The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog

Discussion “The seeds of its own unfolding”: PoemTalk on Lyn Hejinian's "constant change figures" with Thomas Devaney, Al Filreis, Tom Mandel, and Bob Perelman

https://jacket2.org/interviews/seeds-its-own-unfolding

And All Is Only This

Gennady Aygi, Child-and-Rose, trans. from the Russian by Peter France, with a preface by Bei Dao (New York: New Directions, 2003)

by Douglas Messerli

On the book cover of this collection by the noted Russian poet, the book is touted by Jacques Roubaud, Roman Jakobsen, Fanny Howe, Paul Barker (writing in the London Times), and Michael Palmer—all writers I highly respect. The preface by the renowned Chinese poet Bei Dao proclaims what a wonderful human being Aygi is, and suggests that, along with Pasternak (a friend of Aygi's) and Mandel'shtam, Aygi is one of the greatest of Russian poets. Just as importantly—to my way of thinking—is Bei Dao's insistence that Aygi is an engaging drinking companion: "illuminating" in his conversations, "sociable, sensitive, and full of insight." Peter France, in his excellent Introduction to the book speaks of Aygi in the context of his Chuvashia, the small republic in the Russian Federation where the poet is hailed as a national treasure, and France expertly explains how Aygi's writing, although composed in Russian, is highly influenced by the Chuvash chants, riddles, festivals, and Khorovod or choral dance. His work is difficult, but not indecipherable insists France. Aygi has been nominated for the Nobel Prize several times.

If all that weren't enough, the book begins with a short foreword by Aygi himself in which he describes most of the book we are about to read as being a joyful celebration of the birth of his daughter. With five sons, he had long looked forward to the birth of a daughter, particularly having grown up in a culture where most of the men had died in World War II, and women were the bond between families, creating a kind of "sacred" femininity." I had recently finished a review of Charles Bernstein, praising him for employing the language of his children and that of others in his poetry, and here was a writer arguing not only for a poetry expressing the childhood experience, but a "respect for children"and childhood, a love for the child in all of us.

It would seem that one would have to be particularly ornery—perhaps even malicious—not to love the poetry of such a man!

I'm as sentimental as anyone. I almost always cry at the swell of the orchestra and the rise of movie credits, even if the movie has been completely empty-headed. Perhaps that's why I recognize sentimentality so well; and this book suffers from it. A substantial number of the poems here represented seem particularly trivial, focused as they are on his beloved baby. It is not that they are uninteresting—I love children and enjoy their parents' observations about them—but Child-and-Rose is a bit like being subjected to too many baby pictures. Aygi's daughter's "gurgles" "show forth / the clarity of the treasure 'my quiet god.'" The father feels a "heaviness" as the child falls to sleep. The baby's "a-a-of-lullaby" again "shows forth" "with clear-simple-shining / …(in firstguessing / like firstcreation)." The poet's world, we are told, contains, "you know-[only] you," the child. And a part of one poem is made up, presumably, of the baby's attempt at language:

Bwol bzilda grad

ei tselestine

bzilda and grad

obei verty

I actually find that more interesting than some of the other conceits.

However, it is not just the focus on child and father that creates, at times, frustration, but the many pauses, dashes, colons, word combinations and other visual devices that accompany such concentrated subject matter. Normally, these devices would delight simply because of the complexity of the text. And at first reading there appears to be a kind of Celan-like quality to Aygi's "father-wandering," "First-circle," "fresh-and-new-bound," "common-shining." The "mother-come-again," "birchcherry," "falsely-adult-clearsighted" images create a kind of "Word-face," that brings an easy resonance to otherwise quite transparent passages. But in the end, I fear, it is a kind of "face," with none of the dark "breathturns" of Celan's painfully wrought compositions. Dare I suggest that Aygi's writing—at least in this book—is a bit like e.e. cummings's poems: superficially experimental, but actually quite straight-forward, even mawkish?

Having said all that, there is no doubt that this likeable poet is, at times, also quite brilliant. Particularly in poems where his focus is broader, the pauses and shiftings of thought create a linguistic sensuality and narrative wonderment, as in "Song from the Days of Your Forefather (Variation on the Theme of a Chuvash Folk-song)," "Little Tatar Song," "Story of the Level-crossing Gate and the Crossing Keeper's Cabin," "Story of Harlequin Grown Old," "Chuvash Song for a Girl Your Age," "Little Song for You—About Your Father," "Now There Are Always Snows," "Again: Appearance of a Bluetit," "My Daughter's Autumn Walk," and "Drawing Long Ago." Even from the titles of these poems, one can perceive that, at least to my way of thinking, Aygi is on the most solid ground when he immerses himself in the landscape and culture of his homeland. And in conveying that world, Aygi is a true master. Can there be any poem that more clearly portrays a world that, although infused with human spirituality, is equally at the whim of nature as in "Now There Are Always Snows"?

Like snow the Lord that is

and is what is the snows

when the soul is what is

the snows the soul the light

and all is only this

that those like death that is

that like them too it is

confess that it is so

among light darkness is

when once again the snows

Oh-God-Again-the-Snows

how can it be it is

and is not to be checked

as corpses are and not

oh Deathmask-Land that is

no question that it is

then when the People verb

which signifies is not

…………..

it is as is an not

and only by this is

but is what only is

miracle sudden swirl

there is no Deadness-Land

oh God again the snows

the souls the snows the light

Oh God again the snows

but be there there are none

the snows my friend the snows

the soul the light the snow

oh God again the snows

and snow that is there is

At Point Zero

Anne Portugal, Nude, trans. Norma Cole (Berkeley: Kelsey St. Press, 2001)

by Douglas Messerli

With over four books of poetry published in France—all on the list of the distinguished publisher P.O.L.—Anne Portugal is fast becoming recognized as one of the major French poets. Her book Le plus simple appareil has been translated in a beautiful edition as Nude. Before I go any further with this review, however, I must admit that it was originally to have been published by my own Sun & Moon, but in the financial duress of the last few years, was taken on by Kelsey St. Press. So I am prejudiced to like it. However, it rereading the work—years after my original encounter—I do feel I have some observations to make.

The work, divided into seven parts—"the bath," "the exhibition," "the garden," "the elders," "the visitors," "Susannah's letter," and "the painting"—is really one long work thematically based on the biblical tale of Susanna and the Elders. That story, canonical in Catholicism and apocryphal in Protestantism, added sometime in 100 B.C. to the Hebrew-Aramaic version of Daniel, tells the story of Susanna, a beautiful woman married to Joakim, whose house is the site of the local court. Two of the elders of that court desire Susanna and plot her rape. As she takes a bath in the garden, they hide themselves, observing, and then offer her the choice of sexually submitting to them or being accused of adultery. When Susanna refuses to give in to their demands, they denounce her, trying her in the court and sentencing her to death. Enter Daniel, who interrogates the two elders, proving their guilt and Susanna's innocence. Praised by her parents, Daniel becomes a hero among the people.

Portugal's work, however—although containing the bath, garden, nude, elders, and sexual encounters—is hardly a literal retelling of the Bible tale. Rather, for this author the work is an interweaving of what it means to be a woman in contemporary France and a study in formal structures, a kind of verbal painting, which she lays out early in the book with a series of panoramas. Indeed, the work is addressed to an unknown who "knows painting" ("You really know painting"), presumably the individual to whom the book is dedicated, Marc Silvain. But the author could be addressing anyone else, even possibly the poet Guillaume Apollinaire to whose poems Portugal makes reference throughout Nude, and who, as the author of The Cubist Painters, certainly did also know painting. Already in the second section, "the exhibition," Portugal alludes to Apollinaire's poem "Annie," which describes a Mennonite living on the shores of Texas between Mobile and Galveston, passing a garden filled with roses by a villa "Which is one huge rose." And in "the garden" she connects that poem with images from Apollinaire's "White Snow" and "Palais," which, ultimately, in the last section, reverberates with Portugal's references to Apollinaire's "Rosemonde," "the rose of the world," and again to "Palais," as Susannah turns back to Rosemonde's palace.

To focus on these echoing patterns, however, would be to mislead the reader. Portugal's work, far from being a sort of academic compilation of literary references, is lyrically dense and complex in its structure. And for that reason, if for no other, I long for a bilingual edition, where I could compare the complexity of the original—it's multiple puns and enjambments—with Cole's translation. For, if the poem begins with the simple image of Susannah at the bath, a plump and blonde Swede, as the author see her, "limned" by "the two elders' heads," it soon swirls into a series of multiple images, of numerous Susannahs, a woman naked in a field in Normandy while at the same time a passionate girl in a sateen nightie. The poem becomes a "vessel borne upon multiple waves," just as Susannah becomes all women, Venus and "a plump woman who's put on weight she's put on weight." Portugal's work, in fact, is like a cubist painting, a series of images overlaying each other which together portray not an instant in time, a symbolic flash of womanhood, but all women through time, being both preyed upon by the opposite sex and sensually aroused by its attentions, a woman moving forward in history while turning back to the romance of Rosemonde's palace—which leaves man eternally starting out again "at point zero.”

Helga M. Novak [GDR/Iceland/Poland]

1935

Born Maria Karlsdottir in Berlin on September 8, 1935 of German-Icelandic parents, the young poet attended the University of Leipzig, then part of East Germany, studying journalism and philosophy, before working as a technician, laboratory assistant, and bookseller.

In 1961 she married and moved to Iceland, having two children before her divoce. In her first year there she wrote her first book of poems was published as Ostdeutsch in East Germany and Balllade von der risenden Anna in West Germany in 1965. That same year she moved back to Leipzig, studying literature at the Becker Institute there. But the next year, her GDR citizenship was revoked, and she returned to Iceland, where she retained her legal name as Maria Karlsdottir, writing under the pseudonym of Novak. Over the years she lived in Iceland, Yugoslavia, and Portugal, and now resides in Poland.

Novak never allowed herself to categorized as a GDR writer, and conformed to none of the GDR writing requirements. As the poet herself expressed it: “To whom should I conform? I was born in a Childrens’ Home and my mother left me 14 days later. I was adopted by completely unsuitable parents. To whom should I conform? Then there was the war. I left my parents’ home when I was 15. Then came school and the party and I didn’t want to conform to those things either.” In two books, Die Eishelligen (1979, The Iceman) and Vogel federlos (1982, Bird Featherless), Nowak wrote of her difficult childhood and adolescence, works that contain both prose and prose poetry together.

Her more regularized poetry collections are sparer, although even more expressive. Over the years she has won numerous awards, among them the Literaturpreis der Staadt Bremen in 1968, the Kranischsteiner Literaturpreis in 1985, the Roswitha Prize in 1989, the Ernnsst-Reuter-Preis of the same year, and the Ehrengabe der Deutschen Schillerstiftung award in 1994. In 2001 she was awarded the Ida-Dehmel-Literaturpreis.

In 1999 her poems were collected as Solange noch Liebersbriefe eintreffen (As Long as Love Letters Arrive).

BOOKS OF POETRY

Ballade von der reisenden Anna (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1965); Colloquium mit vier Häuten (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1968); Das Gefrierhaus. Die Umgebung (with Timm Bartholl) (Hamburg, 1968); Geselliges Beisammensein (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1968); Wohnhaft im Westend (with Horst Karasek) (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1970); Aufenthalt in einem irren Haus (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1971/reprinted Frannkfurt/Main: Schöffling and Co., 1995); Stelsamer Berich au seiner alten Stadt (with Dorothean Nosbisch) (Hannover, 1973); Die Ballade von der kurzen Prozess (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1975); Die Landnahme von Torre Bela (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1976); Margaret emit dem Schrank (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1978); Die Eisheiligen (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1979); Palisaden (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1980); Vogel federlos (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1982); Grüheide Grüheide (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1983); Legende Transsib (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1985); Märkische Feemorgana (Frankfurt/Main: Luchterhand, 1989);

Silvatica (Frankfurt/Main: Schöffling and Co., 1997); Die Eisheiligen / Vogel federlos (in one volume) (Frankfurt/Main: Schöffling and Co., 1998); Solange noch Liebesbriefe eintreffen (Frankfurt/Main: Schöffling and Co., 1999); Wo ich jetz bin (Frankfurt/Main: Schöffling and Co., 2005); Aus Wut (Berlin: Mariannenpresse, 2005)

Oh, I stood by the spring

finally arrived

I forgot to drink

encircled by twigs

under a witch hazel roof

I saw in the damp

hollow of stone

why

did I absolutely want to go by myself

you still said—

I’ll come along to the spring

brooding in the cold

of water and moss

I sense

beneath the brightness of a sunny day

death all around

and think—it is all over

and I am rid of you

after I was out of that hell

I sank into a fox den

that was under the thorny runners

not to be seen

oh I stood by the spring

and did not drink.

—Translated from the German by Charlotte Melin

______

Zafer Şenoak [b. Turkey/Germany]

1961

Born in Ankara, Turkey in 1961, Zafer Şenoak is now a writer living and working in Berlin. His father was a journalist and his mother a teacher, and in 1970 he moved with his family to Munich where he went on to study political science, philosophy and literature at the University of Munich.

To date, Şenoak has seven volumes of poetry and numerous other books of essays and prose writing. Among his poetry volumes are Ritual der Jugend, Das senkrechte Meer, and Fernwehanstalten. Recently, Babel Verlag has issued a selected edition, Übergämg: Ausgewählte Gedichte 1980-2005 (Border Crossing: Selected Poems 1980-2005) which includes new poems written in the decade since Fernwehanstalten.

The poet has also published translations of the 14^th-century Anatolian mystic poet, Yunus Emre and has published works of fiction, Gefährliche Verwandtschaft, Die Prärie and Die Erottomane—Ein Findelbuch. His books of essays include Atlas des tropischen Deutschland (1992), War Hitler Araber? (2004), and Zungenentfernung (2001). His books have been translated into French, a his essays, Atlas of a Tropical Germany has been translated into English and published by the University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

In 1988 he founded the literary magazine, Sirene. In that same year he received the Adelbert von Chamisso Award and a grant from the Berlin Senate for the Literarisches Colloquium. He was a fellow at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles in 1996.

Şenoak is a regular contributor to the German alternative daily Tagezeitung in Berlin, and has edited numerous bilingual essay and story collections in German and Turkish. He has been writer-in-residence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Darmouth College, University of Wales-Swansea, Oberlin College, and the University of California at Berkeley.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Elekrisches Blau (München: Edition Literazette, 1983); Flammenstropfen (Frankfurt/Main: Dagyeli Verlag, 1985); Ritual der Jugend (Frankfurt/Main: Dagyeli Verlag, 1987); Das senkrechte Meer (Berlin: Babel Verlag, 1991); Fernwehanstalten (Berlin: Babel Verlag, 2005); Übergang: Ausgewählte Gedichte 1980-2005 (Berlin: Babel Verlag, 2005)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

selections in Douglas Messerli, ed. The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20^thCentury, Volume 7—At Villa Aurora: Nine Contemporary Poets Writing in German (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2006)

The Tiger the Woods and Us

the tiger is no longer sad

we opened the cage and we took him

we like to smell him he smells us

and falls profoundly to sleep

he dreams

the way we

dream of him

the woods all to himself

the dark wood raises its white sex

pushes open our door

we keep dreaming

even when it scares us

at home the tiger is tame

the woods are wild and damp

soon comes summer and heavy breathing

we get into our thinnest skin.

—Translated from the German by Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright

The Invisible Woman

even the paths to us are getting shorter

look through the sunny wall of the house

a woman leans on the door

beautiful in her invisibility

all of this makeshift

waiting four us to take a step

but we don’t move

hold our hands back

we don’t sleep

when we don’t want to wake from a dream

lean for while at the door

and search for the word that is not written

—Translated from the German by Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright

_________

Erich Fried [Austria/England]

1921-1988

Erich Fried was born Jewish in Vienna, Austria on May 6, 1921. He was a child actor and began writing at an early age. When his father was killed by the Gestapo during the Anschluss in 1938, Fried fled with his mother to England, working throughout the war as a librarian and a factory worker.

Fried also joined Young Austria, a left-wing emigrant youth movement, but left the group when it advocated Stalinist causes. He also translated Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, and Dylan Thomas. He returned to Vienna for the first time in 1962.

Fried published several volumes of poetry, but also wrote fiction, drama, and radio plays, as well as political works, the last of which were controversial as he attacked the Zionist movement and various left-wing causes.

In 1982 he regained his Austrian nationality, but maintained a dual citizenship with the United Kingdom. Fried was also a member of the Graz Authors’ Collective.

Fried died of intestinal cancer in Baden-Baden, Germany in 1988, but is buried in the Kensal Green cemetery in London.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Deutschland: Gedichte (London: Austrian P.E.N., 1944); Gedichte (Hamburg: Claussen, 1958); Warngedichte (1964); Anfectungen: Füntzig Gedichte (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1967); Die Beine der grösseren Lügen (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1969); Befrelung von der Flucht: Gedichte und Gegengedicted (Düsseldorf: Claussen, 1968); Die Freiheit den Mund aufzumachen; achtundvierzig Gedichte (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1972); Gegengift: 49 Gedichte u. e. Zyklus (Klaus Wagenbach, 1974); Höre Israel!: Gedichte und Fussnoted (Hamburg: Verlag Association, 1974); Die bunten Getüme: 70 Gedichte (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1977); 100 Gedichte ohne Vaterland (1978); Liebesgedichte (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1979); Ganz oben leichte Vögel: Gedichte (Hattingen/Ruhr: Flieter-Verlag, 1982); Es ist was es ist: Liebesgedicht, Angstgedichte, Zorngedichte (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1983); Beunrhigungen: Gedicte (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1984); In die Simme einradiert: Gedichte (Koln: Bund-Verlag, 1985); Als ich mich nach dir verzehrte: swelundsiebzig Gedichte von der Liebe (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1990); Einbruch der wirklichkeit: versteute gedichte 1927-1988 (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1991)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

Last Honours, trans. by Georg Rapp(London: Turret Books, 1968); On Pain of Seeing, trans. by Georg Rapp (London: Rapp and Whiting, 1969/ Chicago: Swallow Press, 1969); selection in Four German Poets (New York: Red Dust, 1979); 100 Poems without a Country, trans. by Stuart Hood and Georg Rapp(London: John Calder, 1978/New York: Red Dust, 1980); Love Poems (Paris: Calder Publications, 1991)

Soap Bubbles

I grasped at

a straw

and blew bubbles of

politicians

generals

and policemen

They shimmered

puffed up

in all colors

but they burst

when they

were touched

A policeman

that I told this to

without touching him

touched me

with his truncheon

so that I burst

—Translated from the German by Milne Holton and Herbert Kuhner

Advantages of Nudism

Naked fear

now seems

easier

to bear

than

it used to be

with heavy

clothing

covering it

—Translated from the German by Milne Holton and Herbert Kuhner

Speechless

Why

do you still

write poems

although you know

that you can only

reach a minority

with this method

my friends ask me

impatient that

they can only

reach a minority

with their methods

and I can’t

give them

an answer

—Translated from the German by Milne Holton and Herbert Kuhner

_________

Dirk van Bastelaere [Belgium/writes in Dutch]

1960

One of the leading poets of contemporary Flanders writing, Dirk van Bastelaere was born in 1960. He came into prominence with his award-winning first collection, Vijf jaar of 1984, followed by Pornschlegel en andere gedicten of 1988, a book hotly debated in the Flemish poetry scene. Yet the volume won him recognition as the most important postmodern poet in Flanders, his work highly influenced by US writers such as Gertrude Stein and John Ashbery.

Although some critics dismissed his work as being over-intellectualized, for the younger generation of Flemish poets he became a mould-breaker.

In 2000, he published Hartswedervaten, which received even further acclaim, and is considered his best book to date, and for which he was awarded the Flemish Culture Prize.

His most recent collection, Zapruder Stress, appeared in 2005. In Wwwhhoooosshhhof 2001, subtitled, in English, On Poetry and Its Worldly Embodiment, van Bastelaere published a book of essays about poetry, and is currently working on a book of essays on photography and cultural poetics, which include a wide-ranging group of essays from everything from Batman, Cosmopolitan magazine, prostheses, and J. G. Ballard’s Crash.

The British publisher, Shearsman Books, has published a collection of the poet’s work titled The Last to Leave: Selected Poems in 2005.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Vijf jaar (Antwerp: Soethoudt and Co, 1984); Pornschlegel en anderere gedichten (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1988/reprinted Amsterdam: Atlas, 2002); Diep in Amerika. Gedicten 1989-1991 (Amsterdam: Atlas, 1994); Hartswedervaren. Gedicten (Amsterdam: Atlas, 2000); Wwwhhhoooosshhh (The Opera Ain’t Over Til the Fat Lady Sings) in Peter Ghyssaert, ed. Turkooizen scheepje van verschil: twaalf jonge Vlaamse dicters (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1997); De wind wit het elders. In praise of Barnett Newman (Ghent: Druksel, 2003); Zparuder Stress (Amsterdam: Atlas, 2005)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

The Last to Leave: Selected Poems (Exeter, England: Shearsman Books, 2005)

For a selection of poems by the poet, go here:
http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/863

D.H. Lawrence's poetry saved from censor's pen

New edition of author's work reveals him as a talented war poet who attacked British imperialism

by Dalya Alberge

The Observer, Saturday 23 March 2013

D.H. Lawrence was an infamous victim of the censor as his sexually explicit novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in Britain until 1960. Now a new edition of Lawrence's poems, many rendered unreadable by the censor's pen, will reveal him as a brilliant war poet whose work attacking British imperialism during the first world war was barred from publication.

His poems took aim at politicians, the brutality of the first world war and English repression – but censorship and sloppy editing rendered them virtually meaningless, to the extent that the full extent of his poetic talent has been overlooked.

Deleted passages have now been restored and hundreds of punctuation errors removed for a major two-volume edition to be published on 28 March by Cambridge University Press – the final part of its mammoth 40-volume edition of Lawrence's Letters and Works.

The Poems, the first critical edition of Lawrence's poetry, sheds new light on the miner's son who became one of the 20th century's most influential writers, with novels such as Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow and Women in Love.

The new volume's editor, Christopher Pollnitz, told the Observer that it "radically shifts our understanding of Lawrence's significance as a poet". What was removed from the poems – by state censors or publishers fearing government intervention – was the "ultimate censorship", he said, because extensive and significant cuts made the texts virtually unreadable.

Lawrence wrote poetry from 1905 until his death in 1930, aged 44. Pollnitz said it is widely assumed that only the novels suffered censorship, "but it goes all through the poetry as well".

Some 860 poems are published in the new edition. They include All of Us, a sequence of 31 war poems never fully published before, which reveal Lawrence's preoccupation with the Allies' campaigns in the first world war.

Between 1916 and 1919, Lawrence struggled to get the sequence into print. Pollnitz said publishers who knew of the banning of The Rainbow would not touch a collection that criticised imperial policy – the opening up of eastern fronts in Turkey or Iraq – and poetry that explored the evil of self-sacrifice for some abstract greater good.

Lines now restored identify places such as Salonika and Mesopotamia – explosive references at the time, Pollnitz said. "While the war was continuing, the worst defeat the British suffered was in Mesopotamia … General Townshend's charge up the Tigris towards Baghdad was one of the most costly and wasteful ventures, in lives and money, of the first world war."

The subtitle Salonika appears in Rose, Look out upon Me, a previously unpublished work. Pollnitz said: "Salonika was the Greek city to which Allied troops were sent after the attempt to storm the Dardanelles failed."

In the poem, Lawrence portrayed a common English soldier, stationed in Salonika, who is attracted to a Greek woman, but it is a doomed passion: "Oh you Rose, look out/ On a miserable weary fellow./ For once she looked down from above/ And vanished again like a swallow/ That appears at a window …"

Lawrence also wrote about the home front, and the changing roles of women – a girl startling her boyfriend by asking him to stay with her before he leaves – and how childhood innocence can be wrecked by the stresses of war.

Pollnitz added: "Lawrence's writing on war and sex were censored by publisher timidity, making All of Us unpublishable at the time, and the sequence is being fully published almost 100 years after its wartime composition."

Ill-health meant Lawrence himself was never conscripted. His insight into the war probably came from his pacifist friend, Lady Cynthia Asquith, daughter-in-law of prime minister Herbert Asquith. While war poets such as Wilfred Owen depicted the cruelty of a bloody battlefield, Lawrence tackled the loss of lives and impact on loved ones from a political point of view. He also had to write with more subtlety because censors were already watching him. In a poem titled Dust, he wrote of a relative's horrible death: "My brother died in the heat/ And a jackal found his grave;/ Nibbled his fingers, the knave;/ No more would I let him eat."

In Antiphony, he wrote of a British prisoner of war in Turkey struggling to cope with captivity – "Each evening, bitter again" – and, in Needless Worry, he explored a young woman's loss of her soldier fiancé, talking to her mother: "Why are you so anxious, there's no fear now he's dead."

In The Well of Kilossa, he referred to the war in German east Africa and the huge loss of lives in inhospitable terrain: "A draught of thee is strength to a soul in hell."

The poetry edition is published a century after 10,000 words were censored from Sons and Lovers, and nearly all copies of The Rainbow destroyed, with a sexual episode between Ursula Brangwen and her schoolmistress among offending passages. His sexually explicit 1928 novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, became a cause célèbre in 1960 when, after a much-publicised trial, Penguin won the right to publish the complete book – a dramatic step towards securing freedom of the written word.

THE AUDEN GROUP (England)

The Auden Group is a very loosely aligned number of British and Irish poets writing through the 1930s. They are also sometimes referred to as the Thirties Poets.

All the poets knew one another, and most had been educated at either Oxford or Cambridge, all sharing vaguely left-wing viewpoints, although one of the group, Louis MacNeice was highly suspicious of Communism. The writers associated with the grouping—W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day-Lewis, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, an, to a lesser degree, Edward Upward and Rex Warner—never gathered together in the same room, nor shared any coherent poetic or literary values. Four of them, Auden, Day-Lewis, MacNeice, and Spender did read together in a 1938 BBC broadcast, that also included Dylan Thomas, but the reading was not significant in their any community sense.

Rather, the poets connected individually, particularly through Auden, who collaborated several times with both Isherwood and MacNeice, and wrote with Day-Lewis an introduction to the annual Oxford Poetry. Auden also dedicated books to Isherwood and Spender, and Day-Lewis mentioned Auden in a poem. But in the public mind, the individuals continued to be linked, with poet Roy Campbell referring to “MacSpaunday” in his 1946 work, Talking Bronco, a word created from the names of MacNeice (Mac), Spender (sp), Auden (au-n), and Day-Lewis (day). Although some members of this group were gay and even had sexual liaisons, MacNeice and Day-Lewis were apparently heterosexual.

—Douglas Messerli

Once again, I invite innovative poets with national or international reputations to send me information that will help me post their existence on our major PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) site. You can post for yourself or another poet. Please send a complete and detailed biography (check the site for what we are seeking), plus a complete list of books in the original language (with city, publisher name and date), a list of English language translations (if any have been done), and a selection of 4-6 poems in English, along with a photograph.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me at my email (douglasmesserli@gmail.com). I will get back to you on your potential posting as soon as possible.

I am eager to include all major, serious poets from around the world. I'll also help to rewrite your bios, etc., but the final decision upon inclusion will be mine.

I also would like to encourage poets whom we have already posted to please update their sites.

We have now had over 200,000 visists to our site, many of our visitors being students, young and older, studying or reading poetry.

Douglas Messerli, Publisher

This site is created and maintained by poet and publisher Douglas Messerli, working very much alone. Eventually, I hope to be able to post over 2,200 international poets, but it is a vast project taking a great deal of work each month.
If you would like to contribute to the effort, you might send a financial contribution, however large or small, to the project directly (The PIP Poetry Project or to our Green Integer publishing company through Paypal.) If you email me at douglasmesserli@gmail.com, I can help you to select a payment method. I truly appreciate any help that individuals or organizations can provide.

Bob Perelman [USA]

1947

Poet, critic, and translator Bob Perelman was born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1947, and attended the University of Rochester and the University of Michigan for his Master’s degree in classics. At the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop he received an MFA degree, before going on to receive his PhD at the University of California in Berkeley. Perelman is currently Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

His first book, Braille (1975), was influenced by William Carlos Williams “improvisations.” Other works have had a wide range of inspirations, from Ezra Pound to Marcel Proust. As an original member of the San Francisco “Language” poets Perelman edited two collections of speeches by poets, Talks (appearing in Hills 6/7) in 1980, and Writing/Talks of 1985. He has published several books of poetry, as well as writing critical books such as The Trouble with Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky (1994) and The Marginalization of Poetry (1996). He also translated The Selected Poems of Tomaz Salamun (1988) and Modern Archaist: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam (2008).

Perelman’s writing often includes seemingly statemental passages on politics, commercialization, violence, and other issues, but these are lyrical linked with more standard poetic sections which, as Ron Silliman has written “at first appears to be that straightforward thing, a collection poems, but when examined more closely reveals layers of connection from one poem to the next until a close reader becomes dizzy with the vertical dimensions that can lurk behind the simplest word.”

His work has been collected into several anthologies, including From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry 1960-1995 and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1994).

BOOKS OF POETRY

Braille (Ithaca, New York: Ithaca House Press, 1975); Seven Works (Berkeley, California: The Figures, 1978); a. k. a (Berkeley, California: Tuumba Press, 1979); Primer(San Francisco: This Press, 1981); To the Reader (Berkeley, California: Tuumba Press, 1984); The First World (Great Barrington, Massachusetts, 1986); Face Value (New York: Roof, 1988); Captive Audience (Great Barrington, Massachusetts: The Figures, 1988); Virtual Reality (New York: Roof, 1993); Ten to One: Selected Poems (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1999); Playing Bodies (with art by Francie Shaw) (New York: Granary Books, 2003); IFLIFE (New York: Roof, 2006)

For a poem and audio broadcasts, go here:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/bob-perelman#about

For several Perelman recorded readings, click below:

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Perelman.php

Marcos Canteli [Spain]

1974

Born in Bimenes, Austurias, Sapin in 1974, Marcos Canteli received his B.A. from the University of Oviedo, and his Ph.D. from Duke University in the USA. He currently works as the Resident Director for Duke University in Madrind.

His four books of poetry include Reunión, enjambre, su sombrío, and catálogo de incesantes. Su sumbrío was awared the XXXI Ciudad de Burgos International Poetry Award.

Canteli has also translated American poetry, including Robert Creeley’s Piecesand Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus. He is editor of the on-line revista de escritua & poéticas (http://www.7de7.net) and of a blogspot, http://dandolavoz.blogspot.com

BOOKS OF POETRY

Reunión (Barcelona: Icaria, 1999); enjambre (Madrid: Bartleby, 2003); su sombrío (Barcelona: DVD, 2005); catálogo des incesantes (Madrid: Bartleby, 2008)

From Breathblade

what we don’t own

will last

the little bath on the grass the trough at its bottom
eye-mold a musical slump
that doesn’t exist

nor do your petals open but to another world

I write a lamina

over the dissolution

and upon returning to the house the house isn’t there

the house the house that most essentially we don’t own

the brightness of the eyes their own insulation suggests

the song dies the eye here starting tomorrow

that patch creaky wooden birds here

it wasn’t not is it a vestige since it derives

at long watery last from heatwritten trees

and this alloy of flux and shame

to the invisible translators from the closing

to the Virgin who licked her mother’s brain

in the haiku in the psychedelia of haiku my renewable

shivering in summer

nothing is imperious to anything

Slow cherry / so silent / licking at the frost

brain blackened / my mother / stares at me

one of two branches of basil / sickens both / of my eyes

—Translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander

Attila József (Hungary)

1905-1937

Born the son of Áron Józef, a soap factory work originally from Transylvania, Attila József was born on April 11, 1905 in Ferencváros, a poor neighborhood of Budapest. His father abandoned the family of three children and his wife Borbála Pöcze when Attila was only three years of age. Living in extreme poverty, the children were eventually cared for the National Protection League and sent to foster parents in the country, where Attila worked on a farm. His foster father declared there was no name such as “Attila,” and renamed him “Pista.” So bad were the conditions on the farm, that the young Attila escaped back to his poor mother in the capitol city.

At the age of 43, his mother died in 1919, and the young Attila was cared for by his brother-in-law, Ödön Makai, a fairly wealthy man who paid for the child’s secondary education. József later attended the Franz Joseph University, but was dismissed for writing a poem, “With All My Heart.”

Without money, trying to eke out a poor living with his own poetry, József begin to develop symptoms of schizophrenia and was treated to what today might be described as a “personality disorder.” He never married and, other than a few affairs, fell in love with one of the women treating him.

On December 3, 1937, at the young age of 32, József crawled through the railway tracks near the home of his sister, and was crushed to death by a starting train. Many authorities claimed the death was a suicide, but others declared it an accident.

Despite these sad events, József is recognized today as one of the greatest and the first of modern Hungarian poets, and his work has been translated widely into numerous languages. At the early age of 17, when still in school, he published his first volume A szépség koldusa (The Beauty’s Beggar) in 1922. Despite his expulsion from the university, a mentor, Lajos Hatvany, saw that the young poet received a good education in Austria (1925) and in Paris (1926-27), where József studied French literature, particularly the work of François Villon.

In Paris József published his second collection of poems, Nem én kiáltok (It’s not me who shouts), the year of expulsion and his travel to Vienna. In Paris he studied at the Sorbonne, reading Hegel and Karl Marx.

His third collection, Nincsen apám se anyám (Fatherless and motherless), which demonstrated the influence of French surrealism and the Hungarian poets Endre Ady, Gyula Juhász and Lajos Kassák. The following year József joined the then illegal Communist Party of Hungary. His book Döntsd a tőkét (Blow down the block/capital) of 1931 was confiscated by the Hungarian public prosecutor and led to József’s indictment. Soon after, the poet left the Communist party.

In 1932 and 1933, he wrote further collections of what is described as his mature poetry, Külvárosi éj (Night in the slums) and the poem Óda (Ode). Two further books appeared in 1934, Medvetánc(Bear dance), 1934 and Nagyon fáj (It hurts a lot) of 1936.

BOOKS OF POETRY

A szépség koldusa (1922); Nem én kiáltok (1925); Nincsen apám se anyám (1929); Külvárosi éj (1932); Medvetánc (1934); Nagyon fáj (Budapest: Cserépfalvi, 1936); Ősszes versei és válogatott Irásai (Budapest, 1938); József Attila ősezes verse (Budapest: Révai, 1950); Ősszes versei (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

Poems (London: Danubia Book Company, 1956); Selected Poems and Texts (Cheadle, United Kingdom: Carcanet Press, 1973); Perched on Nothing’s Branch, trans. by Peter Hargitai (Buffalo: White Pine Press, 1978); Winter Night: Selected Poems of Attila József, trans. by John Batki (Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College Press, 1997); Poems and Fragments (Budapest: Argentum/Maynooth, Kildare, Ireland: Cardinal Press, 1999); The Iron-Blue Vault: Selected Poems,trans. by Zsuzanna Ozsvath and Fredrick Turner (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 2000); Attila József: Sicty Poems, trans. by Edwin Morgan (Edinburgh: Mariscat, 2001); Attila József: Selected Poems (New York: Universe, 2005); A Transparent Lion: Selected Poems of Attila József, trans. by Michael Castro and Gabor G. Gyukics (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2006; PDF file: http://www.greeninteger.com/book-digital.cfm?-Transparent-Lion-&BookID=333

Jeroen Theunissen [Belgium/writes in Dutch]

1977

Born in Ghent in 1977, Jeroen Theunissen lives and works as a teacher of cultural history and media at Erasmus University in that city today.

At the university he studied German language and literature.

Theunissen is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist, having published four novels to date, De onzichtbare (2004, The invisible), Het einde (2006, The end), a work explores the boundaries of the genre, and een vorm van vermoeidheid (A form of fatigue, 2008). In 2013 he published The Detours.

His first book of poetry, Thuisverlangen (Home Lust) was published by Meulenhoff/Manteau in 2005. A second book of poetry, Het zit zo (It’s like this) was published in 2009.

Theunissen also edited the prestigious magazine, Yang.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Thuisverlangen (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff/Manteau, 2005); Het zit so (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff/Manteau, 2009)

A Sweetheart

My sweetheart washed flowers

with wood and with stones,

she came dancing down

in bigger steps.

Baked her clothes

from dough in ovens,

crept in my fingers

as in the stacks of the past.

Oh, were she as quiet

as the engravings of walls

with the mortar at home.

But she begs for soap

and for washing and neighbours

and a film on the box.

—Translated from the Dutch by Astrid van Baalen

What I saw today

I saw a lover locking the doors,

eat bread, sweetmeats and wait,

doze off in a car in the sun and

chatter with a lounging man.

I saw a pair of owlish spectacles on a red bed,

a program on orphaned children and

a bottle of mineral water next to the telly,

carrots, tomes the I read.

I saw the tap drip with victory,

I saw a hero climbing a mountain

of red, brown, orange, green and gray,

heroes! I barely saw the rustling.

I briefly closed my eyes and bellowed

From almost notnothing to almost notlback.

I saw the paper full with the opinions

of idealists, I saw the young women

and their painted toenails, I saw etc.

I saw grass, houses, wind, a computer,

people in a swimming pool, a beautiful dance,

I saw the jumper I would later wear against the cold.

That is what I saw today.

—Translated from the Dutch by Astrid van Baalen

_____

Roof (magazine, USA)

The first volume of Roof magazine, edited by Tom Savage and James Sherry, was published from the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado in the summer of 1976. That first issue contained the work of numerous notable and new authors, including poetry by Robert Duncan, Helen Adam, Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Dick Gallup, John Ashberg, Anne Waldman, Diane Wakoski, Ted Berrigan, Jack Collom, Alice Notley, William S. Burroughs, John Giorno, Ed Sanders, Larry Fagan, Michael Brownstein, Peter Orlovsky, Jerome Rothenberg, Robert Creeley and the two editors.

The second issue, with the same editors, was published in New York City by Sherry’s Segue Press in 1977. That issue, containing 27 poets mostly aligned with the New York School or “Language” writing, and described itself in its short preface as cutting “across lines of school, generation, and reputation. These writers have all read in NYC during the past six months. Among the poets included were Bruce Andrews, Charles Berrnstein, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Ray DiPalma, Ted Greenwald, Barbara Guest, Ann Lauterback, Frank Lima, Eileen Myles, Alice Notley, Anne Waldman, Hannah Weiner, and John Yau.

Issue No. 3, with only Sherry listed as editor, included Berssenbrugge, Yuki Hartman, Ed Frieman, Charles North, Peter Seaton, Tony Towle, Paul Violi and a large section from the collaborative work Legend by Bruce Andrews, Ron Silliman, Ray DiPalma, Steven McCaffery, and Charles Bernstein. In ten issues the ended in the summer of 1979, Sherry continued publishing works by some of the major poets and the day.

Issue 4 contained a special section devoted to innovative poets from Washington, D.C. (my own first poems appeared in that issue); no. 5 a special section of San Francisco “language” writers. No. 7 contained longer poems by just four poets: Michael Lally, John Taggart, Ted Greenwald, and Ron Silliman, along with art by Stuart Shedletsky, Lee Sherry, and John Torreano. No. 9 contained work by Octavio Paz, Diane Ward, Larry Eigner, Peter Seaton, and Bruce Andrews, as well as art by Susan Laufer (Bee), Ron Janowich, and Rae Berolzheimer. No. 9 was made up of work by Kit Robinson, Alan Davies, P. Inman, Lynne Dreyer, and Charles Bernstein.

The final issue contained many of the writers whom Sherry had published in the earliest of issues, including Ray DiPalma, Hannah Weiner, Barbara Baracks, John Yau, Ted Greenwald, Lyn Hejinian, Dick Higgins, Rosmarie Waldrop, Bruce Andrews, Steve McCaffery, Robert Grenier, Brita Bergland, and Mei-mei Berssenbruge.

Because of its somewhat eclectic mix of writers and its commitment to several groups of poets, Roof remains today as one of the most notable American poetry publications of the late 1970s.

—Douglas Messerli

For a revealing essay on Yiddish poet Mikl Likht and Louis Zukofsky by Ariel Resnikoff, go here:
https://jacket2.org/commentary/ariel-resnikoff-louis-zukofsky-and-mikhl-likht-test-jewish-american-modernist-poetics-p-0

For one of Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor’s last poems before he shot to death in the Nairobi-based attack of Somali terrorists, please click below:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/09/22/read-one-of-kofi-awoonors-final-poems/

Kofi Awoonor (Ghana /formerly Gold Coast)

1935-2013

Born in Wheta, Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) on March 13, 1935, Kofi Awoonor was educated at Achimota School before attending the University of Ghana. He began writing under the name George Awoonor-Williams, but later changed it to Kofi Awoonor.

His first collection of poetry, Rediscovery, was published in 1964 while still a student at the University. Like most of his poetry, it was based on the African tradition, particularly the influenced by the native Ewe people.

His second book of poetry, Night of My Blood (1971), was published while he was working on his M.A. at University College in London. During that period he also wrote several radio plays for the BBC.

He received his Ph.D from SUNY, Stony Brook in the USA in 1972, and served as a Professor at that university from 1968-1975. During this period Awoonor published is novel, This Earth, My Brother (1971) and wrote a third book poetry, Ride Me, Memory (1973).

Back in Ghana, he became head of the English Department at the University of Cape Coast, but was soon arrested for helping a soldier accused of attempting to overthrown the military government. Awoonor was imprisoned without trial, but later released. In response to his imprisonment, the poet wrote The House by the Sea which concerned his incarceration.

For several years during this period, Awoonor focused mostly on nonfiction works, including The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (1975) and, later, Comes the Voyager at Last: A Tale of Return to Africa (1992), written after he had served as Ghana’s ambassador to Brazil (1984-1988) and ambassador to Cuba (1988-1990). From 1990 to 1994, he worked as Ghana’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, where he served on the committee against apartheid. He also edited an anthology of Ewe poetry, Guardians of the Sacred Word.

Two further books of poetry, Until the Morning After: Selected Poems 1963-85 and The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook appeared in 1987 and 1992.

On September 21, 2013, Awoonor was shot and killed in the Westage shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya by Somalian terrorists. One of his sons was also shot in the attack, but survived.

Awoonor, who had been participating in the Storymoja Hay Festival, a celebration of writing and storytelling, was 78 at the time of his murder.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964); Night of My Blood (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1971); Ride Me Memory (Greenfield Center, New York: Greenfield Review Press,1973); The House By the Sea (Greenfield Center, New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1978); Until the Morning After: Selected Poems 1963-85 (Greenfield Center, New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1987); The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook (1992)

Dirk van Bastelaere [Belgium/writes in Dutch]

1960

Although some critics dismissed his work as being over-intellectualized, for the younger generation of Flemish poets he became a mould-breaker.

In 2000, he published Hartswedervaten, which received even further acclaim, and is considered his best book to date, and for which he was awarded the Flemish Culture Prize.

The British publisher, Shearsman Books, has published a collection of the poet’s work titled The Last to Leave: Selected Poems in 2005.

BOOKS OF POETRY

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

The Last to Leave: Selected Poems (Exeter, England: Shearsman Books, 2005)

For a selection of poems by the poet, go here:
http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/863

discussion "The seeds of its own unfolding," on Hejinian's "constant change figures"

review "And All Is Only This" (on Aygi's Child-and-Rose) by Douglas Messerli

review "At Point Zero" (on Anne Portugal's Nude) by Douglas Messerli

Helga M. Novak

Zafer Şenoak

Erich Fried

Dirk van Bastelaere

newspaper article "D. H. Lawrence's Poetry Saved from Censor's Pen" by Dalya Alberge

THE AUDEN GROUP (England)

Request for Postings

Green Integer On Net

Bob Perelman

Marcos Canteli

Attila József

Jeroen Theunnissen

ROOF (magazine, USA)

essay "Louis Zukofsky and Mikl Likt, A Test of Jewish American Modernist Poetics, Part One"

Kofi Awoonor (link to one of his last poems)

Kofi Awoonor

Dirk van Bastelaere