Many thanks to Beyond Baroque for their kindness in sponsoring our “For Japan” benefit reading. Hiromi Ito, Jerome Rothenberg, Marthe Reed, and Amy Ueymatsu put on a superb performance. Many thanks to Amy for taking care of the donations. Thanks to all who came and good Kharma to anyone who donates to the Japanese Relief Fund of the American Red Cross, or the charity of their choice, to help the victims of Fukushima. Jess

Very happy about this. And the information is free! Jess

We’re reading through this text slowly and find it very very rich with allusions. I’m especially struck by Quasha’s verbal energy and inventiveness on the edge of chaos. This energy is signaled in several ways, but two in particular strike me: “of the word”–as in assonance, alliteration, echo and response, and learned pun–and “of the page”–the Olsonesque composition by field. Yet there is another aspect to all of this and that is the personal voice we encounter in Blake’s Milton or earlier in Smart, Trahern and Vaughn: a kind of testifying that takes place in the voice of the author who tells (as in Blake) of an energy descending into his foot as he writes his epic (sketching his inspiration as a star falling from the Felpham sky and a tightrope-walking angel), and juxtaposing the drab particulars of day-to-day life with his vision and thereby lifting those particulars to a higher order of being. Blake is careful to mention his brother Robert in the midst of his vision and both memorialize and celebrate this transfiguration. Similarly George Quasha is careful to do just this with friends and his lady love whom he presents to us under various guises throughout the text. This is quite different from the flat diction of the New York School, and more akin to the neo-Romanticism of Duncan, but I would say that the “I” in Quasha’s poetic sequence is more extreme, albeit just as veiled.

“I’m it! I’m it! I’m it!
I cried it seemed all night until
at last I set foot on earlier land
than ever remembered in me…”

This is the assumption of the divine cap and bells of the visionary; the “mad” face and madder voice of Smart in Bedlam writing and reciting his Jibilate Agno.” There’s something risky in this business of traveling back to an imagined purity

On the eve of the great disaster here in Japan, I had the great good fortune to have met up with George Quasha in New York City to talk about poetry for his “What is Poetry?” project. Among some great old titles that Mr. Quasha so generously gave me–I’d like to mention several that stand out:

First, for sheer beauty and force of idea, his Axial Stones; An Art Of Precarious Balance–with its wonderful photgraphs of balanced stones–one on the other– (Quasha practices this Zen-like art), and poetic–philosophic text, warrents continuing study and attention. As Mr. Quasha noted in a hand-wriiten message: “In the stones is vision too.” Highly recommended.

Quasha’s Giving the Back Her Hands is a long poem–mono-mythic in the sense of a Blake text. Still reading this rich exploration/ explosion of energy and form.

Another gift was Charles Stein’s The Hat Rack Tree; Selected poems. Reading, reading.

Even If Only Out Of by Alan Halsey.

A Tour of the Lattice by Maurice Scully.

First-rate work from first-rate poets.

veerbooks[at]gmail.com

We’re presently putting the finishing touches on our roster of readers. We’re pleased to announce Jerome Rothenberg, Hiromi Ito, and Marthe Reed as headliners in our line-up so far. We plan to put together an issue of Ekleksographia dedicated to this cause. More news as it arrives. Jesse Glass

We’re a victim of our success at Facebook with over 4,000 friends, and a computer so slow that it takes an hour to post something now. That suits us just fine. We enjoyed joking around there and hearing from some of our nearest and dearest. All in all though, Facebook is/was a so-so experience we can live without.

Though Daniel seems to be moving on to bigger and better things, Ahadada Books remains doing what it does: i.e. enduring. If we do 30 books one year and two books the next who’s to worry? Not me and not you–Ahadada fans–either.

An earthquake couldn’t knock us out here in Japan and we’re not in the habit of crumbling because of any old world economic depression. Not at all. We practice asymmetrical publishing and have been at it for quite a few years. That means that we’re not chained to this website; neither are we in absolute love with “fine books in limited editions.” Staples and mimeo worked for us for years and if circumstances warrent, we’ll gladly return. The point is to get the best work–i.e. the work that gives me–Jesse Glass–permission to try new and interesting things with language–out there. If that work inspires me, then it will probably inspire others. That’s what we’ve always been about.

We thank Dan Sendecki for his friendship and for all of the good things he’s done, this side of gradually disappearing after c. 2007. We wish he and lovely Katie well.

We also thank most of our authors–most of them–and apologize to a few others for unanswered e-mails and all of that other hair-pulling stuff.

This website will be going through a few changes to another, more easily managed format, according to Dan. We sure hope so as we like this website–it’s served us well.

My friends, we can’t promise to be good, but we can promise to continue to be ourselves in 2012.

Happy holidays to everybody–and buy our books from Small Press Distribution for the fastest service.

We are NOT OPEN TO SUBMISSIONS AT THIS TIME. Jesse Glass

We’re very proud to announce a new issue of Ekleksographia. Please click the black Eklekso link on this page and enjoy. While you’re at it, time some time to browse our other fine issues. Jess

May-Dance

May the Standing Stones once more
Guard the edge of the space-time continuum
May the Maypole-dance, the dance of Life continue
May we begin the healing of our earth

May brightnesse cease to fall from the aire
May we remember who we are / who we have always been

Before ³race²
Before ³class²
Before ³gender²
Before the past 10,000 years¹
20,000 years¹ Stupidity
(means being in a Stupor)

May our only struggle once again
Be the ultimate struggle
within our own minds/hearts
The struggle to open further

Open to all humans
To all beings
To all that is
All that can be

MAY IT BE PEACEFUL
MAY IT BE JOYOUS

ALL POWER TO THE IMAGINATION

Diane di Prima
May 1, 2011
San Francisco

Remarkable video of the massive Alabama tornado sprouting sideways twisters uncannily from its sides. Can anyone doubt that natural phenomena like this did not give rise to the idea of god, gods, devils, and the devil? Put yourself in an iron-age frame of mind and watch this. Jess

JAPAN 2011

The key is in the music

(What key is the music in?)

Dave Van Ronk playing Scott Joplin’s

“The Entertainer”—

a man walking

on a summer day

old pond

“When the present state of man is considered, when an estimate is made of his hopes, his pleasures, and his possessions; when his hopes appear to be deceitful, his labors ineffectual, his pleasures unsatisfactory, and his possessions fugitive, it is natural to wish for an abiding city, for a state more constant and permanent, of which the objects may be more proportioned to our wishes, and the enjoyments to our capacities; and from this wish it is reasonable to infer, that such a state is designed for us by that infinite wisdom, which, as it does nothing in vain, has not created minds with comprehensions never to be filled.”

“One of the secrets of classic ragtime guitar transcriptions is

the harder they are the more fun they are to play.”

Come along with me, sweetheart mine,

Come and look at the world and its ways

the dead favor white stones to be held softly in the hand

“The trio of ‘The Entertainer’ is almost more fun than I can stand.”

The incredible

movement of the music

not dance but movement—

a free man walking

“Ragtime should never be played fast”

“What does the empire not owe to a prince who has honored the house of France”

an island nation

Take a… walk with me, baby mine,

Take a walk and I’ll show you the way

highest life expectancy of any country in the world

lowest crime rate

“There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men’s hands cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any deliver out of his hands.—He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of difficulty to subdue a rebel, who has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the numbers of his followers. But it is not so with God.”

The young woman

standing at the corner

suddenly bursts into tears—

Three friends—alive!

The heart

“The corruption of the heart of man is immoderate and boundless in its fury; and while wicked men live here, it is like fire pent up by God’s restraints, whereas if it were let loose, it would set on fire the course of nature. There is no fortress that is any defense from the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and vast multitudes of God’s enemies combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces. They are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind or large quantities of dry stubble before DEVOURING FLAMES”

breaks