Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg – one of the founding fathers of the Beat Movement and probably the most acclaimed American poet of his generation - in Ginsberg’s case, an introduction really seems superfluous.

His poetry, showcasing a radically different way of writing, was probably one of the first major influences of my own early writing attempts. Even today, his poems have retained their immense force. If you haven’t read it in a while – dig out that old battered copy of “Howl”. It is worth it - every time.

Links:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/ginsberg/ginsberg.htm
http://allenginsberg.org/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/allen-ginsberg
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/allen-ginsberg


My below poem is a response to “Howl”.


~ - ~

Write The Internet

include them all
it’s a long list that you are writing
don’t let your white male middle-class background get in the way
start at the top, make your way down slowly:
aborigines abortionists absentees absolutists
abstinence teachers abusers academics
accountants accusers aces achievers
acid attackers acrobats activists
acupuncturists addicts administrators
your voice will finally speak for them all
like the longest comment thread in digital history
ultimate show case of Godwin’s law
are you lining them up for pure provocation?
are you fishing for fame with the click bait of case?
are you sucking them dry or ultimately blowing?
are you the white space background for all of our dreams?
the road has turned into a data highway
it runs past San Francisco now all around the world
I envy you still - just for trying
go, write the internet
I just don’t believe in it anymore

Ed Sanders

Portrait by Man Ray via Wiki Commons.

Ed Sanders is often considered the bridge between the Beat and the Hippie generation. Born in Blue Springs, Missouri in 1939 and educated at the University of Missouri and New York University, he became known not only as a poet, but also as the lead singer of the sixties rock band the Fugs, the owner of the legendary Peace Eye Bookstore in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and the founder of Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts (1962-5).

Sanders poetry is investigative and research-driven, assuming strong ties between poetry and the description of history. As part of this understanding of poetry, he has composed several biographies in verse, including Chekhov (1995) and The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg (2000). In 1998 Sanders began his work on America, A History in Verse, a long poem projected to include nine volumes and thousands of pages.

Sanders is the author of more than a dozen collections of poetry. His honours include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Woodstock, New York.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ed-sanders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Sanders



My below poem responds to Sander’s “The Cutting Prow” which is included in the anthology. While his poem is dedicated to the late work of Henri Matisse, mine remembers Arnold Schoenberg.


~ - ~

triskaidekaphobia
For Arnold Schoenberg

on Friday, 13 July 1951
the twelve-tone man
died of fear of the additional one
15 minutes before midnight
his heart gave a powerful beat and that was the end
he felt the air from another planet
a breakthrough to a new world of sound
his compositions - like the art of not falling
a new principle of unification
all possibility
there is still plenty of good music
to be written -

rests always sound well.

Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso’s life story is far from ordinary. Born in New York City in 1930 and abandoned by his mother soon after birth, he spent most of his childhood in orphanages and foster homes. He frequently ran into trouble and spent periods of time in a boy's home, the New York City jail The Tombs and the children’s ward at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. At seventeen, he was convicted of theft and sentenced to Clinton State Prison for three years. It was during that time in prison that he started reading literature and began writing his first poetry. After his release in 1950, he met Allen Ginsberg, through whom he also became acquainted many other New York writers and artists. He soon became a key member of the Beat movement and frequently travelled with Kerouac and Ginsberg, spending time in San Francisco and Paris.

Although Corso enjoyed his greatest level of popularity during the 1960s and 1970s, his work spans over many decades, with his last collection published in 1989.

Corso traveled extensively, and taught briefly at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and for several summers at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He died on January 17, 2001, at the age of seventy.

Links:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/corso/corso.htm
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/gregory-corso
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/gregory-corso
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/20/guardianobituaries.books1 (Guardian Obituary)



My below poem took its inspiration from Corso’s famous poem of the same title. It is almost entirely made up of found texts from online advice columns for married couples and the official government marriage guidelines.

~ - ~

marriage

there are usually 2 steps to getting married
one is a combination or mixture of elements
two is also a muscle of the heart
they fulfill each other’s needs
no later than 29 days after
as time goes on it's normal to want more

they know that love is not a passing
being overly jealous intensely angry or chronically sad
to deepen intimacy
don’t be one of 3.7 million couples
largely depending upon on the degree to which
they are uncommitted to conditional love

you can accurately forecast your future emotions
give your local register office a call
they never get tired of starting over
they master the skills
they share the ultimate vision
but such zen-like forbearance is much more rare

be the woman he can count on
missing out on £212 of marriage tax allowance
it's important that you work to keep yourself
legally or formally recognized
when you want to be the woman
and stop trying as hard

but once couples move past the velcro stage of their relationship
active healthy and looking good
are not attractive qualities
a man wants
are you financially dependent?
are you dressing up and trying to seduce your man?

keep curiosity alive
show him that life will be boring
there are a few quantities you definitely want
you may find it useful to download the following documents
to find a way to extinguish passion
with just a little planning before you say your vows

the union of a man and a woman
and state taxation
a wonderful journey of spiritual growth
in some jurisdictions
they trust the good intentions
to build a future together as partners in love

Gary Snyder

Beat poet, member of the San Francisco Renaissance, spiritual poet, political poet, eco poet - Gary Snyder fits all these categories and none.

As one of the six poets who read at the historic Six Gallery reading in San Francisco in 1955 which helped launch the Beat movement, he is often associated with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure and Philip Whalen, yet as Hoover notes in the anthology: “unlike many of the Beats, […] he rarely deals in urban subjects.” Instead Snyder’s writing is far more diverse as he is equally interested in the politics of ecology, performance, and non-western cultures.

Snyder has authored numerous volumes of poetry, including Axe Handles (1983), for which he received an American Book Award and Turtle Island (1974), which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

He was the recipient of the 2012 Wallace Stevens Award for lifetime achievement by the Academy of American Poets. He is a professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/gary-snyder
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/gary-snyder
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/snyder/snyder.htm
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n10/iain-sinclair/the-man-in-the-clearing  - London Review of Books feature including podcast
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jul/16/featuresreviews.guardianreview19 - Guardian profile

My below poem took its inspiration from Snyder’s “As for Poets”.

~ - ~

The Space Poet

The Space Poet has grown old and frail
on his wait for the Space Age.
His Space Hands are shaky and thin
in his giant, white Space Gloves.
He cannot even push the right Space Buttons
anymore to navigate the Space Ship on its course
or write about what he saw in Space
all that he saw in Space

from a distance

when it was too close
for us.

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac – do I have to say anything?

A key figure of the Beat Generation, famed author of the ground-breaking On the Road.

Kerouac is of course mostly known for this prose works, but he also wrote a large number of poems. Like his prose, his poetry was strongly influenced by the improvisational style of jazz. He wanted “to be considered as a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jazz session on Sunday” (Kerouac).

His most well-known collection, Mexico City Blues was published in 1959, followed by the posthumous Scattered Poems in 1971.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/jack-kerouac
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/jack-kerouac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac

My below response to Kerouac draws from his idea of “jazz-like” poetry. It uses the lyrics of the jazz standard “Black Coffee” as a starting point – a theme on which to improvise...

~ - ~

Black Coffee (Take 12)

A standard like black coffee
solo on a xylophone with
one hand across the bars
the rhythm of the rain
glass pane mirror metronome:
    Love’s a hand me down brew

A flavour like black coffee
bitter in my veins
milk curdled ‘round the silver spoon
pumpkin spice spout cup mockery
sugar on the floor:
    Since the blues caught my eye

A feeling like black coffee
burning time like toast
morning nutrient recipe
toxin trace in every face
stomp-down down-town countenance:
    Feelin' low as the ground

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

image by urbanartcore.eu

As one of the driving forces of the San Francisco Renaissance and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti is definitely one of the most important figures of the avant-garde poetry movement in the 1950s – a fact which was paid tribute to not least of all in his 2005 Literarian Award for “outstanding service to the American literary community.” Even though Ferlinghetti’s role as a publisher was important for the careers of many Beats including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Diane diPrima, Michael McClure, and Gary Snyder, he is also an extremely successful poet in his own right. His poetry collection A Coney Island of the Mind has sold more than a million copies since it was first published in 1952 – which makes it the most popular poetry book in the U.S.

As the critic Larry Smith points out in his 1983 book Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet-at-Large:

“[Ferlinghetti] writes truly memorable poetry, poems that lodge themselves in the consciousness of the reader and generate awareness and change. And his writing sings, with the sad and comic music of the streets.”

It is particularly jazz music which had a strong influence on Ferlinghetti, as Hoover writes in the anthology:

“[He] has indicated that some of the poems in A Coney Island of the Mind, including the enormously popular “I am Waiting” were “conceived specifically for jazz accompaniment and as such should be considered as spontaneously written ‘oral messages’ rather than as poems written for the printed page.”

Ferlinghetti writes a weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle. He also continues to operate the City Lights bookstore, and he travels frequently to participate in literary conferences and poetry readings.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lawrence-ferlinghetti
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/lawrence-ferlinghetti
http://www.citylights.com/ferlinghetti/
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/04/lawrence-ferlinghetti-interview-poets (interview)

In response to Ferlinghetti’s understanding of his poetry as ‘oral messages’ designed to be read with jazz music accompaniment, I decided to likewise create a ‘jazz poem’ instead of a written one.

~ - ~

A Virus



Music by Ocean Exposition: Untitled improvisation

John Wieners

John Wieners was born in Milton, Massachusetts in 1934 and received his degree from Boston College in 1954. He studied at Black Mountain College with Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan from 1955 to 1956 and later followed Olson, his mentor, to SUNY Buffalo. As a Beat poet and a member of the San Francisco Renaissance his poetry is however more personal and less committed to poetic theory than Olson’s.

His poetry, which often combines accounts of sexual and drug-related experimentation with jazz-influenced improvisation, reflects his highly political view of lyricism. Wieners was an antiwar and gay rights activist and was deeply involved with publishing and education cooperatives.

He published his first book of poetry, The Hotel Wentley Poems (1958), at the age of 24. Numerous collections followed, including Ace of Pentacles (1964); Nerves (1970); Behind the State Capitol, or Cincinnati Pike (1975). Wieners died in Boston in 2002.

Links:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/wieners/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-wieners
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Wieners.php

My below poem is inspired by Wieners "A Poem for the Insane".

~ - ~

A Poem For The Reasonable

over whom these rules purport
to have authority as vulnerable
to universal credit and post-

structualist ideas. standing
on corners with the milk
bottle wrapped around their

broadsheet moral duties. hesitant
beyond the breakfast cereal cardboard
box copy of a good life in low

calorie. an idea with its roots in
the work of elderly men dried up
in the windowsill pots of

gardenia.  equally situated
at the end of the jointly accepted
middle ground between consent

and truth. how then can some
moral or political rule be rightly
imposed on all of us? you ask me

just in case the foreseeable
consequences and side-effects
of its general observance for

each individual could be jointly
accepted to be fair. this might
indeed seem to be rather

puzzling. i agree.

Anselm Hollo

Anselm Hollo was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland. He worked as a poet, translator, editor and journalist in Sweden, Germany, and Austria before coming to the US in 1966.

He took up teaching positions at SUNY Buffalo and the Writers' Workshop in Iowa City where he first met Ted Berrigan with whom he remained very close friends. The Beat movement and New York School was certainly a major influence on Hollo’s writing: even before coming to the US he had translated Ginsberg into Finnish. Another important influence was however William Carlos Williams – another poet he had translated previously. As Paul Hoover notes in the anthology: “Hollo’s work privileges the details of everyday life. He is adept at capturing isolated moments of perception.” A tendency he shares with both Williams, as well as his fellow poets such as Philip Whalen and Berrigan. “Often whimsical and gently satirical in tone, Hollo’s poems are open-ended, valuing an ongoing human attentiveness rather than rejecting closure on the basis of theory.” (Hoover)

Hollo taught creative writing at a wide range of different institutions across the US, including the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where he held the rank of Full Professor since 1985. Hollo’s many honours and awards included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, grants from the Fund for Poetry, the Government of Finland’s Distinguished Foreign Translator’s Award, and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry. Hollo lived with his wife, the artist Jane Dalrymple-Hollo, in Boulder until his death in 2013.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anselm-hollo
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/anselm-hollo
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/anselm-hollo-poet-translator-and-teacher-8473828.html


My below poem is a response to Hollo’s poem entitled “The Dream of Instant Total Representation”. Taking a look at the idea of possible political change and new beginnings, it works with found text I gathered from Twitter under #Greece.

~ - ~

The Dream of Instant Total Revolution

Isn’t there an extra second added today

3 hours before the payment deadline

the rundown confederate crash help

makes history

might crowd funding be the answer?

you can find the Paypal link below

the total debt split across all citizens

is nearly thirty thousand per head

storm clouds literally over the capital

capital or capital

early July heatwave

change – change part 28

the talks continue

litter bins and boarded windows in every town

bailout for bailout for bailout for out

what is happening here is what they have done to

many poorer nations through structural

adjustment on behalf of corporate capital

capital or capital

the talks continue

not often - but in these days I regret

that I did not learn to speak the ancient language

by the time the country closes its banks

few hedge funds had much direct hold

we stand by the people of Greece

default in 2 hours

we stand by the people of Greece

as Fitch downgrades

further into junk status

from ccc to cc plus

we stand

crowds gathering

we stand

O X I

Amiri Baraka

Image by Sharon Harris

The many faces of Amiri Baraka – there is no way I could ever do them justice in a short introduction like this. His work spans such a vast terrain - from his early Beat years in the 1950s and early 60s in Greenwich Village, where he co-edited the literary magazines Yugen and The Floating Bear, to his Harlem-based years after the death of Malcom X in 1965 which saw his involvement in Black Nationalism; and finally his turn to a more multicultural, Marxist approach in the 1970s.

Baraka’s impact on the American literary scene has undoubtedly been very great. As Arnold Rampersad wrote in the American Book Review:

“More than any other black poet […] he taught younger black poets of the generation past how to respond poetically to their lived experience, rather than to depend as artists on embalmed reputations and outmoded rhetorical strategies derived from a culture often substantially different from their own.”

In addition to his numerous works of poetry, Baraka worked extensively as a playwright. He also published essays, short stories, and novels and wrote about African-American music. He died last year at the age of 79.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/amiri-baraka
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/amiri-baraka
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/baraka/baraka.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/09/amir-baraka-playwright-poet-dies

My below response is loosely based on his Political Poem.



~ - ~

Love Political

It runs with reason and piles of heavy volumes

full force over the back of your hand

till the sinews quake

and you wonder how anyone was ever able

to hold on like this

in the dusk of intimacy

intimidation and third hand dreams

on tape in beat cardboard boxes

long before anyone resolved such history

into code and hung it to a cloud like childhood

summer showers

sweet and short and wet wet wet

It runs with reason

{ as reason like a rusty nail in the flower pattern

holding my great-grandparents’ wedding picture

in a faraway house

(blurry black and blurry faded)   }

and the kind of grand

words we always hoped would adorn our

withered skin one day

pale like parchment paper bleeding significance

and stubborn in each sans-serif line

like possibility and justice

and worst of all what they call liberty

It runs with reason as it runs with passion

the spot on my neck where they both entwine

your kiss the conception of a good life in books

and coarse ground coffee

the twelve pound subscription to the LRB

your head on my hip

your thoughts and ideas’ deep rest in my soft tissue

when Eva said there are many kinds of knowledge

(she bit the apple)

and intellect is just one of many more

I wanted to tell her yes you are right

but this is political

Eileen Myles

The New York Times once called Eileen Myles “a cult figure to a generation of post-punk female writer-performers”. What I can say, she is an amazing poet and I am a huge fan.

Myles joined the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s in New York City in the 1970s after leaving behind her native Boston. A few years later she was working as the assistant of James Schuyler – an influence which is still tangible in her work, as Hoover puts it:

 “Myler’s offhandedly personal and lyrical poetry has an affinity with the work of James Schuyler; this is most evident in her diaristic style of composition, narrative ease, and use of short, enjambed lines.”

Myles’ first major collection, Not Me, was published in 1991. Since then there have been many more, including more procedural work like her 2001 volume Skies, which set the constraint of including only poems which include the sky in some way.

Her versatile work of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction is really compelling and inspirational for any poet. The striking directness of her words and the way she works with the notion of autobiography really draws me in. I highly recommend having a look at her website which is full of poetry and also has a few videos of performances which are wonderful.

Links:
http://eileenmyles.com/index.php
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/eileen-myles (very short bio, but also a few poems)
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/eileen-myles
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/myles/
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Myles.php

My below response is a (for me rather unusual) attempt at something more personal and lyric. Have a read.

~ - ~

Memento mori

Somehow we ended up

in the cemetery,

like one would

I suppose,

eventually,

on a hot spring day

on a walk

through the woods. At

the end of the trail

where I hesitated

like Dante in a summer dress, you

followed me through

the gap in the cast

iron fence and trampled

shrubbery into

forgotten parts

of stone memory grounds. We

followed the lines

over May grass looking

down on distant

names on rain-washed

rock wondering. Daisy-

lined final resting place.

Memento mori, you said

and I reached for

your hand while we

were walking. I wanted

you more then, than

in the forest’s calm leafy

shade or on the bridge over

the brook’s gurgling waters. I

wanted you then, and when I

knew you were no longer

walking my way.

Philip Whalen

The Poetry Foundation describes Whalen as an “an ally and confidant of the major figures of the Beat Generation” such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac – but also as a significant poet in his own right. He was among the poets who famously read their work at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955 and was a strong influence in the San Francisco Renaissance as a whole.

The essayist Paul Christensen writes about Whalen in the Dictionary of Literary Biography:

"Whalen's singular style and personality contribute to his character in verse as a bawdy, honest, moody, complicated songster of the frenzied mid-century, an original troubadour and thinker who refused to take himself too seriously during the great revival of visionary lyric in American poetry." 

A view which is also confirmed by Paul Hoover, who notes in the anthology’s introduction to Whalen’s work: he “embraces the world with a Whitmanesque openness and gentleness. Yet the wit of Whalen’s writing reminds […] of eighteenth-century satirists Alexander Pope and John Dryden.”

Like many other artists of this period, Whalen’s life philosophy and work was strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism and he became an ordained Zen monk in 1973. He lived in various Zen centres across New Mexico and California until his retirement in 1996. Whalen died in 2002 at the age of 78.

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/philip-whalen
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/whalen/
http://jacketmagazine.com/07/whalen-clark.html (review of his Selected Poems volume)
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Whalen.php

My own response to Whalen’s work has its root in his poem “The Slop Barrel” which is included in the anthology. Whalen’s use of the image of a tiger made my consider and dive deeper into my own thoughts and feelings about tigers. The below piece is stylistically and thematically highly indebted to the amazing Juliana Spahr.


~ - ~

As Tigers Go

We always thought it would have been cool if we had been born in the year of the tiger. We always thought it would have been much more glamorous. It was just an idea. We never told anybody. We didn’t believe in that kind of thing anyway. It was just that we were a cat person. We liked to think of us that way. 1972: 37,350

We stared at the back of Kellogg’s carton every morning before school. We asked our mum if she could buy the sweet ones. The great ones. The ones with the smiling tiger cartoon. It seemed so much more fun. 1979: 31,600

We went to the zoo with school where they were pacing behind glass. We had cheese sandwiches in the wildcat house. Some of kids started knocking against the windows. We just watched. They were big. They were real. 1984: 26,900

We saw them on TV but someone always wanted the other channel. We just shrugged and watched MacGyver. We still wondered about them occasionally. 1989: 23,450

In school they taught us about the rain forest. We thought about the jungle. We remembered watching the Jungle Book when we were small and knowing all the words to all the songs and never liking the tiger. We thought about giant trees and orchids and lianas. We thought about their yellow fur among the undergrowth. 1993: 12,000

We laughed about the waiter stumbling over the head of the tiger rug in a New Year’s slapstick comedy sketch on TV every year. It was an old black and white broadcast and we never even thought about the skin as an animal. We laughed and listened to the church bells at midnight. We watched the fireworks sparkle over the rooftops although we had learned how damaging and expensive they were. 1997: 7,500

We read William Blake’s The Tyger. We learned it by heart because we liked it. We learned to recognise its heavy trochee meter in other poems and read loads more of Blake and Poe and Shakespeare and we liked them all. We walked in the dark and heavy steps of poetry through puberty. We liked the books more than the forest. We stayed indoors. 2001: 5,250

We went to uni straight after school while others went away to travel. We had political ideas and voted left. We considered recycling important but we liked to fly to other European cities for short holidays. 2005: 4,850

We never really thought about the rain forest. We declared we weren’t great with plants anyway. We wanted to get a cat. We wanted to write and make a difference. We thought about poetry a lot and moved to a different country where it rained more and there were stronger ties to India. 2006: 4,300

We saw a few illustrations in the museum and thought they looked not really like tigers. We remembered the small status of tigers which used to stand in the living room of an old school friend, who’s father travelled to China regularly. The remembered always thinking of them as very odd and not at all like the tigers we had seen on the telly. We thought about art and culture and how things were different where the tigers lived from where we lived. We were curious and wanted to know more but we never got around to it. We thought about people with tiger tattoos sometimes. 2010: 3,500

We thought about giving a tiger adoption to our newborn nephew but then decided for a dinosaur shirt instead. We started giving to Greenpeace and liked the WWF on Facebook. We felt guilty about printing out too many emails. But we stuck to the 4-ply loo roll. We sometimes stared at the “mixed source” paper certificate on the packaging wondering what it meant but we never got around to looking it up. Greenpeace sent an appeal in the post. We glanced over the brochure and it somehow ended up between the takeaway menus in the kitchen drawer. A tiger in the drawer with the direct debit form.  2014: 3,050

Epilogue:

Bengal tiger, endangered, current population less than 2,500, declining trend. Indochinese tiger, endangered, current population 600-650, declining trend. Sumatran Tiger, critically endangered, current population 441-679, declining trend. Siberian Tiger, endangered, current population 331–393, declining trend. Malayan tiger, critically endangered, current population 250-340, declining trend. South China Tiger, critically endangered, no confirmed presence, possibly extinct. Javan Tiger, (1980s) extinct. Caspian Tiger, (1970s) extinct. Bali Tiger, (1940s) extinct.

Anne Waldman

As Lorenzo Thomas summarised in his essay for the Jacket special edition dedicated to Anne Waldman:

 "Her work ranges, with equal power and feeling, from the personal love lyric and deep moral contemplation to protest against the infernal industry and mindless destructiveness represented by nuclear weapons factories.”

It is probably safe to say that Anne Waldman is one of the most important poets of her generation. She started her career as a poet after attending the 1965 Berkeley Poetry conference, where she attended reading by Charles Olsen, Robert Duncan and Allen Ginsberg. It was particularly the latter who proved an important influence in her life. Yet it would be foolish to call Waldman simply a Beat poet. Hers is instead a very unique style, strongly influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, and its form and presentation are much closer to oral poetics and performance-related poetry.

Waldman founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado together with Ginsberg in 1974. A year later, she was “poet in residence” with Bob Dylan’s famed concert tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. From 1966 until 1978 she ran the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and has published a total of more than forty books of poetry.

My below piece is based upon her famous “Fast Speaking Woman” (1974) part of which can be heard on PennSound 

Links:

http://www.annewaldman.org/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/anne-waldman

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/anne-waldman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Waldman

http://jacketmagazine.com/27/index.shtml (Mainly dedicated to Anne Waldman’s work)

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Waldman.php

 ~ - ~

OPEN // DARING

Diane Di Prima

Allen Ginsberg wrote about Diane Di Prima:

“Diane Di Prima, revolutionary activist of the 1960s Beat literary renaissance, heroic in life and poetics: a learned humorous bohemian, classically educated and twentieth-century radical, her writing, informed by Buddhist equanimity, is exemplary in Imagist, political, and mystical modes. A great woman poet in second half of American century, she broke barriers of race-class identity, delivered a major body of verse brilliant in its particularity.”

What could I possibly add?! All I can say is, read her poetry! There is some available at the Poetry Foundation online. Also I highly recommend reading the interview with Di Prima in Jacket, as well as the short post on the City Lights blog.

My response to Di Prima’s work today is directly linked to her poem “Backyard” which is included in the Anthology. A look back into childhood for her – for me…

Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/diane-di-prima
http://www.blogcitylights.com/2014/08/06/diane-di-prima-at-80/
http://jacketmagazine.com/18/diprima-iv.html


~ - ~

Heimlich

where angels stooped over music boxes brightly painted

their silver fingers in the metal spiel

playing card fans wafting Japanese moonlight and

each shadow a taxidermy crocodile

where phantom knights grazed their horses on the corner beneath the broken streetlight

I heard the nightingale in the deepest furrows of the record playing the Bolero thirty times or more

my porcelain friends with one ear on the creaky loft floor

a spider’s leg tapping trapping in the silken net a Persian rug cast

where chieftain hands folded sternly around a ship in a bottle

hollow haggard ocean caught in sun-faded shell

I threw the dice among the soft black soil of the herb garden

watercolours dripping from the cloth line blurry red and blue

where a white rabbit in a hole in a hole in a hole sitting waiting

skipping marching songs whistled all the way to the funny fully tiled room

I kept my breath under water breathing

where there were books

where there were books

(I was never a backyard child)

Paul Blackburn

Paul Blackburn was a New York Poet – but then again, he wasn’t. He spent most of his life in New York City, yet as Robert Creeley points out his Preface to Against the Silences, he was still strongly shaped by the experience of his Puritan New England childhood. He was an important figure in the New York poetry scene of the 1950s and 60s, organising readings and helping out fellow poets, yet one of his most important influences were the Provencial poets he started studying in his 20s and which he translated throughout his life. As a close friend to Robert Creeley he has often been associated to the Black Mountain Poets, but he himself resisted such categorisation. His own poetics – probably summarised best in his 1954 statement (http://jacketmagazine.com/12/blac-stat.html) – lays a great emphasis on the sound quality of poetry. Reading it today – more than 60 years later – I found some of his words almost prophetic, or maybe we have just been heading in the same bloody direction for 60 years!

I recommend checking out the recordings of his readings on Penn Sound and a whole bunch of poems on EPC.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/blackburn/

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Blackburn.php

~ - ~

Hackney Pandora

After Paul Blackburn

it’s not so much about

curiosity

as about               finding  someone

to blame for all

the         dog shit

& take-away                      chicken

bones & blue

off-license plastic bags

garnishing the   trendy                  side-

walks     of artisan sourdough dreams

sweeping            it                            all           up

every morning at six thirty-five before

we          catch

the over               - ground to highbury     or kingsland

as if        land                      -fill the fucking void

or congestion

charge

just like the cats

and sacks

and that               weirdo schroedinger

(or so they say )              when

singed fur smell &            skunk                   fills the

air

& you can’t escape                           it

                forty hours are never                     enough

in the shade of

 shards &

 restaurant                          bookies

plain                      payday mockery 

most of us           (  living)                               in            a              box

  anyway

with the mouldy bits

&             three     weeks                   of rent                                 behind

so all      they                       are concerned   about

is to                                                        screw

the lid back on

screw

the lid back on

so that

fucking laughing cynic

 hope                    remains

Michael McClure

Once upon a time poetry was right in the middle of counter culture and coolness – and right in the centre of that was Michael McClure. He was one of the five poets who read at the famous 1955 Six Gallery event that launched the San Francisco Renaissance and introduced the world to the Beat Generation. He read poetry to the caged lions in San Francisco Zoo. He lent his voice to the San Francisco hippy movement. He was close friends with Jim Morrison and performed with Ray Manzarek. He wrote songs which Janis Joplin sung; – and those were only the ‘early’ days of his career. Since then, he has continued to work as a poet as well as publishing multiple plays, essay collections and novels, and even working as a documentary film maker.

His poetry is often concerned with the corporeal and our primate emotions and animal drives. The Poetry Foundation quotes a piece about McClure in Publishers Weekly with the words:

“McClure infuses ecstatic direct address and colloquial diction with an exquisite sensibility, one that reveals the world in its ordinary complex gorgeousness.”

In my own response I was particularly taken in by McClure’s piece in the anthology entitled Hymn to Saint Geryon. It immediately resonated with me as I have recently read Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red (which I can highly recommend – it is an astonishing book!), which is also concerned with the mythological creature Geryon. I found myself considering the strange connections between the different poets who wrote about this character over a time of hundreds of years. In a sense, the below poem is therefore not so much a response to McClure but a response to his reference to Geryon.

Links:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/michael-mcclure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_McClure

~ - ~

Geryon

It was a difficult interval to be a poet

our fourteen legs and arms scrambled

our red wings tightly knit

subject to the plain

subject to rigorous editing

a little dog and magnificent cattle

a monster and his bloody death

It was Dante

It was Stesichoros (blind with the feeling)

It was Anne Carson

It was Michael McClure

It was a difficult interval to be a poet

they were hunting for red

they were dissecting bodies

putting black lungs and shivering hearts on display

behind plate glass in the hallway

the big air vent was always running

easily digestible chunks of cooked meat

There was Dante

There was Stesichoros (looking at an angle)

There was Anne Carson

There was Michael McClure

It was a difficult interval to be a poet

we kept our hands in the pockets of our

overcoats tightly pulled around our chest

with sleeves too short for grand gestures

with too few sleeves to cover every red limb

like hair raised stiff against the fabric

our wings neatened caringly as they pushed us through the door

So was Dante

So was Stesichoros (hearing not listening)

So was Anne Carson

So was Michael McClure

It was a difficult interval to be a poet

our porous body stood little chance against the photoshop

our scaled hot skin too shiny for the taste

too red with defiance

every word pins and needles for a tailored suit

grey flannel row subduing riots within

As if Dante

As if Stesichoros (singing brave counter)

As if Anne Carson

As if Michael McClure

It was a difficult interval to be a poet

all caps had turned into an insult

each sign restricted in numbers and clicks

a square was the most popular means or 350 pages

not fragments but digits debris virtuality

left without material page without

eyes but not without monsters

It was Dante

It was Stesichoros (raging red)

It was Anne Carson

It was Michael McClure

Charles Bukowski

Time Magazine once called Charles Bukowski a “laureate of American lowlife”, someone able to invite the whole world along on a journey into the dark alleyways of urban America. He certainly is a true cult writer with millions of fans around the world; who’s life has been immortalised in movies and books.

Bukowski was a hard-working writer, publishing a large number of poetry collections, novels, short-stories and screenplays – you can find the whole impressive list on his Wikipedia entry. Yet the machismo display of sex, alcohol abuse and violence which is presented in his work seems to have prevent the scholarly attention which some of his fellow Black Sparrow Press poets have received.

In his introduction to the five poems featured in the anthology Paul Hoover explains that Bukowski somehow occupies a particular position within the poetry scene at the time: “Although his work is reminiscent of Beat poetry in its confessionalism, existential bleakness, and use of American speech, Bukowski implicitly rejects visionary and shamanistic poetics in favour of a gritty roominghouse lyricism.”

http://bukowski.net/poems/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-bukowski

~ - ~

Comparing Notes

(w/ Mr B)

The blood

-shot eyes

and scabbed elbows revealing

soft tissue

heavy breath over

the sudden

push

broken nails

and the long blonde

curls on the bathroom floor

dirty tiling

three hundred pages

into Simone de

Beauvoire

and he still thinks

mainly

about his size

in the world

and he still keeps

mainly

note of his size

in a world

that no longer exists