Book: A Book Of Witness: Spells & Gris-Gris
Written By Jerome Rothenberg (New Directions)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz

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The precarious frailty of 'I'; the single letter in the alphabet without cross, hook or adornment; pronoun for indicating singularity; that word which proclaims a characteristic distinctly personal.

The 'I' and its role in poetry is a much maligned one. Its effects are scorned, for being wholly the device of confessional history or perhaps worse, indication of work that is ego driven and singular. This assessment is true, but only partly; any device, in amateur hands, sees an eventual disintegration.

Wielding the tall dignified 'I' can still have an acutely profound meaning when brandished with the proper pen.

A Book of Witness: Spells & Gris-Gris is avante-gardist poet and translator Jerome Rothenberg's collection of passage verse, spanning one millennium transforming into the next. Of the one hundred verses, largely utilizing the 'I', the first fifty were written in 1999 while the second fifty are the product of the ensuing two years. Most are prophetic incantations, yearning for self-recognition as the veil draws on the obscuring universe.

A word like 'haunting' doesn't quite describe A Book of Witness -- better, might be 'imploring.'

Where Rothenberg uses the 'I' most deftly, is as the identification of his constantly reinvented self. The effect of this repetition on the reader cannot be lost, as he delves further into that proud and woe stricken proposition of discovery. Rothenberg's serial use of 'I' places him out on a limb -- it projects him into rarefied space as the sole possessor of his poem's device. Stripped of confessional or biographical elements, the 'I' is a steely cool spear in some contexts singular and others, universal.

I am beginning to understand - now after thorough plunges into Jerome Rothenberg's A Book Of Witness: Spells & Gris-Gris - this tall standing letter and the fullness it can entail.

© 2003 - Erick Mertz