Amongst My Books
“… at least resolve, while you remain in any settled residence, to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books…”—Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson “Amongst” could…
Tag: Kenneth Rexroth
Books Inspected This Afternoon
Arthur Waley, Confucius: Analects Kenneth Rexroth, Classics Revisited Ezra Pound, New Selected Poems and Translations Ai Weiwei and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ai Weiwei Speaks David Hinton, The Selected Poems of Tu Fu Ezra Pound, Confucius:…
With Gratitude for Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth, 100 Poems from the JapaneseNew Directions, 1964 Dear EJ Kenneth Rexroth—poet, polymath, anarchist, and pacifist—is a fine guide to Chinese and Japanese poetry. He provided six books of translation for the enrichment of…
Poets/1
Viva Tang Ten thousand and two texts A thousand and three tweets 644 Facebook status updates 87 cell phone messages save or delete Enough already! Take a deep breath Leave behind the technology And go…
“Nobody’s Going To Do It for You”
Anne Waldman and Laura Wright, editors, Beats at Naropa: An Anthology Coffee House Press, 2009 I read Beats at Naropa exactly nine years ago, 2009. In my notes on the dialogues, essays, and interviews are…
Forty Years of Letters
Bill Morgan, I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career: The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg —1955-1997 I read a lot of Ferlinghetti in the 1980s, and loads of Ginsberg…
2015 Chinese Poets in Translation Reading Group
Chris Wallach and I are starting a reading group in 2015 with the aim of reading one of the translations each month of such poets as Wang Wei, Han-Shan, Li Ch’ing-chao, Tu Fu, Su Tung-p’o, Bo Juyi,…
Summer Poetry Reading List 2014
Ernesto Cardenal, Apocalypse and Other Poems Ernesto Cardenal, Flights of Victory/Vuelos de Victoria Ernesto Cardenal, From Nicaragua with Love Ernesto Cardenal, Golden UFOs: The Indian Poems Ernesto Cardenal, Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems Ernesto Cardenal, Psalms Ernesto Cardenal, The Doubtful Strait Ernesto Cardenal, Zero Hour…
For Eileen
The mists rise over The still pools at Asuka. Memory does not Pass away so easily. –Yamabe no Akahito, 8th century translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Sorrow of Departure by Li Ch’ing-chao
To the Tune “Cutting a Flowering Plum Branch” Red lotus incense fades on The jeweled curtain. Autumn Comes again. Gently I open My silk dress and float alone On the orchid boat. Who can Take…