Ostaijen to Picasso

by Pierre Joris · May 3, 2006

* * * Pleasure this morning to come across PoetryInternational‘s new addition: a site for the Belgiam/Flemish poet Paul Van Ostaijen (1896-1928) that includes a little bio and a good number of poems (and indicates that a full English translation of Ostaijen’s Bezette Stad —Occupied City—, 1921) will be published shortly in Jacket magazine. Do not miss reading one of my favorite Ostaijen poems, the Homage to Singer, which contains the following lines in James Holmes & Peter Nijmeijer’s translation from The First Book of Schmoll. Selected Poems (Bridges, Amsterdam, 1982):

A Singer?
yessir
yessir yessir yessir I'm telling you a Singer
don't you understand English Mister
Circulez
   Bitte auf Garderobe selbst zu achten
I want a sewingmachine
everyone has a right to a sewingmachine
I want a Singer
everyone a Singer
Singer
     singer
               meistersinger
                                       Hans Sachs
doesn't Hans Sachs have a Singermachine
why doesn't Hans Sachs have a Singer
Hans Sachs is entitled to a Singer
Hans Sachs must have a Singer
Yessir
           that is his right
                 Right makes might
                                Long live Hans Sachs
                                                       Hans Sachs is right
he has a right to

SINGER'S SEWINGMACHINE ARE THE BEST

* * * Checking out Jacket 30 (the Ostaijen isn’t up yet) I came across John Most’s review of Jerome Rothenberg’s and my The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems by Pablo Picasso ( Exact Change Publishers, 5 Brewster Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA; orders@exactchange.com; http://exactchange.com/.)

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John Sakkis says:

May 3, 2006 at 10:42 am

first time i saw you (ONLY time i’ve seen you) at SFSU you read from the Picasso…i was just watching that tape a couple months back…dig…

Reply

Reading

Segue (Artists Space, 11 Cortlandt Alley, NYC)

Saturday, August 17, 5:00PM

STAND4 Gallery: Karstic-Action VOTE 2024!

Performance - Vote drive - Exhibition by Nicole le Peyrafitte & Pierre Joris
STAND4 Gallery, 414 78th Street, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York 11209

Friday, September 6, 7:00PM

Adeena Karasick, Pierre Joris & Nicole Peyrafitte

Unnameable Books, 615 Vanderbilt, Brooklyn New York

Thursday, September 12, 6:30PM

A Tribute to Tyrone Williams

Join us in honoring the life, work and legacy of seminal poet and scholar Tyrone Williams. Poets House, 10 River Terrace, New York, NY

Saturday, September 14, 12:00PM

Pierre Joris, Scott Laudati & Nicole Peyrafitte

Lansingburgh Historical Society, River Poems at The Herman Melville House, 2 114th Street, Troy, NY 12182

Wednesday, November 6, 7:00PM

Jerome Rothenberg (1931-2024) Celebration

St Marks Poetry Project, 131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY 10003

Saturday, November 23

Poetry Reading

Tucson POG/Chax (details to be announced)

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.