All That's Left

by Jack Hirschman

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.

Genres: Poetry

150 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2008

About the author

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. Since leaving a teaching career in the 60s, Hirschman has taken the free exchange of poetry and politics into the streets where he is, in the words of poet Luke Breit, "America s most important living poet." He is the author of numerous books of poetry, plus some 45 translations from a half a dozen languages, as well as the editor of anthologies and journals. Among his many volumes of poetry are Endless Threshold, The Xibalba Arcane, and Lyripol (City Lights, 1976). "

Reviews

[William West · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim volume convinced me that Hirschman is, at his best, a very fine poet and, even at his worst, someone to whom I would lend my ear. I empathize with the San Francisco laureate too much. Like me, he hates America but loves SF.

He has a great, almost cinematic, sense of place. The earliest poems contained here speak of his New York existence and made me remember the grit and grim of that life in a very immediate way. His love poems to North Beach, and to some degree SF in general, bring the spirit of this city to any reader anywhere. This is not to say they are fawning. One of my favorite pieces, The Kick Arcane, gives a merciless depiction of a Mission district bus-ride and a fearless confession of the racial tensions that are perhaps more pronounced in SF than many other American metropolises exactly because of this city's tradition of resistance.

My other fave in the collection was the title piece, which bring the author's Heideggerean impulses to the forefront at the expense of his (usually dominant) Marxist ones.

Another striking aspect of Hirschman's style is its extreme level of sexual graphicness. I've heard his work described as "erotic" but I'm not sure that's the word I would use. Rather, it's frankness doesn't pretty up love-making, but celebrates it on its own awkward terms. In this sense it struck me as, despite a merciless descriptiveness that some might liken to the pornographic, more "romantic" than "erotic."

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dated now, but still beautiful Jack Hirschman. He told me at Specs that he calls marijuana smoogadoo and I was happy to see that in the poetry. Hirschman is a San Francisco treasure. The international poetry festival he references in his poet laureate speech was an amazing experience.

[Stan · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times this book is very heavy handed with its political prose, read more like a left wing political propaganda than poetry. Still a engaging thought provoking book of poems

[Bob Redmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Hirschman was a college professor who got booted out of the system in the Vietnam era for his involvements with the anti-war movement. He vowed not to return and since the early 1970' has lived a life on the fringes of San Francisco arts society, writing and reading poetry in cafes, and organizing for leftist causes. He has written some 70 books of poetry and translated 50 more books in 8 or 9 languages, become virtually adopted by various cities in Italy and elsewhere around the world where he has traveled extensively.

In 2006 he was named San Francisco's Poet Laureate, a suprise for someone so marginal both in lifestyle and politics. (Jack might say his politics are actually central and essential, if one considers putting people first!)

This slim book contains his inaugural address as SF Poet Laureate and a couple dozen poems. I like his ability to make a good pun, his love of words and surprising syntax, his range of subjects, all of which look outward. Most of all, to expand on this last point, I like his intentions as an artist: (as he says in his acceptance speech) "I realized I was being called by another set of demands than the ones in which the poet writes for other poets, sees the avant-garde as a group of poets or artists."

So as a poet, his point-of-view is revolutionary: he's not writing for grad-school students or other poets! Praise be. This is such an unusual task for a poet in this country that we have practically no cultural context, and it makes it almost difficult to accept: the Greek chorus of U.S. culture subtextually says "that's not a poem! that's a polemic!" While some poems (THE WAR DRUGS ON) hit a perfect note of playfulness and horrible revelations--like Ginsberg at his best but also totally original--others, especially an encomium to Fidel Castro on his birthday (FIDEL CASTRO), Hirschman seems blinded by his politics at the cost of human suffering in Cuba. (He's much more balanced in his assessments of the Israel-Palestine conflict in NEVER AGAIN--despite or because of the fact that he's Jewish.)

A good portion of the poems reanimate Hirschman's heroes: Jack Kerouac, Bob Kaufman, Paul Robeson, Djuna Barnes, his friend Susan Birkeland. Just as he can wax propagandistic about nations (Cuba, Venezuela, Chiapas), so he can with personalities. He can also hit a bull's-eye, as with his funny and tender HOMAGE TO KEN WAINIO, (apparently) a fellow street personality in SF. And ultimately, in this nation of whitewashed history, dubious heroes, missions accomplished, and fake bailouts, who's to say if it's not Hirschman who, even in his more skewed perspectives, isn't actually providing the resolution?

Very Thelonious Monk, is Jack Hirschman, with his efforts to create new harmonies. Sometimes it sounds sloppy, but if you're inventing the key signature you get to make those mistakes.

PS: Hirschman is the special guest at the Seattle Poet Populist inauguration at the Central Library on Sunday, Jan 25, 2008, 2:00 pm.

[J.C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The three arcane poems in the collection are my favorites, and of course I enjoyed the affectionate writings of San Francisco. This is a fine collection of a poet who is looking back on fellow artists that have passed on, the city he loves, and the greater world around him in a particular period of time. It's more political than I usually enjoy but not as densely political as I was expecting. It's good stuff.