Description
Poetry. A CRUEL NIRVANA both is and is not a new Jerome Rothenberg collection. In other words, almost everything in this collection has been published before. Each of the three major sections (Narratives and Real Theater Pieces, The Notebooks, and Conversations) was originally published individually. A CRUEL NIRVANA brings together these long out-of-print smaller gatherings in a way that illuminates their important place in Rothenberg's crucial contribution to Twentieth- and Twenty-first Century poetics. Returning to these poems, properly contextualized, one finds them communicating in one field of immanence. If we feel exhausted by meaningless violence and marketing, A CRUEL NIRVANA shows us wellsprings of meaning and power we missed or just couldn't see in our exhaustion or disaffection.
Author Bio
Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet with over ninety books of poetry and nine assemblages of traditional and avant-garde poetry such. Since the late 1950s, he has been involved with various aspects of poetry performance, including a theatrical version of his book Poland/1931 and a musical version of Khurbn. With his anthologies and journals he has long been a central mover in the development of an ethnopoetics and he has also translated from a wide range of poets. His work in various areas has been recognized with numerous distinctions (a Guggenheim fellowship, a Wenner-Gren Foundation award for experimental ethnopoetic translation, several awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York etc.). A first translation into French of Technicians of the Sacred was published in 2008. He has until recently been a professor of visual arts and literature at the University of California, San Diego.
Author City: Encinitas, CA USA