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Breccia: selected poems 1972-1986
Breccia is an inspired grouping of poems from celebrated poet, translator, anthologist and essayist, Pierre Joris. After a limited initial publication by Station Hill/Guernica, this wonderful collection will be finally be available once again.
“[Breccia] is a showcase for poems from roughly twenty, sometimes rather fugitive, volumes, written and published during a time when Joris was living as a kind of postmodern nomad. One of the virtues of this in-gathering of work is that it makes clear the extent to which a sense of ‘nomadism’ — of being intensely in a place because one knows one has already left it — marks Joris’ poetry.... The sense of immediacy in his work is striking. But the images of weather and shifting light and shade that give so many poems their climate of feeling, always play against a complex flow of conceptual activity and the possibility, but only the possibility, of archetypal permanence…”
— Don Byrd
“…This is honest, radical work, close to the beginning of a poetic disenchanted with its own airs and graces...Pierre Joris is a wonderful poet of remarkable breadth of concern and lyric occasion.”
— Robert Kelly
“…The scope of the work is large, the thrust is synthesizing, the idiom particular and rich…”
— Jerome Rothenberg
“[Breccia] is a showcase for poems from roughly twenty, sometimes rather fugitive, volumes, written and published during a time when Joris was living as a kind of postmodern nomad. One of the virtues of this in-gathering of work is that it makes clear the extent to which a sense of ‘nomadism’ — of being intensely in a place because one knows one has already left it — marks Joris’ poetry.... The sense of immediacy in his work is striking. But the images of weather and shifting light and shade that give so many poems their climate of feeling, always play against a complex flow of conceptual activity and the possibility, but only the possibility, of archetypal permanence…”
— Don Byrd
“…This is honest, radical work, close to the beginning of a poetic disenchanted with its own airs and graces...Pierre Joris is a wonderful poet of remarkable breadth of concern and lyric occasion.”
— Robert Kelly
“…The scope of the work is large, the thrust is synthesizing, the idiom particular and rich…”
— Jerome Rothenberg
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
About the author
Pierre Joris
69 books64 followersPierre Joris left Luxembourg at nineteen & has since lived in the US, Great Britain, North Africa & France. In 1992 he returned to the Mid-Hudson valley where he teaches poetry & poetics at SUNY-Albany. He has published some 40 books of poetry, essays and translations. Forthcoming in 2008 are Aljibar II (poems, a bilingual edition with French translation by Eric Sarner, Editions PHI) and Justifying the Margins: Essays 1990-2006 (SALT Publishing). Pierre Joris’ 2007 publications include the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; & Mitch Elrod, guitar) issued by Ta’wil Productions; Aljibar (poems w/ French translations by Eric Sarner, published in Luxembourg by Editions PHI) and Meditations on the Stations of Mansour Al-Hallaj 1-21(Anchorite Press, Albany). Other recent books include Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999,and A Nomad Poetics (essays), both from Wesleyan University Press. Recent translations include Paul Celan: Selections, and Lightduress by Paul Celan, which received the 2005 PEN Poetry Translation Award. 4x1: Work by Tristan Tzara, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Pierre Duprey & Habib Tengour translated by Pierre Joris came out in October 2002 from Inconundrum Press, and Basic Books published his co-translation (with Ann Reid) of Abdelwahab Meddeb’s The Malady of Islam in 2003. With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry. Green Integer published his 3 volumes of translations of Paul Celan: Breathturn, Threadsuns and Lightduress. Other translations include books by Abdelwahab Meddeb, Paul Celan, Maurice Blanchot, Edmond Jabès, Habib Tengour, Tchicaya U'Tamsi, Kurt Schwitters and Michel Bulteau into English, and by Carl Solomon, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Pete Townsend, Julian Beck and Sam Shepard into French.
Since 1967 he has been actively involved in little magazines: he published "The Clown," a poetry magazine, at Bard College from 1967-1969; edited "Corpus" ("A Radical Newspaper of the Arts") in New York from 1969-1970; founded and co-edited (with William Prescott) "SIXPACK" (A magazine of contemporary literature) in London & New York from 1972-1977, was poetry editor for “Paris Exiles” magazine in Paris from 1985-1986. He has been a correspondent for PO&SIE, Paris (edited by Michel Deguy) since 1986; for “Dédale,” Paris (edited by Abdelwahab Meddeb) since 1995 and for “Arapoetica”, Paris (edited by Abdul Kader El Janabi) since 1999.
Since 1967 he has been actively involved in little magazines: he published "The Clown," a poetry magazine, at Bard College from 1967-1969; edited "Corpus" ("A Radical Newspaper of the Arts") in New York from 1969-1970; founded and co-edited (with William Prescott) "SIXPACK" (A magazine of contemporary literature) in London & New York from 1972-1977, was poetry editor for “Paris Exiles” magazine in Paris from 1985-1986. He has been a correspondent for PO&SIE, Paris (edited by Michel Deguy) since 1986; for “Dédale,” Paris (edited by Abdelwahab Meddeb) since 1995 and for “Arapoetica”, Paris (edited by Abdul Kader El Janabi) since 1999.
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