Obama in Barcelona & Louisiana
Second day in Barcelona: leisurely walks around the Ramblas and the El Raval quarter. I was fascinated to see many Obama posters up — mainly a posterized painting of Obama with the word HOPE underneath it. The papers here suggest that Europeans favor him 4 to one — and are in awe of the fact that he might indeed win, as they do concede that it would be very unlikely, nay impossible for a black person to be elected President in France, Germany, Spain or any other country on the old continent. Later tonight the Lou Reed concert at the KOSMOPOLIS lit fest (he gets billing as a poeta, which may be a bit far-fetched…), but meanwhile here’s a YouTube video from Louisiana that’s a real treat if you like Sydeko:
“Oui, on peut — Yes we can!” OBAMA ZYDECO FROM LOUISIANA 2008
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“Todesguge/Deathfugue”
“Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021)”
“Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello”
“Conversations in the Pyrenees”
“A Voice Full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly.” Edited by Pierre Joris & Peter Cockelbergh
“An American Suite” (Poems) —Inpatient Press
“Arabia (not so) Deserta” : Essays on Maghrebi & Mashreqi Writing & Culture
“Barzakh” (Poems 2000-2012)
“Fox-trails, -tales & -trots”
“The Agony of I.B.” — A play. Editions PHI & TNL 2016
“The Book of U / Le livre des cormorans”
“Memory Rose Into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan”
“Paul Celan, Microliths They Are, Little Stones”
“Paul Celan: Breathturn into Timestead-The Collected Later Poetry.” Translated & with commentary by Pierre Joris. Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Lou Reed’s great literary inspiration was Delmore Schwartz, whose influence is more readily seen in the best post-Velvets work, such as “Berlin” and “Coney Island Baby.” The final track on the Velvets’ first album is dedicated to Schwartz, but its amalgamation of white blues and Schoenbergesque dissonance owes much more to the avant-garde of its time than to the tortured inscapes of Schwartz’s work. John Cale is largely to blame, perhaps, but not at all entirely. Reed’s homage to Poe in the late 90s (I think) is instructive. Anyway, he surely qualifies as a poet, though he works best in more populous idioms, all the while enjoying the patina his Velvets-era and glam flirtations during the punk years affords. This tends to be better recognized on the continent, for some reason.