A Book of Witness: Spells & Gris-Gris (Paperback)

by Jerome Rothenberg (Author) "I was amok & fearless twice deceived for which I sought out satisfactions in a tree..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The 16th collection of poems from the noted poet, translator and anthologist (Poems for the Millennium) uses the turn of the millennium as a pivot point for a sequence of 100 dreamlike lyrics exploring the functionality of the pronoun "I." Splicing in snippets of poems from an international cast of poets (Neruda, Takahashi, Notley, Schwitters), Rothenberg's short-lined variations on the theme of witness were written between 1999 and 2001,with the stated aim of treating the first-person pronoun as an instrument for acts of witnessing: "I came alive/ when things went/ crazy./ I pulled the plug on/ the reports of/ sturm & drang/ When someone/ signaled I/ left open/ what I/ could not close." The unnamed I of these poems, largely operating in the present tense, is infused with a historical consciousness mostly free of personal references: "I lived apart/ from what was/ forming./ I bartered/ photos of/ the dead./ Soon everything/ caved in & I/ emptied my throat/ till I/ felt cleaner." Acutely aware that poetic identity is subject to reinvention on a line-by-line basis, Rothenberg channels other voices and explores metaphysical themes rather than reflect on a personal past. The result is a sequence that builds a stark intensity through its speaker's tonal immediacy and intimacy in the face of time's passage: "I will now count/ the century/ by ones and twos./ This morning/ all the voices in my dream/ spoke with one voice./ I feel privileged to be here/ among you./ From now on/ we will live/ on borrowed time."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Charts the passage from one millennium to another. -- Publishers Weekly, 31 March 2003

Prophetic incantations, yearning for self-recognition as the veil draws on the obscuring universe....Rothenberg uses the 'I' most deftly. -- Erick Mertz, Cosmik Debris, 1 June 2003

Rothenberg has found himself....he combines a serene sense of the sacred, the profane, and of oblivion. -- Paul Christensen, Texas Observer, 16 January 2004

Written in [Rothenberg's] customary associative, disjunctive style, the poems are very much about the self as perceiver of the world. -- American Poet, Spring 2004

[Rothenberg's] poetry occupies a central place in the postmodern American canon…a unique example of the 20th-century avant-garde. -- The Raven Chronicles, David Huntsperger

a sequence that builds a stark intensity thorugh its speaker's tonal immediacy and intimacy in the face of time's passage -- Publishers Weekly, , 21 April 2003

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811215377
• ISBN-13: 978-0811215374
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,832,862 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As In the Book of Thomas, July 19, 2003

By	M. Hori "Jesse Glass" (Urayasu, Chiba Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Scholars speculate that the collection of sayings attributed to Christ in the Book of Thomas were used as a kind of oracle. Many of the utterances are familiar parables, but others are dream-like, perverse, shocking.

This book, too, could be used as an oracle. The voice working here is not that of Jerome Rothenberg, but of something outside the boundaries of the finite self. Each of the 100 poems included in this collection is the by-product of a shamanic ascent (or descent) into the Other that Rimbaud so revealingly invoked in his famous voyant letters. The difference between the two poets, however, is striking. Rimbaud was a brash 15 year old prodigy, ready to set off on an inward voyage, while Rothenberg, who has cast his nets across most of the world's cultures in search of the sources of the visionary, is here returning to the limitations of an aging self, as evidenced by the moving portrait included on the jacket of the book.

Interestingly enough, Rothenberg speaks of the shamaness Maria Sabina in his Postface and discusses her use of the "I," in the mushroom-induced, hallucinatory chants that brought her to the notice of ethnologists decades ago. He doesn't mention the fact that Sabina's shiftings from self to larger self were in search of a language that could heal the bodies of her clients. This omission, I believe, is quite a telling one, for clearly Rothenberg is also on a quest for healing words in these pages. In fact, one could almost say that this volume is one of the poet's most personal books, although the language, striking as it often is, seems to be the product of Oulipo-like processes.

Ultimately, every inward voyager returns to the vehicle that enables the voyage to happen--the body. Rothenberg gives witness to his ascent in a vibrant language whose source is somewhere and nowhere, but is nevertheless locked within the interval between his own birth and his future mortality.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in new and experimental poetry, as it maintains the visionary tradition of people like Moses de Leon, Christopher Smart, William Blake, Walt Whitman, etc. etc., in a time when that tradition has become something of a cartoon in the hands of the neo-beats. I recommend it highly.