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"In the end, every machine breaks down."
Monthly Archives: July 2016
Monthly Archives: July 2016
Kurt Hemmer on “The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg”
“The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg is the most engaging and rigorous analysis of Ginsberg’s political poetry yet attempted. We find in these pages the astuteness of a literary critic, the contextualization of a social historian, the knowledge of …
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Bill Morgan on “The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg”
“The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg is an inspired work about one very-celebrated poet and political activist by another remarkable poet and activist, Eliot Katz. It is a serious work about the politics and social commitment behind much of …
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Dinosaur Love
On the Museum of Natural History’s 4th floor I greeted my old friend: “Hey, T. Rex! Long time, no see!” My buddy flashed his killer teeth: “Over two years, E. Katz, I missed you.” Surprised, I asked, “You missed me? …
Unlocking the Language Room of War
The late poet Allen Ginsberg, who was a teacher and friend, knew that issues of media and language were crucial to our prospects for building a real and humane democracy in America. Allen was an avid reader of the alternative …
To The Vegetable Aisle
Under refrigerated water spray all looks healthy, romaine, red & green, boston bib, watercress— how choose a lettuce? How to know which of you has natural soil’s nutrients intact? Hey arrugula! Why haven’t I seen you …
Review of “Unlocking the Exits” by Jim Cohn
Reading Eliot Katz, I was moved by an elegiac feeling of his sweet well-lit poems & their deeply paradoxical summations. To begin, “These Hands—A Present” chilled me in a deaf way with the lines: “I held out these hands / …
When The Skyline Crumbles
Was sitting Astoria kitchen chair about to vote mayoral primary, then would’ve hopped subway to work Soho’s Spring Street — turned TV on for quick election check when CNN switched to picture of World Trade Center …
Elegy for Allen
Ah, Allen, you gave America a new shape & now you’ve lost yours what a long accomplished road it was from the bridge o’er Paterson Falls through San Francisco’s Six Gallery, Prague’s May King, Pentagon exorcisms, mid-America’s Iron …
Alicia Ostriker on “Unlocking the Exits”
Eliot Katz has been for years an exuberant heir of Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and Allen Ginsberg. He has been oracular, comic, furiously compassionate, explosively and winsomely political, madly inventive, acutely vernacular. To read or hear him is to …
Allen Ginsberg: Praise for “Unlocking the Exits”
Another classic New Jersey bard! E. Katz has created his own original poetics for personal observation, animated discourse, critical insight, fantasy, and communal vision. His verses bespeak the colloquial heart of world tragedy and hope from his haunts, New Brunswick, …
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What We Don’t See
Look at those trees! There are millions of ’em Where the cat treads lightly Whatever we don’t see is there A helicopter whirls overhead; we are not alone Strong winds coerce the leaves into speaking politely In forests like these, …
To The Northern Winds
Sitting in cabin kitchen with Vivian meditating with eyes open following breath out nostrils the day clear and beautiful but cold, and windy as hell it’s heaven up here in Canada’s north country no inkling of industrial air pollution not …
The Weather Seems Different
It is snowing in Athens tonight & Apollo with ice in his beard is having a difficult time singing About six twin engine miniplanes have crashed coast to coast in empty fields …
The Logic of War
1 A group of Bush Sr’s US-armed fundamentalist freedom fighters compared to our own founding fathers have become Bush Jr’s evildoers who need to be smoked from their caves– and the National Review philosophers say postmodern theory has wrecked …
Portraits / M.
He was wired, on crack or might as well– his 3-month welfare motel stay up next week and he was coming to our office for options. He settled on one after 10 minutes: was going to get his gun, blow …
Adrienne Rich on “Unlocking the Exits”
“Eliot Katz’s poems are wonderful in their celebration of life and rhythmic verbal exuberance, set against the atrocities of now” –Adrienne Rich
Howard Zinn on “Love, War, Fire, Wind”
“I love these poems, which are full of passion and thought. Eliot Katz is among a handful of contemporary American poets whose work speaks to me.” –Howard Zinn
These Beautiful Territories
The cloud outside the window is shaped like an angel The gods have forgotten to say goodbye to these beautiful territories It’s impossible to keep shoes unmuddy along these trails Danny was right, I should have brought a pair of …
In Praise of the Seattle Coalition
They came from around the globe to change the shape of the globe They formed a human chain and sidewalks declared their support They led labor down unpaved roads and mountain ranges from all sides tipped their peaks …
At the End of the Century
—written for Allen Ginsberg at his 70th birthday Ah century that has embraced me these past 39 years, that has set before my eyes so much tumult and catastrophe, that has taken too many of my friends and ravaged the …
The View from the Big Woods
By Eliot Katz About a week before leaving for a 12-day summer vacation, I sent The New York Times a Letter to the Editor, which they published on June 20, 2006. In my letter, I addressed an op-ed column by …
Contact Eliot Katz
To get in touch with Eliot or inquire about any of his published work, please email ekatz57 [at] earthlink.net.
About Eliot Katz
Poet and activist Eliot Katz (b. 1957) is the author of seven books of poetry, including Unlocking the Exits (Coffee House Press, 1999) and Love, War, Fire, Wind: Looking Out from North America’s Skull (2009), published with drawings by the …
Alicia Ostriker on “Love, War, Fire, Wind”
“One of the amazing facts about Eliot Katz as a poet is that you can just never predict what he will do next. His sparkling mind, his acute political savvy, his comedy and his all-embracing warmth are always there. He …
William Heyen on “Love, War, Fire, Wind”
“Eliot Katz, spiritual son of Whitman & Ginsberg, is a poet of hypnotic velocity, of anger that has risen to aria, of a comic (& sometimes elegiac) high seriousness. His is Walt’s ‘primal sanity’ that in this faithful & furious …
Abbie Hoffman: American Dissident and Political Organizer Extraordinaire
Abbie Hoffman: American Dissident and Political Organizer Extraordinaire By Eliot Katz One of the most well-known and influential American activists of the 20th century, Abbie Hoffman liked to call himself an American dissident and community organizer. As historian Howard Zinn …
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Who Knew One Could Even Try Such a Thing?
New Brunswick, New Jersey in the 1980s was a pretty good microcosm of America. It was a multi-ethnic city with pockets of both wealth and poverty. It hosted the state’s major public university, Rutgers. It was the hometown of the …
What No God Knows
Even as I declare there is no god a subconscious one-eyed monster digs its bloody teeth into my lower back to protest. Most times I know that notions of who knows god best have …
“Howlin Soul,” by Michael Limnios
HOWLIN SOUL: INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL LIMNIOS Eliot Katz is the author of five books of poetry: When the Skyline Crumbles: Poems for the Bush Years (2007); View from the Big Woods: Poems from North America’s Skull (2007); Unlocking the Exits …
Even a Poet Laureate Doesn’t Deserve to Get Beaten by the Police
As someone who doesn’t care much about government awards or titles given to artists, I still say a 70-year-old former Poet Laureate of the United States should have some extra layer of protection from getting beaten with billy clubs by …
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Gregory’s Last Lines
He was a poet of silk and the shredding of silk. No earthling nor deity remained immune from his probing questions. When the academy turned its head for a pulitzer second he slipped an enlightened humor worm into the gut …
Can We Have Some Peace and Quiet Please?
The belligerent voices are yelling in the streets & on the radios calling for the big bombs of peace to fall, the smart bombs, the bombs that have passed their college entrance exams. It’s Orwellian the way everyone claims Orwell …
For Mark Bradley, Songwriter & Chef
Walt Whitman is crying. One of his greatest and most grateful children has been taken far too early. Beyond nihilistic smokescreens and MTV’s glare of celebrated self-destructiveness, a few visionary potentials …
Ode to the Car Keys
In the late sixties we were so fed up we wanted to destroy it all. That’s when we changed the name of America and stuck in the “k”. The mood today is different, and the language that will respond to …
One Year Later
A year after 9/11, we still inhale the dust of our dead– still read NY Times portraits of a Springsteen fan, a lasagna home cooking specialist, a woman who would do anything for family …
Oklahoma City
I wonder where a Gulf War vet might get the ridiculous idea that you can solve all yr problems w/ bombs
Andy Clausen and the Poetry of Reconstruction
Introduction to Andy Clausen’s Home of the Blues: More Selected Poems By Eliot Katz The first time that I saw Andy Clausen read poetry was in the summer of 1980, at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Andy was scheduled …
7 Types of Bliss
–for Vivian No fires on the forest horizon but beautiful blue smoke emanating from inside. Vibrations at perfect complementary pitch from subatomic strings behind eyelids to moans and screams echoing across the pine tops. 7 hands, 49 positions, 2401 ecstasies, …
A Hair from the Fixer that Bit Him
Donald Trump demands loyalty from all those strolling around his wandering hands, but he gives out loyalty to no one except his daughter, Ivanka, his gold-striped leather wallet and extra-long silk necktie, and the right half of one of his …
Liner Notes for Tom Pacheco’s CD, “13 Stones”
To paraphrase the radical pamphleteer and world citizen, Tom Paine, we are living in times that try people’s souls. Under the disastrous administration of George W. Bush and a corrupt conservative Congress, we find ourselves in the midst of an …