Friday Weekly Round-Up - 207

February 6, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Neal Cassady Weekend (Cassady, the Writer)

≪ Previous: William Burroughs' 101 (July 1985 reading at Naropa)

Tonight in New York City,aWilliam S Burroughs 101 Birthday Celebration.

Last night in London they were celebrating

Meantime, in Denver, it's the 6th Annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash

& tomorrow, in Paterson, New Jersey, Feb. 7, 1 to 3 p.m, in the Paterson Hamilton Club Building, the 2014 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards- the annual poetry reading and award ceremony hosted by the Passaic County Community College

[Allen Ginsberg - Photograph by John "Hoppy" Hopkins]

The above image of Allen was taken by the legendary figure of the 'Sixties UK counter-culture, John "Hoppy" Hopkins.

Here's another of his iconic images - Allen in London in 1965 at the Royal Albert Hall, at the first International Poetry Incarnation

[John "Hoppy" Hopkins (1937-2015)]

Sad to report the passing last week of "Hoppy", aged 78 (he had been increasingly ill, suffering from Parkinson's). His obituary notice in the (London) Independent can be read here

More Hoppy Ginsberg images (under "Poets Artists Writers") here

Published this week, "in honor of Black History Month" - SOS - Poems 1961-2013, a big new Amiri Baraka anthology

Coming next month - March 17 is the publication date - Jack Kerouac's Visions of Cody,Visions of Gerard and Big Sur in one authoritative Library of America volume.

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Neal Cassady Weekend (Cassady, the Writer)

February 7, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Meditation and Poetics - 44 (Q & A)

≪ Previous: Friday Weekly Round-Up - 207

Saturday Feb 7 - Neal Cassady's Birthday tomorrow. In celebration of Neal Cassady, we draw your attention to previous Cassady postings on the Allen Ginsberg Project here, here, here, and here

In the context of the current focus on Cassady, the writer (as a result of the sudden re-emergence of the fabled Joan Anderson Letter) - here's some brief selections from his prison letters (written to his wife, Carolyn)

A section from the Joan Anderson Letter, incidentally, can be read here

August 13, 1959 from San Quentin
to Carolyn Cassady,

Dearest Darling Wife:
O Joy! what happiness! my heart sings to know you still care and are there in our lair despite its wear and all the people in your hair - and have stayed so fair and firm in the face of all the flabby shabby treatment I've handed you, but beware!, the worm has turned (again) and warns your lonely old heart (again) he's going to smother it in the Love-silk he's spinning for none but you for life; and to complete the flip-flop of this fishy Foul - altho' I can't walk alone, or at all in this crummy cell, and am certainly not a prime target for anyone except my Peers. I at least know what species I am, a foul ball, but the exact kind is a secret until I see you - I ask you to come and visit once more before I face the Mighty Men, not only to express my devoted devotion is the understated way of putting it, love and thereby release some of our mutual tension and pentup longing for each other, but also to find out what you wrote Them, what Mr Miller [sic] of the S.P. [Southern Pacific Railroad] has to say when you tell him my only, or best, hope of getting out is for him to say that he has a job waiting whether it's open or not, what your exact planning for Edinburgh is, what your reaction will be to my uncovering of what's wrong with me, wha's the latest with our kiddies and whatever else comes under the heading of what's what, what? Speaking of our dear ones, especially our youngest, I bet he's as homesick right now as I am, for one can recall when I first went to camp, tho nine or ten, and with only a Wino flophouse to yearn for, how desperately lonely and homesick I was even, or on account of, being camp champ athlete (won fifteen of sixteen events, didn't enter the sixteenth), and while quite compatable to the others, including my priest Godfather, who hasn't written lately, wonder if he's sick again; and Johnny isn't eight yet! so be sure and reassure as you pet without fret or letup our mighty man who I can remember best in his Zorro costume or when sleeping warm with Teddy, gosh! come to think of it, I've not even seen a kid for sixteen-and-a-quarter months let alone the ones my thoughts dwell on so much, so how about a picture, Champ? Take it when Cathy comes back from camp and crowd yourself in even if you have to get some passing Hod Carrier to drop his load (these Freudian slips of simile have got to go!) and click the shutter for you or does it automatically shut - until I arrive to open it?; I think so, hard as it is on you, sweet thing I love.
Last Saturday, "Uncle Gavin" Arthur, grandson of our twenty-first President who, Republican though he was, could hardly have been more conservative than is Gain underneath all his Occult Astrology, failed to show (again, for the third time in six weeks) to teach our class in Comparative Religion and Philosophy, about three dozen regularly in attendance, on account of a death in his group at the Global House, which he bought by selling papers on Market Street for ten years; so again it was my pleasurable duty to instruct the boys in Cayce-hood [Edgar Cayce] - a task they always urge upon me whenever our respected and illustrious, tho' altogether ludicrous, Leader, who knows literally everyone important in the Metaphysical field (his talks range from descriptions of taking Yoga-enemas - and you too, my dear bloated blonde beauty, should take one every month, for that's what Cayce advised also - with the great Gurdjieff - to making H Horoscopes for Mrs Winter's [sic] old crony, Dr. Blanche Baker and Lottie Von Stral [Lotte von Strahl], who he now suspects is losing her psychic power because using it exclusively to get money to keep her husband, the Baron who's dying of cancer, alive despite his oft-repeated desire to go), our leader who either oversleeps or runs out of gas, as he did on the two times previous to this latest, most seious and quite the saddest - if the as yet to me unknown deceased is not properly prepared, and who is?, to meet the conditions of that bloody bloodless Bardo Plane, the Astral Realm to which his own subconscious will attune him, that particular portion of Purgatory region, where until next incarnation, if earth-bound, as is usually the unhappy case, he'll emotionally burn away the drearer dross, or if higher bound, as may well be, since I heard the victim was old and on the Path, reap the dearer dreams of his Divine desires - a soundest reason for Gavin's absence.
Two weeks tomorrow I endured, needless to say, with typically unflinching courage (ahem), the removal by that modern savior of shaky doctors, Electro-surgery, of a pinpoint cyst, now infect-swollen to the size of a two-bit piece, on my right forearm very near the elbow which was always irritating it somehow (not being at all lazy any more, ahem; most inexplicable, you see) being forced to lean on the tools of my trade, so recently those splinter-breeding rungs of that monstrous twenty-foot ladder in the Cotton Textile Mill, ring on O ears, to that anvil chorus of looms, but now simply those smoother, tho still splintery, bottom holes - containing q, v, u, t, three-em spacer, a, r, period, semi-colon, colon, dash and two and three-em quads (the 3-em spacer is actually one third of an em - an em is the standard unit from which everything else is measured) in the lower letters, X, Y, Z. J (for John, I think, every time I pick one up), U, &, and the ligiture FFL in the upper ones - of my type case. The California Job Case, which is the most popular case for storing type account consisting of both upper and lower case (letters) together: a storage case is a shallow wooden, sometimes metal, tray divided into compartments of different sizes, one for each character in a font (font: an assortment of types of a single size, point size equals body size of type: seventy two points equals an inch & style). Last week finished (whew!) my initial assignment as Devil (Printer's Devil is youngest apprentice in print shop), to clean (sort) all the dirty (unsorted) type they had, from six to ninety-six point, from plain thru bold and fashion to Gothic and Italic. This week have already finished two-thirds of my lessons, ten of the fifteen. Next will begins setting Aids, I mean Ads, advertisements, out of the newspaper and this entails imposition and lockup of the stonework engravings from which the fashion figures are impressed; however, since the Demon (no devil he) from Denmark, who is the boss, the Free Man in our shop (Free Man includes anyone not a convict or guard) that has been a printer for forty years and head one here for half that long, tho' his accent is still a delightful Danish Pastry starts his annual vacation Monday and, because he dominates everyone (say, vot ya mean goink to tolet tvice todah?) and thing so thoroughly, I can't tell what the situation will be after his departure, whether will start on ads, loaf or what, anyway, do know that when he returns I must pass complicated test to complete my probationary period, supposedly thirty days, and start in as Pressman. So from Rails to Ink, what the devil will try to get into my blood next? certainly not the Devil, tho that's my official title, perhaps writing.
& it only can if you send names & dates used in summary on back page of my journal atop race forms
Love to the Last
N

Septetmber 22 1959 from San Quentin
to Carolyn Cassady,

Dearest yourself there, old dearest wife of mine:
Hey! hey! now THAT's the way to wail! - a five page mash note crammed with everything, including the always running over - say, just how many times a day. Are our toilets used; no need to splurge because we've two you know - altho' I'm sure YOU aren't the prime culprit! - tank designed to effect rapid disintegration of , not, I might add SURELY not, what Helen [sic - Helen Hinkle] would call it, "organic matter" in lieu of the traditional kitchen sink. Yes I suspected that septic tank when you told me on your wonderful September second visit that the pool was punk again, and I was certain that it would cause you trouble as I stood under the big tin shed in the bigger tinnier (with, to say the gentlest least, noise) yard on Friday morning awaiting the gate's opening for work; perhaps I could get a job going from house to house - and NOT the kind that's not a home, please leave Polly Adler out of this - divining when the tank was about to go on the fritz, sort of an unlicensed doctor of dump, dowser of disposal; Seer of Sewage, W.I.R. (when it rains) would emblazon the elaborate emblem of a toilet plunger on my calling card - better give the idea to Helen, I'm sure sure sure she can take it from there.
Seriously, your beautiful letter did did did (I'll turn into a Gertie Stien [sic] , or, more likely, judging sol-y, or is it soley; no it's soly, nope, solely, never mind! from looking at the word (her name), is it Stein, yes, yes, yes, that's it!, if I can stay here much longer longer longer after all, as you MUST well remember, my nose is a nose IS a nose sniffsniffsniff) thrill thrill thrill and mean mean (cutting down to two words only , as a means of originality you understand) so so much MUCH to two me (pretty slick, huh/like there's no need to hide the two mes - doesn't plural look funny; or am I leaving myself toototwo open here" - since you've also admitted a schizophrenic-type (very mild of course, for a BEAT wife, har had, ambivalency - towardthe state of the Golden Bear; and Do that please, in fact tou must if you intend to read on) that not only do I retreat. (GLADLY,) condone & encourage, even plead, but also insist, urge, want and demand a visit so I can tell you exactly just how very very very very (going Gertie one better, for luck) it dif,
Well now I don't feel so badly, if California's cops are getting so good as to give you comeuppance for acautious driving there's even stronger evidence than before that BIG BROTHER will soon be here, and thank goodness we're not going to have to wait until 1984 either; to escape much more, and less, than traffic tickets that is: a good e.g is the two thousand plus more laws that on the eighteenth were added to the over million & one half now effective (?) in these United (?) States; and these two grand of prohibitions were only those of this state, multiply by fifty please, and add up what years of this will mean to our kids. As for your second bit of bedeviled driving: I've always known you were a swinging number, but there was, especially without my witnessing it, ha ha, no need for you to literally prove it - that ought to "handle" who's THE driver now, right?
Happy to hear about the fair, the kiddies fine attitude thru it all, and, by far the best - a most confirming sign that John IS an Atlantian Scientist who will come a better than American Engineer - that our lovely lonely-for-a-father John boy has his "work" to seek refuge in, weak as is that outlet at present, poor kid.
"Uncle" worry-wart [Gavin Arthur] missed showing up for the class again last week and I hear, probably unfounded, rumors that it is to be discontinued, too bad if true, because it was fun to hear the old geezer expound, without at all remembering he had, on the very same things week after week. I mean his examples, and their wording were always so alike one could not only anticipate, but, with any memory at all, give in advance the exact sentence he would be about to pronounce: it was sort of a game. No, I didn't read about Russian prisons but I know they pay inmates the wage they were earning on the outside & allow those concubinal - all weekend - visits that Mexico, & now Chino in our own state system, are famous for, to we frustrated felons anyway. Also agree Mr K [sic] kinda makes one think, as I'm happy to see you have, lover. Must give a gory instance confirming Karma & the law of attraction most grimly (for he had wounds about the head from respectively, fists, broomhandle & flatiron, on three of the half dozen times I met him); the bludgeoning-with-a-blunt-instrument beating to death of the same informer who caused my being here - but only indirectly, of course; my multiple sins & God's merciful manner of expiating them being the direct one,right? - yes, according to the thirteenth's (brr) Chronicle, an ex-convict killed the very ex-convict whom, while hiding in fear in the rear of his county jail cell I last saw when, before taking the third of my four giant steps in the rank prison journey : Vacaville. I gave both sugar, to materially console, a mumbled encouragement - "Cheer up, you'll soon hit the bricks" (be on the streets because of how he'd just finished grunting out the stinking stool relieving him) - to show (thank God!!) I mentally, at least, forgave hiis "cooperating" to prevent being deprived of the dope that constituted the cop's billy making him a perfect type of fink: "gutter-hype" (a hype is one who takes heroin) - so please join me in praying both for this poor devil, another soul lost to a sadistic system in our seemingly senseless society, and the one who did the damning death deed, won't you? Shocking though it is to so quikly change from one depressing subject to another (tho for much different reasons indeed) the limited space demands it so will here comment that if you think your "Snake-in-the-box" dream was something you should see the ones I have about you, why the censor would cutthis for sheet pornography should I detail them; suffice to say that the last one ended, after much play, with us climaxing together as the book we were reading finished with the heavily printed words, ROAR, ROAR, ROAR: funny, what?
Love N

February 14, 1960, from San Quentin
to Carolyn Cassady

My Funny ValentineWife:
Even though still perched here athwart this sagging sleep-sack, it is under far different conditions than prevailed a week ago: on the physical side, much worse - whereas before my belly-break was hardly the size of a dime, now, the piddling pain correspondingly changed from pinpricks to cramps, I've a knot biggern' a dollar bill (not folded either!) athwart (I LIKE that word, don't you?) the abdomen…oh well it seems true with the doctor himself, I can do nothing about it except "come back next week" - on the mental side, much better - whereas before my madly muddled mind was driven into "on you fastening filthy feet" (it well shows my contrary, callous, even cruel confusion that I wrote "feet" rather than the proper "fangs", right?), now, the drives correspondingly changed from half-crazed to at least half-caring. I've fought thru (knowing me, you might well guess the altogether mean & terrible thinking overcome; from "no sex" and "not seeing" to worse, whew a phew, GLAD that's over!) toward a more constructive thought-control, and not just somewhat… it has been an effort that the very difficulty of the struggle itself resolved into a dedicated one, for, no matter how grim, like my emotions themselves still continue to be depite all, I DO realize as never before that letting them - those hellish ideas - run wild (from waking to sleeping and even & especially then - tho must report the exception-proving-rule dream so filled with hope it shattered some of my isolation and gave the needed impetus to chuck the negative attitude & again take up mental shadow-boxing in earnest, unhealthy as that may be: wheeling into the driveway, I caught you cultivating trees in the orchard across the road and, replying to my bellow to stick to your own garden, you said: "Love has no degrees for we're all one in HIM even trees"; by this, spoken with a quiet conviction that instantly shut me up, I understood, conversely, that you were not going to Scotland after all & in a burst of unspeakable joy I grabbed up and carried you to…THE GARBAGE CANS! where together we planned, while I pestered by stroking your body & legs, construction of a play room for the kiddies by stretching a canvas from that bit of fence directly under the trees - I remember being bothered by its branches as I put the tarpaulin up - to the fence with the balky gate (ever fix it?); the plan worked out swell, while the dream never took up the problem of the smelly garbage cans being enclosed, it did regret covering part of the garage window, & I recall how good it felt to really be WITH you for once & how proud I felt to be constructive - from waking to sleeping, then. I had almost NEVER let up thinking how very hopeless it all was; still but a big boo-hoo baby, you see) could only succeed - these wildly whirling wailings - in forever hardening the barrier between us, to say the least…not just somewhat, I say, because to save something of sanity as well as our pitiful relationship, now the same instant hatred for this culture wells or resentment toward anyone swells (who can control feelings? my awful ones shall only improve as healthy thoughts affect them; thus the effort) I ruthlessly switch the mind to other channels which, thereby occupying it, greatly help me to shun the shuddering upsurge…now you may protest that it's useless to repress these results of crooked thinking (thoughts produce emotions & emotions thoughts; they lways interact, with emotions taking priority, to we who live mostly in our lower nature anyhow), yet such is not strictly the case, i.e., until, thru prayer & meditation, thoughts & thus emotions, are sufficiently controlled to be handled without imminent danger of explosion, the bad ones are to be cradled like dynamite, or, better, if possible, ignored! As you know, allowed but one free letter a week, I had to wait the half-dozen days until the beginning of a new one to answer that lovely loving ten page outpouring of yours which I received immediately after mailing the silly, week & stupid letter I now - how many times have I done this? blown hot and cold toward the only one who really counts, tried, in vain, I HOPE, to crush with selfishness that sole soul-love offered me? - humbly apologize for & ask that you "ignore", for such rot will be sent NO MORE!, after so long a delay then, imagine my chagrin when, three days later, making this a whole novena-time late (I still say them, why don't you try it?), I got back this letter I'm now hastily re-typing to get out tonite, because I've suddenly some money on the books from Peter Orlovsky; so, excusably late as it is, & the more appropriately dated, since that priest & doctor, St.Valentine himself would surely concede that underneath all - shall I EVER surface it?- I DO indeed LOVE YOU & WILL make all your last years happy ones (when you get back you'll not even beJ(ack) Benny's age& like him, we'll keep it that way, OK?) I give belated answer: By providence you talked to the very best man in that worst (very, very, I hear) of branch offices. I'll have served my minimum sentence, March 3rd, the day after Lent begins - have you ANY bad habits to give up for His sake? I've plenty - & more because records are sent ANYTIME after the parolee has less than ninety days to go than because I'll be eligible for release after that date but a fortnight away, they should really have my papers in the S(an) J(ose) (they'll go there, not S(an) F(rancisco)): just as I will if you REALLY want it, otherwise, no) office by the time of that month turns lamb-like. Of the several valid reasons - for one thing CassAdy might be considered an alias - for not writing the dept. of motor vehicles. I mention the chief one; my vehicle shan't have a motor; as for Mr Campbell [sic], he was correctly taken care of over one-and-a-half years go when at Vacaville. I signed an authorization for Santa Clara Co. to be notified thirty days prior to parole. As well as (Edgar) Cayce, whom, much as he is now missed (& ALWAYs will be), I know can't care for properly, sell the car (speaking of cars, my ex-bro,-in-law, a boyhood idol who used to let me (softly) throw darts at him (to barely miss, you understand) & who could rip shirt-sleeves (of a too-small one, that is) by simply flexing biceps, is doing a year in county jail account caught drunk-driving one for the umpteenth time: this I read in nice thanks-for-Xmas-card letter from Mrs Dorothy Daly - bro. Ralph's wife - 4620 E Pixley, Compton 2, Calif(ornia), since can't write, please drop her a card (only) saying so & thanking for the letter to me: & thanks to you, my hard-working one who must "front" here too, ugh), the spare Buick parts,grille, generator, fog lites; in short, go whole hog & sell everything you can - except the bicycles, I intend to trade them in on one of my own, yes, reverting over a decade, & big as Santa Clara Co. is, steep as S(an) F(rancisco)'s hills are, or loco as it may seem in Lompoc, I seriously intend to pedal - my legs should please you then - wherever I go - to work, church, parole office & back to unfurnished flat - the next three years. The RR [Railroad] job I want, one that would save five thousand dollars yearly in Deadheads (reason RR might go for the proposition), is the Lompoc Local, which would consist of switching cars in an industrial plant forty miles south of San Luis Obispo a doz(en) hours each day, then retiring to the outfit car provided as FREE living quarters for the brakeman who like myself (desperately), wants it: altho writing Mr Mace [sic] sounds sound I think a better idea is for me to see Mr McKinnon [sic], head of hiring for the whole S(outhern) P(acidic) & a Coast div(ision) Conductor who would well understand about the Lompoc Local, & ask, beg, DEMAND he intercede for me with Mr Miller [sic], the div(vision) superintendent. Glad to hear of Cathy's big improvement, may it be permanent; can't believe John needs new glasses, if so, why no wait till Scot(land). & get free, or cheaper, thus further justify trip; sure Jami will steal May show, equally sure shan"t see it, but million thanks for your noble effort & Jami for birthday note, say she's my Valentine
as most sincerely Hope you will continue to be. All love always
N

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Meditation and Poetics - 44 (Q & A)

February 9, 2015, 3:00 am

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≪ Previous: Neal Cassady Weekend (Cassady, the Writer)

[Lama Tsultrim Allione (Tsultrim Kloppenburg)] [and Allen Ginsberg]

AG: We were doing some sitting. I wonder. We haven't talked too much about it. I've sort of left it up to you to adapt. We did finally get some rugs to make it easier. If you want, you can bring in zafus (if you know what a zafu is - it's a little round pillow that you can prop yourself under your butt and get a more solid seat) . If there's any question about sitting, you can ask me sooner or later, or you can always go over to Naropa and check that out. Most of you have. Yeah. But my meditation instructor is here, in the room, in our very presence, Tsultrim Kloppenburg (Tsultrim Allione) (so while she's here, if anybody has any technical questions relating to meditation practice or how to adapt it, maybe to this situation, sloppy as it is, or any subtle matter that you want to ask about it, this might be a good moment). You had your hand up?

Student: ..I was wondering about sittingwith mantra
AG: Sitting with what?
Student: Using mantra
AG: Yeah.. Do you actually have a mantra? Do you already have a practice? From where?
Student: (Being in the program)
AG: Well, I've sat with a mantra a long time too. My own experience is that sitting just with breath is a little bit more subtle, less.. sort of less crass. Because the breath is invisible Mantra takes up your mind but the breath is a little bit more.. well, for one thing it leads out. For the purposes of poetics, for the purposes of poetry, of leading toward some kind of panoramic awareness of the world outside and some sensitivity to detail in the world outside, not having your mind occupied repeating your mantra, see, that somewhat occupies your mind, somewhat.
Student: (But concentrating on a syllable as music - that's what I'd call amantra)
AG: Well, see, that's contemplation. That would be more contemplating. You're thinking about fixing on that. What I was trying to do was provide a situation where we would all have the experience of being kind of opened up - open - and not focused on any other literary matter, mantra, or music, any other aesthetic literary matter, thus leaving the mind open and maybe attention out into the world, into space, as being the nearest meditative practice to that little poem of William Carlos Williams that I started with. Did you hear it, that first day, about feet planted on the ground, looking up at the sky, breath passing in and out at my nose? I was just trying to find a common place where we could all have the same experience, instead of a whole bunch of different experiences (or our different experiences would be in the same empty space).
And then, the other question was that I was using the breath as in the breath-spirit, breath that's inspiration-expiration in poetry. So that it makes a kind of simple to conjoin the two. In other words, it's distracting if you're laying a trip on music or mantra. So I was saying, if possible, for the purpose of this course, just as you would do, like, literary research, or a footnote, then check out this form of sitting and use it, at least in the class. Does that make sense? Yeah?

Student: ..Is it best to breathe normally, or do you emphasize your breathing and take a little deeper inhalations?

AG: Any breath. I would say normal. As you settle and sit, the breath tends to settle a bit but I wouldn't try to control the breath. Just being mindful of whatever breath, short or long, comes along, whatever outbreath. It's just a question of being with whatever breath youre breathing, rather than trying to control it. In other words, not really trying to control anything, just be there, aware of it and with it. Does that make sense, Tsultrim?
Sulteem is pretty sharp on the subject. If anybody's got any sharp technical questions while she's around. That's Tsultrim over there. We used to run around a lot together with Ram Dassand Bhagavan Das, raising money for Naropa. Yeah?

[Ram Dass]

Student: (A question about vision. (You) sort of like (open your eyes and….)
AG: What do you do with your eyes?
Student: (Right, yeah)
AG: Well, what I do, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing (but) if they wander a little, it's alright. I just don't focus on anything specific. Eyes tending towards the horizon. In this case, generally, I wind up going forty-five degrees down here, just so I don't stare anybody in the face, and don't get.. just try to be invisible, sort of, but generally tending toward the horizon - neither focused nor unfocused, but.. how do you say it?.. resting in space. But not trying to pull an image into your brain, not staring at something. In other words, it's the same thing as like not.. not.. just relaxing your eyes, not doing anything, not doing anything, just letting it be. Letting the external visual world rest there, outside, and you're inside, and looking out into space, so it's what painters might call "the middle distance"? - just resting in the middle distance (middle distance between foreground and background). And then, if your eyes move around, they move around. There's no.. It's mainly a question of relaxing and not trying to pull an image into your brain. Does that make sense? Is that correct? Is there another terminology that might fit? [to Tsultrim] - Is there another terminology that might fit better? [Tsultrim's remarks are, regrettably, not really audible on the tape] - [to the class] - Did everybody hear? - So it'll be a question of not getting attached to anything you see, or hear, or smell… Or, as you become aware of your eyes and mind moving around, you might let them rest. As it becomes obvious that you're jumping around a lot.

If you don't become attracted to what you see or hear or think or smell or taste, oddly enough, it might leave a more sharp impression, in a funny way. Because you don't fuzz it by thinking about it and trying to prolong it, it's just there, and there, sort of unborn, in space, and then it's not there, and something else is there. You might then see and hear so deeply that you might recollect it later on. Involuntarily. Or the recollection might come up on its own. Like there was that mechanical voice that came through? Do you remember? There was a strangely mechanical voice [sic] Did everybody hear that, or not?
Student(s): Yeah
AG: How many didn't remember that? Did not remember it? Yeah? Probably you were thinking about something. You probably were thinking about something so you didn't know what was going on here. But there was a mechanical voice somewhere - a police car or what was it? - did anybody recognize (it)?
Student: (It was coming from the fire station)
AG: What?
Student: (It was coming from the fire station)
AG: Oh... Yeah. It struck me as odd. Since I was in the middle of empty space (and) there was this voice in empty space, also, somewhere in the middle of empty space. It's a kind of, sort of.. And I forgot it, and I recalled it now and I didn't get hung up on it, but I recalled it now, because it was maybe the most odd and striking external fireworks, sensory fireworks, of that moment, of those ten minutes. Yes?

Student:(My question (is) first I'll pretend…..)
AG: Yeah. You mean pretend you're sitting there?
Student: Yeah, I have a lot of my experience by pretending, pretending I'm not thinking and…
AG: Well maybe stop pretending you're not thinking, them. I don't know, what do you do? - Did I tell you (to)…
Student: (I'm not worried about it, but I just want to say that…)
AG: Well, if you go back to your breath, maybe you'll forget you're pretending. If it bothers you. Did I make a suggestion that's haunting you or something?.. Did I say the wrong thing? Actually, I've forgotten, see, what I've said. There's a traditional saying that sitting is like you pretend you're sitting and after a while you're sitting, (in the sense that when you first sit, there's a certain self-consciousness and you don't know what you're doing so you pretend you're sitting, and after a while you do get absorbed in just being there. Is there some special quality of your pretending that's bugging you?
Student: Umm..
AG:..or would bug me if I knew about it, or something?
Student: Oh no, it doesn't really bug me. It's just that feeling of being very calm and then feeling like you're pretending.
AG: Well maybe you can stop feeling like you're pretending then? Maybe you can stop feeling like you're pretending.

[Audio for the above may be heard here, beginning at approximately seventy-six minutes in, and concluding at approximately eighty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes in]

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Meditation and Poetics - 45

February 10, 2015, 3:00 am

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Reginald Ray, on the invitation of Chogyam Trungpa, first full-time faculty member and chair of the Buddhist Studies (later Religious Studies) Department at Naropa Institute/University]

I'm going down with Tsultrim to Santa Fe this weekend, and we'll be leaving Friday afternoon. For the Friday afternoon class, I've asked the Dean of Faculty, which is Reginald Ray, who specializes in teaching Vajrayana Buddhism to come and take my place and do the formal outline of the structure of Hinayana, Mahayanaand Vajrayana Buddhism, all in one lesson - sort of the main themes, the main transformations, the main developments, the whole support structure.

I've been doing, so far, the basic Hinayana ideas (that is samatha, the quieting of mind, and vipassana, insight - somewhat panoramic insight or insight into detail (and) equivalences in poetry. But I would like to get some more precise idea, aside from my own pastiche of ideas. It would be interesting to get a more precise proposition from a more experienced teacher of pure Buddhism. So Reggie Ray, who's a very smart Sanskrit expert, on top of everything else, will come in and give that (and I'll hear the tape before I come in on Monday, so I'll know what ideas he presented and how to relate them to my own)

That's kind of an interesting and rare opportunity to get that whole thing set out by a scholar, because Vajrayana is very mysterious, if you haven't studied it - romantic and mysterious. Mahayana, as you may know, is the whole area of Zen. (I mean Zen is basically Mahayana Buddhism). So you get an inside explanation of all the Buddhist mysteries, as far as they can be explained openly to beginning practitioners, say. So that will be kind of interesting. So use that, if it's possible, or some of his language or some of his terminology (which is the common terminology around here) as a basis for making poetic comparisons.

Mahayana is more and more concerned with the sense of emptiness behind phenomena, just like the emptiness behind that voice, that mechanical voice, more and more concerned with extension out into space, more deepening of a panoramic awareness. As things show themselves in detail, as you hear or see things in detail without projecting your ideas on them, some feelings of conmpassion rise as you hear the suffering squeaks of sparrows. As you hear the suffering squeaks of sparrows, some sense of compassion rises and involvement with thr world outside. Exploration of space and emptiness of space.

For those texts, we'll use some of Walt Whitman - his empathy, all the way out into space - a catalog of empathies covering (and) going around the world. (Whitman's) "Passage to India"and some of (Jack) Kerouac's preoccupation with the emptiness of phenomena might be appropriate there. So I'll be using Kerouac'sMexico City Blues and Whitman, and some of Kerouac's prose (Desolation Angels) - to correlate with Buddhist Mahayana ideas. Is that clear? Does that make sense? (and we'll pick up whatever we can along the way, whatever other poetries - I'll be trying to compare - put in a little (William) Wordsworth and a little more (Percy Bysshe) Shelley and a little more Hart Crane, for the Mahayana - and whatever else I can think of - some haiku. Fine.

When we left off (in a previous class), we were going down into the subway with Charles Reznikoff. One thing, while we're at it. Someone asked me, "Well, what's the purpose of going through all this? Did Reznikoff or (William Carlos) Williams (ever) practice meditation? So why are you laying this trip of meditation on their poetry? - Because they didn't practice meditation." - which stumped me, actually, because they obviously didn't. Except there was this natural setting of mind that Williams went through, so that he did arrive, in 1923, at that poem, "Thursday", where he's just standing in his shoes, feeling the weight of his body in his shoes and the breath passing in and out at his nose.

I'm sort of saying that the Buddha nature, the wakened mind of this nature, is sort of normal anyway. It's sort of natural. People arrive at it anyway, one way or another, if they're serious, if they get grounded, if they have good luck, if they get into something. People tend to go in that direction of grounding, at any rate - grounding in minute particulars and grounding in geography, like a Zen man who's aware of the winds and the streams and the trees in around his temple and makes rock gardens composed of elements of nature right around him (as Williams composed his poems from the elements of speech nature right around him). There is some correaltion between Japanese Zen haiku and poetic style and attention to local particulars, and Williams' attention to local particulars. I'm just saying they're similar minds, and it's no wonder that students of Williams arrive at curiosity and inquisitiveness into Buddhism. It's no wonder that Gary Snyder begins, in (19)48, as a student of Williams, and in (1958), as a student in Daitoku-ji monastery in Kyoto. His mind was led there through Williams, actually, or it correlated precisely enough that there was some convergence culturally or convergence psychologically.

I would also say that for us practicing poets, it might kind of speed up the process if we knew direct meditation. It might kind of speed up the process of settling, grounding, precision, clarity, if you didn't wait for your father to die, and your mother to die, and all your teeth to fall out, and get into an auto accident, to get a little more humble and grounded and pay more attention to the road when you're driving. In other words, it might accelerate the process of clarification, awakening of mind, if there's a little slow-down in the attention to what's actually going on on-goingly (that is, the breath) , some place to start, just as Williams finally wound up starting with the raw material of his own experience in Rutherford, New Jersey.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, starting at approximately eighty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes in and continuing until the end of the tape and then picking up here, continuing for the first approximately two minutes of the tape]

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Meditation and Poetics - 46

February 11, 2015, 3:00 am

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[Woodcutter Gazing at Waterfall (detail) - by Hokusai, ink and colour on paper scroll, (1798), in the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford, California - Courtesy the Stanford University Museum of Art, California, Ikeda Collection]

Student: (Isn't it true that, in certain novels, in certain prose, you can pick out sentences where the author is just so perceptive and so..)

AG: Right, you can, you can, in a lot of good writers. (Jack) Kerouac, particularly, who said details are the life of prose). But you can do it in (Charles) Dickens, you can do it in (Fyodor) Dostoevsky, in any great novelist, yeah, you can find a lot of little things like that. In Desolation Angels, you find not only a lot of little things but a lot of little things formed into three-line haiku, sometimes. In the Kerouac stuff that I've assigned for reading he's very conscious of that. In cruder literature.. actually, in the twentieth-century they became more and more conscious of it, and, if you read (William Carlos) Williams' prose, Life Along the Passaic River, or Ford Madox Ford's prose that Ezra Pound liked so much, you'll find a lot of that. In ancient literature, older literature, yes, also. It's just that here they were isolating this, their poetics was just to isolate it, not to build a larger structure but just to catch these flash perceptions (probably influenced a lot by Oriental literature, by haiku literature, or, if not influenced, sustained, encouraged, by realizing there was a huge ancient tradition of that - like, a whole mind, a whole Oriental mind that had been noticing these things all along and had realized the particular experience essence beauty of just those little flash shots, because - the one thing the Oriental people knew, they knew the mind was discontinuous, that the movie was discontinuous so the perceptions were discontinuous, there were gaps in between thoughts and that thoughts rose, sort of, like out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere. And so, having that knowledge, as distinct from the Western people who thought "I am that I am" and that it's continuous (and maybe there was one big conscious universal mind in which everything was continually floating and changing, instead, there was an appreciation of the discontinuity, in haiku, or in Oriental literature, or Buddhist literature, with its background of meditation, appreciation of the discontinuity of thought and appreciation of the "isolate flecks" [Editorial note - Allen is quoting Williams here - "To Elsie" - ."It is only in isolate flecks that something is given off", appreciation of moments of perception, floating worlds ("Floating World" is the title.. of a..Chinese novel, was it? - who knows that?)

Student: A school, it's a school of painters that.. the woodblocks..

AG: And I think there's a novel, yeah?… "Pictures From..?[Allen is expressing some confusion here - his 1978 remarks pre-date the 1986 publication of Kazuo Ishiguro's "An Artist of the Floating World". Perhaps, he is thinking of his friend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's first book and the first Pocket Poets volume, "Pictures of the Gone World" (published in 1955)?]

Student: ...Hokusai… a lot of people.. [ukiyo-e]...influenced the French Impressionists…by their prints..

AG: Uh-huh. so that Japanese and Chinese poetry (Japanese in particular) did…just as Japanese painting (Hokusai) influenced Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, the Impressionists, a break down of the senses and the beginning of an analysis of sensory forms, rather tham solid.. desolidification of what was thought to be reality. So in Japanese poetry and Chinese poetry there's a.. well, its influence on Western poetics was desolidification, use of the ideogrammatic method (ideograms - that is one thing juxtaposed with another without editorial, rather than the Western philosophic generalization with no phalanx of particulars to support it. Just a phalanx of particulars with no generalization would be the ideogrammatic method that (Ezra) Pound uses in The Cantos - or one single tiny ideogram like (Charles Reznikoff's) "semi-circles of spray, semi-circles of spray", one single isolated perception, which we all have.
So basically what I was saying was when , during this class, if you have any real perceptions of isolated things, write them down as the homework, so to speak.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, starting at approximately fifteen-and-three-quarter minutes in, and concluding at approximately nineteen-and three-quarter minutes in]

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House Cleaning - (Classroom Announcements & An Assignment)

February 12, 2015, 3:00 am

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[Classroom announcements at Naropa, July 17, 1978]

AG: For those of you who were not able to get the William Carlos Williams, will you?. Bobby Myers [Editorial note - Allen's teaching assistant on this occasion] will place an order for The Collected Earlier Poems of William Carlos Williams. That's the order (because it's sold out at the Naropa Bookstore and I think it's sold out at Back Country [Editorial note - the local Boulder bookstore, since closed].
If you want to order it, why don't you put your name down on a piece of paper and Bobby will… It costs ten bucks [sic - 1978] but it's worth having. It's a lifetime book
Student: (How long will it take to order?)
AG: We'll find out. Did you check that out?
Bobby Myers: I think it'll take about three weeks.
AG: Three weeks? Well Bobby will check how long it takes and in the next class, maybe, we'll make some formal decision. Maybe get a list of everyone who would want one if you can get it fast.. By three weeks we'll be past it, but I'll be referring to it again. But it's so basic a work that I suggest everyone should get ahold of it and hang on to it by their bedsides for the rest of their lives. It's the one book that I would unhesitatingly recommend for people to get as a guidebook, model book, handy reference book for basic poetics. Basic observation. I'll come back to it later in the day…

[and the following week]

AG: Do we have any announcements? - ok, Bobby Myers is ordering copies of (William Carlos) Williams'Collected Earlier Poems. For those of you who wanted them, you might see him. You ordered how many?
Bobby Myers: I ordered twelve copies for everybody, and I'll know more information Wednesday about when they will actually be in. It was told it would cost fourteen twenty [sic!] - fourteen dollars and twenty cents [ - see above - this is 1978] - and then they were sent here airmail (so they'll be here quicker) - Special Delivery of UPS is what it'll probably be - and (so) it might cost about fifteen dollars altogether to cover taxes and delivery.
AG: It's a good investment. There's not many of them, so you can always sell it later on for twenty.

[Naropa class assignment]

AG: ….(So find something) luminous, or curious. or recurrent, or striking gossip, sub-conscious gossip, imagery, recollections, fantasies, anything that is particularly interesting, particularly interesting to others too. Anything that out of your own shrewdness you might find palatable, or useful to serve up to others. That is, some interesting mind-trick or autobiographical recollective fragment.

Can you all hear me? Can you all hear me?

Student(s): Not very well

AG: Not well, okay. Such a cavernous room! - Any interesting recollective fragment, anything that might serve for a poem, or be so odd that it sticks out like a sore thumb (or be so average and ordinary that it's equally beautiful). Anything that reminds you of my poetry, anything that reminds you of (Charles) Reznikoff's, anything that (Walt) Whitman might have noticed, or some little Surrealist juxtaposition that Andre Breton or Arthur Rimbaud might have delighted in.

In other words, use some aesthetic judgement and pick out the rawest thing you thought. I don't know your criteria. It's all according to your own nature what you think is beautiful. or what you think is odd, or what you think is radical, or what you think indicates some Surrealist juxtaposition where you're thinking one thought and all of a sudden there's a gap and you've forgot what you were thinking and all of a sudden you're thinking another thought. And maybe two thoughts as you recollect them are so odd they make a haiku or a (William Carlos) Williams poem. In other words, just keep a record of remarkable activities of your mind, without going too much into detail. Don't push it too far. Don't go beyond third thoughts back. In other words, think three times, maybe, but don't get hung up. Cut it short if it begins turning into an infinite regress. That make sense?

[Audio for the above may be heard here, starting at approximately eleven and a half minutes in and concluding at approximately thirteen-and-a-quarter ninutes in - and also here for the first minute in - also here, beginning at approximately sixty seven minutes and continuing to approximately sixty-nine-and-a-quarter minutes in]

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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 208

February 13, 2015, 3:00 am

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[Lawrence FerlighettiInterviews Allen Ginsberg in London in 1965 - William Shakespeare listens in - Photograph by John "Hoppy" Hopkins]

Notice (last week) of the passing of London's ubiquitous counter-cultural hero, John "Hoppy" Hopkins brings us to this little snippet of footage (from the BBC's current affairs program, Panorama) - footage of a "Legalize Pot" rally (including archival footage of Allen) in 1967, in London's Hyde Park.
Despite the pompous commentary…

Speaking ofmarijuana, here'sAllen, in New York, on the picket line, pushing for legalization, two years before:

[Allen Ginsberg - Photograph by Benedict J Fernandez]

Allen's drug views (see our April 2011 posting here) have been getting a little more circulation recently. (The Paris Review recently reproducing the original of his important follow-up remarks to his 1967 interview (regarding psychedelics)).
See here:

MAPS continues to do important work. See also Michael Pollan's piece - "The Trip Treatment" in the current(or at least, recent) New Yorker

Speaking of re-circulation,Ira Glass's highly popular US radio show,This American Life recycled the BBC's 2014 William Burroughs documentary, "Burroughs at 100", (ably and entertainingly) narrated by Iggy Pop. The show can be heard (uncensored) in itsentirety here.

And speaking of drugs and of centennials, the recent Herbert Huncke Centennialevent at San Francisco's Beat Museum can now be viewed (likewise in its entirety - a little over ninety-minutes running-time, complete with the Q & A - don't miss the extraordinary Laki Vazakas' footage, coming in at approximately fifty-minutes in - heck, don't miss any of it!) - here

And Bob Dylan - another "must-read", (courtesy of the LA Times) - the transcription of his MusiCares Person of the Year speech may be read here

Amiri Baraka's SOS (noted here last week) was reviewed in the New York Times - not once, but twice! - read Dwight Garner's review here and Claudia Rankine's review here
Paul Vangelisti's introduction to the book is available on-line here

[Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)

[Bob Kaufman (1925-1986)]

Noted in passing, Eileen Kaufman, the devoted widow of the great Bob Kaufman. John Geluardi, family friend, quoted in theSan Francisco Chronicle - "Without Eileen Kaufman, there is no Bob Kaufman. It is most likely that he would not have been published and would have slipped into obscurity." John Geluardi's touching memorial note (for the blog of the Beat Museum) - "Remembering Eileen Kaufman" may be accessed here

[Allen Ginsberg, Harold Norse, Jack Hirschman, Michael McClure and Bob Kaufman, at the Cafe Trieste, North Beach, San Francisco, 1975 - Photograph by Diana Church]

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Valentine's Day

February 14, 2015, 3:00 am

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There are some posts on the Allen Ginsberg Project so fitting they deserve annual
re-publication, this is one of them.

Happy Valentines Day, everyone!

Celebrating love today ('the weight of the world') on the Allen Ginsberg Project

SONG

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

- - and from William S Burroughs:

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Meditation and Poetics - 47 (Alfred Stieglitz)

February 16, 2015, 3:00 am

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[Georgia O'Keeffe, Hands, 1918 - Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz]

AG: (Who here caught Reginald Ray's) presentation on Friday. Can you raise your hands? Raise your hands high. Okay, I won't go over it again, though I think he gave a very coherent intellectual outline of stages of Buddhist awareness and penetration of mind. If you can, borrow notes or check it out with some classmates.
At this point, I want to (with a little last look back), wrap up the Samatha-Vipassana-Hinayana area that we've been dwelling in so far - the concentration of mind on focused, clear, accurate perception.

Peter (Orlovsky) and I went down to Santa Fe over the weekend, and over the course of that connected with two pioneers in American clarity of mind. First, we saw Georgia O'Keeffe - went to visit her - she was married to Alfred Stieglitz (andI'd mentioned Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer, whose art scene in New York after the turn of the century was enormously influential on theImagists and the Objectivists - on (William Carlos) Williams and other poets whose work we've been reading).

On the way I studied a little - a book called The Hieroglyphics of New Speech - Cubism, Stieglitz and the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams - Bram Dijkstra - D-I-J-K-S-T-R-A - which is actually a good historical survey.

One thing I mentioned beforebut I didn't really get into and I'd like to recap now is that the American modern mind experience after the turn of the century was very similar to whatever growing-up experience we have in introducing ourselves to mindfulness, or meditative state, or aesthetic mindfulness, or poetic mindfulness, in that the American culture had to break away from foreign models, foreign conditioning, and discover its own place, its own air, its own space, its own situ, its own situation. It had to become mindful of its own situation, its own language, its own mind.

And that was, like, the great effort of Stieglitz, particularly in the field of photography. Hitherto most photographers had been trying to imitate painting - imitate misty European painting with little ballet dancers, the paintings retouched, actually, to soften all the lines. Stieglitz, for the first time, said this is a modern machine thing, looking with clear eye, so he wanted photographs that were actually sharp, art photographs that were sharp instead of art photographs that were soft and vague and fuzzy in outline. like 1890's poetry.
So, actually, his big innovation was clarity and precision, just like in poetry, and because of his photographic interest in clarity and precision, Williams used to come around and visit him (because that was what Williams was interested (in)) - clarity and precision of outline of the image.

So, checking through this book, I ran across a few passages which will give you the historical cultural recapitulation of what we've been discussing in personal phenomenological terms. Dig? In other words, America went through the same changes around the turn of the century. So, regarding Stieglitz's idea of photography (Georgia O'Keefe was married to Stieglitz, so she was one of that original group. I'll get to her painting):
"An unretouched painting is the record of a moment, its image fixed in an instant of time. Stieglitz therefore argued that it is the photographer's role to seize the moment in terms of its most opportune structure. He must select the single image which will represent the object under his scrutiny most effectively. The photographer therefore, more than any other artist, must be perfectly alert to the materials of the visible world. He is entirely dependent on what exists to the eye. He must see before he can create. He must, before all, in the most literal sense of the world, be a seer." - he [Dijskstra] said, and then - this is Stieglitz talking now:
"The moment dictates to me what I must do. I have no theory about what the moment should bring. I simpply react to the moment. I am the moment. The materials of the living moment are the things seen" - "Beauty is the universal seen" - (or, same as his friend, (the poet, Louis) Zukofsky - "Sight is where the eye hits") - Beauty is the universal seen"
"Very early Stieglitz discovered [Dijskstra again] that a photographer mus not only be capable of seeing sharply and precisely in order to capture the living moment, but he must be unusually selective as well."

So, he moved, as Williams did and others, first to an awareness that he's dealing with a material, visible world (and) that he's got to see it precisely. But to avoid confusion as to what he's looking at, he's got to narrow it down so you see one thing - one leaf, one rose, or just one scene inter-related.
And it was this selectivity among the sharp, precise images that his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe got to be a specialist in, so that for years she would paint, say, a lily, and for years would paint a cow skull, for years settle, like (the painter Paul) Cezanne, in one area in New Mexico and paint the same mountain over and over….as Cezanne painted Mount Sainte- Victoire over and over again. And also simplifying her image, smoothing everything until it's just that one shape or form that she was trying to bring out to the eye. Most of you are familiar with her work. It's been in Life magazine when you were ten!

So that was interesting. First, precision, and then the need for some kind of simplification, or reduction, or selection, so that you actually look carefully at one thing. Just like the.. it's a similar process of precision about being here in the material world and then simplifying it down to begin the examination just with the breath. Beginning with a breath, like she began with a skull, or a flower, or the red rock canyon behind her home.

[Audio for the above may be heard here - beginning at the beginning of the tape and continuing to approximately seven minutes in]

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Meditation and Poetics - 48

February 17, 2015, 3:00 am

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AG: Peter (Orlovsky) and I went and spent a little time (two hours) with her (Georgia O'Keeffe). She gave us raspberry juice from her own garden. Local particulars. She was really proud of home-grown raspberry-juice, and she had enough raspberries (at the age of ninety-one) that she could actually offer a gallon of raspberry-juice, which was terrific. It's like that (William Carlos) Williams poem ["A Poem for Norman Macleod"] - "No bull" - You can do a lot with what's around if you know what's there" - I read that, didn't I? - "The revolution/ is accomplished./ noble has been changed to no bull" - The Indian that had gashed open the balsam to get a recipe for constipation for the prospector. "You can do a lot with what's around you". So she had raspberries.

[Allen continues reading from Bram Dijkstra's The Hieroglyphics of a New Speech - Cubism, Stieglitz, and the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams]

"Thus the artist could do justice to the object without forcing it to function as a metaphor for something else (in photography). The photographer must therefore begin by seeing all things with perfect precision, perfect penetration. If he does so and if he's closely attuned to the elements of his own subjective experience, he'll be able to recognize in certain natural objects around him elements hitherto not yet discovered but nonetheless eternally present in them. Hence, the objects in nature are recognized to be the source of our spiritual constitution. The content of our non-rational being as much as of our intellectual existence is shown to be determined by the contents of the physical world."

In other words, the spiritual life is determined by the physical world presented, if you're attentive to the spiritual world, to the material world around...

Of course, what I am describing (are) the theories that were operating among a lot of the New York artists coming out of the Ashcan School, William Carlos Williams, the early Imagists, the people hanging around Stieglitz's art gallery, Alfred Kreymborg (as well as Williams), anthologists and poets of bohemia, of the New York avant-garde of the (19)10's and (19)20's - (Stieglitz) had a series of galleries - 291 Madison Avenue, so Gallery 291, followed, finally, by (the)An American Place gallery, that (I)'ve previously) mentioned - (the title is significant - An American Place).

[Allen continues reading from Bram Dijkstra]

"If this is the case then life might find its most complete fulfillment in the accurate observation of matter" - [that's a weird sentence - very unexpected aesthetic - "if this is the case'] - "For Stieglitz, the objects of nature are the absolutes from which all derives. If this is the case, then life might find its most complete fulfillment in the accurate observation of matter. What is seen, felt, and therefore experienced determines the meaning of life. If all values derive from matter, beauty, for one thing, must be the universal seen" - [not S-C-E-N-E, but S-E-E-N - the universal when it is seen, when it is actually pictorially visible] - "If Stieglitz was a pioneer in American art, it was primarily because he established the basis for a non-metaphoric art in America" - [which correlates to that slogan I've been repeating by Ezra Pound - "The natural object is always the adequate symbol" - In other words, the natural object is not a metaphor for something else, but things are symbols of themselves] - "Until Stieglitz began to emphasize the object in his photographs, the artist in this country had been overwhelmingly concerned with those qualities in reality which were representatives of indirect experience. In the wake of the settlers and the immigrants, the American artist in the nineteenth-century had spent all his efforts into turning the native reality into a shadow of experience informed by the European object. His American lamdscapes were landscapes distorted by the painter Claude Lorrain, his poems were about Indian burying grounds, not as they really were, but as they might have been, if placed on an English heath, among the castles of the Gothic imagination. For Stieglitz and his followers, the immediate task was to restore the integrity of the American object…" -
[I could translate that (as), for this class, the immediate task is to restore the integrity of the breath, the integrity of the empty breath] - "the integrity of the American object, to perceive it free from metaphor, to see it as it actually existed within its own experimental framework. They struggled to free the American object from the impositions of alien consciousness, from the metaphoric vision which forces the object to be other than itself, and hence be continually misapprehended. There is no doubt that Williams was profoundly influenced by what Steiglitz and the painters set out to do. What is, even Williams' extensive campaign in favor of the word as the thing itself, if not an extension of these concepts?

So, in other words, the kind of poetry we were examining as representative of samatha-vipassana - that is to say, focus, concentration, simplification, mindfulness, realization of present space, non-imposition of fantasy upon the object in space, but clear perception of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and thought - the preoccupations of this area of meditative consciousness, or meditative experimentation, and the preoccupations of the early (twentieth) century American artists were, surprisingly, amazingly similar, if not identical. They were similar if not identical breakthroughs back to original mind and natural consciousness.
Historically, the American artist had to go through that de-conditioning from European thought forms in order to discover where he was in space around the turn of the century, with the beginning of the Machine Age, and with the beginning of the Space Age. With the beginning of World War I there was this enormous breakthrough to… what?.. we are here in Newark (New Jersey). It isn't Milan amd it isn't Florence. It's Newark (or Hoboken, or Rutherford, New Jersey, in Williams' case - or mid-Manhattan, 291 Madison Avenue, to be precise, in Stieglitz's case). So, 291 Gallery - "An American Place".

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seven-and-a-quarter minutes in, and concluding at approximately fourteen-and-a-half minutes in]

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Meditation and Poetics - 49 (Robert Creeley)

February 18, 2015, 3:00 am

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AG: Then Peter (Orlovsky) and I went from (Alfred) Stieglitz's wife, Georgia O'Keeffe, (a) great painter who had simplified and clarified her sight, to Robert Creeley's house in Placidas (New Mexico) , where Creeley gave me a book of new poems (Creeley also being a student of (William Carlos) Williams. So I thought this same recovery of our own space in Creeley's work has equivalent terminology. His word, I always thought, for space was "place" (like, he's got a little poem about "when we get to heaven we will all have places, they'll be a chair for everybody and everybody will sit with a smile on his face" [Editorial note - the poem that Allen is referring to is "Oh No" - "If you wander far enough/you will come to it/and when you get there/ they will give you a place to sit/ for yourself only, in a nice chair,/and all your friends will be there/with smiles on their faces/and they will likewise all have places"] - but everyone will have a place - a place for his own perceptions, say - but, anyway, Creeley's language, as far as I know it, from the early (19)60's, or maybe earlier, was "place". And I think that was parallel to the way we're using the Buddhist term "space" (or a rough equivalent).

The fruit of all the preoccupation (is) a 1977 poem. Since you've read all that Williams now, just to carry it a couple of decades later, here's Williams' child, or student and appreciator of Williams in our own time [1978] - a book calledLater- Later - He said he would like to have that on his tombstone! Later - his latest joke. [Allen reads from Robert Creeley's volume] - "(9) - Sitting up here in/newly constituted/ attic room 'mid/pipes, scarred walls,/ the battered window/adjacent looks out/ to street below. It's fall,/sign woven in iron/ rails of neighbor's porch;/"Elect Pat Sole"/ O solo mio, mother,/thinking of old attic/ West Acton farmhouse,/same treasures here, the boxes,/ old carpets, the smell./ On wall facing, in chalk:./Small world of these pinnacles,/ places ride up in these/ houses like clouds,/ and I've come as far,/as high, as I'll go/ Sweet weather, turn/now of the year…"/ The old horse chestnut/with trunk a stalk like a flower's/ gathers strength to face winter./The spiked pods of its seeds/ start to split, soon will drop./The patience, of small lawns, small hedges,/ papers blown by the wind,/the light fading gives way/ to the season.School's/started again. Footsteps fall/ on the sidewalk down three/ stories. It's man-made/ endurance I'm after,/it's love for the wear/ and the tear here,/goes under, gets broken, but stays./ Where finally else/in the world comes to rest -/ by a brook, by a/view with a farm/ like a dream - in/ a forest?In a house/ has walls all around it?/There's mor always here/ than just me, in this room,/this attic, apartment,/ this house, this world,/ can't escape." - (Similar. Similar mind, similar view).

Then, the last poem (in the book)… [Allen is temporarily distracted by a child's cry, young Max Corso, in the classroom, but continues] - "(10) - In testament/to a willingness/ to live, I,/Robert Creeley,/ being of sound body/and mind, admit/ to other preoccupations - /with the future, with/ the past. But now - / but now the wonder of life is/ that it is at all,/ this sticky sentimental/ warm enclosure,/ feels place in the physical/ with others,/ lets mind wander/ to wondering thought,/then lets go of itself,/ finds a home/on earth."

So if you've been following what we've been doing all along, with breath and mind wandering, it's amazingly natural that Creeley should come to a very similar statement as (to the one) Williams came to, as Buddhists came to ( as probably Reginald Ray came to, in his exposition of Vipassana). It's actually basically nature we're talking about, or the nature of mind, the nature of the world, the simplicity of the world. But it was interesting. I read this last night and thought this would be a very good specemin to bring in to finish the Vipassana (teachings), to show that this Vipassana focus on detail of the physical world (which as an aesthetic style in America, begun at the turn of the century, (and) still goes on as an ongoing preoccupation - just like the breath)

[Audio for the above can be heard here, starting at approximately fourteen-and three-quarter minutes in, and concluding at approximately twenty minutes in]

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Meditation and Poetics - 50) (Walt Whitman (intro))

February 19, 2015, 3:00 am

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[Walt Whitman (1819-1892)]

AG: So we move from there [Robert Creeley, William Carlos Williams,Vipassana"focus on detail of the physical world"] to some expansion. Okay, we've already got it focused. We've got microscopically fine precise detail, grounded. (We've) burnt away, to some extent, dependency on fantasy ( or, at least, even if we don't want to work totally with that, at least we understand that theory..). Or - as (William Carlos) Williams said, "And resolve to dream no more". Remember the beginning poem, "Thursday"? - I have had my dream.. /and it has come to nothing, so that/I remain now carelessly/with feet planted on the ground/and look up at the sky -/feeling my clothes about me,/the weight of my body in my shoes,/the rim of my hat, air passing in and out/at my nose - and decide to dream no more."

Well, obviously, it's a joke. You can't resolve to "dream no more" because thought is recurrent. Samsara, illusion, is eternal. Thought rises unborn. There's nothing you can do about it, except recognize it, until it becomes more and more transparent. So it was a little bit of an overstatement on Williams' part, that "and decide to dream no more", though it's a typical move, a typical mental chess-move. I think almost everybody has had that experience of waking up to present time, saying, "I'm never going to get trapped in my illusions again". (And so) instantly being trapped, by solidifying a thought.

Well, the background to this mindfulness, in America, is a larger mountain that is so large that, (as) I have said before, that it's too big to be seen, which is the huge bulk of consciousness and work of Walt Whitman, which, perhaps, bulks even larger and encloses the snippy, sharper consciousness of the turn-of-the-century, or pre-dates it and prefigures it and encloses it, and, in a sense, is even more ample.
In Whitman, we'll find what I would say is elements that you could term Mahayana, if we were defining the next move, mentally, as going out into space, with empathy and with... Using that clarity, the mind, unobstructed by fantasy, now penetrating outward into space with sympathy and compassion, because seeing clearly. So I would use Whitman as a major text for that.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, starting at approximately twenty minutes in and continuing to approximately twenty-three minutes in]

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Friday Weekly Round-Up - 209

February 20, 2015, 3:00 am

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Linda Cronin and Linda Hillringhouse - first-prize winners at the annual Paterson, New Jersey. Passaic County Community College Allen Ginsberg awards - Congratulations you two!

Tonight, in NYC (at the Cornelia Street Cafe) - Eliot Katz, Bob Rosenthal, and others - an hommage to Allen Ginsberg (the first of a series of readings, organized by Gordon Gilbert, that will be focusing on a variety of Beat writers)

Manuel Agnelli (of Afterhours), a few weeks back at Sala Verdi Conservaorio di Milano, reciting Allen Ginsberg ( "Moloch! Solitudine! Sudicio! Bruttura! Pattumiere e inottenibili dollari!..")

David Cope - "Allen Ginsberg described him as one of the leading lights of (the) next generation" - is interviewed on Michalis Limnios extraordinary Blues & Greecesite (who Beat-related haven't Blues & Greece featured?). The interview is available here

Gregory Corso's Collected Interviews, The Whole Shot (a project we've reported on before) gets ever closer to completion - see more about it (and help it on its way, perhaps?) here

Beat Attitude, a bi-lingual anthology of female Beats (Spanish translations alongside the originals), edited by Annalisa Mari Pegrum, has just been published by Bartleby Editores.
More about that title here and here

Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion co-founders of 100 Thousand Poets for Change(in collaboration with the Alfonso Gatto Foundation and regional organizers 100 TPC Salerno have plans for an extraordinary gathering next June in, Salerno, Italy -a 100 Thousand Poets For Change World Conference. For more (much more) information, see here

Meanwhile, in the US, later that month, another ambitious gathering - the "Beatnik Shindig" - a Beat Generation Conference in San Francisco. Jerry Cimino of the Beat Museumis the organizing energy behind that one and more information on that can be found here

Not forgetting the annual European Beat Studies Conference, scheduled this time for Belgium (Université Libre de Bruxelles). Date of those activities - 28-31 October.

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1979 Allen Ginsberg Reading in Toronto (Plutonian Ode & other poems)

February 21, 2015, 3:00 am

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More vintage footage this weekend (courtesy Don Rothenberg) - Allen Ginsberg(with Steven Taylor) in Toronto, in April 1979, on the occasion of the World Symposium on Humanity event there. The main feature - (following some brief explication) - a reading, in its entirety, by Allen, of his recently-composed "Plutonian Ode"

The footage can be viewed here

The tape begins in media res with Steven Taylor on guitar accompanying Allen (on aboriginal songsticks) in a version of "Put Down Your Cigarette Rag". This is followed, at approximately three-and-three-quarter minutes in, ("for loud voice, oratorical "), by Allen reading "Punk Rock Yr My Big Crybaby", then, approximately five minutes in, ("in honour of the guru"), "Father Guru" ("Father Guru unforlorn/ Heart beat Guru whom I scorn..") and, ("for voice, heart-voice, voice in the center of the body"), "two love poems, or several love poems" - "Love Replied" ("Love came up to me/& got down on his knee/& said I am here to serve/you what you deserve"] and "Love Returned" ("Love returned with smiles/three thousand miles/to keep a year's promise/Anonymous, honest")

At approximately ten minutes in, Allen introduces a sequence of poems - ("poetry in the voice of ordinary speech") - 'My father died several years ago, 1976. These are poems that I wrote as he ws dying, attending him in Paterson, New Jersey. Peter Orlovsky was with me, the poet. So these are from a series of poems called "Don't Grow Old"- conversations with my father as he died, of cancer, not in pain particularly, philosophically, but lethargic and weak, without force. ("Wasted arms, feeble knees/eighty years old, hair thin and w hite/cheek bonier than I'd remembered')

The sequence concludes (at approximately eleven-and-three-quarter minutes in) with "Father Death Blues" ) - "..then my father died and, flying home from Naropa Institute where I was teaching and studying meditation with Chogyam Trungpa, (I) wrote "Father Death Blues")

At approximately sixteen-and-a-quarter minutes in, having enquired of the audience about the time, Allen begins his introductory remarks to "Plutonian Ode"

"In the poem "Howl", I had a section called "Moloch", pointing to the Urizen-ic,extra-rational solidification of thought-forms that have created a giant skyscraper mechanical machine teaching instrument (father, boss and uncle) around us) and there is a line in there which is, "Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!" In this, relating, I guess, you could say, to the hydrogen bubble of Harrisburg. [Three Mile Island] This poem was written last summer when I was working with Daniel Ellsberg and the Rocky Flats Truth Force doing sitting meditation at the Rocky FlatsRockwell Corporation Plutonium Bomb Trigger Factory, twelve miles south of Boulder, Colorado, where I was teaching at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Instituteunder the meditation instruction of Chogyam Trungpa, who, incidentally, will be here in Toronto, actually… [in 1979]. I have some leaflets here.. his meditation is excellent . He will be doing intensive training sessions and a public talk in this hall on Sunday May 27th at eight o'clock (cheap, two bucks), and then there'll be, from May 28th to June 3rd, intensive training sessions, which involve sitting practice plus evening's conversation, evening's talk and instruction - for that entire thing, seventy-five bucks - it takes you a whole day, from May 30th to June 3rd, sitting eight, nine, hours a day, with instruction how to do samatha meditation.. classical vipassana style..from the Vajrayana .. by the meditation teacher who is one of the inheritors of the whispered transmission of Crazy Wisdom teachings of the Tibetan Book of the Dead [Bardo Thodol], and the Kagyu lineage of Buddhism that goes back to Naropa.

So from that circumstance, we went and did some sitting meditation on the railroad tracks outside of the Rocky Flats plant, (decided to) sit with the problem, rather than scream at the problem, (I think the problem's, actually, insoluable), so we're just going to sit with it - but the night before, I had written this long poem that..(and) a student from the Truth Force came up and said that there was going to be a train coming in bearing missile materials. and did I want to join them and sit? And so the morning after writing this. I wound up getting arrested for (sitting on the) railroad tracks

[Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovksy and fellow meditators, blocking the supply rail for Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production facility, Jefferson County, Colorado, June 1978. photo c. Joe Daniel]

Then there are some footnotes to the poem but I think I'll just go through without footnotes, except to.. to tell you.. that the twenty-four-thousand year period,the Great Year, is also, precisely, the twenty-four-thousand year half-life of plutonium,a new element created by Man.. (named after the planet Pluto, I think - what is it ? there's, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto - the order of the planets, Neptune's ocean, Pluto, Hades..) - Pluto was the father of the Eumenides that come back and punish you if you do mindless things, so that Pluto is the father of this karmic cause-and-effect feedback. So, he had stolen Earth-Mother's daughter Persephone and taken her down to Hades to throw her in the salt mines for thousands of years, and then Persephone got some Spring time..
His mother-in-law was Demeter, Earth goddess, and she was worshipped at the temple of Eleusis(and that was the only temple in the ancient world where Hades was.. worshipped with the sacrificing of sheep..rack of lamb..throats cut and pouring of honey and water on the floor (as the) libation to Pluto.
The cities I name are the cities where we have plutonium plants, where they fabricate plutonium, where they make it, where they fabricate it to three-pound bomb triggers. Each bomb trigger has the intensive explosive force of a Nagasaki bomb and that sets off an explosion ten thousand times larger than that.. We have thirty-thousand such bombs in our possession, in our arsenal, the Russians have twenty-thousand such bombs now - so it's hopeless, don't figure we can get out of that one! The age of the earth is supposed to be four billion years and every year...
That means this Great Year cycle can probably happen one-hundred-and-sixty-seven-thousand times, roughly, if you do your arithmetic, twenty-four thousand and four billion is one-hundred-and-sixty-seven thousand times a ….

I mention in it Jehova.. Ialdabaoth, Iao, Elohim. Jehova.. those are the Aeons orArchonsof the Aeons, sprung from Sophia's Imagination (Sophia, being the first word for Wisdom, or first reflections in the Abyss of Light, which would correspond to the Buddhist sunyata,I suppose, thedharmakaya - the Abyss of Light, an old Gnostic notion - There was a reflection and it was Sophia (Wisdom) and she had a reflection that was Ialdabaoth and then he had a reflection that was Iao - and his thought was the Aeon Elohim and his thought was the Aeon in Jehova - Sophie saw that these egocentric Gods were imprisoning sparks of light in the Garden of Eden, and so she sent the call or the great call, the Messenger, the Serpent, to tell them to eat that Apple of Knowledge, so they'd realize that Jehova was a thought of a thought of a thought, was only a reflection, an Abyss of Light..

There are three hundred tons of plutonium around now. Estimated world military budget [1978] is five hundred billion, US share was one hundred and sixty billion dollars.

(The) four (sic) characteristics of Buddha activity are - to pacify, to enrich, to magnetize (bring and collect together) and then destroy what needs destruction. And the poem ends with an American-ese approximation of the Prajnaparamita mantra, the Highest Perfect Wisdom mantra - "gate gate paragate parasamgate, bodhi svaha" ( "Gone gone - all gone to the other shore gone - Wakened mind salutations") - so Ah! - like Amen - (in Sanskrit, svaha - salutation - in Tibetan - soha - in Japanese - sowaka - so it ends "...so Ah!" , the poem."

[Allen gives here a complete reading of "Plutonian Ode", beginning at approximately twenty-three-and-a-half minutes in and ending approximately thirty-two-and-a-half minutes in (at the end of the tape]

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Meditation and Poetics - 51 (Bodhisattva Vows - 1)

February 23, 2015, 3:00 am

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[Human Tapestry - Sadegh Tirafkan (1965-2013)]

AG: I don't know if Reggie (Ray) went over the Bodhisattva vows - all four? - did he? (I think he went over three or something) but I'll go over it once (not as Buddhism, but just as ordinary mind thoughts, the sort of thoughts that you'd have as a kid, or that you'd find expressed in (Jack) Kerouac or in (Percy Bysshe) Shelley. Remember we began with Shelley's, the end of, "(Ode to) the West Wind" - "Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/ Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!,/ And, by the incantation of this verse,/ Scatter my words.." - what is it? - "Scatter... Ashes and sparks my words among mankind!". [Editorial note - "Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth/Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!"] - That's some by-product of the bodhisattva impulse - to penetrate throughout space and enlighten all space and save all sentient beings. And you'll find it in (Walt) Whitman, you'll find it in almost any heroic, angelic poetry (like Kerouac's notion of himself as "the recording angel", wanting to keep a complete record of all of the epiphanous moments of his existence, to be "The Great Rememberer"). There is some kind of real hot artistic impulse that all of us know and all of us have admired in Kerouac's work, or equivalent heroic expansive works (especially in Whitman), which the Buddhists have a formulation for. Maybe too narrow a formulation, but I want to lay that out clearly so you get their angle. I have it myself in a pre-Buddhist form in "Kaddish". There's a spot where (I'm) talking about going on the ferry-boat across the Hudson River to take my entrance exam to Columbia University, praying. I got down on my knees and prayed that if I passed my exams so I could get a scholarship (and then) if I could go to Columbia, I would vow to use my future to save the working-class (some kind of adolescent impulse which actually prefigures our ultimate choiceless awareness, our ultimate fate, whether we like it or not)
["Prayed on ferry to help mankind if admitted - vowed the day I journeyed to Entrance Exam…"]

The Buddhist version is as follows - "Sentient beings numberless" - Sentient beings are numberless - "I vow to enlighten all of them" - (that's a big order - "numberless", to begin with, infinite - how could you possibly enlighten all of them? You wouldn't have the time. And yet, paradoxically, the totally romantically ambitious program is to enlighten every single sentient being down to the last grass blade. Well, that's terrific, actually, as a romantic notion. Coming out of all this dry vipassana - it's a total turn-on, a totally romantic notion - "Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to enlighten all"

Of course, there's a trick in there, which is that when the self disappears, or self is enlightened, or when egolessness arrives, then you'll see that everything is already enlightened, so actually it works two ways - "Sentient beings numberless, vow to enlighten all" (that's totally Shelley-an, totally Whitmanic, as an ambition. As a poetic ambition, that's certainly the highest and most noble, and most recognizable, poetic ambition - to enlighten the entire universe)

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-three minutes in and continuing until approximately twenty-six-and-three-quarter minutes in]

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Meditation and Poetics - 52 (Bodhisattva Vows - 2)

February 24, 2015, 3:00 am

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[...'though passions are numberless, I vow to cut them all down"]

AG: The next one [of the Bodhisattva vows] is a little more fishy (and) difficult. Something sticks in the craw with that, which is often translated as “Passions are endless, I vow to cut them all down” – Well, that’s pretty tough! It means you’ve got to cut off your balls - or what?

Student: (Are you talking about(Walt) Whitman?)

AG: Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m not talking about Whitman yet. I’m just talking about laying out a general theory (Whitman does it, actually. At a certain point, yes. He does. He has to stand back from himself and say, “Now, wait a minute, I’ve fallen to the usual mistake”). I’m not talking about Whitman (though). I’m going to use Whitman as a text after, but I want to lay down some ground rules and some ground understandings.

Actually, it’s not so much that passions are numberless, it’s that attachments to passions are numberless. It ain’t the passions that are so bad, it’s our obsessive attachment to them. In other words, like in(William) Blake - “He who kisses the joy as it flies/Lives in eternity’s sunrise" - He who binds to himself a joy/ Does the winged life destroy”. It’s better translated, I’m told by Gary Snyder, as “Obscurations", or "coverings", or "illusions", or "delusions", are numberless, I vow to cut through them all”.

As Reggie (Ray)might have suggested to you, the Vajrayanastyle is actually plunging into the passions and using them, without attachment. Riding the passions. Just as you might say you have your thoughts – you ride your thoughts - “Thoughts are numberless, I vow to cut them all down” doesn’t mean you stop thinking. It means you recognize them all. So, in the same way, “Passions are numberless. I vow to cut through them all” doesn’t mean that you stop the passions with a dam or a wall, puritanical, but, rather, by recognizing and riding them, they become more transparent, less obsessive, less of a nightmare-dream in which you’re trapped. So, (the) second Bodhisattvavow – “Passions” (or “obscurations”, or...actually, I think the literal translation is “coverings” - coverings-over of awareness) - are infinite, I vow to cut then all down”.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-six-and-three-quarter minutes in and continuing to approximately twenty-nine-and-a-quarter minutes in]

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Meditation and Poetics - 53 (Bodhisattva Vows - 3)

February 25, 2015, 3:00 am

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[Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, here depicted with thousand arms and eleven heads]

AG: The next (Bodhisattvavow) is “Dharma gates are endless”. The gates of dharmas are endless, “I vow to enter every gate”, I vow to enter all. By “dharmagate”, that means situations are infinite. There are an infinite number of situations – this classroom, the question you asked me, each is a dharmaor a “thing” (dharmameans really a “thing”, not just the law, the whole Buddha dharma or the dharma, the law of nature but dharma, in a technical sense, means just a thing - like this microphone is a dharma, my voice is a dharma, my notes are a dharma (or dharmas) – this book is a thing – “thingies” – “thingies are numberless, I vow to enter every one” (“thingie” is the local terminology around here for dharma, actually, that’s the way (Chogyam) Trungpa uses the word “thingie” - dharmas. It also means law of nature, or nature of things. So it also means that situations are endless, or every single psychological situation, every single mental situation, is a gate to enter to explore and turn to enlightened advantage.”Dharmagates are endless, I vow to enter every one”. In other words, if the mad man comes up to you, then you have to deal with him, rather than run away. He’s a dharmagate. So there is some element of an attempt to enlighten the madman or dis-illusion the madman

And as a corollary to that there is a bodhisattva understanding that you never cut off contact with anybody by saying, “I’ll never talk to him again, he’s a shit.” That common human reaction of "I’ll never (want to see him again)" is forbidden henceforth, because you’re plunged into the thick of life, (where everything is) all inter-related, all sentient beings are of your own nature related, and so, actually, that.. that cut-off point no longer applies. You’re actually doomed to go on forever talking with madmen, throughout the endless length of the universe, until you yourself wake up, or they all wake up, or simultaneously there’s a wakening. In other words, you can’t get away from it anymore, you can’t get away from suffering anymore. Suffering then becomes a dharmagate. Suffering then becomes a gate into which you enter to understand something new. So every situation, every pain, every broken leg is a lesson (or, that’s how it can be interpreted) – “Dharmagates are endless, I vow to enter every one" .

[Audio for the above may be heard here, starting at approximately twenty-nine-and-a-quarter minutes in and continuing to approximately thirty-one-and-three-quarter minutes in]

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Meditation and Poetics - 54 (Bodhisattva Vows - 4)

February 26, 2015, 3:00 am

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["..the Buddha path is endless, I vow to follow through")

And the last of them (Bodhisattva vows) is “Buddha path is endless, I vow to follow through”. Or, “wakened mind” (“Buddha” just means wakefulness) - “Wakefulness is infinite, (or the path of wakefulness is endless), I vow to go right through to the end”

Same thing as “Sentient beings are endless..numberless, I vow to enlighten all.” So it’s a statement of vastness, you realize, it’s a statement of vastness. It’s also a statement of your occupation of this vastness, your… the vastness is our kingdom. We don’t have to shrink from the vast. We are the vast actually. So it’s a statement of endlessness. And nothing could be more…from a poetic point of view, nothing could be more romantic, nothing could be more delightful, nothing could be more poetical, nothing could be more Wordsworthian-vast, nothing could be more Shelley-an, Blake would cream! In other words, it satisfies everything, it satisfies every poetic ambition, except its basis is cold, clear, dis-illusioned materialistic no-mind, no soul, no ego, no self, nothing but phenomena at once real and empty (simultaneously real and empty).

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-one-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-three-and-three-quarters minutes in]

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Friday Weekly Round-Up - 210

February 27, 2015, 3:00 am

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[Allen Ginsberg - Allen Ginsberg Nude Self-Portrait, Portland, Seattle, 1991 - Photograph via the University of Toronto Collection, Gift of the Larry and Cookie Rossy Family Foundation, 2014]

Opening last week (Feb 20) and up till early April (April 5), it's the University of Toronto's Ginsberg photo show, "We Are Continually Exposed to the Flashbulb of Death - The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg (1953-1996) curated by Barbara Fischer and John Shoesmith - currently at the Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver

"Essential viewing" - Burroughs: The Movie moves from the New York Film Festival to the Glasgow Film Festival. Read Rob Dickie's review (for Sound on Sight) here

Kerouac news - coming soon (March 7 and 8) - the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac celebrations

Still time (March 26 is the closing date) to help support The Whole Shot: Collected Interviews with Gregory Corso. The Kickstarter page regarding the book can be found here

More on Annalisa Mari Pegrum's bilingual anthology of Beat women, Beat Attitude - Antologia de mujeres poetas de la generación beat - here

"Selfies" - since we lead off this week with one of Allen's "pre-selfie-selfies", here's some others

Here's a very different vision of Allen - San Francisco Assemblage artist, Bruce Conner's classic work of 1960 - wood, fabric, wax, tin-can, glass, feathers, metal, string and spray paint, "Portrait of Allen Ginsberg" - Recognize him?

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Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

February 28, 2015, 3:00 am

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It's Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's birthday today.
See previous birthday postings on the Allen Ginsberg Project here and here and here

Our focus today is Robert Del Tredici's charming photo-book. Flip through an expanded on-line edition of it here
For those of you in the Boulder area, many of these photos can be seen at an exhibition at Naropa University's White Cube and Nalanda Galleries through until April 21st

Remembering Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche ( 1939-1987)

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