Expansive Poetics - 69 - (More Khlebnikov 3)

May 20, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Robert Creeley's Birthday

≪ Previous: Expansive Poetics - 68 (More Khlebnikov - 2)

$

0

0

[Velimir Khlebnikov, aged 30]

AG: Let's see what else we've got. There was one [by Velimir Khlebnikov] that reminded me a lot of Gregory (Corso) (the reason I said some cross between Gregory Corso and (Peter) Orlovsky is the certain strange combination of phrasing that's similar) called "The Lone Performer" [ОДИНОКИЙ ЛИЦЕДЕЙ]. The first line mentions Tsarskoye Selo [Царским Селом] now Pushkin], which is a little town outside of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) where there was a private school (where (Anna) Akhmatova, his friend, grew up, actually, and went to school)..and which is always referred to.. it's outside of Leningrad, and it's a little.. it's where the Tsar had, I think, a summer palace (I'm not sure, I think it's the summer palace or some special garden or retreat (a summer retreat) outside of St Petersburg, now Leningrad [now St Petersburg again - sic] - Tsarskoye Selo. And there are a lot of poems by Akhmatova relating or referring back to that early era. I think others, also, were familiar with that. Of course, (Alexander) Pushkin grew up there too. So it's famous in Russian literature because Pushkin wrote some very famous poems about it. - [Allen begins reading Khlebnikov's  "The Lone Performer"] -  "And while above Tsarskoye Selo/Akhmatova's song and tears were pouring.." [ И пока над Царским Селом
Лилось пенье и слезы…] "I understood that I was seen by none/That one must sow.." -  (S-O-W - like you sow seed) - "That one must sow the eyes/That the eye-sower must go!" - ["Я понял, что я никем не видим,/Что нужно сеять очи,/Что должен сеятель очей идти!"] (that phrase, "..one must sow the eyes/.. the eye-sower must go!", reminded me of Gregory's kind of combination of words - "the eye-sower" 

Student: "Star-screwer" [the epitaph to Allen's Kaddish is a quote from Corso - "Be a Star-screwer"] 

AG: Hmm

Student; "Star-screwer"

AG: Yeah, well there's that little phrase of Gregory's - to be a "star-screwer". But, "eye-sounds". He has a phrase of describing his own poetry as "eye sounds", his method.

So, you see, a funny genius, this guy (Khlebnikov). And his photograph is a turn-on, because once you see his photograph you suddenly recognize who he is - a big idiot with a  basket on his head!. You might pass that around [Allen passes around his book] - There are a couple of photographs of him in there with his girlfriend. He looks like the simpleton that you'd kn0w he'd be.


[Vladimir Khlebnikov with a friend, "the daughter of a wine-merchant", 1912]

Nineteen twenty-two. A sound poem called "Zangezi" (done on the root in Russian of a root "mind" - "ум" - do you know what is "mind" in Russian? -  "mind"?

Student: "ум"

AG: "ум"?

Student: "ум"

AG:  "ум" - So this is taking that root and using conventional  and unconventional prefixes and suffixes (that is, little phrases, little syllables before and after") - [Allen reads from the translator's introdction to the poem] - 'The translation below leaves the resulting neologisms in the original and converts the standard Russian words into English.". then Khlebnikov gives a little dictionary of all these funny words. We'll just read it straight. 

[Allen begins to read (from "Zangezi")] - 

                
               I

Goum.

Oum

Uum
Paum.
Soum of me. 

And of those I don't know.

Moum. 

Boum.  

Laum.
Cheum.
Bom!

Bim Bam!

II

Proum 

Praum 

Prium 

Nium 

Veum 

Roum  

Zaum

Vyum

Voum

Boum

Byum

Bom!

Help, bell ringers, I'm tired.

III

Doum. 

Daum. 

Mium. 

Raum. 

Khoum. 

Khaum. 

Bang the glad tidings of the mind!

Here's the bell and the rope.

IV

Suum.

Izum.

Neum.

Naum.

Dvuum.  

Treum. 

Deum. 

Bom!

Zoum. 

Koum.

Soum.

Poum.

Glaum.

Raum.

Noum.

Nuum.

Vyum

Bom! bom, bom!

It's the big booming bell of the mind.

Diving sounds flying down from above

at the summons of men.

Beautiful is the tolling of the mind.

Beautiful are its pure sounds.

January 16, 1922. 

Then he has little translations. But if you get the.. actually, you hyper-ventilate if you pronounce that properly. It gives a tingling in the spine. 

Another one of that same time - "Hard Talk" (1919-21)

Student: A lot of those sounds sound like Latin..
AG: Yeah
Student: Just by accident
AG: "Suum Izum"?  "Deum", yes..is that plural..?
Student: "God", right?
AG: But I mean - "-eum" is a plural..is the third-person plural in Latin conjugation?
Student - "sum" is first person (singular) - "sum ego"..
AG: And what would be..
Student:  I am.. that's "sum" 
AG: Okay
Student:  And "deum".. 

Allen reads Khlebnikov's "Hard Talk" -

AG:  “Hard Talk” -  “Hard Talk – Here, take a swat in the teeth/My kiss./ More crimson,/More scarlet,/Like a rough rowan,/Sputtered-0ut, sputter,/Crimson red shaft,/Your cherry blossoms/Your bashed-in lips./And the air in a scream.” – (That’s very Corso-esque (or Corso’s very Khlebnikovesque in that) – “Your bashed-in lips./And the air in a scream.”..” Here, take a swat in the teeth/My kiss.” -  “Hard Talk” – And the title – “Hard Talk” – That really is hard talk.

What else have we got of his to amuse ourselves with?

Oh, I’m sorry, with that  “Goum’/Oum/Umm, there was a prefatory five lines – 

“Quiet! Quiet! He will speak/ Zangezi: Ring the glad tidings of the mind! /Sound the tocsin of reason, the big bell of the/mind: All the different shades of the brain will/ pass before you in a review of all kinds of/reason. Now! Everyone sing after me… “
I - Goum/Oum/Uum.." [And so forth.. That was the prefatory note].

[Audio for the above may be heard here starting at approximately ten minutes in and concluding at approximately seventeen-and-a-half minutes in] 

---

Robert Creeley's Birthday

May 21, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: More Khlebnikov - 4 (Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe)

≪ Previous: Expansive Poetics - 69 - (More Khlebnikov 3)

$

0

0

                       [Robert Creeley in Maine, August 2004 - Photograph by Gloria Graham]

Robert Creeley's birthday today. Here's some more selections from the recently-published Selected Letters of Robert Creeley




Feb 6 1957, Albuquerque, New Mexico -  "Dear Allen, I'm ashamed to say, nothing much at all has been the matter, i.e. I've wanted to and have thought to write often - and have had you and Jack (Kerouac) and Peter (Orlovsky) much in mind if that is not pompous to say. Over the time I had off at Xmas, I went to Mexico,and caught up with Mitch & Dennie [Mitchell Goodman and Denise Levertov] in Barra de Navidad (on the coast), and had at least some time with them, and so, as well, heard about your visit very happily. I wish somehow I might have been there (too)….

September 7 1959, Guatemala - "Dear Allen, We made it, like they say, and glad to hear you did likewise. So that's that. It was a very good ride back with you and the chance to talk and all I'd been hoping to have . There is no one that makes more sense of the politics of the so-called scene than yourself , and likewise I think what you're making of the unresolved areas of communications and control, etc, comes in very usefully.  i/e. when is a man a sandwich, if you ask him to, and so on.  That stroboscope image still hangs in my head, like who controls rhythm controls, as (Charles ) Olson used to quote somebody or other.(Nirvana, the great mystic, etc.). Reading that part of "Kaddish" inBig Table #2, hearing it again on the tape-recorder (and I'll send shortly a tape of poems. etc.) , it makes it thicker, denser, more variable , than heretofore ("Howl"). the "message", Norbert Wiener style is registered in a wider range of "frequency" - it anticipates and leads, giving the reader less area to "reject" in, etc, etc. Ah well! The "feed back" of your own terms, as they occur, declared in the poem, i.e, as you, say, get them, add to the interest likewise. That way I read (William) Burroughs as coming to "terms" in his writing, coming to not so much abstracts of the so-called experience , but patterns that amend and fix it. He uses his mind as a way-out IBM machine, seeing what kind of change the thing can take - because take it must, etc. Or else it can't matter. That humor of his is fatal (mortal) as is all same - only people who really want to live forever, or who don't get the joke, so to speak, never laugh. I am very damned taken by everything of his which I read…

December 24, 1959, Guatemala - (to Charles Olson) -  "..I want to..put Allen G, for one, in the context I read him, i.e not in the popular image, though god knows that's a part also - but qua writing (which, for me, is of course the continual seepage, lost, of what now occurs - that the attitude starts too far back of the poem which is then meant to contain it. And yet Allen clearly, as (William Carlos) Williams said, "thinks with the poem. In that lies his thought. And that is the profundity, etc. I.e, the poet, the poet, the poet, etc)…

March 16, 1960, Guatemala - (to William Carlos Williams) - "…the means wherewith to control the line, and invent upon its nature "fit occasion", like they say…Talking last summer with Allen Ginsberg, I find the same concerns in him - and in (the) opening section of "Kaddish", there seems a much more tangible (certainly closer and more determined) sense of measure…Ginsberg is a very helpful friend, in many ways, and not least in the range of line he is attempting , no matter just now with what success, because the very width of the divergence attempted seems to me useful…" 

July 16, 1964, Placitas, New Mexico - (to Alexander Trocchi) - "..I much respect Allen Ginsberg's contemporary activity in politics - ..very local, and making, at base, an active "fantasy" of the content proposed by institutions as presidents etc…"

June 2, 1965, Placitas, New Mexico - "Dear Allen, We saw a note in NY Times about your being crownedKing of May, like they say, in Prague - which seems a lovely triumph. Bobbie (Creeley - Bobbie Louise Hawkins) made a collage of spritely cherubims dancing about it, so you are eternal.. Too, very very happy that you got the Guggenheim. That's progress for them clearly, and I hope it serves you to some use you've wanted...

November 1, 1975, Buffalo - "Dear Allen, That was such a happy evening down there! Your apartment is charming! And your generous intro to myself was so sweet, truly. Thanks.
Elsewhere sad to miss meeting Bob Dylan (my hero!) - I thought Jim Brodeywas putting me on! Apparently Bill Katz thought it was [just] someone playing a record - etc. It's a hard life.."

January 1 1992, Buffalo - "Dear Allen, A very Happy New Year, or else we speak to God personally. I just saw the enclosed in our local paper last night and since the date you are noted as taking ill is December 21, the solstice no less (and [my daughter] Hannah's birthday), I've got to presume the information about you recuperating in Cooperstown, etc, is accurate. Remember you up past two hustling cash for Steve Lacy's company in Boulder, and then up at five to say goodbye to me so generously, I must think it's time to be simply easier on yourself  and/or more thoughtful as to what you need. Well that you know, but (as like smoking which I seem finally to have managed to stop after getting pneumonia this summer about a week after seeing you) I guess it has to be work to do in fact do it. Since you are that company most dear to my own ears and heart, do be provident and not simply providence itself. I wish I could see you much more often, but you are certainly always in mind no matter. Onward!…

and (out of sequence) here's a "failed" poem (from 1963) to Bob from Allen ("trying to approximate your style, the middle stanza almost makes it no? but the last line sing-songs bad") - "B.C. " I was waiting for Eternals/superimposed on blue sky/and apartment building walls/I was in 15 years before/come back through future doors./I can't wait forever,/I didn't and came back here/by myself feeling sure/lost in this University/with other males and females/looking in Creeley's like eye,/and we all told similar tales" - Creeley's response - "... Allen - who really I love very much.. this side of him.. is so little recognized.. the way he tries, and studies, and thinks - and all the shyness therein".
Allen actually managed to essay a more successful "Creeley poem" ten years later - "For Creeley's Ear" - "the whole/ weight of/ everything/ too much/ my heart in/ the subway/ pounding/ subtly/ head ache/from smoking/dizzy/a moment/riding/ uptown to see/Karmapa/Buddha tonite". 

 Here's (here in its entirety) the glorious Harvard event, celebrating the publication of TheSelected Letters .. - The Creeley Collective

 

Here's the event (February 2014)  celebrating the bequest of his library to the University of  Notre Dame's Hesburgh Library. Penelope Creeley, Steve Clay and Kaplan Harris are among the speakers. Penelope Creeley's wonderful memoir, Robert and Books (we've mentioned it before here), should,  by the way, on no account be missed.

Reviews of the Selected Lettershere, here and here. 

Need we say anything of James Campbell's misplaced observations on Creeley's "peculiar idolect" in the TLS

For Creeley, the poet, celebrate the birth today with this April 2000 reading and discussion, expertly recorded and presented by the Kelly Writers House over at the University of Pennsyvania.

(Their PennSound page for Robert Creeley is here)

For a glimpse of Creeley, the astute critic, see here (musings on his fellow New Englander,Emily Dickinson - (transcription by Graham Foust))



The entire Collected Essays are on line 

Earlier Allen Ginsberg Project postings may be accessed hereand here and here     

More Khlebnikov - 4 (Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe)

May 22, 2014, 4:00 am

≫ Next: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 177

≪ Previous: Robert Creeley's Birthday

$

0

0

[Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922)]

AG: What else might we find here [in this Khlebnikov book]. Well, that's it for the moment, I think. I had some others that.. I'll need the book back if you can pass it around back. The theory of some of the sound ideas was to fuse the Slavic words together (as his commentators have noted) and try to make a universal language, which was what he was interested in. So he was interested in universal mind, universal language, poets as universal legislators of the world, [editorial note - Allen is alluding here to Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous phrase at the conclusion of his "Defence of Poetry" (1821) - "Poets are the unacknowledged legistators of the world"], world collaboration of intellectuals and poets, 
some invented language.  
Actually, if you could pass the book back to me, I wanted to check out some of his manifestos on world leadership. Could I get the book?  I'll pass it back later. There are a couple of rare things in here - in his theories and visions and proposals - let's see if I can find them - "Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe" [ "ВОЗЗВАНИЕ ПРЕДСЕДАТЕЛЕЙ ЗЕМНОГО ШАРА"] - that was his project. Let's see what we've got here.. This would be the equivalent, I guess..  What year is this now? Probably (19)21 again. Let me check it out. I'll have to find out later. [Editorial note - the poem was actually composed in 1917]

[Allen reads  Khlebnikov's "Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe"] - 

"Only we, twisting your three years of war/into one swirl of the terrible trumpet.." [ "Только мы, свернув ваши три года войны "] - (I guess, perhaps, this would be during  World War I) - "Only we, twisting your three years of war/intoone swirl of the terrible trumpet/ Sing and shout, sing and shout,/ Drunken with a charm of the truth,/ That the government of the Terrestrial Globe/ Has come into existence./ It is we./ Only we have fixed to our foreheads/ The wild laurels of the governers of the Terrestrial Globe./ Implacable in our sunburned cruelty,/ Mounting the slab of the right of seizure,/ Rising high the standard of time,/ We fire the moist clays of mankind/ Into jugs and pitchers of time./ We initiate the hunt for people's souls,/ We howl through the gray sea horns,/ We call home the human flocks./ Ego-e! Who's with us?/ Who's our comrade and friend?/ Ego-e! Who's behind us?/ Thus we dance, the shepherds of the people/ And mankind playing on bagpipes./ Evo-e..." - (an old Greek cry [the cry of the Bacchae]) -  "..Who else?/ Evo-ee. What next?/ Only we, mounting the slab/ Of ourselves and our names/ Amid the sea of your vicious eye-pupils,/ Intersected by the hunger of the gallows/ And distorted by the horror of immiment death/ Intend by the surf of the human howl/ To name and acclaim ourselves henceforth/ The Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe. What snots, some will say./ "No, they're saints", others will object./ But we shall smile like gods/ And point a finger at the sun/ Drag it about on a string for dogs,/ Hang it up on the words -  Equality, Freedom, Fraternity,/ Judge it by your jury of jugglers/ On the charge that once/ On the threshold of a very smileful spring/ It instilled in us these beautiful thoughts,/ These words, gave us/ These angry stares./ It is the guilty one./ For we enact the solar whisper/ When we crash through to you as the four plenipotentiaries of its ordinances,/ Its strict mandates./ Corpulent crowds of humanity/Will trail along the tracks /Which we have left behind./ London, Paris and Chicago/In their appreciation/ Will change their names to ours/But we shall forgive them their folly.." - (so the tone is very similar to the Dadaist Manifesto) - "..This is the distant future./ But meanwhile, mothers,/ Bear away your children/ Should a state appear anywhere./ Youngsters hustle away and hide in caves/ And in the depths of the sea/Should you see a state anywhere. Girls and those who can't stand the smell of the dead,/ Fall in a swoon at the very word "borders"/They smell of corpses./For every chopping block/ Was once a good pine tree./ A curly pine./ The block is only bad because/ It's used to chop people's heads off./ So, dear state,/ You are a very nice word from a dream./ There are ten sounds in the word -/ Much comfort and much freshness,/ You grew up in a forest of words:  Ashtray..." -  ("State.. You grew up, state, you were a very fine word, you grew up in a forest of words.. [Allen continues] - )  "..match, cigarette butt./An equal among equals -/ But why, state, do you feed on people?/ Why has the fatherland become a cannibal/ And the motherland his wife?/ Hey!  Listen!/ In the name of all mankind/ We offer to negotiate/ With the states of the past./ If you, o states, are splendid,/As you love to say of yourselves/ And you force your servants/ To say of you,/ Then why this food of the gods?/ Why do we crunch people in your maws,/Between your incisors and molars?/  Listen, states of space,/ For three years already/ You have pretended/That mankind is only a pastry,/ A cookie, melting in your mouth./ But what if the cookie jumps like a razor and says/ "Mommy!"?/ What if we are sprinkled on it/ Like poison?/ Henceforth we order that the words "By the grace of God"/be changed to "By the grace of Fiji"./ Is it decent for the Lord Terrestrial Globe/ (Long may his will be done)/ To encourage communal cannibalism/ Within the confines of himself?/And is it not the height of servility/ On the part of the people, those of the state, the eaters / To defend their supreme Eater?/ Listen! Even pismires/ Squirt formic acid on the tongues of bears.."- ("pismire"'s an ant) - ".."If there should be an objection/ to the state or space is not subject to judgment,/As a lawful communal person,/ May we not object that man himself/ Is also a bimanous state/ Of blood corpuscles and is also communal?/  If the states be truly bad,/ Then who among us will lift a finger/ To prolong their dreaming/ Under the blanket forever/. You are dissatisfied,/O states and their governments,/ You chatter your teeth in advanced warning/ And cut capers. But so what!/ We are the higher power/ And can always answer, "The revolt of states,/ The revolt of slaves, /With a well-aimed missive."/ Standing on the deck of the word "superstate of the star",/And needing no cane in this hour of rolling/ We ask which is higher:/ We by virtue of the right to revolt/ And incontestable in our primacy,/Protected by the laws of patents/ In declaring ourselves the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe,/ Or you,yourgovernments,/Of the separate countries of the past,/ These workaday remnants by the slaughterhouses/ Of the bipedal bulls, with whose/ Cadaverous moisture you are smeared?/ As regards us, the leaders of mankind,/ Which we constructed according to the rules of rays/ With the aid of equalizations of fate,/ We reject the gentlemen/ Who name themselves governors, states, and other book publishers/ And commercial houses of War & Co.,/ Who have placed the mills of dear prosperity/ Under the now three-year-old waterfall/ Of your beer in our blood,/ Withthe defenselessly red wave./ We see the states falling on their sword/ In despair that we have come….." - [(and) it ends] - ".And so the battle/ of the great words has been hurled./ The government of the Terrestrial Globe./ The sky-blue banner of the firmament/Intersected by a red flash of lightning,/ A banner of windy dawns, morning suns,/ Is raised and flaps above the earth./ There you have it, my friends!/, the government of the Terrestrial Globe" 



[Только мы, свернув ваши три года войны/ В один завиток грозной трубы,/ Поем и кричим, поем и кричим,/ Пьяные прелестью той истины,/ Что Правительство земного шара/ Уже существует./ Оно — Мы/ Только мы нацепили на свои лбы/ Дикие венки Правителей земного шара./ Неумолимые в своей загорелой жестокости,/ Встав на глыбу захватного права,/ Подымая прапор времени,/ Мы — обжигатели сырых глин человечества/ В кувшины времени и балакири,/ Мы — зачинатели охоты за душами людей,/ Воем в седые морские рога,/ Скликаем людские стада —/ Эго-э! Кто с нами?/ Кто нам товарищ и друг?/ Эго-э! Кто за нами?/Так пляшем мы, пастухи людей и/ Человечества, играя на волынке./ Эво-э! Кто больше?/ Эво-э! Кто дальше?/ Только мы, встав на глыбу/Себя и своих имен,/ Хотим среди моря ваших злобных зрачков,/ Пересеченных голодом виселиц/И искаженных предсмертным ужасом,/ Около прибоя людского воя,/ Назвать и впредь величать себя/ Председателями земного шара./ Какие наглецы — скажут некоторые,/ Нет, они святые, возразят другие./ Но мы улыбнемся, как боги,/ И покажем рукою на Солнце./ Поволоките его на веревке для собак,/ Повесьте его на словах:/ Равенство, братство, свобода,/ Судите его вашим судом судомоек/ За то, что в преддверьях/ Очень улыбчивой весны/ Оно вложило в нас эти красивые мысли,/ Эти слова и дало/ Эти гневные взоры./ Виновник — Оно./ Ведь мы исполняем солнечный шепот,/ Когда врываемся к вам, как/ Главноуполномоченные его приказов,/Ero строгих велений./Жирные толпы человечества/ Протянутся по нашим следам,/Где мы прошли.  / Лондон, Париж и Чикаго/ Из благодарности заменят свои/ Имена нашими./ Но мы простим им их глупость/. Это дальнее будущее,/ А пока, матери,/ Уносите своих детей,/ Если покажется где-нибудь государство./ Юноши, скачите и прячьтесь в пещеры/ И в глубь моря,/ Если увидите где-нибудь государство./ Девушки и те, кто не выносит запаха мертвых,/ Падайте в обморок при слове «границы»/ Они пахнут трупами./ Ведь каждая плаха была когда-то/ Хорошим сосновым деревом,/ Кудрявой сосной./ Плаха плоха только тем,/Что на ней рубят головы людям./ Так, государство, и ты — /Очень хорошее слово со сна —/ В нем есть 11 звуков,/ Много удобства и свежести,/Ты росло в лесу слов:/ Пепельница, спичка, окурок,/ Равный меж равными./ Но зачем оно кормится людьми?/ Зачем отечество стало людоедом,/ А родина его женой?/ Эй! Слушайте!/ Вот мы от имени всего человечества/ Обращаемся с переговорами/ К государствам прошлого:/ Если вы, о государства, прекрасны,/ Как вы любите сами о себе рассказывать/ И заставляете рассказывать о себе/ Своих слуг,/ То зачем эта пища богов?/ Зачем мы, люди, трещим у вас на челюстях/ Между клыками и коренными зубами?/ Слушайте, государства пространств,/ Ведь вот уже три года/ Вы делали вид,/ Что человечество — только пирожное,/ Сладкий сухарь, тающий у вас во рту; /А если сухарь запрыгает бритвой и скажет: мамочка!/ Если его посыпать нами,/ Как ядом?/ Отныне мы приказываем заменить слова: «Милостью Божьей» —«Милостью Фиджи»./ Прилично ли Господину Земному Шару/ (Да творится воля его)/ Поощрять соборное людоедство/В пределах себя?/ И не высоким ли холопством/ Со стороны людей, как едомых,/ Защищать своего верховного Едока?/ Послушайте! Даже муравьи/ Брызгают муравьиной кислотой на язык медведя./ Если же возразят,/ Что государство пространств не подсудно,/ Как правовое соборное лицо,/ Не возразим ли мы, что и человек/ Тоже двурукое государство/ Шариков кровяных и тоже соборен./ Если государства плохи,/ То кто из нас ударит палец о палец,/ Чтобы отсрочить их сон/ Под одеялом: навеки ?- /Вы недовольны, о государства/ И их правительства,/ Вы предостерегающе щелкаете зубами/ И делаете прыжки. Что ж!/ Мы — высшая сила/И всегда сможем ответить/ На мятеж государств,/ Мятеж рабов, —/ Метким письмом./ Стоя на палубе слова «надгосударство звезды»/ И не нуждаясь в палке в час этой качки,/ Мы спрашиваем, что выше:/Мы, в силу мятежного права,/ И неоспоримые в своем первенстве,/ Пользуясь охраной законов о изобретении/ И объявившие себя Председателями земного шара,/ Или вы, правительства/ Отдельных стран прошлого,/ Эти будничные остатки около боен/ Двуногих быков,/ Трупной влагой коих вы помазаны?/ Что касается нас, вождей человечества,/ Построенного нами по законам лучей/При помощи уравнений рока,/ То мы отрицаем господ,/ Именующих себя правителями,/ Государствами и другими книгоиздательствами,/ И торговыми домами «Война и К ^o »,/ Приставившими мельницы милого благополучия /К уже трехлетнему водопаду/ Вашего пива и нашей крови/ С беззащитно красной волной./ Мы видим государства, павшие на меч/С отчаяния, что мы пришли./ С родиной на устах,/ Обмахиваясь веером военно-полевого устава,/ Вами нагло выведена война/ В круг Невест человека./ А вы, государства пространств, успокойтесь/ И не плачьте, как девочки./ Как частное соглашение частных лиц,/ Вместе с обществами поклонников Данте,/ Разведения кроликов, борьбы с сусликами,/ Вы войдете под сень изданных нами законов./ Мы вас не тронем./ Раз в году вы будете собираться на годичные собрания,/ Делая смотр редеющим силам/ И опираясь на право союзов./ Оставайтесь добровольным соглашением/ Частных лиц, никому не нужным/ И никому не важным,/ Скучным, как зубная боль/ У Бабушки 17 столетия./ Вы относитесь к нам,/ Как волосатая ного-рука обезьянки,/ Обожженная неведомым богом-пламенем,/ К руке мыслителя, спокойно/ Управляющей вселенной,/ Этого всадника оседланного рока./ Больше того: мы основываем/ Общество для защиты государств/ От грубого и жестокого обращения/ Со стороны общин времени./ Как стрелочники/У встречных путей Прошлого и Будущего,/ Мы так же хладнокровно относимся/ К замене ваших государств/ Научно построенным человечеством,/ Как к замене липового лаптя/ Зеркальным заревом поезда./Товарищи-рабочие! Не сетуйте на нас:/ Мы, как рабочие-зодчие,/ Идем особой дорогой, к общей цели./ Мы — особый род оружия./ Итак, боевая перчатка/ Трех слов: Правительство земного шара — /Брошена/. Перерезанное красной молнией/ Голубое знамя безволода,/ Знамя ветреных зорь, утренних солнц/ Поднято и развевается над землей,/ Вот оно, друзья мои!/ Правительство земного шара.."]

- What year would that be? Probably.. I don't know actually, early enough to be part of the (First World) War or after (the) War.  I'll check it out for next time.

I think I'll quit for a while. Next session, we'll go on through some of the other Russians of that time, and their retrospect.. AkhmatovaandMandelstam who are in the anthology, (some books of which are in the library - and we'll put more books there). And those of you who are in the course and want to make use of the anthology (or (want to) buy one), please check now with CC [Allen's teaching assistant] and arrange to give him money now or deliver it later, because I don't have enough money to buy it for you, to put out the money in advance, this time.

Student: In the (Russian)  Futurist Manifesto…

AG: We have a little time to talk now. We got ten minutes.

Student: In the Futurist Manifesto, where they speak in such a negative light of  (Maxim) Gorki..

AG: Yeah

Student: Didn't Mayakovsky who signed it give one of his early important poems…

AG: They hadn't met.

Student: They hadn't met?

AG: They hadn't met in the Revolution yet.

Student: Oh, alright.

AG: This is pre-Revolutionary, this is 1912

Student: Uh-huh… So when did he give him that poem? that was..considerably later? Did his attitude change?

AG: Oh yeah, that, that, that - (his poem)  "A Cloud in Trousers".  I don't know. I'd have to look. He might have grown up a couple of years and then rejected him..

Student: Another thing I'd like to ask you about. There was a line in one of those poems, I think the Mandelstam poem..about "the night's sun shines [glows] unnoticed"…

AG: Yeah

Student: Yeah, I was wondering, how you related to a line like that

AG: The truthfulness, or (the) hopefulness, or the poetry, or.. ?

Student: But that's so non-realistic. It's…

AG: Actually, he's in a place where they have the midnight sun…Actually, he's writing in (the) north, (in) St Petersburg, where there's a midnight sun.

Student: Oh, really. I didn't know that.

AG: Well, "white nights" (as they are called in stories of Gogol, I believe, or Dostoyevsky -[Editorial note - it is actually Dostoyevsky] white - Gogol, "white nights"). 

Student: Okay, well that's…

AG: "Nature shines unnoticed…" ["Nature glows unnoticed.."]















tape ends here

                

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventeen-and-a-half  minutes in and concluding at the end of the tape (approximately twenty-eight-and-a-half minutes in]

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 177

May 23, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Happy Birthday Bob Dylan

≪ Previous: More Khlebnikov - 4 (Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe)

$

0

0

[Allen Ginsberg - c.1989 - Photograph byMarc Geller]

Next weekend (next Sunday, June 1st) in New York City, Elodie Lauten's Ginsberg opera, Waking In New York, will be given a rare in situ public performance. Prior to that (Friday May 30) the opera will be recorded and simulcast from the National Opera America Center, after which it will be made freely available on line.

"Waking In New York is very special piece", Lauten notes."It started when I approached Allen Ginsberg about a libretto..I wanted a piece about New York and he selected a set of poems for me to set to music. A few months later, he passed away..and the piece took on a new meaning as a kind of memorial to the great poet - who I had met in the 'seventies when I first came to New York - quite coincidentally I must say: I joined an all-girl rock band 
[Flaming Youth] that was actually his own back-up band when he did readings, as he liked to sing and was quite a good singer. I lived in his apartment for several months and he taught me many things; how to appreciate New York, how to be compassionate and tolerant, what a mantra is, and how it is practiced, and how spirituality does not have to be bigotry. He was a father figure for me and an unofficial mentor. All of those memories of my youth came back when I wrote the piece.. ." 

Lauten writes further about the piece and about Allen here

Here's the press release and basic  information about the concert.

Meanwhile, over in London, Poejazzicontinue their modern interpretation of Allen's "Howl" (performances are at the Studio Theatre atThe Roundhouse, on the 30th, and also the day before, May 29)   



Back in New York another theatrical project is building up steam. Here are some testimonies from some of the energetic young participants involved in the Untitled Ginsberg Project.







still a few hours left on their Indiegogo fund-raising efforts, if you want to give them your support.

Our good friend,John Suiter writes us with news of an exciting re-configuration of his classic photo-essay, published in 2002 by Counterpoint, Poets On The Peaks,availablehere at the UMass Lowell Kerouac web-site. Stunning photographs have become even more stunning by their reversion to their original color format.  "In addition" - he writes - "there are twenty images here that were not in the book at all, including Walter Lehrman's never-before-published 1956 portrait of a contemplative Jack Kerouac just before he headed off to his fire lookout on Desolation Peak [in the North Cascades Mountains]. There are also three of my own previously-unpublished portraits ofGary Snyder from 2002, and two of Philip Whalen. A couple of Snyder poems not featured in Poets On The Peaks are here, paired up with images of mine that work really nicely with his text..There is also some wonderful mountain prose from Philip Whalen's rather obscure book,The Diamond Noodle, again with photos that tie in very well with his words, I think. And I've written some new text myself to go with the new photos.." 

[Jack Kerouac photographed by Walter Lehrman at a party in Berkeley, 1956 - Copyright Walter Lehrman (to license the image, click here)]


Meantime, (with recollections by Anne Waldman, Ron Padgett, and others), remembering fondly a famed East Coast spot, Le Metro - the pioneering place for live poetry readings.

Scribd Poets? (we've posted about Scribd before) - Jonah Raskin's  American Scream - Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation (2006) is now available (at least temporarily) on that platform - see here 



Speaking of Jonah Raskin, here's a recent essay of his, resurrecting the forgotten spirit of a fated Beat casualty, Natalie Jackson 

"Aural Dialectics - On Allen Ginsberg's Musical Rendition of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience" - Some notes on Ginsberg and Blake, Chris Mustazza's essay, appears on the recently-refurbished, and always-lively, Empty Mirror site.

We'll finish with Allen singing Blake



More next week.

Happy Birthday Bob Dylan

May 24, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Expansive Poetry - 60 (More Khlebnikov - 5 - (A Group Reading)

≪ Previous: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 177

$

0

0

[Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg, Edson Cemetery,  Lowell, Massachusetts, 1975, at the site of Jack Kerouac's grave - Photograph by Ken Regan]

From the upcoming Peter Orlovsky, A Life In Words - Intimate Chronicles of A Beat Writer

Peter Orlovsky’s Letter to Bob Dylan

January 27 1978

Dear Bob

Saw your movie [Renaldo and Clara] twice at (the) Waverly Theatre (New York City)...and you have no idea how breathlessly great your movie is, nor have you had a rare glimpse of how the packed theater was bursting with applause from their hands and mouths at the sight of you singing “Tangled UpIn Blue” or “One More Cup of Coffee For The Road” or just the fast disappearing sight of you and Allen at Kerouac’s grave stone. Just the sight of you both looking at Kerouac’s stone (made) the audience fly into appreciation with their clapping winged hands and the audience’s enthusiasm burst again and again throughout the four short hours, so much so I was astonished and glad for you, for not only streaming out your songs, but (for) flooding the seated theater brains and eyes with your personal private intimate calm aloneness years, flowing love arm embraces and the all so rare glimpse of you with your finger tips guitar on your lap. This is a film that happy bodies will see again and again, as Allen said, because it becomes better, clearer and makes intimate sense each time seen. How intelligently honest you come through to the audience, you have no idea, and how can you, you weren’t there seated with January 25^th Waverley Theatre seekers or the other showings in New York City. Someone should of taped the audience’s perceptions of appreciation to play back to you. The young people I asked during intermission, in the john, etc, all loved it from many different ways. And the sad thing of it all is you don't know how great your film is to see and hear. Allen said to write you a short note of audience’s reactions.

\

[ "Renaldo & Clara" - the  original movie-poster]

[Bob Dylan with bass-player, Rob Stoner & poet Allen Ginsberg at The Dream Away Lodge, Becket, Massachusetts, on the occasion of Dylan's Rolling Thunder tour, 1976 - Photograph by Ken Regan]

[Julius Orlovsky, Peter Orlovsky, Robbie Robertson and Bob Dylan,City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, 1965] 

[Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg, c. Douglas R. Gilbert from Forever Young: Photographs of Bob Dylan DaCapo Press 2005]

Bob Dylan's birthday today (in case you didn't know). Seventy-three (and showing no signs of stopping) - Wishing you a very happy birthday Bob! 

Expansive Poetry - 60 (More Khlebnikov - 5 - (A Group Reading)

May 26, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Louis Ferdinand Celine (1894 -1961)

≪ Previous: Happy Birthday Bob Dylan

$

0

0

AG: So now, as part of our Russian program, I wanted to continue with a little more Khlebnikov, with the poem about laughter, whichRichard Poe (sic) can pronounce (for us) in Russian. The text is on the first page of Khlebnikov in our anthologies, for those of you who have it. [to Richard Poe] - Can you stand up to do it, though. And roar it, you know.

Student [Richard Poe]: Roar it?

AG: Yeah. Part of the elocution is roaring.

Richard Poe reads Khlebnikov's poem in Russian

Заклятие смехом

О, рассмейтесь, смехачи!
О, засмейтесь, смехачи!
Что смеются смехами, что смеянствуют смеяльно,
О, засмейтесь усмеяльно!
О, рассмешищ надсмеяльных — смех усмейных смехачей!
О, иссмейся рассмеяльно, смех надсмейных смеячей!
Смейево, смейево!
Усмей, осмей, смешики, смешики!
Смеюнчики, смеюнчики.
О, рассмейтесь, смехачи!
О, засмейтесь, смехачи!

AG: One more time
Student:  [Richard Poe]: Yeah
AG: One more time. It was great aloud.
Student(s): It sounds great, Richard
AG: It's great. It sounds great.
Student(s): Encore
AG: When you hear good music you want to hear it (again).
Student(s): Hear, hear
Student [Richard Poe] You want me to read this, this, this…
AG: Shall we take a vote?. One more time.
Student(s): Yes.. One more time, yes.

Richard Poe reads the poem again in the original Russian

AG [to another (Slavic) (female) student] - Do you do it (like this) at home, S? Do you know how to read it too?  One more. One more version, in a feminine voice.

Student: Lets (perhaps) have everybody do it.. Everybody gets (a chance to read it).

AG [directing the Student] : Stand up and face there. Face the other side. Straighten your back, yes

Female student gives a third reading of Khlebnikov's poem in original Russian

AG: Louis Zukofsky translated the Latin of Catullus into the equivalent English syllables or English words without regard for the meaning, so you could get the cadences and sound of the Latin of Catullus in English, and so I imagine if you tried the Zukofsky method with this it would be - "Oh smear it around, you smearers/ smear it up you smearers/so they smear with smears,/they smear lots smearingly,/Oh smear it up smearingly/Or the besmeared smeared-upon/the smear of the besmeared smearers/smear it out round smearingly/the smear of the smeared -up smearians,/smearians smearingly. smeary,/ smearification, /smearify,/smearolets,/Smear-up,/smear a bit/smear it around, you smearers,/oh smear it up you smearers" - That'd be somewhat close.

I thought what we might do (all)  together  is the next page (theZangezi excerpt, for those of you that have it, for those who have texts  - All sections beginning with (the words)  - "Quiet! Quiet! He will speak.." 

Student: Can we share that one [that book with you]?
AG: I don't have another one here. This (part) is excerpted out.
Student: Oh, oh, that's not the same
Student (CC): You can share mine tho'

AG: Yeah. Beginning with the actual.. I read it once, but, for those of you who have it, lets try reading [a group reading  of it]. I guess the basic thing would be to pay attention to the punctuation so that you know when to stop and breathe, so that we don't run on. And take time between the words when there's punctuation. So, beginning - one, two, three.. 

Allen and class read in unison  (from Khlebnikov) 
- “Quiet! Quiet! He will speak/ Zangezi: Ring the glad tidings of the mind! /Sound the tocsin of reason, the big bell of the/mind: All the different shades of the brain will/ pass before you in a review of all kinds of/reason. Now! Everyone sing after me - I - Goum/Oum/Uum.. etc etc "

Student [at the conclusion of the group reading] : Nice

AG: Well, it takes some kind of… How many people actually opened their mouths?  Just a little chorus. Nobody else had the texts?..  How many people opemed their mouths?
Peter Orlovsky: Opened their mouths and said "Voum"
AG: So it was about ten, I guess
Student: We were pretty loud!

AG: Well, yes, because we were shouting.   
Okay, well I'd like (now) to run over a couple more poems"


[Andrei Voznesensky (1933-2010)]

Peter Orlovsky: (Andrei) Voznesensky takes off from that because he has..the poem about the bells.
AG: Yes.  Right.  Exactly. 
Student (CC): "Moscow Bells"
AG: Yeah, has anybody heard Voznesensky pronouncing "Moscow Bells" 
Student (CC): Yes I do
AG: He gets up, he stands up, and it's a thing about tolling the bells for all the artists of Russia, and for all the great artists of the past wo have died and he makes this gesture and he goes - "Vam,  Skaromnekee, Vah-vam, Kay, Kallah-kallah, Vah-vam" [editorial note - loose phonetic description]   (which is just the sound of the Moscow bells) 
Student (CC):  It's on the ESP sampler and the ESP recording of Voznesensky [The Lovebook Record - ESP 1067]
AG: ESP? 
Student (CC): Yeah, records.. ESP discs
AG: I know it's on a record
Student (CC): Yeah, that's the label
AG: The phrase is " "Vam," I think, "Kahladniki, Kallah-kallam." [editorial note - again loose phonetic description]  - I don't know the exact phrases for the ringing of the bell - But, I guess, that [Voznesensky's poem]'s a take-off from this, then.
Student (CC): Yes
AG: I had never remembered that. That's Andrei Voznesensky's most celebrated poem, actually, and the one he's most famous for (like "Howl", so to speak).
I've thought of a couple more.
Peter Orlovsky: Well, that's his most celebrated public thing…
AG: Yeah
Peter Orlovsky: … that he can get away with poem…
AG: Yeah
Student: Right
AG: Well, it's probably the strongest sound he's got. 


[Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922)]

(Okay). A couple more things from Khlebnikov that aren't necessarily inthe anthology.1922 - The New Economic Program came in (known as NEP) - I don't think this is in the anthology - he  wrote a little poem called "Stop Fooling!" ["НЕ ШАЛИТЬ!"] - He was putting it down, I think, because it meant the destruction of the small farmers, apparently, which was a very bloody, and wild, scene, and a few of his friends were involved in farming
 - Allen reads from the English translation of  Khlebnikov's "НЕ ШАЛИТЬ!" ("Stop Fooling!") - "Hey, you sharp little con-men!/ The wind is in your head!/ In Pugachoivian sheepskins/Down Moscow's streets I tread/It wasn't for this we had/ The great truth on our side/So in sables and trotters/ All these mockers could ride/It wasn't for this the foe/ Poured out his blood like water./So you'd be seeing strings of pearls/ On every street hawker./ No sense chattering teeth/ All this night long/ I will sail, I will sing/ Down the Volga, down the Don!/. I'll set out in the blue night in my evening skiff./ Who's beside me in flight?,/ Beside me? - only friends."
 [ 'Эй, молодчики-купчики,/Ветерок в голове!/В пугачевском тулупчике/Я иду по Москве!/Не затем высока/Воля правды у нас,/В соболях-рысаках/Чтоб катались, глумясь./Не затем у врага/Кровь лилась по дешевке,/Чтоб несли жемчуга/Руки каждой торговки./Не зубами скрипеть/Ночью долгою —/ Буду плыть, буду петь
Доном-Волгою!/Я пошлю вперед/Вечеровые уструги./Кто со мною — в полет?/А со мной — мои други!']

So it's a declaration of individuality in the middle of the community, Communist, somewhat-forced, project. That's an early comment on the NEP, as it was called, New Economic Program

Then there's another poem which is kind of sweet - 1919-1921 - (an) almost Buddhist-like assessment  of mortal suffering. It's just five lines - "It's your business, gods,/ That you made us mortal./ But we'll shoot at you/ The poisoned arrow of sorrow/. We have the bow" - It's really short and sharp - like a Gregory (Corso) poem. (It reminded me a little of one of Gregory's "idea poems")  - [Allen proceeds to read the poem again] -  It's true enough - the First Noble Truth - Suffering.  

I thought, when I was reading a lot of Khlebnikov and the laughter thing, I thought, if any of you know (Jack) Kerouac's novel, Big Sur, the sound poem at the end of that (there's a long sound poem, which is the sound of the ocean) is very similar.  Yeah? 

[Audio for the above may be heard here, beginning at approximately six minutes in and concluding approximately nineteen-and-a-half minutes in]    

Louis Ferdinand Celine (1894 -1961)

May 27, 2014, 3:30 am

≫ Next: Some 1981 Naropa Planning

≪ Previous: Expansive Poetry - 60 (More Khlebnikov - 5 - (A Group Reading)

$

0

0

Today is the birthday ofLouis-Ferdinand Céline, born in Courbevoie, France, 120 years ago, author of Journey to the End of the Night(Voyage au bout de la nuit), "the first genius international beat twentieth-century picaresque novel written in modern classical personal comedy prose ", according to Allen.

“Have you read Louis Ferdinand Céline? – he’s translated into English from French – Celine vomits Rasberries. He wrote the most Chaplin-esque prose in Europe and he has a bitter mean sad ugly eternal comic soul enough to make you cry.." (Peter Orlovsky) 

"I think (Henry) Miller is a great man but Céline, his master, is a giant" (Jack Kerouac) 

Here's a revealing 1957 television interview with him



andhere's another interview with English subtitles 



Here En Francais, a 1957 Interview with Louis-Albert Zbinden on Swiss radio.

His 1959 interview with Francine Bloch (in three parts, again en francais, but with an English translation), may be heard here, here and here


It was William Burroughs who turned Allen on to Céline 

"Not many prose writers alive  (Céline, (Jean) Genet, a few others) would have the freedom and intelligence to trust their own minds, remember they made that jump, not censor it but write it down and discover it's beauty.." (Ginsberg, en passant, on Jack Kerouac)  

Michel Mohrt arranged for me and  (William) Burroughs to go and visit Céline in 1958. We did want to touch home-base, we did want to visit our heroes and receive their blessing and we did do that. 

Burroughs and Céline were like two cousins literally and the conversation was interesting and very straight . I wrote a little bit about it in a poem called "Ignu"…     
(Ginsberg, in 1972, to Yves Le Pellec)

"Tomorrow night Bill (Burroughs) and I go make visit to Céline. I spoke to him on the phone, he has shy reticent young voice, almost quavering, very delicate voice and hesitates - no ogre. I said "How lovely to hear your voice ". He said. "Anytime, Tuesday, after four.."  
(Allen Ginsberg, July 7 1958, in Paris, writing to Neal Cassady)

"..Céline himself an old ignu over prose./I saw him in Paris dirty old gentleman of ratty talk/with longhaired cough three wormy sweaters round his neck/brown mould under historic fingernails/pure genius his giving morphine all night to 1400 passengers on a sinking ship "because they were all getting emotional""
(from Allen Ginsberg's "Ignu" (1958) 

".. he [Ezra Pound] didn't say anything more that whole afternoon, except one time, when I talked about a visit with (William S) Burroughs in 1958 to Louis Ferdinand Céline who I thought was the greatest French prose writer. 
And I'd asked Céline whom he'd liked among French prosateurs and he saidC.F.Ramuz, Swiss writer, and Henri Barbusse, who wroteLe Feu(Under Fire - World War I) and Barbusse, he said, had jazzed up the French language..  

to have "jazzed up the language" 

When Céline dies (in the summer of 1961)  Allen writes, portentously, in his notebook:
"All Nobility leads to the tomb/Céline the garden and the great harmless black dogs.."
and: "-Céline dead. Old man/hairy image in -  nothing/Fare thy shade well in Eternity…"

His (posthumously published) 1964 interview in The Paris Review is available for perusal here 

Here's a 1976 documentary on Céline  (and here's amore recent (2011) documentary
-  and here too)

For more on Céline see here

  [Louis-Ferdinand Celine - Interview with Louis Pauwels and Andre Brissaud,1959
- for transcript (including English translation) see here]

Some 1981 Naropa Planning

May 28, 2014, 3:30 am

≫ Next: Harry Smith - Early Abstractions

≪ Previous: Louis Ferdinand Celine (1894 -1961)

$

0

0

[Michael Brownstein]



[Bobbie-Louise Hawkins]




















[Merrill Gilfillan] 


[Jack Kerouac]

AG:... (Wednesday night there) will be (a) reading with Michael Brownstein
Student:  Seven p.m. in the library - free
AG: And then..tomorrow..that's free. Then tomorrow night, it'll be Bobbie Louise Hawkins
Student: Bobbie Louise Hawkins
AG: Bobbie Louise Hawkins, who's been teaching here, whose racy dialogue is really interesting. She's a good reader. She's really interesting to hear - And Merrill Gilfillan. Does anybody know much about him?
Peter Orlovsky: She [sic]'s not coming. I think they got a letter saying she can't come, didn't they?
AG: He. No, Merrill is here. Yeah
Student: And there are Sunday nighy readings.
AG: Yeah. There are Sunday night student readings to which everybody is invited to read their work and be criticized. Peter has been going to those quite often
Student: And they're at Varsity Townhouse
AG: Six thirty p.m. - Varsity Townhouse, Room 113, right?
Student: Right
AG: Una's (sic) apartment.
Student; And they're not only to be criticized, but just to hear…for students to hear each other.
AG: Yeah, or talk about it or check it out. Yeah after year, those have been pretty popular. Sometimes they're more energetic than others, and sometimes there's more of a movenent toward that. When the faculty gets obnoxious, the students revolt and have their own readings. If you want to have a chance to hear yourself or hear other people among (you), that's a good shot. And the faculty will be coming to those more as the term progresses.   Any other readings around?
Student: Donegan (evening)...
AG: Oh yes, there's a poetic hosting party.Pat Donegan's house, again, as it was last time ime. That means all the poetics students are invited to scarf up some food, talk to each other, drink a little wine. There'll be a little bit of explanation of what's going on further in the future, in the Fall, at Naropa, if anybody's going to be around. We'll take suggestions for people to invite to teach and general discussion of the whole poetics program, so you can have some in-put into it. That'll be on Sunday. What time?
Student: Three
Peter Orlovsky: Three
AG: Three p.m. Pat Donegan's. And does somebody have the address?
Student: Ten twenty-one Grant
AG: Ten twenty-one Grant Street. Right up the street from the cemetery. You go up Ninth Street to the cemetery, to the end of the cemetery, take one block right and another block left. Ten twenty-one Grant Street. Pat Donegan - D-O-N-E-G-A-N - Anything else?
Student: (When is that?) 
AG: Saturday
Student: August first.
AG: August first, this Saturday coming. There's also going to be a large-scale Naropa participation in aRocky Flats demonstration, the date of which has been changed from the Ninth to the Seventeenth of August 
Student: AtSt. John's Church 
AG: At St. John's Church here
Student: Fourteenth and Spruce
AG: Anybody else got anything to offer (so we've got all our business out of the way)?  Okay. Next. 
Student: What time would that be? 
AG: Oh, it'll be the Nineteenth. It'll be probably seven or eight o'clock (and we'll have all-city collaboration)



And, as you may or may not know, we're now beginning to plan next summer a 25th Anniversary Celebration of the publication of On The Road by Jack Kerouac, and we're going to see if we can get enough money to invite (William) Burroughs, (Ken) Kesey, (Gregory) Corso, all the regular Naropa Beatniks, as well as Norman Mailer - and maybe Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley, all Kerouac's old enemies and school-fellows, as well as his old publishers, from James Laughlinto Malcolm Cowley to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well as some of his old girlfriends who are now publishers [sic], as well as his daughter [Jan] who just wrote a book, as well as John Clellon Holmes, the novelist ..as well as musicians he worked with - Zoot Simsand David Amram and Al Cohn, as well as some Denver friends of his who are still alive, hanging around - Justin Brierly and Ed White andBob Burford, and..

Student:  (John Clellon) Holmes?
AG: Holmes, I just said.
Student: Bob Frank?
AG: Robert Frank, yes. We're going to invite Robert to teach film and show his films.
So, actually, try and gather together the entire Kerouac clan - survivors - and get a hundred thousand dollars from Coors [Coors Beers, based locally in Colorado] to do it!
Student: Money from Coors?
AG:  To get money from Coors to get (William) Buckley.
Student:  Yeah.  God!
AG: So that's being discussed for next summer.

Student:  Allen, is that going to go on all summer, or…?
AG: No, probably what I think what we'll try and do is schedule workshops (like Robert Frank) for a week or two before, and I'll probably go back and teach "The Beat Generation 1953-1960", that first time of the summer, and then probably late July or early August, we'll have a week's meeting, or four or five days meeting, with poetry readings. (We'll) try to get (Gary) Snyder and (Philip) Whalen and (Michael) McClure, who worked with Kerouac, together here. In other words, all the poets who were influenced by him and a lot of the novelists who worked with him or were influenced by him, his publishers, the musicians, friends, because it's the twenty-fifth anniversary. So it's the Silver Anniversary. And also, see if we can plot out what work remains to be done, by the survivors, in the future and further generations.
Student: It'll be the last end of the summer, or..? 
AG: I think, yeah. I think there's going to be an emphasis on.. I think there's also going to be a BuddhadharmaMeditation Poetry Conference, too, we'll try and do right after that, if we can get (Gary) Snyder and (Philip) Whalen here and a few others - And (W.S.) Merwin also (because I'm going to be giving a poetry reading with W.S.Merwin in Mexico City on the 24th of August.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at the start  of the tape and concluding approximately six minutes in]    

---

Harry Smith - Early Abstractions

May 29, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Peter Orlovsky Parinivana

≪ Previous: Some 1981 Naropa Planning

$

0

0

[Harry Smith (1923-1991), at The Chelsea Hotel,  aged 52]

Harry Smith's Early Abstractions (1946-1957), in honor of what would have been his 91st birthday. Even in their severely-reduced You Tube format, feast on his visionary genius. 

Other Harry Smith postings on the Allen Ginsberg Project includehere, here, here,
here and here

upcoming Harry news - Saturday June 14 in Woodstock (an "all-star line-up", like they say).



and, forthcoming, in the Fall, Raymond Foye'sedited and notated Harry Smith Naropa lectures (with an afterword byCharles Stein) as a CD booklet audio project (from the incomparableDust to Digital. More about that when we hear more.
Happy Birthday, Harry!

Peter Orlovsky Parinivana

May 30, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Walt Whitman's Birthday

≪ Previous: Harry Smith - Early Abstractions

$

0

0

[Peter Orlovsky, portrait for official documents, 1963, India. Photo Courtesy of the Peter Orlovsky Archive, University of Texas]

May 30 is Peter Orlovsky's Parinivana. See our last year's posting in celebration of him - here.

See our transcription of his 1975 Naropa class - (Poets Who Have Influenced Me") 

And now it's our pleasure to announce from Paradigm Publishers a new book, a posthumous gathering - Peter Orlovsky - A Life In Words - Intimate Chronicles of a Beat Writer- edited and introduced - expertly compiled - by Beat scholar, Bill Morgan(with a lucid introduction by Ann Charters)

"Peter Orlovsky was the secret heart of the Beats. He wrote and roamed among them. This book contains unknown fragments of their world, the words of their orphaned angel." 
(Patti Smith)

"Peter Orlovsky was one of a kind and his poetry was one of a kind. It's in-your-face poetry, at once comic and tragic." 
(Lawrence Ferlinghetti) 


From the jacket copy: "Until now, the poet Peter Orlovsky, who was Allen Ginsberg's lover for more than forty years has been the neglected member of the Beat Generation. Because he lived in Ginsberg's shadow, his achievemens were seldom noted and his contributions to literature have not been fully recognized. Now, this first collection of Orlovsky'd writings traces his fascinating life in his own words. It also tells for the first time, the intimate story of his relationship with Ginsberg. Drawn from recently-dscovered journals, correspondence, photographs, and poems, Peter Orlovsky - A Life in Wordsbegins just as Orlovsky is discharged from the army, having declared that it was "an army without love". The book follows the young man through years of self-doubt and details his first meeting with Ginsberg in San Francisco from his own perspective.During that same year, Peter, always acting as the care-giver in his relationships, adopted his teenage mentally-impaired brother and tried to help him make a life for himself. In never-before-heard detail, Orlovsky describes his travels around the world withGinsberg, Kerouac,Burroughsand Corso - whose writings so often benefited from knowing the highly creative and inspiring Orlovsky. Orlovsky's story is a refreshing departure from the established history of the Beats as depicted by his more famous companions. The reader will discover why Jack Kerouac described Orlovsky as the saintly figure of Simon Darlovsky in Desolation Angelsand why the elder poet William Carlos Williamspraised his poetry as "pure American". His was a complicated life, this book shows, filled with contradictions. Best known as Ginsberg's lover, Orlovsky was heterosexual and always longed to be with women. Always humble, he became a teacher at a Buddhist college and taught a class that he entitled "Poetry For Dumb Students". His spirit was prescient of the flower children of the 'sixties, especially his inclinations towards devotion and love. In the end, Orlovsky's use of drugs took its toll on his body and mind, and he slipped into his own hell of addiction and mental illness, silencing one of the most original and inspiring voices of his generation."

Here's a few very brief selections from the book, just to whet your appetite -  a few of the variously included (previously unpublished) poems.  

Here's (July, 1955), "Coney Island, USA", his earliest extant poem:

 “Young flesh bouncing under tight smooth suits/children own the red sand of the beach/Old mammas stand by, watchful eye safety/of children./Children deserve to own their share of the/beach, they live with the water as if it were/alive/Then the wave came, they all jumped, they/make noise with the voices of the waves." 

And, from two years later, Fall of '57 (some quirky little notations):

 “Many chairs are alone in the/world”

  “Nothing like a hot dish of/warm lips”

 “At night the jeweler dreams/about putting diamonds in the window”

 “A butterfly lay burnt and crushed against a Texas/licence plate while the Pontiac was heading in to Mexico"

“Please come in,/come in/I said to the door”.

And from a little later:

"Reading a story,/before I finish/must pet the cat at my feet"

"In a cave/there was a slave/with a golden tooth pick"

"Two apples/Kissing on a tree/The sun - moving closer"

Next, a prose-poem, from 1957:

"One red footprint in the snow - what is that doing here? - why do I write it down? - Well, it came from a painting of Chagall I saw in Amsterdam - I said to Gregory (Corso) and Allen, one red footprint in the snow - "Wow - what a great magical thing yoou said Peter - whoever heard of a red footprint in the white snow"
So now what am I going to do with it - how can I make a poem out of it - why do you bother me with this. I don't write poems anyway I write what's in my head - I need a haircut - What's a red footprint in the snow got to do with that? Why do you bother me - go away - leave me alone - well, to make you feel better the poem will be 
One red footprint in the snow."

and from April 1961 - "My Own Writing":

"My own writing is like me, or/someone, making room on/a page to move around in/as to dance before a mirror or sing/before a mirror or talk to/onself -/to keep on and be tickled/by each little improvisation /or cry of fleeting memory -/Swell to be sadly crying for a while - /as is my want. Bend my head -/the price for being a lone wolf -/ on the touch - up my ass with/ear - to hear what swells/within each rib-/I'm an artist, I can slice my heart/up and put it into my brain skull pot/and press the jet light of my eye -/for gassier reasons/than some two thousand year/old God did back then - he he -/- me me - " 

Here's, rueful, regretful, his very last poem:

"Feet dance for money/Feet dance for life/Feet dance for blues/Dear Peter kiss these feet goodbye./ Like a fool, Uncle Pete shot too much coke/and now no money left -/Not to mention no brains left/and now can eat shit for the rest of my short life./ Can't even stop smoking/ain't it a joke/No lungs left/Oxygen bottle - How stupid can one get?/ Is this a royal Doha/on an ant hill?/Or dullness from shooting coke/Go to hell coke, eat shit coke/ Cigarette smoking has led to everything else bad/and now can't even stand up straight/Back aches and tooth aches/Too much coffee and no sleep, who wants sleep anyway?/ Just like an Elephant, sleeping standing up -/That's the trick -/Only want one trick in life,to sleep standing up!!!/That's what an American monk does/ Don't ever take coke -/pure poison -/a downer, a drag -/pure waste of time." 
 
And this, in response to (March 1982) enquiries by a student:

"Dear Kathy Strekfus,
Thank you for your letter and reading my poems. I'll try and answer your questions as they come in your letter.
1. Shock to reader etc? - Yes and No - (I) don't want to hurt anybody. Gentleness is best for now - it goes a long way, as my guru, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche has said many times.
2. Spelling wrong? [the editor choses to correct Orlovsky's "erratic" spelling in this edition] - Because I used to be too lazy to bother with dictionary - Sorry about that - also at moment of writing wouldn't want to waste time fingering the dictionary - more interested in writing down what's going through my mind - or head - will make sure future poems are spelt correct as my guru says it shows respect for the English language, etc
3. No, "Morris" just happened to be a young kid. [editorial note - the reference here is to Peter's poem in Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs - "Go on Morris, piss up your room/you've gypsied your mind haillo far better than the moon.."]
4. Could louse up my senses - but that's why I got a Buddhist Tibetan guru and meditate samatha and read the Dharma to make sure I don't go to either extremes of joy or down - read Meditation in Action by Chogyam Trungpa, published by Shambhala, 1969 - you can get it in your nearby book stores - and his Myth of Freedom andCutting Thru  Spiritual Materialism. Basically samatha meditation gives me balance. I used to go through - you name it - all kinds of unnecessary depression and woe - not now - thanks to common sense of Buddha's teachings.
5. I'm not going to make myself vulnerable to danger unless I can handle it and transform it into sanity."

An added bonus - here's rare video footage of Peter 



[Peter Orlovsky reading the opening section of  "Write It Down Allen Said" from Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs(1978)]

Walt Whitman's Birthday

May 31, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: More Peter Orlovsky - (A Life In Words)

≪ Previous: Peter Orlovsky Parinivana

$

0

0

[Walt Whitman, 1863 - Photograph by Alexander Gardner  - Alderman Library, University of Virginia]  


[Leaves of Grass, 1855 - courtesy The Walt Whitman Archive]

Walt Whitman's Birthday Today. 

We celebrate with an eager young Whitmaniac,Steve Roggenbuck reading, as his You Tube tape boldly announces, "one hour and fifteen minutes of Walt Whitman's poetry" - "I read the entire text of  "i love you, before long i die - a walt whitman mixtape" 



"This is all my favorite Walt Whitman in one book. Sometimes it's cut up in ways that other Whitman books wouldn't cut it up. I sometimes took my favorite poem, my favorite section of a poem, my favorite stanza sometimes. So, it's in a different order than you might find in other places but this is all credited to Walt Whitman and is my favorite Walt Whitman stuff'

Previous Whitman salutes on the Allen Ginsberg Project include here and here and here 

More Peter Orlovsky - (A Life In Words)

June 2, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Allen Ginsberg's Birthday

≪ Previous: Walt Whitman's Birthday

$

0

0

The St Marks Poetry Projecttonight (8 o'clock) sees the book-launch for Peter Orlovsky's A Life In Words (we've spoken already of the book here, citing some of the poems, here's a few (just a few) of the never-before-seen journal-entries

Readers from the book, alongside editor, Bill Morgan, will include, Ed Sanders,Steven Taylor, Rosebud Felieu-Pettet and Hettie Jones

On June 18, there'll be a celebration of the book at City Lights in San Francisco, accompanying Bill Morgan on that occasion will be Joanne Kyger and Michael McClure. 

There'll also be a book event on June 22nd at Boulder (Naropa)


[ "Peter Orlovsky at James Joyce's Grave, Zurich, Switzerland, December 198o. We climbed up to the cemetery and found Joyce's statue snow-covered, brushed it off his head" (Ginsberg caption) c. Allen  Ginsberg Estate]

[Peter Orlovsky, Vermont, 1984. c Allen Ginsberg Estate]

August 13 1954   “…One question I asked before I became disturbed. How does one fight or stand up for oneself when he is weak like me, when other people are weak, and because of this weakness, hostility is radiating from them onto me? How when I am weak, can I keep free???...It’s good my handwriting is so poor – so some people won’t take time to read what I say (including myself).”

November 1 1954 – “I wonder why I write: to please myself, to feel a certain order at the end of the day, to take refuge by using the face a white sheet of paper provides, to let someone say who looks at my notes: “So this is Peter?” in a friendly way – while actually I’m telling him indirectly to say this? Something (that is) accomplished by indirect methods – (I) can hide behind a bare wall, where criticisms can bounce off.“

January 11 1955 – “Conversation with Allen. Feeling Allen manipulates me. Remaining doubt. Felt the presence of my smallness. Loss of true feelings at times. A turn on the path with signs.   Allen says “No!” – Robert (LaVigne) says “Yes!” – Peter says “Both of you are pains in the ass, I am going.””


[Nude With Onions (Portrait of Peter Orlovsky - Robert LaVigne, 1954]

March 14 1955 – “Luck is like water for me, it falls out of my hands. (It’s) just as good. I would only misuse it. Instead of grinding my teeth, I keep nervously moving my toes inside my shoes. Finished a philosophy test, failed. Could hardly write enough to answer a question. All my thinking is this way, so that all my efforts (amount to a) few small sentences..”

March 31 1955 – “No dreams. Allen likes to sleep with me. He claims I help him release emotions of some nature, that he feels relieved, freed when sleeping with me. For me: I don’t like it. His body is like an octopus, always in the next moment about to rub his hand against me. Sleep is shallow, waking up in a tired state, more so than (that which) I went to bed with.”

July 16 1955 (from letter to Robert LaVigne) – “In Long Island after hitching seven days across the nine or so states on Highway US .30. Sleeping in railroad cars, under the stars, waking up damp as the early morning dawns. Luck with rides was fairly good, although I never did feel I would get through Wyoming. I baked in the hot sun for hours on end looking at my neighbors, the mountains, doing the same. Staying over in Utah, visiting the Mormons and hunting the streets for some young girl. The fireworks I saw there grew octupuses of different colors..”

August 1955 (from letter to Allen Ginsberg) – “… (I) (n)eed you Allen, you got the social “touch” (my brother) Lafcadio needs for outward life. I try myself to do this. I can’t . Your impression on him will come with a bang. It’s only sparks that turn the engine over into life – your expression of humor, your wide-open mouth, stretching to take in and give off laughter, your thinking movements, your Mississippi wideness of experience, your collection of antique thoughts like New Orleans’ hidden alleyways, your activeness in boring things, and the field of poetry you have command of. All have a glowing effect like on peyote. Me he takes too much for granted…”


[photo: Lafcadio & Peter Orlovsky, August 1995. c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

December 15, 1955 – “More self-doubt these past few days. Nothing like doubt, it cleans the soul, eats up excess fat . Doubt can be enjoyed..I’ve never thought myself so mad before. Allen says it all the time now. “How can you be so stupid?” referring to my blankness. I yell at Lafcadio what Allen yells at me. But the thing is my memory is falling to hell, I move unnecessarily about, can’t think along a line of thought without going off, ah shit this fucking world is painful, the people are all the same crying in their sleep..”


[Peter Orlovsky with his sister Marie and his mother Kate, October 29, 1979 - Photograph by Cliff Fyman]

February 21 1956 (from letter to Kate Orlovsky, his mother) – “Allen just came back from hiking up in Oregon and near Canada. He gave a reading of his poetry there, many were excited by his poems. Some old ladies walked out - it was too much for them. He was close to Vancouver, Canada, and saw the Indians dressed funny looking in all different strange clothes. A long poem called Howlis going to be published. When it is, I’ll send you a copy.”

March 21 1956 (ibid) – “Allen did great in that reading of his poetry last Sunday. The audience response was overwhelming, people call him an ANGEL when they see him on the street now..

April 1956 – “Allen must be going through a strange experience, he seems so humble. He said he feels like a monster, “people just poke their face closer to hear what I say, when really I am just saying nothing of importance”..

May 11 1956 – “I myself am wandering up and down the milky way for I’ve lost my soul in hell somehow.”

August 14 1956 (from letter to Allen Ginsberg) – “I’ve been reading (Arthur) Rimbaud, we ought to go around like Rimbaud and (Paul) Verlaine friends. It takes two minds together to straddle the sun under our saddle and ride through space and time to the stars of human workings. Gregory (Corso) says, “What is needed is (to) keep friendships like Rimbaud and Verlaine in this world, then things would start to happen”…” 

August 17 1956 (ibid)  - “Your letters seem to show you know, are aware of understanding what is in the universe. (Henry) Miller is like that. (Guillaume) Apollinaire also. Your “Siesta in Mexico” [“Siesta in Xbalba”] is self-revealing, it’s part of your self naked on the ‘blank white light”, showing yourself to who ever will look open the pages to read…”


[Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, NYC New Years Eve, 1977.  Photograph by Gordon Ball]

April 18 1957 (from Tangier – from a letter to his brother, Lafcadio) -  “..You know how strange the streets of Mexico City (are), here it’s far more stranger. The Arabs walk around in a monk like costume, there are old Berber women, dressed and wrapped up in cloth, white, covering their heads, some are black-skinned and so old that it’s a wonder that they have enough strength to come down from the mountains pushing a donkey which carries garden vegetables that they bring to the grand market (it’s called Grand Socco) and sit all day on rock roads yelling at people who pass by shopping, like me and Allen do. Lots of these old people have noses cut off and eyes that don’t work..”

June 20 1957 (from Madrid – from a letter to the Orlovsky family) – “…the bull fight is horrible, never want to see it again, the poor bull never has a chance, he dies before he knows what it’s all about: I don’t think it’s so thrilling as the Spanish make it to be – There was a moment or two when looking at the fight that I wish the kingly bull would kill the matador (which in Spanish means killer) and rip them all to pieces, but that would never happen because the matadors are protected by other matadors in ring and what not. It’s quite a spectacle, all of Spain sitting in the ring which looks like Roman amphitheater. Four blinded horses drag the dead bull away…”

September 17 1957 (from Paris – ibid) – “Here in Paris, best place in Europe…Paris is the future of the world – big black negroes sit in cafes by the dozen – all the people here live Bohemian and dress like it. Never been so excited and happy..

[Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg, Paris at The Beat Hotel -Photograph by Harold Chapman]

September 26 1957- “Allen and I cross the French frontier into Belgium at four in the afternoon – (Arthur) Rimbaud must have walked this road a few times – it’s all flat and heavy springy grass where Vermeer cows stand in green dew fields with clear glowing black and white colors – saw already the flower-pots and strange-shaped houses and it’s raining…

October 2 1957 – “..I had a dream last night but I forgot it now – it might have been about a wall full of snakes or a white whale on my back – but dreams are funny, like lollipops, you have them in your hand one moment and then they’re gone – but a cafeteria is a good room to live in for a while

["Peter Orlovsky, returned to New York from India, Avenue C and 5th Street, September 1963"(Ginsberg caption) c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

November 27 1957 - "There will come the time I will die and on that day I have a feeling I am going to be very happy, no one will be around me, for I will go to a forest and find a tree with a hole in its trunk so that when the pigeon in me flies away I fall ino this hole like a wolf would do. And there my eyes will look to my brains and my brains will say no more except that velvet juice will twinkle through my cavernless body and at that moment a sparkle like a dream will all turn blue on an old ambrosian decrepit hill where a shack with a witch's voice repeats the mournful cries of a drunk wino that her sons all cracked to become wolves in mad houses. I took the sun with my left hand and flicked it into my back pocket without giving it a thought, and my boy, to this day I have no ass…"




[Peter Orlovsky, St. Johnsbury, VT 2006. Photo: John Sarsgard]

Allen Ginsberg's Birthday

June 3, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Kousa Dogwood 2014

≪ Previous: More Peter Orlovsky - (A Life In Words)

$

0

0

Born Irwin Allen Ginsberg in Newark, New Jersey, June 3, 1926, Allen would have been 88 years old today.

Happy Birthday, Allen!  Happy Allen Ginsberg's Birthday, everyone.

In celebration of an extraordinary life (and an exemplary death), we feature todayColin Still's masterly 1997 documentary No More To Say & Nothing To Weep For, originally commissioned by Channel 4 in England, and originally intended as a wider, more substantial profile (it was tragically cut short, or rather, re-envisioned, by Allen's diagnosis of liver cancer, an event that took place just as the crew had arrived in New York and were about to begin shooting - so it became a very different film (none the worst for that) transforming it into an elegy). 

Among those featured are Allen, Eugene Brooks (Allen's brother), Bob Rosenthal (who took over the narrative that would otherwise have been provided by Allen), Ann Charters,Gelek Rinpoche, Peter Orlovsky, Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder,Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ed Sanders, Anne Waldman, Philip Glass and Patti Smith 






Philip Glass and Patti Smith's Tribute to Allen Ginsberg (performed since his death in a number of locations) is also included (the audio from a live concert that took place at the Parco della Musica in Rome, last year)


\

Kousa Dogwood 2014

June 3, 2014, 11:00 am

≫ Next: Expansive Poetics - 61 - (Michael McClure)

≪ Previous: Allen Ginsberg's Birthday

$

0

0

It's an annual Allen Ginsberg tradition - it's the flowering kousa dogwood, planted in his honor, by friends and supporters at the St Mark's Church (his"church" - home to the venerable St Mark's Poetry Project - ("The Poetry Project burns like red hot coal in New York's snow", Allen once wrote) - and flowering each year, right around this time (perfect natural timing) on his birthday - although this year it's been a pretty tough winter/an alarmingly late spring - (notwithstanding, you can still see those little white flowers brazenly peeking out).

Check in with our previous kousa dogwood postings  here, here, here and here. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALLEN! 

Expansive Poetics - 61 - (Michael McClure)

June 4, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Expansive Poetics - 62 - (Kurt Schwitters - 1)

≪ Previous: Kousa Dogwood 2014

$

0

0

                                           GOOOOOOR! GOOOOOOOOOO! 

GOOOOOOOOOR!
GRAHHH! GRAHH! GRAHH!
Grah gooooor! Ghahh! Graaarr! Greeeeer! Grayowhr!
Greeeeee
GRAHHRR! RAHHR! GRAGHHRR! RAHR!
RAHRIRAHHR! GRAHHHR! GAHHR! HRAHR!
BE NOT SUGAR BUT BE LOVE
looking for sugar! 

GAHHHHHHHH!
ROWRR!
GROOOOOOOOOOH!

       
Student: I want to mention that Michael McClure has created something called  aGrahh language..

AG: Yeah, beast language.

Student: (It's in) Ghost Tantras.

AG: Ghost Tantras, yeah.

Student:  ..which is, all the way, what is it, ninety-nine?

AG: Ninety-nine poems, or so [ninety-nine]. He was inspired by listening to the lions in the San Francisco Zoo, and listening to whale sounds and coyote sounds and wolf records. And so he (wrote) poems in what I think he called "Beast Language", and the book is GhostTantras, and we probably do have it in the library. And he pronounces them really interestingly. And what they are (are)..little fragments.. you've heard them?

Student: Ah..

AG: Some of them?

Student: On and off

AG: Yeah. He read them here at Naropa, some. Little fragments of his favorite associated words, like "air","tip", "wing", "gold", "velvet""delicate", and then, mixed up with "graar, graour, greyour, graar, greeear, grouer" - all different sounds. And then he read some of them..there's a recording of him reading some of them in the lion house in San Francisco Zoo, beginning to read, and, after a while,rousing the lions so that the lions are roaring back at him and he's roaring back at the lions. And it goes up like a great fugue, or builds up until the lions build up to a height and slowly descend and calm and he descends and calms also. So it ends in the quiet.

There are a lot of  poets that have done sound poetry and there's a vast field which we're hardly covering (except for a few poems by Kurt Schwitters, which are in our anthology here - particularly the poem "primititti", which we actually might get to right now, just as a comparison     
to be continued…

[Audio for the above may be heard here, beginning at approximately nineteen-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding approximately twenty-one-and-a-quarter minutes in]    

On Ghost Tantras (addenda) - Ghost Tantras was recently re-released by City Lights. Here's McClure's introduction to the 2013 edition



Many decades ago in San Francisco, lying on the couch, reading the newly written first Ghost Tantra [above] as it unveiled to my eyes and ears, I feel a ripple, maybe a shudder, of embarrassment and laugh at myself. Where is the beauty that I expect after my experience of that ball of silence promising me ninety-nine tantras to the goddess? I remember Robert Creeley’s admonition to believe in the experience of writing the poem. I look at the page again — it brings love looking for sugar! I know that there are to be ninety-eight more of these. I’m sure of it.

The next day Ghost Tantra 2 appears and speaks in“beast language” . . . the Tantra waves baby arms at me and gives me news of the great Tibetan poet Milarepa who is imprinting himself on the poem, becoming a“mystic experience” — and tells me that everything lies in front of me not in the past. Yes, it is a mystic experience and is my self-experience which can be laughable as easily as loaded with torment. Maybe some beauty that I do not expect will occur in a different guise or body or body of words. Next, Ghost Tantra 3 brings its own announcement with a cigar and cherries, and the sounds that begin to feel familiar —“grooooooooor yahh-yort gahhr.”

Immediately afterward, Tantra 4 carries long howls, brings gardens with cool shadows, and sings of youth and liberation. Sounds of the molecular body account for the fifth Tantra. Tantra 8 has the rose and lily-lovely cheek of the goddess appearing. Belief is beginning to push the edge of dubiety back.

Tantra 13 begins, “OH LOVELY LINE BETWEEN DAY AND DREAM.” I am “pleased and richly placid,” I am sentient and this flow of language seems to be conscious, and is its own being. Can these, in fact, bring changes to the universe, as tantras should do? I’m changing.

Once comic books had words like “CLANG” and the ancient Greek poem says “KLANG.” Did Goethe write Faust or did Faust create Goethe?

I am excited with the existence coming into being— I have brought it about.

* 

Now it is time to pack my bag for the air flight to Mexico City and the long drive to Huautla de Jiménez— and the journey into the mountains of Oaxaca.

I write Tantra 15b in my notebook as the plane departs San Francisco for Mexico City. I have no idea what I’m doing — just writing. I sit in the near empty plane with a swelling sense of meditation, feeling the plane’s metal walls shudder with thoughtless physical pleasure. Above a central California of the Sixties I am thrilled with the magic entering Tantra 16. By the time the plane lands in Mexico City there is little doubt left.In the airport the sadness of all of everything strengthens me.

We drive across the desert stopping sometimes to look at roadside botany. Hours later, we turn off the worn asphalt and enter the mountains into an adventure of thunder and lightning storms and deserted, roadside, cliff edges and narrower “trails”with pounding torrents crushing them — no campesino or burro to be seen in the steep craggy latenight flashes of a landslide drive. Waking in the morning in the small pueblo of Huautla de Jiménez, in a quiet terrain, we drive from the country town to empty cow pastures and carefully make cultures of psilocybes, sterilizing the instruments with a portable burner, propping a tarp of waterproof canvas over our heads, and our sterilized instruments make clean cuts in the small mushrooms. In the early afternoon the curandera María Sabina allows us into her chanting ceremony. Lightning is flashing and thunder booming through the uncovered windows of her home on a high road. Later that day carrying our broken movie camera, we listen to the stories of Isauro Nave, a curandero of the Leaves of the Good Shepherdess, in his hacienda. A few days later, we are in a rural Mexican airport and begin flying to San Francisco. At home, in a flat overlooking the Golden Gate and waves crashing on Point Bonita, I resume writing the Tantras. About this time I struggle in my writing with my shyness and an urge to explore self-dramatization — to attempt a non-mimetic poetry which would not be descriptive of the ordinary world but would be at one with creation of muscular music coming from the body and organs and inspiring sounds and “pictures” from that source.

I believe that a poem I make is part of myself like an organ or spirit-body, and these poem-tantras are becoming a body and growing up — having a life of their own. This is not hard to imagine for a young poet who believes in the divinity of  (William) Blake and(Percy Bysshe) Shelley, and in the paintings of Clyfford Still and Jackson Pollock as a part of those artists’ being.

It was, and is, part of my art to believe that all conceptions of boundaries are lies . . .

As the Tantras move forward and as the ball of silence from which they sound-out is both more clear and more elusive, I consider them carefully. I can feel the spirit of Marilyn Monroe (Tantra 39) entering them the day after her death in 1962. It is only right; it is a business of the goddess. I like the mammalian music when I declaim the poem. Now the title occurs to me “Ghost” from the German “Geist” or soul — Spirit Tantras — Ghost Tantras. I am moved by Brahms’ Four Serious Songs as they sing, in German, the Preacher of the Old Testament’s concern with the spirit of men and the spirit of the beasts and how one goes down underthe earth and the other goes out, out, out. Huge low silences and huge high silences are occurring. Tantra 49, “SILENCE THE EYES! BECALM THE SENSES!” has an extending and extended life.

A year or two later, Bruce Conner and I go to the San Francisco Zoo to record lion roars and snow leopard growls for a sound-play I have written. The newly published first edition of this book is in my back pocket and through a lucky event we end up in the lion house, and I yell this Tantra to the four maned males of the building. They roar back with me and we sing it together. The five of us are deeply pleased; also I am profoundly shaken and then shaken again when Bruce plays back the tape he made with his high fidelity machine. A few years later a public television group is making documentary films of the new generation of poets and asks me to read again to the lions and again they roar with me. The film was shown on TV and now it can be found on the internet.

From Ghost Tantra 90 on, the stanzas build to power and the final ones close by hugely shouting into the dense mattress-like curtain of material reality, until it begins to lift in tranquility.

                                    Michael McClure, Oakland, 2013

---

Expansive Poetics - 62 - (Kurt Schwitters - 1)

June 5, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 178

≪ Previous: Expansive Poetics - 61 - (Michael McClure)

$

0

0

[Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) performing his "Ursonate", London. 1944 - photograph(s) by Ernst Schwitters] 

AG: (Kurt) Schwitters also, (listed under the Russian section [sic - of the classroom anthology]), an inheritor of Dada and the version of Futurism, (the) breakthrough into modernity that took place in Central Europe. Schwitters - 1887-1948, for those of you who have the anthology. He has a poem called "Priimiitittiii". I'll do it once, and then maybe those who have the text can do it with me. Anybody find it? Schwitters? - it's in the French section.

Student (CC): French, oh you said Russian.
AG: French section.
Student (CC): French.
AG: French section - 1887.
Student (CC): I don't even know this poet. 
AG: And I hope you go on and read the rest of the page, once you get it. Schwitters is..
Student (CC): It should be right here.
AG: ..1887 - Eighteen eighty-seven. If you go..
Student (CC):  I…
AG: See, they're all arranged chronologically. 
Student (CC): Um..hmm.
AG: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Excuse me, German! , German.
Student (CC): German.
AG: German, German, third in the German (section) - 1887 - third in the German. I got him associated with the French because he was part of the Surrealist movement [editorial note - not so - Schwitters was never a part of the Surrrealist movement, the Dadaists even kicked him out for being too bourgeois (probably because his income came from his typography work and some real-estate holdings). He went on to create his own art movement which he dubbed "Merz", a movement with a membership of one!) - Expressionist, as well.  The German section (The German section is right before the Russian, immediately before the Russian. Before the Russian is the German section, at least in my book. Have you found it?
Student (CC) : I('m) (looking at various) poems,  just go ahead with it. I think I..
AG: Let's see, you got through Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, German and then Russian. Is anybody else having trouble finding it? You keep going (from the) Spanish..
Student (CC): Mine goes from Spanish to Russian
AG: "Heroic Precursors" - Portuguese, Greek, German…
Student (CC): Before the Spanish?.. See, it's before the Spanish in this book.
AG: Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, I see. Okay, you're right. Right, okay..

AG: Priimiitittiii




priimiitittiii           tisch
tesch
priimiitittiii           tesch
tusch
priimiitittiii           tischa
tescho
priimiitittiii           tescho
tuschi
priimiitittiii
priimiitittiii
priimiitittiii           too
priimiitittiii           taa
priimiitittiii           too
priimiitittiii           taa
priimiitittiii           tootaa
priimiitittiii           tootaa
priimiitittiii           tuutaa
priimiitittiii           tuutaa
priimiitittiii           tuutaatoo
priimiitittiii           tuutaatoo
priimiitittiii           tuutaatoo
priimiitittiii           tuutaatoo

You want to try that?

Student (CC): Wouldn't that be 'tuu-taa-toe"? - "Tuutaa-toe", I think 
AG: No, "two" - it's T-O-O
Student (CC): But it's T-U-U
AG:  "Tea-tah-too", "Tea-tah-tew" maybe

This particular poem, if you notice, if you can see it or hear it, it has somewhat of a pyramidal form, like a litany,,

Student: A litany?

AG: ..where you have a statement and then a response: 
"priimiitittiii         tisch..
priimiitittiii           tesch..  
priimiitittiii           tischa.."

and, actually, this was the model I used for the third part of "Howl" ["Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland!/where you're madder than I am.."] - this particular little fragment of a poem, the sound construction of this poem.. if you gentlemen would listen a second.. the sound construction of the poem (is) (also) the paradigm I used for the second part of "Howl" ["Moloch.."] (and also the litany section in"Kaddish") - that is, the presentation of a phrase, and then a response, with a graduated response, where your response gets longer and longer and so it builds a pyramid with a pyramidal base beginning with a point at the top -  "priimiitittiii           tesch"
Also, what he did was abstract the common litany form that Andre Breton practiced (which you'll find in the French section) of just setting forth a phrase and then adding on a weird idea to go along with it. So it's the litany form, or the list poem form, but used  also as a sound poem. So you have a list poem and a sound poem together. In other words, you try and make a sound structure out of the form of litany or list poem  

Now, shall we try doing "Priimiitittiii" - or, does anybody object to pronouncing words that have no meaning here? Must there be… May we have some objection to pronouncing words without meaning? 

Student (CC): I think its "oo", as in "zoological"

Student: (There's) "titty" and  "tush"..

AG: Pardon me?.. Yes, we've got the tush in there, but you're not supposed to be interpreting.

Student (CC): Is this "o", "ooh", or "oh"?  Any German students here?. I had three years and I think its zoological.
AG: Zoological?
Student (CC): Zoological. I think its "oh".
AG: Okay -  'tuu-taa-toe"
Student: "O-E"?
Student (CC): No, "O-O"
AG: "O-O", we have "T-U-U"
Student (CC): "O-O"
AG:  And "T-O-O"
Student: I think it's nonsense syllables
AG: However, he wrote it in English
Student: In English?
AG: I think in English.
Student: It's phonetically… 
Student: This sounds slightly Latin or something... 

AG: Okay - "Priimiitittiii"  - One, two, three..
[Allen leads the class in a group reading of Schwitters' "Priimiitittiii"  - they read through it  twice]  - Alright

Student: That sounds like something that they made you do in a mental institution.

AG: In the middle of what?

Student: In a mental institution.

Student: Mental?

AG: Yes, exactly. That's what it's about! - Actually, if you read on in this page, there's a discussion of a meeting with (Filippo) Marinetti , (Lazlo) Moholy-Nagy, Kurt Schwitters, at a banquet with the high members of the Nazi party, (Joseph) Goebbels, (Hermann) Göring, and the President of the University of Berlin, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Rudolf Hessand Ernst Röhm . This is in the early (19)30's, and there's a description of the Nazi culture people, (who) wanted to include Kurt Schwitters and a few of the other Futurists and Expressionists in their scene, and so they invited them to a banquet..

Student (CC): It's unbelievable!  (Chinese) Communists inviting the (Tibetan) lamas back to Tibet!  

AG: Would you like to hear what happened?

Peter Orlovsky (sitting in on the class): Yes

Student(s): Yes

to be continued

[Audio begins here, beginning at approximately twenty-one-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately twenty-six-and-half-minutes in & then from approximately thirty-seven-and-three-quarter minutes, concluding at approximately 
 forty-one-and-a-quarter minutes in] 




[ Kurt Schwitters reciting from the "Ursonate" (1932) - see here for note on the authenticity of Schwitters' recordings]

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 178

June 6, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Expansive Poetics - 69 - (More Khlebnikov 3)

≪ Previous: Expansive Poetics - 62 - (Kurt Schwitters - 1)

$

0

0

Two weeks since the last "Round-Up", so let's get right down to it…

Not-to-be-missed -Distant Neighbors, the Selected Letters between Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, just published by Counterpoint. Watch the video of the two together, in conversation, at the recent (2014) Festival of  Faiths in Louisville, Kentucky (moderated by publisher, Jack Shoemaker). 
There'll be conversing again on June 27 in Santa Rosa.

An interview with Gary Snyder on "Buddhism, Beat Poetry and Environmentalism" may be accessed here. 



Jack Kerouac's notebooks -  Joshua Rothman at The New Yorkerreminded us of the revealing selection published by that magazine in 1998 (with a brief introduction by Douglas Brinkley) - "On The Road Again", "span(ning) the years from 1948, when the twenty-five-year-old Kerouac had recently returned to New York from a cross-country trip, to 1950, when his first book, The Town And The City, was published."

"January 1, 1948 … Wrote 2500 words, until interrupted by a visit from Allen Ginsberg who came at four o'clock in the morning to tell me that he is going mad, but once and if cured he will communicate with other human beings as no one else has - completely, sweetly, naturally. He described his terror and seemed on the verge of throwing a fit in my house. When he calmed down I read him parts of my novel and he leeringly announced that it was "greater than (Herman) Melville, in a sense - the great American novel". I did not believe a word he said. 
Someday I will take off my own mask and tell all about Allen Ginsberg and what he is in the "real" flesh. It seems to me that he's just like any other human being and that drives him to wit's ends. How can I help a man who wants to be a monster one minute and a god the next". 

"I Saw The Best Minds of My Generation Destroyed By Copyright Violation" is an unfortunate story - unfortunate on all sides. Aimee Levitt reports for the Chicago Reader about Joyce Johnson's discovery, and recent closing, of  "the Runaways Lab Theater's mostly improvised play", based on her own Minor Characters.

(Here's an exchange of letters over Andrew O'Hagan's New York Review of Books review of her (Johnson's) recently-published Jack Kerouac biography, The Voice Is All - The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac) 

Nathan Coy, audio digitalization specialist at Stanford University writes about just two (one from 1971, one from 1989) of the many remarkable audiotapes of Allen preserved in the Stanford Special Collections Library - here

Bart de Paepe of Sloow Tapes (we've mentioned his project before) continues the technology (we'd previously mentioned his release of Allen's  "London Mantra"). Among his most recent releases - Nanao Sakaki's "Wind For Mind" ("like (Matsuo) Basho meets (Henry David) Thoreau", he deftly notes) - This tape collects two readings from the '(19)90's, alongside an interview. A sample of the recording may be accessed here  

[Nanao Sakaki (1923-2008)] 


Couldn't resist posting this - Anne Waldman's recitation of the late Rene Ricardin vintage form.

and, speaking of Anne Waldman, Naropa Summer Sessions begin this week . The 40th Anniversary of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Summer Writing Program is now in session (now through June 28). Highlights include lectures/courses by/with Joanne Kyger, Margaret Randall, Lewis Warsh, Steven Taylor, Clark Coolidge (on William Burroughs), and Thurston Moore 

More details here, here, here and here.




Interested in observing a Tibetan response to Howl? - check out this

Other scatterings we've come across on You Tube? - well, we have to confess we're somewhat partial to this setting of Allen's "Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square" (the recitation is, quite seductively and quite successfully, offered in Greek)
(For Allen himself, reading the poem in the original language, see here).

And what's this? - Allen Ginsberg vs (the great Chilean poet) Vincente Huidobro? - well, certainly no shortage of brio and enthusiasm! - who wins? -  we'll respectfully call it a draw.


[Vincent Huidobro (1893-1948)]

A funny thing happened this week on our Facebook page(well, not so funny, we were censored!). Internationally-renowned photographer Richard Avedon's oft-glimpsed (indeed, arguably iconic) image of Allen and Peter Orlovsky (the cover image of Peter's new book) was deemed "inappropriate", not befitting Facebook's community standards, and was ignominiously taken down! What next?

It seems David S Wills of Beatdom had a not dissimilar experience over on his site. 




[Elodie Lauten (1950-2014)]

Sad news to report today, at the conclusion of today's Round-Up, Elodie Lauten (featured here only a couple of weeks ago) passed away this week.  She was 64 years old. She was a remarkable talent. She will be much missed. 

"An oddly quirky, ever-upbeat personality with a touch of Zen mysticism" - Kyle Gann's obituary  (for Arts Journal) can be read here. 
Her Waking in New York, an opera, composed around the writings of Allen Ginsberg may be seen (and heard) in its entirety (from a recent performance) here.

Expansive Poetics - 69 - (More Khlebnikov 3)

May 20, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Robert Creeley's Birthday

≪ Previous: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 178

$

0

0

[Velimir Khlebnikov, aged 30]

AG: Let's see what else we've got. There was one [by Velimir Khlebnikov] that reminded me a lot of Gregory (Corso) (the reason I said some cross between Gregory Corso and (Peter) Orlovsky is the certain strange combination of phrasing that's similar) called "The Lone Performer" [ОДИНОКИЙ ЛИЦЕДЕЙ]. The first line mentions Tsarskoye Selo [Царским Селом] now Pushkin], which is a little town outside of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) where there was a private school (where (Anna) Akhmatova, his friend, grew up, actually, and went to school)..and which is always referred to.. it's outside of Leningrad, and it's a little.. it's where the Tsar had, I think, a summer palace (I'm not sure, I think it's the summer palace or some special garden or retreat (a summer retreat) outside of St Petersburg, now Leningrad [now St Petersburg again - sic] - Tsarskoye Selo. And there are a lot of poems by Akhmatova relating or referring back to that early era. I think others, also, were familiar with that. Of course, (Alexander) Pushkin grew up there too. So it's famous in Russian literature because Pushkin wrote some very famous poems about it. - [Allen begins reading Khlebnikov's  "The Lone Performer"] -  "And while above Tsarskoye Selo/Akhmatova's song and tears were pouring.." [ И пока над Царским Селом
Лилось пенье и слезы…] "I understood that I was seen by none/That one must sow.." -  (S-O-W - like you sow seed) - "That one must sow the eyes/That the eye-sower must go!" - ["Я понял, что я никем не видим,/Что нужно сеять очи,/Что должен сеятель очей идти!"] (that phrase, "..one must sow the eyes/.. the eye-sower must go!", reminded me of Gregory's kind of combination of words - "the eye-sower" 

Student: "Star-screwer" [the epitaph to Allen's Kaddish is a quote from Corso - "Be a Star-screwer"] 

AG: Hmm

Student; "Star-screwer"

AG: Yeah, well there's that little phrase of Gregory's - to be a "star-screwer". But, "eye-sounds". He has a phrase of describing his own poetry as "eye sounds", his method.

So, you see, a funny genius, this guy (Khlebnikov). And his photograph is a turn-on, because once you see his photograph you suddenly recognize who he is - a big idiot with a  basket on his head!. You might pass that around [Allen passes around his book] - There are a couple of photographs of him in there with his girlfriend. He looks like the simpleton that you'd kn0w he'd be.


[Vladimir Khlebnikov with a friend, "the daughter of a wine-merchant", 1912]

Nineteen twenty-two. A sound poem called "Zangezi" (done on the root in Russian of a root "mind" - "ум" - do you know what is "mind" in Russian? -  "mind"?

Student: "ум"

AG: "ум"?

Student: "ум"

AG:  "ум" - So this is taking that root and using conventional  and unconventional prefixes and suffixes (that is, little phrases, little syllables before and after") - [Allen reads from the translator's introdction to the poem] - 'The translation below leaves the resulting neologisms in the original and converts the standard Russian words into English.". then Khlebnikov gives a little dictionary of all these funny words. We'll just read it straight. 

[Allen begins to read (from "Zangezi")] - 

                
               I

Goum.

Oum

Uum
Paum.
Soum of me. 

And of those I don't know.

Moum. 

Boum.  

Laum.
Cheum.
Bom!

Bim Bam!

II

Proum 

Praum 

Prium 

Nium 

Veum 

Roum  

Zaum

Vyum

Voum

Boum

Byum

Bom!

Help, bell ringers, I'm tired.

III

Doum. 

Daum. 

Mium. 

Raum. 

Khoum. 

Khaum. 

Bang the glad tidings of the mind!

Here's the bell and the rope.

IV

Suum.

Izum.

Neum.

Naum.

Dvuum.  

Treum. 

Deum. 

Bom!

Zoum. 

Koum.

Soum.

Poum.

Glaum.

Raum.

Noum.

Nuum.

Vyum

Bom! bom, bom!

It's the big booming bell of the mind.

Diving sounds flying down from above

at the summons of men.

Beautiful is the tolling of the mind.

Beautiful are its pure sounds.

January 16, 1922. 

Then he has little translations. But if you get the.. actually, you hyper-ventilate if you pronounce that properly. It gives a tingling in the spine. 

Another one of that same time - "Hard Talk" (1919-21)

Student: A lot of those sounds sound like Latin..
AG: Yeah
Student: Just by accident
AG: "Suum Izum"?  "Deum", yes..is that plural..?
Student: "God", right?
AG: But I mean - "-eum" is a plural..is the third-person plural in Latin conjugation?
Student - "sum" is first person (singular) - "sum ego"..
AG: And what would be..
Student:  I am.. that's "sum" 
AG: Okay
Student:  And "deum".. 

Allen reads Khlebnikov's "Hard Talk" -

AG:  “Hard Talk” -  “Hard Talk – Here, take a swat in the teeth/My kiss./ More crimson,/More scarlet,/Like a rough rowan,/Sputtered-0ut, sputter,/Crimson red shaft,/Your cherry blossoms/Your bashed-in lips./And the air in a scream.” – (That’s very Corso-esque (or Corso’s very Khlebnikovesque in that) – “Your bashed-in lips./And the air in a scream.”..” Here, take a swat in the teeth/My kiss.” -  “Hard Talk” – And the title – “Hard Talk” – That really is hard talk.

What else have we got of his to amuse ourselves with?

Oh, I’m sorry, with that  “Goum’/Oum/Umm, there was a prefatory five lines – 

“Quiet! Quiet! He will speak/ Zangezi: Ring the glad tidings of the mind! /Sound the tocsin of reason, the big bell of the/mind: All the different shades of the brain will/ pass before you in a review of all kinds of/reason. Now! Everyone sing after me… “
I - Goum/Oum/Uum.." [And so forth.. That was the prefatory note].

[Audio for the above may be heard here starting at approximately ten minutes in and concluding at approximately seventeen-and-a-half minutes in] 

Robert Creeley's Birthday

May 21, 2014, 3:00 am

≫ Next: More Khlebnikov - 4 (Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe)

≪ Previous: Expansive Poetics - 69 - (More Khlebnikov 3)

$

0

0

                       [Robert Creeley in Maine, August 2004 - Photograph by Gloria Graham]

Robert Creeley's birthday today. Here's some more selections from the recently-published Selected Letters of Robert Creeley




Feb 6 1957, Albuquerque, New Mexico -  "Dear Allen, I'm ashamed to say, nothing much at all has been the matter, i.e. I've wanted to and have thought to write often - and have had you and Jack (Kerouac) and Peter (Orlovsky) much in mind if that is not pompous to say. Over the time I had off at Xmas, I went to Mexico,and caught up with Mitch & Dennie [Mitchell Goodman and Denise Levertov] in Barra de Navidad (on the coast), and had at least some time with them, and so, as well, heard about your visit very happily. I wish somehow I might have been there (too)….

September 7 1959, Guatemala - "Dear Allen, We made it, like they say, and glad to hear you did likewise. So that's that. It was a very good ride back with you and the chance to talk and all I'd been hoping to have . There is no one that makes more sense of the politics of the so-called scene than yourself , and likewise I think what you're making of the unresolved areas of communications and control, etc, comes in very usefully.  i/e. when is a man a sandwich, if you ask him to, and so on.  That stroboscope image still hangs in my head, like who controls rhythm controls, as (Charles ) Olson used to quote somebody or other.(Nirvana, the great mystic, etc.). Reading that part of "Kaddish" inBig Table #2, hearing it again on the tape-recorder (and I'll send shortly a tape of poems. etc.) , it makes it thicker, denser, more variable , than heretofore ("Howl"). the "message", Norbert Wiener style is registered in a wider range of "frequency" - it anticipates and leads, giving the reader less area to "reject" in, etc, etc. Ah well! The "feed back" of your own terms, as they occur, declared in the poem, i.e, as you, say, get them, add to the interest likewise. That way I read (William) Burroughs as coming to "terms" in his writing, coming to not so much abstracts of the so-called experience , but patterns that amend and fix it. He uses his mind as a way-out IBM machine, seeing what kind of change the thing can take - because take it must, etc. Or else it can't matter. That humor of his is fatal (mortal) as is all same - only people who really want to live forever, or who don't get the joke, so to speak, never laugh. I am very damned taken by everything of his which I read…

December 24, 1959, Guatemala - (to Charles Olson) -  "..I want to..put Allen G, for one, in the context I read him, i.e not in the popular image, though god knows that's a part also - but qua writing (which, for me, is of course the continual seepage, lost, of what now occurs - that the attitude starts too far back of the poem which is then meant to contain it. And yet Allen clearly, as (William Carlos) Williams said, "thinks with the poem. In that lies his thought. And that is the profundity, etc. I.e, the poet, the poet, the poet, etc)…

March 16, 1960, Guatemala - (to William Carlos Williams) - "…the means wherewith to control the line, and invent upon its nature "fit occasion", like they say…Talking last summer with Allen Ginsberg, I find the same concerns in him - and in (the) opening section of "Kaddish", there seems a much more tangible (certainly closer and more determined) sense of measure…Ginsberg is a very helpful friend, in many ways, and not least in the range of line he is attempting , no matter just now with what success, because the very width of the divergence attempted seems to me useful…" 

July 16, 1964, Placitas, New Mexico - (to Alexander Trocchi) - "..I much respect Allen Ginsberg's contemporary activity in politics - ..very local, and making, at base, an active "fantasy" of the content proposed by institutions as presidents etc…"

June 2, 1965, Placitas, New Mexico - "Dear Allen, We saw a note in NY Times about your being crownedKing of May, like they say, in Prague - which seems a lovely triumph. Bobbie (Creeley - Bobbie Louise Hawkins) made a collage of spritely cherubims dancing about it, so you are eternal.. Too, very very happy that you got the Guggenheim. That's progress for them clearly, and I hope it serves you to some use you've wanted...

November 1, 1975, Buffalo - "Dear Allen, That was such a happy evening down there! Your apartment is charming! And your generous intro to myself was so sweet, truly. Thanks.
Elsewhere sad to miss meeting Bob Dylan (my hero!) - I thought Jim Brodeywas putting me on! Apparently Bill Katz thought it was [just] someone playing a record - etc. It's a hard life.."

January 1 1992, Buffalo - "Dear Allen, A very Happy New Year, or else we speak to God personally. I just saw the enclosed in our local paper last night and since the date you are noted as taking ill is December 21, the solstice no less (and [my daughter] Hannah's birthday), I've got to presume the information about you recuperating in Cooperstown, etc, is accurate. Remember you up past two hustling cash for Steve Lacy's company in Boulder, and then up at five to say goodbye to me so generously, I must think it's time to be simply easier on yourself  and/or more thoughtful as to what you need. Well that you know, but (as like smoking which I seem finally to have managed to stop after getting pneumonia this summer about a week after seeing you) I guess it has to be work to do in fact do it. Since you are that company most dear to my own ears and heart, do be provident and not simply providence itself. I wish I could see you much more often, but you are certainly always in mind no matter. Onward!…

and (out of sequence) here's a "failed" poem (from 1963) to Bob from Allen ("trying to approximate your style, the middle stanza almost makes it no? but the last line sing-songs bad") - "B.C. " I was waiting for Eternals/superimposed on blue sky/and apartment building walls/I was in 15 years before/come back through future doors./I can't wait forever,/I didn't and came back here/by myself feeling sure/lost in this University/with other males and females/looking in Creeley's like eye,/and we all told similar tales" - Creeley's response - "... Allen - who really I love very much.. this side of him.. is so little recognized.. the way he tries, and studies, and thinks - and all the shyness therein".
Allen actually managed to essay a more successful "Creeley poem" ten years later - "For Creeley's Ear" - "the whole/ weight of/ everything/ too much/ my heart in/ the subway/ pounding/ subtly/ head ache/from smoking/dizzy/a moment/riding/ uptown to see/Karmapa/Buddha tonite". 

 Here's (here in its entirety) the glorious Harvard event, celebrating the publication of TheSelected Letters .. - The Creeley Collective

 

Here's the event (February 2014)  celebrating the bequest of his library to the University of  Notre Dame's Hesburgh Library. Penelope Creeley, Steve Clay and Kaplan Harris are among the speakers. Penelope Creeley's wonderful memoir, Robert and Books (we've mentioned it before here), should,  by the way, on no account be missed.

Reviews of the Selected Lettershere, here and here. 

Need we say anything of James Campbell's misplaced observations on Creeley's "peculiar idolect" in the TLS

For Creeley, the poet, celebrate the birth today with this April 2000 reading and discussion, expertly recorded and presented by the Kelly Writers House over at the University of Pennsyvania.

(Their PennSound page for Robert Creeley is here)

For a glimpse of Creeley, the astute critic, see here (musings on his fellow New Englander,Emily Dickinson - (transcription by Graham Foust))



The entire Collected Essays are on line 

Earlier Allen Ginsberg Project postings may be accessed hereand here and here     

More Khlebnikov - 4 (Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe)

May 22, 2014, 4:00 am

≫ Next: Ginsberg-Ram Dass Weekend - 1

≪ Previous: Robert Creeley's Birthday

$

0

0

[Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922)]

AG: What else might we find here [in this Khlebnikov book]. Well, that's it for the moment, I think. I had some others that.. I'll need the book back if you can pass it around back. The theory of some of the sound ideas was to fuse the Slavic words together (as his commentators have noted) and try to make a universal language, which was what he was interested in. So he was interested in universal mind, universal language, poets as universal legislators of the world, [editorial note - Allen is alluding here to Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous phrase at the conclusion of his "Defence of Poetry" (1821) - "Poets are the unacknowledged legistators of the world"], world collaboration of intellectuals and poets, 
some invented language.  
Actually, if you could pass the book back to me, I wanted to check out some of his manifestos on world leadership. Could I get the book?  I'll pass it back later. There are a couple of rare things in here - in his theories and visions and proposals - let's see if I can find them - "Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe" [ "ВОЗЗВАНИЕ ПРЕДСЕДАТЕЛЕЙ ЗЕМНОГО ШАРА"] - that was his project. Let's see what we've got here.. This would be the equivalent, I guess..  What year is this now? Probably (19)21 again. Let me check it out. I'll have to find out later. [Editorial note - the poem was actually composed in 1917]

[Allen reads  Khlebnikov's "Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe"] - 

"Only we, twisting your three years of war/into one swirl of the terrible trumpet.." [ "Только мы, свернув ваши три года войны "] - (I guess, perhaps, this would be during  World War I) - "Only we, twisting your three years of war/intoone swirl of the terrible trumpet/ Sing and shout, sing and shout,/ Drunken with a charm of the truth,/ That the government of the Terrestrial Globe/ Has come into existence./ It is we./ Only we have fixed to our foreheads/ The wild laurels of the governers of the Terrestrial Globe./ Implacable in our sunburned cruelty,/ Mounting the slab of the right of seizure,/ Rising high the standard of time,/ We fire the moist clays of mankind/ Into jugs and pitchers of time./ We initiate the hunt for people's souls,/ We howl through the gray sea horns,/ We call home the human flocks./ Ego-e! Who's with us?/ Who's our comrade and friend?/ Ego-e! Who's behind us?/ Thus we dance, the shepherds of the people/ And mankind playing on bagpipes./ Evo-e..." - (an old Greek cry [the cry of the Bacchae]) -  "..Who else?/ Evo-ee. What next?/ Only we, mounting the slab/ Of ourselves and our names/ Amid the sea of your vicious eye-pupils,/ Intersected by the hunger of the gallows/ And distorted by the horror of immiment death/ Intend by the surf of the human howl/ To name and acclaim ourselves henceforth/ The Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe. What snots, some will say./ "No, they're saints", others will object./ But we shall smile like gods/ And point a finger at the sun/ Drag it about on a string for dogs,/ Hang it up on the words -  Equality, Freedom, Fraternity,/ Judge it by your jury of jugglers/ On the charge that once/ On the threshold of a very smileful spring/ It instilled in us these beautiful thoughts,/ These words, gave us/ These angry stares./ It is the guilty one./ For we enact the solar whisper/ When we crash through to you as the four plenipotentiaries of its ordinances,/ Its strict mandates./ Corpulent crowds of humanity/Will trail along the tracks /Which we have left behind./ London, Paris and Chicago/In their appreciation/ Will change their names to ours/But we shall forgive them their folly.." - (so the tone is very similar to the Dadaist Manifesto) - "..This is the distant future./ But meanwhile, mothers,/ Bear away your children/ Should a state appear anywhere./ Youngsters hustle away and hide in caves/ And in the depths of the sea/Should you see a state anywhere. Girls and those who can't stand the smell of the dead,/ Fall in a swoon at the very word "borders"/They smell of corpses./For every chopping block/ Was once a good pine tree./ A curly pine./ The block is only bad because/ It's used to chop people's heads off./ So, dear state,/ You are a very nice word from a dream./ There are ten sounds in the word -/ Much comfort and much freshness,/ You grew up in a forest of words:  Ashtray..." -  ("State.. You grew up, state, you were a very fine word, you grew up in a forest of words.. [Allen continues] - )  "..match, cigarette butt./An equal among equals -/ But why, state, do you feed on people?/ Why has the fatherland become a cannibal/ And the motherland his wife?/ Hey!  Listen!/ In the name of all mankind/ We offer to negotiate/ With the states of the past./ If you, o states, are splendid,/As you love to say of yourselves/ And you force your servants/ To say of you,/ Then why this food of the gods?/ Why do we crunch people in your maws,/Between your incisors and molars?/  Listen, states of space,/ For three years already/ You have pretended/That mankind is only a pastry,/ A cookie, melting in your mouth./ But what if the cookie jumps like a razor and says/ "Mommy!"?/ What if we are sprinkled on it/ Like poison?/ Henceforth we order that the words "By the grace of God"/be changed to "By the grace of Fiji"./ Is it decent for the Lord Terrestrial Globe/ (Long may his will be done)/ To encourage communal cannibalism/ Within the confines of himself?/And is it not the height of servility/ On the part of the people, those of the state, the eaters / To defend their supreme Eater?/ Listen! Even pismires/ Squirt formic acid on the tongues of bears.."- ("pismire"'s an ant) - ".."If there should be an objection/ to the state or space is not subject to judgment,/As a lawful communal person,/ May we not object that man himself/ Is also a bimanous state/ Of blood corpuscles and is also communal?/  If the states be truly bad,/ Then who among us will lift a finger/ To prolong their dreaming/ Under the blanket forever/. You are dissatisfied,/O states and their governments,/ You chatter your teeth in advanced warning/ And cut capers. But so what!/ We are the higher power/ And can always answer, "The revolt of states,/ The revolt of slaves, /With a well-aimed missive."/ Standing on the deck of the word "superstate of the star",/And needing no cane in this hour of rolling/ We ask which is higher:/ We by virtue of the right to revolt/ And incontestable in our primacy,/Protected by the laws of patents/ In declaring ourselves the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe,/ Or you,yourgovernments,/Of the separate countries of the past,/ These workaday remnants by the slaughterhouses/ Of the bipedal bulls, with whose/ Cadaverous moisture you are smeared?/ As regards us, the leaders of mankind,/ Which we constructed according to the rules of rays/ With the aid of equalizations of fate,/ We reject the gentlemen/ Who name themselves governors, states, and other book publishers/ And commercial houses of War & Co.,/ Who have placed the mills of dear prosperity/ Under the now three-year-old waterfall/ Of your beer in our blood,/ Withthe defenselessly red wave./ We see the states falling on their sword/ In despair that we have come….." - [(and) it ends] - ".And so the battle/ of the great words has been hurled./ The government of the Terrestrial Globe./ The sky-blue banner of the firmament/Intersected by a red flash of lightning,/ A banner of windy dawns, morning suns,/ Is raised and flaps above the earth./ There you have it, my friends!/, the government of the Terrestrial Globe" 



[Только мы, свернув ваши три года войны/ В один завиток грозной трубы,/ Поем и кричим, поем и кричим,/ Пьяные прелестью той истины,/ Что Правительство земного шара/ Уже существует./ Оно — Мы/ Только мы нацепили на свои лбы/ Дикие венки Правителей земного шара./ Неумолимые в своей загорелой жестокости,/ Встав на глыбу захватного права,/ Подымая прапор времени,/ Мы — обжигатели сырых глин человечества/ В кувшины времени и балакири,/ Мы — зачинатели охоты за душами людей,/ Воем в седые морские рога,/ Скликаем людские стада —/ Эго-э! Кто с нами?/ Кто нам товарищ и друг?/ Эго-э! Кто за нами?/Так пляшем мы, пастухи людей и/ Человечества, играя на волынке./ Эво-э! Кто больше?/ Эво-э! Кто дальше?/ Только мы, встав на глыбу/Себя и своих имен,/ Хотим среди моря ваших злобных зрачков,/ Пересеченных голодом виселиц/И искаженных предсмертным ужасом,/ Около прибоя людского воя,/ Назвать и впредь величать себя/ Председателями земного шара./ Какие наглецы — скажут некоторые,/ Нет, они святые, возразят другие./ Но мы улыбнемся, как боги,/ И покажем рукою на Солнце./ Поволоките его на веревке для собак,/ Повесьте его на словах:/ Равенство, братство, свобода,/ Судите его вашим судом судомоек/ За то, что в преддверьях/ Очень улыбчивой весны/ Оно вложило в нас эти красивые мысли,/ Эти слова и дало/ Эти гневные взоры./ Виновник — Оно./ Ведь мы исполняем солнечный шепот,/ Когда врываемся к вам, как/ Главноуполномоченные его приказов,/Ero строгих велений./Жирные толпы человечества/ Протянутся по нашим следам,/Где мы прошли.  / Лондон, Париж и Чикаго/ Из благодарности заменят свои/ Имена нашими./ Но мы простим им их глупость/. Это дальнее будущее,/ А пока, матери,/ Уносите своих детей,/ Если покажется где-нибудь государство./ Юноши, скачите и прячьтесь в пещеры/ И в глубь моря,/ Если увидите где-нибудь государство./ Девушки и те, кто не выносит запаха мертвых,/ Падайте в обморок при слове «границы»/ Они пахнут трупами./ Ведь каждая плаха была когда-то/ Хорошим сосновым деревом,/ Кудрявой сосной./ Плаха плоха только тем,/Что на ней рубят головы людям./ Так, государство, и ты — /Очень хорошее слово со сна —/ В нем есть 11 звуков,/ Много удобства и свежести,/Ты росло в лесу слов:/ Пепельница, спичка, окурок,/ Равный меж равными./ Но зачем оно кормится людьми?/ Зачем отечество стало людоедом,/ А родина его женой?/ Эй! Слушайте!/ Вот мы от имени всего человечества/ Обращаемся с переговорами/ К государствам прошлого:/ Если вы, о государства, прекрасны,/ Как вы любите сами о себе рассказывать/ И заставляете рассказывать о себе/ Своих слуг,/ То зачем эта пища богов?/ Зачем мы, люди, трещим у вас на челюстях/ Между клыками и коренными зубами?/ Слушайте, государства пространств,/ Ведь вот уже три года/ Вы делали вид,/ Что человечество — только пирожное,/ Сладкий сухарь, тающий у вас во рту; /А если сухарь запрыгает бритвой и скажет: мамочка!/ Если его посыпать нами,/ Как ядом?/ Отныне мы приказываем заменить слова: «Милостью Божьей» —«Милостью Фиджи»./ Прилично ли Господину Земному Шару/ (Да творится воля его)/ Поощрять соборное людоедство/В пределах себя?/ И не высоким ли холопством/ Со стороны людей, как едомых,/ Защищать своего верховного Едока?/ Послушайте! Даже муравьи/ Брызгают муравьиной кислотой на язык медведя./ Если же возразят,/ Что государство пространств не подсудно,/ Как правовое соборное лицо,/ Не возразим ли мы, что и человек/ Тоже двурукое государство/ Шариков кровяных и тоже соборен./ Если государства плохи,/ То кто из нас ударит палец о палец,/ Чтобы отсрочить их сон/ Под одеялом: навеки ?- /Вы недовольны, о государства/ И их правительства,/ Вы предостерегающе щелкаете зубами/ И делаете прыжки. Что ж!/ Мы — высшая сила/И всегда сможем ответить/ На мятеж государств,/ Мятеж рабов, —/ Метким письмом./ Стоя на палубе слова «надгосударство звезды»/ И не нуждаясь в палке в час этой качки,/ Мы спрашиваем, что выше:/Мы, в силу мятежного права,/ И неоспоримые в своем первенстве,/ Пользуясь охраной законов о изобретении/ И объявившие себя Председателями земного шара,/ Или вы, правительства/ Отдельных стран прошлого,/ Эти будничные остатки около боен/ Двуногих быков,/ Трупной влагой коих вы помазаны?/ Что касается нас, вождей человечества,/ Построенного нами по законам лучей/При помощи уравнений рока,/ То мы отрицаем господ,/ Именующих себя правителями,/ Государствами и другими книгоиздательствами,/ И торговыми домами «Война и К ^o »,/ Приставившими мельницы милого благополучия /К уже трехлетнему водопаду/ Вашего пива и нашей крови/ С беззащитно красной волной./ Мы видим государства, павшие на меч/С отчаяния, что мы пришли./ С родиной на устах,/ Обмахиваясь веером военно-полевого устава,/ Вами нагло выведена война/ В круг Невест человека./ А вы, государства пространств, успокойтесь/ И не плачьте, как девочки./ Как частное соглашение частных лиц,/ Вместе с обществами поклонников Данте,/ Разведения кроликов, борьбы с сусликами,/ Вы войдете под сень изданных нами законов./ Мы вас не тронем./ Раз в году вы будете собираться на годичные собрания,/ Делая смотр редеющим силам/ И опираясь на право союзов./ Оставайтесь добровольным соглашением/ Частных лиц, никому не нужным/ И никому не важным,/ Скучным, как зубная боль/ У Бабушки 17 столетия./ Вы относитесь к нам,/ Как волосатая ного-рука обезьянки,/ Обожженная неведомым богом-пламенем,/ К руке мыслителя, спокойно/ Управляющей вселенной,/ Этого всадника оседланного рока./ Больше того: мы основываем/ Общество для защиты государств/ От грубого и жестокого обращения/ Со стороны общин времени./ Как стрелочники/У встречных путей Прошлого и Будущего,/ Мы так же хладнокровно относимся/ К замене ваших государств/ Научно построенным человечеством,/ Как к замене липового лаптя/ Зеркальным заревом поезда./Товарищи-рабочие! Не сетуйте на нас:/ Мы, как рабочие-зодчие,/ Идем особой дорогой, к общей цели./ Мы — особый род оружия./ Итак, боевая перчатка/ Трех слов: Правительство земного шара — /Брошена/. Перерезанное красной молнией/ Голубое знамя безволода,/ Знамя ветреных зорь, утренних солнц/ Поднято и развевается над землей,/ Вот оно, друзья мои!/ Правительство земного шара.."]

- What year would that be? Probably.. I don't know actually, early enough to be part of the (First World) War or after (the) War.  I'll check it out for next time.

I think I'll quit for a while. Next session, we'll go on through some of the other Russians of that time, and their retrospect.. AkhmatovaandMandelstam who are in the anthology, (some books of which are in the library - and we'll put more books there). And those of you who are in the course and want to make use of the anthology (or (want to) buy one), please check now with CC [Allen's teaching assistant] and arrange to give him money now or deliver it later, because I don't have enough money to buy it for you, to put out the money in advance, this time.

Student: In the (Russian)  Futurist Manifesto…

AG: We have a little time to talk now. We got ten minutes.

Student: In the Futurist Manifesto, where they speak in such a negative light of  (Maxim) Gorki..

AG: Yeah

Student: Didn't Mayakovsky who signed it give one of his early important poems…

AG: They hadn't met.

Student: They hadn't met?

AG: They hadn't met in the Revolution yet.

Student: Oh, alright.

AG: This is pre-Revolutionary, this is 1912

Student: Uh-huh… So when did he give him that poem? that was..considerably later? Did his attitude change?

AG: Oh yeah, that, that, that - (his poem)  "A Cloud in Trousers".  I don't know. I'd have to look. He might have grown up a couple of years and then rejected him..

Student: Another thing I'd like to ask you about. There was a line in one of those poems, I think the Mandelstam poem..about "the night's sun shines [glows] unnoticed"…

AG: Yeah

Student: Yeah, I was wondering, how you related to a line like that

AG: The truthfulness, or (the) hopefulness, or the poetry, or.. ?

Student: But that's so non-realistic. It's…

AG: Actually, he's in a place where they have the midnight sun…Actually, he's writing in (the) north, (in) St Petersburg, where there's a midnight sun.

Student: Oh, really. I didn't know that.

AG: Well, "white nights" (as they are called in stories of Gogol, I believe, or Dostoyevsky -[Editorial note - it is actually Dostoyevsky] white - Gogol, "white nights"). 

Student: Okay, well that's…

AG: "Nature shines unnoticed…" ["Nature glows unnoticed.."]















tape ends here

                

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventeen-and-a-half  minutes in and concluding at the end of the tape (approximately twenty-eight-and-a-half minutes in]