Synopses & Reviews
Unhurried Vision continues Michael Rothenberg's experiment with the journal, a record of a year--The Millennium, but slower, without the fanfare, evenings before falling asleep, sometimes half asleep, taking down fragments as they surfaced, dating them, and going on. This is the year that Philip Whalen became terminally ill and Rothenberg began taking care of him on a daily basis, editing his book of selected poems, Overtime, organizing events to celebrate its publication, and pulling together Whalen's archives and library.
Political, personal, and romantic, Unhurried Vision works to savor the impermanent, looking at the moments in a poet's life, contemplating the body of experience. It is the mind on a quiet stroll through longing, loss and beauty."Unhurried Vision, a year in the life of Michael, is really a deeply loving celebration and farewell to mentor Philip Whalen, poet, roshi, and all around confounder of boundaries. A day-book; a non-epic odyssey through routes and roots of living and dying; a gastronome's pleasure dome, but above all a deeply stirred and stirring affirmation of poetry's centrality in realizing mundane and profound instances in the everyday extraordinary. Rothenberg's raw footage is disarming, sly, self-effacing, proclaiming, doubting, affirming."--David Meltzer
Synopsis
Poetry. Underneath the art of poetry exists the tradition of the journal -- the attempt to capture and reveal the world as it passes by. Observations, reflections, and ideas accumulate to form connections and reveal process, content and story. UNHURRIED VISION is a record of the year 1999, and continues Michael Rothenberg's experiment with the journal. This is the year Philip Whalen became terminally ill and Rothenberg began taking care of him, pulled together Whalen's archives and library and edited his book of selected poems, Overtime. "Rothenberg's raw footage is disarming; sly, self-effacing, proclaiming, doubting, affirming. You can read it in one sitting, say blurbologists, but it takes at least a lifetime. and then what?"--David Meltzer.
Synopsis
"Unhurried Vision . . . is really a deeply loving celebration and farewell to mentor Philip Whalen, poet, roshi, and all around confounder of boundaries. A day-book; a non-epic odyssey through routes and roots of living and dying; a gastronome's pleasure dome, but above all a deeply stirred and stirring affirmation of poetry's centrality in realizing mundane and profound instances in the everyday extraordinary."--David Meltzer
About the Author
Michael Rothenberg is a poet, songwriter, and editor and co-founder of Big Bridge Press and Big Bridge, a webzine of poetry, and co-editor and co-founder of Jack Magazine. He is editor of Overtime: Selected Poems by Philip Whalen, and As Ever: Selected Poems by Joanne Kyger. He lives in Miami, Florida.