David Meltzer and Jerome Rothenberg: December 3, 1975

The Poetry Center presents David Meltzer and Jerome Rothenberg, reading together in what host Lewis MacAdams describes as a session of "ethnopoetics, the Jewish division." Both prolific poets, they each read a generous selection, mostly from their contemporaneous work. Meltzer reads from a range of his books and from manuscript, and Rothenberg opens with his adaptation/translation of a Seneca song as presented in his anthology Shaking the Pumpkin:Tradional Poetry of Indian North America (Anchor Doubleday, 1972) and reads from Poland/1931 (Unicorn Press, 1970, with a subsequent expanded edition from New Directions, 1974), among other work.

They are introduced by MacAdams, who also introduces The Poetry Center banner handpainted by Kenneth Patchen, unearthed from "a file cabinet" in the Poetry Center offices and put on display to brighten the classroom atmosphere. The readings take place at San Francisco State University. 

Publisher
American Poetry Archives
Location
The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University
Date
1975-12-03
Event Run Time
01:45:10
Contributors
Lewis MacAdams
Rights

©© American Poetry Archives. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For all other uses please email poetry@sfsu.edu. 

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David Meltzer (00:43:57)

David Meltzer reads "Awoke to See the Jew," "Nature Poem," "A," "Friday Night Fights," "Commentary on a Text," "The Art," "Family Poem," from "The Name," and from the sequence "Nineteen Forty-Five," reflecting on the Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, among other aspects of that historic moment, then he reads his poem "Bolero" and closes with another titled "Apple." 

Jerome Rothenberg (00:54:25)

Jerome Rothenberg opens saying he'll pick up where he left off a couple years ago (referring to a 1973 reading for The Poetry Center, together with David Antin), then sings one of the "12 Songs to Welcome the Society of Mystic Animals," which he translated/adapted from the Seneca, and as included in his anthology Shaking the Pumpkin. He then reads "Salamanca, a Prophecy," "Cokboy," "Alpha & Omega," "A Poem of Beavers," "The Dreamers," and "The Pearl" —  the last of these from The Pirke & The Pearl, which he notes was published by Meltzer's Tree Books.

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