It’s his 90th birthday and we celebrate the extraordinary phenomena that is Jerome Rothenberg. 10 years since his CUNY 80th Birthday tribute, he remains prolific and active and, truly inspirational (this past Wednesday (a mere two days ago) he appeared as part of a celebratory “Radical Poetry” reading for the Brooklyn Rail – see here)
Here’s his author page at EPC
Here’s his invaluable blog “Poems and Poetics”
Here’s Jerry on Pennsound
Here’s Jerry on Ubuweb – (and here (his ethnopoetics section) – and here – and here)
Jerome Rothenberg at New Directions
Recent volumes include Eye of Witness – A Jerome Rothenberg Reader (2013), A Field on Mars – Divagations and Autovariations – Poems 2000-2015 (2015), President of Desolation – A Book of Mirrors (2019) and The Mystery of False Attachments (2019)
Here’s some (relatively) recent presentations (in the Zoom age), April 2020 (introduced by Rae Armantrout) for Charles Alexander’s Enclave series)
Jerry Rothenberg, 2019 at Bard (audio only):
Here’s Jerry in Chicago in 2014 speaking on poetics and reading from Eye of Witness:
A reading the previous year 2013 for DIA. (with Pierre Joris) (introductions by Vincent Katz) 2013 at D.G.Wills Books in San Diego (introduced by David Antin)
2008 – a reading and discussion in Philadelphia at the Kelly Writers House
2006 – a vintage reading at the UAG Gallery in Albany – here and here
not forgetting…
Jerry, the anthologist, the assemblagist (what a blessing for us all, what an extraordinary achievement!) –
The five volumes (so far) of the Poems for the Millennium (two with Pierre Joris), the most recent volume, Barbaric Vast & Wild: Outside & Subterranean Poetry from Origins to Present (2015) – Modernism, Romanticism, Outsider Art..
Check out also, if you haven’t already – Shaking the Pumpkin – Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas (1972, 2014), A Big Jewish Book – Poems & Other Visions of the Jews from Tribal Times to Present (revised and republished as Exiled in the Word, 1977 and 1989),
America a Prophecy: A New Reading of American Poetry from Pre-Columbian Times to the Present (1973, 2012) (co-edited with George Quasha) and Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward An Ethnopoetics (1983), (co-edited with Diane Rothenberg).
and then, of course, the one that started it all, (published in 1968, revised and expanded in 1985, and revised and expanded again in 2017 on the occasion of its 50th anniversary), the extraordinarily influential, Technicians of the Sacred,
Ethnopoetics – Here’s him in Australia
and here’s him from that same Australian visit – On Writing Through – Translation and Othering As Forms of Composition
Jerry Rothenberg can be heard talking on anthologies and on the construction of anthologies here
More Rothenberg on anthologies – here
Charles Bernstein interviews him from back in 1996 – here
from 2005, edited this past Summer by David Hughes, a forty-five-minute filmed interview, The Bard of Encinitas will be coming, coming soon..
Here’s a trailer:
to quote Anne Waldman from 1992)
“Our illustrious Jerome Rothenberg , who’s been a recurring faculty here at Naropa, has given us tremendous input and insight and his texts are those we use frequently in our teaching here”
Recordings from Naropa – More readings and presentations
Among the highlights:
His 1981 reading (Allen introduces him)
A 2013 reading
1985 collaborating with Allen on a class on Yiddish poetry
and two classes on “the Voice”
In 1981 he delivered eight lectures on “Ethno-Poetics and Performance”
We’ll be featuring tomorrow a transcription of one particularly engaging Naropa talk (from 1992) – “Notes on His Own Poetics” – stay tuned