Poasis II
Description
Poasis II gathers Joris's major poetic works from 2000 to 2024. These nomadically shape-shifting poems range widely across times, places, and cultures, addressing, for example, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster (in a quasi-opera libretto),the meditations of tenth-century revolutionary poet, sufi teacher, and thinker Mansur al-Hallaj, an homage to his old friend and collaborator Jerome Rothenberg (1931-2024), a list poem celebrating Herman Melville's 200 birthday, and extracts from his Book of Cormorant. These sequences are interspersed with shorter works, such as poems addressing Paul Celan upon completing translations of that poet's oeuvre, Dante's expulsion from Florence, and more. As he says in the poem "The Poet's Job," "pick up everything that shines / discard the gold / keep the light." Or, as Randall Horton suggests, these poems "are inter-cont(in)ental as sound and symbol weaves in and out of cultures, traditions-they critique, inform-teach in a multiverse of languages-they love. The beauty, as with all of Joris's literary work, is when language is allowed to be nomadic and unbound." Published with the support of Kultur lx - Arts Council Luxembourg.
[sample poem]
Outside:
sun caught
in bare tree branches,
cradled
Inside:
me caught
in shelter in place,
cradled too
p.s. We shall both
rise again
-
4/1
These buds on the branches
here this year too
their steadfastness. my surprise
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
PIERRE JORIS (1946-2025) was a Luxembourger-American poet, essayist, translator, and editor who has published over 80 books. His most recent books include Interglacial Narrows: Poems 2015-2021 and Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. He is also a prolific translator, in particular of Paul Celan. He received the 2020 Batty Weber Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement, Luxembourg.
Content
Table Of Contents
from: Permanent Diaspora
This afternoon Dante
The word, the mawqif
Tuesday, may 23rd 2000
EP: heard, not seen
# 18
for Gerrit Lansing at 75
from: The Rothenberg Variations
VARIATION #1
VARIATION #2
VARIATION #3
VARIATION #6
VARIATION #9
from: learn the shadow
R.I.P. for C. L.-S.
Sour Birth
07.29.09. Bourg d'Oueil
The Gulf (Between You & Me)
Rigwreck
Interlude: Word Swarm 1
Love at First Sight
Interlude: Word Swarm 2
Dis/aster - Oildreck
from: Meditations on the Stations of Mansur al-Hallaj
1. manners (adab)
2. awe (rahab)
3. fatigue (nasab)
4. serach (talab)
5. wonder ('ajab)
8. avidity (sharah)
9. probity (nazah)
10. sincerity (sidq)
11. comradeship (rifq)
12. emancipation (litq)
16. witnessing (shuhud)
17. existence (wujud)
19. labor (kada)
26. Presence (hudur)
32. perplexity (tahayyur)
34. patience (tasabbur)
40. beginning (bidaya)
from: Barzakh
Canto Diurno 2: A / To Jack Kerouac : Ode Bilingue
Three Little Proses
Out Between
9/11/01
[Introït to my Purgatory]
L'Heure Bleue
Poem upon returning to these States after a 6-months absence
from: An Alif Baa
preamble to an alphabet
[alif]
[ba]
A poem in noon
The Rheumy Eye of Night
Another end to writing/reading 18
"But the ear"
"Along the coast of Sri Lanka fish feed"
The Sanctuary of Hands
from The Fez Journals
Bab Bou Jeloud
In Larache
"What if the birds were the shadows"
Canto Diurno 5
1. At the Mondrian
2. Lunch at La Grille (1.30 p.m.
Blurb for Hütte
Reading Edmond Jabès
Letter to Steichen's Ed
"I like the imp"
Homage to Badia Masabni
from: The Book of U /Le livre des cormorans
TWO FOR THE CORMORANTS
In the dog days of summer, 3 of 'em:
After Basho
"summer's so"
"The one & only"
Last cor poem
from: Fox-trails, -tails, & -trots
A Poem in Luxembourgish on New York
from: Interglacial Narrows
ELEGY FOR ANSELM HOLLO
Avicenna to Break Up
Sudanese Saying
Marasma redirects
"our unconscious is always"
Haiku for the End of the World
The Poet's Job
Triggernometry of the Trinity
A Late Antler for Dawn Clements
The Art of the Fugue, no
Purgatory is
Shipping Out at 1:25 p.m. on Herman Melville's 200 birthday
A three-minute composition à la mode Dalachinsky to celebrate Steve
"Earlier today I saw"
A Poem or something, a gift, a song, for Paul Celan at 100
from Up to & Including the Virus: Diaretics 2020-2021
Uncollected:
# ?. via Dante, Purgatory
from An AlifBa: T
Peace Flag
