Ammiel Alcalay Remembers Jack Hirschman (1933-2021)

News of Jack Hirschman’s death on August 22nd simply knocked the wind out of me. Despite his age, it came without premonition, and felt unexpected and jarring. When mutual friend David Meltzer passed in 2016 I dreamt about him, only to wake up to the news. Jack had collaborated closely on David’s magazine, TREE, the harbinger for a radical Jewish poetics that found sources not only in the kabbalah but in a politics grounded in the generative and generous … Read more Ammiel Alcalay Remembers Jack Hirschman (1933-2021)

Remembering Mourid: 10 in Translation, Online

With thanks to the ever excellent & useful ArabLit for this compilation: On February 14, poet and memoirist Mourid Barghouti died in Amman, Jordan, having spent most of his life in various exiles: Below, a selection from his work available in translation, online. PROSE Excerpt from I Saw Ramallah, with an introduction by Edward W. Said, translated by Ahdaf Soueif It is very hot on the bridge. A drop … Read more Remembering Mourid: 10 in Translation, Online

Paul Celan: Fifty Years Later: Tenebrae & 5 More

It was exactly 50 years ago, on the night of 19 to 20 April 1970 that Paul Celan left his apartment on the avenue Emile Zola, and succumbed to his psychic demons: the Pont Mirabeau (an actual bridge over the Seine that is also a poem by Apollinaire) is where he decided to put an end to his life by going into the Seine. His body was found further downstream on … Read more Paul Celan: Fifty Years Later: Tenebrae & 5 More

Uri Avnery (1923-2018)

Very saddened to learn this morning that Uri Avnery has died at 94. His weekly column which I read religiously — no, that’s the wrong word, though “irreligiously” won’t do either — as soon as his email appeared in my inbox, & which I often reposted on this blog, was one of the most insightful, intelligent, knowledgeable, and sanest analyses of the Israel/Palestine situation I knew of. He … Read more Uri Avnery (1923-2018)

Norman Weinstein’s Homage to Cecil Taylor

Cecil Taylor: Completion Then Scherzo in Mind (1928-2018) : keyboard, acquire roiling equipoise. Who once sent your keys catapulting into free space breathes somewhere his vapor trail here after remains in visible, his touch whole tone holy sprit tongues vibrate as waves shimmer radiant radiant off a Telsa coil. This meteor shower dis ceased clears a night sky for constellations which swell at … Read more Norman Weinstein’s Homage to Cecil Taylor

Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)

Gerrit Lansing (February 25, 1928-February 11, 2018)

Gerrit Lansing, poet, scholar, friend, passed away peacefully this past night. A man of wider & deeper knowledge than almost anyone I have known, Gerrit was as familiar with, and brought as much care to contemporary poetry & poetics than to older literatures, to the traditionary sciences than to modern science, to the making of music than to the preparing of food. A conversationalist sans pareil, he moved with grace, … Read more Gerrit Lansing (February 25, 1928-February 11, 2018)

Norman Weinstein: Elegy for Roswell Rudd

Elegy for Roswell Rudd: Curtain Calls With Glissandos Galore just nerve-jazzed getting off Wilshire then mysterious left turns then soccer field arises, horizon fills with team of middle-aged realtors, one puts a trombone in my face “HERE!” & tosses cornball straw hat “HERE!” so trombone wraps itself boa-bodacious around shoulders & neck, while hat turns into half- assed mute, Dixieland dollar store style, & someones shouting orders, pretend … Read more Norman Weinstein: Elegy for Roswell Rudd

Sam Shepard, Writer — Homage

My translation into French of Motel Chronicles (and Hawk Moon) came out in 1985 & reused the same cover photo than the US edition above, though I had the original photo, much wider, and wrote the introduction below (in French, originally, quickly translated it right now) based on that one, having asked the publisher, Christian Bourgeois to do a wrap around cover image — unhappily the French edition cropped the shot … Read more Sam Shepard, Writer — Homage

Roy Fisher (1930-2017)

Startled & saddened last night, returning from reading at Saint Mark’s Poetry project, to come across Jed Rasula’s FB-post: “I just heard that the great English poet Roy Fisher died today, not long after Tom Raworth passed. They were the two most important non-American poets for me in the early 70s. I corresponded with Raworth but never met him. I interviewed Fisher in 1973 with my friend Mike Erwin, who … Read more Roy Fisher (1930-2017)

Nomadics

Category: Obituaries