The Allen Ginsberg Project

[Ming Hui - translation of the opening lines of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" into Mandarin]

from a recent interview (Q & A) in the New York Times with poet and translator, Willis Barnstone, (provocatively titled "Willis Barnstone on Translating Mao and Touring Beijing With Allen Ginsberg"):

NYT: During your stay in 1984-85, Allen Ginsberg came.

WB: Yes, he came on a visit with leading American authors. He gave a talk about [fellatio]. - [n.b. New York Times' square-brackets and Latin terminology, not ours!] - That was the end of his tour! Everyone was stone-faced. But being Allen Ginsberg and finding marvels in China, and boyfriends, he stayed on until Christmas.

To reduce Allen's historic - and productive - trip to this one salacious anecdote seems, well.. hardly fair (not to say, frankly, inaccurate). The Times doesn't go quite that far:

NYT: [So] What happened at the White Cloud Temple [in Beijing]?

WB: I went there with Allen. We walked in there, and the abbot was wise, as Taoists should be, and generous. We were interested in everything, and although I’m not religious, religion is something I know well, so we had a lot to talk about. We were walking around, and we saw a room. Allen said, “What’s in this room?” and the abbot said, “Look inside.” Allen opened the door, and there was a young man wearing a loincloth, but otherwise completely naked. He was in a posture where his hands touched his feet, like a circle, but his eyes were open. Allen said, “Oh, oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb him.” And the abbot said, “Don’t worry. No one will disturb him for twenty-four hours.” Allen said he had been in India for three years, (and) but this is the real thing.

The opening lines from Allen's "One Morning I Took A Walk in China":

"Students danced with wooden silvered swords, twirling on hard packed muddy earth
as I walked out Hebei University's concerete North Gate
across the road a blue capped man sold fried sweet dough sticks, brown as new boiled doughnuts.
in the gray light of sky, past poplar tree trunks, white washed cylinders topped
with red band the height of a boy - Children with school satchels sang & walked past me
Donkeys in the road, one big one dwarf pulling ahead of his brother, hauled a cart of white stones
another donkey dragged a load of bricks, other baskets of dirt -
Under trees at the crossing, vendors set out carts and tables of cigarettes, mandarin Tangerines, yellow round pears taste crunchy lemony strange…"

and,

"Reading Bai Juyi" (written in Shaghai, a couple of weeks later)"

"I'm a traveler in a strange country
China and I've been to many cities
Now I'm back in Shanghai, days
under warm covers in a room with electric heat -
a rare commodity in this country -
hundreds of millions shiver in the north
students rise at dawn and run around the soccer field
Workmen sing songs in the dark to keep themselves warm…"

These and several other "China poems" can be found in his collection, White Shroud.

Here's the beginnings of another one (actually, Section V of the previous poem):

"I sat up in bed and pondered what I'd learned
while I lay sick almost a month:
That monks who could convert Waste to Treasure
were no longer to be found among the millions
in the provinces of Hebei. That The Secret of the Golden Lotus
has been replaced by the Literature of the Scar, nor's hardly
anybody heard of the Meditation Cushion of the Flesh
That smoking Chinese or American cigarettes makes me cough;
Old men had got white haired and bald before
my beard showed the signs of its fifty-eight snows.
That of Three Gorges on the Yangtze the last one downstream
is a hairpin turn between thousand-foot-high rock mountain gates.
I heard that the Great Leap Forward caused millions
of families to starve, that the Anti-Rightist Campaign
against bourgeois "Stinkers" sent revolutionary poets
to shovel shit in Xinjiang Province a decade before
the Cultural Revolution drove countless millions of readers
to cold huts and starvation in the countryside Northwest…"

[Gary Snyder]

Gary Snyder, another erstwhile "Beat"not unfamiliar (to say the least) with China (and most particularly classical Chinese literature) has his eighty-fifth birthday coming up in a couple of weeks time. In advance of it and on the occasion of a new book, he's been giving a couple of interviews. Here's hisinterview with NPR's Linda Wertheimer

and here's his interview, (ora section of his interview) with KRCC (Colorado College) (he quotes his friend Peter Coyote's sage advice, "don't buy your own poster!")

from the interview:
Interviewer - "I think your style as a poet, at least at first, it seems very observational, there's a lot of very concrete imagery, of things that you seem to be witnessing, and in a way kind of bearing witness to, whether it's in the natural world or human culture, or looking at ancient myth or older traditions. So is that for you, as a poet, is that part of that "being unprepared", in terms of just allowing yourself to observe in some way?
GS: Well, that's, you know, that's a kindergarten step is what that is. You can't even be a bird-watcher without having good and accurate observations. You need to be an observer, which translates into, (on a slightly larger scale), something that has become very popular in the United States recently (and I completely welcome it) which is the whole idea of the practice of mindfulness. Now the term "mindfulness" is a very meaningful term. It means thinking clearly and observing correctly - both. And it means keeping calm. And it means knowing who you are and what your steps are, and so I certainly welcome that.."

[David Olio]
A follow-up fromlast week, (sadly not a positive one) - the David Olio -"Please Master" case. Olio's lawyer writes:

"It is with the heaviest of hearts that I write to tell you we were unable to save David's job but hopefully we saved his career. After ten hours of mediation we negotiated a separation agreement [with the South Windsor, Connecticut School Board]. The district feels the community is divided on David's actions and there is no way other than to release him to bridge that divide. I am heartsick and forever changed by this experience.."

"Please master, can I touch your cheek/please master can I kneel at your feet"
Censorship is alive and well and living in America.

Regarding some thrilling news on poetry digitalization, our good friend Rob Melton at the University of San Diego's Mandeville Library Archive For New Poetry writes us:

"Shortly after the death of the poet Paul Blackburn in 1971, ANP (Archive For New Poetry) acquired his personal papers, library, and audiotape collection, which has been called “the most comprehensive oral history of the New York poetry scene between the late 1950s and 1970.” But the roughly four hundred tapes, the majority of which are in the reel-to-reel format, are in danger of deteriorating and being heard only on almost obsolete equipment. In February, we began to digitize the tapes and we will soon begin to obtain permission from copyright holders to make the tapes as widely available on the Internet as possible. Although the digitization will not be complete by May 7^th, we are hosting a virtual reading during which selected readings will be played from the new digital files, with a focus on poets whose papers are also held in ANP."

[Paul Blackburn 1926-1971]

So - "..on Thursday, May 7^th, from 4:00-6:00 (at the Seuss Room of the Geisel Library). It’s a double-barreled celebration: first, to celebrate, publicize, and listen to selections from a digitization project that we have recently undertaken and second, to honor (esteemed poet and teacher at UCSD, and an important figure in the development of the collection), Michael Davidson."

Speaking of San Diego, we note (belatedly) the passing of another local teacher and poet, Steve Kowit.
Here's Ted Burke's loving recollections of him. Here are more tributes

and, speaking of recordings of poetry readings, it being National Poetry Month, the US Library of Congress has decided to go all out. (Allen's reading (from 1988), incidentally, can be accessed here)

The Beats-via-vinyl note - The Vinyl Factory recently put up a story by Chris May on "Radical Poets - The Story of the Beat Generation in Ten Rare Records" - Rarities indeed. Perhaps you're familiar with this one:

but what about this?

The other eight and May's comments on the records can be read here.

Upcoming, in London, on May 30, plans are afoot for an Albert Hall anniversary updated Poetry Incarnation - Stay tuned

and more on the Beat Museum's upcoming Beat Shindig in June

Closer to the moment, Fred W. McDarrah, fabled Greenwich Village photographer, is having a photo-opening, tonight!, at New York's Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea. (515 W. 26th.) from 6 pm to 8 pm. The show will be based on his classic 1961 book The Artists's World in Pictures.

[Robert Creeley (1926-2005) - Photograph by Michael Romanos]

Last weekend, we featured Allen reading (from "Kaddish" and other poems) as part of the Robert Creeley audiotape collection, (now lovingly engineered and digitalized and made available on the incomparable PennSound site).

This weekend, we spotlight another one, a reading, some years later, from 1978, (in the Kiva Room at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where Creeley was then teaching, the first recipient of the chair of David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters - he would later be promoted to the position of Samuel P Capen Professor of Poetry and the Humanities - In 1991, along with Charles Bernstein, he co-founded the on-going and lively Buffalo Poetics Program)

This reading, from October 5, 1978, features (and concludes with) a reading of his then recently-completed long-poem of nuclear protest, Plutonian Ode
(this may be compared with alternative readings made available on the Allen Ginsberg Projecthereandhere)

[Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) - Photograph by Michael Romanos]

Allen Ginsberg at State University of Buffalo, 1978, a vintage audio, may be heard in its entirety here

Allen begins with a brief song (accompanying himself on the harmonium) by William Blake - "I've been working on (William) Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experienceand put music to most of the songs, and this year (1978), working with "The Tyger", and a song that I had never understood before, "My Pretty Rose Tree", a little, slight two-stanza lyric (the music I'm sort of improvising)"…."What interested me is, "Such a flower as May never bore" (meaning an unearthly flower, such as William Carlos Williams mentions in "Asphodel..") - "A flower was offered to me/Such a flower as May never bore/But I said I've a Pretty Rose-tree" - So he's.. he wants his earthly flower, his mortal, transitory, vegetable flower, but then, when he gets his transitory vegetable flower - "(the) thorns were my only delight"

Allen continues: "I'll read poems written since I was here in Buffalo last, (in 1975).
In September (19)75, I went on a three-week meditation hermitage, alone, with the idea of not writing anything (also), that is, just do(ing) Buddhist-type sitting meditation, and, because I wasn't trying to convert my experience into language, wound up seeing more precisely than I had before, with a writing habit, and a few perceptions remained stuck in my mind. So when I got out (on September 16) I wrote down a few fast poems. So these are haiku, written after several.. after a couple of weeks of sitting alone in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains -

"Sitting on a tree-stump with half cup of tea,/ sun down behind mountains -/ Nothing to do." - "Not a word! Not a word!/ Flies do all my talking for me -/ and the wind says something else." - "Fly on my nose/ I'm not the Buddha/ There's no enlightenment here." - "Against red bark truck/ A fly's shadow/ lights on the shadow of a pine bough." - "An hour after dawn/ I haven't thought of Buddha once yet!/ - walking back into the retreat house." - " - and "Walking into King Sooper after Two-Week Retreat" ("an instant karma shot") - A thin red-faced pimpled boy/ stands alone minutes/looking into the ice cream bin." - (There was a similar haiku I'd written on an earlier retreat which was "Snow mountain fields/ seen thru transparent wings/ of a fly on the windowpane." - that is to say, the perception becomes clearer after clearing the mind - you can even see a snowfield on a mountain through a fly's wing on the window-pane, or you might notice it, with an attentive eye)."

"And in October that year, Gospel Noble Truths, which is a gospel style blues featuring the Three marks of existence - suffering, change and ego-lessness (that is, no.. empty of ego, (as) the universe itself), the Four Noble Truths - the Eightfold Path, instructions for sitting, and a review of the six senses."

[Allen Ginsberg and Louis Ginsberg, 1975 teaching a class at Naropa - Photograph by Rachel Homer]

"Don't Grow Old" is a series of poems written in January to July 1976, with several additions done last night and into today, on the death of my father, Louis (Ginsberg), who was a poet - in seven parts… (no) nine parts - so nine seperate sections.."

"and my Father died while I was in Naropa Instituteteaching, after being away for several weeks and so I flew home to the funeral and wrote a song - "Father Death Blues."

"There is a Buddhist slogan (the notion of slogan precedes Mao Tse Tung, it's a traditional Chinese form, (the) slogan) which says "Drive All Blames Into One", which is to say, take the great stinky ball of blame that nobody wants, put it all in one, and take it, because it's empty, so what difference does it make?, then you can get on with trying to figure out what to do with the situation , beside blaming something, or somebody else, for it."

"From a longer poem ["Contest of Bards"], a song called "The Rune". The.. I was reading a lot of (Thomas) Campion (and (Bob) Dylan, actually) - with Dylan and Campion and (I) tried to write a (sort of) silver lyric." (It's part of a longer poem called "The Contest of Bards" and it's a sort of a riddle poem in the middle of the longer epic work)"
(Allen is accompanied on vocals here byPeter Orlovsky)

Allen continues with "I Lay Love on My Knee", "Lack Love", "Punk Rock Your (sic) My Big Cry Baby","What's Dead?", "Father Guru", and "Manhattan Mayday Midnight" (" - "ur" - the syllable "ur" is not "er" but "Ur", that is to say, of Sumer? of the city in Sumer? If you hear the phrase "ur", it's the ancient city..")

"I'll finish with a Plutonian Ode, a longish poem (it'll take about ten minutes), written this summer (1978). Peter (Orlovsky) and I were involved with Rocky Flats nuclear facility Rockwell war-plant anti-nuclear protests near Boulder, Colorado, and one.. I got more involved thinking about it, and wrote a long poem, and the next morning one of the Rocky Flats Truth Force workers came and said that there was a train coming through with fissile materials and some of the Rocky Flats Truth Force people were going to sit on the tracks in front of the train to stop the train, (as was their want - about seventy people had been arrested doing that, including Daniel Ellsberg, earlier) (and) did we want to come out and join them? - and I'd just finished this long poem, and I said, "Yes, my script is written, so I'm all ready". And then, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote notes to it because there's confusing mythology involved, so I'll read you the notes."

(Allen's annotations to "Plutonian Ode"):

"Dr Glenn Seaborg was officially, is officially, the discoverer of plutonium (in the third line, "Doctor Seaborg" is mentioned). I'm talking about planets, Uranus (like "uranium" - plutonium is uranium-enriched)..so, among the planets, there's Uranus, and then there's Neptune (ocean), and then there's Pluto. I mention "Fish", "Crab", "Bull", "Ram", "Lion" - those are the astrologic constellations (we just left the age of Pisces, theoretically, according to the astrology columns in the newspapers, and are going into the age of Aquarius - two-thousand years each. Each age is considered to be two thousand years, and of the twelve signs, twenty-four-thousand years, and that was known by William Butler Yeats and Plato as "the Great Year" (of twenty-four-thousand years), the Babylonian Great Year, or Platonic Great Year, (meaning the time it takes for us to pass through..for our solar system, I guess, to enter and pass through, each of the major constellations). The center of our galaxy, actually, is in the direction of Sagittarius. Twenty-four-thousand years, this "Great Year" is also, amazingly, the half-life of plutonium (so this is a way of getting poetic scale to the political fact that we have created a new element, the heaviest element, (heavier than uranium, next to plutonium - there are new elements, since then, heavier - caesium - but the heaviest element created at that time - plutonium, and its half-life is twenty-four-thousand years, exactly the same as the Great Year) (and) so..
That gives you some idea how long we're going to have to take care of West Valley, New York [sic] 's old nuclear plant, (that's sort of half-sunk in the earth and closed up and nobody knows how to deal with the nuclear waste and get rid of it). So… the full-life is two-hundred-and-forty-thousand years, two-hundred and forty-thousand millennia, before it becomes physically inert and un-dangerous. If the "Great Year" is twenty-four-thousand years and Earth is four-billion years old, that means we've gone through the "Great Year" a-hundred-and-sixty-seven-thousand times (a little) piece of information…"

"And did I mention "Hanford, Savannah River, Rocky Flats, Pantex, Burlington,Albuquerque"? - those are towns where there are plutonium factories, where the plutonium is made (in the first two cities), where it's fabricated into bomb.. three-pound bomb-triggers at Rocky Flats (each bomb-trigger is the size of a Nagasaki-size explosion, and that's the trigger for a hydrogen bomb ten thousand times that strength… And then the old bombs are stored at Manzano Mountain, outside Albuquerque, So I'm mentioning the towns and the states."

"One single pound of plutonium scattered throughout the Earth is supposed to be sufficient to wreck all human life, if it is scattered equally. One atom to one lung is enough to cause cancer. And (then) there is the mention of "the Six Worlds", (which is a Buddhist notion of six psychological states - world of bliss, (world of) gods, human world, world of angry warriors, world of hungry ghosts, hell-world, and animal world. And there are now three-hundred tons of plutonium, (estimated, 1978, amount) produced for bombs (the United States has thirty-thousand such bombs and Russia twenty thousand). There's mentioned also the temple, the single temple, at Eleusis, which is the temple to Demeter, where Pluto and Hades ((the) god of Hades) was also worshipped. Pluto's always bad news (as in Chaucer [ in "The Merchant's Tale"]), wherever he appears, god of the underworld, he stole Spring-time, Persephone, from Earth-Mother, Demeter, took her underground for half (of) the year. Libations to Pluto were honey and water poured on the floor of the temple and black sheep throats were cut (but the priest's face was generally turned away from underground, he wasn't supposed to look)."

"And the estimated world military budget 1978 is five-hundred-billion dollars (just Russia and America and China and everyone)…. two-hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars a minute - or five-hundred billion a year.
And I mention the word (s) "pacify", "enrich", "magnetize" and "destroy", (which appears earlier in twentieth-century American Literature in "Give, sympathize, control" ("Datta, dayadhvam, damyata"), (at) the end of (T.S.) Eliot's (The) Waste Land . ("Magnetize this howl with heartless compassion, destroy this mountain of Plutonium with ordinary mind and body speech"). They are aspects of, or characteristics of,Buddha-nature - that it pacifies, enriches (pacifies where it can, enriches what's lacking), magnetizes and draws together, attracts, and what it can't deal with, destroys, (what ignorance is dissolvable, destroys).

[A jar of hot air]

AG: So the question is, has twentieth-century poetry, in its attempt to define itself in space and time and locate itself and become down-to-earth and renew the language and renew the mind and occupy the place where it is, become too materialistic and single-leveled, monotonous, pictorial? Well, what I would say is (that) this Hinayana-Mahayana-Vajrayana poetry that we’re supposed to go into (the recombination of details of reality, or the weird arrangement of them) might come, in Surrealistic or Vajrayanaor something other – wilder – poetry, but, without some sensory base, without some original contact with earth in poetry, (as in meditation), you can’t proceed to the other because you have no matter to work with, generally. There might be some individual genius who has got it born in him to do it, to do something, but, judging from the poetry I’ve seen around here [Naropa], I would say everybody ought to go back to home-base, to begin with. Judging from the quality of thought-forms around, I would say everybody’s got to go back to home-base in order to escape from abstraction, which leads nowhere, to get to some kind of communication and common area that other people can read, at least. Because the plain fact is that most abstract writing is self-ultimate and does not carry sufficient information or reference for other people to understand what’s being talked about.

There’s this insistency that.. well, can you read your abstract poem that I was screaming about, please, Francine (sic) – Do you have it here?

Student (Francine): Which one?

AG: That abstract one. The one I began going mad over

Student (Francine): Well you went mad over a lot of them. I (wrote several and…)

Peter Orlovsky: (The one about) what I don’t know..

AG: It can’t be said, it can’t be seen..

Student (Francine): How about I..

AG: No, no, please, that poem.

Student (Francine): What?

AG: You don’t have that poem?

Student (Francine): Yes I do…

AG: Please read it

Student (Francine): (But..)

AG: Please read it

Student (Home-based..)

AG: Pardon me?

Student: Home-based for sitting meditation?

AG: Well, home-based for practical reality, at the same time, home-based, the breath, something you can contact.

Student (Francine) Objectively read it?

AG: You read it.

Student (Francine) Oh no, (not) here

AG: No, you read it. Come on, I’ll read it after you read it

Student (Francine): Well, it’s actually meant to be read (to oneself). It’s not a read-aloud poem

Student (Francine) finally succumbs – reading her poem – “There is no telling, even showing/is missed, and being best to worst, best/ to worst leaves me alone with wild/thoughts.”

AG: Okay, now there’s a poem that depends completely on the logopoeia,so to speak, on “best to worst”.

Student: One more time

Student (Francine): Sure (she reads the poem again) - “There is no telling, even showing/is missed, and being best to worst, best/ to worst leaves me alone with wild/thoughts.”

AG: Well, now where is that in space and time? It’s a common thought. Everybody knows "there is no showing, there is no telling", whatever it is we are talking about

Student (Francine): I think there (are) some people who would understand that.

AG: No I’m saying, let us say, everybody understands it. But I say, Idon’t understand it. In the sense that, “There is no telling, even showing/is missed, and being best to worst, best/ to worst leaves me alone with wild/thoughts.”. Best to worst”, I would say, has the logopoeiapart. But there is no content, in the sense of nothing you can contact.

Student: "leaves me alone with wild/thoughts"

AG: Well, that’s the part I objected to most. Because I would have said that you would have to have an example of a wild thought in there to bring it back home somewhere that other people could contact, really, rather than guess at. This way it’s like an equation which has no.. apples, it’s like mathematics, so anybody can interpret it any way they want. But in a sense, that’s ultimate nebulousness, ultimate vaporousness, in the sense that there is no way of relating to it except by building whatever guess-work you want (perhaps using it as a mirror for your own secrets, or for your un-tell-able experiences). But, finally, there’s no dimension of meaning that’s connected to the earth.

Student : (or universe)

AG: Yeah, definitely. I know. Definitely.

Student (Francine): I mean, you can see, you can take the poem apart, critically, and find that maybe it’s not a very good poem.. but..

AG: That’s not…. okay..

Student (Francine): ..but what I really did question, after much thought, is whether you see a preference. You have a preference, right now it’s to particulars..

AG; Right

Student (Francine): ..and very specific, tangible, practical.. things.. (like) the glass on the table..

AG: Uh-hmm

Student (Francine): I enjoy them. I like being (around things), (but) I like being in all that space, I like being offered a seed to let my own imagination respond. I like unbound, spacious, undefined things. I like rain, I like fog, I like gas. It’s a preference. Maybe someone else is..

AG: Ah, let's see, who else likes gas?

Student: (I'm thinking about) ...Gertrude Stein (and) that reminded me a little bit of that poem (of hers)...

AG: Uh-hmm

Student: … ((which is) also an example of logopoeia) - "When I sleep, I sleep, and do not dream because it is as well that I am as I seem when I am in my bed and dream" [from "Before The Flowers of Friendship Faded, Friendship Faded"]

AG: Yes.

Student: That's wild.

AG: Yeah, But here…she has a sort of technical...

Student: (and maybe Francine too..)

AG: No, but she has a.. let us say Francine has a.. more definite, practical.. Though she claims she wants nothing but space, I’ll bet she projects that other people have had exactly the same mystical experience that she has and know(s) exactly what she thinks.

Student (Francine) Let's say..

AG: I’ll bet! - Now, how could you win a bet like that or lose it? How could you prove it? You can’t prove nothing in this world. It’s so indefinite.

Student (Francine) ( I think that other people have had mystical experiences and I think I know it?)

AG: I think you think that other people have had some sort of mystical experience of so similar a quality as yours that yours refers to them, to their mystical experience, and they will recognize yours in it, in this formulation of it.

Student (Francine); I think what?

AG: Do you? I don’t know. I assume so.

Student (Francine): In a sense. But not quite as confined. I’d never say it the way you said it, but there are certain similarities in various kinds of experiences, as well as the…

AG: Well, yes, experience is experience, so that naturally they’re similar.

Student: The objection of Allen is, I think, (that) there’s no experience in the poem, it’s about experience.

AG: It’s referential to experience, but no experience is articulated in the poem. Yes.

Student (Francine): Right. That’s what you didn’t like about most (of my poems). I had several other poems..about that, and you didn’t like that.

AG: It was only when you got down to [referring to another of Francine's poems] the "I-got -to-fix-the.. I-got-to-keep-the-water-running-in-the-faucet-so-the-pipes-won’t-freeze-for- winter", that I got back to…

There is very definite logopoeiaand there’s also a flash-picture brilliancy. There is abstraction possible, but the abstraction would have to be so precise and definite in relation to a certain specific experience (Actually, a lot of the Zenpoetry is referring to the experience of sunyata,which is a sort of definite codified experience which you check out with yourZen master, and people sit for years, and go in for theirkoan, check out everyday – it’s too indefinite, it’s rejected, until, finally, there does seem to be that transmission and it’s a very definite thing. It’s not an indefinite thing – that’s the thing – the brilliancy there. And it also depends (up)on a whole tradition of working with that language in a specific situation of sitting and Zen masters. So there’s a cultural background that supplies what’s missing of definiteness. How much indefiniteness you can get away with, (in the sense of (still being) socially communicable?), (that) you can have, without that specific cultural background.. in our situation - to write indefinite poetry, (say, like Kahlil Gibran) - there are no fixed mental reference points (except maybe in the acid world!) for people to interpret from. That’s the reason that (Ezra) Pound, (William Carlos) Williams and the others at the turn of the century tried to return to definite form. And I think (it was) partly in response to (Alexander) Pope’sgeneralizations (that) (William) Blakewanted to return to “minute particulars”

The other example was “leave the water trickle, so the pipes don’t freeze”. This is after a list of things on her floor, a list of objects on her shelves, bone, shell-bone, crystal..

Peter Orlovsky: Prism

AG: Prism

Student (Francine) ..rock

AG: ..rock -and then a list of books on the floor, scattered, Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching,(Tibetan) Book of The Dead… Magical Mystery Tour, cluttered on the floor. Then, “leave the water trickle so the pipes don’t freeze”. So there was a shift to something that was so definite that I thought that was interesting. Then a description of the s cene in which this (takes) place - “a rickety old house, swinging through the trees, returns in the wind to hold this hill-top down.”

Student: To what?

AG:”.. returns in the wind to hold this hill-top down.”, “..rickety old house, swinging through the trees, returns in the wind to hold this hill-top down.” – Well, there was a gale and the house, as if swinging in the wind.. there was the idea that the house itself was what held the hill-top down from blowing away. “Returns in the wind”, I didn’t quite get, but “swinging through the trees returns in the wind” (so there’s some idea of it returning in the wind). So there’s an actual situation of power and force and plenty of detail, but here it’s sort of the expression, or the description, of it (that is) so abstracted that it sounds more sentimentalized and generalized than need be and doesn’t carry the force of impression of the gale, (that) was my complaint.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-five-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-six-and-three-quarter minutes in]

[Philip Whalen (1923-2002)]

Student:Allen, (I just wanted to read to you) from Philip Whalen’s “Small Tantric Sermon”)

“To say concisely/That the man in the picture. Really made it out through the roof/ Or clear through the floor, the ground itself/ Into free space beyond direction - / Impossible gibberish no one/ Can understand, let alone believe/"

AG: Yeah

“Still, I try, I insist I can/Say it and persuade you/That the knowledge is there that the revelation/is yours.”

AG: Um-hmm. But you see, he has made this large generalized statement in such a funny (way). He’s made a very funny statement, that a man, (Philip Whalen, the man went up to the picture…I forgot.. went out to the roof into space, and then he qualified it, realizing he’s talking on a level that’s really incomprehensible, literally, and to say that this is gibberish, And then he says, “But anyway I’m going to try and say it”

Student: All he does is that?

AG: Yeah, So he goes and comes back. So he touches some kind of common home-base constantly, going and coming back. There the thing would be somewhat logopoeia,because in the common situation of trying to say something about empty space, suntaya, in this case, open mind, non-conceptual, he’s tried to say it abstractly, then he realizes that the abstraction doesn’t make any sense to others, probably, says it’s gibberish, then he has this lyric moment of saying, “But I’m still going to try and say it”. So the definiteness there is in the wavering and coming back, back and forth, between those levels of mind, or poetry. The definiteness is him showing his struggle, not in asserting “I have said it”. The definiteness is in him saying, “I didn’t say it” – Dig? – In other words, it’s the definiteness of him showing how his mind operated there. So there, in a sense, the mind and the attempt to write the poem is the subject, rather than the sunyata.Does that make sense?. It’s the drama of his trying to say it and wavering back and forth, sort of the Romantic drama, of his trying to say it and wavering back and forth, that’s what makes it definite. Or - the definiteness is in the drama going back and forth.

Abstraction is possible as lyric. I think I mentioned that the other day - Lyric Abstraction – i.e. the line in (Shakespeare’s) King Lear, which is a dramatic moment, when he yells out, “..never,never, never, never, never!”. It’s a guy talking and that’s the insistency, so that it’s actually a concrete line, or an objective line, in the sense that the object is this guy yelling, the emotion of this guy yelling “..never,never, never, never, never!”.A scream is also an object, on the stage, is definite in the form that I was trying to suggest that we try, (since I think the problem is excessive abstraction and lack of focus and lack of definiteness) as a beginning. So I’ve been going over and over again the first grounding of vipassana-style poetry - insight into definite objects, because, I think, unless you have that under you, you wouldn’t be able to have the humor that Whalen has in his poem (Whalen, who was brought up on Williams, and who also specializes in very definite, clearly-defined poems) and so that little outrageous outburst is sort of a little definite outrageous outburst in the midst of a definite world. Or doesn’t that make sense? - Yes?

Student: (And Bob Dylan has that grounding)

AG: Yeah. I don’t think it would be possible for him to do (those) abstract things unless he was first grounded though. Because then the grounding comes into logopoeia. I mean, say, “To live outside the law you must be honest”, there’s no definite thing there, true, but there is certainly a definite…

Student: (It's the end of class)

AG: Pardon me?

Student: (End of class)

AG: Oh, I’m sorry. Okay.”Out, out damned spot”. Well, let’s continue on this point..

tape and class end here

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

[from Walt Whitman's 1867 publication of the poem "Respondez!"]

Okay.. [Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso continue reading and reviewing Whitman’s Civil War poem, “Respondez!” ] – “For not even those thunderstorms…”

GC: Go ahead

AG: “..nor fiercest lightnings of the war, have purified the atmosphere;)/ - Let the theory of America still be management, caste, comparison! (Say! what other theory would you?)”

GC: There you go. Revolutionary fuck-ups..

AG: “Let them..”

GC: ..finally opening up..

AG: “Let them that distrust birth and death still lead the rest! (Say, why should they not lead you?)/ Let the crust of hell be neared and trod on! let the days be darker than the nights let slumber bring less slumber than waking time brings!..”

GC: Right

AG: “Let the world never appear..

GC: “ ..to him or her for whom it was all made!”

AG: “Let the heart of the young…”… Yeah, that was a good (line), okay.. “Let the world…”

GC & AG together: “Let the world never appear to him or her for whom it was made”.

GC: They got the chick in there, always.

AG: Yeah, yeah

GC: Love is male

AG: Yep.

GC: “Him or her” [sic]

AG: “Let the heart of the young man still exile itself from the heart of the old man! and let the heart of the old man be exiled from the heart of the young man!/ Let the sun and moon go! let scenery take the applause of the audience!”

GC: “Let scenery take the applause, fine!

AG: “Let scenery take the applause of the audience!”

GC: “Let scenery take the applause”

AG: “..let there be apathy under the stars!/ Let freedom prove no man’s inalienable right! every one which can tyrannize, let him tyrannize to his satisfaction!/ Let none but infidels be countenanced!/ Let the eminence of meanness, treachery…”

GC: What does that mean? – “Let none but infidels be countenanced!”?

AG: In other words, the only ones you can put….

GC: Infidels?

AG ….elected President.

GC: What does “countenanced” mean?

AG: Put up with your face, you know, like, faced with equanimity.

GC: Countenanced

AG: Allowed

GC: Allowed. No,”countenanced”, means it’s there

AG: Be countenanced

GC: “Let none but infidels be countenanced!”, in other words, be seen.

AG: Well that could be seen that way, yeah, sure. “Countenanced”, as it’s generally used is – [Allen pointedly alludes to Gregory Corso’s son, Max, who’s cries have been a continuing background to the class so far] - “I won’t countenance Max in this classroom, disrupting my..”

GC: He wants the fucking infidels around (in charge of America..)

AG: That’s what he’s saying, yes

GC: (That's fucking cold)

AG: Well, actually, he’s describing reality, political reality.

GC: His best shot.

[Allen and Gregory continue to combine together to give a classroom reading of Whitman's poem] – “Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm, hate, greed, indecency, impotence, lust, be taken for granted above all!..”

GC: “..let writers, judges, governments, households, religions, philosophies, take such for granted above all!”

AG: “Let the worse men beget children out of the worst women!”

GC: (That’s) a fuckin’ goodie, man! – “Let the priest still play at immortality” – What a shot! – Come on! Give it again.

AG: – “Let the priest still play at immortality” (Of course, he was the one who was playing at immortality)

GC: Right , they’re pointing heaven to you, right? Everlasting shit. Alright, what else?..

AG: Well, now, this (one) is for you, Gregory – “Let death be inaugurated!...

GC: The inauguration of death, of course. Let it be.. Alright..

AG: “Let nothing remain but the ashes of teachers”

GC: Oh shit, he’s fucking us up. He wants us (out) too

AG: No, no …

GC: No, he says, “Let nothing remain” here / but the ashes of teachers, artists, moralists, lawyers, and learn’d and polite persons!”

AG: “Let him who is without my poems be assassinated!”

GC: Oh, wow! wow!

AG: He’s really mad. He’s really mad. See, but for the humor..

GC: (He’s barking) but he’s got the humor.

AG: Actually, with that line..

GC: ..saves the fucker..

AG: With that line the whole thing turns inside-out .. – “Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee, let the mud-fish, the lobster, mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and..” – [Gregory joins in] - “..the grunting pig-fish, let these and the like of these, be put on perfect equality with man and woman!"

GC: Alright. Can you imagine, he gets the mud-fish and the pig-fish in there

AG: Yes.. mud-fish and “grunting pig-fish”

GC: Grunting pig-fish. So he’s still fucking around, right? Is he really letting out some anger, tho’

AG: Both. Might be..

GC: Alright, both, ok.. but look at what he gives the churches, Al - “Let churches accommodate serpents..”

AG: Vermin

GC: “..vermin, and the corpses of those who have died of the most filthy of diseases”

AG: “Let marriage slip down among fools”

GC: What does he say about marriage? what is it? what is it? - “Let marriage slip down among fools”, right! – and, wait, “Let marriage slip down among fools..and be for none but fools!” (I think he should have said “Let marriage slip down amongst fools”)

AG: Well, we can imagine.

GC: Well it’s hard – “among fools” – alright, anyway, “Let marriage slip down among fools” – It’s not a bad line but what does it mean? Bullshit. He doesn’t hit it there, in that line

AG; Well you can’t… you see, at that point, when you let the aggression take over, occasionally you generalize..

GC: Right. There you go, there you go. Alright – “Let..” - now here’s the man and woman shot - There’s a big line…

AG: This is a..

GC: ..one of the biggies of his man and woman shot. Give it, Al

AG: “Let men among themselves talk and think forever obscenely of women and let women among themselves talk and think obscenely of men!”

GC: Nice! jerk-off time, man, fucky-time

AG: And now the rest..

GC: Lust. It means lust, right? - to have lust for each other.

AG: Yeah

GC: Sure

AG: And the next one was the great beatnik platform, the next line.

GC: Okay - (GC & AG together) – “Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in public, naked, monthly, at the peril of our lives, let our bodies be freely handled and examined by whoever chooses” –

GC: ...I never took the last line.

AG: But that was a John Sinclair…

GC: Fuck it, I didn’t want anybody always touching me!

AG: No, that was the John Sinclair… Gregory, (but) that was the John Sinclair/Ed Sanders shot of…

GC: It was?

AG:..of "dope, sex and fucking in the street"

GC: Well that was one of the best.

AG: No, "dope, rock and fucking in the street" – “Let nothing but copies at second-hand be permitted to exist upon the earth, let the earth desert God” – And that’s where he really…

GC: That’s not a bad one

AG: Nah..

GC: It’s not a bad one though for a poem.

tape ends here -

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

[Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) circa 1862 – Photograph by Etienne Carjat]

“Baudelairewould have liked Billie Holiday” (Allen Ginsberg journal note, December 1960).

(Actually, we just finished celebrating Billie Holidayon the occasion, this past Tuesday, of her centennial, but today it’s Charles Baudelaire - April 9,the anniversary of the birth of Charles Baudelaire).

November 1957, three years previously, Allen’s in Paris, writing to Jack Kerouac:

“Not yet explored Paris, just inches, still to make solemn visits to cemeteries Père Lachaise and visit Apollinaire’s menhir (MENHIR) and Montparnasse to Baudelaire.”

[Baudelaire's grave in Cimetière de Montparnasse, Paris]

Allen Ginsberg to David Cope, January 1977, almost twenty years later:

“I once read a lot of Baudelaire + my Angel kid [sic] has read every translation – apparently, if you don’t know French (I do) you have to read all the translations to get a good idea”

Multiple translations of Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857) are available (along with much more) here at Fleursdumal.org

We’ve always been partial to Nicholas Moore’s thirty-one different versions of the same Baudelaire poem(quite an achievement!)

Hereis “LeBalcon”(“The Balcony’) translated into English by twenty different hands.

Jim Nisbet’s Baudelaire versions (our current favorites) still haven’t been published and deserve to be seen in book form. A brief selection of them, however, may be seenhere

The W.T.Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies in Nashville, Tennessee is an invaluable resource.

Allen in a lecture at the New York Public Library in 1987 – (included in the 1991 collection, Deliberate Prose):

“Kerouac and I, following Arthur Rimbaud and Baudelaire, our great-grandfathers among hermetic poets and philosophers, were experimenting naively with what we thought of as “new reality” or supreme reality”….

”The tradition [of direct treatment of the subject] was initiated by Baudelaire, who had updated the poetic consciousness of the nineteenth-century to include the city, real estate, houses, carriages, traffic, machinery..”

Allen’s discarded early poem, “The Last Voyage”– “I knew the pit of Baudelaire” – “Others have voyaged far, have sailed/On waves that wash beyond the world”, owing perhaps a little too much to Rimbaud and Baudelaire (but later he subsumed the influence)

Then, of course, there’s the Baudelaire-Poe connection. Allen on Poe – here,here and here

Remembering Charles Baudelaire today - one-hundred-and-ninety-four years on.

Hal Willner's 60th anniversary celebrations in L.A. for "Howl" this past week turned out to be a grand success.

From Tim Grierson's account of the evening, for Rolling Stone:

"Nearly 60 years after its first public reading in October 1955, a concert was held in downtown Los Angeles to honor "Howl", Allen Ginsberg's epic zeitgeist-chaneling poem that wrestled with sexuality, creativity, drugs, capitalism and the contradictory forces that were shaping mid-century America. Although not as consistently revelatory as the poem itself, "A Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"" could be as demanding, playful, funny, moving, defiant, overwhelming, exhausting and proudly idiosyncratic as its namesake…"…."True, "A Celebration.." meandered and dawdled on occasion, but the evening's clear highlight brought the focus back to the man (and the poem) of the hour…"

And "the evening's clear highlight"? - "(Hal) Willner came on stage with actressChloe Webb, a little more than halfway through the night to perform excerpts from "Howl"… Backed first by strings and upright bass, before drums, pedal steel and guitar entered the mix, Willner and Webb read (from) Ginsberg's infamous poem, letting the timeless power and mad swirl of his words create a panoply of dazzling mental images of a nation hurtling towards an exciting, uncertain future. By the time the two performers had gotten within spitting distance of the conclusion….there was a palpable energy in what was otherwise an often laid-back, polite crowd. The marriage of music and words, even words that are 60 years old, made the room seem stirringly alive, random audience members letting out whoops of pleasure and approval throughout the reading. Suddenly, "A Celebration.." lived up to its name, honoring a community of artists profoundly altered by the work of Allen Ginsberg."
Willner and Webb received a standing ovation.

Actor, Tim Robbins: "I am a Ginsberg fan, I'm a fan of his writing but I'm also a fan of his soul and how he lived his life."

Among the highlights - Here's Steffie Nelson on the New York Times "T" blog:

"Ginsberg's passionate and playful spirit animated all the performances, from Amy Poehler and Chris Parnell's rapped "Ballad of the Skeletons" to Devendra Banhart's rousing rendition ofGinsberg and Bob Dylan's "Vomit Express", featuring a gaggle of back-up singers, one of whom was dancing precariously in a papier-mâché bull’s head. The unlikely pairing of Will Forte and Peaches produced one of the show's most engaging bits, with their frenetic, free-jazz version of "Birdbrain", a punk song Ginsberg recorded in 1981….Petra Haden's soaring interpretation of "Father Death Blues" had been suggested by Willner as a tribute to her father Charlie Haden who passed away last summer.."

Van Dyke Parks saluted Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nick Cave,Courtney Love, and a whole bunch of others (too many to mention here) enthusiastically participated. "Howl" was suitably feted.

The poem will get another public airing tomorrow in San Francisco - see here.

Another upcoming anniversary - Preparations are already afoot for the 50th anniversary of Kral Majales in Prague - coming soon - the Allen Ginsberg Memorial Freedom Festival - a week of activities (screenings, discussions and related events), beginning (pre-May Day), April 29,

Among the confirmed participants (so far) - Josef Rauvolf, Josef Jařab, Gyorgy Toth,Miloš Calda, Andrew Giarelli, Justin Quinn, Temple history professor and Prague Spring specialist, Ralph Young…

More news about that event to follow.

Allen as a teacher - Longreads, this past week, re-published Elissa Schappell's lively, informative and extended essay, "The Craft of Poetry: A Semester With Allen Ginsberg" (which first appeared in 1995 in the Summer issue of the Paris Review - and was later included in their 1999 collection,Beat Writers At Work) - "The education Ginsberg provided me exceeds the bounds of the classroom, and far beyond the craft of poetry, Look inward and let go, he said. Pay attention to your world.."

Abandon All Despair Ye Who Enter Here - the blog from our good friends at City Lights can always be counted on for stimulating content. Here's two of their recent posts (in case you might have missed them) - Ryan Hass surveys "The City Lights Books of Jack Kerouac", in particular, the books of poetry - and Garrett Caples pens a note (an obituary note) on the great West Coast poet and filmmaker, Richard O Moore.

Dangerous Minds, another of our favorites, recently featured this - a spotlight on William Burroughs - plus this - a note on Burroughs' son (William Burroughs Jr (John Giorno once famously described him as "the last Beatnik").

[William Burroughs (1914-1997)]

[William Burroughs Jr. (1947-1981)]

[John Giorno]

And speaking of John Giorno, his exhibition of paintings and recent works-on-paper opened last week at theElizabeth Dee Gallery in New York (it'll be up until May 9th - Giorno will perform at the gallery on May 8th - the day before the closing). In the Fall, his partner, the painter Ugo Rondinone will curate a major retrospective of Giorno's work entitled “I ♥ John Giorno", scheduled to take place atthe Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

[William Burroughs room preserved on the first floor of John Giorno's New York City Bowery "Bunker" space]

John Giorno (resident/custodian of William Burroughs'"bunker" and a survivor) is profiled here and, again, here.

Did we mention William Harris' illuminating Amiri Barakareview in the Boston Globe? - (well, we did now)

and Douglas Messerli's respectful-but critical assesment in Hyperallergic?

[Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)]

Allen Ginsberg’s Meditation and Poetics class from August (August 4, 1978, in this particular segment) continues

AG: Does anybody have any trouble with this preliminary sitting? – when I come here and start (and for the first ten minutes) sit?....Does anybody have any trouble with the sitting in terms of it as an annoyance? – or a relief? – For me, when I get in here and I don’t have to immediately plunge into whatever is going on , it’s a relief to be able to do nothing. But I’m wondering if there’s anybody here for whom it’s an irritation or some kind of stumbling block or a drag or an anxiety producer? Because, if so, maybe see me after class? We can readjust the situation somewhat. I sort of really like it. It seems silly sometimes to do a ten minute meditation, but on the other had, it’s a respite from work.

…Someone brought this up (I forget whose insight this was into (Jack Kerouac’s) Desolation Angels)– this is a description by Kerouac of literary society in 1958, Washington (DC).Gregory Corso (here named “Raphael Urso”) was living with the Library of Congress Poetry Consultant,Randall Jarrell, and Kerouac visited – [Allen reads from Kerouac’s novel] – “Insane Raphael with a huge nail and a huge hammer actually banging into the smartly decorated wall so he could hang his oil-on-wood painting of Michelangelo’s “David”. I see the housewife wince. Raphael apparently thinks that the painting will be held and revered there on the wall for ever, right by the Baldwin grand pianoand the Tang tapestry. Furthermore, he then asks for breakfast. I figure I’d better get going” – [Gregory was staying in Jarrell’s basement in Washington, in his house, and Kerouac visited] [Allen continues] – “I figured I’d better get going. But Varnum Random..” – [that’s Jack’s name for Randall Jarrell] – “But Varnum Random actually asked me to stay one more day, so I spend the whole afternoon writing poems high on bennie in the parlor, and I call them “Washington DC Blues”– [which I don’t think have been published yet – [Editorial up-date: they are, of course, included in the recent 2013 Collected Poems and were also set to music by the David Amram Ensemble - see here] – “Random and Urso argue with me about my theory of absolute spontaneity.In the kitchen, Random takes out the Jack Daniel's and says, “How can you get any refined or well-gestated thoughts into a spontaneous flow, as you call it. It can all end up in gibberish”. And that was no Harvard lie. But I said, ”If it’s gibberish, it’s gibberish. There’s a certain amount of control going on, like a man telling a story in a bar without interruptions or even one pause.” – “Well, it’ll probably become a popular gimmick, but I prefer to look on my poetry as a craft.” – “Craft is craft” – “Yes, meaning?” – “Meaning crafty. How can you confess your crafty soul in craft? – Raphael took Random’s side and yelled, “Shelleydidn’t care about theories about how he was to write “(To) A Skylark” . Duluoz (Kerouac), you’re full of theories like an old college professor. You think you know everything.” “You think you’re the only one”, he added, to himself. Triumphantly he swept off with Random in the Mercedes Benz to meet Carl Sandburg or somebody. This was the great “making it” scene (Irwin Garden) (Ginsberg) had crowed about. I yelled after them, “If I had a poetry university, you know what’d be written over the entrance arch?” – “No, what?” – “Here learn that learning is ignorance”. Gentlemen. don’t burn my ears. Poetry is lamb dust. I prophesy it. I’ll lead schools in exile. I don’t care” (they weren’t bringing me to Carl Sandburg…"

Student: I will lead what in exile?

AG: “I’ll lead schools in exile” – which he did, actually [Naropa]. With a capital “C” – it’s funny, I’d forgotten that.

We've been serializing these past few months (and will be continuing a little longer with) Allen's 1978 (Naropa) lectures on Meditation and Poetics. As an amalgam of the two, what more fitting (and instructive) than his 1981 composition "Do The Meditation Rock"

Allen, in his sleeve-notes to Holy Soul, Jelly Roll, offers the genesis:

"I'd had meditation teacher training in the late '70s, when (Chogyam) Trungpa Rinpoche OK'd me to show basic meditation in his tradition to classrooms or groups at poetry readings. I tried to codify meditation instructions in pop form, inspired by the annual New Year's Day Marathon at St. Mark's Poetry Project, knock all the poets out with sugar-coated dharma. Christmas Eve, I stopped in the middle of the block at a stoop and wrote the words down, notebook on my knee. I figured that if anyone listened to the words, they'd find complete instructions for classical sitting practice, Samatha-Vipassana ("Quieting the mind and clear seeing"). Some humor in the form, it doesn't have to be taken over-seriously, yet it's precise. It's the first time I got around to putting a chorus in a song, a take-off on"I Fought The Law":"I fought the dharma and the dharma won."…

The version here, free-wheeling, differing from the published version. Allen even gets to sneak in a reference to the location (the Ukranian National Home, a bar and restaurant on 2nd Avenue in New York City). Guitar accompaniment is byTom (whatever happened to Tom?)

If you want to learn how to meditate
I’ll tell you now ’cause it’s never too late
I’ll tell you now ’cause it's never too late,
never too late and I can't wait.

(Can you hear the words or is it muddy?
I will continue and sing to you, buddy
Can you hear me now over the guitar?

I will try if ever you are.)

If you are an old fraud like me
or a lama who lives in the Himalaya-i
a lama who lives in Eternity,
in the Himalya-i, in Eternity.

Do the meditation Do the meditation
Recreate the nation,
Play a little Patience and Generosity

Generosity, generosity
and generosity!

The first thing you do when you meditate
is keep your spine your backbone straight
(The stage is too weak to jump around,
so stay there, Tom, on your firm firm ground)

Sit yourself down on a pillow on the ground
or sit in a chair if the ground isn’t there
if the ground isn't there, if the ground isn't there
Sit in a chair if the ground isn't there

Sit yourself down on a pillow on the ground
or sit in a chair if the ground isn’t there

Follow your breath but don’t hang on
to the thought of your death in old Saigon
in old Saigon, in old Saigon,
in old Saigon, in old Saigon

Follow your breath right outta your nose
follow it out where ever it goes,
where ever it goes, where ever it goes,
where ever it goes, where ever it goes.

Follow your breath when thought forms rise
whatever you think it’s a big surprise
big surprise, big surprise,
big surprise, big surprise,

Follow your breath out open your eyes
sit there steady & sit there wise

sit there wise, sit there wise

All you gotta do is imitate

You're sitting meditating and it's never too late

You're never too late, your never too late,

The older you are, the better you'll relate

The thoughts catch up when your breath goes on

You forget what you thought about Uncle Don.

Uncle Don, Uncle Don,

Charlie Chaplin, Uncle Don

Uncle Don, Uncle Don,

Charlie Chaplin, Uncle Don

If you see a vision come say hello goodbye,

Play it dumb with an empty eye,

with an empty eye, empty eye.

empty eye, empty eye.

If you see a holocaust, just pay no mind

It just went past with the Western wind

If you see Apocalypse in a long red car

or a flying saucer sit where you are,

Do the meditation Do the meditation,

sit where you are, sit where you are,

Pacify the nation, sit with the Creation, like a movie-star

like a movie-star, movie-star, like a rock star or a movie star.

If you feel a little bliss, don't worry about that

Give your wife a little kiss when your tire goes flat

tire goes flat, tire goes flat,

Keep your hard-on under your hat

If you can't think straight and don't know who to call

It's never too late, do nothing at all,

nothing at all, nothing at all,

nothing at all, do nothing at all

Do the meditation, follow your breath
So your body and mind get together for a rest
get together for a rest, get together for a rest,
Relax your mind and get together for a rest

If you sit for an hour or a minute every day
you can tell the Superpower, sit the same way
you can tell the Superpower, watch and to wait
to stop & meditate ’cause it’s never too late
never too late, never too late,
never too late to stop and meditate.

(In the Ukranian Home (sic)), it's never too late,
It's never too late to sit and meditate

Here, by way of contrast, is the version that he performed (with Steven Taylor, Arthur Russell andPeter Orlovsky) on January 1 1984, as part of Nam June Paik's global event, "Good Morning, Mr Orwell"

& here's the version (recorded at the William Burroughs River City Reunion in Lawrence, Kansas in 1989) that appears on Volume 4 (Ashes & Blues) ofHoly Soul Jelly Roll

There's also a version of it here - and here - and...

Here's the published lyrics (fromWhite Shroud):

If you want to learn how to meditate
I’ll tell you now ’cause it’s never too late
I'll tell you how 'cause I can't wait
it's just that great that it's never too late
If you are an old fraud like me
or a lama who lives in Eternity
The first thing you do when you meditate
is keep your spine your backbone straight
Sit yourself down on a pillow on the ground
or sit in a chair if the ground isn't there
Do the meditation Do the meditation
Learn a little Patience and Generosity

Follow your breath out open your eyes
and sit there steady & sit there wise
Follow your breath right outta your nose
follow it out   as far as it goes
Follow your breath but don't hang on
to the thought of yr death in old Saigon
Follow your breath when thought forms rise
whatever you think it's a big surprise
Do the meditation Do the meditation
Learn a little Patience and Generosity
Generosity Generosity Generosity & Generosity

All you got to do is to imitate
you're sitting meditating and you're never too late
when thoughts catch up but your breath goes on
forget what you thought about Uncle Don
Laurel Hardy Uncle Don Charlie Chaplin Uncle Don
you don't have to drop your nuclear bomb
If you see a vision come say Hello Goodbye
play it dumb with an empty eye
if you want a holocaust you can recall your mind
it just went past with the Western wind
Do the meditation Do the meditation
Learn a little Patience & Generosity

If you see Apocalypse in a long red car
or a flying saucer sit where you are
If you feel a little bliss don't worry about that
give your wife a kiss when your tire goes flat
If you can't think straight & you don't know who to call
it's never too late to do nothing at all
Do the meditation follow your breath
so your body & mind get together for a rest
Do the meditation Do the meditation
Learn a little Patience and Generosity

If you sit for an hour or a minute every day
you call tell the Superpower to sit the same way
you can tell the Superpower to watch and wait
& to stop & meditate 'cause it's never too late
Do the meditation Do the meditation
Get yourself together lots of Energy
& Generosity Generosity Generosity & Generosity!

Check out past May Day postings on the Allen Ginsberg Project - here,here and here
even, (last year's) here

A special May Day this year, it's the 50th anniversary of Allen's fleeting elevation to Kral Majales - King of May - "And I am the King of May"

"And I am the King of May, which is the power of sexual youth,/and I am the King of May, which is industry in eloquence and action in amour,/and I am the King of May, which is long hair of Adam and the Beard of my own body/and I am the King of May which is Kral Majales in the Czechoslovakian tongue.."

On May 1st 1965, he was crowned "King of May" by an enthusiastic crowd in the town of Výstaviště, in Communist Czechoslovakia. Soon undercover police halted the festivities and un-crowned him. Prague secret police took this photograph (below) of him (with young Czech poet Pavel Beran) on Wencislas Square. A few days later they seized his journals and summarily deported him"

[Allen Ginsberg and Pavel Beran, May 1965 - Photograph by the Czech Secret Police]

The Allen Ginsberg Memorial Freedom Festival revisits 1965 - "The First of May celebrations will be launched by an amazing allegorical parade", the organizers state, "which will start at Kampa (today) at 10.30. The parade will pass by significant places reminding us of the 50th anniversary of the legendary Majales (notably, Karlově náměstí (Charles Square), where there will be a reading of Ginsberg's poetry)".
Notable events in the coming days include a series of talks, on Tuesday the 5th, at the American Center, "focus(ing) on the famed Beat poet's visit to the Czech Republic, his political and personal views, as well as the legacy of Ginsberg's open approach to sexuality" - Josef Jařab, a Czech Anglicist, literary historian and translator, will talk about "Ginsberg's philosophy" and LGBT activist Carlton Rounds will introduce a screening of Larry Kramer's film adaptation, The Normal Heart.
An even more Ginsberg-centric day is planned two days later (on the 7th) at the Faculty of Arts, where there'll be several papers - Andrew Giarelli will speak on “Leaving Them Still Wondering What You Were Doing When You Got Outta Town - Ginsberg, Prague, and the Birth of the Counterculture”, Josef Rauvolf on “How This Beat Beat the System: What Really Happened When Ginsberg Came to Prague in 1965”, Justin Quinn on "Ginsberg After Prague, in Nicaragua and Further Afield", and Gyorgy Toth on “”Howl”, Allen Ginsberg’s Obscenity Trial, and Why It Still Matters Today.". There'll also be a screening of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's "Howl" film.

Here's an important document - the Final Report on Allen Ginsberg's Deportation

Here's Petr Blazek's "The Deportation of the King of May - Allen Ginsberg and the State Security"

Richard Kostelanetz's contemporaneous (well, two-months later) account in the New York Times

"Allen Ginsberg and the Student Spies of Czechoslovakia" (an excerpt from the extensive account by Andrew Lass in the valuable 1998 summer issue of the Massachusetts Review)

Here's (alongside a couple of short readings from "Kaddish"), another reading of "Kral Majales" (and of "The Return of Kral Majales" ) in Olomouc in the Czech Republic in 1993 (with Czech renditions by Mikuláš Pánek)

[Colin Still]

Colin Still and Optic Nerve's poetic documentation and extraordinary achievement needs to be sung. So we're singing it today here.

By now, perhaps, many of you will have already seen, and be familiar with, this footage (Colin's footage) - the legendary pairing - Allen Ginsberg accompanied by Paul McCartney, at the Royal Albert Hall in London, in October of 1995 - "The Ballad of The Skeletons"

From the same occasion - "After Lalon"

but that event and that footage, extraordinary though it is, is only the very tip of the iceberg.
Colin has shot full-length films on William Carlos Williams, Frank O'Hara,Amiri Baraka, Michael McClure, and... Allen - The Windows of The Skull (later to be re-titled "No More to Say And Nothing To Weep For")

Colin, (from an interview in the upcoming Beat Scene), takes up the story:

"After much deliberation I decided to make.. [a film] on Allen Ginsberg, with whom I’d developed a good rapport... The film..which was originally called The Windows of the Skull, was quite a challenge. For a start, this was only a couple of years after Jerry Aronson had released his film The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, and, whilst I’d liked what Jerry had done, I obviously wanted to do something different. There was also the question of how you treat on film – particularly a film destined for the classroom – a poem like Howl.This remains an issue, even when one’s working with fewer restraints. Do you, for example, dramatise the poem in some way? Do you show the text on screen? Do you show images which in one way or another resonate with the text without literally illustrating it? If the poem is a long one do you feature an excerpt from it? What assumptions, if any, can you make about your audience? There are all kinds of issues like this. My principles on these and on subsequent films were, even if the film had a biographical and chronological structure, to feature a small number of poems and to have these read by several different interviewees, and quite often to have the readings spliced together, in a ‘pass the parcel’ fashion, generally with lines being repeated, playing against one another the different intonations and cadences of the readers...

With the Ginsberg film, thanks in part to Bob Rosenthal and Peter Hale of what was to become the Allen Ginsberg Trust, I was able to enlist a stellar team of interviewees, including Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Anne Waldman,Ann Charters, Philip Glass, Gelek Rinpoche, Peter Orlovsky and Ed Sanders.

With so much material it was difficult to condense it into a 28-minute film."

"Anna (Price) and I were editing the (film) when it became clear that Allen’s health was fast declining. When he died, in April 1997, I was in London. Among the many people who visited him in his final hours was the film-makerJonas Mekas, who brought a video camera with him, on which he shot images of Allen on his deathbed and (also) a short interview with Peter Orlovsky. This is the footage which, with Jonas’s permission, appears in my film. On learning of Allen’s death, the Commissioning Editor for Arts at Channel 4 contacted me and asked whether it might be possible to make an hour-long version of The Windows of the Skull for prime-time transmission. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity, and the extended version, rapidly re-edited and renamed No More to Say and Nothing to Weep For, was broadcast a few weeks later. This, I have to say, was the only occasion on which one of my poetry films has ever had a major TV slot."

The good news is that Colin is focusing on refurbishing his website. Again from the Beat Scene interview:

"The website (www.opticnerve.co.uk) includes clips from my Williams, Ginsberg, O’Hara, Baraka and McClure films, plus unseen out-takes from them all. It has the opening sections of most of the poems featured in "Arrows of Desire"[a modular educational project, 48 films, each dealing with a single poem, "from Sir Thomas Wyatt to Lawrence Ferlinghetti"..] which should be of interest to teachers, four sections from my uncompleted film Brakhage on Brakhage, and a fair amount of contemporary music, including a recording I made with the saxophonist Lol Coxhill shortly before he died….I plan to update it fairly regularly, with the aim of doubling its size during the coming months. What I’m particularly keen to do is make available footage from my (currently) uncompleted films on Jerome Rothenberg ["Vot Am I Doink Here?"] andRobert Creeley[provisional title - "Shall We & Why Not?"]. These are two projects on which I’ve shot an enormous amount of material, and which, if I could raise the money, I’d like to see completed by the end of the year…."

[Christopher Smart (1722-1771)

[Allen’s 1978 Meditation and Poetics class continues. He begins by briefly surveying some of the recent topics that have been covered in the class. He does so playfully, using the Christopher Smart conjunction - “for” (in preparation now for some emphasis on Smart, and Smart’s extraordinary observations).]

AG: For we have discoursed on the nameless in poetry, for we’ve talked about Walt Whitman’s catalogs, lists, ellipses and minute particulars, for we’ve pointed to William Blake’s strophes on taking care of the little ones, for I’ve mentioned that Christopher Smart was one of the early English originators of the list or the catalog poem full of jumps of mind and elliptical appearances of phenomena rising in his brain unborn, for I promised to read some of Christopher Smart, for we haven’t finished Whitman’s great grand catalog in “Song of Myself”, for we haven’t fully explored the nameless as presented in traditional Japanese verses and Buddhist verses as a way of dealing with the nameless, which we might do with a thunk, for it’s time to also compare the Japanese style dealing with the unmentionable (and) with William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”, for there’s lots of work to do. I’ll plunge in immediately, finishing by giving examples of Christopher Smart’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” [Jubilate Agno], examples of his lines, which, as I said, were parallel to Whitman’s lines, at least as long-line poetry, parallel in imaginative jump, for these were written by Christopher Smart, (legendarily three-lines-a-day, in the madhouse at Bedlam).

Allen recites selected lines, selecting from a cornucopia of lines

For I bless the Prince of Peace and pray that all the guns may be nail'd up, save such are for the rejoicing days.

For I have glorified God in Greek and Latin, the consecrated languages spoken by the Lord on earth.

For I preach the very Gospel of Christ without comment and with this weapon shall I slay envy.

For I bless God in the rising generation, which is on my side.
For I have translated into charity which maketh things better and I shall be translated myself at the last.
For I am come home again, but there is nobody to kill the calf or pay for the musick.
For the hour of my felicity like the womb of Sarah shall come at the latter end.
For I shou'd have avail'd myself of waggery, had not malice been multitudinous.
For there are still serpents that can speak - God bless my head, my heart and my heel.
For I bless God that I am of the same seed as Ehud, Mutius Scaevola and Colonel Draper.
For I bless God for the Postmaster general and all conveyancers of letters under his care especially Allen and Shevlock.
For my grounds in New Canaan shall infinitely compensate for the flats & maynes of Staindrop Moor.

Let Ezariah bless with the reindeer who runneth upon the waters and wadeth through the land in snow.
Let Holda bless with the silkworm, the ornaments of the proud are from the bowels of their betters.
Let Michael bless with the stoat. The praise of the Lord gives propriety to all things.

Let Susanna bless with the butterfly, Beauty hath wings but chastity is the cherub.
Let Manassas bless with the wild ass. Liberty begets insolence, but necessity is the mother of prayer.
Let Hashum bless with the fly whose health is the honey of the air but he feeds upon the things strangled and perisheth.
Let Huz bless with the polyphus. Lively subtlety is acceptable to the Lord.
Let Malchiah bless with the gnat - it is good for man and beast to mend their pace
Let Buz bless with the jackal - but the Lord is the lion's provider
Let Pudiah bless with the humblebee and make his honey alone
Let Zorababel bless with the wasp who is the Lord's architect and buildeth his edifice in armor.
Let Helen rejoice with the Woodpecker, the Lord encourage the propagation of trees.

For I mediate the peace of Europe amongst family bickerings and domestic jars.
For the praise of God can give to a mute fish the notes of a nightingale.
For I have seen the White Raven and Thomas Hall of Willingham & am myself a greater curiosity than both.
For I pray God to bless improvements in gardening till London be a city of palm-trees.
For I pray to give his grace to the poor of England, that Charity be not offended & that benevolence may increase.
For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God, God hath sent me to sea for pearls.
For the nightly visitor is at the window of the impenitent, while I sing a psalm of my own composing.
For there is a note added to the scale, which the Lord hath made fuller, stronger & more glorious.

For there is traveling for the glory of God without going to Italy or France.
For I rejoice like a worm in the rain in him that cherishes and from him.
For I am ready for the trumpet and alarm to fight and die and to rise again
For I bless the Lord Jesus from the bottom of Royston Cave to the top of King's Chapel.
For I am a little fellow, which is entitled to the great mess by the benevolence of God, my father.
For I this day made over my inheritance to my mother in consideration of her infirmities.
For I this day made over my inheritance to my mother in consideration of her age.
For I this day made over my inheritance to my mother in consideration of her poverty.
For I bless the 13th of August in which I had the grace to obey the voice of Christ in my conscience.
For I bless the 13th of August in which I was willing to run all hazards for the sake and the name of the Lord.
For I bless the 13th of August in which I was willing to be called a fool for the sake of Christ.
For nature is more various than observation, though observers be innumerable.
For my angel is always ready in a pinch to help me out and to keep me up.
For silly fellow, silly fellow, is against me, and belongs neither to me nor to my family.
For I bless God on behalf of Trinity College Cambridge and the Society of Purples in London.
For I have a nephew, Christopher, to whom I implore the Grace of God.
For I pray God bless the Cam River, Mr Higgs and Mr and Mrs Washborne as the drops of dew.
For I pray to bless the King of Sardinia and make him an instrument of the peace.
For I am possessed of a cat, surpassing in beauty from whom I take occasion to bless God.
For I pray for the professors of the University of Cambridge to attend and to amend.
For I bless God in the honey of the sugarcane and the milk of the coca.
For I bless God in the libraries of the learned and for all the booksellers in the world.
For I bless God in the strength of my loins and for the voice which he hath made sonorous.
For grey hairs are honorable and tell everyone of them to the glory of the Lord.
For I bless the Lord Jesus to the memory of Gay, Pope and Swift.
For there is silver in my mind, and I bless God that it is rather there than in the coffers.
For I bless God in St. James Park til I routed all the company.
For the Officers of the Peace are at variance with me and the watchman smites me with his staff.
For my seed shall worship the Lord Jesus as musical and numerous as the grasshoppers of Paradise.
For the learning of the Lord increases daily as the sun is an improving angel.
For I Pray God for a reformation amongst the women and the restoration of the veil.
For beauty is better to look on than to meddle with and tis good for a man not to know a woman.
For I stood up betimes on behalf of liberty, property, and no excise.
For I bless God with all gums and balsams and everything that ministers relief to the sick.
For the suns that work to make me garments and the moons that work for my wife.
For tall and stately are against me, but humiliation on humiliation is on my side.
For I have a providential acquaintance with men who bear the names of animals.
For I bless God to Mr. Lion, Mr. Cock, Mr. Cat, Mr. Talbott, Mr Hart, Mrs. Fish, Mr. Grub, and Miss Lamb.
For they throw their horns in my face and reptiles make themselves wings against me.
For I bless God for the immortal soul of Mr. Pig of Downham and Norfolk.

[Johann Knopf (Knupfer) - Lamb Gottes (Lamb of God) c.1920 - from the Prinzhorn Collection]

For I pray the Lord Jesus that cured the lunatic to be merciful to all my brethren and sisters in these houses.
For they work with me their harping irons, which is a barbarous instrument, because I am more unguarded than the others.
For I bless God that the Church of England is one of the seven even in the candlesticks of the Lord.
For the English tongue shall be the language of the West.
For I pray Almighty Christ to bless the Magdalen House and to forward a National purification.
For I have the blessing of God in the three points of manhood, of the pen, of the sword, and of chivalry.
For I have a greater compass, both of mirth and melancholy, than another.
For I am safe as to my head from the female dancer and her admirers
For I pray to God for Nore, for the Trinity house, for all light-houses, beacons and buoys.
For I pray God for all those who have defiled themselves in matters inconvenient.
For I pray God for the introduction of new creatures into this island.
For I pray God for the ostriches of Salisbury Plain, the beavers of the Medway and silver fish of the Thames.
For Charity is cold in the multitude of possession, and the rich are covetous of their crumbs.
For I pray to be accepted as a dog without offence, which is best of all.

Let Esdras bless Christ Jesus with a rose and his people, which is a nation of living sweetness

For there was no rain in Paradise because of the delicate construction of the spiritual herbs and flowers.
For the doubling of flowers is an improvement of the gardener's talent.
For the flowers are great blessings.
For the Lord made a nosegay in the meadow with his disciples and preached upon the lily.
For the angels of God took it out of his hand and carried it to the height.
For a man cannot have public spirit who's void of private benevolence.
For there is no height in which there is not flowers.
For flowers have great virtues for all senses.
For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary.
For the flowers have their angels, even the words of God's Creation.
For the warp and woof of flowers are worked by perpetual moving spirits.
For flowers are good both for the living and the dead.
For there is a language of flowers.
For elegant phrases are nothing but flowers.
For flowers are particularly the poetry of Christ.
For flowers are medicinal.
Foe flowers are musical in ocular harmony.
For the right names of flowers are yet in heaven, God make gardeners better nomenclatures.
For the poor man's nosegay is an introduction to a prince.
For flowers can see and the Pope's carnations knew him.
For the art of agriculture is improving.
For this is evident in flowers.
For it is more especially evident and manifest in double flowers.
For earth will get it up again by the blessing of God on the industry of man.
For the Lord succeed my pink borders…

These are sections from an eighty-page poem, composed in the bughouse, at the time of Dr Samuel Johnson.

[Audio for the above can be heard here beginning at approximately forty-two-and-a quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty-two-and-a-half minutes]

[Angelic Musicians - from Agnolo Gaddi's "Coronation of the Virgin" (c.1370)]

Allen continueshis readings from Christopher Smart

"Of Spiritual Music"

For the spiritual musick is as follows.
For there is the thunder-stop, which is the voice of God direct.
For the rest of the stops are by their rhimes.
For the trumpet rhimes are sounds, bounds, soar, more, and the like.
For the Shawm rhimes are lawn fawn moon boon and the like.
For the harp rhimes are sing, ring, string, and the like.
For the flute rhimes are tooth, youth, sooth, mute, and the like.
For the clarinet rhimes are clean, seen, and the like.
For the bassoon rhimes are pass, class, and the like
God be gracious to Baumgarten
For the dulcimer are rather van, fan, and the like and grace place, etc. are of the bassoon.
For the beat, heat, weep, peep, etc. are of the pipe.
For every word has its marrow in the English tongue for order and for delight.
For the dissyllables such as able, table, etc. are the fiddle rhimes.
For all dissyllables and some trisyllables are fiddle rhymes.
For the relations of words is in pairs first.
For the relations of words are sometimes in oppositions.
For the relations of words are according to their distances from the pair.

[Angel Playing The Harp - Italian School, (18th Century)]

"Of The Harp"

For God the Father Almighty play upon the harp of stupendous magnitude and melody.

For innumerable angels fly out at every touch and his tune is a work of creation.

For at that time malignity ceases and the devils themselves are at peace.

For that time is perceptible to man by a remarkable stillness and serenity of soul.

For the story of Orpheus is of the truth.

For there was such a person, a cunning player on the harp.

For he was a believer in the true God and assisted in the spirit.

For he played upon the harp in the spirit by breathing upon the strings.

For this will affect every thing that is sustained by the spirit, even every thing in nature.

"Of Colors"

For Newton's notion of colors is unphilosophical.
For colors are spiritual.
For white is the first and the best.
For there are many intermediate colors before you come to silver.
For the next color is a lively grey.
For the next color is blue.
For the next color is green, of which there are ten thousand distinct sorts.
For the next is yellow, which is more excellent than red, though Newton makes red the prime.
God be gracious to John Delap.
For red is the next working round the orange.
For red is of sundry sorts, til it deepens to black.
For black blooms, and it is purple.
For purple works off to brown, which is of ten thousand acceptable shades.
For the next is pale.
God be gracious to William Whitehead.
For pale works about to white again.
Now that color is spiritual appears in as much as the blessing of God upon all things descends in color.
For the blessing in health upon the human face is color.
For the blessing of God upon purity is in the Virgin's blushes.
For the blessing of God in color is on him that keeps his virgin.
For I saw a blush in Staindrop Church, which is of God's own coloring.
For it was the benevolence of a virgin shown to me before the whole congregation.
For the blessing of God upon the grass is in shades of green visible to a nice observer as they light upon the surface of the earth.
For the blessing of God on the perfection is in all bloom and fruit by coloring.
For from whence something in the spirit may be taken off by the painters.
For painting is a species of idolatry, though not so gross as statuary.
For it is not good to look with learning upon any dead work.
For by doing so something is lost in the spirit and given from life to death.

[Audio for the above can be heard here beginning at approximately fifty-two-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty-six-and-three-quarter minutes in]

[Lawrence Ferlinghetti standing outside his "Banned Books" display at City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, in the early 1950's]

The David Olio "Please Master" Censorship case - some update. Steve Silberman, over at Our Allen, has been doing sterling work marshalling (sadly necessary) some defense. An enthusiastic highly-regarded Connecticut high-school teacher lost his job.

[David Olio]

Here's word from someone not unfamiliar with defending Allen Ginsberg and free speech issues - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"As the original publisher of Allen Ginsberg's poetry, City Lights Books fully supports David Olio as a high school teacher of poetry. We feel he was justified in showing in class a video of Ginsberg reading 'Please Master,' since students absolutely need to know this poem for a full understanding of Ginsberg's oeuvre." (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

and, with more detail and more depth, the esteemed Harvard poetry professor, Helen Vendler

Although Mr. Olio made use of a poem brought to class by a student, asking students to bring a poem to class does not violate the curriculum: on the contrary, it asks that the student make an investment in his own education.There are persistent efforts at censorship of material read in school, whether contributed by students or on a recommended list. To add Ginsberg's poem to school-censored works of Twain, Faulkner, Whitman, etc. is to deny the freedom to read what one likes, and share what one likes with others, which is the basis of intellectual life. Given what students are already exposed to via TV and film, Ginsberg's poem, which concerns a well-known form of abjection (whether heterosexual or homosexual) reveals nothing new. It may have been imprudent of Mr. Olio to feature it after a student brought it in, but it is certainly not cause for termination. Termination of Mr. Olio would announce that freedom of speech has been abolished in the school system. Mr. Olio might be counseled to remember the sensibilities of adolescents, but fear of giving possible offense should not curtail speech. Mr. Olio was not crying "Fire" in a crowded theater. He has taught in this school system for twenty years; his service to students for two decades ought to outweigh a single class incident, prompted by a student. And Ginsberg is a radically original and worthwhile poet; American students should know his work (but perhaps through a different poem)." (Helen Vendler)

Here's further contextualization from Binghamton Poetry Professor, Joe Weil:

"..I think the teacher was taking a volatile subject and containing it in a classroom where it could be dealt with intelligently. There's room for Aristotle's catharsis - relieving a situation's worst possibilities by allowing some breathing room. Plato's censorship just makes such a poem into forbidden fruit. Better to deal with it. The teacher did the right thing by not faning the flames. And I agree with Ferlinghetti. This poem is essential to understanding both Ginsberg and the tradition of Blake/Whitman from which he comes.
In order to understand Ginsberg as an artist – and he is indeed recognized as one of his country’s most important poets – one has to consider his relationship with Neal Cassady. In “Howl”, undeniably one of the most important poems of the 20th Century, Cassady is famously described as “N.C., secret hero of these poems.” In the late forties, Cassady was the secret hero of another poem – a love letter of sorts – called “Dakar Doldrums.” In 1956, the year “Howl” was published, he wrote“Many Loves,” the first poem in which he explicitly named and described his relationship with Cassady. Towards the end of the poem he refers to Cassady as “my master.” The same year, in explaining and defending “Howl”, Ginsberg used the phrase “my master” to refer to Cezanne– an influence upon his art. Indeed, Ginsberg often used the word “master” to describe his literary and artistic influences throughout his letters. Cassady was not just a one-time lover over whom Ginsberg pined, and about whom he wrote dirty poems, but an important influence (again, a "master" in the classical sense) on his life and art as he was withJack Kerouac."

More updates - last week's "Howl" in L.A concert - Mandalit Delbarco's report for NPR news (complete with brief sound-bytes - including Jonah Raskin,on the impact of the poem) is well worth catching.

Here's Katya Lopatko's report of the event for the USC Annenberg Media Center.

Meantime, in San Francisco - "The Six Gallery Reading" Redux -"Beat Explosion: The 6 Gallery and the Birth of the Beats", a 60-year-on re-creation/ evocation of the legendary evening of "Howl's" first public performance - "Wonder Dave" performed as Kenneth Rexroth, m.c., Josh Merchant performed as Allen Ginsberg.
"It's not meant to be an exact replica of the night, but to capture the feel of what went on", Wonder Dave had previously explained.
Notwithstanding, that didn't stop at least one audience member from expressing public, and quite explicit, vocal dissent.
Tony Bravo of the San Francisco Chronicle takes up the tale:

[from Oakland, California, poet Josh Merchant]

"I saw", Merchant beganthe famous opening lines to "Howl", "the dopest minds of my generation destroyed by madness", he colloquially updated.
(and) Merchant continu(ed) substituting subjects like Islam, hipster beards, hip-hop, Hennessey, and gentrification, for Ginsberg's concerns of sixty years prior.
Although he elicited his share of cheers (as did Lisa Evans as Gary Snyder) one audience member stood up during the poet's final bow for reasons of the non-ovation variety. "Rubbish, just rubbish" (declared) the man (who did not want to share his name),
(he) spat at the crowd, before marching up the cellar stairs, stopping, and waving goodbye to the readers with one finger."

Perhaps he was in search of a more participatory, more one-on-one experience. In that case, (in the very same city), he could not have done much better than participating in this - Evan Burton and Zachary McCune's enterprising experiment for National Poetry Month

[Evan Burton and Zachary McCune]

National Poetry Month in America continues - and the phone line is still up. 1-415-763-6968

[from "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry" - poem by Christopher Smart - (illustrated print by Paul Bommer)]

"For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry" - Allen concludes his reading of Christopher Smart to his 1978 Naropa class with, perhaps, his most famous lines.

For earlier Ginsberg-on-Smart see here, here and here

"Of Jeoffry His Cat"

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.

For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.

For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.

For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.

For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.

For he rolls upon prank to work it in.

For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.

For this he performs by degrees.

For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.

For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.

For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.

For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.

For fifthly he washes himself.

For sixthly he rolls upon wash.

For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.

For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.

For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.

For tenthly he goes in quest of food.

For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.

For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.

For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.

For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.

For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.

For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.

For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.

For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.

For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.

For he is of the tribe of Tiger.

For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.

For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.

For he will not do destruction if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.

For he purrs in thankfulness when God tells him he's a good Cat.

For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.

For every house is incomplete without him, and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.

For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.

For every family had one cat at least in the bag.

For the English Cats are the best in Europe.

For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.

For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.

For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.

For he is tenacious of his point.

For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.

For he knows that God is his Saviour.

For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.

For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.

For he is of the Lord's poor, and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually - Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.

For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.

For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete Cat.

For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.

For he is docile and can learn certain things.

For he can sit up with gravity, which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment

For he can jump over a stick, which is patience upon proof positive.

For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.

For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.

For he can catch the cork and toss it again.

For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.

For the former is afraid of detection.

For the latter refuses the charge.

For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.

For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.

For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.

For he killed the Icneumon rat, very pernicious by land.

For his ears are so acute that they sting again.

For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.

For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.

For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.

For the electrical fire is the spiritual substance which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.

For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.

For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.

For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.

For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.

For he can swim for life.

For he can creep.

“So that’s Christopher Smart. I would recommend (you read him). There is some element of going beyond logic to, at the same time, complete perception, like “(For he) camels his back to bear the first notion of business”, “For his voice, what it wants in music, it makes up in sweetness”. [“For his tongue is exceedingly pure, so that it has in purity what it wants in music”] Certain lines which are totally logical - or, - “For a flower can speak and the Pope’s carnations knew him” [“For Flowers can see, and Pope’s carnations knew him”] – have a funny kind of telepathic absurdity.

Student: “for black blooms and it is purple.”

AG: Yeah, the discourse on color is extraordinary.

You could classify him somewhere… well, there’s the Hinayana element of correctness, accuracy - “black blooms and it is purple” – or “the cat arches his back”, “camels his back” (sic). “Camels his back” is terrific. So there’s that. There is certainly that extension of sympathy into space. “God bless Shelvock and the Postmaster general and all the deliverers of letters”. [“For I bless God for the Postmaster general and all conveyancers of letters under his care, especially Allen and Shelvock.”] There’s a kind of personal density, querulousness and insistency, or being in his own skin and knowing his own opinions, taking his own opinions as ultimate, absolute and final, which either can be interpreted as ignorance or as some kind of Vajrayana - entering your own skin and being one with what you are. I take it as that, actually. There’s the seeming-irrational jumps – jumps of logic which are so breath-taking that they're like haiku, which would class him in the scale of (a) Vajrayana dweller in unmentionable space.

Audio for (some of) the above can be heard here beginning at approximately fifty-six-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at the end

["..Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface"]

I wanted to finish (by) comparing that (Christopher Smart) with what will come after, which is haiku, (but, first), I want to finish our catalog in (Walt) Whitman now, both for the tongue-ing of the line (that.. (the) awareness of sound and vowel amd consonantal kick-up) and for accuracy of observation, as well as for those funny logical jumps and sort of querulous personal noticings, oddities and eccentricities of unborn spontaneous mind.

Allen continues/concludes his reading from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself", section 15.
(see previous sectionshere, here, here and here)

"The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the roof, the masons are calling for mortar,/ In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;/Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather'd/it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!) /Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground,/ Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,/The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe,/ Flatboatmen make fast toward dusk near the cotton-wood or the pecan-trees,/Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through those drain'd by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,/ Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,/Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grand-sons around them,/In walls of adobe, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport,/the City sleeps and the country sleeps"- [a sudden short line] - "The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,/ The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife,/ And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,/ And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,/ And of these one and all I weave the song of myself."

Well, what we found there was some kind of particularity, and, at the same time, vast gaps of mind in between the particulars.

[Gary Snyder - July 2002 - Photo by John Suiter]

Gary Snyder's 85th birthday today. Here's Gary interviewed by Eliot Weinberger, back in 1992, for the Paris Review.Here's the full interview that appeared four years later in the Paris Review.

Here's more recent Snyder (from last month) interviewed on NPR and reading from his newest book, This Present Moment

and the recent (April 22) Colorado College lecture and reading, "The Practice of the Wild"

Looking forward to John Suiter's upcoming biography .
Here's an excerpt from Suiter-on-Gary (from his wonderful Poets on the Peaks

and not forgetting the Ginsberg-Snyder correspondence

Previous Gary Snyder birthday salutes on the Allen Ginsberg Project
here, here, here
and here

Happy Birthday, Gary!

[Allen Ginsberg with accompanist, Steven Taylor- performing live in Europe, 1986]

Allen Ginsberg, in 1987, surveys his musical history.

The interview (from which these remarks are excerpted) is dated June 25, 1987, and was

conducted by journalist and music critic, David Menconifor the Boulder Daily Camera, the local paper.

A considerably edited version (incorporating some of these notes) was published contemporaneously, but the bulk of the interview has remained unpublished and is appearing for the first time here.

part two - a continuation (Allen discusses Buddhism, politics, poetry, and '80's zeitgeist), will appear in this space next week

[Allen arrives [only temporarily, happy to report] on crutches, explaining, “I took a spill on the pavement a few nights back”.]

AG: I did an album in 1968 Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake with tunes by Allen Ginsberg, on MGM. I had some very good musicians on that one, like Charlie Mingus, Charles Wright on bass, Julius Watkins on French horn, and Elvin Jones on one of the cuts, and Don Cherry on half a dozen others.

In (19)75, I did a whole album with David Mansfieldfrom the Rolling Thunder Revue for John Hammond Sr. He produced it at Columbia’s studios. In (19)81, I did another album with Hammond on Columbia,First Blues.

Around 1971, I had gone into the Record Plant Studiowith (Bob) Dylan, the idea being to improvise whatever we could. About three cuts from those sessions are on First Blues.

I also did a little work here in Denver with The Glu-ons - Birdbrain – do you know that? It was put out by Wax Trax! .That’s a classic, it’s really good, the thing I’m most proud of. It was the first time I was able to work with lyrics that weren’t rhymed, with irregular lines like my poetry, but with a definite dance beat . So I happened to have the e-las-tic sense of timing to lay the verses out within sixteen bars without interrupting the beat – with a refrain – “Birdbrain”. You never heard that? For a forty-five from Wax Trax! it did really good, sold three-thousand copies and was on most of the college stations across the country for about a year. As far as being dance-able, up-to-date & punkish, and, at the same time, classical, I think it’s the best thing I’ve done. And I think it cost fifteen-dollars-an-hour (not that anybody got paid for it)

I also did a whole album, [unreleased] with a band called Still Life, with Mike Chapelle [of the Glu-ons] .We might do something more this year [1987] while I’m here. I made another album with him that hasn’t come out . And I recently did something with Bugs Henderson, a Texas guitarist. In February, the revived Fugs are playing in New York & I’ll be their opening act. I’m also going to do a record later with Hal Willner.

I hit it big with a total hit number, heard by millions of people in Hungary in 1980, so I’m a minor but notable rock star in Hungary with the Hobo Blues Band. My first full-length albumcame out there about a month ago, in which they set music to “Howl”in Hungarian. I sing on one cut, a thing called “Gospel Noble Truths”, but the rest is all Hungarian translations by a very literate Hungarian rock band using great Eastern European poetry. I was there last Fall, in the studio, for three days, and it was fun being a Hungarian rock & roll character.

I worked with The Clash a little on the lyrics for the Combat Rock album, on three cuts, including the one I like most – “Death Is A Star”. I did some background vocals and I’ve sung with them live a few times (including at Red Rocks in (19)82).

(Bob) Dylan taught me the three-chord blues pattern. I didn’t know that until 1971. Before that, I kept confusing everyone by calling something a blues when it wasn’t, it was just a ballad. I’ve never played much of my own stuff but I was always good at improvising (‘cause I used to wander under the Brooklyn Bridge with (Jack) Kerouac& make up poems or funny songs, nonsense blah-blah-blah rhymes). Apparently, that’s all Dylan does, spontaneous composition.

A lot of the rockers, like Dylan, began conceiving of poetry as a real and possible expansion of folk lyricism. So I got to know some of the musicians, like Jim Morrison, who I met through Michael McClure, his poetry guru. I later met Van Morrison, who’s interested in (William) Blake, (as I am).

I don’t know enough about music because I’m not really a musician (I know five chords, maybe, enough to do rudimentary blues) but I think music is a sacred pursuit. I think any art is sacred if your attitude is sacramental. I’m also interested in photography from the same point of view – sacred moments, scared faces,sacramental awarenessof the scene as you snap the photo, while time passes into eternity. It’s the same way with poetry or music.

The first music I heard as a kid was at grammar school. I used to go down to the spiritual churches on River Street [in Paterson] and hear black spiritual singingat revival meetings.In high school I would listento a lot ofBessie Smith, Louis Armstrong,Jelly Roll Morton, Lead Belly, Billie Holiday& the older jazz & blues people. In the (19)40’s, I was following the development of rhythm & blues, stuff like “Open The Door, Richard”– [Allen begins singing] – “Open the door, Richard/ Open the door and let me in” – You know that one? – To me, it was some sort of apocalyptic opening of the gates of heaven! – People like Fats Dominoand Screamin’ Jay Hawkins too – (We) used to go out and listen to mambo

Kerouac was interested. I always felt more like an intellectual Jewish poet rather than a down jazz musician but there was some kind of relationship between the kind of poetry I was writing & the free-form spontaneous jazz style. He used to listen a lot to bop, in the Village at the time, Charlie Parker was playing at a place calledThe Open Door, where they didn’t sell alcohol, (in those days the great jazz musicians were (all) illegal because of the cabaret license – if you’d been busted (even on something minor, like a little stick of grass, at a gas station in Delaware), you couldn’t get a license to play in cabarets. So people like Thelonious Monkwere forbidden to play & make money in the (Big) Apple.) In 1960, I had the chance to hear a lot of Thelonious Monk, night after night at the Five Spot, where I also met Lester Young. (I) went out one night and turned out the junk with Thelonious Monk. [sic]. In 1960, I deliveredpsilocybinfrom Timothy Leary to Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie, to see what they’d say about it. Dizzy (‘s response) was - “Anything that gets you high, man” – Monk, when I asked him what happened, he said - “Got anything stronger?”

By historical lineage, there’s a connection, certainly. There’s a scene in Renaldo and Clara where (Bob) Dylan and I are improvising songs and talking over Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, Mass., and Dylan reads a poem from (Jack) Kerouac’s “Mexico City Blues”. When that scene was over, they were filming us walking out of the graveyard, and I asked Dylan, why he was so interested in coming to Lowell, and what his knowledge of Kerouac was. He said – “That was my first poetry. Someone handed me a copy of Mexico City Blues in St. Paul and it blew my mind”. I asked “Why?, and he said – “It was the first poetry that talked American, that I could actually understand & read. It meant something to me.

Their styles are certainly of the same mode, the improvisational, accidental rhyme, inspired connections made up out of lightning-bolt flashes. (Dylan once described his method of making a tune as going into a studio & jabbering into the microphone, then going back into the control room and taking down what he said, improving it a little, then going back in & singing it).

Making it up at the mike. That’s what we did in 1971. I have one manuscript ,(the first and only version of which is on tape, and it’s on First Blues), a little gay song, “Jimmy Berman”. They (sic) were playing“Jimmy Brown, the Newsboy”, and I didn’t understand what it was. I said, “What’s that, Jimmy Berman? I heard you drop his name” (that was the beginning line) – “What’s he got to say? What papers is he sellin’?/ I don’t know if he’s the guy I met or aint…”

[Allen “excuses himself to go to the bathroom. As he hobbles off on crutches, he sings - “Jimmy Berman does (some) yoga, smokes a little grass.."]

[Kaddish (50th Anniversary edition), Allen painted by Naomi, Allen & Naomi]

Allen's classic poem "Kaddish" has been featured on several occasions on The Allen Ginsberg Project (notably here, here, hereandhere). Today, we're doing so again.

Today's version (noticeably missing Part II) - (low-, but nonetheless serviceable, fidelity) is from a recording included in the Robert Creeley collection (the collection of audiotapes bequeathed by the Estate) currently available on the University of Pennsylvania's unparalleled PennSound site.

The tape, as UPenn's curators inform us, "appears to have been recorded at the Creeley's home in or around 1959", and runs for approximately twenty-eight minutes. As well as reading (from) "Kaddish", Allen also reads "Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square", "Laughing Gas (part 1)", "My Sad Self (for Frank O'Hara)" and "To Aunt Rose"

The entire reading may be heard here

Kaddish part I may be heard here
Kaddish part III may be heard here
Kaddish part IV here
and Kaddish part V here

["When Dick the Shepherd blows his nail" - (from William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, Act V Scene 2 - "Winter") - painting by Edward Frederick Brewtnall (1846-1902), 1886 - oil on canvas (76.5 x 61.5 cm.)]

Detail? – How much detail? I was quoting Shakespeareearlier today to Francine (sic) when we were talking about the problem of what is detail, or what is accuracy, and one ideal is the Shakespeare song, “When icicles..” - on winter - “When icicles hang by the wall,/And Dick the shepherd blows his nail..”,”And Marian’s nose is red and raw” [Editorial note - “And Marian’s nose looks read and raw”] – “And milk comes frozen home in pail”..”And crabs are roasting in the bowl [“When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl”], or something. (But) to conjure up winter without saying winter – by means of “objective correlatives”, that is, objects that relate to winter-time (as you might in a haiku, also – haikubeing divided into Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) – is the trick, the gimmick. The gimmick is to find whatT.S.Eliot called ”objective correlative(s)” for your generalization, whether it be an idea (Winter) or a sensation (an ecstatic vision in which you see the green shoot tips of the Spring tree-branches waving delicatetly in the sunlight). You still have to have some detail to indicate your own presence, and your own consciousness. And the clearer the detail, the more lucid or the more illuminated the consciousness indicated.

And one characteristic of either ordinary mind, properly understood, or mystical mind, has always been microscopically detailed perception rather than blurred generalization – “Marian’s nose looks read and raw”, “Dick the shepherd blows his nail” (is), if not microscopically detailed. so precise and so exact that you don’t have any trouble identifying what the guy’s talking about – the chill, the cold, the wind, the snow, the outdoors, outdoors into indoors.”

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 218

Plutonian Ode, 1978, (The Robert Creeley Recording)

Student Poetry & Abstraction - (Debating with Francine)

Meditation and Poetics - 82 (Philip Whalen and Abstraction)

Meditation and Poetics - 70 - (Whitman 13 - Respondez! - 2)

Baudelaire's Birthday

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 216

Poetry Is Lamb Dust - (Kerouac in Desolation Angels)

Do The Meditation

May 1st - (May Day - Kral Majales)

Colin Still - Optic Nerve

Christopher Smart - 1

Christopher Smart - 2

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 217

Christopher Smart - 3

Walt Whitman Lists - 5

Friday May 8 - Gary Snyder's Birthday

David Menconi Interview - 1 (Allen Ginsberg in 1987 Surveys His Musical History)

Kaddish, 1959, (the Robert Creeley Recording)

Meditation and Poetics - 77 - (A Little Focus on Detail)