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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