Concealments and Caprichos

Combining two series of poems written since the turn of the century, A Book of Concealments and 50 Capriches after Goya, Rothenberg's latest volume is a two-pronged follow-up to his earlier hundred poem work A Book of Witness, with some notable changes in strategy & composition. As Rothenberg states in his preface,"" In A Book of Witness, I was concentrating on the rescue of the first-person voice as our principal instrument of witness---not only the personal `I' but the possibilities of a real if sometimes fictive `I' across a range of experiences, my own & at choice moments those of others. By contrast, the poems in A Book of Concealments suppress or conceal the witnessing `I' while 50 Caprichos, written simultanously, compensates for the largely missing `I' by allowing a give-&-take responsive to the dance of images in Goya's early opening to states of spirit & mind that many of us would later come to share. The writin of these poems at a time of new wars & new dissimulations---a notable change since the writing of A Book of Witness---is another circumstance not to be ignored.""Jerome Rothenberg is a DNA spaceman exploring the mammal caves of Now.""---Michael McClure""Jerome Rothenberg is one of the truly contemporary American poets who has returned U.S. poetry to the mainstream of international modern literature No one writing poetry has dug deeper into the roots of poetry.""---Kenneth Rexroth""The significance of Jerome Rothenberg's animating spirit looms larger every year [He] is the ultimate `hyphenated' poet: critic-anthropologist-editor-anthologist-performer-teacher-translator, to each of which he brings an unbridled exberance and an innovator's insistence on transforming a given state of affairs.""---Charles Bernstein