Meditation and Poetics - 78 (Phanopoeia, Logopoeia and Melopoeia)

April 21, 2015, 3:00 am

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[“Then nightly sings the staring owl/Tu-whoo!/Tu-whit! tu whoo!" (William Shakespeare)]

AG: Okay. I don’t know if we’ve gone through this, but Ezra Pound had three characteristics, or three marks of poetry. He said one was – what I’ve been talking about here – the phanopoeia– P-H-A-N-O-P…how do you spell “poeia” – P-O-E-A? dipthong? – P-O-E-I-A. Thank you. phanopoeia– “the casting of images on the mind’s eye”, the casting of clear, precise images on the mind’s eye. I think his example is a line of Catullusabout a crimson curtain blown in the window (to indicate the breeze), or a crimson curtain…

tape ends here. ..(and) tape continues….

(then) logopoeia..(“the dance of the intellect) among words”. That is, the abstract... wittiness, the wittiness of the abstraction like his (Walt Whitman’s) use of the connoisseur there – (“ The connoisseurpeers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways”) – his connoisseurship of the connoisseur (because you’ve also got phanopoeia– he’s leaning to the side and his eyes are half-closed – you’ve got the phanopoeia, but you also have a sort of curious European witty mind when he says, “The connoisseur passes through [Editorial note – “peers along”] the gallery”

Peter Orlovsky: The dance of what?

AG : The dance of intellect among words, “The dance of the intellect among words.”….

(William Carlos) Williams, oddly enough is a great example of logopoeia, From the point of view that his intelligence in language was in (the) choice of the ordinary language spoken about him instead of the hand-me-down poetic language, so his version of logopoeia was novel, fresh, invented, made new, but it was true logopoeia in the sense that it was attention to the usage of language in the mouth (like when he says to the postman, “Whyn’t you bring me a letter with some money in it? I could use some of that. Attaboy, attaboy.”There’s a little melopoeia – (“Attaboy, attaboy”), I always thought was parallel with (William) Shakespearesaying “Tu-whit! tu-whoo!”, or “With hey!, with hey!, the thrush and the jay”“Tirra-lyra sings the lark” [“The lark that tirra-lyra chants"] – the little onomatopoeic lyric refrains – “Hey nonny-no”, “Attaboy, attaboy” (so that was (William Carlos) Williams’ conscious substitute for “Hey nonny, hey nonny-no” – “Attaboy, attaboy” – so you’d have to call that wit.

Oh, another example of logopoeia– sure. He’s writing about… I don’t have the Shakespeare here - “Tu-whit! tu-whoo!”. Remember that? – “Tu-whit! tu-whoo!”? – What was that poem from? I think it’s the same – “(When) Dick the shepherd blows his nail…(G)reasy Joan doth keel the pot..,(and) then the owl doth sing a merry note”.

Student; “While greasy Joan doth keel the pot”

AG: Yeah, but how goes it go? If I can (get) the whole structure – “When icicles hang by the wall/And Dick the shepherd blows his nail..and Mary’s nose is red and raw [And Marion’s nose looks red and raw]..And milk comes frozen home in pail..Then nightly sings the..

Student: The staring owl

AG: The what?

Student: “Then nightly sings the staring owl”

AG: “..staring owl/Tu-whoo!/Tu-whit! tu whoo!..”

Student: “..a merry note”.

AG: “A merry note/ And greasy Joan doth grease the pot”

Student: “..keel the pot”

AG: “..keel the pot”. Okay. “The staring owl doth sing..” What was that again?

Student; “Tu-whit! tu-whoo!”

AG: Yea, okay. Now that is that? The pun is “To wit” – Okay, let’s get the line before “Tu-whit! tu-whoo!”. You had it..

Student: “Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!”

AG: Okay, “Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!”/ While night does the staring owl.. What?

Student: “Nightly sings the staring owl” is that it?

AG: “(Then) nightly sings the staring owl..”/…’ Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!” – Right?

Student: yeah

AG: Okay. “(Then) nightly sings the staring owl..” - “to wit” (i.e. as an example, “to wit” – do you know that phrase? – “to wit” (in legalese) – “to wit”. This is what he sings – “To whoo!” (to woo) - “Tu-whit! tu-whoo! – So it’s a pun on its own making, but also as a further pun – in this winter night, what do you do? – You woo. That’s why it’s a merry note – To wit, to woo (to make love. woo, make love). So are you following what I’m saying? Is there anybody that thinks this is gibberish. Do you understand, Helen (sic)?

Student: Um-hum

AG: It was obvious from the beginning. Is there anybody that doesn’t hear the pun that’s going on there?, the logopoeic pun? The owl is singing a note at night in the winter, and what does he sing? – “Tu-whit”, he sings, “tu-whoo”, meaning “i.e,” or “this following”. And what follows? – the instruction “to make love”, “To wit, to woo” (sic). So that’s logopoeia, maybe, at it’s purest, followed by “a merry note”. It’s also, obviously, onomatopoeic to the owl sound. What’s weird is he says it’s “a merry note” (owls aren’t generally thought of as being merry, merry noted, but the particular message that Shakespeare has embedded in this pun is quite merry, and he’s pointing it out – it’s “a merry note”) – And who are you gonna fuck _ “(G)reasy Joan”, probably (“(G)reasy Joan doth keel the pot”), or who’s she gonna fuck? – the suggestions are “Dick the shepherd”, probably (no, “Dick the shepherd” and “Marion” are the couple).

So we have phanopoeia, logopoeia, melopoeia. In (Ezra) Pound’s ABC of Reading,you’ll find an exposition of that, or in the “How To Read” essay that I recommended before. And it’s one of the best clarifications I’ve found for pointing out attention to certain areas, or for teaching maybe, for pointing out certain areas of writing possibility. Or, if you want it simpler, it’s the picture, music, and wittiness, say. Picture, music, and intelligence. There’s a picture, (and) there’s music, and there’s intelligence.

[Audio for the above may be heard here, starting at beginning (in media res, the opening minute) …then, from approximately nine-and-a-half to approximately fourteen-and-a-half minutes in]

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Meditation and Poetics - 79 (Bob Dylan's Logopoeia)

April 22, 2015, 3:00 am

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['To live outside the law you must be honest" (Bob Dylan)]

AG: Now most people’s intelligence in poetry when they’re amateurs comes from just imitating other poems and recycling used poems, basically. There’s a possibility (like in T.S.Eliot and others) of referring back and having a pun, but most people just repeat other people’s poetry and other people’s ideas and it’s like a tape-machine of everything that was learned in grammar school, with a Romantic idea of “I want to be a big egotist, so I’ll be a poet, and I’ll repeat what I heard in grammar school”.

So for (a) teaching method what I’ve always wound up doing is trying to bring it back, then, to the senses, to the eye and to the optical. Simply, that’s the one place you can actually nail it down to some reality you can see. Or to the ear. The problem with depending purely on melopoeia (melo-poesia),or the problem of teaching the basic of poetics as melopoeia, (is that) everybody’s got a pretty good ear alright, but they tend to imitate other people’s sounds with dull pictures and usually re-use other people’s sounds, so it’s not like a firm or clear enough basis to get a toe-hold on the solidity. You can get away with too much. And there’s too many examples of senseless beauty in rock n’ roll lyrics, or in (Bob) Dylan, whose every fourth line is one of pictorial genius, with three other lines that are of pure sound melody to fill in the music, in the early work. Later on, he wanted to fill in the holes and didn’t want any more of that. He wanted every line to be sensible. There was a time once (when) Robert Creeley and I listened to, I think, Blonde on Blonde and tried to figure out how many lines of genius there were in relation to how many lines of just filler for the cycle or the melody, and we came to about one in four. But every fourth line was real genius.

Oh, okay, a genius in logopoeia – “To live outside the law you must be honest”. That’s logopoeia– “the dance of the intellect among words”, witty, incisive, sharp, shrewd use of language. “To live outside the law you must be honest” – that’s good aslogopoeia. And that’s something that everybody knows. See, there’s no picture there (except maybe “outside” suggesting some space). There’s no picture there. It’s all generalization. But it’s generalization used so freshly and originally (and) the words recombine so curiously (curiously, I guess that would be the right word, the words recombine so curiously, recombine so curiously) that it actually does take on a fresh, incisive meaning that alters people’s minds and makes them get to another space or clarifies their confusion. In our modern (world) that’s the most brilliant and best-known example of logopoeia, probably – “To live outside the law you must be honest”. I asked Dylan what he thought his best line was and that was the one he said. And at the time I hadn’t noticed it (and didn’t quite understand what it meant, and was ideologically obsessed with pictures), and I said, “Ah, you must have something better than that?” (this was) in a telephone conversation). He was really disappointed that I didn’t appreciate it. And Iwas disappointed, later, that I didn’t appreciate what he was offering, actually.

I don’t find most people smart enough to preach logopoeiaor wildly original enough to preach melopoeia, but everybody’s got eyes, everybody’s got eyes.
Student: (Well…)
AG: You don’t think so?

Student: (Well, different people develop different senses)

AG: Maybe.

Student: (You don't think so? I'm sorry I said it).

AG: No, that may be. There may be... There is that possibility that other senses are…others' auditory or language senses are more developed than their visual perception. But there’s another point of view which is - So people might be more specialized. There are musicians who can’t put words together. There are musicians, yes, who can appreciate rhythm and sound (the rhythm's part of the melopoeia I forgot). But, practically speaking, apparently, in brain area.. I think the largest brain area is the eyes, isn’t it? in terms of the surface of the brain area? That seems the most prominent occupier of our consciousness. It’s like a great scoop in our consciousness. It’s this big space that we see, and seems the most commonly-used sense.

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

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Meditation and Poetics - 80 (Penfield's Homunculus)

April 23, 2015, 3:00 am

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AG: Has anyone seen Penfield’s Homunculus? – the homunculoid picture drawn on the surface of the brain according to the areas of the brain that relate to the different senses? I think (the) mouth is enormous, actually. The mouth area is enormous. (The) forehead (is) very low, because there’s not much sensation up there. The visual? - I’ve forgotten how much area the visual takes up..

Student: It’s only for touch that he did that.

AG: For touch? – Ah..

Student: There’s also motor homunculus.

AG: That’s right. The thumbs were enormous.

Student: Yeah. Thumbs and the face. As a matter of fact…

AG: Thumbs and (the) mouth. It was a homunculus made up of giant thumbs and (a) big mouth, and then….

Student: There’s a book in the library called The Mechanics of the Mind ( Editorial note: The Mystery of the Mind - A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain), where (they) made clay models..

AG: Uh-huh

Student: … (and) came up with something looking exactly like the homunculus…

AG:Yeah

Student: …that Penfield drew

AG: Yeah. It’s a terrific picture, if you ever get (to see) it. Wilder Penfield. What’s the name of it?.. The Living Brain.. or something like that. (William) Burroughslaid the book on me once - [Editorial note - Allen is confusing two pioneering books in neuroscience here - W.Grey Walter's seminal 1963 text and the aforementioned text,Wilder Penfield's

1975 The Mystery of the Mind]

So my reference is wrong on that as far as sight. But I think sight is generally the most common, largest sensation of consciousness. Sound is supposed to be the first and last - the first to arrive and the last to go. If you’re vanishing in the dentist’s chair, I think sound is the last sense to depart, when you go under onlaughing gas.

Anyway, I propose, generally, what can be seen, and most other poets do, or modern poets ((Ezra) Pound, (William Carlos) Williams, (Louis) Zukofsky) propose that area that you can see (“sight (is) where the eye hits”)as being the commonest place that people can find each other, (that is, in poetry), where they can communicate, where they can find matter that does communicate.

Student: How would you answer the ancient objectionthat it’s nothing but imitation, nature's just a type of mirror, an imitation of nature, (that) you have to have something extra.

AG: Yes. That’s a… (after borrowing a cigarette) : Actually, there’s a long essay in the recent Arsenal [magazine] by Philip Lamantia, the Surrealist, precisely attacking me and (William Carlos) Williams and the whole development of twentieth-century poetry for having suppressed the Imagination in favor of the gross material sight. And particularly suppressed the inner voice, and his very precisely defined area of what is “inner voice”. So we’re going to try to have Philip Lamantia here next summer (1979 – [Editorial note - he didn’t come]) to teach Surrealism and to teach that area.

William Burroughs’writing, incidentally, (in this context) is interesting. I think his writing.. hesays (or has always said, since, at least the (19)50’s when I began enquiring)..Having been (at that time) working with (William Carlos) Williams, I began getting curious about the mechanics of Burroughs’ mind (and) I asked him how does he think? – And he insisted, from the very beginning, early (19)40’s, that he does not think in words. He thinks in pictures. Now, I find myself thinking in words (though, since doing a lot of meditation, there’s a little more pictorial element flashing on the mind’s eye). And then in Tangier, when we were spending a lot of time (together) in the early (19)60’s, (when he was writing certain chapters of Naked Lunch), I saw him at a typewriter and he was sitting there staring into space, as if in meditation, or he was just. His hand was on the typewriter keys as if waiting for inspiration, waiting for the next thought, looking at the wall. And so I said, “What are you thinking about, Bill?”. And he said, “Hands pulling in nets from the sea” – “Hands pulling in nets from the sea in the darkness”. And I thought, “Gee, what a cosmic image! – like the cosmic hands of God bringing up the souls from the ocean of…”. And I said,” Where did you get that?”(thinking it was an idea - that is, a cosmic idea, a conceptual idea, fromtheosophy or something). And he said, “Oh, every morning before dawn the fishermen down at the beach are pulling in the nets from the sea ,on the Tangier beach”. And he was just seeing their hands pulling in nets from the sea - Totally literal.

So, in that sense, he thinks in pictures, and if you read his cut-upstuff (The Soft Machine, (The) Ticket that Exploded, (which we’ll go into), and Nova Express), you’ll see that his prose is a succession of visual imagery, generally. He has (a) good ear (as (Jack) Kerouacnoticed). For Burroughs’ ear, Kerouac’s favorite line was “Motel motel motel loneliness moans along still oily tidal waters of East Texas bayou roads”- “Motel motel motel loneliness moans along still oily tidal waters …” – Kerouac picked that line out and said, “Bill’s a great poet. Like (John) Milton or something. He has this fantastic ear” – Which he does. That would be melopoeiafor that one.

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

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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 218

April 24, 2015, 3:00 am

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[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.

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Haiku - 1 (Spiritual Origins of Haiku)

May 11, 2015, 3:00 am

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[Bodhidharma(Daruma) - the Indian founder of Zen Buddhism, which he brought to China and subsequently Japan - from the British Museum collection - a Japanese hanging scroll painting from the Momoyama period, late 16th Century]

AG: What shall we do with this problem of wordlessness however. There are a lot of ways of dealing with the un-nameable, or what can't be described, that we were talking about. So I'm now going to go to Haiku - Volume 1again, and read swiftly through a whole succession of haiku dealing with different subjects, different aspects of mind, concrete-detail-noticing, vast space-, or crazy-wisdom-, jumping.

But first there are some that really do relate to the problem of not being able to say it.

The book is (the first of) R.H.Blyth's four volumes of haiku- Volume 1, which is (an) analysis of haiku and some historical survey.

By (Oshima) Ryota:

"They spoke no word/The visitor, the host/and the white chrysanthemums."

"How pitiful! /Among the insects/ A solitary nun."

"There are hamlets/that do not know sea bream or flowers/but all have today's moon."

The spiritual origins of the haiku are built on the Zenrin-kushu, which are two-line poems, very similar to (William) Blake's "Auguries of Innocence", which are like haiku, but longer (they are generally two long lines). They're used afterZen sitting, when you go and visit the Zen master, the roshi, for a brief face-to-face mind transmission. They're usually involved as answers to a particular riddle or koangiven (to) you, which is supposed to impeach, or break in on, or express, or manifest that area of mind which is totally silent (and) wordless - the gap that we were talking about, the emptiness, the sunyata element of Mahayana - or point to one or other of the scale of consciousness experienced in sitting.

Here's relating to a notion of selflessness, or no-self, or pointing out our tendency toward projection of our own impressions on nature:

"The raindrops patter on the basho leaf (bamboo leaf), but / these aren't tears of grief/ This is only the anguish of him who's listening to them."

Student: Will you read that again?

AG: "The raindrops patter on the basho leaf (bamboo leaf), but / these aren't tears of grief/ This is only the anguish of him who's listening to them."

"It's like a sword that wounds, but can't wound itself/ Like an eye that sees, but can't see itself."

"To be able to trample upon the Great Void/The iron cow must sweat."

Now (the next one) is sort of like haiku, (and) like (William Carlos) Williams.. - yes?

Student: Allen, I heard another theory as to the problem of the haiku

AG: This isn't the theory. This is the development of the haiku..

Student: Oh, sorry.

AG: There's an enormous treatise on the haiku in this [points to Blyth], which gives charts and lineages from Confucianismand Taoism, and from Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism and Chinese poetry, all building up to renga and waka. What these are are from the Zenrin kushu two-line tags, or couplets, which are related to haiku in relating to that space, void, time-jump, gap, or space-gap, or some element of particularity, which relate to the haiku but are not the origin of the haiku. They're way back before haiku, though.
[to Student] - Is there some theory that's important that you want to..?

Student: No, no, no

AG: I just wanted to dwell in this space here.

Student: Yeah

AG: There's a historical thing we could do, too, but….

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Meditation and Poetics - 79 (Bob Dylan's Logopoeia)

April 22, 2015, 3:00 am

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['To live outside the law you must be honest" (Bob Dylan)]

Student: (Well, different people develop different senses)

AG: Maybe.

Student: (You don't think so? I'm sorry I said it).

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Meditation and Poetics - 80 (Penfield's Homunculus)

April 23, 2015, 3:00 am

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Student: It’s only for touch that he did that.

AG: For touch? – Ah..

Student: There’s also motor homunculus.

AG: That’s right. The thumbs were enormous.

Student: Yeah. Thumbs and the face. As a matter of fact…

AG: Thumbs and (the) mouth. It was a homunculus made up of giant thumbs and (a) big mouth, and then….

AG: Uh-huh

Student: … (and) came up with something looking exactly like the homunculus…

AG:Yeah

1975 The Mystery of the Mind]

Student: How would you answer the ancient objectionthat it’s nothing but imitation, nature's just a type of mirror, an imitation of nature, (that) you have to have something extra.

↧

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 218

April 24, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Haiku - 2 (Zenrin-kushu continues)

≪ Previous: Meditation and Poetics - 80 (Penfield's Homunculus)

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

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]?

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

[Paul Blackburn 1926-1971]

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

↧

Haiku - 2 (Zenrin-kushu continues)

May 12, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Haiku - 3 (more from Zenrin-kushu)

≪ Previous: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 218

["..the wave exhibits the spiritual nature of the moon"]

[Allen continues with his reading from R.H.Blyth’s classic anthology of Japanese haiku]

AG: So this one that follows covers a great gap of time without actually mentioning the years properly, directly – “Meeting, the two friends laugh aloud./In the grove, the fallen leafs are many.” - [Allen repeats this allegedly Confucian poem] - “Meeting, the two friends laugh aloud./In the grove, the fallen leafs are many.” – [and continues]:

“The cock announces the dawn in the evening./The sun is bright at midnight.”

“The cries of the monkeys echo through the dense forest./ In the clear water, the wild geese are mirrored deep.” - [he repeats this poem too]

Sight, sound. Both the flash of sight and sound. Not the direct thing but the echo or the mirror:

“The wooden cock crows at midnight/The straw dog barks at the clear sky.”

“Entering the forest, he doesn’t disturb a blade of grass./ Entering the water, he doesn’t cause a ripple.”

“One word determines the whole world./ One sword pacifies heaven and earth.”

“The plum tree, dwindling, contains less of spring,/But the garden is wider, and holds more of the moon.”

(This is actually Williams-esque, the following (one), Williams-esque instructions for how to deal with presentation rather than reference):

“The tree manifests the bodily power of the wind./ The wave exhibits the spiritual nature of the moon.”

(“The tree manifests the bodily power of the wind”.. So, if you want to describe your big wind, just (portray) your tree as flashing – “The wave exhibits the spiritual nature of the moon.”

So this is somewhat the same argument we were having at the end of the last class with my constant insistence on beginning with“minute particulars”:

“From of old there were not two paths./ Those who arrived all walked the same road.”

“In the vast inane there is no back or front./ The path of the bird annihilates East and West.

(That was always my favorite – referring to conceptual mind – ““In the vast inane there is no back or front./ The path of the bird annihilates East and West.”)

Student: In the what?

AG: “In the vast inane..” – I-N-A-N-E – there is no back or front.

Student: What is the..

AG: What is “the vast inane”? Right here.

Student: (What does “inane” mean?)

AG: Oh, inane – inanity - like meaningless, dumb, crazy - the inanity - “What an inane question, “What is inanity”!” You know, “inane”?

Student: Allen?

AG: Remember “i-nane?”

Student(s): I name?

AG:I-nane

Student(s): In-ane.

AG: Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve been pronouncing it wrong all my life. I’ve told you it was I-nane – and vast – “In-ane”. Okay – “In the vast inane there is no back or front.”
”The path of the bird annihilates Boston and New York.”

“Perceiving the sun in the midst of the rain.”/“Ladling out clear water from the depths of the fire.”

This is one that I paraphrased in “Wichita Vortex Sutra”– “When a bomb is dropped on Saigon,/ a woman screams equal in Hanoi” – or, “When a bomb bursts on East 11^th Street” - (that’s where the Weathermen blew their house up) - “When a bomb bursts on East 11^th Street,/ a woman screams equal in Hanoi”.

“When a cow in Kaishu eats mulberry leaves,/ the belly of a horse in Ekishu is distended.” – [Allen repeats the lines] – In other words, when a cow in New York State eats mulberry leaves, the belly of a horse in Japan blows up.

“To have the sun and moon in one sleeve./ To hold the universe in the palm of one’s hand.”

So, after reading these, I’ll go (next) to (William) Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence", because they’re perfectly parallel and they come from the same mind.

↧

Haiku - 3 (more from Zenrin-kushu)

May 13, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Allen Ginsberg's "Beat" Correspondence with Paul Bertram

≪ Previous: Haiku - 2 (Zenrin-kushu continues)

["To have the sun and moon in one sleeve/To hold the universe in the palm of one's hand"]

Allen continues from the Zenrin-kushu:

"To have the sun and moon in one sleeve./ To hold the universe in the palm of one's hand"

Then there's a line by (W.B.) Yeats - "I carry the sun in a golden cup and the moon in a silver bag."

"If you don't get it from yourself,/Where will you go for it" - "If you don't get it from yourself,/Where will you go for it - Where else will you go for it?

"Though we lean together on the same balustrade/ the colors of the mountain are not the same."

"Taking up one blade of grass/ use it as a sixteen-foot golden Buddha" - That was Gary Snyder's favorite.

"The blue hills are, of themselves, blue hills/ The white clouds are, of themselves, white clouds."

"Nothing whatever is hidden/ From of old, all is clear as daylight."

"Seeing, they see not./ Hearing, they hear not."

"Just one pistil of the plum flower/ and the three thousand worlds are fragrant."

"Every man has beneath his feet/ enough ground to do sitting meditation on" - "Every man has beneath his feet/ enough ground to do zazen on."

"If you meet an enlightened man in the street/ don't greet him with words, nor with silence."

"The water before…" - [(this is the mind again)] - "The water before and the water after/now and forever flowing, following each other."

"There's no place to seek the mind/ It's like the footprints of birds in the sky." - [(I always liked that)]

"Sitting quietly, doing nothing/Spring comes, grass grows of itself."

"The mouth desires to speak/the words disappear." - "The heart desires to associate itself but the thoughts fade away."

"If you wish to know the road up the mountain/ go ask the man who goes back and forth on it."

"Simply, you must empty "is" of meaning/ and not take "is not" as real."

"The geese don't wish to leave their reflection behind./ The water has no mind to retain their image."

"The old tree leans over the waves, its cold image swaying/Mist hovers above the grass, the evening sun fading."

"If you don't believe, look at September, look at October,/ How the yellow leaves fall and fill mountain and river."

↧

Allen Ginsberg's "Beat" Correspondence with Paul Bertram

May 13, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Haiku - 4 - (Zhuangzi)

≪ Previous: Haiku - 3 (more from Zenrin-kushu)

[Allen Ginsberg to Paul Bertram (1928-2013) , in 1947, from the Ginsberg-Bertram letters]

Readers+Writers Journal, this week, announced the discovery (in a trove of newly-found letters and postcards from Allen to his life-long friend, Rutgers professor and Shakespearean scholar, Paul Bertram), of, arguably, the first known reference in the writings of the Beat Generation to the seminal term "Beat".

[Paul Bertram's 1965 volume - Shakespeare and The Two Noble Kinsmen (Rutgers University Press)]

Writing as early as July 14, 1947, (these are "among the earliest, if not the earliest collection of Ginsberg correspondence ever" appearing on the market), Ginsberg notes:

"I spent most of June in Texas with Joan Adams and Bill Burroughs and Herbert Huncke, amid scorpions, Armadillos, Bayoux, Spanish moss, Be-bop music, marijuana, Beat Texans, white trash and poon tang. Now I am in denver, broke hungry unemployed, depressed"

[Herbert Huncke, 1947, New Waverly, Texas - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg - c. The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

As E.T.Carlton in her accompanying article points out - "Scholars generally date the first use of the word "Beat" (in writing) to November 1948, when writer John Clellon Holmes recorded in his diary a conversation between him and Jack Kerouac. Holmes later recounted the conversation in a 1952 article for the New York Times magazineentitled "This Is The Beat Generation", quoting Kerouac as saying, "So I guess you might say we're a beat generation"…The term "beat" was introduced by fellow writer and notorious [sic] junkie Herbert Hunckewho learned it from the hustlers, carnies and members of the underworld he moved among in New York's Times Square. Ginsberg, Kerouac, and others in their circle picked it up from him. It's original meaning was negative and connoted being beaten down but Kerouac later appropriated the word to describe himself and others of his generation, giving it a more spiritual meaning… As Kerouac wrote [in Esquire, March, 1958] in "Aftermath - The Philosophy of the Beat Generation", "..beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction". The word came into general use [and abuse (sic)] in the 1950's with the word "beatnik" used to describe a person who was artistically inclined and whose values were counter to the general culture. Mass media portrayals showed beatniks dressed in black turtleneck sweaters playing bongos and attending poetry readings.."

[Beat Exploitation]

["It's the beat generation, it's beat, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's beng beat and down in the world and like old-time lowdown"]

Brian Cassidy, the bookseller, responsible for the sale, notes:
"What the March 1947 letter shows..is just how early the term was in circulation among this core group of writers. While he does not use the word to refer to the group or the movement itself, what is clear is that Ginsberg is using the word as he and his circle originally meant it - "beat down" or "worn out". And it further cements the term's association with Huncke."

and again (regarding the sale): "I'm excited to be representing this collection on behalf of Bertram's heirs" [Bertram died in 2013 and the letters were discovered a year after his death].."These letters capture Ginsberg at a formative and significant time in his life..(A)s a specialist in the Beats, this is particularly fascinating to me. Moreover, as these were almost literally rescued from the trash, I'm especially proud to be part of saving these materials for later generations and scholars"

"These materials" consist of a total of three signed letters and eight postcards, the bulk of the correspondence written between 1946 and 1950. They cover, as Carlton explains, Allen's "travels with the merchant marine, his earliest encounters with members of what would become the Beat movement, and his thoughts on writing and on music, including a list of his favorite jazz recordings" - 'I have (as I told you last time) developed a terrific interest in this [1947] and last year's jazz. I wish you would try to listen to them sympathetically - responsively", he tells Bertram,"that is - without trying to fit them to a set of ideas about music until you like them for what they are without categorical or literary or sacramental classification..simply as significant noises…"

Carlton's article teases us with a few other choice quotes - August, 1947, writing from Denver -"I have been working as a porter nights in a dept. store. I steal enough clothes and shoes to make it worth while. Also I've organized my work so as to have several hours free each night to listen to their phonograph records, so I picked up on the latest Bartokrecordings which were new and quite exciting to me." The previous month, he notes the birth of William Burroughs' Jr., mock-dismissively - "I think" she [Joan Adams] dropped the brat on a rude cot in her tumbledown shack in the backwoods." - and there's this, three years later - from a postcard, dated March 8 - "I have been in a mental hospital [Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute] and have been very ill. That is why you have not heard from me. The Benzedrine [sic] is out of the question these days."

↧

Haiku - 4 - (Zhuangzi)

May 14, 2015, 12:00 pm

≫ Next: Meditation and Poetics - 81 (Student Poetry & Abstraction - Debating with Francine)

≪ Previous: Allen Ginsberg's "Beat" Correspondence with Paul Bertram

[Hokusai (1760-1849) - Philosopher Watching A Pair of Butterflies (1814) - plate from picture-book, Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden National Museum of Ethnography]

So what I’d like to do now is read through a whole range of these, getting now into the

actual haiku themselves, referring back to both (Christopher) Smartand (William) Blake’s long-line form, noticing that, in a sense, the haiku is parallel to the long-line form. The long line is only good if you’ve got a haiku in it, or you’ve got some mind-jump

“The cow comes,/moo, moo/ out of the mist”

“Yield to the willow/all the loathing/all the desire of your heart” [(I think (Ezra) Pound paraphrased that in his later Cantos– “On the island of Tarpeo, weep your heart out to the willows”)] - “Yield to the willow/all the loathing/all the desire of your heart”

“Octopuses in their jars..” [(Octopuses were caught in jars in shallow water)] – “Octopuses in their jars/transient dreams/under the summer moon”

Student: Can you read that again?

AG: “Octopuses in their jars/transient dreams/under the summer moon” – If anybody needs any of these read over, I’ll read them over. If anybody’s got a real comment, we can make a comment, but there are about thirty, forty, fifty, that are just perfect and most of you don’t know these so I’d like to just lay ‘em out like eggs, one by one. Yes?

Student: Can you repeat (that one), “Simply, you must empty “is” of meaning/ and not take “is not” as real”

AG: That’ s what you just did.

Student: (I wasn’t quite clear about the) last word?)

AG: (“Real”) - “and not take “is not” as real”.

Student: “(A)s real”?

AG: Yeah - “Simply, you must empty “is” of meaning/ and not take “is not” as real”

And there’s the famous passage from (the) Zhuangzi– “as the butterfly/however it may be”..was the haiku answer – “The world is, after all,/ as the butterfly/however it may be” – Do you know that? Does everybody know that? Everybody heard that before – “Am I a man who dreamed of being a butterfly?/or am I a butterfly/dreaming myself to be a man?” – Does everybody..

Student: Zhuang Zhou

AG: Zhuangzi. That’s what I thought I said – Zhuangzi, in , I guess.. which chapter? do you know?

Student (I’m not sure)

AG: On making all things equal

“The storm has come/the empty shell of a snail” – [(relating again to that “Am-I-a-man-dreaming-I-am-a-butterfly-or-a-butterfly-dreaming-I-am-a-man?”)]

“Arise, arise/and be my companion/sleeping butterfly”

or – “I will ask/concerning the haiku of China/this fluttering butterfly”

“You are the butterfly/and I the dreaming heart of/Zhuangzi” –

So, a little reference back to Chinese poetry here, since there’s a few excellent specimens that have minute particulars, or concrete images, and that lead into haiku

A Life of Seclusion in Late Autumn

I live in a withdrawn, out of the way place

Not many people come and visit me.

I put on my clothes and sit quietly.

I nourish my peace of mind.

I don't sweep the autumn garden.

With a staff of wisteria in my hand,

I slowly walk over the yellow palonia leaves.

↧

Meditation and Poetics - 81 (Student Poetry & Abstraction - Debating with Francine)

April 27, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 219

≪ Previous: Haiku - 4 - (Zhuangzi)

[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]

↧

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 219

May 15, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: David Menconi's Allen Ginsberg Interview part 2

≪ Previous: Meditation and Poetics - 81 (Student Poetry & Abstraction - Debating with Francine)

[Allen Ginsberg on Times Square via the Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests - Times Square, May 1, 2015. Photograph by Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts]

[Andy Warhol, Screen Test: Allen Ginsberg [ST115], 1966, 16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 4.5 minutes at 16 frames per second, ©2015 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Film still courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum.]

There hasn't been a Friday Round-Up for a couple of weeks now, so a brief catching-up:

All this month on New York's Times Square - Allen Ginsberg's mug (from Allen Ginsberg's Andy Warhol Screen Test), courtesy the Andy Warhol Museum (part of the on-going Times Square series, Midnight Moments)

Meanwhile, opening last week on the West Coast (at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles) - "The Singing Posters: Poetry Sound Collage Sculpture Book - Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (by conceptual artist, Allen Ruppersberg) - "In order to reinterpret the piece for contemporary audiences, Ruppersberg (has) transcribed the poem into phonetic spellings and printed the “new” text on approximately 200 vibrantly colored commercial advertising posters installed floor to ceiling on gallery walls."

Using graphic design styles of the period when Howl was published, the posters communicate the “high culture” of poetry via the common language of advertising. The layout of the type is visually chaotic, analogous to the barrage of images conjured up by the poem and to the social climate in which the text was produced."

"The installation also includes Ruppersberg’s personal scrapbooks, which contain an accumulation of images, newspaper and magazine clippings, and other miscellany that the artist has collected throughout his life, particularly in the ’60s and ’70s."

The Whole Shot - Collected Interviews with Gregory Corso(we've written about ithere and here) is now, we're happy to announce, out - an essential book

and Joanne Kyger's On Time - Poems 2005-20014, from City Lights - another essential book

Footage of Joanne reading from the book, last month, at the San Francisco Public Library, may be seen here

Ed Sanders' A Book of Glyphs was published by Steve Clay's extraordinary Granary Books last year. Don't miss Tim Keane's note in Hyperallergic on Ed Sanders'"Glyphic Works".
"Seeking the Glyph: An Exhibition of the Glyphic Works of Edward Sanders", an exhibition, organized by poet Ammiel Alcalayand Kendra Sullivan of the redoubtable Lost and Found - CUNY Poetics Document Initative, opened last month at the Poets House in New York and continues until May 23rd

Last month's DutchMondriaan Quartet Ginsberg event. Here's Hans Buhrs (and Jacq and Bert Palincks) performing "Howl!"- (continuing here). Here's "What The Sea Throws Up at Vlisingen " ("Wat de zee uitbraakt in Vlissingen") and here's Eddie Woods and Joep Bremmers together performing "Birdbrain" ("Mafkees")

French poet, international poet, Serge Pey, at the Festival de Poesía en Voz Alta in Mexico last month – remarking on his inspiring collaboration with Allen (his remarks are in Spanish):

[Serge Pey]

Interviewer: Como interveno Allen Ginsberg en su quehacer poetico?

SP: Yo tenia una revista que se llamaba Tribu y era una aventura, publicama a amigos como Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Ernesto Cardenal, Rafael Alberti y otros mas; nacio como un deseo de compartir una fiesta entre varios poetas. Me gusto Ginsberg porque era un poeta comprometido, teníamos, cosas en comun y me incito a recita la poesia públicamente al deprime: "Tu debes hacerle como Bob Dylan, expresar la poesia con los dientes, mordiendo las palabras". La modernidad de la poesia americana me libro, porque esteban ligados a la palabra física, a diferencia de la tradicion de la poesia francesa que es mas apegada a la escritura. Con Ginsberg hice recitales en Amsterdam, en Tunez y en Paris, por citar algunos. A el le gustaba que recitáramos "Howl" y "Kaddish, dos poemas largos de sue autoria. Tambien aprendi a integrar la relacion poética a la política, cosa importante de la generación, beat."

How did Allen Ginsberg take part in your poetic work?

SP: I had a magazine called Tribe, and that was a trip, I published friends like Henry Miller,Allen Ginsberg,Ernesto Cardenal, Rafael Alberti, and many more. The magazine was born from a desire to share a great party with great poets. I liked Ginsberg because he was a passionate poet, we shared things in common, and he inspired me to recite my poetry in public when he said, "You must do it like BobDylan, express the poetry with your teeth, biting the words." The modern American poetry that I read was linked to the physical word, (unlike the French poetic tradition which is more attached to writing). With Ginsberg I did readings in Amsterdam, in Tunis, in Paris, to name a few. He loved when we did"Howl" and "Kaddish" together, two of his long poems. Also I learnt how to integrate my poetry into politics, something very important in the Beat Generation)

(For the complete interview see here)

Here's Allen's sometime Brooklyn College-student, poet Sharon Mesmer on Allen - "Poets on Poets" (She is interviewed by current Brooklyn College professor, Robert Viscusi)

RV: Has this [Allen Ginsberg's poetry] been an abiding influence on you, in your writing?
SM: Allen? Yeah. Def(initely). I would say, yeah - and, getting to study with him here [Brooklyn College] was pretty amazing. It was just, "how could that ever happen?", you know, but..yeah, I imitated his work for a while. When I was in college, my female friends and I wanted to be a female Beat Generation, you know, and do all the things that they did, you know - except as women. Yeah, I would say he was my main influence - still, still.
I think also because (of)... he really took the idea of freeing oneself of shame as a practice, in his life, in his writing life, in his life as a Buddhist, and I was always very interested in the way that he lived his life..

We've been trawling, (as we occasionally do) Ebay. Here's a little gem (a lost poem?) on the back of a postcard (regarding the 1981 Jack Kerouac Conference)

"Kerouac Conference/was Fine as Rhine/Whine on the line/thee & thine OK/Keep yr spines/Straight & kind!/Love/Allen"

Here's a photograph by Allen DeLoach (taken some ten years or so before) on Allen's Cherry Valley farm. He is flanked by, on the right, Peter Orlovsky's brother, Julius (Orlovsky), and, on the left, Peter's then-girlfriend, Denise Mercedes.

Thank you Boing Boing (another of our favorite sites) for the recent plug for Snapshot Poetics

Michael Horovitz in London's Daily Telegraph recalls/revisits one of the great counter-culture encounters

Jim Cohn's wonderful Museum of American Poetics saluted in the Boulder Daily Camera

Congratulations Alice Notley on winning the Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly Poetry prize. It couldn't go to a more deserving figure.

David Woodard and Jon Aes-Nihil's documentary, William S. Burroughs In The Dreamachine has just been released on DVD. From Kurt Dahlke's enthused-but-less-than-enthusiastic review in DVD talk - "Burroughs and (Allen) Ginsberg hold court at LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art], throngs beseech them for autographs. Leo DiCaprio asks for a photo-op. Aes-Nihil gently intersperses still shots of the luminaries. As they speak, and we can't hear, we wonder what wisdom they impart. We wonder why we haven't done anything that impacted the word and the world in the way that these gentlemen did. But mostly we just wonder at the quality and import of the footage. Were it not for the two men who sit front and center, either waving their wrinkled hands or smiling benignly, the footage would be strictly B-reel for your own home movies."

And again, (regarding later, interview, sequences) - "Lack of camera focus and poor audio make the living room sequences difficult to absorb, not to mention the fact that said sequences don't seem to have much more of a theme than, "we're quite fortunate to have an audience with Burroughs, let's tape it!". Those who love Burroughs will find it fascinating, but, I dare say, lacking."

[Leonardo DiCaprio, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, 1996, at the"Ports of Entry-William S Burroughs and the Arts" opening at LACMA(Los Angeles County Museum of Art)]

and here, to conclude, is another gratuitous Ginsberg-Burroughs photo (for no particular reason, but, heck, why not?):

[Allen Ginsberg & William Burroughs, Lawrence, Kansas, at target-practice - Photograph by Richard Gwin]

↧

David Menconi's Allen Ginsberg Interview part 2

May 16, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Haiku 5 (Śrāvaka Buddha)

≪ Previous: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 219

David Menconi's 1987 Interview with Allen Ginsberg (featured here last week) continues:

AG: (So) I was working here at Naropa from 1978 to 1983, getting a small salary, but also contributing money to keep the place going until we became accredited, like now. Teaching here seven months a year, I didn't have much income except by going out and doing poetry readings. In 1982, I signed a contract with Harper and got a little more money (not a lot - about as much as the average high-school teacher's salary). Last year [1986] I got a job at Brooklyn College to replace John Ashbery, who had gotten a MacArthur grant (which is a quarter million dollars for five years). I have a good salary there and I only have to go in for a day-and-a-half a week. Between that and what I make from photography and books, it's a pretty good sum (although my expenses for secretaries, photographic printing & musicians' fees about eats it all up). So I live in this narrow margin.

DM: (What's the value of Naropa's accreditation?)

AG: It means mommies can send their children here & realize they're on a career track. It might corrupt the place, for all I know, and make Naropa as bureaucratic and square as anyother place, but its meditative nature will probably keep it safe. I think it's a great meeting of East and West, in the sense that there's this intersection between Walt Whitmanand Buddhism, where the Himalyas and the Rocky Mountains come together. Naropa isn't just an off-the-wall spiritual indulgence, but an actual practical grounded American school with a unique twist - in that it teaches wisdom & meditation & how to train your mind in personal and mental aesthetics. It teaches how to clarify your head and see clearly. The key is the anarchy of wild mind (which almost did in experimental schools like Bard). Here, that's disciplined by mind training, so you have both the looseness of wild mind and the toughness of sitting practice, patience & perception. It's a combination that seems stable. (Chogyam) Trungpa (Rinpoche) said, thirteen years ago, that it's putting in roots, but it may take one hundred years to really put in roots here in America. It's a long-range project, a very sow acculturation project - how to express, in American terms, insights into the nature of the mind that are far older than America. Notions likethe emptiness that I was talking about earlier are not so familiar as an American concept, (except maybe in Kansas, or Texas - that would be a funny Buddhist question - how does Texas emptiness differ from Kansas emptiness - or Manhattan emptiness?) . There are some structural similarities. At the heart of Hebrew mysticism is absolute emptiness, or non-theism, similar to Buddhism. A lot of Orthodox Jewish practice involves reading books, interpreting them and telling stories about them, figuring out fine points of law and metaphysics. There's a sort of eye-glass intellectual aspect of Buddhism that's similar. The Jews practice some form of meditation too, rocking back & forth and chanting. The sense of the enlightened, or chosen (sect) may be parallel. It may be that much ofJudaism is transmitted from Wise Man Elder Rabbi to Wise Man Elder Rabbi & you don't find manyof those around. Or it may be the disgraceful quasi-Fascist governmentin Israel has turned people away from such a cultural identification. Another aspect of Judaism has always been its rootless intellectual cosmopolitanism, and many Buddhist practitioners, like myself, are rootless cosmpolitan intellectuals (the kind of people Stalin and Hitler hated).

DM: (What of the criticism of “selling-out”?)

AG: They always like to put the tinge of “selling-out”, when they’re not putting the tinge of “Oh-the-culture’s-changed-and-he’s-done-it-his-own-way”. Those are the two stereotypical buzz-words that appeal to drunkenly cynical macho newspaper reporters – “I did it my way” (the Frank Sinatra-type stuff) or “They sold out”. They’re meaningless stereotypes, useful to irritate the person being interviewed and to reassure the reader that, even if the United States is full of shit & committing mass murder, everything is fine, & there is really nothing to rebel about, it’s immature to complain, you should be a good ol’ boy American & wrap yourself in the flag & gobble up all the money you can, like Walt Whitman said, it’s just a way of taking advantage of people’s gullibility.

Since you can’t print what people really think in private, there’s no way of answering it in a newspaper. You can’t say “shit”. Until you can print vernacular American in a newspaper, you can’t really answer that kind of stereotype.

I always thought of myself as mainstream, while most of the rest of America was sort of…kinky (that’s to say, (Richard) Nixon, General MacArthur). Ronald Reagan, that old faker and simpleton, has certainly been absorbed by the mainstream. He’s cute, I must admit I had a crush on Ronald Reagan in (1942), when he got his leg cut off in Kings Row (over forty years ago), he was considered this fringe weirdo, and then the rest of America became the same way (or enough of America did for the out-and-out fringe weirdos to take over and occupy a lot more space than they deserve by calling themselves a majority). That’s nonsense. The “Moral Majority” isn’t any kind of majority, they’re a bunch of poseurs and loud-mouths.

I read the paper every day. I don’t watch much television, except for the news. Most of it is pretty boring. I read a lot of odd leaflets and pamphlets I get from various peace organizations or war organizations (I get the Republican party funding appeals, with their cries of “liberal pinkos”! – I think I’ve even got one of their membership-cards somewhere, although I’m a registered Democrat. I sent them three dollars once, because I thought it might be interesting to get in on the Republican line & find out what they’re all about). I get the Dartmouth Review, the neo-CoorsHeritage Foundation offshoot. I know (William) Buckley & those people too, and I get all sorts of junk mail too. There’s one called the National Man-Boy Love Association Bulletin, talking about the FBI actually trying to seduce them by sending out these young provocateurs. I’m also Vice-President of the American P.E.N. Club (Poets, Essayists & Novelists), a freedom-to-write group.

I did a lot of work with the Rocky Flats Truth Force when they were popping (I think many of their people grew older burned out & felt (that) they had succeeded in pointing sufficient attention to Rocky Flats, so that the common opinion is that the place is a menace. Everybody knows it now, & they didn’t when the Truth Force started.

I still remember when the head of Rocky Flats lied to us. I asked if there was any way to dispose of plutonium waste-products and he said, “Oh yes, we have the technology to do that. We can reduce a football field of it to the size of a small glass”. And they’re still trying to dig a hole in New Mexico & dump it into the bowels of the earth. So they never did find a way of getting rid of it . It’s real half-assed science, in that they can make this hyper-industrial heavy-metal excrement, but they don’t know how to get rid of it.

It’s like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. You know that story? He knows how to make the broom carry the water, but not how to stop it. There’s this arrogance & vanity of industrial scientists as they practice it now. They’re willing to create this heavy-metal poison, & they don’t even know how to get rid of it. They can’t clean up their own excrement. They don’t know how to wipe heir own behinds.

They’re still doing it, because everybody depends on ‘em for money. Everybody’s hooked on this three hundred billion dollar military budget, it’s no different from a junk habit. The whole nation is locked into it, the sense of identity and coherence would fall out of the bottom of the United States without it. Nobody’s had any idea what it feels like to be normal and in tune with nature for so long. We’ve violated it for so long, killing species and poisoning ourselves.

So…it’s very easy for a journalist to say, “Oh, you’ve gotten mellow, haven’t you? You’ve got some money and a Republican card”. It’s meaningless, though, because it’s not following the complicated thread of discourse over decades & decades. It’s a favorite Time magazine buzz-word – “mellowed” – Everybody does & should mellow, because if you don’t, by the time you get to be old, you haven’t lived. But they mean “mellow” in the sense of no longer disagreeing with Ronald Reagan, no longer feeling paranoid about the CIA, no longer interested in dropping LSD, no longer interested in copulating with your eyes open with strange creatures and people. They imply that you’re no longer interested in sex, in being gay, in radical social change, in going to the moon in your imagination, in spiritual matters, in truth. Or, like them, no longer interested in your own prose but willing to write and have it edited any way they feel like because you’ve got a wife & a kid. (That’s exactly what the next-to-last reporter I talked to said, from People magazine – “I used to be proud of my writing, but I’ve got a wife and kid now, so I don’t care what they do to it”. So that’s their notion of “mellowed” & they like to lay it on other people. There’s no point in getting hung up on their neuroses.

DM: (How old were you when you realized you were gay?)

AG: I must have been eight or nine. It wouldn’t be “gay”, it was “homosexual”, or “queer”, in the (19)30’s. I always had crushes on young boys, since I was sixor seven, but I didn’t get sexually aroused by reading about boys until I read Krafft-Ebing. My uncle was a doctor and had a copy and I used to lie around in the front hall while my parents were inside, sneaking looks at the case-histories. I had some crushes on friends in high school & grammar school too, so it’s from as far back as I can remember.

Ultimately, I think it may have to do with conditioning, because I’ve been going to a psychiatrist for the last few years, I’ve been going back and recycling my insights, & it probably has a lot to do with the completely chaotic experience I had with my mother, who was in and out of mental hospitals. At a very sensitive time for me, when I was just forming, I had to take care of her. So instead of getting some sort of stable, comforting softness from that exquisite mother-love, I had continued fear & terror. Unfortunately, my father was teaching in school and would leave me at home to take care of her when I was really young. It wasn’t anything I could actually do with any competence, so I think that somewhat conditioned me
.

Otherwise, it’s something genetic, I’m sure, because it’s very deep. I’ve lived with women and had good sexual relations with them when I was younger, but I think my bent has always been very naturally toward younger men. I’m still involved quite a bit with Peter Orlovsky. Not sexually, but as a life-time friend (he has very close girlfriends, always has).

(Chogyam) Trungpa (Rinpoche) was a sort of roly-poly cheerful Tibetan. He was my guru for many years, from 1972 on, I met him about two years after he came to America, on the street in New York (I was hailing the same cab he was), with my father, no less. My father came out here [to Naropa] & met him again, & taught in my class. One of the things I loved Trungpa for was resolving the problems I had when my father died in 1976. I was so confused, you know, how do I relate to it? Do I cherish his memory, build a monument to him, write him a poem, go back home and hang around?

(What do you do with the spirit and memories?)

Trungpa sent me a telegram, (which I didn’t get at first, so I called him). He said, “I extend my thought so that your father entered Dharmakaya (meaning the big sky, the emptiness). Please let him go, and continue your celebration” - That was so sharp, such a good attitude – Just let him go, don’t hold him back with your Jewish guilt, & don’t hold yourself up with a bunch of sentimental feelings of what you think you’re supposed to do. Don’t give him more trouble, just let go. It was such a wise thing, and it applies now (1987) to Trungpa’s death.

I remember him for one-liners that changed my perspective on simple things. After Trungpa died, William Burroughs told me about the time his son, William (Burroughs) Jr, had been hovering between life and death in Boulder Community Hospital, awaiting a liver transplant the next day He was hemorrhaging, with an ice-pack in his throat, laid out on a stretcher, Burroughs on one side & Trungpa on the other, Trungpa said to him, “You may live or you may die. Both are good”. It resolved so much & it was so obvious & so simple, because I think he was worried about dying guilty from burning out his liver from too much speed, and would go to hell or something. But, “Both are good”. No fear. It was really an exquisite balance that very few people have. For me to hear something like that, it sets your mind in focus.

I’ve written a few simple little poems for him, but no big work yet . That’ll come sooner or later. I’ve had a number of real interesting dreams. The night after he died, I dreamt I saw him again, as I met him in Fourmile Canyon [in Boulder, Colorado] in 1972. He had his sleeves rolled up and a neat shirt, looking very good. I’d seen him the week before he died, in the hospital in Halifax (Nova Scotia) & he had a blackened skull. But in this dream, I saw him younger, in a kitchen in Four Mile Canyon, cooking up his supper of hamburger. I described to him what I’d been doing recently, & I asked him how he thought I was doing – “Am I on the right path?”. He said, “No”. He was right, too. I hadn’t been doing much meditating. I’d become too entangled in Brooklyn College, rock ‘n roll, poetry, Naropa & running around Eastern Europe being a minor notable rock star.

(DM (What about your poetry’s self-absorption?)

AG: Well, that’s true, but some of that comes out of (Walt) Whitman –“I celebrate myself and sing myself”. The reason for that is it’s the only thing I really know. I don’t know other people like I know inside my own head. I know other people & the world from the outside, but I have access to my inner self, like you have access to yourself.

It’s probably true that I jack off too much, & it affects my world view. But, at my age, whaddaya want? (especially if you like young boys, it’s pretty hard to score). So, from that point of view, I’m probably vulnerable & somewhat self-enclosed. Not that I don’t make out (probably as much as anyone else). The one problem with sex after sixty is, if you have high blood-pressure, and take pills for it, that inhibits the engorgement of the organ with blood, & it’s hard to get a full erection. That’s a conflict, between lowering blood pressure and erotic potency.

I’d like to do what Whitman was talking about with perfect personal candor, break down that barrier between public & private speech. In private, people are more candid and open, but public speech tends to be more bureaucratic, with buzz-words & glossing over things & evading the point. Like Elliott Abrams testifying in Congress. [sic] Like (William) Blake said –“A truth told with bad intent/beats all the lies you can invent”.

The PMRC [sic] are the ones saying how great it was that the L(os) A(ngeles) D(istrict) A(ttorney) was for busting Jello Biafra, who is, after all, a poet. That’s only one instance of a seamless web of restriction of communication, that runs in every direction & comes from the Neo-Conservatives. There’s this kind of retrograde legislation everywhere. It’s harder to get files under the Freedom of Information Act now. The CIA has started its dirty tricks again, with secret manipulations of secret wars. The government is now trying to make non-governmental scientists submit their research papers to government censorship before publishing . They’ve extended the FCC’s (sic) seven-word doctrine up to Ulysses. You can’t broadcast “Howl” on the radio anymore, either. They’re trying to roll the clock back & I don’t think they can get away with it – [at this moment, a dog starts yelping outside]

They’re forcing people to testify against themselves & getting kids to fink on their parents, like they used to in Stalinist Russia, (and the Republicans want them to be proud of being patriotic Americans), like the kids in Maoist China, when they denounced their parents. Then there’s the destruction of the individual family farm, which used to be the symbol of rock-ribbed Republican virtue.

So when you look all the way down the line, instead of getting government off our backs like they promised to do, they’ve gotten government on our backs in the most literal way imaginable, spying on your private acts of sex & declaring sodomy illegal. There couldn’t be anything more restrictive on the freedom of communication than that.

This is all in addition to escalating the national debt beyond anyone’s wildest imagination with this hyper-militarization, after coming in on a platform of balancing the budget. It’s a cancer on our nation. Now they’re packing the Supreme Court with these odd-balls who really don’t believe in the First Amendment and think the Bill of Rights is wimpy, “not strong enough to control the niggers”, or something. It’s a black-out on communication, up to and including censorship of literature. This from the people promising libertarianism and a free market.

It’s so obviously paradoxical & contrary, like the Mad Hatter scenes from Alice in Wonderland that nobody notices it. Finally, it starts falling apart on its own because it is so contradictory. Like telling everybody not to send arms to Iran, while they’re secretly doing it all along. Then they ignore the World Court’s decision on Nicaragua, while yakking about how we’ve got to live in a world of law and order. They’re breaking the law everywhere.

So there’s not only a black-out of communication, but confusion of actual communication by double-talk. There are“Peace-keeper” missiles now, the Contras are “Freedom-fighters”. It’s just an abusive distortion of language for a sly P(ublic) R(elations) gimmick to hypnotize gullible citizens with no historical memory.

The great thing about rock ‘n roll was that it was an expression of personal opinion that could alter the culture. Then it got absorbed by the mainstream, so now you have your bubblegum music again. The Washington wives (of the PMRC) aren’t attacking the industry itself which is dominated by local promotion men using cocaine and money to pay off dee-jays. They’re attacking the last bastion of marginal, alternative, non-monolithic, expression, these bands on the fringes like the Dead Kennedys, they’re not attacking the big companies, they’re attacking these little independents that can’t fight back.

It’s an interesting pass in American history. I think it’s coming to an end with the destruction of Reagan’s schemes – this Contra-diction (the Buddhist image of that is of a serpent uncoiling in mid-air). It’s all self-destructing, Nobody attacked Reagan, but it was just so bold-face contradictory that it would have to come out sooner or later. Same thing withThe Bakkers (sic – JimandTammy Faye Bakker’s evangelical scandal), the sort of hypocrites Sinclair Lewis denounced back in 1929, in his novel Elmer Gantry, about a rapacious born-again evangelist on the make for money. That sort of stuff was passé back in the (19)30’s, & how it came back, like some weird form of syphilis, I don’t know,

I never had any difficult dependencies on alcohol like he did, & he died at forty-seven. Also, I never had as much denunciation & poison poured on my work as (Jack) Kerouac did. When his first books came out, he was denounced as “un-American” and a jerk. People said it wasn’t writing, it was typing, because he was altering the tender American heart. He realized that what he had to offer was put down so viciously because of some really great pain in America & in the world. As Gregory Corso said, when the nation sickens, what happens to the singer of the nation?

But most of the poets and writers from that period have held up rather well, like Gary Snyder and William Burroughs, who continue to have a huge technical & linguistic influence on punk & new wave bands. So I would say (that) the life-expectancy for Beat poets is probably better than for most insurance salesmen. There’s always a few who burn out young and gloriously (or ingloriously).

My old works are still relevant , and they’re more popular than ever. As far as I’m concerned, the newer works are ripened . That’s why I’ve been able to work with (Bob) Dylan and The Clash. Poetry is always relevant to the extent that it’s intelligence of language. This overlay of Buddhist meditation classicism makes it twice as rich, maybe more permanently relevant than the spontaneous naïve lyricism. Now I’m a wise old lyricist, an old dog lyricist, & that’s very hard to get.

(DM (How would you like to be remembered?)

AG: I keep getting asked that. I’d like my poems to be remembered. My ambition is to write something so memorable people will remember them like I remember lines of Whitman or (W.B.) Yeats. I haven’t done it yet with any complete poems. Maybe a line, like the opening of “Howl”, or some fragments from “Kaddish”. (Bob) Dylan has written whole verses and songs that people remember. That’s really important, because books fade and paper turns to dust, but memory stays & is transmitted from generation to generation. ”Sticks and stones may break my bones/ but words will never hurt me”.You don’t need a book to get that one. People remember it from generation to generation, without a book.

It’s about getting something that sticks in the mind because it’s so pithy & rhythmic & full of suggestion. That’s what I’d like to be remembered through. Maybe for a photograph or two? – and the lyrics for “Father Death Blues”? - In Hungary, there may be a hundred thousand kids who know the words to that song in Hungarian!

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Haiku 5 (Śrāvaka Buddha)

May 18, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Haiku - 6 (More Haiku)

≪ Previous: David Menconi's Allen Ginsberg Interview part 2

[Hanging scroll of an Indian Buddhistarhat by Japanese painter, Shiba Kokan (1747-1818)]

AG: Then there's the Śrāvaka Buddha as part of the Hinayana. The guy who just meditates for himself and never gets out of it into the bodhisattvapath. So there's an old Chinese poem deriding an aged monk for worshipping the sutras, for worshipping the books themselves.

“Burning incense, lighting tapers/ a white-haired old monk is chanting the ten-thousand-Buddha’s-names Sutra/ For how many years has he been drinking the wine of Śrāvaka/Up to now he’s never wakened from his stupor.”

The Śrāvaka buddhas are the buddhas who get into samadhi states, meditative states, calm, tranquility samadhi states and just get stuck there, without ever moving out into action or into the world or giving those states up for the benefit of other sentient beings.

Student: Shah-lock-ah?

AG: Śrā-vak-a

Student: Śrāvaka

AG: Śrāvaka Buddha is a sort of buddha who gets up into a samadhi meditative state and never steps out of himself to do anything for anybody else. Or, as Robert Creeleysaid in one of his early poems [ "The Immoral Proposition"] - "If you never do anything for anybody else you are spared the pain of existence." Does anybody know how that goes? "If you never do anything for anybody else you're spared the…."

Bobbie Louise Hawkins (Creeley's ex-wife is in the audience): "... you're spared the pain of human relation-/ships."

AG: Yeah. "You are spared the pain of human relationships.""If you never do anything for anybody else, you're spared the pain of human relationships," if that's what you want. "If you never do anything for anybody else.." - that's the Śrāvaka Buddha

So, “For how many years has he been drinking the wine of Śrāvaka/ Up to now he's never wakened from his stupor.” – [(Actually, the wine of vanity, in a sense)].

↧

Haiku - 6 (More Haiku)

May 19, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Haiku - 7 (Haiku - continued)

≪ Previous: Haiku 5 (Śrāvaka Buddha)

[Shinsui Ito (1898-1972) - wood-block print - Night Rain at Mii Temple (1917)]

AG: So this is obviously one proceeding from meditative state, now.

“Rain at Night”

A cricket chirps and is silent
the guttering lamp sinks and flares up again
Outside the window, evening rain is heard
It’s the banana plant that starts talking about it.
It’s the banana plant that speaks of it first

The morning after the gale, too
the peppers are red..

[(the green peppers, or peppers growing on the vine)]

The morning after the gale, too/the peppers are red.

The first snow
just enough to bend
the leaves of the daffodils

[Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) wood-block print from "The Fifty Three Stages of the Tokaido (1833)]

[That’s typical of (William Carlos) Williams, that style or that kind of observation. Williams and (Ezra) Pound did begin to derive from haiku (We’ve got to remember that Pound translated some Chinese and Japanese poetry and did actually try to work on haiku, around the turn of the century.)]

Who is it that grieves?
The wind blowing through his beard
for late autumn.

[You might say that’s an Objectivist poem in the sense that it’s the thought in the mind of the observer, but it’s sort of (an) impersonal observer looking at his own impersonal self]

Who is it that grieves?
The wind blowing through his beard
for late autumn

A flying squirrel
is crunching a small bird
on the withered moor.

The moon,
coming back with me from the mountains
entered the gate together with me.

[That’s so sort of subtle. There’s a lot of little things about distance and dealing with space, distance, actually – dealing with the sensation of space using moon as coordinate – or scarecrow as coordinate. I think there’s a haiku.]

Walking through the autumn moor
the scarecrow
walked with me

[That is a common observation (from) walking – a distant object seems to move – which conjures up the sensation of space, without having to yatter about space all the time.

Now this is a little Wordworth-ian.I think I had mentioned “green to the very door”. Have we worked on that? Yes.]

Ivy creeps
over the wooden door
under the evening moon

[Ivy creeps/ over the wooden door/ under the evening moon – Because, first of all, you’ve got the whole human-garden-house relationship, where ivy.. or perhaps nobody (is) there in the house – “Ivy creeps/over the wooden door”. But the ivy under the moon? So there are a couple of space coordinates. Let’s see, there’s the small ivy, there’s the moon, there’s the silence. So you get a silence, you get a spaciousness from the moon to the door.]

Student: Opposites.

AG: Yeah. You get the opposites. You get all the opposites. But my own insight constantly is that the space is the key. Like in (Paul) Cezanne. It’s the reconstruction of a little sensation of space, (which, in his canvases, Cezanne pointed out as pater omnipotens aeterna deus– eternal father omnipotent – eternal god – but some eternal quality of space itself, which is silent), which is constantly conjured up in these by using coordinates within space to present the space, without referring directly to the space, because, as Francine said,(there’s) the space itself or there is something that is not nameable. You could call it space, but by presenting sharply defined objects in relation within it you do conjure it up. It’s that same space that we practice appreciation of by meditation – through breath flowing out into space, mixing mind with breath, mixing mind, mixing breath with space, mixing mind with space. So that every breath becomes a haiku – Yes?

Student: Also a sense of time, too.

AG: Yes. Well..
Student: (Like the ivy on that) house...
AG: Yes
Student: (..seems to be in this poem)
AG: Oh, in this, yes.
Student: (Emptiness in time?)
AG: Yeah, Well, maybe the time.. the emptiness there of nobody there anymore, perhaps So, a long time gone since that house was dwelt in.
There is space and there is time.

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Haiku - 7 (Haiku - continued)

May 20, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Haiku - 8 (Haiku continued part 2)

≪ Previous: Haiku - 6 (More Haiku)

Meeting, the two old friends laugh aloud
In the grove, the fallen leaves are many.

Packed in and sleeping with others
Again getting up from this night’s lodging.

The wandering poet, Basho, describing his own empty wanderings - "Packed in and sleeping with others/Again getting up from this night’s lodging".

(R.H.) Blyth, who was the author of this, suggests a number of qualities, such as space (and) time, which are, for him, the empty subjects, so to speak, the empty subjects ofhaiku– selflessness, loneliness, grateful acceptance, wordlessness, non-intellectuality, contradictoriness, thus humor, freedom from conceptions, non-morality, simplicity, materiality – those are the eleven – a series of eleven themes or aspects of the emptiness suggested by the haiku.

Standing still
the voices of frogs
heard in the distance too

Standing still
the sound of car tires
heard on Marine Street

That’s a common experience, that standing still..

And then there’s a Chinese poem, quoted to back up his contention about the empty forms - or the different forms of emptiness, the different aspects of emptiness. It’s called “Evening Quiet”

"Evening Quiet".

Early cicadas stop their trilling

[(Cicadas – locusts)]

Early cicadas stop their trilling

Points of light, new fireflies pass to and fro.

The taper burns clear and smokeless;

Beads of bright dew hang on the bamboo mat.

I won't go into the house to sleep yet

But walk awhile underneath the leaves.

The rays of the moon slant into the low veranda.

The cool breeze fills the tall trees.

Letting loose the feelings, life flows on easily.

The scene entered deep into my heart.

What is the secret of this state?

To have nothing small on one's mind.

With the bull on board,

a small boat passes across the river

through the evening rain.

That's a sort of Kerouac-ian powerful one - "With the bull on board,/a small boat passes across the river/through the evening rain".

Another, sort of Objectivist style:

Along this road

no one goes

this autumn eve.

Well, somebody had to go through there to notice that - "Along this road/no one goes/

this autumn eve".

Then, regarding change, and some element of grateful acceptance of change:

Blowing from the west

fallen leaves

gather in the east.

The grasses of the garden

they fall

and lie as they fall.

Or lie as they fall, or lie where they fall. Wherever they fall, they lie where they fall.

The heavy wagon

rumbles by

peonies quiver

I used some similar thing in"Wales Visitation" poem, speaking of my own breath; my own breath trembling in white daisies by the roadside.

Summer lightning

yesterday in the East

today in the West.

In the vast inane

there is no back and front.

In the vast inane

there is no back and front.

Summer lightning

yesterday in the East

today in the West.

Peter Orlovsky: What does "inane" mean?

AG: Can somebody define "inane"? Somebody define "inane" to Peter Orlovsky.

((and) can somebody give me a cigarette?) - Inane?

Student: (Inanity)

Student (2): Making no sense.

Student (3): Harmless.

Student (4): Heartless, meaningless.

AG: Is there a classics major in the house?

Student: Yes.

AG: What is it? What's the root? What's the root?

Student: Benign.

AG: And what does that mean?

Student: Without substance.

AG: Without substance.

Student: Yeah.

AG: …I want to go back, because it recurs in the book, but it's.. just right now..

They spoke no word:

the visitor, the host

and the white chrysanthemum.

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Haiku - 8 (Haiku continued part 2)

May 21, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: The Essential Ginsberg

≪ Previous: Haiku - 7 (Haiku - continued)

[Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)]

I'm halfway through this book [R.H.Blyth – Haiku – Volume 1], so actually I could zap through the chief haikuof this book, according to about twenty years of reading and re-reading, before we're done.

Do most of you know these particular ones? Is there anybody that knows these already?

Student 1: Yes.

Student 2: Yeah, some of them.

AG: Some? From these translations?

Student 1: (Some)

AG: (But) the vast majority (doesn't) - so I'd really like to [continue]. Because they're so dear, so perfect crystal clear. [These are the] precious ones and they're part of the vocabulary of Gary SnyderandPhilip Whalen, (Jack) Kerouac, myself, and many other people. I'd like to lay these all out because they're part of the basic armamentarium of modern poetry -- at least among the San Francisco Buddhist-influence school -- and appropriate to our sitting silent listening. (So), page 205 - Have you heard these at all?

Student 2 : Some of them.

AG: Well, this is a terrific [one]. This one is one of the central ones of all:

How admirable

he who doesn't think life is fleeting

when he sees the lightning.

How admirable/he who doesn't think life is fleeting/when he sees the lightning.

That's always been, for me, one of the best reference points for cutting off conceptual blather.

This for space, as well as silliness. That it's looseness of mind -- a fine silliness, or humor of a kind.

A handle on the moon

what a splendid fan.

That is putting up a handle - A handle on the moon/what a splendid fan.

The women planting the rice.

Everything about them dirty

except their song.

Having slept,

the cat gets up and with great yawns

goes out lovemaking

The next few will be those I read to those who met with me in the credit course.

Asking the way

all the bamboo hats

move together.

[Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) - from "32 Aspects of Customs and Manners"- Looking Suitable (1888)]

The fan seller

pulled one out

showing how to fan oneself.

Peddling [or] pushing the fans. So eager. A totally personal thing. That's one, I think, that's from a painting or a brush drawing to begin with. It's a tiny littleDickens novel, actually. The fan seller/pulled one out/showing how to fan oneself. In anxiety, to peddle the fans.

So what's not mentioned is that element -- like the frog jumping in the water with the sound of the water -- the anxiety. Simply, the action presented carries the generalization that might be made that there is anxiety by the poor, poverty-stricken, hungry little fan seller, so much so that she's developed all these life tricks or peddler's tricks or anxious moments to sell the fan.

This in the realm of one that I noticed, which is - [Louis Zukofsky's] "sight is where the eye hits" - I had a haiku myself after a long meditation ... let's see.

Snow mountain fields

seen through transparent wings of a fly

on the windowpane.

Snow mountain fields/seen through transparent wings of a fly/on the windowpane. That means you're observing actually so sharply you're actually looking and seeing what you can see through the wings of a fly on a windowpane.

By daylight,

the nape of the neck of the firefly

is red.

That's Basho.

And then a little extension of that:

The snake slid away

but the eyes that glared at me

remained in the grass.

A brushwood gate

for a lock

this snail.

Then, the following would probably be in the Vajrayanaarea, in a sense of turning what would be considered ugliness to beauty. Uguisu is a traditional bird with a very sweet sound that's mentioned in haiku.

The Uguisu

poops

on the slender plum branch.

And there's a parallel one, which [would] again be the Vajrayanic transformation of poison to nectar.

The young girl

blew her nose

in the morning glory.

Actually it says - "The young girl/blew her nose/in the evening glory" (Another flower, less recognizable) - And there's another Basho haiku following that, referring to that:

Blowing my nose
on the blossom

Ah! the plum trees at their best.

Blowing my nose

on a plum blossoms.

Ah! the blossoms at their best.

I don't know. I don't know the exact formation of it, but Basho's commenting on wiping his snot, or blowing his nose. Yeah - "Wiping my snot/on the flowers/Ah! the plum blossoms at their best." - "Wiping my snot/on the flowers/Ah! the plum blossoms at their best."

That'sBasho. The most dignified and celebrated of haikumakers.

↧

The Essential Ginsberg

May 22, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Allen Ginsberg's FBI files

≪ Previous: Haiku - 8 (Haiku continued part 2)

Next Tuesday (May 26th) is the official publication-date for the new Allen Ginsberg book (published by HarperCollins in the United States and by Penguin in the United Kingdom and Australia) - The Essential Ginsberg(a vital - indeed, essential - 400-page plus compendium, covering the entire range of his art, skillfully edited by his biographer, Michael Schumacher- curiously, the first such one-volume survey).
Lawrence Ferlinghetti notes that it is "An intellectually impeccable selection, distilling Ginsberg as visionary mystic and dark prophet foretelling what people in power didn't want to hear". Michael McClure writes: "In these memory orchards Allen Ginsberg flashes from the divinely practical to inspired songs and factual revelations..They shine on the future". Anne Waldman wryly observes: "When planet earth is dust, The Essential Ginsberg will be one of the books to take to Mars to remember us by".
Here is the starred review that appeared in Library Journal:
"The work and not just the poetry of Ginsberg (1926-97), one of 20th-century America's most important and notorious literary figures has finally been given the career-arching overview it deserves. Schumacher (Dharma Lion) has compiled the poet's greatest hits into this volume, including the regularly-anthologized, "Howl", "Kaddish", "A Supermarket In California", "America", and "Kral Majales". What distinguishes this book from other posthumous Ginsberg collections is that it also presents small samples of his songwriting, essays, interviews, letters, journal excerpts, and understated photography. Ginsberg's position at the center of the Beat movement is made clear through Schumacher's selections which highlight his key relationships with Jack Kerouac,William S Burroughs,Neal Cassady, among others. Similarly, his involvementin the burgeoning American counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s is at the heart of many of these selections. By making this volume similar to the ones in Viking's "Portable Library"series, Harper Perennial has all but ensured the book's place in university classrooms for years to come. VERDICT: An essential starting-point for any reader encountering the artist's still-controversial work for the very first time."
and from Kirkus Review:
"A representative sampling from an iconic American poet. A prolific poet and political gadfly, Ginsberg (1926-1997) never wrote an autobiography, but he did keep journals, write letters to fellow poets, and reflect on his life and work in interviews and essays. Schumacher..Ginsberg's biographer, offers a well-chosen selection of his writings in this copious collection: 34 poems, including the famous "Howl" and "Kaddish"; 10 essays, including his testimony regarding LSD before a special Senate Judiciary Committee ; assorted journal entries from 1949 to 1969, several unpublished; two lengthy interviews; and a dozen letters to prominent Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Burroughs and Robert Creeley. Forthright about fueling his creativity with a cornucopia of drugs, Ginsberg expounds on his interest in "all states of consciousness": dreams, spiritual ecstasy, and "preconscious, quasi-sleep" states. BesidesEmerson,Thoreau, Whitmanand Blake, he cites as influences William James, especially Varities of Religious Experience, and the poetry of James' student Gertrude Stein. In an "Independence Day Manifesto"in 1959, he proclaimed that America "is having a nervous breakdown", intent on oppressing poets for their allegedly anti-social behavior. But in a country "gone mad with materialism, a police-state America, a sexless and soulless America", poetry offered solace and wisdom. "Poetry", he contended, "is the record of individual insights into the secret soul of the individual and…into the soul of the w orld". A few years later, he again chided Americans for living in a "mental dictatorship" of materialism and conformity. If his solution - everyone should try LSD once - seems capricious, his critique is likely to resonate with contemporary readers. Except for brief introductions to the journal entries, Schumacher allows the selections to stand alone as testimony to an often outrageous, groundbreaking poet and tireless social activist."

tomorrow! - Allen's Ginsberg FBI files!

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