I am still on my “book break”, but I wanted to share here a brief notice in memory of my friend and great inspiration, the poet Jerry Rothenberg, who died late last month. You can read his full obituary here. I saw Jerry only twice in person, once for a lovely lunch at his home in Encinitas in 2018 with his wife, Diane, and once again at the New York Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, which he had helped to found in the early 1960s. I corresponded with him fairly regularly for a few years. He is the one who convinced me, or perhaps strong-armed me, into taking on the project of doing an edition of Sakha Olonkho epic for the University of California Press series, “World Literatures in Translation”, for which he served as an adviser. For this, but not only for this, I have Jerry to thank for much of the course my life has taken over the past six or seven years.
Both Symposium and Technicians were crucial discoveries for me in the early 90's , when I was wending my autodidactic way through the library. JR was just quietly doing multiculturalism long before it was named, & showed how to do it regardless of whether it was cool, or cause celebre, or co-opted. Thank you for putting up this notice; I would not have learned for a while otherwise.
A Big Jewish Book brought me back to connection with my Jewish heritage. As I think about the immense variety in that book and in Symposium, I am reminded of Auerbach's Mimesis -- the microcosm connecting to the surrounding context and elsewhere. To use the language of mathemtics, Jerry was a collector and distributor of essential singularities.
In 1970, as a college freshman/aspiring poet, Technicians of the Sacred was my Bible! Symposium of the Whole, America: A Prophecy, and Shaking the Pumpkin are also books I have cherished throughout my life and returned to often. A great man, a good soul, Jerome Rothenberg!.
Both Symposium and Technicians were crucial discoveries for me in the early 90's , when I was wending my autodidactic way through the library. JR was just quietly doing multiculturalism long before it was named, & showed how to do it regardless of whether it was cool, or cause celebre, or co-opted. Thank you for putting up this notice; I would not have learned for a while otherwise.
much enjoyed the other cave + rothenberg essay also.
wrote on facebook: JR "helped save poetry from itself at a critical juncture".
A Big Jewish Book brought me back to connection with my Jewish heritage. As I think about the immense variety in that book and in Symposium, I am reminded of Auerbach's Mimesis -- the microcosm connecting to the surrounding context and elsewhere. To use the language of mathemtics, Jerry was a collector and distributor of essential singularities.
In 1970, as a college freshman/aspiring poet, Technicians of the Sacred was my Bible! Symposium of the Whole, America: A Prophecy, and Shaking the Pumpkin are also books I have cherished throughout my life and returned to often. A great man, a good soul, Jerome Rothenberg!.