Friday's Weekly Round-Up 222

June 12, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Allen Ginsberg's Top Ten Films - part 1

The Academy of American Poets, on the occasion of his 89th birthday, gave Allen a tribute (the key component of which is this wonderful video of him and Steven Taylor on the rooftop of his East 12th Street, East Village apartment, in his final year, 1997, performing "A Western Ballad"("the first song I ever wrote"). This video was produced and directed byLeita Luchetti as a part of the Poetry Breaks. series.

More kudos for Allen, he was posthumously inducted, in 2015, (alongside Isaac Asimov, Dawn Powell, Francine Prose, Colm Tóibín, children's book authorEzra Jack Keats and New Yorker editor,David Remnick) into the august New York State Writers Hall of Fame

- and Allen also recently received his "sainthood" (according to Antinous, the Gay God)!

The "Please Master" debate continues - (as far-reaching as India, for example - to give just one example). Interestingly, David Freedlander's Daily Beast piece got reprinted in the pages of the local paper, The Hartford Courant (not without eliciting a vitriolic intemperate letter-to-the editor - re "The filthy poem, Please Master..." (sic))

Here's another brief survey/review of the whole brouhaha - So just who is it defining "obscenity"? - and why?

- from "Why Allen Ginsberg Matters" - Regina Weinrich on the Essential Ginsberg -

"Rereading "Please Master" in the light of these current events, with its poeticized yet truthful yearnings should affect a compassionate response to human desire, for touch, connection, penetration, and fulfillment. No revulsion here. How bewildering it is to find a poem's truth-telling language threatening when the hypocrisies of government officials are exposed, those who violate young people physically, secretly, while legislating against gay rights. And that's just one example. As Allen Ginsberg would ask, which is the true obscenity?"
Read more of ReginaWeinrich's Huffington Post article here

We're always on the look-out for these - Ginsberg encounters - here's "The Swede" (actually in England), recalling Allen's generosity at a book-signing in 1994 in New York

Speaking of generosity, here's a generous review of last week's Glass-Ginsberg Hydrogen Jukebox performance by the Long Beach Opera

Here's Kyle Gann's review of Philip Glass's autobiography in the New York Times

Hilary Holladay's Herbert Huncke biography gets a new cover and new edition

Read more about that book here

Paul Nelson's Memorial Day Interview with Joanne Kyger(featuring audio - and focusing on her new book, On Time) may be foundhere

An excerpt from that book can be found on her City Lights page - and more on Joanne (from the Allen Ginsberg Project) here, here, here and here

Joanne's publisher, the indomitableLawrence Ferlinghetti is profiled (by NPR - "while he may have slowed down, he's still publishing three books (himself) this year") - here

One of those books (we've mentioned this before) being:

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Allen Ginsberg's Top Ten Films - part 1

June 13, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Allen Ginsberg's Top Ten Films - part 2

≪ Previous: Friday's Weekly Round-Up 222

Back in the 1980's (and, indeed, into the 1990's - and beyond?) Kim's Videos (on St Marks Place, later on Avenue A) was an essential part of Allen's New York East Village neighborhood. As Allen's upstairs neighbor, Richard Hell remarked (in a valedictory piece, in 2014, in the New York Times) - "The moment Kim's opened, it supplanted everything else in the area. It was so much better curated". Carefully arranged (via directors, via genres), mind-boggling comprehensive, it had... well, everything! Too expansive to keep up a regular (printed) catalog, there were one or two desultory attempts to map the terrain. On one occasion, Mr Kim, (or rather, his film-buff associates), hit upon the idea of asking local East Village luminaries to list their "ten favorite films", to fill up the back of what was already a hefty (and impressive) give-away volume. Among the luminaries they asked was Allen.

Here are his ten choices (we'll break them up into two sets of five over this weekend). As you'll see, it's not really a definitive set of ten, more just some contemporaneous musings (Allen had obviously been thinking about the French cinema, four out of five of the first five). The first two are by Jean Cocteau

From 1930, Le Sang d'un Poète (The Blood of the Poet).

Here's the trailer:

Here's the whole film:

The second of Allen's choices, Orphée, from 1950, is the second part of Cocteau's Orpheus trilogy (the third, and concluding part, the Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament d'Orphée) was not chosen, but we've no reason to suspect that Allen held it in other than equal esteem)

The third of Allen's French choices (from the same year as Le Sang d'un Poète)

Julian Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (starring Jean Gabin):

Et aussi (from 1945), Marcel Carné's classic Les Enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise)

The fifth and final (and only non-French film) in this set is a little closer-to-home, Ron Rice's classic "Beat" film (from 1960), The Flower Thief (starring Taylor Mead)

Here's a spread on the film fromJonas Mekas'Film Culture

Here's an hommage to the unjustly forgotten Ron Rice

The remaining five movies will be listed tomorrow.

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Allen Ginsberg's Top Ten Films - part 2

June 14, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Naropa Summer Writing Program, 2015

≪ Previous: Allen Ginsberg's Top Ten Films - part 1

Continuing fromyesterday's listing of "Allen Ginsberg's Top Ten films". We begin today with the very earliest that he cites, Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 Броненосец«Потемкин» Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkin)

The Franco-centric nature of Allen's choices we've remarked upon already - two Jean Cocteaus and two Marcel Carnés. This is the second one of Carné's, his classic 1938 film noir, Le Quai Des Brumes (Port of Shadows)

et aussi français - Jean Renoir's 1937 La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion)

To conclude with two more closer-to-home. The first, Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's "Pull My Daisy". We've spotlighted that Beat classic several times before- likehere.

Here it is again:

and we've also spotlighted many times the extraordinary Harry Smith - (here, here, here, here, here andhere, for example).

Here's Allen's final choice, his utterly remarkable Heaven and Earth Magic

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Naropa Summer Writing Program, 2015

June 15, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Mexico City Blues - 4

≪ Previous: Allen Ginsberg's Top Ten Films - part 2

It's that time of the year again. This week sees the beginning of the 2015 Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Summer Writing Program

"The Summer Writing Program is a four-week-long convocation of students, poets, fiction writers, scholars, translators, performance artists, activists, Buddhist teachers, musicians, printers, editors and others working in small press publishing. Programming includes workshops, lectures, panels, readings, special events and more."

This years's theme - "The Braided River - Activist Rhizome" - the four weeks being broken down as, week one - "Disparities, Exigencies, Identity, Language", week two, "Who am I when I dream: Philo-poetics", week three - "The Activist Rhizome", week four - "Sangha, Cross Worlds, Common Ground"

Among the highlights (but there are so many highlights.. for a full scheduling of the programming, download the catalog - here) - Joanne Kyger -"Writing in Dream Time",
Eileen Myles - "Gender/Genre", Bernadette Mayer and Philip Good - "Don't Get Mad, Write A Poem", Steven Taylor - "Songworks", Margaret Randall - "Writing from Global Consciousness and Personal Experience", Thurston Moore - "Composed on The Tongue", Anne Waldman -"Entanglement: Co-Existence in a Dark Time" - and, keenly anticipated, our particular favorite, Clark Coolidge-on-Allen Ginsberg - "Allen Ginsberg - Poet"
- "Time to take a close look at the life's work of one of the founders of the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. His influences, his evolving fascinations and procedures, his innovations in the long line and the long poem. We'll consider all his major works plus many others unsung but deserving. A chance to engage with the overall poetic accomplishment of one of the last century's great poetic forces"

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Mexico City Blues - 4

June 16, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Mexico City Blues - 5

≪ Previous: Naropa Summer Writing Program, 2015

[Jack Kerouac in a Merchant Marine cap - c.1944]

[Dexter Gordon, resting. New York City, 1949 - Photograph by Herman Leonard]

[Charlie Mingus, Roy Haynes, Thelonious Monkand Charlie Parker at The Open Door, New York City, 1953]

[Dizzy Gillespie- New York City, 1948 - Photograph by Herman Leonard]

[William Shakespeare]

[Allen Ginsberg's examination of Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues continues]

AG: [Mexico City Blues – 42^nd Chorus]:

“POEM WRITTEN ON A SAILBOAT/ It’s a powerful sock powerful/Mock powerful breeze blowin/Across this leeward shirsh/Of fought waters thrashin/Up to spit on the deck/Of Heroing Man,/Ah, as we sail the jibboom/Upon the va va voom.And Saltpeter’s her petter/Again, the Larceny Commission’ll/Hear of this, fight the lawyers,/Upset the silly laws, anger/the/hare/brain/bird/of/wine/in this railroad tam o shanter/Commemorative termagent/Able to dissect such tycoon/Burpers outa their B movies’/investment in Black./’Bop”/ Even on a sailboat/I end up writin bop”

[43^rd Chorus]

“Mexico City Bop/I got the buck bop/I got the floogle mock/I got the thiri chiribim/bitchy bitchy/batch batch/ Chippely bop/ Noise like that/ Like fallin off porches/Of Tenement Petersburg/Russia Chicago O Yay./ Like, when you see,/the trumpet kind, horn/shiny in his hand, raise/it in smoke among heads/he bespeaks, elucidates,/explains and drops out,/end of chorus, staring/at the final wall/where in Africa/the old men petered/out on their own account/using their own immemorial/ Salvation Mind/ SLIPPITY BOP”

Does that make sense to anyone? Actually, it makes perfect sense to me at this point. He’s just playing – “Mexico City Bop/I got the buck bop/I got the floogle mock/I got the thiri chiribim/bitchy bitchy/batch batch/ Chippely bop/ Noise like that..” – “Noise like that” – That’s a comment – “Noise like that”. Then he says how easy it is – “Like fallin off porches/Of Tenement Petersburg/Russia Chicago O Yay” – Easy to fall off a log, falling off a porch – or the sound of drunkards “fallin off porches in tenement Chicago, St Petersburg,Russia – Then he explains again that it’s like the bebop, like the black musicians in America in night clubs and that’s just like the mind-thoughts and excellent intelligences of old men in Africa, leaning against the wall, waiting to die, with their own salvation and intelligences. So – “..when you see,/the trumpet kind” – the trumpet player, the kind of trumpet players, the trumpet kind – “..horn/shiny in his hand, raise/it in smoke among heads/he bespeaks, elucidates,/explains and drops out,/end of chorus, staring/at the final wall/where in Africa/the old men petered/out on their own account/using their own immemorial/ Salvation Mind/ SLIPPITY BOP” – Is that perfectly clear? I want to make one thing perfectly clear. Is that clear or (does) that sound like nonsense. It is nonsense. It’s clear nonsense. It’s clearly nonsense, that is, certain elements of it are clearly nonsense, and he’s talking about the nonsense of the mind, or the sub-sense of the mind, or the senses of the mind that make some kind of funny sense, archetypally – certainly make good sound, good rhythm, and actually symbolized the benevolent indifferent sentience, ease, and leisurely relaxed open-mindedness of old African men dying in a wall, with their own minds, not worried, like Americans.

[44^th Chorus]

“Waves of cantos and choruses/And lilypads of anything/Like flying carpets that are/nowhere/And all’s bugged with the scene –‘ Ah I wish I could fight out/Of this net of mistakes/And anxieties among others/Who wait in my silence/Till I end up my work/Which never began and/Never will end – hah -/Bespeak thyself not, soft spot,/ Aurorum’s showed his Mountain/Top/of Eastern be Western morning/To indicate by Moon Magic/Constellative Stardom/of/Gazers/in Mock Roman/Arabian Kimonos,/the lay of the pack/in the sky” – He was reading Shakespeare’s Sonnetsprobably, and he picked up a little Shakespeare sound there – “Bespeak thyself not, soft spot,/ Aurorum’s showed..” – it’s something from Macbeth, where the dawn is coming, or dawn is flattering the (mountain-tops), the silence, where dawn flatters the mountain-tops – “Aurorum’s showed his Mountain/Top/of Eastern be Western..” – from East(ern) be West(ern) – going towards the West – “of Eastern be Western morning/To indicate by Moon Magic/Constellative Stardom/of/Gazers/in Mock Roman/Arabian Kimonos..” – “Roman/Arabian Kimonos..” – the Arabs were the inventors of astronomy (for modern days, anyway) –.” Gazers/in Mock Roman/Arabian Kimonos,/the lay of the pack/in the sky” – “(M)y work/Which never began and/Never will end” – I suppose he’s comparing (himself) to the vast Arabian astronomers and their kimonos, looking up at the sky, trying to figure out the constellations.

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Mexico City Blues - 5

June 17, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Mexico CIty Blues - 6

≪ Previous: Mexico City Blues - 4

Allen on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues

[49^thChorus]

“They got nothing on me/at the university/Them clever poets/of immensity..” – That’s very funny, actually – “Them clever poets /of immensity” – “With charcoal suits/and charcoal hair/And green armpits…” – “Green armpits” – that’s because when we introduced Gregory Corso to John Clellon Holmes and he read some of Gregory’s early poetry, Holmes, who was a mid-town sophisticate, said, “Oh he writes green armpit poetry”. I guess you all know “green armpit poetry”. (There’s) much of it written around here [at Naropa]. It’s a whole genre of poetry, of beginning poets. But – “They got nothing on me/at the university/Them clever poets/of immensity/ With charcoal suits/and charcoal hair/And green armpits/and heaven ait/And cheques to balance/my account/in Rome benighted/by White Russians/Without care who puke/in windows/Everywhere./ They got nothing on me/ ‘Cause I’m dead/ They can’t surpass me/’Cause I’m dead/And being dead/I hurt my head/And now I wait/Without hate/For my fate/To estate” – i.e., no more ambition, no literary ambition, just pure mind, pure truthful mind. Yes?

Student : How is this different from what you would label as doggerel?

AG: There are elements of doggerel, but it’s handled so.. actually, it come so funny, it’s almost Emily Dickinson doggerel-esque. “And being dead/I hurt my head” - Quite literal - And now I wait/Without hate/For my fate/To estate” – It’s quite sensible.It makes a lot more sense than most doggerel. His fate has estated in this room. His fate has estated, that’s the funny part. It’s prophetic. But he’s not sure either.

So he says, in the 50^th Chorus – “Maybe I’m crazy, and my parts/Are scattered still – didn’t gather/’em when form was passin out/The window of the giver ,/So I’m looking for derangement/To bring me landward back/Through logic’s cold moon air/Where water everywhere/Appears from magic gems/And Asphasiax, the Nymph/of India by the Sea/Dances princely mincing/churly jargots/in the oral eloquent air/ of tents’/Canopied majesty/Ten thousand Buddhas/Hiding Everywhere - /How can I be crazy/Even here?/ - or wait/Maybe I’m an Agloon/doomed to be spitted/on the igloo stone/of Some North mad.” – Typical schizophrenic trip. “Maybe I’m an..” have you ever felt like “an Agloon/doomed to be spitted/on the igloo stone/of Some North mad.”? – I don’t know how he gets it but it sounds to me totally archetypal, like anybody’s thought of how weird they themselves are in relation to other people. Some kind of goofy,lonely, ignu Eskimo doomed to starve on a whale spit, on a whale spear “of Some North mad.”

They’re funny. Actually, just the ordinary thoughts of an ordinary mind, saying, “Maybe I’m crazy or maybe I’m not crazy or maybe I’m “Agloon in the gloom”, you know? That’s the same thing you get in the bathroom when you’re taking a shit - “How am I?” - It’s archetypal self-reflections (which most people hide because they seemed too goofy, but by revealing them of himself), Kerouac gave permission to other people to realize their own natural ordinary mind idiocy.

Student: It’s being sensitive to the quirks of your mind

AG: Exactly.. Yes, exactly. Sensitive to the quirks of your own mind – the quirkiness. And, in this case, since he was such a language man, sensitive to the quirkiness of his own language – to both the mind-image and the language (I think they came simultaneously with him)

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Mexico CIty Blues - 6

June 18, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 223

≪ Previous: Mexico City Blues - 5

[Henry Luce]

["…And nobody cares how you hang/ Your spaghetti wash…"]

[Louis Armstrong]

[T.S.Eliot]

["..I want to go and live in the desert.."]

["...One Thousand/Two hundred and fifty/Men/Sitting around a grove/of trees/Outsida town/right now/ With Buddha/is their leader/Discoursing in the middle,/Sitting lotus posture…"]

Allen's notations on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues

[51^stChorus]

“America is a permissible dream” – This is in (19)53, and Henry Luce was writing about the “American Century”, and Henry Luce was having lunch with John Foster Dullesevery week in Washington, and spreading the basic CIA moral American line through Timemagazine and the Luce Empire, and so everybody was thinking, “America, America” – big deal – “American Century”. (So) Kerouac’s 1952-53 comment – “America is a permissible dream,/Providing you remember ants/Have Americas and Russians/Like the Possessed have Americas/And little Americas are had/By baby mules in misty fields/And it is named after Americus/Vespucci of sunny Italy,/And nobody cares how you hang/Your spaghetti wash/On the Pasta Rooftops/Of Oh Yawn Opium/Fellaheen Espagna/Olvierto Milano/Afternoon, when man/gamble & ramble & fuck/and women watch the wash/with one eye on the grocer boy/and one eye on the loon/and one eye/in the universe/is Tathagata’s/Transcendental/orb of balloon" - Emptiness. Balloon is Sunyatahere.” – It’s very funny. Tis is 1953, now, that he’s got pasta rooftops of Olvierto Milano/ Afternoon” – “Olvierto Milano/Afternoon” – “Olvierto”? – I don’t know what Olvierto was, in those days, what reference Olvierto was (but I bet it was an Olivetti typewriter)

Onward to further poems about poetry:

[63^rdChorus]

“Rather gemmy,/Said the King of Literature/Sitting on a davenport/at afternoon butler’s tea./ Rather gemmy, hm,/ Always thought these sonnets/Of mine were rather gemmy,/As you say,/ pureperfect gems/of lucid poetry/ Poetry being what it is today/ Rather gemmy, I concluded/ thinking you were right -/ it isn’t my fault that Buddha/gave me helmet.Of Right Thought, and indices/of long Saints/To Cope my Lope along/with,/Seeing I never had harm/from anything/But a Heavenly Farm.”

[64^thChorus]

“I’d rather die than be famous/I want to go live in the desert/With long wild hair, eating,/At my campfire, full of sand,/Hard as a donut/Cooked by Sand/The Pure Land/ Moo Land/Heavenland Righteous/sping/the thing/ I’d rather be in the desert sand,/Sitting legs crossed, at lizard/High noon, under a wood/Board shelter, in the Dee Go/Desert, just west of L.A,/Or even Chihucha dry/Zackatakies, High Guadalajara,/ - absence of phantoms/make me ni o king - / rather go in the high lone land/of plateau where you can hear/at night the zing of silence/from the halls of Assembled.”

He was constantly preoccupied by shabda– sounds – the zing of silence, and the sounds coming into the window of the mind through the ear, which is the phrase he uses in the opening line of “Old Angel Midnight”, which is a lot of rapping and bopping on pure sound (actually, the sound of a friend, Lucien Carr, the sound of his voice, the sound of his kind of St Louis-New York newspaper-ese drunken talk). That was “Old Angel Midnight”’s characteristic.

[65^thChorus]

“To understand what I’m sayin/You gotta read the Sutras,/The Sutras of the Ancients, India/Long ago, when campfires at night/Across the Rahuan River/Showed lines of assembled bo’s.. “ – Hobos? Bodhisattvas? - “Showed lines of assembled bo’s/With bare feet bare the naked/Right shoulders of the passing houris/Sravasti late at night, tinkle/Goes the Indian Dancinggerl - / There’s One Thousand/Two hundred and fifty/Men/Sitting around a grove/of trees/Outsida town/right now/ With Buddha/is their leader/Discoursing in the middle,/Sitting lotus posture,/Hands to the sky,/Explaining the Dharma/in a sutra so high” – It ended in doggerel, right? – “In a sutra so high” – It’s a very funny projected imagination of what it would have been like with one hundred and twenty five thousand hippies listening to Buddha outside of Sravasti (Sravasti, where Buddha discoursed). So there goes the Indian dancing girl! – Probably quite correct. That was probably exactly what was going on there. Why not? – “Sitting around a grove/of trees/Outsida town/right now” – I’m just trying to check through the things that are exemplary of pure poetry”

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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 223

June 19, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Mexico City Blues Readings

≪ Previous: Mexico CIty Blues - 6

[Rosebud Feliu-Pettet (1946-2015) and Allen Ginsberg]

Rose "Rosebud" Feliu-Pettet, a long-time friend of Allen's, author ofthe definitive account of Allen's passing, passed away herself this week. She'd been suffering from a particularly virulent form of cancer, bile duct cancer.She was 69

For more of Rosebud on Allen - see here: "Well, I met Allen a long time ago, about 1964, I was living in this crazy dinky kind of collective called Kerista, a sort of benign Manson family [sic] . There were about eighteen people living in a store front on Ludlow Street [on New York's Lower East Side], and one day Allen came by…I didn't have a clue who he was, although I'd read Howland been wildly impressed, so when this oddball beard guy appeared & was so sweet, I got down & laughed & sat on his lap & tickled (him) and asked him his name. Allen was pretty surprised I think that some school girl liked him, just for being a fine guy." "So, he said, "If you ever need a place to stay, come over to my flat", (5th Street then and Avenue C), and I did, for a year or two. He was always like Uncle Allen, the guy you borrow a cup of sugar from down the hall. Sweet. But he worked always, hard, every day. Locked in the bedroom. Refuse(d) the phone - Wrote for two to three hours - Always reminded everyone to WRITE DOWN THEIR DREAMS"...
"I think of Allen at hisfarm in Cherry Valley, Allen in gumboots, Allen eager for rock & roll, Allen being considerate to all the folks who ask him for favors, Allen being a dirty dog with all the pretty boys. I love this guy"

Rosebud's account of her life with Harry Smith(she was his "spiritual wife") in Paola Igliori's American Magus - Harry Smith: A Modern Alchemistis also, it should be pointed out, essential reading.

[Rosebud Feliu-Pettet and Harry Smith]

and here's her in 2010, at the St Marks Poetry Project Memorial for Peter Orlovsky

Another "fan" of Allen's - the new U.S. Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera. From a profile piece this week in The Guardian:"When he (Herrera) speaks of Ginsberg now, it's in the reverent tones of a worshipper: "He didn't back up, he didn't shy away, he didn't censor himself, he wasn't afraid of his body, he wasn't afraid of being gay, he wasn't afraid of exposing what was not exposable in society…"
"He was right about the poem being a mind-breath, Herrera adds, "Each word depends on how your mind breathes." .

It's the Beatnik Shindig next Friday - Jerry Cimino's ambitious gathering takes place in San Francisco. For all the details of all the activities ("the largest Beat gathering in 20 years") go to BeatnikShindig.com.

Among the (many) highlights - Philip Hicks' talk, the psychiatrist who, back in 1955, gave Allen the green light ("How doctor helped Allen Ginsberg accept himself")

and 89-year-old Al Hinkle ("Big Ed Dunkle" inOn The Road), a "national treasure", a font of authentic Beat lore

[Allen Ginsberg and Al Hinckle]

Other participants include David Amram, David Meltzer, Jack Hirschman, Cathy, Jami & John Allen Cassady, ruth weiss - writers, scholars, performers - a whole bunch more.

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Mexico City Blues Readings

June 20, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Mexico City Blues - 7

≪ Previous: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 223

In 1996, Shambhala Publications (for their Shambhala Lion Editions) produced a two-cassette audiobook (that ran for just under three hours) - Allen reading the entire Mexico City Blues.

We've featured Allen reading from Mexico City Blues before (see this 1975 Naropa class - and, as we mentioned there, by way of contrast, a later, 1988 Mexico City Blues class)

Here's the first ten sections from the Shambhala recording

Here's Gregory Corso reading from Mexico City Blues

Johnny Deppreading from Mexico City Blues

Kerouac himself reading

and not forgetting this unforgettable Chorus - (211th Chorus - "The wheel of the quivering meat/ Conception")

So, a brief shout-out for that Shambhala audio. Hopefully it'll be back, back in circulation again real soon.

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Mexico City Blues - 7

June 22, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Jack Kerouac and Kenneth Patchen

≪ Previous: Mexico City Blues Readings

[Gore Vidal]

["Dem eggs & dem dem/Dere bacons"]

["..be boppy/be buddy/I didn’t took/I could think/So/bepo/beboppy.."]

[William Carlos Williams]

G: I’m just trying to check through the things (in Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues) that are exemplary of pure poetry

[74^thChorus]

“”Darling!”/Red hot,/That kind of camping/I don’t object to/unless it’s kept/within reason” – You got that? - “”Darling!”/Red hot,/That kind of camping/I don’t object to/unless it’s kept/within reason./ “The coffee is delicious.”/

This is for Vidal./ Didn’t know I was.a Come-Onner, did you? (Come-on-er)/ I am one of the world’s/Great Bullshitters,/Girls/ Very High Cantos.” – It’s whatever he thought.

[80^thChorus]

“This is about a kind of funny bebop complexity or bebop simplicity in poetry – 80^th Chorus – Goofing at the table with Bill Garver, actually. The situation was Bill Garver (was) in Mexico City, sharing an apartment at 220 Oruzaba Street, an old junkie retired from New York, who had a legal (prescription) for morphine in Mexico, and who had retired to live out his days there. Kerouac was living upstairs and would go down and visit Garver who was shooting-up, or just talking, or…

“GOOFING AT THE TABLE/ “You just don’t know.”/”What don’t I know?”/How good this ham n eggs/is/”If you had any idea/whatsoever/How good this is/Then you would stop/writing poetry/And dig in.”/ “It’s been so long/since I been hungry/it’s like a miracle”/Ah boy but them bacon/And them egg– /Where in the hell/is the scissor?/ SINGING: -“You’ll never know/just how much I love you.”

That’s the 80^th Chorus. So it’s dispersed mind, but it’s actual recollection of the things happening there.

[81^stChorus]

“Mr Beggar & Mrs Davy/Looney and CRUNEY,/I made a pome out of it,/Haven’t smoked Luney/& Cruney/in a Long Time./ Dem eggs & dem dem/Dere bacons, baby/if you only lay that/ down on a trumpet/Lay that down/solid brother/’Bout all dem/bacon & eggs/Ya gotta be able/to lay it doen/solid -/ All that luney/& fruney"

[82^ndChorus]

“Fracons, acons,& beggs,/Lay, it, all that/be boppy/be buddy/I didn’t took/I could think/So/bepo/beboppy/ Luney & Juney/ -if-/ that’s the way/ they get/ kinda hysterical/ Looney & Boony/Juner & Mooner/Moon, Spoon, and June.”

[83^rdChorus]

“Don’t they call them/ cat men/ That lay it down/with the trumpet/ The orgasm/Of the moon/And the June/ I call em/ them cat things/ William/Carlos/Williams” - He knew William Carlos Williams’ work and advanced on it into the mind. In other words, not merely vernacular thought but vernacular mind. So that’s why it ends – “I call em/ them cat things/ “That’s really cute, that un” – that one – that un – “That’s really cute,/ that un”, William /Carlos/ Williams.”

Bobbie Louise Hawkins [in attendance in the class]: (Did you make that up - "vernacular mind"?)

[Bobbie-Louise Hawkins]

AG; I just thought it up this minute. That is to say, Williams was working with actual speech as he heard it around him and arranged it. (He) composed his poems, as he says, of the elements of the speech as it is heard around. But he was primarily preoccupied with quotidian speech, or vernacular speech, or Rutherford (New Jersey) speech. Kerouac was more preoccupied with the quotidian mind, that is to say, the sounds in the ear, or the sounds in his head,

Bobbie Louise Hawkins: (What) is that word? - “quotidian”?

AG: Quotidian – Q-U-O-T-I-D-I-A-N – Everyday. Everyday mind, or, in Buddhists-speak, Ordinary Mind, i.e, what is actually happening in the mind and the stream of language that goes in and out of the mind, as in those early poems when he’s saying, “DON”T IGNORE OTHER PARTS/OF YOUR MIND/…when you’d let the faces/crack & mock/& yak & Change” – the “yakkety-yak” of the mind, the matter-babble behind the ear – “yak & change/& go mad utterly/in your night/firstmind/reveries” – as a baby. “Bo-bee-zabba-dooble-wee-blue-di-doo” [Allen parodies mind-language,scat singing] – Anything you do with it. The actual mind sounds, rather than the household sounds of Wiliams’, or the doctor’s sounds. So Kerouac was really preoccupied with the internal vernacular

Bobbie Louise Hawkins: So it’s like his mind is the locus of experience..

AG: Yes

Bobbie Louise Hawkins: ..and the source of his language

AG: Yes, rather than Rutherford (New Jersey). In that sense, I think, there was an advance over Williams (not over, but an advance from Wlliams’ base) because previous writing of that kind of gobbledygook nature, or Surrealist, or automatic, writing, or Dada had been senseless, but literary (rather than senseless, but painted after nature..sketched after nature). Jack was sketching after what-he-heard-in-his-mind-nature, His mind was Mont St.Victoire and he was constantly sketching Mont St Victoire, his brain was Mont St Victoire, so that he was constantly making paintings of (that), rather than the speech out of the mouth, in the street, So, as we were moving from, say, Objectivist,Imagist,1930’s clear lucid material world preoccupations to a later psychedelic, more internalized subjective exploration (in the) (19)50’s and (19)60’s, this was sort of like a signal…what do you call it? – graduation or move or evolution, in terms of his and others' preoccupations to what's going on inside my head.

↧

Jack Kerouac and Kenneth Patchen

June 23, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Keats, Shakespeare and Kerouac (A Query)

≪ Previous: Mexico City Blues - 7

Student: Would you put down Kenneth Patchen’s The Journal of Albion Midnightin that kind of [internalized subjective exploration] category?

AG: I haven’t read it in so long, but I think that The Journal of Albion Moonlight does not quite have as much central focus point. See, this whole book (Kerouac's Mexico City Blues) is about the mind and the language of the mind, the language that you hear in the mind. I don’t remember what the subject of.. Journal of Albion Moonlight was, but I have a feeling it was just quixotic thoughts, and quixotic, somewhat sterile, and Romantic literary stereotypes - or, more, like in William Saroyan, a certain amount of Romanticism that isn’t painted after the nature of the mind, so, a sort of idealistic Romanticism. But here, Kerouac (with elements of Saroyan too) has gone back to use the mind as source for

his babble, use the actual mind as source for his babble, rather than more conscious composition, I think. I’m not sure how you’d make the distinction. I have a feeling of Kerouac’s stuff that it’s real actual real-mind thoughts. I have a feeling about ..Journal of Albion Moonlight, that it’s more artificially literary – the original subject was not his actual consciousness. It wasn’t a graph of his consciousness, was it? (I may be wrong, because I haven’t read it in so long)

Student: Just journey and myth

AG: Journey and myth?

Student: Yeah

AG: Yeah, well, see, Kerouac wasn’t so much dealing with myth, except as it entered his mind at the moment of composition. Like “Sravasti midnight dancing girls in the moonlight with bare shoulders” - [(from 65th Chorus) – “Sravasti late at night, tinkle/Goes the Indian Dancinggirl”] – His subject wasn’t myth, the subject was the emptiness of the mind.

And this is a perfect exemplar of that:

[84^thChorus]

“SINGING:-/By the light/Of the silvery moon/I like to spoon/To my honey/I’ll/Croon/ Love’s Dream/ By the light/Of the silvery moon/ We’ll O that’s the/part I don’t remember/ ho ney moon -/Croon-/ Love-/ June-/ O I don’t know/You can get it out of a book/ If the right words are/important”

[85^thChorus]

“Do you really need/the right word/Do you really need/Of course it’s all asinine/Forms of asininity/Once & for all/ Mr William Carlos/Williams/ Anyway,/An asinine form/which will end/all asininity/from now on/ There’s a poem/The poem/Will end/Asininity” – That is, the over-serious, over-heavy, over-intense trying to find meaning rather than the empty mind loose – or the empty mind let loose. (that’s a phrase that Robert Duncan quotes from the letters of John Adams, I believe - “In America, the mind must be loose” ["Let the human mind loose, it must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it." (John Adams, in a letter to his son, and 6th US President, John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816)]

↧

Keats, Shakespeare and Kerouac (A Query)

June 24, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Haiku and Desolation Angels

≪ Previous: Jack Kerouac and Kenneth Patchen

[Jack Kerouac]

[John Keats]

[William Shakespeare]

Student: Allen, wouldn’t you say that a lot of the British poems written in (the) English language (are, formally, tight)?

AG: Until this century, yes. ‘Tis is a craft, sir. To be able to… (and) (let’s see you do this!). This (too) [Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues] is a craft – the craft of observation of mind. The discipline here is the discipline of observation of mind accurately – accurate, precise, observation of mind.

Student: But it sounds (initially, without a) sense of craft and, (clearly), it took a long time to get to a point where you can write like that, (to) be able to zip (it) off like that - but it sounds like he’s maybe denying, like (what was that? the "negative capability" of) (John) Keats, and… I know he could probably write (conventionally as well, but..)

AG: He’s not denying Keats. He’s quoting Shakespeareconstantly. He’s not denying anybody. he’s just going further down the road.

Student: He’s saying craft is craft, you know, (he speaks of) "crafty", but it’s (a put-down)

AG: Oh, but in this century, by “craft”, he’s using “craft” meaning miserly craft, egoistic craft, (which was characteristic of the poetry of his time that was “crafted” in the style of Keats and Shakespeare). It was a plague at that time, because the conception of craft that people had was actually the imitation of the inventions of their predecessors, rather than the new invention, as Keats did. As you remember, Keats, in his craft, invented the run-on line with rhymes – the “..thing of beauty is a joy for ever:/Its loveliness increases; it will never/Pass into nothingness..”

Now before Keats, there was another series of couplets styled by (Alexander) Pope, where you had to end the sentence or end the phrasing at the end of each line and Keats broke that. It was called uncraftsman-like because he changed the terms of the craft. Kerouac changed the terms of the craft. He didn’t deny previous craft, he just said, for this generation, century, when investigation of mind itself, after Einstein and others, is the focal subject of the entire century, the focal situation of this very situation we’re in now, “Meditation and Poetics”, where investigation of the mind itself was the big subject, (then) new means had to be crafted to graph the movements of the mind. So this is just as crafty, but it’s a different kind of craft.

And when he was putting down "the Craft Gleam"[in the 28th Chorus], the miserous (sic) "Craft Gleam", he was probably talking about Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, people he knew, John Hollander,Mark Van Doren, his teacher at Columbia, and all sorts of people who were trying to write poetry in the same form as the previous centuries without accommodating to the new relativistic mind that we’ve been pushed into by Einstein and everything that follows Einstein. The discipline, let us say (to get off the word “craft”), the discipline, or, to use the Buddhist word here (Naropa) used for meditation, the practice – the practice of observation of mind. If mind is clearly observed, mind will be observed to be shapely, And so, the art notated from that observation will also show the same shape as the mind indicates and the art will also be shapely.

↧

Haiku and Desolation Angels

June 25, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 224

≪ Previous: Keats, Shakespeare and Kerouac (A Query)

[Jack Kerouac - cover of Book of Haikus (posthumously published in 2003]

..tape begins in media res with Allen writing on the blackboard - "building on the ground, the film in.. (the) film crackling in plastic bags..under plastic bags in a breathing class" -

(He continues reading his own short haiku-like poems)

Nagasaki Day– “Blue sky cumulus clouded over the white plutonium plant /Rocky Flats mountains ridge west, Denver below in morning sun/ walking off with police and photographers"

Golden Court- "Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent/Prisoners, witnesses, Police/the stenographer yawns into her palms" - That’s the most accurate.
(Haiku) - It’s a good way of centering your mind in moments of what would otherwise be curious stress. One that I hadn’t gotten to..

(Gregory Corso suddenly enters the classroom creating some distraction)

AG: Gregory.. sit down..

GC: (I’m just getting a chair)

AG….’cause I just started something here.

GC (I’ll (not) do anything)

AG: What I had forgotten to do was.. the main haiku–

[to Students] (Will you get your mind(s) back, please!)

- the main haiku is considering space - the main haiku considering space:

[Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973) - woodcut - "Wild Sea and the Milky Way.." ]

“A wild sea - / and stretching across to the isle of Sado/ the Milky Way.”
Let’s see how they have it here – Ah, “A wild sea - / and stretching across to the island of Sardo/ the Galaxy” - that’s about as vast a space-shot as I’ve seen (that’s Basho) that I’ve seen in haiku. There are a couple others that I wanted to fill out .

"Coming out of the box…"

([to Gregory Corso] - “You’ll have to be quieter because I can’t concentrate – ok?)

“Coming out of the box/This pair of dolls/How can I forget their faces?” [Buson]

This, for listening while sitting – “The banana plant in the autumn storm/Rain dripping in the tub/Listening that night.”

(It says three elements – (but there’s just two elements (here)) – “Behind a pot of azaleas/ a woman tearing up/ dried codfish” - [Tsutsuji ikete sono kage ni hidara saku onna] - that’s like “wiping my snot on the blossoms..” –

“A bowel-freezing night /Rain dripping in the tub…” No, “A bowel-freezing night / The sound of the oar striking the wave/Tears” – So that has three elements, like a long story.

One very famous one – “On a withered branch/A crow is perched/Autumn evening” (But that’s usually accompanied by.. that was accompanied by a drawing originally).

Kara eda ni karasu mo tomari keri aki no kure

(Jack) Kerouac was good at that also. [composing haiku] In the beginning of Desolation Angels there’s a whole series of haiku. Has anybody read through Desolation Angels here? – Has anybody cracked open the book? – okay, well, if you crack open the book, check out the haiku. It’s done in classical style. I think it was self-invented in the sense that he knew the tradition, but he adapted it to the novel, the tradition being, say, a travel journey, prose, economical, paragraphs giving setting and suddenly the flash thought.

[Allen begins reading from Desolation Angels]

“The wind, the wind, and there’s my poor endeavoring human desk at which I sit so often during the day facing south. The paper and pencils and the coffee cup were ….the waiting’s long – then in three lines, ending the paragraph – “On Starvation Ridge/little sticks/are trying to grow”

Then, on page 18 – “Then come the long daydreams of what I’ll do when I get out of there, that mountain-top trap just to drift and roam down that road on 99 fast…" this first off this Haiku– “Hitch-hiked a thousand/ miles and brought you wine"

“Hiss hiss says the wind bringing dust and lightning near, tick…thunder in the mountains, the iron of my mother’s love.. - (Now where does he gets his mother’s love? It just came up out of his head, unborn)

“The days go/They can’t stay/I don’t realize.” That’s like the haiku that Chuck Carroll [sic - Allen's student] read the other night

"Is Boston crazy?/or am I?/or am I in Detroit?"

"The fog in Japan/ Is the same as the fog in North West Washington”. - (the sensing-being is the same) - “and Buddha is just as old and true anywhere you go"

"The sun sets dully on Bombay and Hong Kong like it sets dully on Chelmsford, Mass"

"I called Han Shan in the fog. There was no answer"

"The sound of silence is all the instruction you’ll get"

"Whatever happens to me down that trail to the world is all right with me because I’m God and I’m doing it all myself, who else?"– (While meditating/ I am Buddha/ Who else?)

Those are, the.. I think, the best of what I saw in Desolation Angels (there are a couple of others

– “Neons, Chinese restaurants, coming on -/Girls come by/ Shades

"Eat your eggs/ and shut up" - "Sit in fool/ And be fool/ – that’s all"

- (So those are more abstracted).

So they come naturally actually. They’re just thoughts that come naturally, I guess. Gregory (Corso) had one – that “(I)n the Mexico zoo/ they have ordinary/ American cows” [from “Mexican Impressions”]– that was the American traveler’s flash.

[Audio for the above is available here beginning at the beginning of the tape and concluding approximately eight-and-a-quarter minutes in]

↧

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 224

June 26, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Gay Pride Weekend

≪ Previous: Haiku and Desolation Angels

Beatnik Shindig this upcoming weekend. We spotlighted it last week but are reminding you again. The place to be right now - Fort Mason Center, San Francisco

Hot hot news - Allen Ginsberg 's recently-(re)discovered pro-Bernie Sanders poem "Burlington Snow".

Here's the hand-written poem courtesy the University of Vermont Library (written in 1986, when Sanders, current Denocratic Party Presidential candidate, was that town's colorful and controversial mayor)

Burlington Snow

Socialist snow on the streets
Socialist talk in the Maverick Bookstore
Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops
Socialist poetry in Socialist mouths
- aren't the birds frozen Socialists?
Aren't the snowclouds blocking the airfield?
Social Democratic Appearances ?
Isn't the socialist sky owned by
the Socialist Sun?
Earth itself socialist, forests, rivers, lakes
furry mountains, socialist salt
in oceans?
Isn't this poem Socialist? It doesn't
belong to me anymore.

Maverick Bookstore 5.30 PM February 21 1986 Allen Ginsberg

Stephanie Nikolopoulos's account of, and pictures from, the New York launch of Michael Schumacher's wonderful recently-published collection The Essential Ginsberg
can be accessed here

[Michael Schumacher - Photograph by Stephanie Nikolopoulos]

Jonah Raskin's detailed account of much-missed "Beat painter", Robert LaVigne - "Robert LaVigne - Naked Artist" may be seen here

[Allen Ginsberg - Portrait by Robert LaVigne]

John Wieners this month in Poetry magazine - a few choice excerpts from the forthcoming heroically-compiled Collected Letters, edited by Michael Seth Stewart.

Supplication-Selected Poems by John Wienersis due out later this year (in October) from Wave Books

[John Wieners - Photograph by Wallace Berman]

& more book news - David Schneider's eagerly-awaited Philip Whalen biography appears next month. Here, from Shambhala Times is an early pre-publication review. The author reveals the source of the book's all-embracing title - "..the title was something that Philip said in a hardware store in the Castro district of San Francisco…Mostly blind and attended by writer Steve Silberman, (he) began to feel overwhelmed by the selection of merchandise. Turning to Silverman, he quipped, "Get me out of here, I'm feeling crowded by beauty."

↧

Gay Pride Weekend

June 27, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: William Blake's Auguries of Innocence - 1

≪ Previous: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 224

Celebrating sexuality, coming out, and of course Marriage Equality on an extraordinarily euphoric Gay Pride Weekend!

"Some situations are exuberant, like "Howl" or "Plutonian Ode". Some situations are "Gee, I feel so good, I think I'll write down what I see at this moment". Some situations, I'm trying to locate what is my erotic imagination and write it down as a sample, like "Please Master". You know, to locate my fantasy and put it down exactly, to see how far out I can go into my own mind, into the real fantasy inside, deep inside my mind and then make an external object of it. Because, you know, other people have the same fantasy but are ashamed of it, or think it isn't real, or think they're the only ones who ever have "Please Master" fantasies, when it turns out that everybody's had it one way or another, or some variances that would be equally hidden. You know, if not that one, another one but something that's their own, some secret erotic delight." (Allen Ginsberg)

Please Master

Please master can I touch your cheek
please master can I kneel at your feet
please master can I loosen your blue pants
please master can I gaze at your golden haired belly
please master can I have your thighs bare to my eyes
please master can I take off my clothes below your chair
please master can I kiss your ankles and soul
please master can I touch lips to your hard muscle hairless thigh
please master can I lay my ear pressed to your stomach
please master can I wrap my arms around your white ass
please master can I lick your groin curled with blond soft fur
please master can I touch my tongue to your rosy asshole
please master may I press my face to your balls,
please master order me down on the floor,
please master tell me to lick your thick shaft,
please master put your rough hands on my bald hairy skull
please master press my mouth to your prick-heart
please master press my face into your belly, pull me slowly strong thumbed
till your dumb hardness fills my throat to the base
till I swallow and taste your delicate flesh-hot prick barrel veined Please
Master push my shoulders away and stare in my eyes & make me bend over
the table
please master grab my thighs and lift my ass to your waist
please master your hand's rough stroke on my neck your palm down to my
backside
please master push me, my feet on chairs, till my hole feels the breath of
your spit and your thumb stroke
please master make me say Please Master Fuck me now Please
Master grease my balls and hairmouth with sweet baselines
please master stroke your shaft with white creams
please master touch your cock head to my wrinkled self-hole
please master push it in gently, your elbows enwrapped round my breast
your arms pushing down to my belly, my penis you touch w/ your fingers
please master shove it in me a little, a little, a little,
please master sink your droor thing down my behind
& please master make me wiggle my rear end to eat up the pink trunk
till my asshalfs cuddle your thighs, my back bent over,
till I'm alone sticking out, your sword stuck throbbing in me
please master pull out and slowly roll onto the bottom
please master lunge it again, and withdraw the tip
please please master fuck me again with your self, please fuck me Please
Master drive down till it hurts me the softness the
Softness please master make love to my ass, give body to center & fuck me
for good like a girl,
tenderly clasp me please master I take me to thee
& drive in my belly your selfsame sweet heat-rood
you fingered in solitude Denver or Brooklyn or fucked in a maiden in Paris
carlots
please master drive methy vehicle, body of love drops, sweat fuck
body of tenderness. Give me your dough fuck faster
please master make me go moan on the table
Go moan O please master do fuck me like that
in your rhythm thrill-plunge & pull-back-bounce & push down
till I loosen my asshole a dog on the table yelping with terror delight to be
loved
Please master call me a dog, an ass beast, a wet asshole,
& fuck me more violent, my eyes hid with your palms round my skull
& plunge down in a brutal hard lash thru soft drip-fish
& throb thru five seconds to spurt out your semen heat
over & over, bamming it in while I cry out your name I do love you
please Master.

& in Italian (translated by Luca Fontana and Leopoldo Carra),

Ti Prego padrone posso toccarti la guancia
ti prego padrone posso inginocchiarmi ai tupi piedi
ti prego padrone posso aprirti i pantaloni blu
ti prego padrone posso dare un'occhiata alla tua pancia dorata di peli
ti prego padrone posso com delicatezza tirarti giù le mutande
ti prego padrone posso avere le tue cosce nude ai miei occhi
ti prego padrone posso togliermi vestiti sotto la tua sedia
ti prego padrone posso baciarti stinchi e anima
ti prego padrone posso sfiorarti di labbra la coscia dura musculosa senza peli
ti prego padrone posso premerti l'orrechio sullo stomaco
ti prego padrone posso stringerti tra le braccia il culo bianco
ti prego padrone posso leccarti l'inguine riccio di morbida pelliccia blonda
ti prego padrone posso toccar di lingua il tuo roseo buco del culo
ti prego padrone posso strofinarti la faccia sulle palle,
ti prego padrone, ti prego guardami negli occhi,
ti prego padrone ordinami di gettarmi a terre,
ti prego padrone dimmi di leccarti quella grossa stanga
ti prego padrone mettimi la mano ruvida sul cranio-calvo con peli
ti prego padrone premimi la bocca sul tuo cazzo-cuore
ti prego padrone premimi la facci fin sulla pancia, lento con pollici forti
finché la tua durezza muta mi riempie la gola fino alla base
e io ingoio e gusto il tuo cazzo-carne-calda delicata fusto venato Ti Prego
Padrone spingimi via per le spalle e fissami negli occhi, e piegami sul
tavolo
ti prego padrone prendimi per le cosce e alzami il culo alla tua altezza
ti prego padrone la carezza ruvida della tua mano sul collo e la palma giù
per la schiena
ti prego padrone rovesciami in su, coi piedi sulle sedie, finché il mio buco
sente l'alito del tup sputo la carezza del tuo pollice
ti prego padrone fammi dire Ti Prego Padrone Chiavami subito Ti Prego
Padrone ungimi palle e boccapelosa de dolci vaseline
ti prego padrone carezatti la stanga con bianchi creme
ti prego padrone accosta la cappella al mio grinzoso buco-sé
ti prego padrone spingilo dentro con grazia, i tuoi gomiti mi serrano il petto
e le braccia van giù verso la pancia, il pene toccamelo con le dita
ti prego padrone caccialo dentro di me un po', un po', un po',
ti prego padrone affondami quel tuo grosso robo nel didietro
e ti prego padrone fammi scodinzolar col culo ingoiar poco il tronco
finché le mie due metà di culo ti carezzan le cosce, io piegato in due,
finché io solo ho un doso dritto fuori, la tua spada infilata mi palpita dentro
ti prego padrone tiralo furoi poi infilato lento fino in fondo
ti prego padrone fai un affondo ancor, e ritralo fino alla punta
ti prego ti prego padrone chiavami dài col tuo sé, ti prego chiavami Ti Prego
Padrone caccialo dentro finché mi fa male là dov'è morbido
Morbido ti prego padrone fai l'amore col mio culo, dai corpo al centro,
chiavami sul serio come una ragazza,
stringimi con tenerezza ti prego padrone mi ti cedo tutto,
e ficcami in pancia quella stessissima dolce croce-calore
te la toccavi in solitudine a Denver o Brooklyn o chiavavi in qualche ver-
gine a Paris nei parcheggi
ti prego padrone guidami io tuo veicolo, corpo d'amor chinato, sudor
chiavato
corpo di tenerezza, Dammelo alla pecorina più veloce
ti prego padrone fammi fare mmmmm sul tavolo
Fare mmmmmmmm Oh ti prego padrone si scopami cosi
col tuo ritmo fremito-affondo e poi indietro-e-calcone e spingo tutto
finché allento del tutto il buco un cane sul tavolo che guaisce di terror
goduria d'esser amato
Ti prego padrone chiamami cane, cul de bestia, buco di culo umido,
e scopami più violento, a occhi coperti dalle tue palme attorno al mio cranio
e tuffati dentro una staffilata dura brutale nel morbido cic ciac pescioso
e pulsa per cinque secondi schizzando fuori il tuo seme caldo
ancora e ancora, calcandolo dentro mentre io grido il tuo nome Si ti amo
ti prego Padrone.

(1968)

from 1994:

from Allen's 1989 interview with arch-Conservative, John Lofton

Jimmy Berman!

[& see previous various Gay Pride postings - here, here, here - and here]

↧

William Blake's Auguries of Innocence - 1

June 29, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: William Blake - Auguries of Innocence 2 (Bells Theorem)

≪ Previous: Gay Pride Weekend

[William Blake (1757-1827)]

AG: So, we were on the… I had read, “In order to trample on the Great Void/ The iron cow must sweat”, and also, "Meeting, the two old friends laugh aloud/ In the grove the fallen leaves are many" - or "The path of the bird.." - "In the vast inane/ there is no back or front,/ the path of the bird annihilates East and West"

So (William) Blake has a series, like those two-line poems that we were doing, that verge on Vajrayana, that is to say, turning things inside out, taking accident and mishap and learning from it, alchemizing poison to nectar, or learning from experience, like, same thing, learning from experience, open to experience and learning from it (rather than resisting and solidifying and saying, "that’s bad-bad-bad", and "that’s good-good-good", experience) . So any broken leg is an opening to sunyata, i.e. there’s no place to stand on

Does anybody know "Auguries of Innocence"? How many here have read that? William Blake’s "Auguries of Innocence"? – and how many have not? – just raise your (hand).. good..great - so it’s a good field, imagine!

Gregory Corso (sitting in attendance in class): Equable!

AG: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour” - That’s like that little two-line thing we had “When a cow eats in Kaishu, a horse’s belly bloats in Boston" ["When a cow in Kaishu eats mulberry leaves,/ the belly of a horse in Ekishu is distended"]

Gregory Corso : (Can I read) the next one?

AG: Pardon me?

Gregory Corso: See if I can read the next one…

AG: Yes

GC: “The Lamb misus’d breeds Public Strife./And yet forgives the Butcher’s knife”.

AG: It’s not the next one, it’s about eight down, but it’s right there.

GC: I’m so embarrassed!

AG: “A Dove-house fill’d with Doves & Pigeons/Shudders Hell thr’ all its regions”

“A dog starved at his Masters Gate/Predicts the ruin of the State”

Student: That’s also a Chinese proverb?

AG: It is? - Literally?.. how?…what? do you know the..

Student: Literally. I have no idea (about…)

AG: I’m wondering is that (just) archetypal thought, or is that Blake’s esoteric Gnosticosmosis?

Student: Yes

AG; “A horse misus’d upon. the Road/Calls to Heaven for Human blood”

“Each outcry of the hunted hare/A fibre from the Brain does tear” - (the hare, the rabbit) – “Each outcry of the hunted hare/A fibre from the Brain does tear” - Now what does that mean? Anybody got any idea? - "Each outcry of the hunted hare/ A fibre from the Brain does tear" - Can anybody explain the literal meaning of that?

Gregory Corso: I can, Al, a little bit

AG: Yeah

GC: Want your students to do it first?

AG: No…anybody. Well, let’s let them try first.

GC: (You'll) let them try first.

Student; You said (that that statement has the power)

AG: Yeah, but how does a fibre get torn from the brain by the outcry of the hunted hare?
( is what I’m asking).

Student: (But asking is intelligence). The brain, the mind, is what distinguishes humans from other animals..

AG: But how does the outcry, literally…

Student: The brain is repeating the outcry..
AG: Right.

Student: (...having to deliver it, through it), maybe a slither of it, a part of (it), the people's brain, will die with the death of a hare..

AG: Yes, it might put a strain on one single cell or fibre of the brain, actually because...
”The hare’s "outcry”? – What is a hare’s "outcry” like? – Is (CC) here? [Allen's student, Chuck Carroll]

Student: (mimicking) : (Eeek!)
AG: Does anybody know?
Student (2): A human sound.
Gregory Corso: A human sound, they say.
AG: Well, that would actually...

Student: A cry of speech, a cry of outrage.

AG: Yes., and, coming unexpected, it might actually give you that shudder-shock, which was, like a little electrical short-circuit in your brain, It’s absolutely literal (particularly, if coming unexpected). The odd thing is that all of these are absolutely literal. In one way or another, there’s a literality to these that’s really uncanny. It looks like they’re opposites. It looks like they’re impossibilities. It looks like they are poles apart. The amazing thing is that (William) Blake’s intelligence has filled it in, or has found, has seen, the relations - or guessed the relations, or intuited the relations - without thinking even. So that the relations are there perceived instantly. That’s why, for some people, if you read some of these (like “The cut worm forgives the plow” [from Blake's "Proverbs of Hell" in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"]), it’ll stick in your brain for years until you understand it. Like aZen koan, actually - “The cut worm forgives the plow” - We’ll get to that.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginnning at approximately eight-and-a-quarter minutes in and continuing until approximately thirteen-and-a-half minutes in]

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William Blake - Auguries of Innocence 2 (Bells Theorem)

June 30, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: William Blake's - Auguries of Innocence - 3

≪ Previous: William Blake's Auguries of Innocence - 1

[“Each outcry of the hunted hare/A fibre from the Brain does tear" (William Blake) ]

Student: (...In the electronic universe, every living thing is connected to every other, everything is connected, by a law or theorem..)

AG: Yeah, ok , well, but not.. because they’re connected.. Okay, but, so.. a sharp cry would precipitate a shock(ed) brainwave..

Student:(..every atom (would)…)

AG: Well, first of all, you said it – every atom.. Well, at least, every atom bumps into every other atom, sooner or later …

Student: Instantaneously.

AG: Instantaneously.

AG: Does it really happen that way?

Student: ( (Within) a fair amount of (time and space))

AG: That’s pretty vast! – You’re sure.. you’re sure you mean, actually - not by telepathy, or something?

Student: Bell’s Theorem.

AG: Bell’s Theorem.

Student: Bell’s Theorem.

AG; Bell’s Theorem. What is that? What is it?

Student: Well, I don’t know exactly but ..

AG: Does anybody know that? Bell’s Theorem..It’s interesting..

Student: They did an experiment with yoghurt (sic) on Times Square. Some guy.. (experimenting with) a lie-detector..

Student 2 : Cleve Backster

[Cleve Backster (1924-2013) seen here experimenting with the consciousness of plants]

Student (to Student 2): You know about it!

Student: (Yes)

AG: Well, (but) I would like to stick to some sort of literal (model), rather than telepathy or something.

Student: It’s not about telepathy...

AG: Okay (then). Go on.

Student; (Well, it's like she said), the yoghurt that stood in the metal containers knows (knew) when it was getting fed – How about that ?

AG: (William) Blake is simpler –“A dog starv’d at his Masters Gate/Predicts the ruin of the state” - that the cruelty that would literally starve the dog, the cruel.. the quality of emotion that would starve the dog, would be a quality, if prevalent in the state, (that) would ruin the state, (obviously). I mean, it’s something that doesn’t need that kind of mysticum, so to speak. It’s more simple . The nice thing about these are these are more simple.

"A Skylark wounded in the wing /A Cherubim does cease to sing"

"The Game-Cock, clipd & armd for fight/Does the Rising Sun affright"

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

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William Blake's - Auguries of Innocence - 3

July 1, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: William Blake - Auguries of Innocence - 4

≪ Previous: William Blake - Auguries of Innocence 2 (Bells Theorem)

[William Blake's script - from "Augurires of Innocence" in the Pickering manuscript]

Continuing with Allen's reading from, and annotation of, William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"

AG: "Every Wolfs and Lions howl/Raises from Hell a human soul” – did you get that? – it doesn’t put it down in Hell, it raises it from Hell, (that is) the energy of the wolf’s and lion’s howl "Raises from Hell a Human Soul", merely by their raw energy, the naked nature. And then the compliment of that is:

“The wild deer wandring here and there/Keeps the Human Soul from Care”

(which, in a sort of simple-minded ecological context, makes perfect sense - which is that a State which has the space and the calm for a wild deer to wander "here and there”, obviously, has room for people to “wander here and there”, or is calm enough "to keep the human soul from care".

“The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife/And yet forgives the Butchers knife”

The Bat that flits at close of Eve/Has left the Brain that wont Believe” – That is to say, the.. there’s a joke in there. I mean, he’s laying a trip on the bat as being, you know, sinister, a sinister creature, but the fear of the bat, actually, “flitting at close of eve/Has left the Brain that wont Believe”

“The Owl that calls upon the night/Speaks the Unbelievers fright”

“He who shall hurt the little Wren/Shall never be beloved by Men” – It’s obvious – He who would hurt a little wren? Who’s gonna love him? [laughs] – even better:

“He who the Ox to wrath has movd/Shall never be by Woman lovd”

– So, any guy so macho as to abuse an ox...

It’s crystal-clear. And yet, first inserted into the brain, they seem mysterious..

Student: They didn't have any S & M at that time?

AG: "The wanton Boy who kills the Fly/Shall feel the spider’s enmity” – Of course, that’s speaking of the boy’s projection, having killed the fly, then he’s going to be, like, paranoic about nature and feel the spider’s enmity

Student; Also the spider might have eaten that fly

AG: Yes.. stealing, he’s stealing the spider-food. So the spider will be coming out at night and crawling all over his bed-clothes, looking for a fly

“He who torments the Chafers Sprite/Weaves a Bower in endless Night"

to be continued….

[Audio for the above can be heard here starting at approximately fifteen-and-a-quarter minutes in and continuing until approximately eighteen-and-a-half minutes in]

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William Blake - Auguries of Innocence - 4

July 2, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 225

≪ Previous: William Blake's - Auguries of Innocence - 3

[William Blake's script - from "Augurires of Innocence" in the Pickering manuscript]

Continuing with Allen's reading from, and annotation of, William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"

AG: “The Catterpiller on the Leaf/ Repeats to thee thy Mother’s grief “ – That’s a mysterious one. How do we make that one? - “The Catterpiller on the Leaf/ Repeats to thee thy Mother’s grief “

Student: (Maybe the caterpillar being born…)

AG: Being born. Yes. Being born of earth, really. In the Book of Thel, actually, if you read the Book of Thel, that actually completely explains that couplet, because it’s a conversation between Thel, who’s a little scared to be born, a virgin from the Bardo Thodol, [Tibetan Book of the Dead], who’s not sure she wants to be born, and so she enquires of the lightning, of a Cloud (which represents male sperm), and she enquires of a Clod of Clay and a little Worm on the Clod of Clay and the Clod of Clay (and the Clod of Clay is the Mother, the little Worm is the “little Babe born”), and they invite her to look into the grave and see how they operate. (And) she’s scared to get born lest she have to go into the Clod of Clay and become a Clod of Clay - So, “The Catterpiller on the Leaf/ Repeats to thee thy Mother’s grief "

“Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly/For the Last Judgement draweth nigh”

"He who shalt train the Horse to War/Shall never pass the Polar Bar“ – I don’t know what "The Polar Bar" is. Anybody know that one?

Gregory Corso: Yeah Al, It's usually, you can’t pass the bar, get past the bar. Me, myself, I passed the bar. But (what) he means by"the Polar Bar", obviously, is where they’ve never trekked before

AG: Yeah.. "He who shalt train the Horse to War/Shall never pass the Polar Bar“

“The Beggars Dog & Widows Cat /Feed them & thou wilt grow fat”

"The Gnat that sings his Summer’s Song /Poison gets from Slanders tongue"

"The poison of the Snake & Newt/ Is the sweat of Envys foot"

"The poison of the Honey Bee/Is the Artist’s Jealousy"

Gregory Corso: ' Scuse me, Al, what was that one before the honey-bee?

AG: "The poison of the Snake & Newt..

Gregory Corso: Newt

AG: ... Is the sweat of Envys foot"

Gregory Corso: Foot

AG: How do we interpret that?

Peter Orlovsky:(in attendance in the class also): What’s a newt?

AG: A newt is like a little…

Gregory Corso: A little chameleon

AG: (A) little lizard, little water lizard, babe-lizard, or, actually, the beginning of a frog, isn’t it?

Student: No, that’s something else..

AG: (A little) chameleon-like thing.

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

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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 225

July 3, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Allen Ginsberg's Uncle Sam Hat

≪ Previous: William Blake - Auguries of Innocence - 4

Sometime since we noted great Ginsberg parodies - Remember Yelp? and Tweet? - even "Peter LaBarbera" (!) - Filip Noterdaemehas taken it one stage further, not just revisiting 'Howl" (the opening poem) but that entire book! - Growl and Other Poems will be published by Lit Fest Press in the Spring of 2016. Meanwhile, here's the opening salvo - "Growl" (and Noterdaeme on the thinking behind it)

Gary Snyder in the current Newsweek
Robert Frank inthis weekend's The New York Times
Jonah Raskin's curt and-to-the-point interview withLawrence Ferlinghettipublished in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle

More updates on previous Allen Ginsberg Project postings - see here for here,
here for here,
here for here

More Ginsberg video footage. This is from Paris, 1990, three classics - William Blake's "..Tyger", Allen's "Father Death Blues"and "CIA Dope Calypso" - see here

[Allen Ginsberg performing in Paris, 1990]

A little round-table on AG in Philadelphia - Molly Russakoff,Warren Longmire, Ryan Eckes and Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela - here

[Clark Coolidge]

[Thurston Moore at Naropa]

Clark Coolidge begins teaching Ginsberg at Naropa next week (as part of the Summer Writing Program) - and, as Thurston Moorepoints out, he too - "My class will focus on Allen's work vis a vis his recordings and his relationship and inspiration to recording artists ((Bob) Dylan,Patti (Smith) and all). Clark and I will join forces with our classes on the last day"

Clark Coolidge and Thurston Moore may be viewed in performance together - here

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