The Serpent and the Fire

Jerome Rothenbergs final anthologyan experiment in omnipoetics with Javier Taboadareaches into the deepest origins of the Americas, north and south, to redefine America and its poetries The Serpent and the Fire breaks out of deeply entrenched models that limit American literature to work written in English within the present boundaries of the United States. Editors Jerome Rothenberg and Javier Taboada gather vital pieces from all parts of the Western Hemisphere and the breadth of European and Indigenous languages within: a unique range of cultures and languages going back several millennia, an experiment in what the editors call an American omnipoetics. The Serpent and the Fire is divided into four chronological sectionsfrom early pre-Columbian times to the immediately contemporaryand five thematic sections that move freely across languages and shifting geographical boundaries to underscore the complexities, conflicts, contradictions, and continuities of the poetry of the Americas. The book also boasts contextualizing commentaries to connect the poets and poems in dialogue across time and space.