The Serpent and the Fire

Jerome Rothenberg's final anthology-an experiment in omnipoetics with Javier Taboada-reaches 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."