JEROME ROTHENBERG'S FEARS

“[S]ome had a fear of men/some had a fear of women/some had a fear of girls,” begins Jerome Rothenberg’s “A Poem of Fears in seven installments,” and then proceeds, in like manner, through four-plus pages to its ensorcelled ending: “some had a fear of magic/some had a fear of infinity/some had a fear of the void[.]”

On the page, the poem is as unreadable as the columns of a telephone directory. Heard aloud, as you can in a marvelous (in both senses of the word) rendition by Rothenberg himself during an engaging half hour discussion segment of Al Filreis’s ModPo series, however, the poem can induce a trance in listeners.

Taken in through the eyes, the work appears to be an offshoot of Language poetry, which aims “to place complete emphasis on the language of the poem and to create a new way for the reader to interact with the work.” In other words, Rothenberg isn’t addressing fears, per se, but the language of fears. It’s also, of course, a perfect example of a list poem. But challenged by Filreis to find the fears in the poem that related to current day political matters (the poem was written decades ago), the panelists responded to the content of the poem, not the language. Citing the line “some had a fear of inoculation,” one participant saw a connection to the current vehemence of anti-vaxxers; another associated “some had a fear of dampness” with the demise of the rain forest. Looked at that way, Rothenberg’s poem proves that there’s really no such thing as Language Poetry. Try though you might, you can’t strip language of its meaning.