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IN MEMORY OF A BANYAN TREE: POEMS OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD: 1985 - 2022

IN MEMORY OF A BANYAN TREE: POEMS OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD: 1985 - 2022

$18.00Price

ISBN: 978-1-7364323-4-1

Pub Date: April 2022

Pages: 96


By Michael Rothenberg


In Memory of A Banyan Tree: Poems of the Outside World: 1985 - 2022 is a collection of poems relating to nature, ecology, and ecopoetics, selected from the expanse of Rothenberg’s writings over the past thirty-five years. Contemplative and political, Rothenberg’s many years as a horticulturist and his engagement in the environmental movement inform his work. These poems are a watershed account of an intimate relationship with the outside world.

    Dahlia

    Corridors beyond reach

    dahlias glob the mirror-world.


    Snow at 6,000 feet.

    Muffled drifts.

    Fir sentinels.

    Icicles bleed from shingled ledge.


    I won’t let go.


    Each petal whole in divided sociology.

    Snow. Snow. Each

    petal figures in a whole.

    Each white floating tranquilizer

    piled up against the sill.


    Green smothered under melting light,

    Drawn under crust of sleeping mother-life.


    A tribunal of snow voices.

    Winter in the palm of a strengthening

    god, I want to slip away.

    But dahlias seize a dark heart.


    I won’t let go.


    —Michael Rothenberg


    Michael Rothenberg is editor and publisher of the online literary magazine BigBridge.org, co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change (www.100tpc.org), and co-founder of Poets In Need, a 501(c) nonprofit assisting poets in crisis. Born in Miami Beach, Florida in 1951, Rothenberg moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and co-founded Shelldance Orchid Gardens in Pacifica, which is dedicated to the cultivation of orchids and bromeliads. While in Pacifica, he helped lead local environmental actions that stopped major coastal developments that would destroy wildlife habitat. His most recent books of poetry include Sapodilla (Editions du Cygne-Swan World, Paris, 2016), Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press, 2016), Wake Up and Dream (MadHat Press, 2017), The Pillars (Quaranzine Press, 2020), and I Murdered Elvis (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). A bi-lingual edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story was published by Varasek Ediciones, in Madrid in 2017. In 2020, Arwiqa Publishers, Cairo, Egypt published an Arabic edition translated by El Habib Louai. Rothenberg currently lives on Lake Jackson in Tallahassee, where he is Florida State University Libraries Poet in Residence.

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