Happy Birthday Jerry!

Today Jerome Rothenberg, poet, translator, anthologist extraordinaire turns 89!

Many, many Happy Returns, my friend!

& here, as we come to the end of this year of desolation, a few quotes from your book The Mystery of False Attachments:

Eager to break thru language
& touch life
I crack my head against
a mirror

*

In the way words
rhyme
or fail to
I found my truth

*

The smell of mackerel
was the greatest poem
America
was promises

*

I learn to mimic birds caught in the brambles
I have a stark vocabulary
letting my heart keep time
my throat in rapture

*

It doesn’t matter if the rhyme
is slant or straight
I feel it on my tongue
my eyes see through it

*

“Read me and instructions will be clear:
I fight the final revolution
Peace draws nigh
The mark of teeth on flesh signals our end”

*

A miracle of darkness hides the light
itself a miracle
in which infinities escape us
& we plunge on in hot pursuit

*

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