Charles Bernstein’s
”Eulogy for Emma”
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Events
Reading
STAND4 Gallery: Karstic-Action VOTE 2024!
STAND4 Gallery, 414 78th Street, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York 11209
Adeena Karasick, Pierre Joris & Nicole Peyrafitte
A Tribute to Tyrone Williams
Pierre Joris, Scott Laudati & Nicole Peyrafitte
Jerome Rothenberg (1931-2024) Celebration
Poetry Reading
ABOUT
Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age 18, he has moved between Europe, the Maghreb & the US & holds both Luxembourg & American citizenship. He has published over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021) & Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. In 2020 his two final Paul Celan translations came out: Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose, from CMP) & The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG). Forthcoming are: Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” (Small Orange Import, 2023) & Diwan of Exiles: A Pierre Joris Reader (edited with Ariel Reznikoff, 2024). For a full list see the right column on this blog.
In 2011 Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, published Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’ work by, among others, Mohammed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Robert Kelly, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Jean Portante, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte (2011).
Other work includes the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta’wil Productions). With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, and with Habib. Tengour Poems for the Millennium, vol. 3: The University of California Book of North African Literature.
When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte. A volume of their collaborative work, to be called Domopoetics, will be published in the near future.
More
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS IN PRINT
“Exile is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader” edited & translated by Pierre Joris
“Meditations on the Stations of Mansur al-Hallaj”
“Paul Celan: The Meridian Final Version”—Drafts—Materials
“Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-Between” edited by Peter Cockelbergh
“The University of California Book of North African Literature”
4×1 : Works by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey and Habib Tengour
PABLO PICASSO The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems
Poasis (Selected Poems 1986-1999)
Poems for the Millennium 1 & 2
ppppp-Poems Performances Pieces Proses Plays Poetics by Kurt Schwitters
It’s absolutely none of my business, but I am deeply touched by Charles Bernstein’s grief. My daughter is named Emma too. She is everything to me, though I usually forget to make that clear. I will hold her tightly today, and I will tell her how precious she is. I promise.
Please know, Charles, that you are not alone. There is nothing more to say.
Here is a poem for the occasion, written by Theodore Roethke. I hope there is some solace in it.
Elegy for Jane
(My student, thrown by a horse)
I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.
Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.
My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.
If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.