A book of visionary works, Solar Poems is the first English translation of a single volume of poems by Mexico’s famed poet-activist, Homero Aridjis, exploring political consciousness as well as the psychological unconscious. Reflecting his ecological concerns and a mystical relationship with the sun, Aridjis’s poems range from the humorous to the poignant, transcending the boundary between life and death as he explores his own past and Mexico’s cultural heritage.

A poet of worldwide renown, Aridjis has received two Guggenheim Fellowships and numerous awards, including the Global 500 Award from the United Nations Environment Program on behalf of the environmental association he founded, the Group of 100, in 1987, and the Prix Roger Caillois from France for poetry and fiction in 1997. President Emeritus of International PEN and former Ambassador to the Netherlands and Switzerland, Aridjis was until recently presently Mexico’s Ambassador to UNESCO. A prolific author, Aridjis published Poemas solares (Solar Poems) in 2005.

“Homero Aridjis’s poems open a door into the light.” — Seamus Heaney

“In the poetry of Homero Ardjis there is the gaze, the pulse of the poet . . . the discontinuous time of practical and rational life and the continuity of desire and death; there is the poet’s personal truth.” — Octavio Paz

The second installment of the City Lights Spotlight poetry series, Free Cell is the latest collection from Anselm Berrigan, one of the most significant American poets under 40. Consisting of two experimental suites—”Have a Good One” and “To Hell with Sleep”—connected by the central poem “Let Us Sample Protection Together,” Free Cell is Berrigan’s most ambitious work to date, a spiritual autobiography wrapped in an exploration of form. His work combines the freneticism of his New York environment with oblique humor, political angst, and a reflective, lyrical interrogation of his own subjectivity: “For my part it’s/ been an honor/ to be at someone’s/ service, though doing/ so has diminished/ my expiration date/ and my astral self-/ projection has already/ fled in bitter tears/ having used up even addiction.”

The first installment of our new Spotlight poetry series, Where Shadows Will selects from twenty years of innovative writing by Bay Area poet, translator, and visual artist Norma Cole. Beginning with her earliest collection, Mace Hill Remap (1988), and taking us up through her recent NATURAL LIGHT (2008), Where Shadows Will is a comprehensive overview of Cole’s melodic and experimental poetry, whose shadow-haunted landscapes embody a theory-informed exploration of the relationship between language, self, and world. By turns severe and exuberant, Where Shadows Will confirms Cole’s place as a major avant-garde poet and a leading voice among contemporary innovative women writers.

In this episode, poet Sesshu Foster reads from his eclectic World Ball Notebook, recorded at City Lights on April 29, 2009.

The first team sport in human history was played with a ball made of stone, on courts that have been found from the Mayan ruins of Central America to Arizona. Thus we find a soccer dad walking the sidelines of a scuffed LA field, its goal lines swirling, nets strung loosely between daylight and the spirit world — Foster’s inimitably fierce and powerfully evocative mix of the fantastic and the mundane.

For more, visit Sesshu Foster’s blog, East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines.

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This podcast was made possible by the generous folks at the Pacifica Radio Archives.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), one of the most outrageous and controversial figures of 20th-century American literature, was so prolific that many important pieces were never collected during his lifetime. Portions is a substantial selection of these wide-ranging works, most of which have been unavailable since their original appearance in underground newspapers, literary journals, even porno mags. Among the highlights are his first published short story, “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip”; his last short story, “The Other”; his first and last essays; and the first installment of his famous “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” column. The book contains meditations on his familiar themes (drinking, horse-racing, etc.) as well as singular discussions of such figures as Artaud, Pound, and the Rolling Stones. Other significant works include the experimental title piece; a fictionalized account of meeting his hero, John Fante (“I Meet the Master”); an unflinching review of Hemingway (“An Old Drunk Who Ran Out of Luck”); the intense, autobiographical “Dirty Old Man Confesses”; and several discussions of his aesthetics (“A Rambling Essay on Poetics and the Bleeding Life Written While Drinking a Six-Pack (Tall),” “In Defense of a Certain Type of Poetry, a Certain Type of Life, a Certain Type of Blood-Filled Creature Who Will Someday Die,” and “Upon the Mathematics of the Breath and the Way”, revealing an unexpectedly learned mind behind his seemingly offhand productions.

Friedrich Hölderlin emerged in the early 20th century as one of the key figures of modern European literature. This comprehensive selection of over 80 of his odes, hexameters, and elegies is taken from the important early period of his mature work—a time in which we encounter the poet open to nature and love with a rare vulnerability. The translations in a new book of translations, Odes and Elegies includes poems never before available in English, rendering forcefully and directly the deep longing and heartbreak of Hölderlin’s poetic world; their open, pathos-filled rhythm and disarming clarity present Hölderlin’s powerful work as distinctive English poems.

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), whose work has influenced such figures as Rilke, Celan, Heidegger, Adorno, and Benjamin, is considered by many to be one of the most important German lyric poets.

Nick Hoff is a writer and translator who lives in San Francisco. His translations have been published in numerous journals.

Recording for this podcast was provided by Ian Hiebert of Dublit.com

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