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Open Books: Event Archive
May 08, 2007 07:30 PM
DAVID MELTZER & MICHAEL ROTHENBERG
In 1960, poems by David Meltzer appeared in Donald Allen's ground-breaking
anthology, _The New American Poetry_. Then in his early 20s, Mr. Meltzer has
gone on to create a substantial body of vigorous work that is, as Diane Di
Prima has written, pervaded with "a kind of bop-perfection." He arrived in
San Francisco in 1957, a particularly fertile time and place for poetry, and
is associated both with the Beats and the San Francisco Renaissance. His
writing carries the energy and immediacy of those movements and exhibits as
well his particular history and interests, including Jewish mysticism and
jazz. David's Copy: The Selected Poems of David Meltzer ($20 Penguin),
edited by Michael Rothenberg, draws from nearly 50 years of his poetry and
provides ample evidence of his work's stylistic breadth -- from haiku-like
pieces to lengthy mythic series -- as well as its music, humor, and active
emotion from sorrow to ecstasy: "I need no food I'm fueled by dance / Radios
are in front and back / they're in my ears / my mouth is a radio /
everything I see and hear is music / everything I say / everything is music
I dance to."
Michael Rothenberg's work as an editor is well known, not only for David's
Copy, but also As Ever: The Selected Poems of Joanne Kyger, Overtime:
The Selected Poems of Philip Whalen and just published this spring, Way
More West: New and Selected Poems of Edward Dorn. Songwriter,
environmentalist, and orchid-cultivator, he is also an author in his own
right. His latest book, Unhurried Vision ($16 La Alameda), is an intimate
and historical volume that charms and enlightens. Through poetry, prose, and
list, it charts the arrival and passage of 1999, the year Mr. Rothenberg
spent working to organize the papers of, and ultimately caring for, the
terminally ill Philip Whalen. The result is a vivid and poignant portrait of
the poet and roshi and of their complex and tender relationship -- "Bald and
pink and great / This is a man you could love / And the poetry he makes /
can jump out the window / and get away fast."
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