The latest NewPages gives Mark Spitzer (and Ahadada) a thumbs up! Thanks so much! Jess

Friday in Japan got even better when I found a great, perceptive review of The Passion of Phineas Gage in my in-box with a note indicating that it had appeared in the 15th number of 10th Muse. I’d reprint it here, but lack permission. However, here’s a big thanks to editor Jordan for the kindness. Jesse

It’s hard to believe, but next year will mark our tenth anniversary! No time to pat ourselves on the back, though. We have plenty of projects to do, including books in the works by Michael Heller, Diane di Prima, Robert Lax, Alan Halsey, Rane Arroyo, David Jaffin, Skip Fox, Robin Blaser, Don Wellman, Eileen Tabios (among others) and e-books by Maurice Scully, Dyane Stetco and more. We have a new on-line maga (eKleksographia) taking shape on the anvils of Los, and not a few other projects on the burners. We want to branch out into anthologies and publishing experimental plays and performance texts as paper books and as e-chapbooks, and the Witness continues to add that extra bit of information to Maryland history that sorely needs to be there. We’ve connected with Bookmobile to begin print on demand publishing and on and on and on. Ahadada Books is an exercise in freedom–we publish the work that we like and that suits us. We answer to no one but ourselves.

When 2009 rolls around it may be time for a cup of coffee in celebration with friends, but I can assure you that soon after that it will be back to work.

And oh yes–the long-promised publication of Yoko Danno’s Kojiki is almost a fact!

Poe’s been weighing heavily on my mind recently and in an e-mail conversation with the poet-playwright Rane Arroyo, this gem arrived in my in-box.

Dream of Poe

He is young, fresh-faced, and we’re
amigos ready to go to an opera
about dancing horses in the Alps.

A woman with painted arms asks
for directions. The local cemetery
isn’t difficult to find: just die.

We mock the plain crowd in its fineries.
Edgar whispers, I’m very late for a story.
Is it because this opera is terrible

or that these horses cause avalanches?
He exits wearing a beard, a coat
made of winds, and a ripping shadow.

2004

Published: Four Corners, 2005

Story: a dream poem

We’ve waited quite a while but the manuscript finally arrived attached to a great e-note this morning. Watch here for more news. Jess

Happy to announce the sudden change of about 100 tadpoles into 100 tiny frogs this morning. The whole process is still as exciting to watch as when my mother and I collected these critters in pickle jars and set them on the window ledge in the apartment near Westminster where I spent my second and third years. These are common rice-field frogs–or “rain frogs”–amagaeru–as the j-folk call them. The true frogs swim about with their slower developing siblings and then make expeditions up the sides of the tank, where they cling and meditate in a manner worthy of the anchorites of Yamadera. Just as exciting as the new residents of our apartment is my old friend Sir Thomas Wyatt, who we’ve been dipping into this morning. here’s the beginning of a prosodic gem:

In eternum I was once determined
For to have loved, and my mind affirmed
That with my heart it should be confirmed
In eternum.

Forthwith I found the thing that I might like,
And sought with love to warm her heart alike,
For as me thought I should not see the like
In eternum.

I like the rugged, half-spoken, half sung feeling of these stanzas, and the intricate echoes of the first and second halves of each line. John Stubbs suggests that Wyatt was an important influence on the young Donne and we can surely see it here.

Another new arrival is Charles Bernstein’s Close Listening. We’re at chapter four, the consideration of Free Verse by Marjorie Perloff–vital stuff as always.

I’ve also just finished a new translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem “The Ruin” and am working on “The Fates of Men”–both from the Exeter book.

So as the new life in the tank continues to change and intrigue, so do the things of the mind-freighted breath.

The world is a wedding, but the world is a funeral too. The John Cage of visual art has left us at age 82. He will be missed. I’d like to offer Mark Spitzer’s cover as a tacit memorial to the great American Artist. Jess

Best wishes and congratulatiosn to Dan and Katie! It couldn’t have happened to a better couple! Though we’re sitting on the other side of the world, our hearts are right there with you. The Glass Family.

Just saw it on the TLS web site. The very fine poet Archie Markham died on Easter. I was waiting to hear back from him about a third person to make up a volume of Caribbean poets for a future Ahadada Reader. Rest in peace, Archie.

We’re in the midst of the famed Golden Week here in Japan–a holiday during which many people make a final flying trip to their home towns or to the hot spring of their choice, before buckling in for more gray days at work. The big question always is: what are your plans for Golden Week? My answer this year: “Apato de goro goro shtai!”–”I’m just going to stick around the apartment.” This answer always bring a smile to my J-work mates and students. Yes, they know that feeling well. Today’s weather is a bit overcast, but not too bad. The ever-present projects call from my office: I have books to finish, translations to polish, work-related writing to do, tomes to read and think about. Today’s also “Children’s Day,” and the kids are excited. They’re on the phone right now with their grandmother. Goro goro indeed! And one more Golden Day left before it’s back to the grind.