Meditations on the Stations of Mansur al-Hallaj…

…(the complete set) is just out from Chax Press, with a gorgeous cover by Nicole Peyrafitte:

& the following endorsements:

All boundaries between the writing of Pierre Joris and that of Al- Hallaj are abolished with a view to an alliance that is renewed but not in view of an approach that would refuse the freedom of reading and writing. I call it an “alliance,” because there is a divide, a rupture in each alliance. The duration of the alliance is, precisely, conditioned by how long the divides and ruptures last. … Through an extreme economy of words and through the elliptical construction of his verse, Joris joins Al-Hallaj. His poem is a flash of lightning. It is also an art sought out in a vision that crosses time and space to give meaning to a nomad poetics renewing its territory. The poem dares to live face-to-face with the impossible in speaking and writing. Thus does Joris turn Al-Hallaj’s words into his own words, and even sees him as an example returning in a different epoch in another language.

Mohammed Bennis, author of Sab’atou touyour (Seven Birds)

Well-versed and well-read in Sufi mysticism, Joris appears throughout these captivating Meditations as a nomadizing poet-scholar – a poeta doctus in the classical sense: whether it is the manners, or pockets of the desert, Baghdad bombings, or Hallaj’s set of stations that caught his eye (a poeta vates?) and fired up the engine of his writing, Joris – poeta faber – also always guides us back to the material flux of language that constitutes these Meditations. Start with the staggering soundscapes of these poems, indeed, begin the beguine!

Peter Cockelbergh, editor of Pierre Joris —Cartographies of the In-between

You can acquire the book via Chax Press directly or via SPD shortly, or by ordering from your favorite bookstore.

Share

Tweet