Poet, Poetry Activist, Spoken Word Artist, Writer, & Curator
ABOUT
Introduced to the evolving field of expansive Outrider poetics by Anne Waldman in 1976 and as a teaching assistant to Allen Ginsberg at Naropa’s University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in 1980, poet, recording artist, editor, publisher, and poetics curator Jim Cohn studied with renowned Black Mountain, Beat Generation, New York School, Black Arts, Feminist, and Environmental Justice poets, political activists, and countercultural luminaries.
An early investigator and identifier of the post-beat poetry genre––which sought the continuation of cultural, sexual, medicinal, social, political and environmental struggles of the Beat Generation into 21st century American society as well as abroad, with a special interest in China-–Cohn centered his work on themes of diversity, equality, social justice and environmental sustainability in the face of climate change and the rise of white supremacist bigotry. In his career as a disability specialist, he served students with nonvisible disabilities at St. Lawrence University and the University of Colorado at Boulder where he was also an advocate for Disability Studies. An ally of American Sign Language poetry communities, he coordinated the first National Deaf Poetry Conference in the United States (1987).
Besides books of poetry, poetics nonfiction, spoken word recordings, and curating the vast Museum of American Poetics website he founded in 1998, Cohn mimeo-produced ACTION Magazine in the mid-1980s while living in Rochester, NY, and then the annual poetics journal Napalm Health Spa from 1990-2015. His master work, Treasures for Heaven, collects published, unpublished and recent works spanning nearly five decades of poetics activism. Cohn’s literary papers are archived at the University of Michigan Special Collections Library. He resides in Boulder County, Colorado, where his daughter, Isabella Grace Cohn, was born.
PUBLICATION AT GIANT STEPS PRESS
Treasures for Heaven: Collected Poems 1976-2021, 2022, Giant Steps Press
Jim Cohn has good imagination and direct perception, facts, details, Whitmanic ambition; his poems are inventive, profuse, concise, improvisational. ––Allen Ginsberg
Cohn cuts back and forth between the human heart and home, and the spaces and surprises of the wild. He does it beautifully. ––Gary Snyder
Follow Jim Cohn’s extraordinary “fem action poem” [“The ongoing SagaI Told My Daughter”] through its vivid narration and manifestations. Wise, witty, insightful, generous, culturally accurate & quite moving, the SAGA is a panorama of the feminine. All the trickstresses and dakinis are invoked in this salient tribute, saluting him. ––Anne Waldman
Jim Cohn is one of the finest poets of my generation. ––David Cope
A poet’s poet for his craft and care, but I have no doubt that when his work is taken to heart, the world will be better for it. ––Andy Clausen
Jim Cohn takes you through a poetically charted journey on what it is to be human in relationships, in the death of loved ones, in the struggle for justice, at the movies; an esoteric, mystical and real trip you have to take. ––Nancy Mercado
The centerpiece long poem, “Treasures for Heaven,” is simply a knockout, combining the eye-opening spontaneity of Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues with a Whitmanic desire for a more democratic and compassionate planet. ––Eliot Katz
Though it’s not known if he ever sent it, Emerson once wrote a letter to his brother about a public talk his brother had delivered. In the letter, he pointed out, with that talk, his brother had been for his hearers a spectacle instead of an engine. I mention that insight to you by way of response to your epic “if 45 was 16 & 16 Wad 45.” Against what I size up to be nearly insurmountable odds, you’ve created a work that is not spectacle but engine. For me, that difference is decisive. ––George Drury
OTHER BOOKS
If 45 was 16 & 16 was 45, 2020, Museum of American Poetics Publications (Chapbook)
Birthday News: A Poemoscope, 2018, Museum of American Poetics Publications
The Ongoing Saga I Told My Daughter: Expanded Edition, 2016, Museum of American Poetics Publications
The Groundless Ground, 2014, Museum of American Poetics Publications
Sutras & Bardos: Essays & Interviews on Allen Ginsberg, The Kerouac School, Anne Waldman, Postbeat Poets & The New Demotics, 2011, Museum of American Poetics Publications
Mantra Winds, 2010, Museum of American Poetics Publications
The Ongoing Saga I Told My Daughter (original edition), 2009, Museum of American Poetics Publications
Quien Sabe Mountain, 2004, Museum of American Poetics Publications
The Golden Body: Meditations on the Essence of Disability, 2003, Museum of American Poetics Publications
Sign Mind: Studies in American Sign Language Poetics, 1999, Museum of American Poetics Publications
The Dance of Yellow Lightning Over The Ridge, 1998, Writers & Books Publications
Grasslands, 1994, Writers & Books Publications
Prairie Falcon, 1989, North Atlantic Books
Green Sky, 1980
DISCOGRAPHY
Venerable Madtown Hall 2013, MusEx Records
Commune 2013, MusEx Records
Impermanence 2008, MusEx Records
homage 2007, MusEx Records
Trashtalking Country 2006, MusEx Records
Emergency Juke Joint 2002, MusEx Records
Antenna 2000, MusEx Records
Unspoken Words 1998, MusEx Records
Walking Thru Hell Gazing at Flowers 1996, Rudy’s Steakhouse Music
The Road 1995, Rudy’s Steakhouse Music
FEATURES
Jim Cohn on Wikipedia
“‘If 45 was 16 & 16 was 45’; Jim Cohn: A Poem and Interview” on the Giant Steps Blog (DATE?)
“Jim Cohn: “Diamond Fragments, Golden Sparks” interview by Michael Limnios (2012)
“Jim Cohn: Meditations on Leaves of Grass at 150″ (2005) NEW LINK: https://logosjournal.com/article/meditation-on-leaves-of-grass-at-150/
“Treasures for Heaven” (excerpts in English and Chinese, translated by Peter Feng)
Taking Giant Steps: May 2022 Poetry Is My Instrument: A Discussion of “Treasures for Heaven: Collected Poems 1976-2021.” Interview with Jim Cohn by William Seaton.
Taking Giant Steps: March 2020 Whitman in Vegas by Jim Cohn
https://giantstepspress.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-museum-of-american-poetics.htm [THIS BLOG POST IS NOT AT THIS LINK]
Taking Giant Steps: 2014 A review of The Groundless Ground: Poems 2010-2014 by Jim Cohn
Taking Giant Steps: All Loves Are the Way Onward: An Interview with Jim Cohn by Kirpal Gordon
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