Poetry

add news feed

post a story

[The List Poem by Larry Fagin (2000, from Teachers & Writers Collaborative) - cover design by Trevor Winkfield] Student: I feel I have to defend myself against (you and) the rest of the classAllen Ginsberg: Do you have a “self” to defen...
[The List Poem by Larry Fagin (2000, from Teachers & Writers Collaborative) - cover design by Trevor Winkfield] Student: I feel I have to defend myself against (you and) the rest of the classAllen Ginsberg: Do you have a “self” to defend? – okay, if you insist on having a “self”Student: Well you said (my comparison with set theory wasn’t so helpful) but why I said that was, that if the members don’t interact, then that means that, just like in a sentence, that means there’s no articulation, (group consciousness) is not being put into formTed Berrigan: If you take a group.. you have to..Student: It’s not articulation until the words interact, right?Ted Berrigan: The articulation [in Anne Waldman’s “Fast Speaking Woman”] is in the dance of vowels and syllables, much more there than in “Pressure”, where everything there snaps. In this poem, everything sings (and when you see it performed, for example, you understand that very clearly because it comes off her so smoothly). The interaction is in the music so much more in “Fast Speaking Woman” than in “Pressure”, which has a great breathless qualityAllen Ginsberg: Well, then, her next move was “Musical Garden”, where she complicated the line, interestingly – “Can’t give you up, speech, can’t stop/ clamoring” – So then (she) began to augment the line, because she couoldn’t repeat the poem, or the same attack on the poem, one poem after another, with the same simple lines, so then she began expanding the musical possibilities and the ideation and image possibilities within the sweetheart, my tender/ chocolate big-lipped love/ Can’t give up all dear ones, your bright/ ears and delicate smiles” – So you see how she began developing that. Actually, it’s sort of like a primary course in the list poem, going from one poem to another to another of hers and seeing how she’s developed it, and finally, in the last [1976 -most recent] poem, “Shaman” ["Shaman Hisses"], there’s very complicated lines, involving description, with different actions, long, very long sometimes. Sometimes a short single-word line, but, most of the time, it’s a line describing a whole action – “Shaman, your mother’s calling you on the telephone” The reason I brought this up was (is), if you have a litany, or a list poem, or if you want to try one like that, if you’re developing one, or if you’re revising one, or working on one, just to bear in mind that (a) single-word list poem has been done, a double-word list poem has been done. You’ve got to have something interesting in each line. Anne has developed it in this way. (Christopher) Smart started with a much more pedestrian line, you might say, (a) more everyday line. A major element in it all, however, is the ear for the line, keeping the line of such an elastic spoken quality that the whole thing hangs together as one tripping breath, or one vowel-ic breath (but there you’d have to pay attention to sound, you’d have to pay attention to having the imagery colorful enough enough to fill out a line). And I’ll end there, because it’s eight twenty-five.Student: I made the list into a narrative.AG: Pardon me?Student: I made the list into a narrative.AG: Yes. You can (do) do that.Tape and class ends here – to be continued
about 7 hours ago
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 585 3339 University Health Network 27 6 4100 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"...
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 585 3339 University Health Network 27 6 4100 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} [Anne Waldman & Ted Berrigan - Photograph by Gerard Malanga - Copyright The Photographer]Ted Berrigan: Are you making a criticism (of Anne Waldman) on those grounds (set theory, mathematics)?Allen Ginsberg: Pardon me?TB: Is he (one of the students) making a criticism (of Anne) on that grounds?AG: I don’t know. I think so, yeahTB: I want you to tell me. I’d like to know who he is.AG: I’m making a criticism.I’m criticizing Anne’s later poems.TB: But you’re making it on different grounds, Allen (and your grounds are not valid either), but hisgrounds.. AG: I’m just saying what I think..TB: Okay, you think what you’re thinking, that’s only valid, it’s what you’re thinking, whereas she’s speaking (in "Fast Speaking Woman") as a woman there..AG: ..that this was a..TB: She’s being an (archetypal) woman, and then she’s being “Anne Waldman”, at the same time, whereas, in the other one ("Pressure"), it’s just like that she’s a pronoun. She’s herself, you know..AG: Uh-huhTB: But in that one, I mean that’s.. (that might appear) coming on to you, but that’s.. she is..she does.. she’s attempting the shamanistic concept, AllenAG: YesTB: She’s attempting to speak for all women..AG: Uh-huhTB:..and it seems, consequently that that bulwarks the structure very muchAG: YeahTB: And when the juxtapositions may possibly seem facile, it’s true that the faces are different, but there are..there are many more interesting things that she says a woman can be, for example, in that poem, than there are..AG: Yeah, the virtues of the poem are apparent . The virtues of the poem are already apparent, I think . I’m demurring now on it’s total virtue, in a sense that I think that it’s less interesting on the page and probably depends a good deal on recitation for it to become really live, because, line-by-line, reading it through, it finally becomes a little boring on the page..Student: Really?AG: ..and the only way to mend that was (she does it at a few points)..is..complicate it a little bit, instead of just having “elastic woman, necklace woman, silk scarf woman” – “I’m the woman who works the machine./ I know how to work the machines”..TB: “I know how to work the machines”, okay.AG: .. which is, I think, the great line (or one of the great lines) in that . But, at this point, when I first heard her read it, I began thinking it would be interesting if she started making the lines a little denser, because she had already done that in “Pressure”, and I thought that in “Pressure”, that the situation, the original situation, was so penetrant – the idea of “no way out” the entire universe – that all you did have to do was list places in the universe in a weird juxtaposed order and that that juxtaposition of the order would make the excitement. Here the juxtaposition of the order – “I’m a moon woman/ I’m a day woman/ I’m a doll woman/ I’m a dew woman/ I’m a lone star woman / (I’m a) loose ends woman”..” – There isn’t enough tension. It’s just like repeating the line and making changes, but it isn’t mad enough, verbally – and for the eye-ball it isn’t mad enough (because I’ve shown it to, say, kids in France, French translators who say, “The conception is interesti
1 day ago
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 1322 7536 University Health Network 62 15 9254 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Norma...
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 1322 7536 University Health Network 62 15 9254 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} [Anne Waldman - Photograph by Greg Fuchs via AnneWaldman.org]Student: A lot of Anne (Waldman)’s poems are that way (oracular, rhapsodic) like “Musical Garden”, a breath of fresh air. They can pick you up and just…AG: YeahStudent : ..stanza after stanza, ( with a hook line) - “Can’t give you up” AG: YeahStudent: The “Pressure” poemStudent: That’s not all one line, is it?AG: No, these are separate lines. Same principle, though - a repeated refrain.. The thing is “Pressure” is.. as distinct from other poems of Anne’s.. “Pressure”.. was the first of her magnificent “list poems”.Student: That’s the “Can’t give you up” poem?AG: YeahStudent: “No pressure”..”No way out”AG: “No way out”. “No exit”. “No way out”Student: Did she read that the other night?AG: Yeah – That was the first of her series – [Allen begins to recite Anne Waldman’s poem – “When I/ see you/ climb the walls/ I climb them too/ No way out of the cosmic mudhole!”… “no way out of the telephone booth/ the classroom/ the VW bus, the igloo,,”...”no way out of the 60-story office building./the church, the temple, the mosque/ the Long Island Railroad Station/ the A train the D train, the BMT/ the 9th Street crosstown bus/ the rain, the 10-inch snow piling up/ outside my window...] – Now what’s going on in my head, what’s going on there is – she had this really interesting idea – “No way out”. And then pretty soon, she’s throwing in the whole universe! – So no way out of death, no way out of life, no way out of Naropa Institute, no way out of New York City , no way out of the D train.Ted Berrigan: Also, in that kind of poem you can get little sequences going, like you get, “no way out of your own house, no way out of the street you live on”, and then you can.. like.. “no way out of the next street, the next street over, the 60-story office building, the helicopter, the moon, the sun, the planets”, and it sounds like you’re doing something, and then you drop that and you just keep going with, “no way out”. Sometimes you’ve got something going here, sometimes you’re just making a further list of things that there’s “no way out” (of). There’s a lot of varieties of things you can do.Student: But there’s more of a connection, it seems, between what there’s “no way out” of. You can throw in the whole universe and say there’s “no way out” of that, because it’s almost welded to one another, but what about saying, I mean..AG: I actually want to talk about this. I want everybody to shut up, because I had something to say (and now I have forgot!). This was Anne’s first long list poem, I think, and there is a quality in here which is different from her later list poems. And I think this is among the best of them. I think, in some respects, they get weaker later on, or more mechanical. The thing that’s going on here is that she has a grand conception, a really grand conception – a realization of the claustrophobia of the Universe, and sort of a Buddhist notion of “no way out” in meditation. There’s no way out of what is. So then, what you have is a series of lines, ringing the changes on what is, or what’s in her Universe that she can’t get out of it. And the lines are simple. In other
2 days ago
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 1620 9236 University Health Network 76 18 11342 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Norm...
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 1620 9236 University Health Network 76 18 11342 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} [Philip Whalen, Anne Waldman, and Allen Ginsberg, Naropa Institute, 1975 - Photograph by Rachel Homer]Continuing with our vintage audio recordings. Here's Allen and Philip Whalen at Naropa, June 18, 1975. The introduction is by Anne Waldman (Anne's intro on the Internet Archives version, embedded above, is preceded by a couple of minutes of typically assiduous Ginsberg sound-checking, which the archivists at the Naropa School have, mercifully, spared us. For the full, uninterrupted version of the audio, go here)AW: Welcome to the Wednesday night poetry readings at the (Jack) Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. (It’s) a great pleasure to introduce Philip Whalen - and Allen Ginsbergtoo – Allen most of you know, he’s the head of the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics - the flesh of the disembodied school! Philip Whalen and Allen Ginsberg met on a corner of First Street and Mission Street in September of 1955 at the Key Terminal and Allen was with Jack Kerouac and Philip was with Gary Snyder – a pretty heavy meeting! Philip Whalen has been a poet, is a poet . He’s been a poet to me, especially, and a teacher, and a friend. He’s also a Zen novice priest and you can catch him in his full regalia, his monk’s regalia, walking to Karma Dzong before nine in the morning, most mornings. He’s in residence at Naropa this week, and is lecturing tomorrow at the Visiting Poets class at 1.30. Philip has been a constant source of energy and inspiration for a whole generation of younger poets and we were checking out his poems in dark basements in New York in 1965 and ’66 [in New York] at The Poetry Project. He’s the author of On Bears Head, Scenes of Life At The Capitol, Severence Pay..and two novels, Imaginary Speeches For A Brazen Head and You Didn’t Even Try Allen (Ginsberg) is the author of The Fall of Americawhich won the National Book Award in 1974.He’s also a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and, I’m just gong to… this is a quote from Allen - from somewhere [it is, in fact, from Allen’s essay, “When the Mode of the Music Changes, the Walls of the City Shake” – “Skill of freedom of composition” which will lead Poetry to the expression of the highest moment of the mind-body - mystical illumination..” ..(I think) that has something to do with the inspiration behind the Kerouac School. Philip will read first and then Allen. Glad you’re all here.PW – glub. glub. – I want.. is this operating?, I guess? – glub. glub.. [tests mike] - [begins his reading] - "This is a lovely poem that dragged a friend of mine to the extent where he wouldn’t talk to me for about seven years in a row" – Whalen reads “20.VII.58, On which I Renounce The Notion of Social Responsibility”. (“The minute I get out of town/My friends get sick, go back on the sauce..”…”Mind a revolving door/My head a falling star”) AG: [interrupts, typically concerned about the acoustics] - Can he..be heard syllable by syllable? Is the sound alright in the back? Raise your hand if you can nothear.PW: I think everybody hears more or less, anyway. I think that..I think they’re they’re wondering why it is, as usual. (It’s a)
4 days ago
Allen Ginsberg, goaded on at the beginning there by a typically giddy Simon Vinkenoog, reads "Mafkees" (a.k.a. "Birdbrain") (from a reading in 1983, from Allen's European tour, recorded that year in Amsterdam) - (for earlier (alternativ...
Allen Ginsberg, goaded on at the beginning there by a typically giddy Simon Vinkenoog, reads "Mafkees" (a.k.a. "Birdbrain") (from a reading in 1983, from Allen's European tour, recorded that year in Amsterdam) - (for earlier (alternative) versions of this "Ginsberg minor classic", see our previous postings - here and here) .This recording includes, also, a brief segment from a Dutch interview - wherein Allen, bemused and non-plussed, sweetly chastises the hapless interviewerInterviewer: In the last years, I think, the idea of young poets to make music and read poetry at the same time is being not only successful, but accepted in a certain way..AG: Yeah. I've done that. I did.. tried that myself with this, with "Birdbrain" [Allen displays the cover of the 45 rpm recording that he made of the song "Birdbrain" with The Glu-ons] This is a little record of a poem originally written as a poem and then set to new-wave music by a local garage band in Denver, Colorado, where I work at Naropa Institute [now Naropa University]. So there's a band that's around Naropa Instiute sometimes. So I worked with them. You wanna hear that? sometime? ok - We'll put it on. It's on here [points to small portable tape-recorder] - same thing, [shows record-sleeve again] - "Birdbrain" on here - can you listen..? with your little machinery? [Interviewer puts on head-phones and starts listening]AG: You're not going to sit there and listen while we're rolling the camera are you? ..Are you going to waste all that film? - [incredulous] - Are you gonna waste all that film? - Well.. Mafkees! Jack Kerouac Letters For Sale - A significant trove of (Jack) Kerouac correspondence - "59 letters and postcards" (stretching from 1947 to 1969), part (only part?) of his correspondence with Columbia college-buddy, Ed White, is going on sale at the high-end Manhattan book-dealer, Glenn Horowitz - asking-price $1.25 million dollars! - Yes, you heard that right, $1.25 million dollars! (If you had any lingering doubts about the commodification of "the Beats", by the "baby boomers" - see the ironically-named Robert Frank (sic) discussing it on CNBC (business television) here!) - "The number of Kerouac-loving millionaires in America is probably a very small demographic" - Sheesh!) [Peter Orlovsky Notebook pages (from Rolling Thunder Notebook, October 29, 1975]From private collections to public collections - Archival News - Peter Orlovsky's Archive, it has just been announced, has been officially acquired by the repository of repositories, the Harry Ransom Center in Austin at the University of Texas - "More than 1,600 letters written to Orlovsky and/or Ginsberg, including 165 letters written by Ginsberg himself..", also "more than 2,650 photos taken by or of Orlovsky, documenting the years between 1970 and 2010". "Also included are eight reel-to-reel tapes from the 1960's and more than 120 audiocassettes made by Orlovsky during the 1970's and the 1980's, some recording conversations with Ginsberg". 140 notebooks/journals are also included (see sample pages above). "The materials will be available once processed and cataloged". HRC Humanities Coordinator, Gregory Curtis has already published (in The Daily Beast) research arising from these papers - "The Mystery of the Allen Ginsberg-Diana Trilling Feud" (Peter's blithe invite to his book-launch for Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs, eliciting a chiding for Allen - "one short note... reveals over 30 years of animosity" - Allen felt moved to write an exasperated 2,000-word letter in response!) A new Paul Bowles movie (a new Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles movie) opening (in the US) this summer - Daniel Young's long-time-in-the-making documentary - Paul Bowles: The Cage Door is Always Open. The official trailer for the movie is now available and may be viewed here(and a review by Deborah Young (sic - no relation!) in The Hollywood Reporter may be read here)(an additional review (by Alan Mattli) may be read
5 days ago
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 824 4700 University Health Network 39 9 5771 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"...
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 824 4700 University Health Network 39 9 5771 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} ["Stars" - 1926 - oil painting by Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)] Ted Berrigan: Well, when you say “I miss you like.., I miss you like.., I miss you like…” and each time after “like”, what you list, what you say, is something missing that..Student: ..is good.TB: ..that would be very similar in feeling to the way that you feel as you miss the other person.Student ..but each one a different aspect of itTB: Yeah, and each one a different.. and see how far out you can go, actually, yet still be incredibly accurate so that each time the person reading it comes across one of those things, they can say, “Gee, I know that feeling, and yet I wouldn’t have thought to put it in”. You know, you don’t want to say, ”I miss you like I would miss my doggy, if he were not in the room right now”, you know? Well, that’s really boring, but, if you had a.. if you happened to have an alligator for a pet, and “I miss you, I miss you like I miss my alligator”, that’s actually a little more interesting, but I’d like to make it more transmit-able and finer than that, I mean, I assume you can rewrite the poem and do a better job with it, but I don’t think.. I think it’s going much too far to take out “you”, and I also think it’s going much too far to take out “you like” with “saliva” [Ted is continuing his debate here with Allen – see here and here] – “I miss you like saliva” – that’s actually fairly interesting – “I miss you like saliva” – except I really don’t know what it means. I miss you like saliva misses you? – missing you in that way? – that’s a tad bizarre. I mean, (it’s better to be) simplistic and ordinary.AG: RightTB: “I miss you like saliva”, you know. I mean, what does… that simply doesn’t mean anything at allAG: My compromise, “I miss you saliva dirt under my nails” TB: Yeah, what you’ve done is try and make some good lines out of some weird ones.AG: Right.TB: You made some good weird ones out of some weird weird ones. The way you’ve done (in this other line).AG: Which one?TB: When you were talking about “meditation knee”. I mean that’s the kind of (move you can make)AG: Well, we’ll get whatever good example(s) we can out of it… One I kind of liked was a really complicated.. it’s really long – “I miss you like the dead Dutch Elm outside on the front lawn, like the sprinkler shooting across the green lawn. You shoot in me like that, like the dirty kitchen here, the dishes in the sink, the phone ringing, the subscription magazines that the mailman brings” – That’s an awful lot of things that jump around in every direction. I changed it to “I miss you dead Dutch Elm front lawn sprinkler shooting across the green”. Then I started a new line – “You shoot in me like that dirty kitchen here, sink dishes, phone ringing, mailman bringing subscription magazines”. What I did was just boil it down to the main elements and made a funny kind of syntactical pun with them.Student: When you’re doing that, bringing it down into the main elements, in some way, you’re taking away a vowel-sound modulation that is quite..(central) which is part of the way of that kind of writingAG: YeahStudent: The “like” (the) “you” is picked up in vowel sounds..AG: YesStudent:
6 days ago
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 494 2818 University Health Network 23 5 3460 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"...
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 494 2818 University Health Network 23 5 3460 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} AG: Er.. (Well), unbeknownst to everybody - separately - every time anyone’s been giving me poems, I’ve been doing this to them [editing them], to about half, or a third, of the class, at least...Student: Allen, how would you have closed the spacing (to just tie it in to what you were doing before)? How would you take a long line like that? What would you do with the spacing?AG: Oh no, this is another... this is an example of long line, like Smart, like Whitman, like Howl.Student: So you would have just left it?AG: Yeah, I left the line there. No, I would just condense the line. I would collapse the line and condense it down to its elements, or to the elements that I thought were necessary, and I would judge that by what is pictorially visible and necessary for the sense. At some point or other in the poem I figured (that) she ["Anita", the poet] wasn’t really missing her boyfriend, anyway. She was making a list of things she was familiar with, and really dug and missed, and was nostalgic about. I think that was one of the...Student: No.AG: Well, ok, no. Student: If you went so far as to cross out the “you”, the “you” and “like”, all that – I’m not necessarily agreeing with all this – reading (only) what you think are the valid elements...AG: The active elementsStudent: …okay, why didn’t you cross out the “I”?AG: Where?Student: “I”. There’s still a whole “I”.AG: Okay, the second consideration (now the lesson continues for a second), the second consideration is how you would say it, if you were talking more or less normally, as speech. Now you might say “Miss you, saliva”, or you might say, “I miss you saliva”. So it depends how you want it as spoken speech…I propose that a basic guiding consideration for arranging the lines is that you can speak them with some kind of common sense. Even if you’re doing Surrealist verse, you’ve still got to bear in mind what it all sounds like when spoken, and because the imagery is so fantastical, it’s really necessary to keep…One way of writing is keeping within the bounds of ordinary tongue mouthing - “Miss you” would also be vernacular.Student: Now, I.. the reason I wouldn’t put “Miss you” instead of “I miss you” is because, I feel it would be (personal intrusion) crossing out all that, who (are) you handing it over to? (who is the poem addressed to?)AG: Actually, it’s complicated. The poem’s so long. We did get “Brett”, her boyfriend, in (the title) – “Letter to Brett in Taos”Student: I think those.. maybe those human links, you know.. the “miss you like”” is.. (in this case) really valid - Okay, but maybe that’s a separate point. AG: I’ll tell you, when the whole poem goes on, you get sick of the “miss you like”. It’s sort of unnecessary after the poem goes on. I’ll read the whole thing in the original again if you want (to prove it).Students: No!AG: No? But it does get.. One of the problems was “I miss you like, I miss you like”, and, after a while, it sounded... drippy.Ted Berrigan: But “Anita” (the poet) wouldn’t give imprecise (memory)?AG: If you had an accurate mind, you wouldn’t.Ted Berrigan: (And I think one aspires to) a higher degree of accuracy as to what comes after “like”, in r
7 days ago
Great news! hot news! - the new Ginsberg Recordings release! - Wichita Vortex Sutra! - This is a fully digitalized re-issued masterpiece (recognized at the time as, "one of Ginsberg's finest moments as a poet and certainly his finest an...
Great news! hot news! - the new Ginsberg Recordings release! - Wichita Vortex Sutra! - This is a fully digitalized re-issued masterpiece (recognized at the time as, "one of Ginsberg's finest moments as a poet and certainly his finest and most compelling recording"). The poem itself dates from 1966 (an epic chronicle of the Imagination and of American consciousness at the height of the Vietnam War). This particular production of the work was recorded, significantly, later, at the St Marks Poetry Project in New York, with a stellar group of musical collaborators including Philip Glass, Elliott Sharp, Lenny Kaye, Marc Ribot, Arto Lindsay, Steve Shelley, Christian Marclay and Hal Willner (amongst others).Of the 2004 Artemis CD recording, Allmusic.com wrote - "Of all of Ginsberg's recordings this one works especially well, partly because the performance of this work is complete and the musicians understand their role in painting the poet's words, and partly because of Ginsberg's willingness to serve the language. This works in spades, it flows, it has drama and humor and pathos and poignancy, and it is drenched in a terrible kind of beauty". Ginsberg Recordings remarkable project, digitalizing and releasing (as well as re-releasing) the extraordinary range of Allen's recorded work continues.
8 days ago
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 933 5323 University Health Network 44 10 6537 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal...
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 933 5323 University Health Network 44 10 6537 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} [Ted Berrigan and Allen Ginsberg by Paul Killebrew via Poetry Foundation] Ted Berrigan: I’m in favor of the addition of as many words as possible in a poem…AG: Oh, God, I’m in favor of taking out as many words as possible!TB: It’s just to see if you can get away with it. It has to be good.AG: Oh well, if you’re conscious of seeing what you can get away with, that’s another matter, but here, I think, it was the first attempt at writing a “list poem”, (in which the “you” and “like” was unnecessary. I thought so, structurally. We can argue about it if you want). But, anyway, what I want is for everybody to see what happens when you begin condensing and getting into a little Surrealist electric, instead of sticking with slower, more pedestrian syntax.TB: What happens is you get (perhaps, maybe, further away from the original)AG: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I think, in this case, (though) we’ve actually got, probably much (most) of the original intention of the poem. It’s a subtle matter. I don’t know if we want to get into it.Student: Well?AG: (So) what did we decide?Student: I think we.. well, what I felt, personally, is that we made it (kept it) your (the original) poemAG: Yeah, definitely.TB: Yeah, AG: But, (see,) that’s the only thing I can teach. That was my excuse. That’s the only thing I could teach was …how to write poetry. And so I was actually aborting the poem, but actually (at the same time) giving a clear illustration of my thinking process. TB: Al, could you read those first three lines again, actually?AG: The original?TB: YeahAG: “I miss you like sliced bread, like peach kafir, like a Florentine at a French bakery”TB: Okay, hold it there,AG: “I miss…” okayTB: If I were teaching that, I would have suggested to cut everything else.AG: Like what?TB: After that, before – everything!AG: That’s a possibility.TB: Those lines are really beautiful, I think, and it’s also..AG: Yeah but (then) the next line is, “I miss you like saliva, like dirt under my nails, like gums bleeding, like a fly on…”TB: Ah, I don’t want to hear about all of those horrible things!AG: Okay, So I’m saying it (in a) way (that) you can hear about it - “I miss you like saliva, like dirt under my nails, like gums bleeding, like a fly on meditation knee..”TB: That part’s very nice. That part’s very nice – “Fly on meditation knee”. That’s a kind of transitional cut that can be done that’s very terrific.Student: “I miss saliva”,”I miss you like saliva”.. TB: Man, I’m telling you “I miss you like saliva” changed to “I miss saliva” really seems like..(well, what’s the point?)AG: Yo! - “I miss saliva dirt under my fingernails”. There isn’t actually very much difference there, if you think on it - “I miss you like saliva, like dirt under my nails, my gums bleeding”Student: No, that’s not the idea.AG: Huh?Student: I would miss saliva if I didn’t have it. AG: Well I’m saying “I miss you saliva”. I miss you like saliva. So “I miss you saliva”. What’s different? TB (to “Anita”): But you’re not saying “I miss you saliva” – that’s the whole point.Student: You’ve been reading “I miss saliva” and leaving out the “like”, but up there (on the blackboard) you wrote “I miss you sa
8 days ago
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 705 4024 University Health Network 33 8 4941 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"...
Normal.dotm 0 0 1 705 4024 University Health Network 33 8 4941 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} AG: (to Student) – Anita (sic) – do you have your poem?Student: Anita?AG: We were working on a poem before today, that was a long-lined poem, somewhat like this, in this form. Thanks. It’s a similar form, but now what I wanted to get into was some of the techniques of the form, or some of the technology of it, or, partly, the rhythm in this form, and how it is done most succinctly by me, or, after the examples of (Guillaume) Apollinaire, who also wrote a long-lined poem, in French, and Walt Whitman (and before that Christopher) Smart). Twentieth-century French Surrealists have (also) used a long-line form. (And) It was something that I’ve seen in people’s work here (at Naropa), which I’d like to exemplify, by showing you what we did with that poem this afternoon.It’s called “Letter to Brett in Taos”“I miss you like sliced bread, like peach kafir, like a Florentine at a French bakery. I miss you like saliva, like dirt under my nails, like gums bleeding, like a fly on my knee in meditation, like shitting into two gallons of water and then flushing it. I miss you like sitting on the second floor of this house with paved streets outside watching it hail, beat, scram all over the place. I miss you like the dead Dutch Elm outside on the front lawn, like the sprinkler shooting across the green lawn. You shoot in me like that, like the dirty kitchen here, the dishes in the sink, the phone ringing, the subscription magazines that the mailman brings. I miss you like these raindrops falling in mud puddles on the sidewalk, rain seeping into the wet grass ground, my knees crossed, my zafu, my heavy sleep.”That’s the first section. Then begins another section“Echoes your name the rain on the blue mailbox, the rainwater running down the curb, the rain is warm on my bare feet, the flash of lightning cut, seen through a moment and is gone. Echoes your name, love, in the moving avocado leaf by the window, break overhead the thunder, your name, love, slow biker, coast downhill, your sound in the pedals, in the chill breeze through the window. Clash, thunder rumbles over it all, car motor in street starts up, thunder reminds me the echo of head, I smell the smell of you on my pillow, the echo of your mind rumbling through the distance between us. Rain fills the gutter here, my ears hear thunder over the next hill, next buttock, it rumbles over there. Here we are, rain filling our gutters, sounds filling our rooms, you are in this all, calling from the next hill, running down the gutter, gutter rain, rain gutting our gutter, running down the city street fast, water catches a glimpse off the chrome from the VW, fast, water catches leaves, Maple, Ash leaves, catch fly fast down the gutter, you are in this, love, turn penny over in my pocket, all sides of you are in this. I address this to you, love, music sound fills your room, thoughts wave out in echoes as far as the adobe walls and I know the limits. I am in Boulder, you are in Taos, the rain is echoing nothing so much as itself. I miss you like that.”Well, I was interested in the form because I’m used to that form and I’ve worked in it, worked with it. But also, I thought this was really long-winded
9 days ago