Kirjahaku

In the activist verse of this poetic warrior, always committed, the actual world is never out of mind, even in his most intimate poems. Kabbalist, populist, and communist, Hirschman has published over sixty books of his own poetry, and this representative selection is a cross-section of his poetic output, spanning many years and mutations. When he reads aloud, the words take fire, and on the page they crackle and spark. "Hirschman is tender but tough, with a steel fist in his velvet glove." -San Francisco Chronicle "What this poet brings to us, beyond ideology, is the simple truth that we already know and so immediately recognize: we have to stop hating each other, killing each other, raping each other, and start loving each other." -Poet News "...one of the left's most prolific and consistent poetic voices." -Contemporary Poets "For a poet as prolific as Jack Hirschman, the 224 pages of his new City Lights book Front Lines -- a selected poems covering a half-century of work from 1952 to 2001 -- gives us only a fraction of his gargantuan output over that long, productive arc. (With over one hundred books of original work and translations at last count.) With a deft touch, he has lifted many of the best poems from these years, giving us a consolidated, if not a "best of" Hirschman reader, in which the turning of each page causes something of a small epiphany, if not outright cause for celebration." -Asheville Poetry Review "The publication of Front Lines ...serves as an appropriate celebration of Jack Hirschman's 70th birthday and his staying power as a poet of conscience." -Bloomsbury Review Jack Hirschman is a San Francisco poet, translator and editor. His powerfully eloquent voice set the tone for political poetry in this country many years ago. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, plus some forty-five translations from a half a dozen languages, as well the editor of anthologies and journals.

The fourth volume of the San Francisco Poet Laureate Series, All That's Left is a powerful collection of poems for social justice by street-poet-turned- laureate Jack Hirschman. The volume opens with Hirschman's autobiographical inaugural address, which vividly traces his career as poet, translator, and agitator. Included are several of Hirschman's earlier poems, marking successive stages of his poetic development. The poems following the address were composed during his tenure as poet laureate, covering contemporary outrages like post-Katrina New Orleans and the Virginia Tech tragedy, paying homage to fallen poetic comrades like Jack Kerouac and Bob Kaufman, and exploring more personal dimensions of love.

Mallarm 's second child, Anatole, born July 1871, became seriously ill when he was seven years old. He suffered from rheumatic fever complicated by an enlarged heart, and died in October 1879, aged eight. Mallarm wrote a series of grief-stricken fragments for what was planned to be a long poem in four parts. The poem was never completed, and the fragments were not published in France until 1961, when it appeared as Pour Un Tombeau d'Anatole. Poet Jack Hirschman first translated this work in the 1970s, and then tragically lost his own son, David, to leukemia in 1982. In his commentary that accompanies this translation, written one month after his son's passing, Hirschman reflects on the pain of a parent who has lost a child, and his grief is palpable. According to Hirschman, Mallarm has written himself into contemporary 20th century voice with this book, and in such a way to give comfort and meaning to all those who experience the dark passage of grief at the loss of one close to the heart. Hirschman wrote out the translation by hand, reflecting Mallarm 's placement of words on the page, and his handwritten work is what appears in this book, adding to its personal nature.

In this anthology, we bringing together many revolutionary voices of poets from around the world, writing in many languages. Every poet has a unique style, but we share a common vision with insights, passions, music, tools, weapons, forging visions and consciousness. This is not genteel poetry for coffee tables and drawing rooms, but poems built for action, for demonstrations and uprisings, rebellions and street corners, verses for storming the halls of power. Handle these poems with care: they are fully armed. Overthrowing Capitalism is published annually by the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. Volume Four was edited by Jack Hirschman, Agneta Falk, and John Curl.