Michael Rothenberg

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=120 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0ec8dfe1esnpes.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>FootHills Publishing 2010</B></FONT><B>     </B><B>|</B><B>     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FootHills Publishing 2010"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FootHills Publishing 2010"><U>FootHills Publishing 2010</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id66.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wheeler Hill Reading 9262010"><U>Wheeler Hill Reading 9-26-2010</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id68.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Anthologies"><U>Anthologies</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id74.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Montana Poets Series"><U>Montana Poets Series</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id41.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books 2010"><U>Books 2010</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id46.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Upcoming Readings"><U>Upcoming Readings</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id54.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="April 17 Reading"><U>April 17 Reading</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id43.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dennis Formento"><U>Dennis Formento</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id44.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Veronica Noechel"><U>Veronica Noechel</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id45.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Margaret Menges"><U>Margaret Menges</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id47.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Howie Good"><U>Howie Good</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Susan Deer Cloud"><U>Susan Deer Cloud</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id49.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Donna M. 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Riding along, down below, we see the music and hear the land, sipping on a goblet of that sweet synesthesia.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>                                    - Anselm Hollo </div> <div>      </div> <bR> <div> Engaged, inventive, playful, passionate, poetry for everyperson at a time when many north american poets are managing performance or funding empires or writing oddly obligatory forms of gibberish.  Michael's poems sing, instruct, surprise within constant awareness of our species' absurd, precarious rush towards extinction.  A new wave of comprehensible, activist art is coalescing around this work.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> - Harris Schiff</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <I>My Youth As A Train</I> is a spiritual romp across America:  boxing, boardwalks, beaches, baked hams, biscuits, Barbasol, and blue herons-a mirror of a life lived with peaked awareness fully inhabiting each immediate environment, embodying each moment.  The richest details accumulate and fall in layers as Rothenberg's fast moving images and thought fragments create a mind movie of perceptions prying our eyes and hearts open.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> - Wanda Phipps</div> <bR> <bR> <div> This train may be bound for glory, but Michael Rothenberg, like Woody, like Whitman's "sun falling round a helpless thing," excludes no one. Onboard you'll find ramblers and gamblers, boxers and Buddhists, cosmic jokers and midnight tokers, all in the shadow of Twin Towers/Twin Peaks Golgotha America. Plus perhaps the greatest poem written about fly fishing since Brautigan, if not Izaak Walton.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>                               - John Roche</div> <bR> <div> From the book:</div> <bR> <div> VISION OF PEACE</div> <bR> <div> Between huge blanket of black clouds </div> <div> and ragged graymouth of cityscape </div> <div> Eye of green morning light</div> <bR> <div> Wind raking bay (thunder hum) thrashing voice </div> <div> of branches & leaves </div> <bR> <div> Storm blown away </div> <div> for another <I>more</I> pleasant distortion </div> <div>    Not boredom </div> <div>            but interest in someone <I>not</I> found here</div> <bR> <div> Two pelicans </div> <div> too far away to know what they're doing </div> <div> I put on my glasses </div> <div>          Three pelicans, four, seven </div> <bR> <div> any amount of floating & flight, even that jet plane </div> <div> going the other way</div> <bR> <bR> <div>     November 13, 2002</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> CIVILIZATION OF TWO</div> <bR> <div> Attack, terrorist attack</div> <div> Coffee spills on the floor</div> <bR> <div> The clothesline drips with the puppeteer's soul</div> <bR> <div> Bombs, fireballs, ground zero, body bags</div> <div> Ten thousand deaths, invisible, lidless</div> <bR> <div> A glass breaks in the sink </div> <div> With peels and mushy fruit</div> <bR> <div> Separate the waste and contemplate the loss</div> <bR> <div>           *</div> <bR> <div> In crisis I seek isolation</div> <bR> <div> While skull-faced children search for their fathers </div> <div> In the rubble of alcohol and war</div> <bR> <div> Mothers raped in the name of the holy mother</div> <bR> <div> A shadow recites the Lord's Prayer</div> <div> Masturbates to a photograph of a tantric goddess </div> <bR> <div> God never answers</div> <bR> <div>           *</div> <bR> <div> Apocalypse, doomsday, end of time</div> <bR> <div> Waves thunder “On The Beach” </div> <bR> <div> Cicada</div> <div> Crow</div> <bR> <div> The telephone rings, rings, rings</div> <div> “Hello, Sweetie, what are you doing?” </div> <div> Peeing off the deck to save water</div> <div> The world is coming to an end</div> <bR> <div>           *</div> <bR> <div> We should have torn the fences down</div> <div> While we had the chance</div> <div> Rebuilt the temple with apples and honey</div> <div> Fasted and prayed</div> <bR> <div> The towers have fallen</div> <div> I'm nobody I've ever known</div> <div> Going home</div> <div> The only one on the plane </div> <div> Philadelphia to Reading</div> <bR> <div> On TV the program called “Attack on America” </div> <div> is replaced with “America At War”. </div> <bR> <bR> <div>  September 19, 2001</div> <bR> <div> Michael Rothenberg was born and raised in Miami Beach. He is a poet, songwriter, and founding editor and publisher of Big Bridge, www.bigbridge.org. His books of poems include <I>What The Fish Saw </I>(Twowindows Press), <I>Nightmare of The Violins </I>(Twowindows Press), <I>Favorite Songs </I>(Big Bridge Press), <I>Man/Women</I>, a collaboration with Joanne Kyger (Big Bridge Press), <I>The Paris Journals </I>(Fish Drum Press), <I>Grown Up Cuba</I> (Il Begatto Press), <I>Monk Daddy </I>(Blue Press), <I>Epigenesis on Temple Mount</I> (dPress), <I>Unhurried Vision </I>(La Alameda/University of New Mexico Press), and most recently <I>Choose</I> (Big Bridge Press). He is also author of the eco-spy thriller <I>Punk Rockwell</I><B> </B>(Tropical Press). Michael Rothenberg has edited the selected works of Philip Whalen, Joanne Kyger, David Meltzer and Edward Dorn for the Penguin Poets series, and <I>The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen </I>(Wesleyan University Press). He currently lives in the redwoods of Northern California.</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="1d22c490.jpg" border=0 width="300" height="329" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>My Youth as a Train</B> is an 80 page hand-stitched paper book with spine - $16.00</div> <bR> <div> TO ORDER  ON-LINE                               </div> <div>       </div> <bR> <div> From the US         <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="My Youth as a Train"> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="10--22"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> </form>  </div> <bR> <div> From Canada    <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="My Youth as a Train"> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="10--22"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> <input type="hidden" name="shipping" value="2.75"> </form>  </div> <bR> <div> From Other Countries            <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="My Youth as a Train"> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="10--22"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="shipping" value="5.00"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> </form>  </div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering By Mail"><U>To order through mail click here</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>