rothenberg

The broadcast program Dec 12, 2013

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December 11, 2013 www.Misterbowlerradio.com celebrates poet Jerome Rothenberg's 82nd birthday with an on-line broadcast from producer Bent- Erik Rasmussen's ICMM studios in Svinø, Denmark. Danny Snelson, U Penn will celebrate by launching the digital version of Jerry's New Wilderness Letter. The program features a birthday reading by Jerry from his home in Encinitas, California and celebrates nearly fifty years of collaborations with composer, sound artist Charlie Morrow in selected works from the Other Media archive.. The program includes performances, greetings and links to Rothenberg's wide circle. It will remain on-line and continue to grow. (The next Celebration Broadcast will feature Sten Hanson on his birthday April 15, 2014)

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Dear Bent-Erik and Charlie Morrow: When we took Jerry and Diane to China in 2002, traveling across half of China, we have taken many pictures in places like Dunhuang, in the Gobi Desert. We read poems together, he in English, I in Chinese. In his case, always bilingual, he in his sonorous English with me or other Chinese poets reading his poems in my Chinese translations. We both wrote poems about the trip. Here is one of those of mine that I had translated for Jerry and read in UCSD in one of his gatherings. Best, Wai-lim Beijing: August Wai-lim Yip Sandstorms long gone Sky has yet to find its blue In the vast turgid air Like leafless forest trees in the haze Hard, straight, spearing the sky Buildings far and near now seen now unseen Under a steaming lid, netted, knotted, locked and blocked The whole city sneezes Black hair gold hair, visitors Ants crawl over molasses Caught Drenched in Dripping sweats, a thousand ten thousand pound heavy The Imperial Palace Golden Dragon cannot spit out its last purple breath The wings of phaetons all rusted In the vast turgid air Sky-reaching tombstones, The Transnational Commerce Shadows over shadows over shadows of ghosts Closes in and tightens in rings A thousand ten thousand pounds of memory In a cultural center in mid-city A foreign poet Calls the name of Poland Poland, Poland, Poland, Poland Wavelike sufferings race here from ancient times A wandering son from overseas Knots of angst Swirl into the Conch of Death Knots of melancholy Swirl out of the Conch of Death And then he says: “The air all at once was filled with the tenderness of earth, As if that happy moment had already arrived. Birds, like bouquets and bouquets of light,

Exploded out from the tree like a fountain. You ran to embrace it And suddenly stopped short. Are you all ready?” A young poet crippled by reality Is about to speak only to Find his throat Stuffed with balls and balls

Of crumpled paper written all over with his poems Gruntle-Grottle hardly a voice In netted, knotted, locked and blocked August Beijing, August, 2002

Timezone: PST - Pasific standard Time (Central European Time - CET = + 9 hours) Program details: click here 10.00 am Birthday program - premiere broadcast 11.00 am Reading - Jerome Rothenberg recorded by Tyler Clausen List of poems in the program 12.00 am Rothenberg and Morrow compositions part 1 1.00 pm Birthday program - rebroadcast 2.00 pm Rothenberg and Morrow compositions part 2 3.00 pm Rothenberg and Morrow compositions part 3 4.00 pm Birthday program - rebroadcast 5.00 pm Rothenberg and Morrow compositions part 4 6.00 pm Rothenberg and Morrow compositions part 5 7.00 pm Reading - Jerome Rothenberg recorded by Tyler Clausen 8.00 pm Birthday program - rebroadcast 9.00 pm Rothenberg and Morrow compositions part 1 10.00 pm Rothenberg and Morrow compositions part 2 Persons appearing in the Birthday program: Mathew Rothenberg Charles Bernstein Steve McCaffery Åsa Simma Wai-lim (read by Zeljka Rasmussen) Gideon D’Arcangelo Steven Dalachinsky Julian Cowley Bob Holman Michael Heller Jane Augustine Jerome Rothenberg Charles Morrow Sound and music: Morrow: Toot and Blink Morrow/Rothenberg: Birth of Wargod Drumloops by Peter Erskin Christopher Williams and Tom Bruckner Bach: theme from the Goldberg variations played by Glenn Gould (1955 version) Classical chinese music: Two fountains reflecting the moon Western Wind Vocal Ensemble Glen Velez

Street - for Jerry The street below my window lacks closure. There is no end to it in the sense of the end of a life. People who don’t look like me are usually walking in 2s or 3s on up it. Some bicycle in fair or foul/ the starry wheel on adamantine pediments invisible to most however much they try to see it. Even a car rams itself along—louvers like gills of a shark. Only stiff and graceless. Dead shark. I suspect everyone negotiates a cognitive distance in themselves, & talks of the distances they must endure & have endured to be included “Here,” recreating the world in a language unlike mine. Their laughter similar but not the same. (Hear it?) I approximate their laughing systems singing systems fashioned now from clumsy brush-work they would scorn if they saw it. (They won’t.) “…categorical space carried on the tongue necessary for this speech (act) to continue to connect with what we say is ‘Out

There’” where/ a basilisk sleeps on the margins of the weather, where/ the old promises wait for the Grand Hand- Over to Happen. Still, our perceptions are fallible, We fall prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate without reason. The precision and retention of our motor skills may also give us a false sense of confidence in our abilities: grants us an illusionary permission to posit imagined “maps”/machines pulling aluminum boxes into the sky/ an old woman pushing a cart with squeaky wheels hawking noodles and apples. Over there. No Here. Maps fade with too much sunlight. The road we intuit stops (in reality) beyond that corner (just beyond my sight) where everyone seems now to be heading JESSE GLASS

ROTHENBERG ROTHENBERG ROTHENBERG ROTHENBERG ROTHENBERG Jack and Adele Foley my mind is stuffed with tablecloths brought in the imagination a naked bridegroom hovering above his naked bride mad rothenberg thy thermos bottles thy electric fogs we have lain awake in thy soft arms forever thy underwear alive with roots o rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg let us sail through thy fierce weddings rothenberg o rothenberg o sweet resourceful rothenberg have we not tired of thee rothenberg no for thy cheeses shall stand like kings inside thy doorways shall throw their arms around thy lintels rothenberg & begin to rothenberg … Is a stranger. Is ROTHENBERG A Poultice. One ROTHENBERG Catch him. He slips. ROTHENBERG He is heavy. One ROTHENBERG Is a steward. Is ROTHENBERG One steals. One adds numbers. ROTHENBERG … From the skin of a hare the blood of a black hen Burn a dove’s feather Afflict the knees This is the ring of travel. This is the yellow cloth. Take a chain, a hook & the figure of a bird This is the ring of incest Its signs are seven. —& it is said in The Book of Beasts that the lizard fleeth the privy members of a man therefore when they see it they bind ropes from the male to the female & bow down to rothenberg & bow down to rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg rothenberg * “poland” replaced by “rothenberg” … well you know or don’t you kennet it’s a rothenberg of the morning speaking his varses in the grand manner of the germinating jesus the joycemaster making the flower here & the mind bender & oh the tongues he’s telling & the triple tales & the voices of no masters but his own fancy dances & I tell you we listen we listen in a glisten in a daze of days to the shaminacle pinnacle to what wrought this wonder this waxing this joy and this wellaway the rothenberg of the morning

Hello All— &Happiest of Happy Birthday Celebrations to you, Jerry—! I'm thrilled to send on a link to the 'new' New Wilderness Letter, hosted now on Reissues thru J2. Please do see here, with my introductory notes: http://jacket2.org/reissues/nwl Feel free to distribute this link at will. Let me know if you see any errors, I can fix immediately all day. So delighted to see this work up, &on grand occasion. All celebratory cheers, Danny

love to the BIRTHDAYBOY xo Bruce CAFES Y BARES / DIRECTORIO TELEFONICO DE LA HABANA 1958 Bruce Andrews American Bar Anchor Bar Apple Bar Atlantic Bar Bar Ten Cent Bar To-day Bar Turf Club Boston Century Bar Club Pan American Continental Detroit Esquire Frank Happy Bar Hollywood Home Plate

Johnny Bar Club Johnny Dream Bar Club Kid Bar Mexico Bar Club Miami Restaurant New Henry New York Bar Pan American Bar Club Pan American Club Pennsylvania Plus Ultra Polar Riverside Bar Rogers Bar Roosevelt Royalty Seventy Two Shangri-La Club Sloppy Joe’s Surf Club Tally-Ho Tony’s Club Tropicana Night Club Twenty One Club Wall Street Willie’s Club Wonder Bar

A Poem for the Cruel Majority BY JEROME ROTHENBERG The cruel majority emerges! Hail to the cruel majority! They will punish the poor for being poor. They will punish the dead for having died. Nothing can make the dark turn into light for the cruel majority. Nothing can make them feel hunger or terror. If the cruel majority would only cup their ears the sea would wash over them. The sea would help them forget their wayward children. It would weave a lullaby for young & old. (See the cruel majority with hands cupped to their ears, one foot is in the water, one foot is on the clouds.) One man of them is large enough to hold a cloud between his thumb & middle finger, to squeeze a drop of sweat from it before he sleeps. He is a little god but not a poet. (See how his body heaves.) The cruel majority love crowds & picnics. The cruel majority fill up their parks with little flags. The cruel majority celebrate their birthday. Hail to the cruel majority again! The cruel majority weep for their unborn children, they weep for the children that they will never bear. The cruel majority are overwhelmed by sorrow. (Then why are the cruel majority always laughing? Is it because night has covered up the city's walls? Because the poor lie hidden in the darkness? The maimed no longer come to show their wounds?) Today the cruel majority vote to enlarge the darkness. They vote for shadows to take the place of ponds Whatever they vote for they can bring to pass. The mountains skip like lambs for the cruel majority. Hail to the cruel majority! Hail! hail! to the cruel majority! The mountains skip like lambs, the hills like rams. The cruel majority tear up the earth for the cruel majority. Then the cruel majority line up to be buried. Those who love death will love the cruel majority. Those who know themselves will know the fear the cruel majority feel when they look in the mirror. The cruel majority order the poor to stay poor. They order the sun to shine only on weekdays. The god of the cruel majority is hanging from a tree. Their god's voice is the tree screaming as it bends. The tree's voice is as quick as lightning as it streaks across the sky. (If the cruel majority go to sleep inside their shadows, they will wake to find their beds filled up with glass.) Hail to the god of the cruel majority! Hail to the eyes in the head of their screaming god! Hail to his face in the mirror! Hail to their faces as they float around him! Hail to their blood & to his! Hail to the blood of the poor they need to feed them! Hail to their world & their god! Hail & farewell! Hail & farewell! Hail & farewell!

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