Sotère Torregian: Vision Quest

For Yeghishe Charents (1897–1937) 

and 

in Memoriam, Diana Der Hovanessian (1934-2018)

mais c'est moi qui  leur réclame mon trésor volé

Le Rebelle, from Et les chiens se taisaient   

Tragédie par Aimé Césaire

Yet again une autre fois I speak

to you O Heart of A Lion you are ever remembered

Your heart still beats its rhythm within me

and in every Armenian still

What can Poetry declare

about you your dreams your hopes your love

for a homeland to welcome the dispossessed

There are days I do not know

where or why I am

as I gaze out of my window

as a virtual prisoner here in this home

watching

folks out there pass by

as if sleepwalking or in a cloud

The drums of Africa beat inside me

calling still in this dépaysement

         --AWAKE ! -- ARM !-- REVOLT !

As you called from your prison-cell to your people

themselves downtrodden and confined

not only by dictators

but by superstition also and suspicion

of each other Vanetsti and Bitlistsi !

Yet here is yesterday today and tomorrow residing

as one within the soul

of the Poet's

         Vision - quest for a new life

for all of man -and -womankind

         and that of the world that would be

as was once proclaimed the kingdom of God on Earth

  Sotère (L'Inconnu )

  17 mai 2025

Sotère Torregian: After reading Aram Saroyan

 

Sotère Torregian: MANIFESTO (AGAINST) AN (ARTS) FESTIVAL, QUEBEC

for Lola Koundakjian

en ce chant de trop téméraire s’ accomplit

- Aimé Césaire, Ferrements

The oysters of housewives a hostesse agency
that assesses your celebration a work
without end
my decathlon prawls in your direction - LOOK!

Arriving at an appropriate
time of the journey I don’t know
when the hour my head lets go a charge
the Blank Page of Mallarmé goes forth with its main-sail
toward the demolition of all poetics!
GREETINGS FROM THE SWAMP BANTUSTAN
OF OKEFENOKEE HOME OF POGO AND ALBERT THE
ALLIGATOR
RATHER A BUSY CARAVANSERIE!
As I am no longer the voyager there

GOO’DAY
O MY LITTLE SCHOLARS PLACED IN ESCROW
A never-ending pioneering

AND WHEN I hear the lullaby of lumberjacks
“If you find your nose bruised as you slide into home-plate”
It’s surely the fault of an overhead cloud of enormous size

After-effects of a series of sayonaras.

AMALGAM, © Sotère Torregian, 2019, Ugly Duckling Presse

Sotère Torregian: record world

my heart at thy sweet voice
                                –Saint Saëns’ Samson et Delilah


        The girl
                        flushes the gold
seas and her eyes lift
with the temperature
of the day
become two moons…
Her hair is an album
of the despoiled countryside
I wander sounds
of love’s fallen arquebuses
devesting themselves

Camille Sabie (second from left in the picture) was a graduate of East Side High School, pursuing a degree in education at Newark State Normal School when she was photographed training in Weequahic Park for the first Women’s World Games in Paris. At the August 1922 competition Sabie set a world record and won the gold medal in the 100-yard hurdles. She also took the gold medal in the standing long jump and the bronze medal in the running long jump. Women’s track and field events were added to the Olympic Games in 1928.
Sotère Torregian’s multiethnic upbringing in Newark led to experiments with internationalist and surrealist poetry. The piece above comes from his 1970 collection The wounded mattress.

https://newarkpoems.org/category/poets/sotere-torregian/

Sotère Torregian: HANDLE WITH CARE

The Words “HANDLE WITH CARE" (apparaître tout d’un coup)

for Haroutiun Koundakjian and for Lola

ma saison pleine de saisons

René Char, Seuil

Appear before me out of Nowhere

which is to say

there is Nowhere there is Everywhere

Everywhere you have left your shadow

Where you have stepped across the globe

the instant

of your camera's shutter flicked like a snake's tongue

Sahara’s sands at your heels Africa’s vain glory

The dinner-plate left with unfinished food in Aleppo

The beauty of Woman your gaze gathered into itself

perhaps

having seen them only once before you had to move

on to another assignment

At this moment I pause

as I have lost count

sun moon meridian East West all can be captured in New York

reflected in a department store window as one passes by

As I lift my glass of wine in tribute here

To your converging lens and the rainbow cascaded there

on the painter’s palette of Arshile

as I too partout meet you

in this Everywhere

Sotère Torregian

13 April, dimanche des Rameaux, AD 2014

This poem is in memoriam to photojournalist Harry Koundakjian (1930-2014) whose baptismal name was Haroutioun, which is Armenian for Resurrection.

The poet’s father, Sami Torregian (1910-1992) was also a photographer.

Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) was an Armenian-American surrealist painter.

SOTÈRE TORREGIAN: 2 Poems

for Gerard Malanga and Andy Warhol

                 First Day On The Job

Shepherd him milk & sugar

12 o'clock among unicorns

time of blue veils

mummified Gramercy

My impressario message eaten up

ache in my crotch

I arrive at The Friends   I am sailing by way

of the sky

bus September boat with vacant windows

thank-you I am weak

O friendly tamarack

                     I'm coming with my little chair

insignificant when you manhandle God

End of my Poem

my coat a lalop girl on a dead rock

something in the air with telephones

the twin end of the day

like an atlantic squall

I can't always voice

my lyricide

                       Last Day On The Job

Forget us: alpine flowers deer

I wasn't to last for long

Forget us beards escorted by dogs

coming out of the white portals for exercise

Send her back to California with his eyes

says the kind old Good Humor Man

Send YOU to Robespière's Thermidor

where your last day of fire a mountain

of children that come up to you & say

I don't remember meeting you Goodbye

fatal hour matrons Third Avenue

And unseen indescriminant princesses who shatter

wine bottles on the lumespento traffic lights

Catshit cloud overhead while you're king

of pencil-sharpeners!

                                                                     1964

                                               From Andy Warhol's

                                        (Intransit) Monster Issue

Sotere Torregian, "2 Poems" from “I Must Go” (She Said) “Because My Pizza’s Cold”. Copyright © 2002 by Sotere Torregian.  Reprinted by permission of Skanky Possum.

Source: “I Must Go” (She Said) “Because My Pizza’s Cold” (Skanky Possum, 2002)

SOTÈRE TORREGIAN: On the Birthday of Ted Berrigan, (1965)

           “Sooner or later we'll all get to speak like Ted Berrigan”

A donkey might consider itself a white stallion

and the ear-phones oft the desert

                                                    tune into us

A hair-breaking pallor

    Nothing to be afraid of

How long has the checker-board been “on the scene”?

                                           It's the miracle she-wolf.

I know I am “too serious”

For “The Daughters of Nothing already for Nothing”

Who will erase my ulcer

See its dry its dry it's got a combination

My friends.

What's left over?

Pagliacci. In the guise of Enrico Caruso bangs his drum with hysteric eyes

His girl-friend's inside he's beating the heart of his bass drum

O that crazy clown Pagliacci!

It seems we stood and talked like this before

Don't Grab from me Baby

I keep my face and open spigot a cry of the winds

Fall all your fresh newspapers

Inquisitors

Happiness

It is the divine stone the white stone with the name

                                                      which no one knows

                                                               New York City

                                                   On Ted's 31st Birthday

Sotere Torregian, "On the Birthday of Ted Berrigan, (1965)" from “I Must Go” (She Said) “Because My Pizza’s Cold”. Copyright © 2002 by Sotere Torregian.  Reprinted by permission of Skanky Possum.

Source: “I Must Go” (She Said) “Because My Pizza’s Cold”. (Skanky Possum, 2002)

Sotère Torregian: The Two Palm-Trees Play the Sinfonia Concertante of Mozart

For Ida and Ani Kavafian



Tendresse de loin en loin ce grand repos
Aimé Césaire, Ferrements
(Tenderness in long intervals this grand repose)

The two palm-trees reach the pinnacle
of ecstasy in their vibreto
How did we know theirs was the destination

In this hour

Of our Appian Way of étonnement

Where I find myself standing
in front of the mirror
or in the back of the mirror

Their hair cascades

inform my sky

Sleep and Sunday daylight and workaday days
are as the sea meeting the shore

Transported here in their midst
to music's sanctuary

From the ceaseless barrage of the external world

O shadows left sutures of the long march of Van*

We revisit here as the signature
of Spring in the midst of Winter

And where once I was "dumbfounded by a word"
becomes a thousand words

And out of the "broken world" witness
Témoignage wholeness as a horizon
as reduced to a microscopic element I
am carried on the tip of your bow.







Copyright Sotère Torregian
November-December AD 2009

Note: étonnement, Fr., state of awe.
*Van: The Death March genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, 1915.

Sotère Torregian: Fragments

Fragments of Poem Found in Letter
Sent to Gary Snyder—1986

*Vos que decia: Da voces y toda su

Gloria como flor del campo

They have asked me about it many times What can I

Write about?
I say the people sleeping on buses
Introduce them
To the distant mountains
That “slightest thread” of the “Nuclear” sword of

Damocles”
And if it’s “Paris”
You want then let it walk inside you

And any crisis is a texture of colour blood and the elements
Chagalle / his countries

One’s footsteps in the morning fog
While the beloved reads a letter 5.000 mi.
Away

Again, in unison
To the still center of heart’s desire

1986 -- Sotère Torregian

From "I Must Go" (She Said) "Because My Pizza's Cold" Selected Works, 1957-1999 poetry book.

Sotère Torregian:“The Words are Missing” …

(22nd Nov. 1963, JFK, Dallas)
for Diane

“The words

Are missing

That will remove

Our doubts…

The words

Are missing

That will remove

Our doubts

They will exist forever

The words

Are missing

That will remove

Our doubts

They will exit forever” …

22-23 Nov., 1963
Assassination of JFK

-- Sotère Torregian

From "I Must Go" (She Said) "Because My Pizza's Cold" Selected Works, 1957-1999 poetry book.

Sotère Torregian: I Discover Jean Valjean Everywhere

We see these pearls walking in the morning
Know who they are
But we know
The true conquerors jasper landscape
One “Beastie” after another
Papa
Shifting sands
Bottles and
Sun and Earth

I am proud of my zero
The box-cars rushing through me in succession
I am Jean Valjean
A Challenge to any exterior
When my loves says “Garbanzo”

You harbour a hag but it is beautiful that you do
It is what makes your name stand out
It is what makes you beautiful
This pristine brilliance
O Camino a Los Cerros!

I take my stride
My legs are giant totem poles
That cause a whirlwind wherever I go wherever I have been
O feathers of Youth!I will not leave you orphans
I will come to you again and again

O gyrating feathers of Youth!

May 24-June 7, 1967
Mountain View, California

-- Sotère Torregian--
From "I Must Go" (She Said) "Because My Pizza's Cold" Selected Works, 1957-1999 poetry book.

Sotère Torregian: Fragments

Sotère Torregian has published eight books of poetry and contributed to many small press magazines since the 1960s, including Paris Review, Art and Literature (Isere, France) and "C," a magazine of the arts.

Affiliated with French Surrealist posts and associated with the New York School of poets and painters, he has been a resident of California since 1967. He received the Frank O'Hara Award for Poetry (1968) and the Gotham Book Mart Author of the Year Award (1976) upon publication of his Age of Gold (Poems 1968-1970).

Assistant to Dr. St Clair Drake, he helped establish the Afro-American Studies Program at Stanford University in 1969, where he also taught as Writer In Residence and Scholar.

He traces his ancestry to the Aghliabid Dynasty of Moorish rulers of Sicily, to Greece, Ethiopia, and to the Levant , on his maternal side; and to The Maghreb and Central Asia on his paternal side.

Sotère Torregian: Quetzlcoatl

for Allen Ginsberg
The jewel of the leaves I see

Reflected on the butcher’s glassy showcase

Before which
I stand like an Egyptian totem with
Hands folded

The little girl holds the ukelélé
As an immolation
To the vanquished sun

And to the shadows
And the little Negro child learns and calls

Me a shadow as I pass

1962?
Newark, N.J.—New York

-- Sotère Torregian
From "I Must Go" (She Said) "Because My Pizza's Cold" Selected Works, 1957-1999 poetry book.