photo by Vivian Demuth
 

Eliot Katz's newest book is a full-length volume on the poetry and politics of Allen Ginsberg. He is the author of seven books of poetry, including Unlocking the Exits (1999) and Love, War, Fire, Wind: Looking Out from North America’s Skull (2009), done in collaboration with the artist, William T. Ayton.  His first full-length poetry book, Space and Other Poems for Love, Laughs, and Social Transformation was published in 1990, with introductions by Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka, and a front cover drawing by Leon Golub. Katz is also the author of two prose e-books, Three Radical Poets: Tributes to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Adrienne Rich (2013) and The Moonlight of Home and Other Stories of Truth and Fiction (2013). He was a coeditor, with Allen Ginsberg and Andy Clausen, of Poems for the Nation (2000), a collection of contemporary political poems that Ginsberg was compiling in the 18 months before his death in 1997. A cofounder, with Danny Shot, and former coeditor of Long Shot literary journal, he guest-edited Long Shot's final issue, a "Beat Bush issue" released in Spring 2004. His poems are included in the anthologies: Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets; Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, 2nd ed.; The World the 60s Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America; Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; Blue Stones and Salt Hay: An Anthology of Contemporary New Jersey Poets; Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American; Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam; Nada Poems; Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement; and In Defense of Mumia. His long essay, "Radical Eyes," is included in the prose collection, The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later. He is coeditor of a bilingual anthology published in France in 1997, entitled Changing America: Contemporary U.S. Poems of Protest, 1980-1995. Called “another classic New Jersey bard” by Allen Ginsberg, Katz has worked for many years as an activist for a wide range of peace and social-justice causes, including a decade spent as an advocate for Central New Jersey homeless families. He currently lives in Hoboken, NJ, and serves as poetry editor of the online politics quarterly, Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture.


      

For more information about Eliot Katz's newest book, see The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg.


Poems from Unlocking the Exits

Dinosaur Love

Ode to the Car Keys

To the Vegetable Aisle

Who Does What to Whom

For Mark Bradley, Songwriter & Chef

McNamara's Ghosts

Oklahoma City

Elegy for Allen

What No God Knows

At the End of the Century

New & Recent Poems

Even a Poet Laureate Doesn’t Deserve to Get Beaten by the Police

7 Types of Bliss

45th Birthday in 2002

2001 Skies

Can We Have Some Peace and Quiet Please?

Gregory's Last Lines

In Praise of the Seattle Coalition

One Year Later

Portraits / M.

The Logic of War

The Weather Seems Different

To the Northern Winds July 4, 2002

What We Don't See

When the Skyline Crumbles
 

Online Poems

Rocking the Globe from DC

These Beautiful Territories


Chapbooks

When the Skyline Crumbles: Poems for the Bush Years (Cosmological Knot Press, 2007)

View from the Big Woods: Poems from North America's Skull (Cosmological Knot Press, 2007)


(email Eliot Katz at ekatz57@earthlink.net if you would like to order signed hard-copy versions of these collections.)


Online Prose

"Reaching Out to Adrienne Rich: An Activist Poet's Tribute"

"Recalling Allen"

"Unlocking the Language Room of War"

Interviews

"Talkin' Occupy With Eliot Katz," by Levi Asher

"Howlin Soul," by Michael Limnios

Editor Affiliations

A history of the founding of Long Shot

A review of Poems For The Nation


Film

See Eliot in Dinners with Andy

Eliot Katz & Andy Clausen:
Interview with Harold Channer (8/24/04)

Elliot Katz YouTube page


Poetry/Music Collaboration

Poetry/Music Collaboration with Russell Branca


Reviews

Review of Andy Clausen's Without Doubt

Adrien Begrand's review of
Unlocking the Exits


Review of Unlocking the Exits
by Jim Cohn


Praise for Unlocking the Exits
by Allen Ginsberg


Alicia Ostriker Sings Praise for Eliot Katz



Book Order Information

Three Radical Poets: Tributes to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Adrienne Rich

The Moonlight of Home and Other Stories of Truth and Fiction


Love, War, Fire, Wind: Looking Out from North America's Skull—done in collaboration with artist William T. Ayton

Space and Other Poems for Love, Laughs, and Social Transformation (With Introductions By Amiri Baraka and Allen Ginsberg)

When The Skyline Crumbles - Poems for the Bush Years

View From The Big Woods - Poems From North America's Skull

Unlocking the Exits


"Liberation Recalled"
In his long poem, "Liberation Recalled," composed from 1994-97, Eliot Katz presents testimony from his mother about her WWII concentration camp experiences, interspersed with his own stylistically varied verses on a wide range of contemporary social themes. Employing elements of modernist experimentation, Katz inventively explores questions of historical and intergenerational legacy, psychic reconstruction, political-literary theory, and the challenge of building a more humane future. The poem, written in 39 sections, is posted here in its entirety in a pdf format.
"Liberation Recalled" was originally published in the poetry collection, Unlocking the Exits
(Coffee House Press, 1999).
For information about reprinting "Liberation Recalled," in whole or in excerpts, or to inquire about readings, please contact the author at ekatz57@earthlink.net