Jerome Rothenberg

1931 / New York City, New York

Autobiography 1997 The First One Hundred

1 Archipelago of the wandering dream

2 A castle with two bodies

3 The figure of Rosa Luxemburg among the animals in cages

4 Midnight forest

5 Trains circling below the icy waters

6 A meeting in the bourse

7 The men come into the small locker room & order drinks

8 Picasso wears a hat with roses

9 He has shoes aglow with little lights

10 Electricity runs along the floor & in between the tables

11 Picasso & Rosa Luxemburg converse

12 Her face is the face of our old friend Hannah Weiner

13 "Time is abolished" someone says "the world is o'er"

14 Letters dance into the infinite

15 She wears the infinite around her neck

16 He keeps another infinite inside one earring

17 They live in a world made up of infinites

18 How small a thought it takes to fill the world

19 When we gut up to dance the java it is 5 o'clock

20 Robert Filliou acts the role of Picasso & doesn't like it

21 It makes us look too small

22 A crowd of diplomats crosses the first rhine bridge

23 There is a place called holy mountain where the ghost of Goebbels wanders

24 Picasso the tap dancer

25 Rosa Luxemburg the temptress on the hill she holds a faded banner

26 A group of soldiers pokes her from the rear

27 A castle opens up

28 The lady with the playing cards is only half familiar

29 I make a phone call to Lynn Lonidier I have to read her book

30 Twice Rosa Luxemburg shows us her breasts

31 Picasso & Paul Blackburn are throwing a ball back & forth

32 It hits Zukofsky who calls out in pain "they hit the poet"

33 A ladder hangs in space

34 I climb it & look down

35 The soldiers of the revolution block every street

36 A line of cars reaches the Seine

37 Tomorrow when you go shopping bring back some cheese

38 Exchange the news with the Jabèses

39 I want all my friends to live where I live especially the dead

40 A banquet in a factory

41 The statue of a woman standing with spread legs between her legs a fire

42 A table piled with roasted meats & spirits

43 I ravished you

44 They embraced at length

45 The armies of drunk artists spread out through the forests

46 Children with their throats cut open

47 In a room with photographs tacked to the walls

48 The mouths are packed with gravel

49 They run the women down for pleasure

50 When the earth shakes bulbs drop from the chandeliers

51 An artist trembles in his atelier

52 In the cold air fingers burn & stretch

53 A holy sacrament begins

54 He swallows air & spits out fire

55 The gardens drop their leaves the leaves crack under foot

56 The carnival comes rushing by

57 We watch it from a window in the bombed-out town

58 My fist is beating on a stranger's vest

59 The forest comes alive with sounds of cuckoos

60 Clocks & death our password

61 In the night George Oppen still a soldier guards our house

62 Disney among the metaphysicals

63 Picasso in the Louvre hiding with his loot

64 We are all too human

65 She was not the first victim nor will she be the last

66 Napoleon standing on the altar of the world

67 The battle is engaged

68 The beasts in the fountain cry with pain

69 December is the cruelest month

70 There is an avant-garde that cannot be defeated

71 Robert Duncan rides his elevator up to heaven

72 It drops us back to earth

73 The airplane rushes blindly up the city streets

74 Find me a place to hide and I will love you dearly dearly

75 Here is a beer hall called the Holy Ghost

76 My socks in tatters

77 A geranium

78 The way to rub out wine stains is to pour on salt

79 A soldier with a line of watches on each arm

80 The rat inside the lion's cage

81 Someone follows someone up the hill & stops

82 "Why shouldn't we be a live?" he asks & no one answers

83 She has a stone to mark her grave her friend has none

84 Christ in a woman's dress with hefty boobs

85 I might have known it

86 He pours a black blob on the sheet & blows on it until it dries

87 The circle of their friends draws closer

88 The retrieval of a body in the early dawn

89 It is an accident of weather

90 From too much the process leads into a dearth of themes

91 My country is an amphitheater

92 A peacock bed pharaoh the lord of Egypt

93 A nickel flattened by a trolley spreading lead across the street

94 They slide the body back onto the bed & leave

95 Down in the restaurant a sailor lying on a table sleeping

96 Steps with blue messages are everywhere

97 Blue tambourine blue nails blue poppy seeds blue powdered hair

98 Too tardy & too premature for god

99 Tell Rosa Luxemburg to wait for Monday

100 It is eight a.m. in Paris
142 Total read