Gallery
"In the end, every machine breaks down."
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
Rocking the Globe From DC
The cops have boarded up the demonstration’s central planning space & roped off entire downtown Sunday DC yet, after Seattle, they and we believe there is magic enough …
2001 Skies
July 1st, Canada Day, once again sit morning meditation facing out Vivian’s forest cabin window today lower back muscles ache, I squirm in chair seeking comfort, watch a thin trail of smoke rise from sage incense …
McNamara’s Ghosts
The Best & Brightest were neither It wasn’t only a Battleship they steered wrong They looked up at Dawn’s Slippery Sky and cried “Ours” Thought a nation’s most sacred trees could be tortured into spying Feared the Creaky Springs of …
45th Birthday in 2002
Turned 45 while low back spasmed first time in few months– body getting old, but at least concepts of life becoming clearer: everyone on planet has 3 basic needs: material (food, water, shelter, medical, solid spot of …
Who Does What To Whom
These questions of who does what are of little import now— the facts are we continued to have a great public life but our private one began suffering & you had the courage to leave. Why the top floor of …