University of California Press Blog

Poems for the Millennium

Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet and Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts and Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is also co-editor of three volumes of the Poems of the Millennium series: Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry. Volume One: From Fin-de-Siècle to Negritude (UC Press, November 1995), Poems for the Millennium: The University of California  Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry Volume Two:  From Postwar to Millennium (UC Press, April 1998), and his upcoming release, Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three: The University of California Book of Romantic and Postromantic Poetry (UC Press, January 2009). While writing, editing, and overseeing many works of poetry, Rothenberg also maintains his blog about poetry called, Poems and Poetics.

Below, is a poem Rothenberg wrote in memoriam to his friend and fellow Poet, Jackson Mac Low to celebrate their friendship and Low's work.

A THIRD NIGHT POEM,
FOR JACKSON MAC LOW,
IN MEMORIAM


How will I take the final words of your Night Walk, now that you’re dead, & work them
into my poem?
I had promised it at your birthday, the last or the next to the last, so hard to tell the years
apart,
so leave myself no choice but to continue, get it down & try to speak your presence with
the words you give me.

Once again I think of you as someone wearing many coats or bundled up against the
night, my own delight to sit beside you,
to see your nose & eyebrows glowing in that light, revealing you to us,
revealing secret bodies from your night walks, meanings written on their foreheads,
two o’clock when happiness arrives to free our tongues,
when coats are shed & foreheads show what’s real inside us, feeling, hearing, walking
with delight,
a man at night whose being flows out from his teeth, who steps on twigs & breaks the
silence,
learning how to draw attention in that halflight, feigning sweetness.

Clasping your coats around you, hairsmells heavy in the night, dark clouds & kisses
foremost,
when the evening’s dark & cold, I hold the clouds in memory, a dimness
black as three o’clock, so touching when the cold rests on your eyebrows, otherwise
revealing what we all try finding,
clothing darker than the sky, desiring & feeling, telling your old stories, standing rooted
like a tree.

Desiring what else I couldn’t say but know that when the light grows dark, as when our
fingers close around it,
a streamsound breaks the silence, that’s when wondering makes way for learning,
pointing out the stars at night, wrapped in your many sweaters, when our beings feel
delight,
you wait there, listening in that dimness, hearing little, knowing less, of what the night’s
revealing,
bodies black & cold are sliding past you, clasping you around as you might grasp at
meaning,
bundled in your clothing, looking outward where the night grows white & quiet.

There’s a halflight that survives you. Now we’re warming ourselves in it, resting,
hugging, hearing streamsounds,
loving peace as you did, finding that our eyes, turned to the sky, observe a man there,
hearing what we hear, whose kisses promise sweetness, being who he is, but turn to ice
before us,
talking through the night while wearing many coats against its dimness, friends together,
filming trees & raising eyebrows, hearing, hugging, kissing, melting ice against our
tongues,
out in the night air, trading coats.

A dimness with no resting, seeking warmth from kisses, needing what a man has always
needed,
touching lips to eyelids, talking to each other through the night, a memory of three
o’clock,
no longer a delight for eyes & tongues, with never warmth enough to suit your liking,
bodies poor & old, their pockets long since emptied, naked beings who still freeze
like naked beings,
some dispensing meanings, others begging for attention, listening while walking, slipping
backwards in the night,
its grey trees masking feeling.

Will trees still bring delight, the way old stories made our cheeks turn red or hairsmells
filled our noses?
Will we be clasping something, feeling it slide past us, eyes & teeth revealing what
the night can’t hide?
Where will our clothing be at three o’clock, our pockets empty, trees like fallen friends
around us,
& no telling if there’s starlight, if the night still brings us wonders, trees that once again
are only trees,
each one of us a fallen being, hairsmells heavy in the darkness, noses swollen,
clasping what we can & listening, for what?

Another nightwalk, half forgotten,
where the light turns black.

finished 17.i.05

Robin Blaser and Ko Un Win Griffin Poetry Prizes!

The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry honored Robin Blaser and Ko Un with awards at a June 3 ceremony. Blaser's The Holy Forest is the Canadian winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize for the best first-edition, single-volume poetry book in the world. Judges selected the book from over 500 entries, and Blaser will share the $100,000 prize with one other winner. Distinguished Korean poet Ko Un, author of many works including The Three Way Tavern: Selected Poems, received the trust's third annual Lifetime Recognition Award. (Blaser won the first Lifetime Recognition Award in 2006). Robert Hass, an editor of the UC Press New California Poetry series, presented Un with the prize. 

Fanny Howe wins Academy Award in Literature

Congratulations to author Fanny Howe, who has won a 2008 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Literature. Howe is the author of more than twenty books, including the UC Press titles The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life, Gone: Poems, and Selected Poems. Howe also crafted the introduction to Henia and Ilona Karmel's A Wall of Two. The Academy honors the year's most outstanding achievements in architecture, art, literature and music, and to win is a significant achievement. The work of all the 2008 Academy Award recipients is on display through June 15 at the Academy's galleries in New York.  

Robert Hass wins Pulitzer Prize in Poetry

Congratulations to Robert Hass, whose book Time and Materials (Ecco/Harper Collins) has won a Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Hass expands the poetry frontier as an an editor of our acclaimed New California Poetry series, and his exceptional career includes many awards and a stint as the poet laureate of the United States. Time and Materials also won the National Book Award in 2007. Click here to read more about Robert Hass and the other Pulitzer Prize winners.

Aime Cesaire, Martinique Poet and Politician, Dies at 94

The poet and politician, Aimé Césaire, died yesterday at the age of 94.  The New York Times published an obituary yesterday.  The University of California Press published the Collected Poetry of Aimé Césaire in 1983. 

UC Press Journal Honored by Melville Society

The Cohen Prize committee of The Melville Society has named Professor Jeffory Clymer the winner of the 2007 Cohen Prize for his article, "Property and Selfhood in Herman Melville's Pierre," which was published in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Volume 61.2 (September 2006). The Cohen Prize is awarded annually for the best published article or book chapter on Melville. For more information on the article, click here.

Robert Creeley's Selected Poems Reviewed in New York Times

August Kleinzahler wrote an insightful tribute to Robert Creeley's Selected Poems, 1945-2005 in Sunday's New York Times Book Review:

"For readers coming to Creeley's work for the first time, the format of a "Selected Poems" is the best way in, and this new "Selected," supplanting a 1991 edition, is well chosen by Benjamin Friedlander. . . . Robert Creeley was one of those artists who refused to let himself be bored by his own art. The reader will find very little to be bored by in this brilliant, essential volume."

Read the full review here.

"Earning Every Word"

George Oppen won a Pulitzer Prize for his poetry, but he characterized himself as more of an “explorer or mathematician" than a traditional poet. Oppen's writing was a means of discovery and not a means of expression—through revision, he distilled the truth from the words. He did not preach about issues like politics, art, and self, but he always addressed them and came to his own conclusions. In Selected Prose, Daybooks and Papers, Stephen Cope compiles Oppen's previously unpublished notes, essays and observations to reveal a man who could live a sincere and honest life because his decisions and actions were purely his own.

George Oppen's Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers was reviewed in the February 11 issue of The Nation. Read the full review here.

UC Press Congratulates Robert Hass on Winning the 2007 National Book Award for Poetry

University of California Press congratulates Robert Hass, whose most recent book, Time and Materials (Ecco/Harper Collins), has received the National Book Award for poetry.

Hass, a professor at UC Berkeley, is one of the four series editors (with Calvin Bedient, Forrest Gander, and Brenda Hillman) of UC Press's New California Poetry series, which also garnered a National Book Award nomination in 2002 for Harryette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary. The series, which began in 2000, has been widely recognized and reviewed. It is one of the most preeminent series in avant-garde and experimental poetry in the country.

In addition to his work on the series, Hass has been a great friend to UC Press and to the Berkeley community. Hass, an avid environmentalist and outdoorsman, is committed to environmental education. He was instrumental in organizing River of Words, a Berkeley-based organization, which inspires students to create artwork and poetry based on the environment. He has also encouraged the expansion of UC Press's California Natural History Guide series. Since the 1960s, the books have been read and used in the field by amateur naturalists of all ages.

Hass directs the Lunch Poems Reading Series, which takes place on the first Thursday of the Month at Doe Library on the UC Berkeley campus. In 2005, UC Press published The Face of Poetry, which is based on the series and to which Hass contributed a foreword.

We are pleased that someone of such generous spirit and great talent has been recognized by the National Book Foundation.

UC Press Re-launches The Collected Writings of Robert Duncan

The University of California Press and the Jess Collins Trust are pleased to announce the re-launch of an important publishing project: The Collected Writings of Robert Duncan. We are currently planning to issue six volumes: The H.D. Book; Early Poems, Plays, and Prose; Later Poems, Plays, and Prose; Critical Prose; and two further volumes with contents to be determined. We are talking to prospective volume editors and anticipate that the first of these volumes will be ready for production in three years, with publication as early as Fall of 2011. We have also invited a number of scholars, critics, and poets to join an advisory board, which will provide support and advice to volume editors and to University of California Press.

Since the 1960s, Robert Duncan's seminal poetic works have been published by New Directions (The Opening of the Field, Roots and Branches, and Bending the Bow). Most recently, New Directions published Duncan's Selected Poems (1995), A Selected Prose (1997), and Ground Work I & II in a combined volume (2006). All the New Directions individual editions will continue to be available, and this project shall proceed with their collaboration.

The road leading up to this announcement has not been without significant challenges. The project was originally initiated in 1987 and 1988 by Robert Duncan and an editorial board that included Robert Bertholf, Robert Creeley, Michael Davidson, and William McPheron. Duncan died in 1988, and all but Robert Bertholf eventually resigned from the editorial board. Robert Bertholf's contribution to the legacy of Robert Duncan has been significant and important, and we wish we could have found a way to proceed on the project with his continued involvement. In 2007, the Jess Collins Trust confirmed that the copyrights to Robert Duncan's writings had passed to Jess upon Duncan's death. At that time, Christopher Wagstaff and Mary Margaret Sloan, on behalf of the Trust, reaffirmed their commitment to seeing through the Collected Writings project with University of California Press. The Trust will provide a needed grant toward the publication of each volume. In addition, a portion of royalties generated from publication of Robert Duncan's work will be used to further encourage and benefit dissemination, publication, and study of the work of Robert Duncan and Jess.

Publication of the Collected Writings is long overdue, and we look forward to publishing volumes worthy of both the University of California Press imprint and the great legacy of Robert Duncan.