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Carl Rakosi may be San Francisco's best kept secret. At 96 he's sharper than
ever and surely one of the most joyous voices on the entire Coast. And yet
the City just doesn't seem to realize who they have there. Steve Dickison
interviewed Carl at his home for The Poetry Center recently and I invite you
to read the interview. I've included links for further exploration too, one
from Modern American Poetry and one from JACKET. And books by Carl can be
found at Small Press Distribution:
http://www.spdbooks.org (enter Rakosi, Carl for an author search).
I've been a fan ever since I found a dog eared copy of AUMULET in a used
book store 25 years ago. Since then I've had occasion to meet and hear him
read. What's not to love about this man? So, dear listees, thank you for
putting up with my enthusiasm when a new interview comes out.
best
:fp
A Conversation with Carl Rakosi by Steve Dickison
http://www.sfsu.edu/~newlit/news/rakosi.htm
(extract:)
The nearly eighty-year publishing history of American poet Carl Rakosi
begins in the early 1920s, with a number of poems in a college magazine, at
the University of Wisconsin in Madison, then in several national periodicals
and "little magazines." An invitation from Louis Zukofsky to contribute to
the "Objectivists" issue of Poetry magazine (February 1931) was followed by
inclusion in An "Objectivists" Anthology (1932), published in France by
George and Mary Oppen's small expatriate press, To, Publishers. He,
Zukofsky, Oppen, and Charles Reznikoff would be known henceforth as the core
group of "Objectivist" poets. Mr Rakosi dropped out of poetry publishing
between 1941 and the mid-sixties, devoting himself to social work. Since his
return to poetry, books of new and collected earlier work have been brought
out by New Directions, Black Sparrow, the National Poetry Foundation, and
Sun & Moon, among others. Still prolific as he approaches his 96th birthday,
Mr Rakosi has had two recent books published in England by etruscan books:
The Earth Suite (1997) and The Old Poet's Tale (1999)-the latter the first
of three volumes planned for publication as his Collected Works.
* * * *
And at the Modern American Poetry site more from and about Carl Rakosi:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rakosi/rakosi.htm
(extract:)
Kent Johnson
Many of his more recent and powerful poems, like "The Menage," "Yaddo,"
"Lying in Bed on a Summer Morning," "In What Sense I am I," "Ginger," and
"Associations with a View from the House," are among the most direct
engagements of the problematics of subject/object relations within the
Objectivist canon.
[. . . .]
For Rakosi, being fully participant in that mystery of the "outer," also
implies a need to regard the subject’s desires and speculations with a sense
of modesty. While meditations on the nature of cognition and knowledge in
our poetry have often been a province for melancholic seriousness if not
outright existential angst, Rakosi--and with remarkable frequency--makes
them into occasions for self-effacement and an easy acceptance of the
unknown. In poems like "The Menage" or "How to Be with a Rock" (which may
well be a take-off on Stevens's solemn and celebrated poem), he shows
himself to be our happiest—and sometimes funniest—philosophical poet.
* * * *
And Carl Rakosi at JACKET online (good photo!):
http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket01/rakosi01.html
***************
Frank Parker
[log in to unmask]
http://now.at/frankshome
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