THE POEM

in the original languages:

in English:

i       Oh Poets, why sing of roses! Let them flower in your poems!
        Listen!
        In the beginning was the Word.
        The world is holy! The soul is holy! The typewriter is holy
                the poem is holy the voice is holy!
v      Sing, O Orpheus! A tree grows in your ear!
        “Tree! You can be a canoe! Or else you cannot!”
        Here are swim-stick words you can use to scare away sharks
        The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence
        The colors ripen on the weightless branch of time
x      A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green
        A word sits on the kitchen counter
        Let the house be dead silent
        Today is the world-pregnant day of judgment
        Everything only connected by 'and' and 'and.'
xv    We are entitled to die the way we want to die. Let the land
                hide in an ear of wheat.
        This poetry, I never know what I'm going to say
        It's the long story that never comes to an end.
        To write into emptiness
        It has always been this way.
xx    The slightest pain hurts me, the slightest joy overwhelms
        What you see here is colorful illusion... corpse, dust,
                shadow, nothing.
        Only the poet sells his soul to separate it from the body
                that he loves
        Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing.
        The abyss doesn't divide us. The abyss surrounds us.
xxv   In the middle years of the journey through life
        My task was to be a sower of eyes!
        Grown old, do we hear silence splitting open
        Whistle at the other end and let me sing it
        And I can also rightly be quiet.
xxx   The stones, the water, the sun speak
        Of the stone I say, "It's a stone."
        O Saints! Ye Divine Washermen!
        Please listen as if I were a bubbling spring
        If I had known it was a dream, I would never have wakened
xxxv A terrible beauty is born.
        The prison cells say nothing, like an animal whose wound
                bleeds inward...
        When even my grave I remembered no more,
        A brand from a brand is kindled and burned, and fire
                from fire begotten
        Night after night, I danced on dynamite
xl      Every slam a finality
        As for the hibiscus on the roadside — my horse ate it
        Come, Hendecasyllables, one and all
        Do not shatter my heart, learn to be still.
        No one will write the final poem... what worries me is
                the final dream
vl     When I close the book, I open life
        And to search for nothing, that was my intent
        O poets! poets male and female, listen to the ruins!
        Rinnzekete bee bee nnz krr müü?
        What was was cool. What was it?
l       Now, today, I shall sing beautifully for my friends' pleasure.

THE POETS

1. Vincente Huidobro (Spanish, Chile)
2. Beowulf (Old English)
3. The Bible (The Gospel According to John, I:1, Hellenistic Greek)
4. Allen Ginsberg (English, USA)
5. Rainer Maria Rilke (German)
6. Derek Walcott (English, St. Lucia)
7. Aimé Césaire (French, Martinique)
8. Tomas Tranströmer (Swedish)
9. Vasko Popa (Serbian)
10. Artur Rimbaud (French)
11. James Tate (English, USA)
12. Luo Incantation (Kenyan)
13. Yehuda Amichai (Hebrew, Israel)
14. Elizabeth Bishop (English, USA)
15. Mahmoud Darwish (Arabic, Palestine)
16. Jelaluddin Rumi (Farsi, Turkey)
17. Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Portuguese, Brazil)
18. Tu Fu (Chinese)
19. Nora Marks Dauenhauer (Tlingit, Alaska)
20. Alamanda (lenga d'oc, France)
21. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Spanish, Mexico)
22. Tomaz Salamun (Slovenian)
23. William Shakespeare (English, Great Britain)
24. Wislawa Szymborska (Polish)
25. Dante Alighieri (Italian)
26. Velimir Khlebnikov (Russian)
27. Yang Lian (Chinese)
28. Luhyia Riddle (Kenyan)
29. Francis Ponge (French)
30. Cecilia Vicuña (Spanish, Chile)
31. Alberto Caeiro/Fernando Pessoa (Portuguese)
32. Miribai (Hindi, India)
33. Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese)
34. Ono no Komachi (Japanese)
35. William Butler Yeats (English, Ireland)
36. Nazim Hikmet (Turkish)
37. José Rizal (Tagalog, Philipines)
38. The Poetic Edda (Old Norse)
39. Ai (English, USA)
40. Bob Kaufman (English, USA)
41. Matsuo Basho (Japanese)
42. Catullus (Latin)
43. Anna Akhmatova (Russian)
44. João Cabral de Melo Neto (Portuguese, Brazil)
45. Pablo Neruda (Spanish, Chile)
46. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German)
47. U Sam Oeur (Khmer, Cambodia)
48. Kurt Schwitters (German)
49. Amiri Baraka (English, USA)
50. Sappho (Greek)

THE PERFORMERS

Here are the program credits for the first performance of the SemiCento, October 7, 1998, at the Frankfurt Buchmesse Festhalle, before an intimate dinner party for 4,000:

Performed by Dana Bryant, Regie Cabico, Bob Holman, Edwin Torres
Written and directed by Bob Holman
Designed by Edwin Torres
Lighting & Sound by Daniel Pistorius
Research by Christopher Connelly, Director, David Grand, Carley Moore, and the performers
Books by Biruta Auna, Purgatory Pie Press
Typography by Jackson West
The SemiCento is part of The World of Poetry, a Washington Square Films Production
Managed by Julie Dercle, Exbrook Entertainment

Bob Holman is your Poetry Guide.

Edwin Torres is a bilingual poet/artist/provacateur, rooted in the languages of both sight and sound. He’s toured around the world performing and giving workshops all over the alphabet. His books include I Hear Things People Haven’t Really Said and SandHomméNomadNo. His debut CD, Holy Kid, was released by Kill Rock Stars.

Dana Bryant grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She made her poetry debut in 1991; in 1995, she released her first book of poems, Song of the Siren (Boulevard Books/Putnam Berkeley) and the following year her debut solo album, Wishing From the Top on Warner Bros. Records. She has performed in Europe and Japan with artists such as Speech (of Arrested Development), Zap Mama, PM Dawn and Ronnie Jordan.

Regie Cabico is coeditor of Poetry Nation: A North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (Vehicule Press, Montreal). His solo show, “the poet welcomes his male muse a cabaret poem in 1 act,” was presented at The Public Theater in New York City. He was a member of the Poetry Slam Team, Mouth Almighty, which won First Place at the 1997 National Slam.