Synopses & Reviews
"The word 'anthology' hardly does justice to Rothenberg and Joris's brilliant reconceptualization of twentieth-century poetry in a global context. This is that rare book that forces us to rethink what the poetic is and can be."and#151;Marjorie Perloff
"This book is destined to become a fundamental resource for the study of twentieth-century literature and culture. Its importance cannot be overstated."and#151;Charles Bernstein
"A much broader, much more intelligent sweep, this anthology, than most."and#151;Amiri Baraka
"A riveting literary achievement of phenomenal scope and generosity. Kudos to Rothenberg and Joris for their passionate, discerning editorship, spanning cultures, sensibilities, and languages. This illuminating compendium displays the best of humanity's bardic inheritance and vision. It should be obligatory reading for all scholars, students, writers and lovers of poetry. May the wisdom in these poems benefit us all."and#151;Anne Waldman, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, The Naropa Institute
"Looking back from this end of the century we can begin to see how partial our views of its literary happenings have been: how time-bound, tongue-bound, often celebrity-bound. In an accurately titled Poems for the Millennium we can at last sense the scope of the Revolution of the Word that's been in process sinceand#151;oh, 1895. There's no other anthology like this one, no other overview so venturesome."and#151;Hugh Kenner
"This is not like any other anthology, not a collection of excellences, no absurd imitations of a canon. It's more like a Handbook of Inventors and Inventions, or of Explorers and Discoveries, that opens up all sorts of pathways for poetry from its past and future to a living present. A truly international book of modern poetry that exceeds its claims to move from the fin de siand#232;cle to the poets of Negritude, as it crosses frontiers of language and culture and genre. This may be the only collection of modernist poetry that reveals its simultaneous connections to an archaic and ecological past as well as a technological future, as it also wipes out rigid distinctions between poets and painters and sculptors and performers. It is above all a book of possibilities and invitations.and#151;David Antin
"The intermingling circles of poetries and cultures move outward to continents and also open up to all times. True cosmopolitanism loves the specifics of little places and small societiesand#151;just the right gesture, the precise quaver of the voice, the exact variety of maize. Rothenberg and Joris's anthology gives us, by virtue of its organic structure and inspired choices, the possibility of a kind of situated internationalism, what 'modernism' half wanted to become. This is a presentation of a poetics that is already here, but imperfectly recognized. It is a sourcebook for the future."and#151;Gary Snyder
Review
and#8220;Poems for the Millennium: Part One is . . . one of the very best of its kind.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A monumental achievement.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A fascinating book thatand#8217;s bound to be controversial.and#8221;
Synopsis
The Los Angeles Times Book Review counted Technicians of the Sacred among the hundred most-recommended books published in late twentieth-century America. Hailed by Robert Creeley as -both a deeply useful book and an unequivocal delight, - this landmark anthology has educated and inspired generations of poets, artists, musicians, and other readers, exposing them to the multiple possibilities of poetry throughout the world. Juxtaposing -primitive- and archaic works of art from many cultures with each other and with experimental poetry, Jerome Rothenberg contends that literature extends beyond specific temporal and geographic boundaries, and must be understood globally, cutting across space and time. A half-century since its original publication and more timely than ever, this revised and expanded third edition provides readers with a wealth of newly gathered and translated texts from reinvigorated indigenous cultures, bringing the volume to the present and further extending the range and depth of what we recognize and read as poetry.
Synopsis
Hailed by Robert Creeley as "both a deeply useful book and an unequivocal delight" and by the
LA Times Book Review as one of the hundred most recommended American books of the late 20th century, Jerome Rothenberg's landmark anthology
Technicians of the Sacred has educated and inspired generations of poets, artists, musicians, and other readers, exposing them to the multiple possibilities of poetry throughout the world. Juxtaposing "primitive" and archaic works of art from many cultures with each other and with avant-garde and experimental poetry, Jerome Rothenberg contends that literature extends beyond specific temporal and geographic boundaries, while acting as a retort to those who would call that larger humanity into question. A half-century since its original publication, this revised and expanded third edition provides readers with a wealth of newly gathered and translated texts from recently reinvigorated indigenous cultures, bringing the volume into the present and further extending the range and depth of what we recognize and read as poetry.
Synopsis
As we come to the beginning of a new century, we find that the entire vista of modern poetry has dramatically changed. Poems for the Millennium captures the essence of that change, and unlike any anthology available today it reveals the revolutionary concepts at the very heart of contemporary poetry. International in its coverage, these volumes bring together the poets and poetry movements that radically altered the ways that art and language express the human condition. Volume 2 offers a dazzling chronicle of the second "great awakening" of experimental poetry in the twentieth century. Ranging from the period of World War II through the cold war to the onset of the twenty-first century, this volume presents two "galleries" of individual poets such as Holan, Olson, Rukeyser, Jaband#232;s, Celan, Mac Low, Pasolini, Bachmann, Finlay, Ginsberg, Adonis, Rich, U Tam'si, Baraka, Takahashi, Waldman, and Bei Dao. There are also samplings of local and international movements: the Beats, the Vienna Group, the Cobra poets and artists, the Arabic-language Tammuzi poets, the creators of a new "Concrete Poetry," the "postwar poets" of Japan, the Italian Novissimi and Avan-Guardia, the Chinese Misty Poets, and the North American Language Poets. In addition, an extended section is devoted to examples of the "art of the manifesto" and two smaller groupings of traditional "oral poets" and of experimenters with machine art and cyberpoetics. Poet-editors Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris provide informative and irreverent commentaries throughout. They challenge old truths and propose alternative directions, in the tradition of the manifestos that have marked the art and poetry of the twentieth century. The result is both an essential resource for experiencing the full range of contemporary poetic possibilities and an arresting statement on the future of poetry in the millennium ahead.
Synopsis
Praise for Volume 1: "The word anthology hardly does justice to Rothenberg and Joris's brilliant reconceptualization of twentieth-century poetry in a global context. This is that rare book that forces us to rethink what the poetic is and can be." and#151;Marjorie Perloff
"This book is destined to become a fundamental resource for the study of twentieth-century literature and culture. Its importance cannot be overstated."and#151;Charles Bernstein
"A sourcebook for the future."and#151;Gary Snyder
Synopsis
As we come to the end of the century, the entire vista of modern poetry has dramatically changed.
Poems for the Millennium captures the essence of that change, and unlike any anthology available today, it reveals the revolutionary concepts at the very heart of twentieth-century poetry. International in its coverage, these volumes depart from the established poetic modes that grew out of the nineteenth century and instead bring together the movements that radically altered the ways that art and language express the human condition.
The first volume offers three "galleries" of individual poetsand#151;figures such as Mallarmand#233;, Stein, Rilke, Tzara, Mayakovsky, Pound, H.D., Vallejo, Artaud, Cand#233;saire, and Tsvetayeva. Included, too, are sections dedicated to some of the most significant pre-World War II movements in poetry and the other arts: Futurism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, Objectivism, and Negritude. The second volume will extend the gathering to the present, forming a synthesizing, global anthology that surpasses other collections in its international scope and experimental range.
Poet-editors Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris provide informative and irreverent commentaries throughout. They challenge old truths and propose alternative directions, in the tradition of the revolutionary manifestos that have marked the art and poetry of the twentieth century. The result is both an essential source book for experiencing the full range of this century's poetic possibilities and a powerful statement on the future of poetry in the millennium ahead.
Synopsis
The previous two volumes of this acclaimed anthology set forth a globally decentered revision of twentieth-century poetry from the perspective of its many avant-gardes. Now editors Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson bring a radically new interpretation to the poetry of the preceding century, viewing the work of the romantic and post-romantic poets as an international, collective, often utopian enterprise that became the foundation of experimental modernism. Global in its range, volume three gathers selections from the poetry and manifestos of canonical poets, as well as the work of lesser-known but equally radical poets. Defining romanticism as experimental and visionary, Rothenberg and Robinson feature prose poetry, verbal-visual experiments, and sound poetry, along with more familiar forms seen here as if for the first time. The anthology also explores romanticism outside the European orbit and includes ethnopoetic and archaeological works outside the literary mainstream. The range of volume three and its skewing of the traditional canon illuminate the process by which romantics and post- romantics challenged nineteenth-century orthodoxies and propelled poetry to the experiments of a later modernism and avant-gardism.
Synopsis
"It would be impossible to overstate the wonders of this masterpiece of radical humanism. Expansive erudition, fundamental sensitivity, passionate intelligence, concern, adventurousness, and love inform this volume's structure and its substance. Rothenberg and Robinson have dedicated this project to an intensification and expansion of the vital and vivacious contexts of the ongoing project of human thought. They present us not with the fixity of a canon but with the unfixity of our world. The brooding of Romanticism will continue to burst around us. This wide-ranging, decentering, global panoply is a work of geniusand#151;the editors' and ours."and#151;Lyn Hejinian, author of
The Language of Inquiry"Compendious, capacious, global in scope, this third volume of Poems for the Millenniumand#151;as the editors put it, a 'prequel' to the two existing volumesand#151;is a treasure; its commentaries offer a severe delight."and#151;Esther Schor, author of Emma Lazarus
"This volume of Poems for the Millennium is every bit as challenging, unsettling, and surprising as its predecessors. It provokes us to take a fresh look at the achievements of nineteenth-century poets and of modernists often assumed to have defined themselves mainly by refusing and rejecting what came before. We have much to learn from this book about the diversity of ways in which poetry has found forms for responding to the world of which it is a part."and#151;William Keach, author of Arbitrary Power: Romanticism, Language, Politics
and#147;The romantic vision is one of extension and renewaland#151;of poetry's signifying capacity in the immediate, human realm and that of the spirit. This provocative third volume of Poems for the Millennium is itself an instance of that romantic vision, definitively reframing and expanding our understanding of the movement.and#8221;and#151;Michael Palmer, author of Company of Moths
"Modernism rejected romanticism in the way that one political party rejects anotherand#151;not because it is so different but because it wishes to win the same audience. This book demonstrates that the crucial thing that happened in modernism was that a door opened onto still another aspect of the immense cultural experiment that romanticism wasand#151;or, as Rothenberg and Robinson might insist, that romanticisms were (are).To know the work so carefully, lovingly, and brilliantly assembled in this book is to know ourselves in a new and newly conscious way."and#151;Jack Foley, author of The Dancer and the Dance: A Book of Distinctions
Synopsis
Since its first publication in 1968, Jerome Rothenberg's Technicians of the Sacred has educated a generation of poets, artists, and readers to the multiple faces and possibilities of poetry throughout the world. Hailed by Robert Creeley as "both a deeply useful work book and an unequivocal delight," and by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the hundred most recommended American books of the last thirty-five years, it appears here in a revised and expanded version several years in the making. Rothenberg's revision follows the structure and themes of the original version while reworking the contents to include a European section and a large number of newly gathered and translated poems that reflect the work set in motion since 1968.
Synopsis
"Technicians of the Sacred presents 'primitive' and ancient poetries as the incantations they are, loaded with power and very full of the magic that invests all good poetry. The treatment is fascinating...the commentaries are a gold mine of responses to the material by a strong poet (the editor), and his selection of analogous writings from a broad range of contemporary poets."David P. McAllester
About the Author
Jerome Rothenberg is a poet and one of the world's leading anthologists. His more than fifty books include Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania (California, 1985). He is Professor of Visual Arts and Literature at the University of California, San Diego. Pierre Joris is a poet and has published over twenty books and chapbooks of poetry as well as many anthologies and translations. He is Professor of English at the State University of New York, Albany.
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