Cross Words refers to cultural hybrids, trans-cultural alliances, and associations. This fascinating compendium documents—in essays, conversations, and socratic raps—the vital work poets perform when they write across borders.
Anne Waldman is the author of more than forty collections of poetry, the editor of numerous anthologies, and, for The Iovis Trilogy, the winner of the Shelley Memorial Award and the USA PEN Center Award for Poetry. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Laura Wright is a poet, translator, and librarian. With Anne Waldman, she co-edited Beats at Naropa (Coffee House Press, 2009).
Industry Reviews
"There are serious riches on hand in this latest marvel-filled gleaning from the Kerouac School's indispensable yearly summertime transcultural poetic vortex. Equally attentive to the voices of those who have left us and those still around to "put fire on this crazy world," Editors Anne Waldman and Laura Wright have herein beautifully gathered a host of high-voltage talks, panels, interviews and razor-sharp asides whose collective brilliance out burns anything this side of the sun." --Laird Hunt "Filled with a variety of useful riches that traverse a dizzying array of languages, geographies, and political realities, Cross Worlds: Transcultural Poetics--like previous volumes Civil Disobediences and Beats at Naropa--continues to deliver the goods stored in the Archives of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. We are in need, more than ever, of this kind of archival attention, as even our recent past gets consumed by the present. This 'news that stays news' moves from Allen Ginsberg on Aboriginal poetics to Vietnam, the Mayan classics, Puerto Rico, African America, and the need for gringos to encounter the world as seen through Arab and other eyes. Poetic thought here, the thought of poets, is provocative, critical, and necessary, a way of grasping the worlds we now live in and how they came to be." --Ammiel Alcalay "This wondrous, extraordinary collection reflects the facets and range of artists that interact with each other and fellow luminary Anne Waldman, evoking human interactions beyond our constructions of nations and states and prompting us to think about our connection to the planet itself and all its inhabitants. Contemplative, illuminating, unusual, and global, Cross Worlds is an excellent compilation of the confluence of global systems and renowned workers/players/ experimenters of language and culture. What's also really wonderful in it are the many instances of these word masters in conversation with each other and the insights generated by their discourse. I appreciate what this book will continue to do for future decades, future books, future worlds."--Tracie Morris "This collection presents an excellent snapshot of contemporary international poetry."--Cultural Weekly "A firm belief in poetry's inherent transformative principle properties is pervasive throughout this collection. From continents to languages, there's a diverse offering of perspective both historical and contemporary."--Jacket 2
