The Arcanes represent, in Jack Hirschman’s vast poetic production, a fundamental and extraordinary element, the most advanced point of his questing. In this 3rd volume, 270 ong and orchestrated compositions are included.
The volume is presented in its chronological development from 2016 to 2019, encompassing its entire output. Within that span of time having coined a new verb —to arcanize— he created new Arcanes from longer poems published in the past or from unpublished notations that were looking for new form.
Since 2016, the year of the publication of The Arcanes in its 2nd volume, Jack Hirschman has not only continued “archanizing” his poems from the past but he has confronted, in poetic form, the rise to the surface of the political slime of the past three years of the fascism always latent in American capitalism and now obvious with the administration of Donald Trump.
In these works, fragments of poetic insight explode, from which the themes and images engaged by the poet emerge, which knowingly fuse reality with metaphysics, actuality with the memory of the past.
As a native New Yorker who has lived in exile in San Francisco for most of his adult life, Jack knows very well that rotten side of “The Apple” from which the current President of the United States comes. And he attacks that rot in various Arcanes here.
He also of course has more to say, lyrically, on matters of intimate love, sexuality, and the “punography” which provides some genuine humor necessary in this age of the lie of a “friendly fascism”.