How to leave this year, nay, this first decade of the no-longer-brand-new century, during which some we liked a lot called it splitsville? Well, for a posthumous celebration of Tuli Kupferber’s 87th B-Day, I remembered that when I first met him in 1969, Tuli had amazed me by being the only human I knew who claimed to live on nuts alone. So Nicole Peyrafitte & I put together a … Read more Nuts to 2010
Paul Bowles was born today, 30 December, 100 years ago. Composer, poet, novelist, short story & travel memoir writer, translator, Bowles was a core figure of the 20th century nomad — expatriate as they said back then — community. Having settled in Tangier after 1947 he became what the Tunisian writer Albert Memmi called “an immobile nomad.” But few writers have better described the fate of the modern tourist … Read more Paul Bowles @ 100
Didn’t know what was wrong with New York this last month, but it felt uncanny, unheimlich, no one saying savvy rude things to you or the guy next to you, no one slapping you on the back calling you names or complaining about this or that as you enter Katz’s, no one offering unasked for wise-crack put downs with that unmistakable faint Brooklynese (rhymes with pekinese) people here speak … Read more He Gone? No, He Back!
Today is Chinese poet, writer, activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiabobo‘s 55th birthday, which he ‘celebrates’ in jail. Below a poem of his written 9 April 1999, reprinted today in the German newspaper Tageszeitung in a German translation by Martin Winter, on which I base my version. Wait for me with the Dust (For my wife, who is waiting for me) There’s nothing left for you to … Read more Liu Xiabobo @ 55
tesserae commissure [written Jan 19th 1962; one of my very favorite Olson poems [audio:https://pierrejoris.com/blog/audio/OlsonTesserae.mp3] from Olson’s reading at Goddard College, transcript here: ” tesserae commissure UV: What is “tesserae”? CO: Yea. The little pieces that are used in making a mosaic. They are tesserae, the, the—all those little pieces of stone and glass and color. UV: And the other word? CO: “Commissure,” which means, uh, bound together. But it’s … Read more Charles Olson @ 100
BONA ANANDA GLÉCKLECHT NEIT JOER BONNE ANNEE HAPPY NEW YEAR 새해복 많이 받으세요 سنة سعيدة Switching year is always exciting and this is how we FIRE UP 2011
The poet, teacher & activist Janine Pommy-Vega passed away yesterday, 23 December. More information here and here. And below, the opening poem of her first book, Poems to Fernando (City Lights Books, 1968): The Last Watch The monk’s prayer sung bowed down in the dome comes around ascending sound calling far as the land reaches Wakefulness now in the last watch — Lord near us! & churchbells toll no … Read more Janine Pommy-Vega (1942-2010)
Interesting essay by Orhan Pamuck in today’s Guardian. Below, the opening paras; you can read the whole piece here. The souring of Turkey’s European dream In the schoolbooks I read as a child in the 1950s and 1960s, Europe was a rosy land of legend. While forging his new republic from the ruins of the Ottoman empire, which had been crushed and fragmented in the first world war, Mustafa … Read more Orhan Pamuck on Europe
Anuncian VII Festival de Poesía en Nicaragua MANAGUA—La Fundación Festival Internacional de Poesía anunció al martes que su VII edición se celebrará entre el 13 y el 17 de febrero próximo en Granada, al este de Managua, con la presencia de unos 150 poetas de más de 50 países.”Quien quiera saber cómo está la poesía en el mundo que asista al festival”, dijo el poeta nicaragüense Francisco de Asís … Read more VII Festival de Poesía en Nicaragua