Amalgam

Sotère Torregian

POETRY  |  $12 $9.60

December 2019
Read an excerpt

AFTER AN ADDRESS BY BERNADETTE DORN <em>for Bill Walker</em>

For thousands of years the star-filled sky
has been
a source of wonder       between the door
and the wall. Be prepared
Cherryblossoms in bloom       to again announce
the historicity of Women In Film which streams
from the blossoms, albeit invisible to the eye
of those who can see, which means
the majority of the human race, if you will
or if you won’t
As I speak
There isn’t a piece of candy I can slip
into my mouth or even a Groucho Marx cigar for that matter
(Anyway gave up smoking ages ago)
Neither have I a roadmap or a GPS
for Peace which seems as untenable

Now as ever
But am continuously encouraged, however
Where what were once “stumbling” because
as walls       that melt away in dreams

One of our most radically original poets.

Anne Waldman

Amalgam is a collection of recent poems and ephemera by the “surreal adventurer” Sotère Torregian. Since the early 1960’s, Torregian has been developing a distinctive transnational revolutionary poetics informed by deep readings and associations with the Surrealism and Négritude movements, and the “New York School” of poets. Here are poems dedicated to poet-friends from New York to Paris to Timbuktu to California with a stopover in Newark, NJ.

About the Author

Sotère Torregian was born in No-Man’s-Land in the fateful year 1941; adopted language English; earliest poems in 1950’s; found himself a Surrealist 1963 onward; associated with “New York School” of poets, 1963-1967; with then-wife poet Kathleen Brummal moved to California 1967; two children; divorced 1972; Single Parent; taught as “writer-in-residence” at Stanford; lecturer and research assistant to world-renowned scholar and Director of Afro-American Studies Program, Dr. St. Clair Drake (1969-1975); position terminated by Stanford administration for anti-war activities on campus; visiting lecturer, University of the Pacific (Stockton), “Mysticism Islamic and Christian” (2001-2012). Among his many books are The Golden Palomino Bites the Clock (Angel Hair), The Wounded Mattress (Oyez), Because My Pizza’s Cold: Selected Works, 1957-1999 (Skanky Possum), On the Planet Without Visa (Coffee House Press), and Amalgam (UDP).

Praise

In Sotère Torregian, we have not simply one of the most unique poets of the New York School, but one of the most unique poets writing today. For I know no other poet who has so melded the quotidian impulse of Frank O’Hara . . . with the full tilt madness of authentic surrealism.

Garrett Caples

[Torregian’s] poetry often moves at dazzling speed, connecting absurd but astonishingly concrete imagery that challenges a reader's expectations of the poem.

Dale Smith

One of our most radically original poets.

Anne Waldman

Publication Details

Chapbook
Hand-bound. 032 pp, 5 x 7.5 in
Publication Date: December 01 2019
Distribution: Direct Only