When Thoreau wrote in his Journal in 1841, Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets, and when Whitman describes Leaves of Grass as a language experiment, they are expressing an approach to poetry that never ceased and has grown continuously during recent decades. This ground-breaking anthology of the early 1970s takes such an approach in presenting the poetry of the North American continent. It includes many recognized poets of the period, though appearing here in often unexpected contexts, and others who have been overlooked but whose contributions to the development of poetry are revolutionary. Starting from their own moment, the editors have read back into the more distant past and selected from broad American traditions works that had thitherto been considered outside the realm of poetry proper: the native poetry of the American continent, African-American sermons, blues and gospels, and the sacred, often innovative poetry of such radical religious groups as the Shakers. The book takes its title from William Blake's poem presenting the American Revolution as not only a powerful, promising and problematic historical event but the birth of a new development in man's consciousness-one that finds complex expression in the poetry of a continent. Selections mostly appear non-chronologically in juxtapositions suggesting what T. S. Eliot called the simultaneous order of all poetries of all times.

America, a prophecy,: A new reading of American poetry from pre-Columbian times to the present

Literature & Fiction

Quasha, George

Poetry

Vintage Books

Beowulf

Education & Teaching

Studying & Workbooks

Monarch Notes

Somapoetics

1973 First Edition consisting of 100 softcover paperback Editions: "Somapoetics" (POETRY) by George Quasha (Author from Fremont, Michigan).

The Sumac Press

For over two decades Gary Hill's work in video and installation art has cross-pollinated mediums--video, books, the speaking voice, composed sound, strobe light pulsation, experimental text, image transformation, computer animation, the human body--to alter awareness of art as language. Language Willing modestly presents four of Hill's recent installations: Wall Piece, Language Willing, Accordions (The Belsunce Recordings, July 2001) and Crossbow.

Gary Hill: Language Willing

Arts & Photography

Close, Tim

Individual Artists

Further/Art

This new volume in the Performance Ideas series is drawn from the ongoing video work art is/poetry is/music is (Speaking Portraits), which features over 1000 artistspainters, poets, musicians, dancers, actors, video-/filmmakersin eleven countries saying what art is. art is offers an intimate view of seventy of those engaged in art as performance. Single-frame images, accompanied by individual artist statements, capture moments of high intensity from Marina Abramovic, Carolee Schneemann, Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson, Jonah Bokaer, Robert Ashley, Pauline Oliveros, Thurston Moore, Gary Hill, Vito Acconci, Archie Shepp, Joan Jonas, Anthony Braxton, Ann Hamilton, and many more. George Quasha writes in his Introduction: Listening to so many artists, closely and over many years, has taught me further configurative dimensions of performative mind. Close listening/viewingnon-interfering attentionnurtures art, just as it does people, animals, maybe even plants.”

art is (Speaking Portraits) (Performance Ideas)

History & Criticism

PAJ Publications

George Quasha’s extraordinary sculptures unite natural stones in a state of breathtakingly improbable balance. The stones are not altered physically or bonded in any way; rather, Quasha discovers an unknown axis that brings them into radical alignment. The stones "learn" this state of levity in contrast to their ordinary state of gravity, resulting in a new art form that feels alive with its own individual energy and personality. Here, 37 axial stones are displayed in dazzling full-page color photos. The accompanying text explains not only how the stones were found and eventually came together, but explores the aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual, and practical implications of an art of danger and impermanence. "Action pages" document the process—the repeated setting up, balancing, losing balance, and falling—until the full axial stone is born: a whole being greater and more real than the sum of its parts.

Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance

North Atlantic Books

In Ainu Dreams, poet George Quasha and buun, a Japanese artist living in America, collaborate in poetically manifesting the artist's richly articulated dream-life. These eighty-odd poems embody an ever-opening cosmos of curious image, surprising narrative, and enigmatic teaching in a language no one could have dreamed up alone. Structurally intriguing poems reveal the innards of the dreams themselves, yet always speak directly and readably, sometimes addressed to a second person (the poet? the reader?). The poems and even reading itself seem to be dreaming. Poet and dreamer both live in New York's Hudson Valley.

AINU DREAMS (Barrytown)

Hasegawa, Chic

Station Hill Press

When Thoreau wrote in his Journal in 1841, Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets, and when Whitman describes Leaves of Grass as a language experiment, they are expressing an approach to poetry that never ceased and has grown continuously during recent decades. This ground-breaking anthology of the early 1970s takes such an approach in presenting the poetry of the North American continent. It includes many recognized poets of the period, though appearing here in often unexpected contexts, and others who have been overlooked but whose contributions to the development of poetry are revolutionary. Starting from their own moment, the editors have read back into the more distant past and selected from broad American traditions works that had thitherto been considered outside the realm of poetry proper: the native poetry of the American continent, African-American sermons, blues and gospels, and the sacred, often innovative poetry of such radical religious groups as the Shakers. The book takes its title from William Blake's poem presenting the American Revolution as not only a powerful, promising and problematic historical event but the birth of a new development in man's consciousness-one that finds complex expression in the poetry of a continent. Selections mostly appear non-chronologically in juxtapositions suggesting what T. S. Eliot called the simultaneous order of all poetries of all times.

America a Prophecy: A New Reading of American Poetry from Pre-Columbian Times to the Present

ROTHENBERG, Jerome

AmazonUs/INDPB

SCORNED BEAUTY COMES UP FROM BEHIND: PREVERBS is one of seven preverb complexes comprising the unpublished book Exchanging Intentions, itself one of seven books of preverbs, of which the first to be published was VERBAL PARADISE (Zasterle: 2011). A preverb is like a proverb, a one-line capture of wisdom, but at the raw stage before wisdom. Such an open intentional act of language invites configurative reading as a singular event of variable meaning. An instance of axial poetics, it puts language on its own stepped-up recognizance. Robert Kelly writes, SCORNED BEAUTY is the most gripping series of poems I've read in a long time. Wise, funny, humble, arrogant, love-sick, swooning into uncountable clarities. It seems the full maturation of work, of presence.

Scorned Beauty Comes Up From Behind

“Words say too much to let you know the truth.’’ George Quasha’s torqued, enigmatic proverbs create unlikely balances among discrepant engagements. The vectors of these marvelous poems work at cross purposes, keeping each other aloft. These are sparkling aphoristic aporias for a new age in an old time.  “Poetry,” says Quasha, “resists immortality with difficulty.” And also with wit and charm. Be here now, in which case immortality will take care of itself."   Charles Bernstein, author of Attack of the Difficult Poems   If William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” are poetry, then George Quasha’s preverbs are like a close cousin. It’s core question is: can poetry say the unsayable? Like Blake’s work, Glossodelic Attractors makes you wonder: what is poetry? A well established poetic tradition both modern and post-modern―some call it experimental―starts its definition with: poetry is not what you think it is. Its work is journeying inside language, as if passing through a distant country or else another reality. It conveys news of alternate dimensions showing through in the here-and-now, embedded inside our everyday thoughts and speaking. 

Glossodelia Attract: Preverbs

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