The Serpent and the Fire
Poetries of the Americas from Origins to Present
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"This seminal effort redefines what it means to write and read poetry in the Americas. It's a must-read." ― Publishers Weekly
Jerome Rothenberg's final anthology--an experiment in omnipoetics with Javier Taboada--reaches into the deepest origins of the Americas, north and south, to redefine America and its poetries
The Serpent and the Fire breaks out of deeply entrenched models that limit "American" literature to work written in English within the present boundaries of the United States. Editors Jerome Rothenberg and Javier Taboada gather vital pieces from all parts of the Western Hemisphere and the breadth of European and Indigenous languages within: a unique range of cultures and languages going back several millennia, an experiment in what the editors call an American "omnipoetics."
The Serpent and the Fire is divided into four chronological sections--from early pre-Columbian times to the immediately contemporary--and five thematic sections that move freely across languages and shifting geographical boundaries to underscore the complexities, conflicts, contradictions, and continuities of the poetry of the Americas. The book also boasts contextualizing commentaries to connect the poets and poems in dialogue across time and space.
Jerome Rothenberg
Jerome Rothenberg is the author of over seventy books of poetry including acclaimed volumes such as Poland/1931, Khurbn, and The Lorca Variations (all from New Directions). Describing his poetry career as an ongoing attempt to reinterpret the poetic past from the point of view of the present, he has also edited ten major anthologies, including Technicians of the Sacred, Shaking the Pumpkin, and Poems for the Millennium (three volumes, co-edited with Pierre Joris and Jeffrey C. Robinson). His poetry has been translated extensively into French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, Polish, Japanese, Lithuanian, Chinese, and Finnish. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and was awarded an American Book Award, two PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Awards and two PEN Center USA West Translation Awards, among other honors. He was elected to the World Academy of Poetry in 2001. His books available from SPD include GEMATRIA COMPLETE, THREE POEMS AFTER IMAGES BY NANCY TOBIN, CHINA NOTES & THE TREASURES OF DUNHUANG, 25 CAPRICHOS AFTER GOYA, and A BOOK OF CONCEALMENTS.
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