To begin ...

As the twentieth century fades out
the nineteenth begins
.......................................again
it is as if nothing happened
though those who lived it thought
that everything was happening
enough to name a world for & a time
to hold it in your hand
unlimited.......the last delusion
like the perfect mask of death

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Concealments & Caprichos: A New Publication

Publisher: Black Widow Press
Paperback Publication Date: May/June 2010
212 Pages
ISBN 10: 0-9842640-0-1
ISBN 13: 978-09842640-0-1


The following is from the announcement by Black Widow Press:

Combining two series of poems written since the turn of the century, A Book of Concealments and 50 Caprichos after Goya, Rothenberg's latest volume is a two-pronged follow-up to his earlier hundred-poem work, A Book of Witness, with some notable changes in strategy & composition.

As Rothenberg states in his preface: "In A Book of Witness I was concentrating on the rescue of the first-person voice as our principal instrument of witness - not only the personal 'I' but the possibilities of a real if sometimes fictive 'I' across a range of experiences, my own & at choice moments those of others. ... By contrast the poems in A Book of Concealments suppress or conceal the witnessing 'I' but draw from more distant ‘romantic’ predecessors & from my own accumulated works by collaging as italicized inserts small fragments of poems already written & published, while 50 Caprichos, written simultaneously, compensates for the largely missing 'I' by allowing a give-&-take responsive to the dance of images in Goya's early opening to states of spirit & mind that many of us would later come to share. ... The writing of these poems at a time of new wars & new dissimulations - a notable change since the writing of A Book of Witness - is another circumstance not to be ignored."

Selected excerpts from Concealments & Caprichos have appeared previously as postings on Poems & Poetics.

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