Poeta Doctus

Jerome Rothenberg posted today some poems from his “Pound Project”, a set of sixteen-line poems that riff off lines of Pound’s. Rothenberg writes Pound is “a strong poetry influence for many of us ([him]self [& myself] included)”. And the poetic at work in his series echoes that at work in a sequence of poems I wrote in response to (Ezraversity graduate) Louis Dudek’s penultimate book of poems.

Rothenberg has been an important influence and/or poeticultural coworker for me, too:  his Technicians of the Sacred strongly orients my own understanding of what poetry has and can be, and his Poems for the Millenium assemblages, especially Volume III, Romantic and Postromantic poetry, resonate with my own present concerns. It’s good to be in such spiritual, poetic company, however physically distant.