Cross Worlds

Transcultural Poetics:
An Anthology edited by Anne Waldman and Laura Wright

2014 • 366 pages • ISBN: 978-1566893589 • $18.95

Never-before-collected documents, essays, conversations, and socratic Raps with the luminaries of Beat literature.

Cross Worlds refers to cultural hybrids, transcultural alliances and associations. Contributors are from a range of places and disciplines and their work reflects the Jack Kerouac School’s unique zone of interaction, which runs parallel to more mainstream academic institutions. This fascinating compendium of documents, in essays, conversations, and Socratic raps, the vital work poets perform when they write across borders.

Contributors include:
Allen Ginsberg
Tom Pickard
Andrei Codrescu
Lyn Hejinian
Wang Ping
Ilya Kutik
Elsa Cross
Dennis Tedlock
Barbara Tedlock
Cid Corman
Lorenzo Thomas
Samuel Delany
Nina Zivancevic
Eileen Myles
Alexs Pate
Pierre Joris
Bhanu Kapil
and many more…

Reviews:

“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. The result is not only an enduring testament to Naropa’s program in poetics but to the overall pursuit of knowledge grounded by poetic practice.”
—Patrick James Dunagan, for Jacket2

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