A Book of Witness Spells & Gris-Gris

A landmark collection by one of America's leading avant-gardists. A Book of Witness: Spells & Gris-Gris is Jerome Rothenberg's passage from one centuryone millenniumto another. Of the one hundred poems that comprise the book, the first half were written in 1999, the second in the two years that followed. But far more than a marker of era-shifting, it is a collection that reestablishes the primacy of the poetic "I," not in the sense of a confessional, personal voice, but of the grammatical first person as both a singular witness and conduit for othersa kind of prophecy. Often incantatory, the poems in A Book of Witness are a reaffirmation of self in the face of history's darknesses, a shout for life against an indifferent universe.

The Case for Memory	p. 3
The Burning House	p. 4
Where God Is Light	p. 5
I Have Paid the Price & Lost	p. 6
There Is a Map Inside My Pocket	p. 7
An Empty Bell	p. 8
What the World Gives Back	p. 9
A Premonition	p. 10
Like a Wall	p. 11
A Real Man	p. 12
Every Night at Ten	p. 13
There Is Never Enough Time	p. 14
The Last Friend	p. 15
I Am Mad by Turns	p. 16
More Than Stars	p. 17
A Cruel Nirvana	p. 18
Enhancing the Pleasure	p. 19
When We Do One Plus Two	p. 20
At Night	p. 21
To Make Life Real	p. 22
The Messages of Slaves	p. 23
Better Than Numbers	p. 24
In the Stars	p. 25
Despair Is Never Universal	p. 26
The Kings of Water	p. 27
I Will Not Save the World	p. 28
I Practice Dying	p. 29
In Defiance of the Dead	p. 30
A Medicine That Kills Me	p. 31
To Slow the Passage	p. 32
This Does Me Proud	p. 33
The Curse Was Stronger	p. 34
The Search for Truth	p. 35
When Sleep Draws Nigh	p. 36
I Believe in the Magic of God	p. 37
I Feel a Surge of Power	p. 38
Going Crazy	p. 39
I Weave a Circle Thrice	p. 40
The Fire Deep Inside	p. 41
I Take a Page Out of Your Book	p. 42
I Prefer a Poem with Spaces	p. 43
That Is Who I Am	p. 44
I Count It by a Thousand	p. 45
It Is a Day of Miracles for Me	p. 46
I Give Up My Identity	p. 47
I Is the First Word	p. 49
I Dare Not Starve	p. 50
The End Is the Beginning	p. 52
A Town Called Meter	p. 53
I Can't Say Who I Am	p. 54
I Come into the New World	p. 57
It Is a Shame to Watch My Face	p. 59
I Hold Dark Matter	p. 61
What Was Begun in Anger	p. 62
As from a Distant Height	p. 63
A Giant for the Moment	p. 64
I-Songs Exist	p. 65
A Lucky Day	p. 66
I Am Not a Native of This Place	p. 67
I Make My Way by Stealth	p. 68
Eager to Break Through Language	p. 69
I Live in Dungeons	p. 70
I Will Not Eat My Poem	p. 71
A Calendar That Fluttered	p. 73
I Arrive in Paris	p. 74
The Voice Inside	p. 75
Therefore I Am	p. 76
I Am Where You Dropped Me	p. 77
In Nerval's Tower	p. 78
Because I'm Foreign	p. 79
Cursing the Light	p. 80
I Lose the Sound That Music Makes for Me	p. 81
I Speak in Tongues	p. 82
The Miracle of Death	p. 83
History Is What I Like to Call It	p. 84
A Missal Like a Bone	p. 85
I Leave No Time for Pleasure	p. 86
I Am Thankful for Your Words	p. 87
I Fend Off What Was Done Before	p. 89
I Am Not Like Anyone Among You	p. 90
I Feel the Sand Between My Teeth	p. 91
I Vent My Wrath on Animals	p. 92
In the Way Words Rhyme	p. 93
I Accept Their Nomination	p. 94
Feckless with Disgust	p. 95
Confessions	p. 96
Because Completeness Is Our Virtue	p. 97
The Fabled City	p. 98
A Little Thought	p. 100
The Victim I Once Shunned	p. 102
In Frozen Motion	p. 103
I Let Them Speak for Me	p. 104
I Write My Name on Air	p. 105
I Fail As a Celibate	p. 106
I Am the Uncommitted	p. 107
I Exceed My Limits	p. 109
In Love with Love	p. 111
A Living Heart	p. 112
I Am the President of Regulation	p. 114
I Am That I Am	p. 115
Postface	p. 117
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A Book of Witness Spells & Gris-Gris

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Table of Contents

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