Light on Mind and other works by Pierre Joris

 

Pierre Joris is a poet, translator, essayist & anthologist. He has published over forty books, most recently Aljibar II (poems, a bilingual edition with French translations by Eric Sarner) and Justifying the Margins: Essays 1990-2006 (SALT Publishing, forthcoming May 2009). His 2007 publications include the CD Routes, not Roots; Aljibar and Meditations on the Stations of Mansour Al-Hallaj 1-21. Recent translations include Paul Celan: Selections, and Lightduress by Paul Celan, which received the 2005 PEN Poetry Translation Award. With Jerome Rothenberg he edited the award-winning anthologies Poems for the Millennium (volumes I & II) and most recently, Pablo Picasso, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & Other Poems. Check out his website & his Nomadics blog.

 

___________________

this piece of tree bark
picked up & brought
home to remember
something now
forgotten. this
piece of tree bark
birch of forgetting
now only what
it is. this piece of
birch bark.

 

___________________

I like the imp
in impossibility
that makes it all
possible
(april 07)

 

Light on Mind

Light on mind,
In darkness of pre dawn

Light rides
From Ridge to Ridge

Darkness settles
Had settled

Headlights streak
Dark intersection

Computer gone dark
Reboots into wheat field

mid summer tong
a gallon

old light

 

Slow

Slow, space paragraph
reluctance restart
off the loss under the raise
fear of look White look for
cheap HE
second century stopped
it quoted Nicole
Moon Bay Ridge
paralyzing
a meek of muscles cramping
at a should be erased
as it has always been

a morning mode of questions
and no evening will bring
ounces of answer's
cheap questioning

at the only quest

and says and says
on sore
on sows object
on sows are deaf
and says or death

caramelized offerings
in vote OD morning
in the early morning
looked in for the lyrical

save

 

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