When I look back on what inspired and formed me as a poet, I have to give a lot of credit to the work of Jerome Rothenberg, whose Poems for the Game of Silence opened a world for me, as did his marvelous anthologies Shaking the Pumpkin and Technicians of the Sacred. Therefore, it is really gratifying to note that today's post at his Poems and Poetics site is dedicated to my No Sounds of My Own Making, and concludes with the following:
"An extreme example of what I’ve elsewhere called “othering” or, borrowing the phrase from John Cage, “writing through,” Bloomberg-Rissman’s No Sounds of My Own Making is a 200 page work constructed (almost) entirely from words or sounds appropriated from other writers. That this is done without any sacrifice of coherence or feeling or intelligence & in a voice that remains unified & “personal” throughout is a testament to the communal nature of language & thought of which our individualities are a crucial if sometimes questioned part. While Bloomberg-Rissman is not alone in the pursuit of such an outcome, his beautifully wrought & linked three-line stanzas present what may well remain a milestone of a new communal poetics. (J.R.) No Sounds of My Own Making was published in 2007 by Leafe Press of Nottingham, U.K. and Claremont, California."
