The Allen Ginsberg Project

["Jack Kerouac wandering along East 9th Street after visiting (William) Burroughs at our pad, passing statue of Congressman Samuel "Sunset" Cox, "the letter-carrier's friend" in Tompkins Square toward Corner of Avenue A, Lower East Side, he's making a Dostoyevsky-mad face or Russian basso be-bop Om, just walking around the neighborhood, then involved with The Subterraneans, pencils & notebook in wool shirt-pocket, Fall 1953, Manhattan" - (Photograph and Inscription by Allen Ginsberg) - c. Allen Ginsberg Estate.]

We've been in the past weeks spotlighting Clark CoolidgeandRobert Creeley's remarks at the 1982 symposium on Jack Kerouac at Naropa, (celebrating the 25th , anniversary of the publication ofOn The Road ) - but what about Allen? - Here follows a transcription of some of his remarks, (delivered as part of an on-going workshop, July 25th, 1982). The primary focus is Kerouac's "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose"
Allen goes systematically through this work, annotating each of Kerouac's pithy statements.
For reasons of length, this transcript has been broken up into several sections. Today, the beginning:

AG: Is anybody recording? Is anyone recording? There's no provision for recording? - Oh..Yeah.. Oh fine..thank you. Can you hear me clearly, or is this too muffled? In other words, with this tone of voice and with this loudness of voice, can you hear?. And if you can't, if you're too far back, then you probably should come forward - and Joe [to Joe Richey], you should probably be in with one of the people that you don't know, you know the classes with people that you never heard before, have you studied with Ted Berrigan? ..yeah..ok..because you've heard me before.. ok..
How many people are from Boulder, can you raise your hands? And how many people are in town for the festival? [show of hands] - Amazing! - ok - and how many people have..been in a workshop with me before? So..yes..the.. one, two.. who else?.. three, four..so then, actually,we're, in a sense, we're strangers, in terms of discourse and method. How many are here for the whole ten-day festival? [show of hands] - wow, great, congratulations, we all got here.

I want to do some very definite things. The only thing is I'm a little... because I've been helping organize the festival, I'm a little, spaced-out as to what the procedure is. Is this a two-day workshop consecutive? In other words, will everybody be here for two days and has signed up for two consecutive days, so we have two days to work, and the next day is tomorrow? And the last thing, is it possible to get some water? [water is passed to him] great! - And the hours are two to three-thirty, is that right? - How many were here last night at the opening? [another show of hands] - What was that like?! - I thought it was great. I mean it really was..traditional… (Re the films:) I think we're going to try to arrange another viewing. For one thing, the Steve Allen thingwill be, I think, almost continuously on display over at the Museum. We have a Betamax(sic) or a video version of it (which it originally was) over at the Boulder Center For Visual Arts. So you'll be able to see that (tonight, especially, and then we're arranging to have it, so it will probably be playing often). And I think also trying to arrange for another showing of Pull My Daisy, the Steve Allen show, and Cocksucker Blues also. So, later in the week..

Well.. so the traditional way of beginning business is in the local Buddhist circles is a bow and sitting like this (Allen displays). The bow is kind of interesting as a method. The bowing is down like that (so that's the deliberate part), then, once you're down, it's all over, so, lifting yourself up is not part of it, it's just getting up again. The actual… the sort of haiku of it is the going down, and the coming back up is just relaxed. So I'm told there's all sorts of interesting techniques for psychic, or mind, tricks, of that kind, that I've been picking up on, relating to tea-ceremony, or swordsmanship, or calligraphy, haiku-writing, and poetry-writing, all sorts of mind-tricks that were very..home-made familiar to (Jack) Kerouac and home-made familiar to William Carlos Williams and to Ezra Poundand home American-made to the innovators of theImagistand Objectivistschools of the nineteen ten-twenty-thirty-forty period - home-made mind-tricks for augmenting perception, or for sharpening perception, or for locating perception, or for locating the mind, or for locating consciousness, locating awareness, specializing, particularizing perceptions of things, so that you could actually write them down and transfer your little epiphany vision over to the paper and over to the reader. Those were home-made things, and they're very powerful.. the American tricks, the American mind-tricks, "eyeball kicks", so to speak (which is a phrase I used in "Howl"). There's also an ancient classical development of such mind-tricks in Oriental painting and poetry and calligraphy and tea-ceremony, like that little bow (just that one funny idea..that the going down, that the deliberation and mindfulness is in taking a posture and going down, during which time you sort of blank your mind, in other words, you're not supposed to be reverential or anything, you're just blank. You see, you get rid of yourself for a second, so to speak. Instead of straining to get to God when you're going down or to zap a message through the top of your forehead, it's actually letting everything go and not having to do anything, which is a nice idea, you know, of blanking out, rather than intensifying- dig? In other words..because there might be some mystic heads or psychedelic heads or cosmic-vibration artists, who think that, when you make a gesture like that, that it's some kind of zap that you're supposed to be sending through the cosmos, when, actually, it's just the opposite, you're, for a change, leaving the cosmos alone, not trying to zap anybody. You know, letting things be, or, in a sense, acknowledging the universe as it is already, without your improving it, without your need to strain aggressively to add some icing on top of the corpse! (or the living body). So, the mind-trick there particularly, and always struck me, is that people went down (as (Chogyam) Trungpa did last night) and when they went down there was, actually, nothing going on in their heads (and because nothing going on in their heads, they were aware of just the ballet of it, so to speak, or the profound emptiness of it, which is what the bow is about). Then, once you're down, then you come back up and nothing's happenng so you just come back up normal as if you're coming back up to your seat. So, you don't have to worry about your attitude in coming up, in other words, you don't have to worry if you're holy enough, as you come back up, you don't have to worry about if you're sending the right vibe because you don't have to send any vibe, you're just coming back up.

So, that attitude of complete relaxation, nothing to be gained, and nothing to lose, above all, nothing to lose, is a basic aesthetic attitude, which (Jack) Kerouac had - nothing to lose, obviously, no matter what he said, because all he had to do was say what was on his mind . He didn't have to create a drama, so to speak, he didn't have to create an artificial metaphor, he didn't have to make up a poem, the poem was whatever it was going on in his mind (which is mostly twentieth-century art, which is more recollection of mind than an attempt to make up somethin' pretty, for the purpose of making a "poem" (with a quote around it), with a frame, that you could send to a magazine.) His poetry is not a poetry until after it's published and people point at it and say that it's poetry, because, actually, what it is is whatever you scribbled out of your thoughts, in whatever form it takes, according to whatever content it had, or whatever sequence of thinks, sequence of thinks, as they came along, according to whaetver sequence of thinks as the thinks were scribed on the page, but it needn't necessarily start with the idea you're going to write a poem. So I used to say I'm just writing writing (when someone's asking, "What are you writing there?"), because I didn't know, I wasn't writing rhyme, and I wasn't writing short lines like (William Carlos) Williams, and I wasn't counting syllables. I was just scribing some thoughts that came through. It was easier that way to have the raw material as the method - the method being raw material rather than a finished poem. So I didn't have to strain. Besides which, I felt ignorant, unsophisticated, and too lazy and so I didn't think I could measure up to writing a quote "poem", but I could measure up to just writing what I was writing, if I wanted to write somethin'. So that saved me, out of some kind of stupid innocence. So I was too dumb to write poetry. I was just going to write whatever I was going to write.

The mind-trick, or, I should say, the dharma Buddhist mind-trick of .. when you bow, emptying your mind (or allowing your mind to be empty, rather than straining) and when you come up just coming up, is a mode, or is a method applicable to poetics also, is a method applicable to writing poetry (the same kind of empty head, where you don't have to know in advance what you're doing, just do it). In other words, you do it without knowing what you're doing, or, do it withouy knowing what you're doing in a sense that you do it without planning, "like a miser counting the herring in his barrels", (as Kerouac would say), [Editorial note - "Like a Miser Hero of Gold/Cellars/& herring/in barrels" - from Mexico City Blues], without planning rationally in advance, without limiting your mind to the few plans you could make in advance in words or conceptualize, without limiting yourself in advance by insisting that you have this form and this structure and you know what you're going to say. There's no need to be that stupid because the mind is much vaster than what you can think of in advance, obviously. Your whole body.. the whole body and the whole mind is smarter than the partial conceptual set, or conceptual scheme, that you might make up. Everybody understands that, that's just basic New Age Journal teaching, I guess (or just New Age teaching). The application of it, the understanding of it in the body, and the application of it to praxis, to work, to art, is a little more difficult, but the general idea of some holistic sense of a body-mind together, as one, as being smarter and bigger and more ample than just a fast catchy.. conception(s) or thought-forms, I think that's a common understanding, is it not? I mean, is this an unfamiliar idea? Did anyone do.. if it's familiar, raise your hand [show of hands] - okay, so I don't need to beat a dead horse too much. If.. Is there anybody to whom this notion is unfamiliar? (not that I've completely expounded it, but is there anybody who finds this confusing what I'm saying? - because, if it is, if at any point, I am not completely clear to anybody, please interrupt and we go back over the ground that we're covering. I would like to be able to be clear enough so that everybody could completely understand and.. because I think I'm talking about something that is clear, clarify-able, though I'm talking a little abstractly at the moment. So we'll get to applications in a minute.

["Jack Kerouac, Avenue A across from Tompkins Park New York, his handsome face looking into barroom door - this is the best profile of his intellgence as I saw it sacred, time of Subterraneans writing" (Photograph and Inscription by Allen Ginsberg) - c. Allen Ginsberg Estate.]

How many here know Kerouac's short writings on.. "How to Write", I think it's called, "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose" ? - How many here know that? Raise your hand if you do. [show of hands] - And how many do not? - Okay, so, since this is a Kerouac conference, and since I learned my own writing, a great deal, from him (mostly from.., directly from him, and from William Carlos Williams and William Burroughs and a few other people), I'd like, then, to run over some basic ground that Kerouac wrote about, since most people don't know it. He wrote a little tiny essay of thirty points, thirty slogans, to cover how to write, called "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose" (so he was talking about prose, but it could've been poetry anyway because his prose and poetry were intermingled, they were like.. he wrote prose-poetry. So it's thirty one-liners. [Allen begins reading from "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose"] - "one" - (these will be available in the Naropa Library, if anybody wants to get ahold of it, maybe I'll..I hadn't realized it was that unknown, but.. ) - "1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy" - (In other words, not to write poems, but for your own joy. So, always keep a notebook around somewhere - "Scribbled secret notebooks" - [Allen shows his] - I keep this. Do you all have big notebooks or little notebooks ? How many here carry a pen? - always - How many don't? - Well, if you want to write, first thing you do is get your axe ready - (there's two that don't, or maybe four?) - get your axe ready means you always have a pen. and also, part of that is always have a notebook of some kind. In this case, I just have a new one I bought the other day because I used up my old one in which, well, generally I just write poems in it but here I wrote notes for introducing (Chogyam) Trungpa - "Fellow, poet lover, drinking and admired Kerouac..heard his voice, heard K voice influence US poetry American-style, artist, calligrapher, photographer, meditation-teacher, equestrian. Welcome." Well, so, like one..funny little speech-poem, but Kerouac wrote his book Mexico City Blues poem-by-poem in a little notebook like this (which is the cheapest around) and each poem is about the size of one of these pages, If you ever get to look at the poems in the book Mexico City Blues. I don't know how many of you know this. Each one of those is a poem, written one page, one a day, each morning. Got up, took a cup of black coffee, smoked a joint, on the roof in Mexico City, wrote down fast first things that came to his mind as he.. you know, in the morning, the morning vision-thoughts, left over from last night going to bed, in bed, dreaming, and then just wrote it, and then went on to the next day, or maybe did two in a row. How many know this book? How many don't? - Well, for those who don't, I would recommend it as a seminal book. How many agree (that) this is a major book of American poetry for the century? [show of hands] - Well, that's a pretty good number for this.. So I'll take all of our advice, those of you who don't know it, it's two-hundred-and-forty-two choruses called Mexico City Blues. He had his axe, he had a little notebook. So I was recommending, for carrying around, for fast spontaneous immediate notation, always have a book and always have a pen. I generally have three because they run out easily and I try to carry a pencil and I usually try and use an ink pen, fountain pen, actually, real old-fashioned fountain pen, and then a subsidiary ball-point (pen) just in case I run out of ink. At home I have a great big notebook, maybe something, maybe.. bigger than this, that I keep by my bed table for dreams and for serious writing in bed or for writing at my desk. And I keep everything together in a notebook, being a poet, not being a prose-writer much, because the thoughts as they come out of my head.. I don't write that much but I write five minutes a day, say, but if you write five minutes a day, by the end of a year you have more than anybody could ever read, you know, four or five hundred, six hundred, pages. So you write two pages a day and it's three-hundred-and-sixty-five days in the year, that's seven hundred pages, and who can read all that? - who'd want to?. So maybe thirty pages of that is truly your poetry, you know, you hit on something once a month, two pages each. So it's doing, really, what comes naturally, like rolling off a log, rather than trying to write poetry, dig?, rather than straining to write something. This is the external method, let us say. I'm not talking about the mind-trick, I'm talking about the material trick is.. you always have.. always have a great big notebook by your bed, always have a light handy that you can get at (Jack had a breakman's lantern by his bed, so he could always switch on and write, in the middle of the night, waking from a dream). If you have a night-table lamp, that's great, if you have a night-table, that's good to have there, a notebook there. He also.. also I write.. he also wrote straight on typewriter too - but this is to fill in all the spaces. So you're always ready. So you're always ready and you always have your axe ready. So he thought.. and his attitude.. his belief (it's not a technique, it's a belief.. the attitude - "secret notebooks and wild typewritten pages" - "wild" and "secret" - wild-secret - everybody has "wild secrets" - I have wild secrets - so it's for your wild secrets, the things that you wouldn't tell your mother or your best friend, things that you'd be ashamed, all that you know about, whatever you're most interested in and most ashamed of at the same time. The most difficult thing about writing is that you think you're supposed to write about things that other people can read, or that are suitable for other people to read, rather than things that are suitable for you to read in your old age when you want to check back what you were really thinking about when you were..eighty-seven, or twelve, or nineteen.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at the start and concluding at approximatelynineteen-and-three-quarter minutes in]

This posting will continue tomorrow

[Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) at a "Beat"party, 1959 - Photograph by Burt Glinn./Magnum Photos]

Continuing here from yesterday's posting - Allen annotates Jack Kerouac's "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose"

"2. Submissive to everything, open, listening" - so that's an attitude of mind of.. submissive to any thought that comes along - about fucking your mother, or about...I don't know, anything it is that is most.. common, and most forbidden, anything that comes along in your mind that is.. fucking God, if you want to, anything that you wouldn't want, necessarily, anybody to hear, but you hear yourself, and so, "submissive to everything" ("submissive" meaning, to.. an attitude, like tender, lamb-like, innocent openness to..
when you're writing, openness to the world, so that you.. so you're not trying.. so you get in as much as possible, that you understand as much as possible, because you're not laying a trip and not resisting and not insisting but actually open-handed, open-hearted, listening to the promptings of your own nature, your own mind, your thoughts, (reading your thoughts, actually, the thoughts that rise spontaneously)

"3. (this is Kerouac's own medicinal prescription) - "Never get drunk outside yr own house" (because he would go into New York and get really drunk and get fucked up and lose his notebooks and..) - 4. (this is really important) - "Be in love with yr own life" (which is to say, Walt Whitman or Henry David Thoreau , or me, or Gregory Corso, or Buddha, or.. whoever it is that really digs his own existence, appreciates his own existence, "find(s) no fat sweeter than that which sticks to (his) own bones " ["I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones"], like Walt Whitman). The line is "Be in love with your life. In Kerouac's case, and lesser in mine, but strong in his case was the fact that he saw his whole life as a giant heroic myth and so he was able to write about any part of his life because it was all part of the giant heroic myth, just like, say, if you saw this whole week as part of a giant heroic myth, any little conversation in the bathroom would be fascinating, any minor escapade with a mouse in the corner would be an event of enormous historic importance as a footnote. So, all the footnotes of your own life. So, "be in love with yr own life", be in love with life. So that's.. In other words, you can't take a doleful attitude and say, "Oh well, I don't like myself and I'm a shit. I want to write so I can get myself better than I am, or maybe somebody will like me then, or maybe it'll be a..maybe I'll make some money." But just imagine the energy if you actually thought that you were the hero of your own existence and that when you died, there was no more going to be that hero in your existence. So you're the hero of your own existence because nobody else could possibly be the hero of your existence. So therefore you have to be in love with your life, or you'd have to take the attitude towards your own life that it's writ in golden letters - "the one and only life". This is your life, and so therefore that attitude, this is (my) life is the proper attitude, which means straight back (like you're sitting on a horse, riding on a horse in eternity through life, throwing thunderbolts ) - "Be in love with yr life"

5 - Something that you feel will find its own form - So you get an idea and you write it down, without worrying if you're going to make it a sonnet or quatrains (unless you have so mastered blues, or quatrains, or sonnets, that you can write them as swift as you can play "Chopsticks"on the piano, unless you're so good and swift at rhyming or terza rima, or rondeaux, or sonnets). There's nothing wrong with forms as long as you don't have to force yourself , yeah? - or rock 'n roll songs (I find I can write almost as fast and rhyme for rock 'n roll as write free verse so it doesn't make any difference - like at the dance last night, I was carrying on, making up rhymed verses).

How do you learn forms? - Well, I learned forms as a kid. My father was a high-school English teacher and so I read the Untermeyer anthologies and saw all the forms in the high-school books (they didn't have many in those days, they didn't know very many, you know, it was, like a standard nineteen-twenties, very provincial idea of what forms were, not big extensive ones - that it was iambic.. Well, first of all, I learned how to count iambic and trochaic meters - Does everybody know how to count? - heavy and light accents - Does everybody know what an iambic meter is? - Raise your hand if you do (now) raise your hand if you don't (raise your hand if you don't, please) . So it's about a third to a half . Well, how do you learn it? Somebody's gotta tell ya, I guess. You gotta ask. Well that's a whole question ofthe classical forms, whether to take it up now, I don't know, we might take it up next time.Next time I.. for the next class, I will bring in a single page which has every one of the classical meters and pass it out - from Greek and Latin - Trochee, Spondee, but alsoCretic, Amphibrach, well, the two-syllable meters, the three-syllable meters, the four-syllable meters, like da-da-da-da, de-da-da-da, de da-da-da, and there are five-syllable meters like boom-boom-ba-da-da, boom-boom-ba-da-da - "Lo, lord, Thou rightest", "Droop herbs and flowers/Fall fruits and showers" (Ben Jonson for the last two, and "Lo, lord, Thou ridest" - Hart Crane's Hurricane). (I've) forgot what the name of that is. It's used by the Greeks in the height of their plays when they want to make ecstatic choruses. - Da da de-da-da - But, I'm sorry, I'm getting lost, because I'd like to talk first about the mind-attitude, rather than the.. the mind-attitudes towards writing, and later on, maybe, we'll get into forms, ok? - But if you want to learn forms, I'll bring in a sheet which will give you all the forms, not all of them, (all of the meters, rather) and we can talk about forms. But I want to talk about open form for the moment (and also, you can always get them out of a book, or out of a regular teacher, a regular poetry teacher in high school - High School, the old 1930's high-school books had lots, and there, the old college anthologies, in the back, usually had big expositions of dimeter, monometer, trimeter, quadrameter, (tetrameter), four-beat lines. I grew up on it so my ear is good but I found that I had to get rid of it, had to get rid of the classical forms, in order to notate my own tongue as it went along in my own mind. Something that you feel will find its own form, Kerouac says, which is to say that the thoughts that occur to your mind in the sequence that they occur, and for that it would be useful to read the essay "Projective Verse" by Charles Olson in the anthology The New American Poetry 1945-1960. How many are familiar with that book, the Don Allen anthology? - And how many are not? - okay, almost a majority are not, so I'd recommend that as a survey of the poetry that surrounded Kerouac and the Beat Generation, Grove Press. Grove Press. The New American Poetry. It's just been re-issued (originally it was The New American Poetry 1945-1960, edited by Don Allen). And if you can get it in a second-hand bookstore, the old edition, that's the real authentic one. This year [1982] a new edition of The New American Poetry edited by Don Allen was issued by Grove Press which dropped some poets and added some more.
But, at the end of it, they have a lot of essays by the poets on how they found their own form and how they wrote their poems, essays by Kerouac, essays by Gary Snyder, essays by Robert Duncan, by me, by Gregory Corso, and those are worth looking at, and the one I'm recommending from that book is "Projective Verse" by Charles Olson. And the thing that Olson says is that "one perception must immediately lead to another". In other words, don't get hung up trying to fill up a flash, write down your flash and go on to the next flash, next flash-thought.. Keep the mind moving, keep the perceptions.. that is to say because your mind is having new perceptions every half-minute, don't get hung-up on one of themand try to get stuck with it because you'll set-up a feed-back. Instead, junp from one thing to another fast, jump from one thought to another fast, as the thoughts rise during the time that you are writing, and don't go looking for a thought that you had a half an hour ago or before you started writing, just the thoughts that you have while you're writing, because that, clearly, is much easier to do. Otherwise you stop the natural flow of what's going on as you're writing and you short-circuit it trying to retrieve something that you thought two days ago or half-an-hour before, or try and think up something smarter than the thing you thought. And to try and think of something smarter than what you're thinking, than what you actually thought, is just a waste of time, because if you just hang around and take downthe thoughts you're thinking of at the moment, sooner of later you'll think of something smarter than the last thought anyway. It's funny, if you stop the whole process of thought to think of something smarter, all you do is think of the word -"smarter","smarter","smarter". So you set-up a feed-back. So the thing is '"one perception must immediately lead on to another", or follow your perceptions. And Robert Creeley contributed the phrase to Olson in that essay, "Form is never more than an extension of Content" and that means the same as something you will feel will find its own form -  "Form is never more than an extension of Content" - like.. I was thinking of a poem of Philip Lamantia... (So if that were a line of poetry - "Form is never more than an extension of Content - like".. colon on the page - "like, colon , like.. I was thinking of a poem of Philip Lamantia" - The form of those three lines is exactly as said, in other words, is identical with their content. And there's a great poem by Philip Lamantia that goes.. from his Selected Poems, City Lights ( I paraphrase it, because I don't have it here) - "I long for the super essential light of the darkness, I long for Christ on the cross, I long for the blood of the beauteous heavens, I long for the immense vegetable turnips of Jesus Christ's victory, I long for.. it is nameless what I long for". And the line goes "I long for the - blank, stop, go down to the next line, continue - "It is nameless what I long for". "I long for the… it is nameless what I long for", It's just the way his mind went. So that's an example of a thought finding its own form on the page, or an example of what Kerouac says, "Something that you feel will find its own form" - Is this clear? Is there anybody who doesn't understand what I was just saying? Please, if you don't understand, let me know, because it means that I haven't said it clearly, it doesn't mean that you're dumn

(7) "Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind" - In other words, allow any thought - "8. Write anything you want bottomless from bottom of the mind - "Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind - what you realy want to write about instead of what you think you're supposed to write about - "9. The unspeakable visions of the individual" - that's such a funny phrase - "the unspeakable visions of the individual" - something, more or less, probably derived from an amphetamine high - "the unspeakable visions" - so.. because Kerouac at that time did write a good deal on amphetamine (and it wasn't so good an idea, (he) burned his body out doing that, made it harder to write novels later, because it's more of an ordeal to take a lot of amphetamine and then go write for twenty days on amphetamine, and then get totally physically exhausted and have to not write again for another year, and not write a.. one single work, but to accomplish a single work he did it in intense bursts and for several years he was using amphetamines to complete.. like in The Subterraneans) -"The unspeakable visions of the individual" is the title of a series of archive, books, put out by some guests here, the Knights, archives of Beat writers, taken from this little phrase, "the unspeakable visions of the individual". (10.) "No time for poetry but exactly what is" - This is what I was talking avout before. No time for deliberate "I'm going to write something that they can put up in a museum or in an anthology", "No time for poetry but exactly what is", what is in your mind - (11) "Visionary tics shivering in the chest" - "That beautiful cute boy I saw yesterday!" - "Visionary tics shivering in the chest" - (12) "In tranced fixation dreaming before object before you" - In other words, you set up the picture in your mind of what it is you want to describe, somebody's face (I think Kerouac has an "old tea-cup for a face" or "a trip across America") - I think he would sit first, figure out (the) picture in the mind, picture it in his mind, the whole thing that it was going to be into, get it all together, and then.. then write, letting the picture suggest the words - (13) "Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition". In other words, like Philip Lamantia said, "I long for the… It is nameless what I long for", or William Carlos Williams has a funny line at the endof a poem called "The Clouds" where he breaks off in he middle of the sentence because he couldn't.. can't say any more (he's talking about the people getting abstract and not being down to cases, not talking about "for instance"s and not being down to earth, saying their imaginations plunging on a moth, a butterfly, a pismire, a….. - and he ends "a", dot dot dot dot dot, or in the poem "For Eleanor and Bill Monahan" - "The moon which was latterly the poets planet they have..rediscovered, or they've taken over for scientific purposes..the fools, what do they think they will find..that death has not already shown them/Those ships should be directed inward upon/but I'm an old man , I've had enough…" - That was, just as you would talk, just as you would say it, just as you would think it, with a break. He didn't have to finish the sentence, he already said it - Those ships should be directed inward upon/but I'm an old man , I've had enough…" - (14) "Like Proust, be an old teahead of time" -  "Like Proust, be an old teahead of time" - In other words, as Proust had the total recall, or conducted a total recall of all of the details of his life, very appreciatively, like a tea-head who had, having sipped a little grass and gottten very high was begining to appreciate all the cracks in the china bowl and all the tiny little flowers blooming in his back yard out the window, and appreciating the purple drapes and the paisley coverings for the sofa, and remembering the paisley coverings of the sofa in his aunt's house and the taste of tea and little crackers, way back when he was a kid visiting suburbs, to visit his aunt, so remembering all the details -  "Like Proust, be an old teahead of time" - (15)  "Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog" - the way you would think it to yourself - "Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog" - (16) "The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye"  (I'll xerox these up for you by tomorrow, so you don't have to worry about it, unless you're speed stenographers, or something) - (17) "Write in recollection and amazement for yourself" - Kerouac wrote all that stuff.. I remember he used to, before it was published, he had it all lined up, neatly-typed, on his shelf, and he said, "I want to have something so I can read something, something interesting in my old age - "Write in recollection and amazement for yourself" - (18) "Work from pithy middle eye, swimming in language sea" - In other words, stumbling over your own tongue to tell the story, as if you were talking to your best friend, in bed. (19) "Accept loss forever" - that's a basic Kerouac tragic Buddhist idea - Accept loss forever - because his first big book was about his father dying and his second book was fare-thee-well-beloveds, you and your kids, On The Road, and then the third or fourth book, Visions of Gerard, is about the death of his nine-year-old, or six-year-old, elder brother. So "Accept loss forever", and actually, for prose that really is, if you write with a realization that you're writing about a world that'll be gone in the twinkling of an eye by the time the book is published, so you're writing about a ghost world, you "accept loss forever" .It gives poignance and emotion to your view of the world that you're writing about when you realize you're already writing.. you're already writing about already ghosts. Life is a dream already ended. That was Kerouac's phrase. (20) "Believe in the holy contour of life" - So that would be the same as "Be in love with your life", or similar, but, in terms of the novelist, or the life-time poet tracing year after year the changes and contours of his own mind and his own soul and his own loves and his own works and his own moves from cities to cities - contour.. Be in love.. ""Believe in the holy contour of life"

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

to be continued

Allen continues to elucidate the thirty precepts that comprise Jack Kerouac's "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose"

AG: "(21) "Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in your mind" - That's the real key, or that's the main slogan here - Struggle - well, I wouldn't say a struggle - but, "sketch the flow that already exists intact in your mind" - in mind. So what he's saying is there already is an interior monologue, or interior talk, or interior movie going on, you're always seeing movies inside, you're always dreaming movies, daydreaming movies. If you're a novelist, all you have to do is write down the daydream movies that you have all day long. If you're a poet, just take one or two daydreams, write them down and put the title on the top of the page from the last piece of conversation in the daydream. "I want to open up a delicatessen, he said" - That was the last thing in the dream so that was the title - "I want to open up a delicatessen, he said". And then you have.. You just write your dream down, what it was, (as distinct from struggle to make up some kind of something that will sound pretty to other people, or make up something, out of whole cloth, that doesn't already exist).

Now this I think is the key. How do you know (and he says this) the flow that exists in your own mind, (and) but how do you locate that flow? What do you mean by flow in your mind? What is this flow? So it's a flow of words and a flow of pictures. And I would define the flow of words as (and the flow of pictures) as, tangible sounds, audible (tangible in the sense of audible) sounds, audible along the surface of the tongue, into the center of the throat, a continuously running tape going on all the time, which, if you are silent, you (can) simply tune in on, (like you just turn on the radio), and listen. In other words, abandon attention to all the background sounds and listen to the way you're talking to yourself. Now, in that moment of silence, maybe, you heard along the back of your throat, "Now what did he mean by that?", or something like some question, or some, "Yeah, that's right", or.. In other words, did.. How many here talk to themselves all the time? How many never hear themselves talking to themselves? - Really? - I don't want to trick you into this thing - that, actually, literally, how many hear themselves talking to themselves..often, let us say, if not all the time? - Okay - so - of course, there's many levels of talk. Sometimes it's just horrible gibberish babble, and sometimes it's real deep sorrowful, interior questioning - "Oh mama?", you know. So, it's a question of working with that flow
.
How many see pictures all the time? - or how many often see pictures during their waking moments? How many never see picures of daydreams? - Well, daydream comes in pictures sometimes. (William) Burroughs insists that he doesn't even think in words, he thinks in pictures all the time, actually.. Peoples' phenomenal consciousness seem to be varied. Some people hear sounds. Some people think in rhythms. Andrei Voznesensky, the Russian poet, asked me what language I thought in, and I said, "oh English, or sometimes Spanish", and he said, "I think in rhythm". You know - da dada da da - da… Well, the question is, is it a statement?, or is some hoped-for goal to exhaust word patterns? I think that, if you write poetry, you've got to make use of them. I would say, rather than exhaust them, become aware of them. That which is shallow or useless will drop away as soon as you become aware of it, it's just..it'll be just drivel, but that aspect, those portions, of talk-to-yourself which are sincere talk, to your own heart, can be taken down as poems. I notice (that) if you want to rub out the word, get rid of the word, the way you do it is not to shoot it, because that only makes it resurrect bigger. It's like suppressing the Jews, or suppressing porn, or something. Yeah, just play it through and let the record play and listen to the record, sort of, listen to the tape along the surface of your tongue. (I'm saying "along the surface of your tongue", because I think, literally, if one were to zero in, in awareness, where the interior monologue goes, it's probably along the tongue, and back into the larynx).They say that if you put some very sensitive mic, along the larynx, that silent verbal thought that is unspoken does reverberate in the chord box. Is that so? Does anyone know anything about that? Anybody ever heard of this? Raise your hand if you have. Can somebody explain it more scientifically than me? Yeah? [Allen locates a Student] - if you can? - it's a little awkward. Could you pass him the microphone maybe? - just take it out and pass it along…yeah.. (is that microphone on? - yes, it's on, go on)

[Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)]

Student: Well, actually, it's Wittgensteinian linguistic analysis
AG: What?
Student: Wittgensteinian linguistic analysis
AG: What kind of? Wittgensteinian?
Student: Wittgensteinian, yes.
AG: Please speak very clearly because the echo in the room makes it hard to hear. Ok, go on.
Student: And in fact it was tested that whenever you are - quote "thinking to yourself" that your larynx is in fact moving in the verbal pattern as though you were speaking.
AG: Really? Who did the testing on that?
Student: I don't recall.
AG: I remember reading about it. That's why I'm saying this.. Somebody did a test, yeah. Do you know when that was?
Student: Well, the testing was actually done in the late nineteen-forties, and didn't become particularly large knowledge among the intelligensia until Wittgenstein became more popular as a philosopher.
AG: And what was Wittgenstein's generalization about it, do you remember?
Student: "Thought is.." Wait a minute, sorry.. -"Thought is the manipulation of signs, and only the manipulation of signs"
AG: And how would that relate to an interior..?
Student: Well, he would make the claim that you are not thinking unless you are using words. That, what you were talking about, visual imaging, is not, by his definition, thinking.
AG: I see. Well, I'm calling that thinking too - visual thinking. But the correlation I was looking for is, when you're thinking in words, is there physical (activity) in the larynx? - and apparently there is according to tests.
Great. If we neeed to talk, maybe we can pass the mic around…because (this) is being recorded.

For the pictures (I was speaking now of sound), for the pictures, I think we tend to visualize or see, actually, in an area about two inches in front of the forehead to two inches inside the skull (like a little t.v. set, a visualization). I mean, when you close your eyes and see a picture.. Let's close our eyes for a moment.. Picture an old tea-cup. Now where is that physically, in relation to the space of the head? It tends for me to be around above the eyeballs or into the eyeballs, or a little bit further out. Does anybody have any other ideas about that?

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

AG: (Where does your mind-image display?) It's sort of in front of your nose, and up above. It may vary for people.
Student: You mean outside..?
AG: Pardon me?
Student: You mean outside? You think, and then you put yourself outside..
AG: You think of it, but then you do put yourself…?
Student: (In front of you. It's not on your face)
AG: Ok, no, I'm just wondering. So, the question is - where, in the space of your dark head space (with the eyes closed), where does the picture appear? - and I'm saying, to me, it seems to appear a little bit in front of the face, or in front of the brow.
Student: (In the mind's eye)
AG: Well that's what I'm saying. Let us think now, where do we actually locate our pictures?
Student: Usually in the eye.
AG: Yes, indeed, that would make sense. And I'm even saying a little bit above the eye and a little in front of the eye, but certainly somewhere in relation to the eyes, absolutely, why not! (just like somewhere in relation to the tongue and the larynx for sound). But.. I'm glad you said.. I'd never thought of that before, but that's the whole point - there is a physical picture going on, and it's going on somewhere, so, if you're having trouble, if you say, "I've got writers' block, I don't know what to write about", and there's all this television going on in front in relation to your eyeball, all you have to do is become aware of the screen in there. So I was just pointing out that there is a tv screen of the mind going on, and there's a phonograph record or tape-machine going on. And that is in relation to "Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in your mind", and, next one, which is the most important for me, and the most useful slogan in all writing, the most useful mind-trick (like I was talking about those mind-tricks for the bowing, I was trying to introduce this notion of a specific technique, that' s really brilliant and smart - and simple as.. you know, just shit-simple, down-to-earth easy, the next one) [Allen has been expounding on Kerouac's thirty-point Belief & Technique for Modern Prose"]

- (22) "Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better" - "Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better" - In other words, you're writing a poem and you get stuck, you know, because, you know, you can't remember what the object was. So, don't get tangled in your tongue when you're trying to get the right word but look at the picture, define the picture, get the picture outline clearly in your mind's eye and then the word comes automatically. There's no problem getting the word if you can see the thing clearly. I mean, say, describe a wall, well, how do you describe a wall? -"Well, the wall is painted grey-green and has got hinges all over it and has got cracks going up and down from the ceiling to the floors " - that wall - so you see the picture and then you can describe it, but if you don't see a picture than you have nothing to describe but the word "wall" - and just a word describing more words instead of a word describing a tangible object. So Kerouac's idea here was..was a real definite mind-trick - "Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better" - Is that clear? That's really important because it relates to many many other slogans and conceptions of poetry of the twentieth-century.

So I'll do a little footnote side-track here - William Carlos Williams' slogan - "No ideas but in things" - no generalizations and abstractions, like.."it's summer and it's hot" (for) what may be instead, "I walked out the door and the air was shimmering above the asphalt sidewalks" (in other words, the heat portrayed by a physical, tangible object - or, my favorite example of that is in Shakespeare, when he's talking about winter, and he doesn't say winter but he's got a song "When Dick the shepherd blows his..""When milk the.." When icicles hang by the wall/And milk comes frozen home in pail/And Dick the shepherd blows his nail" [ "When icicles hang by the wall/And Dick the shepherd blows his nail/And Tom bears logs into the hall/And milk comes frozen home in pail"] - That's a very vivid image of winter, or cold - "And Marion's nose is red and raw.." - So Shakespeare gave out winter by giving the instances of winter, for instances, pictures mostly. So, "no ideas but in things" - no winters but in frozen-milk-in-pails (because winter is nothing but frozen-milk-in-pails and icicles-hanging-by-a-wall. It isn't a word, it isn't a general thing, it's a specific movement of cold which has.. which you can see, you can see the frozen pails and frozen icicles. So for instances all the way, from beginning to end. So, that's useful. How do you get for instance? Well, don't stop to think of the word when you stop but stop to see the picture better - "Man, I met this ugly girl." - "So what about this ugly girl?" - "Well, I met this girl, she didn't have a nose, her nose was eaten away and there was a large green spot there", or something. Instead of saying "ugly", just describe the large green spot - "Don't stop to see words when you stop but to see picture better" -

"Keep track…" - here's a nice one next - (23) - "Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning" - So, when you write (in) your notebooks, you know, put the date down and… what Kerouac did as a novelist was take some few notes every day of the great events of the day - who he talked to, what little vision he had, how much the milk cost when he went down to the eternal grocer - "Keep track" - and also he kept his journals every day - so he kept track of his life and didn't let his life slip away into, like, amnesiac sand, by.. you know, he could open up his notebook and see what he did last week, whereas.. How many of us can remember what we did last week? - or where we even were ? - You can? - I can't, I don't know where I was (unless I wrote it down and put a date on it). How many can't remember where they were last week? - Ok, fine, well keep track of every.. those who can't remember where they were, "keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning" - that's like "Be in love with your life" - "Be in love with your life, and "Believe in the holy contour of your life" - "Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning" - In your morning? - that means.. (what is it today? July 24th, 1984 - 1982! - July 24th, 1982, the second day of the grand international Kerouac Festival, "emblazoned" in my forehead.

Yes, sir? (can I pass the mic?)

Student: Does Kerouac have any suggestion as to where we get the time to do this, where we get the time to sit down..
AG: As to what?
Student: Where do we get the time to write about our days. If we sit down and write about the day, we would actually need two days, one day to experience it, another day to write it all down.
AG: You don't have to write it all down. You only need to take five minutes to "emblazon" the day, day's date, and main images in your mind, twenty minutes. Of course, (William) Burroughs gets up every morning and he writes from nine or ten in the morning until four in the afternoon. His day is writing. You know, the inventions of the writing is his big day. (Jack) Kerouac when he was writing novels would write maybe sixteen hours (and sleep eight, and then sixteen hours and sleep eight). My own method is, you know, whenever I write something, I write something, I don't even think about it, I just do it, when I want to, when I have something that overflows , when I have something to say. But I'm a minor poet [sic] for that reason, compared to the enormous epical prose-poems that Burroughs and Kerouac have exuded, accomplished.

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

[Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)]

Allen continues with the numbered precepts, thirty precepts, that comprise Jack Kerouac's "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose"

(24) "No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge"  - That's a little bit like the negative capability of John Keats - Does anybody know that phrase - "Negative Capability"? (and how many do not know "negative capability"? - One of the great phrases of all literature and all mind-tricks (it's a great mind-trick phrase) which is.. It's from a letter by John Keats to his brother, saying, "I was thinking about talking with these literary nit-wits, and having supper with them, and they were boring me with a conversation, and I thought of something - they had all these opinions - and I thought of something, what characterized really great poets, like Shakespeare, which was (what) I would call "negative capability"" - "the ability to keep contrary ideas in the mind, without an irritable reaching out after fact". [Editorial note - "..when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason"]. In other words, the ability to be able to entertain opposite ideas, completely contradictory poles of ideas, in the mind (like "the universe is absolutely real" and "the universe is completely a dream and unreal"), the ability to keep both of those ideas in the mind without an "irritable reaching out after fact" - ("Well, I got to prove that it's real!" - "Well, I got to prove that it's unreal" - "It must be real' - "No, it must be unreal" - "No, it couldn't be both. It's got to be one or the other") - But Keats said - "the ability to keep both in your mind, without that irritable reaching after fact, without being a big jerk and getting mad and saying, "What? One's got to be right, rather than the other". So it's "Negative Capability" - capable of having negatives, or opposites, in your head without freaking out (which is the characteristic of genius, according to Keats, because it means Big Mind, not mind reduced to a couple of obsessional decisions, that you've got to decide what's right, what's wrong , as if you knew, as if there was such a thing as right and wrong, even., but, you know, open).. It goes back to being open, submissive to everything, open, listening (open, listening and submissive, rather than closed, not listening, not submissive but ordering the universe around and trying to put it all into pigeon-holes and categories).

(25) "Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it" - So it goes back to pictures - I didn't fill up all those footnotes when I said "No ideas but in things". It also means "No ideas but in facts", according to Williams,"no ideas but in the facts". It also means.. most of the facts are pictures, in a way. Ezra Pound divided poetry into three aspects - melopoeia (the music of words), logopoeia (the amusement of words, or "the dance of the intellect among the words", the wittiness of it all, like Shakespeare talking about love - "on purpose laid to make the taker mad", [Sonnet 129], just the wittiness of - "love - "on purpose laid to make the taker mad"" - that's an example of logopoeia, wittiness of words - or, when he's talking about.. to his boyfriend, (in the Sonnets, [Sonnet 20]) and saying… "Oh it's too bad you don't wanna make it with me, you wanna make it with these chicks"..."But.." (it's about nature) - "But (since nature) since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure/There's be your love and my.. well, I don't know.."there's be your love" - i.e, the women get it -"But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure". So it's.. a witty way of using the word "prick" - "set thee up", gave him a prick ["But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure/Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure"] - So that's wit or logopoeia -  melopoeia - music, logopoeia - intelligent trickery with the language - and phanopoeia - the pictures in the front of the forehead, "the casting of the picture on the mind's eye". So Kerouac says, "Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it" (same pictures you had when you were a kid, by the railroad tracks, under the crib, pissing behind the piano, exactly the same pictures, just sketched the same for others).

(26.) "Bookmovie" - "Bookmovie" - that was Kerouac's idea of a novel - "Bookmovie" (because picture-movies, picture-show, book-picture-show) -"Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form" (he thought of it as American because it came out of the movies, that is the movies set the way for people to think about life and to make pictures of it and effective novels) - 27.- We're up to twenty-seven of thirty - "In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness" - Character (like last night when (Chogyam) Trungpa was showing character, I thought, almost gibberish, although obviously he was making sense but there was tremendous character). And the interesting thing about most of the Beat writers is that all of them are characters, in a sense that they have.. strange, interesting eternal tastes about their natures ((Herbert) Huncke's face or (William) Burroughs' face)..so that Burroughs is funny when he eats, actually. It's interesting to watch Burroughs eat - or anybody intelligent - the way he eats, or the way he walks, or the way he sits down, or the way he picks up an apple and looks at it - "In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness" - So, of course, that was for a novelist - "Character" - That's a thing that I dig most of all. In fact, more than ideas, I'm more interested in.. let us say.. Timothy Leary. Oh I had lunch today with Leary, Burroughs and Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner. We went over what we were going to arrange the evening for tonight, and I was noticing, everybody dug Burroughs because of his character, even if they disagreed with his ideas they just liked the sound of his voice, the way he drawled it out, the way he'd make-believe he was being nasty or something, the way he made-believe he was being cynical, so the tender way he made-believe he was being cynical. It was just all in the character. "In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness" - And in character, finally, it comes to some kind of generosity, I think, generosity of expression.

"28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better" - That's abandoning restraint and actually saying what you're thinking - "29. You're a genius all the time" - You'll find that emblazoned on our posters for the poetry readings for this week. So, on the top it says "Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning" (so we could remind people what day the poetry readings were ) and on the bottom it says, "You're a genius all the time". In other words, same thing as "Be in love with your life" - 30. "Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven" - So, character on earth, for no reason at all, except maybe some angelic eyeball will take a look at it some day, and if they don't, there still some kind of human eyeballs around.
So that's Kerouac's, one of Kerouac's really interesting essays on how to go about writing.

What I want to do then (because I'm not going to talk all the way through this, I think - but I've got five minutes more of just talk - reducing everything into a series of one-liners or slogans as mind-tricks for writing) - "No ideas but in things" - no ideas but in facts - "The natural object is always the adequate symbol" (Ezra Pound) - "The natural oject is always the adequate symbol" - In other words, don't try and symbolize, don't try and make a poem out of symbols, go back to the original experience, object, fact that impressed you and write what impressed you rather than some extrapolation of thought that sounds like a Socialist manifesto or a Metaphysical manifesto. In other words, the natural object, the icicle hanging by the wall, the milk coming frozen home in pail, Dick the Shepherd blowing his nail, is the adequate symbol of winter, you don't have to work it up any more. (Chogyam) Trungpa - "Things are symbols of themselves" -  Things are symbols of themselves. If you want to find the eternal character of the microphone, it's the microphone. If you try… It's the same thing as "To find Heaven in a Grain of Sand or Eternity in an Hour"? - What's the (William) Blake line?. Anybody know that? - the line in Blake - Can you recite it please? -

Student: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand..
AG: "To see the world in a grain of sand and Heaven in a Wild flower/Hold Eternity in the palm of your hand
Student: Hold infinity in the palm of your hand…...
AG: … And Eternity in an Hour". Does everybody know that?, from "Auguries of Innocence", is that? - "To see a World in a Grain of Sand/An Eternity in an hour/Hold.. I don't know, Hold all Earth in the palm of your hand and in heaven..
Student: (Hold infinity in..)
AG: Yeah, hold the Universe in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour - something like that, you'll figure it out (as Kerouac says, you can always look it up in the book if the right words are important. But do you get the idea? (or did we confuse it and make too much of a soup out of it? - Eternity soup?)
So, "the natural oject is always the adequate symbol", or "Hold Eternity in the palm of your hand" - and the Buddhists have a very similar thing "Buddha in the palm of your hand" (it's exactly the same as Blake, oddly enough, and it's natural Japanese, Chinese, Sanskrit, "Buddha in thr palm of your hand", or "Eternity in the palm of your hand" - (William) Blake, also - "Pay attention to minute particulars" - take care of the little ones - pay attention to minute particulars, take care of the little ones. I have a whole essay, or speech, on this, a dharma poetry that we transcribed, a class I gave July 6, this month, which is transcribed and will be printed up and handed out as part of a lttle Naropa bulletin, so I hope you grab it before you leave (it should be on those… on the tables out here, in a day or two, making a sort of explanation of all these slogans, and an exposition of them.

So, "No ideas but in things", "No ideas but in the facts", "The natural object is always the adequate symbol", "Things are symbols of themselves", "Take care of… Pay attention to minute particulars, take care of the little ones". "Don't stop to think of the words when you stop but to see picture better", "Melopoeia, Logopoeia, Thanopoeia" (different, three different, pieces or parts of poetry, aspects). Those are suggestions for focusing the mind, and Williams adds one other thing, which is if you have trouble trying to describe a tree, or one object among a class of objects, all similar. How do you individualize or particularize a face, a tree, a sidewalk? You choose, or you flash on that aspect of the tree that makes it different from other trees, or that aspect of an object that makes it different from other objects of the same class - that tree with the broken giant bough on the north side, that tree which comes up with two horn-like branches to the top (those are actually examples from Williams). So you choose that mark, or characteristic, of a face, or a tea-cup (that Chinese tea-cup with the jasmine flowers with the crack along the handle - so it's the crack along the handle that makes it particular and distinct from other.. tea-cups).
That is for fast sketching. If you were a sketch artist and you had to make a tea-cup…find the characteristic of that particular teacup, you have to find that crack or mark or design or shape or…check-point that makes it different from other tea-cups. So, surveying a room, or surveying a landscape, you have to fast pick out what's unique about it, what one little picture-word will conjure up the entire landscape from just one thin stream running through the green fields, snaking their way through cottonwood, going along the river bottom - So that's that landscape, outside of Lawrence, Kansas. Is that clear? -

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

[Kobun Chino Roshi, sitting Sesshin at Naropa, July 1989. photo.c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

August 14 1978, Allen Ginsberg’s class on Meditation and Poetics continues. [Editorial note (via Randy Roark) – “The class begins with taking class roll and discussing credit requirements and other business. About mid-way through, the tape-machine begins malfunctioning and an indeterminate amount of the presentation (has been consequently) lost, as a result]

AG: Just to cover a little bit of meditation technicalities, which I may have said at one time or other. The purpose of having the eyes open is that you’re not checking out another universe, you’re just sitting normally in the middle of this one. So if the purpose of meditation is purposeless, settling into where you are already, in this particular case, (particularly related to poetry), eyes open is preferable.

One trick related to the eyeballs is (to) relax them and not stare, and that means looking, as it were, through the window of the eyes, even perhaps aware of the surface of the eyeball, rather than fixing on an external universe. Not staring at the surface of your eyeball, but at least looking through it. If you’re at all experienced with peripheral vision, sitting of that nature might wind up relaxing sufficiently. So, not focusing on a center, there would be some even spread, including peripheral vision, if you’re wondering what to do with your eyeballs (to get technical about it).

The reason for straight back is that when you’re sitting up straight there is alertness and wakefulness, whereas when you’re leaning against a chair there’s a tendency to daydream. A formula oft-repeated is – twenty-five-percent attention to breath (in other words, you don’t get hung up on that like another thought). And twenty-five-percent attention to posture (As I sit, you may have noticed that, occasionally, I straighten up. That means I’ve been daydreaming. The daydreaming and the absence, the travel out of your body, so to speak, comes, generally, when you begin to lose attention and you begin to droop. When you wake up, there’s that straightness again). Twenty-five-percent attention to thoughts (in the sense of recognition or acknowledgement) and twenty-five-percent nothing (open attitude – blank).

(It’s) not a question of fighting off thought-forms, it’s a question of acknowledging them, recognizing them, taking a friendly attitude, and passing on out through the breath again. The old formula back from Gampopa’s time, was making breath with space, mixing mind with breath, thus mixing mind with space. Basically, just sitting. Shikantazais the Japanese – just sitting. There’s a little bit more than just sitting because you’re making a little bit of effort to wake up occasionally and go back out on the breath.

So far, we’ve dealt with definition and focus and some extension of awareness into space, and ) (this is) a good reminder of that spaciousness (because this sort of sitting, or this kind of awareness, which is both poetic and meditative, does tend to lead to what has been called “panoramic” perspective. You do become aware of yourself after a while, just as this (moment now), sitting in the center of the room all around you, and above the room, the sky, and all around, Boulder, and all around, (the) Rocky Mountain region, and Colorado, America, North America, Western Hemisphere, Planet Earth, Solar System, (the) Galaxy… In other words, you’re just sitting in the middle of an infinite space. And I’ve heard it suggested that, occasionally, you can remind yourself (of) that.. that you can say, “I, Allen Ginsberg, am sitting in the middle of (the) Casey High School cafeteria, up in the hill(s) in Boulder (Colorado)…” .And just go on out until you hit the end of space. Just, simply, to come back to awareness of where you are, actually, (which is an old poetry trick as well). In the "Plutonian Ode", I used that simply as a poetic image – “this Ode completed on the fourteenth day of the sixth month revolving on Planet Earth, revolving around the Solar System year after the Dominion of the last God, nineteen hundred and seventy eight, on Planet Earth, in a galaxy, in a solar system in a galaxy, in the middle of space”.

This leads out to a sort of infinite emptiness, or empty infinity, occasionally, or a sense of spaciousness so vast that there’s no roof to the mind. And that does tend toward some kind of glimpse of such great spaciousness, that there is nobody there, or at least it’s space through which we’re passing. As (Chogyam Trungpa) pointed out, that’s somewhat of a Boy Scout notion (that is, there’s a certain amount of effort involved there to realize the emptiness), and, after a great deal of experience with that, it’s no longer (necessary) to try to practice it consciously, because it becomes somewhat second-nature. Then the human practice becomes actually being in your body, aware of what you are and doing what you’re doing – looking at what you look, hearing what you hear, tasting what you taste here, smelling what you smell, touching what you touch mindfully, and thinking what you think. So it’s just returning to yourself and doing what you are to begin with, which is the Vajrayanasphere, (or, as in the haiku, the personal comment) Your own somewhat-cleaned-up ego. Your self, actually,intervening in the world, living in the world and intervening in it. So the poetry we’ll deal with touches on that mood, of the Vajraindestructible self.

AG: Does anybody know the Finnish epic, “The Kalevala”. Has anybody ever read any of that? – I’d like to read a few pages of that. It’s an epic poem which was originally in oral form, and (was) written down in the nineteenth-century by a Swedish [sic] scholar, Elias Lönnrot, [Editorial note - Lönnrot was actually a Finn] and translated (fantastically) by Francis Peabody Magoun and published by (the) Harvard University Press. It’s called “(The) Kalevala” – K-A-L-E-V-A-L-A, and in the chapter, or poem, three, that I’m going to read from, this old bard, who has had lots of discipline and lots of experience and is an old dog, finally (old dog, incidentally, is one of the characteristics of tantric mind) – old dog, like an old dog that no longer jumps up (and) barks excitedly when it hears an egg drop.

So, Väinämöinenthe old dog bard, meets Joukahainen, a young punk bard coming up the road, and their chariots pass (but) can’t pass each other in the road because there’s a too-narrow road, and so comes “a contest of bards” between the older and the younger. They’ve heard of each other, but finally they’re meeting (at least Joukahainen has heard of Väinämöinen

"..Steadfast old Väinämöinen lives his days/ on those clearings of Väinämöinen's district, on the heaths of Kalevala district./ He keeps singing these songs, keeps singing, goes on practicing his art,/ Day after day he sang, night after night, he recited/ recollections of ancient time those profound origin songs/ which not all children sing not all men understand/ in this dreadful time in this fleeting age/ Far away the news is heard the tidings spread quickly/ of Väinämöinen's singing, of the man's skill./ The tidings spread quickly to the south, the news reached the north country./ Joukahainen was a young, a scrawny, Lappish lad./ Once he was gadding about; he heard that remarkable charms,/ magic songs, were being rattled off, better ones intoned/ on those burned-over tracks of Väinämöinen's district on the heaths of Kalevala District/ - better than what he himself knew, had learned from his father/. That he took greatly amiss, constantly envied/ Väinämöinen being a singer better than himself.."

So there are a few verses where he sets out to meet the older guy:

"..Steadfast old Väinämöinen, eternal sage,/ was driving on his way, covering ground/ on those clearings of Väinämöinen's district, the heaths of Kalevala District./ Young Joukahainen came along, he was driving on the road in the opposite direction./ Shaft caught in shaft, trace got tangled in trace,/ hames became fast in hames, shaft-bow in butt of shaft-bow./ Therefore they then stop, stop deliberate;/ water poured from shaft-bow, vapor steamed from the shafts."

As you'll notice, the formulaic aspect of this is - you make a statement and you modify it, make a statement and you modify it - two halves, one line.

"..Old Väinämöinen asked: "Of what clan are you/ to come along foolishly, recklessly onward./ You break the bent-wood hames, the sapling shaft-bows./ you splinter my sleigh to pieces, my poor sleigh to bits."/ Then young Joukahainen/ uttered a word, spoke thus: "I am young Joukahainen/ but name your own clan;/ of what clan are you, of what crew, miserable creature?"/ . Then steadfast old Väinämöinen now told his name./ Then he managed to say: If you are young Joukahainen,/ pull over to the side. You are younger than I"

"Then young Joukahainen uttered a word, spoke thus:/ "A man's youth is small matter, his youth, his age./ Whichever of two men is better in knowledge, the stronger in memory,/ let him indeed stay on the road, let the other get off the road./ If you are old Väinämöinen, eternal singer,/ let us begin to sing, start to recite magic./ one man to test the other, one to defeat the other"/. Steadfast old Väinämöinen uttered a word, spoke thus:/ - "What can I really do as a singer, as an expert!/ I have always lived my life just on these clearings,/ on the edges of the home field, again and again have listened to the cuckoo by the house./ But, be this as it may, speak, so that I may hear with my ears:/ what do you know about most about, understand beyond other people?"/ Young Joukahainen said: "I indeed know something!/ This I know clearly, understand precisely: "A smoke hole is near a ceiling, a flame is near a fireplace./ It is pleasant for a seal to live, for a pike, dog of the water, to roll about;/ it eats the salmon around it, the whitefish beside it./ A whitefish has smooth fields, the salmon a level ceiling./ A pike spawns in the chill of night, theslobberer in bitter cold weather./ Autumns the timid, obstinate perch, swims deep./ summers it spawns on dry land, flaps about on shores./ "If this may be not enough, I have still another bit of knowledge,/ understand a certain thing:/ "The North ploughs with a reindeer,/ the South with a mare, remotest Lapland with an elk./ I know the trees of Pisa's Hill, the tall evergreens on Goblin's Crag,/ tall are the trees on Pisa's Hill, the evergreens on Goblin's Crag/. There are three strong rapids, three great lakes,/ three high mountains under the vault of this sky./ In Hame is Halla-whirlpool, in Karelia Loon Rapids./ none exceed the Vuoksi rapids (which) surpass those of Imatra" . Old Väinämöinen said: "A child's knowledge, a woman's power of memory! / It is neither that of a bearded man nor indeed of a married man./ Speak of profound origins, of unique matters."/ Young Joukahainen uttered a word, spoke thus:/ "I know the origin of the tomtit, I know the tom-tit is a bird,/ the hissing adder a snake, the roach a fish of the water/, I know iron is brittle, black soil sour,/ boiling-hot water painful, being burned by fire bad./ Water is the oldest of ointments, foam of a rapids oldest of magic nostrums,/ the Creator himself is the oldest of magicians, God the oldest of healers./ The source of water is from a mountain, the source of fire is from the heavens/, the origin of iron is from rust, the basis of copper is a crag./ A wet tussock is the oldest land, the willow the first tree,/ the foot of a tall evergreen the first habitation, a flat stone the first wretched cooking vessel."/ Steadfast old Väinämöinen uttered these words:/ "Do you remember anything more or has your foolish talk now come to an end?"./ Young Joukahainen spoke: "I remember a little more. /I remember indeed that time when I was plowing the sea,/ hoeing out the hollows of the sea, digging deep spots for fish,/ deepening the deep places in the water, putting the lily ponds in place./ overturning hills, heaping up blocks of stone./ I was already the sixth man, seventh person/, when they were creating this Earth, fashioning the sky/, erecting the pillars of the sky, bringing the rainbow,/ guiding the moon, helping the sun,/ arranging the Great Bear, studding the heavens with stars"./ Old Väinämöinen said: "You are certainly lying about this./ No one saw you when they were ploughing the sea,/ hoeing out the hollows of the sea, digging deep spots for fish,/ deepening the deep places in the water, putting the lily ponds in place./ overturning hills, heaping up blocks of stone,/ Nor were you probably seen, /probably neither seen nor heard,/ when the earth was being created, the sky fashioned,/ the pillars of the sky erected, the rainbow brought,/ the moon guided, the sun helped,/ the Great Bear arranged, the heavens studded with stars."/ Young Joukahainen then uttered these words: "If I do not happen to have intelligence, I will ask for intelligence from my sword./ O old Väinämöinen, big-mouthed singer!/ Proceed to measure off our swords, set out to fight a duel"./ Old Väinämöinen said: "I don't think I'm very much afraid/ of those sword of yours, your intelligence, your ice-picks, your thoughts./ But be that as it may, I will not proceed to measure swords/ with you, wretch,/ with you, miserable fellow"./ Then young Joukahainen screwed up his mouth, twisted his head around,/ clawed at his black beard. He uttered these words:/ "Whoever does not proceed to measure swords nor set out to fight a duel,/ him I will sing into a swine, change into a pig with lowered snout./ Such men I enchant, one thus, the other so. /strike dead onto a dunghill, jam into the corner of a cattle shed"./ Old Väinämöinen got angry, then got angry and felt shamed./ He began to sing, got to reciting,/ the magic songs are not children's songs, not children's songs, women's jokes;/ they are a bearded man's which not all children sing,/ nor half the boys indeed, nor one bachelor in three/ in this dreadful time, in this fleeting final age"./ Old Väinämöinen sang. Lakes splashed over, Earth shook/, copper mountains trembled, solid slabs of rock split,/ the crags flew apart, stones on the shore cracked./ He bewitched young Joukahainen. He sang sprouts onto his shaft-bow,/ a willow bush onto his hames, sallows onto the ends of his traces./ He bewitched the lovely basket sleigh. he sang it into a pond as fallen trees./ He sang the whip with the beaded lash into shore reed of the sea./ He sang the horse with the blaze to the bank of the rapid as a rock./ He sang the gold-hilted sword to the sky as flashes of lightning;/ then he sang the ornamented shaft of the crossbow into a rainbow over the waters/ then his feathered arrows into speeding hawks, / then the dog with the undershot jaw, it he sang onto the ground as rocks./ He sang the cap off the man's head into the peak of a cloudbank./ he sang the mittens off his hands into pond lilies./then his blue broadcloth coat to the heavens as a cloud patch/ the soft woolen belt from his waist into stars throughou the heavens/ He bewitched Joukahainen himself,/ sang him into a fen up to his loins,/ into a grassy meadow up to his groin, into a heath up to his arm-pits./ Now young Joukahainen indeed knew and realized./ he knew that he had got on the way, got on the route to a contest,/ a contest in magic singing with old Väinämöinen. /He keeps trying to get a foot free; he could not lift his foot./ However, he tried the other; here his shoe was of stone./ The young Joukahainen indeed becomes anguished,/gets into a more precarious situation. He uttered a word, spoke thus:/ "O wise Väinämöinen, eternal sage!/ Reverse your magic charm, revoke your enchantment,/ Free me from this predicament, get me out of this situation./ I will indeed make the best payment, pay the most substantial ransom"./ Old Väinämöinen said: "Well, what will you give me/ if I reverse my magic charm, revoke my enchantment,/ free you from this predicament, get you out of this situation?"/ Joukahainen spoke, "I have two vessels, two lovely boats. /One is swift in race the other transports much. Take either of these. / Old Väinämöinen spoke, "I do not really care about your vessels. I will not select any of your boats./ These I too have with every rower hauled up, every cove piled full,/ one steady in a high wind, the other that goes into a head wind".. He bewitched young Joukahainen, bewitched him still deeper in./ Young Joukahainen said, "I have two stallions, two lovely steeds./ One is better for racing, the other lively in the traces. Take either of these"./ Old Väinämöinen said, "I don't care about your horses. Don't bother me about white fetlocked horses./ These too I have, with every stall hitched full, every stable full,/ with fat as clear as water on their backbones, a pound of fat on their cruppers"./ He bewitched young Joukahainen, bewitched him still deeper in./ Young Joukahainen said, "Old Väinämöinen, reverse your magic words, revoke your enchantment./ I'll give you a high-peaked hat full of gold pieces, a felt hat full of silver pieces got by my father in the war, brought in from battle"./ Old Väinämöinen said, "I don't care about your silver pieces. I have no need, wretch, for your gold pieces./ These too I have with every storehouse crammed, every little box fully stocked./ They are gold pieces as old as the moon, silver pieces the age of the sun". /He bewitched young Joukahainen, bewitched him still deeper in. /Young Joukahainen said, "O old Väinämöinen , free me from this predicament, release me from this situation. /I'll give you my windrose back home, surrender my fields of sandy soil to free my own head, to random myself". / Old Väinämöinen spoke, "I don't want your wind rose, useless person, nor your fields of sandy soil./ These too I have, filled in every direction, windrose in every clearing./ My own are better fields, my own windrose finer"./ He bewitched young Joukahainen, kept bewitching him further down./ The young Joukahainen at last, however, grew desperate when he was up to his chin in the mud, up to his beard in a bad place./up to his mouth in a fen, in mossy places, up to his teeth behind a rotten tree-trunk. /Young Joukahainen said, "O wise Väinämöinen, eternal sage, now sing your song backward./ Grant me yet my feeble life. Set me free from here./ The current is already dragging at my feet, the sand scratching my eyes./ If you will reverse your magic words, leave off your magic spell, I'll give you my sister, Aino, to rinse out the wooden firkins, to wash the blankets,/ to weave fine stuff, to bake sweet bread."/ Then Väinämöinen was exceedingly delighted when he got Joukahainen's girl to provide for his old age./ He sits down on a song stone, sits himself on a song rock./ He sang once, he sang twice, he sang a third time too./ Young Joukahainen got free, got his chin free of the mud,/ his beard from a bad place, his horse from being a rock in the rapids,/ his sleigh on the shore from being a rotten tree-trunk in the water, his whip from being a shore reed./ He climbed slowly into his basket sleigh, He set out in a sorry state of mind with heavy heart to his dear mother's, to his esteemed parents."

Student: When was that written?

AG: Well, the oral tradition is old, maybe two, three, four, centuries.. It was written down mid nineteenth-century, not long ago, (17), perhaps (18)47. Lönnrot went around to Lapland and other places on field trips collecting these tales and has composed them into an epic. Here's Lönnrot out on his field trip looking for epics (from an 1847 illustration).

(A) great book - Harvard University Press

So it's one assertion, or one, say, magisterial mind.

[Some sections of the above (Allen reading from the Kalevala) can be heard here, beginning at the beginning of the tape and concluding approximately four-and-three-quarterminutes in]

[Hart Crane (1899-1932) standing in fromt of The Brooklyn Bridge]

AG: So it's one assertion, or one, say, magisterial mind - The (very) last chorus [Chorus 242] of Mexico City Blues. Now, recapping from (Jack) Kerouac's magisterial point-of-view - instructions for creating a liberated society - (what was the phrase used by (Chogyam) Trungpa last night (sic)?, the name of Naropa?) - the creation of an enlightened society):

"The sound in your mind/is the first sound/that you could sing/ If you were singing/at a cash register/with nothingon yr mind - / But when that grim reper/comes to lay you/look out my lady/ He will steal all you goy/ while you dingle with the dangle/and having robbed you/ Vanish/ Which will be your best reward/T'were better to get rid o'/ John O'Twill, then sit a-mortying/In this Half Eternity with nobody/To save the old man being hanged/In my closet for nothing/And everybody watches/When the act is done -/ Stop the murder and the suicide!/ All's well!/ I am the Guard" - (So that's like a bodhisattva proclamation. So it's proclamation. As Väinämöinen's proclamation, that's Kerouac's proclamation (We've had Whitman's proclamation)

Here's a proclamation by Hart Crane - Much more strange. Does anybody know Hart Crane's poetry at all here? (He was) an American who committed suicide jumping off the fantail of a boat coming up from Veracruz, 1931, great friend of all the intellectuals of the (19)20's, lived in Greenwich Village. Perhaps the greatest American poet of the century in the old manner (which is to say, the classical, but he took the classical pentameter of (Percy Bysshe) Shelley to its extreme. and also to the extreme of abstraction, and yet with such solidity and intensity that it formed some kind of whirlwind of breath (like Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind", with which we began this class). So, having startted with gentle breath, I'm now returning to the big wind.

The poem is called "The Bridge", which is a sort of modern epic, in which he picks up various Americanist local particulars, pays homage to (Edgar Allan) Poe, to Walt Whitman, to theDharma Bums of his time, to the railroad track, to the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge, to the American Indians, to the mythology of the Machine Age, attempting to find a bridge between the old America known at the end of the nineteenth-century and at the time of his birth and the more craven commercial materialistic (and yet iron-shod) futurity that was prophesied by (William Carlos) Williams, (Alfred) Stieglitz, Walt Whitman and the others - cities interlaced with iron on the Plains, the Modern Age, as we know it - his little kind ofcut-up, collage, section about the old winos and hobos on the railroad, called "The River" - So I'll read that first, because it's just a little sort of Kerouac-ian style, or Americanist style, Thomas Wolfe-style, nostalgia - and then get on to his heroic stanzas at the end of the poem in "Atlantis"

[Allen begins by reading from Hart Crane's "The River" - ("Stick your patent name on a signboard/brother - all over- going west - young man - Tintex -Japalac- Certain-teed Overalls ad/and lands sakes! under the new playbill ripped/in the guaranteed corner - see Bert Williams what?/Minstrels when you steal a chicken just/save me the wing for if it isn't/Erie it ain't for mils around a/Mazda - and the telegraphic night coming on Thomas/a Ediford…"…."So the 20th Century - so/whizzed the Limited - roared by and left/three men, still hungry on the tracks, ploddingly/watching the tail lights wizen and converge, slip-/ping gimleted and neatly out of sight. The last bear, shot drinking in the Dakotas/Loped under wires that span the mountain stream./Keen instruments, strung to a vast precision/Bind town to town and dream to ticking dream./But some men take their liquor slow - and count/ - Though they'll confess no rosary nor clue - /The river's minute by the far brook's year/Under a world of whistles, wires and steam/Caboose-like they go ruminating through/Ohio, Indiana - blind baggage -/To Cheyenne tagging…Maybe Kalamazoo…"…."Youngsters with eyes like fjords, old reprobates/With racetrack jargon,- dotting immensity/They lurk across her, knowing her yonder breast/Snow-silvered, sumac-stained or smoky blue -/Is past the valley-sleepers, south or west/ - As I have trod the rumorous midnights, too…"

And, from the "Atlantis" section - This is like a pure music, pure breath. The imagery sort of pounded and hammered, like hammered metal. One image condensed upon another, and linked in a series of vowels - very powerful, perfect for blowing on. Perfect for blowing through - like a clarion. But the interesting thing is that finally it verges on such pure desire, or proclamation of desire, but with what object, finally? A bridge between dirty modernity and ideal antiquity, but still almost a suicidally urgent prayer that has no focus except he pure breath of wind that flows through it. The image is of the Brooklyn Bridge - "Through the bound cable strands, the arching path/Upward, veering with light, the flight of string, -/ Taut miles of shuttling moonlight syncopate/The whispered rush, telepathy of wires./Up the index of night, granite and steel -/Transparent meshes - flecklexs the gleaming staves -/Sibylline voices flicker, waveringly stream/As though a god were issue of the strings…."…."O Answerer of all, - Anenone, -/Now while thy petals spend the suns about us, hold -/ (O Thou whose radiance doth inhert me)/Atlantis, - hold thy floating singer late!/ So to thine Everpresence, beyond time,/Like spears ensanguined of one tolling star/That bleeds infinity - the orphic strings,/Sidereal phalanxes, leap and converge:/- One Song, one Bridge of Fire! Is it Cathay,/Now pity steeps the grass and rainbows ring/The serpent with the eagle in the leaves…?/Whispers antiphonal in azure swing."

Well, that's really (a) powerful piece of oratory, invoking a breath like (Percy Bysshe) Shelley's breath. Certain, sure, swift, almost inevitable sounding, grasping toward some infinity which probably resides in the infinite feeling of the poem itself, and the infinite oceanic feeling of the poem itself. He had to work on it a lot (in the sense of hammer it together, revise and revise and revise) to get that total intellectual opacity, actually. Though if you analyze it, there's lots of symbolic hints and clues to piece it together into some kind of statement about modernity and desire and love and basically modern general ideas, or modern stereotypes, but set forth with such a chain of sound that you can simply use it almost as an orchestral or saxophone piece to blow on. And if you read it paying attention to the punctuation, you can approximate the exaltation ambitioned in the construction. [to Student] - You had (a question)?

Student; (What is the) name of this poem?

AG: Oh, this is (called), the "Atlantis" section of "The Bridge", by Hart Crane. A poem, "The Bridge" - section eight (VIII) - "Atlantis", (which has the epigraph: "Music is then the knowledge of that which relates to love in harmony and system" (Plato).

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

AG: Another proclamation - from (William) Burroughs - this is somewhat a mindfulness proclamation - from Exterminator! , page 57. (It features) his favorite character, Colonel Sutton Smith (he wrote another chapter of Colonel Sutton Smith this summer), sort of a parody of an English ex-militaryZen man, so to speak, someone with perfect Western consciousness, or perfect Western mindfulness. But what's interesting in (that) Burroughs outline is a kind of precision and mindfulness very similar to, say, Zen gardening,or flower-arrangement, or archery. Burroughs' own system, which, with his usual humor, he even parodies - or he sets forth, and then parodies. You have here, also, Burroughs' accounting of returning to present consciousness and present space. So you could say this, to begin with….(is a) somewhat Vajrayana-stye parody of what he respects, which is total precision:

"A cold, dry, windy day. Clouds blowing through the sky sunshine and shadow. A dead leaf brushes my face. The streets remind me of St Louis… red brick houses, trees, vacant lots. Bright and windy back in a cab through empty streets. When I reach the fourth floor, it looks completely unfamiliar as if seen through someone else's eyes. "I hope you find your way… red brick houses, trees...the address in empty streets. Colonel Sutton Smith, 65, retired, not uncomfortablyon a supplementary private income...flat in Bury Street St. James's….cottage in Wales... could not resign himself to the discovery of Roman coins under the grounds of his cottage, interesting theory the Colonel has about those coins over two sherries - never a third, no matter how nakedly his guest may leer at the adamant decanter…" - (Burroughs has a great sound, too) - "He can, of course, complete his memoirs…extensive notes over a period of years, invitations, newspaper clippings, photographs, stretching into the past on yellowing dates. Objects go with the clippigs, the notes, the photos, the dates… A kris on the wall to remember Ali who ran amok in the marketplace of Lampiper thirty years ago, a crown of emerald quartz, a jade head representing a reptilian youth with opal eyes, a little white horse delicately carved in ivory, a Webly .455 automatic revolver….(Only automatic revolver ever made the cylinder turns on ratchets stabilizing like a gyroscope the heavy recall). Memories, objects stuck in an old calendar.

The Colonel decides to make his own time. He opens a school notebook with lined papers and constructs a simple calendar consisting of ten months with twenty-six days in each month to begin on this day February 21, 1970, Raton Pass 14 in the new calendar. The months have names like old Pullman cars in America where the Colonel had lived until his eighteenth year… names like Beauacres, Bonneterre, Watford Junction, Sioux Falls, Pike's Peak, Yellowstone, Bellevue, Cold Springs, Lands End dated from the beginning Raton Pass 14 a mild grey day. Smell of soot and steam and iron and cigar smoke as the train jolts away into the past. The train is stopped now red brick buildings a deep blue canal outside the train window a mild grey day long ago.

The Colonel is jolted back to the now by a plate streaked with egg yoke, a bacon rind, toast crumbs on the table, a jumble of morning papers, cigarette butt floating in cold coffee right where you are sitting now. The Colonel decides on this mild grey day to bring his time into present time. He looks at the objects on the breakfast table, calculating, then moves to clear it. He measures the distance of his chair to the table, how to push the chair back and stand up without hitting the table with his legs. He pushes his chair back and stands up. With smooth precise movements he scrapes his plate into the Business News of the Times, folds the paper into a neat triangular packet, sweeos up plate, knif, fork, spoon and coffee cup out the kitchen with no fumbling or wasted movements, washed and put away. Before he made the first move he has planned a whole series of moves ahead. He had discovered the simple and basic discipline of D.E. - Do Easy. It's simple to do everything you do in the easiest and most relaxed manner you can achieve at the time you do it. He has become an assiduous student of D.E. Cleaning the flat is a problem in logistics. He knows every paper, every object, and many of them now have names. He has perfected the art of casting sheets and blankets so that they fall just so and the gentle silent sopoon or cup on a table. He practices for a year before he is ready to reveal the mysteries of D.E. As the Colonel washes up and tidies his small kitchen, the television audience catches its breath in front of the little screen. Knives, forks and spoons flash through his fingers and tinkle into drawers, plates dance onto the shelf. He touches the water tap with gentle, precise fingers, and just enough pressure considering the rubber washers inside. Towels fold themselves and fall softly into place. As he moves he tosses crumpled papers and empty cigarette packages and crumpled papers land unerringly in the wastebasket as a Zen master can hit the target with his arrow in the dark. He moves to the sitting room, a puff of air from his cupped hand delicately lifts a cigarette ash from the table and wafts it into the wastebasket. Into the bedroom smooth movements cleaning the sink and arranging the toilet articles into a….. "

AG: (So Burroughs) follows that little charade with a little essay. So this is like home-made American mindfulness:

"D.E. is a way of doing. It is a way of doing everything you do. D.E. simply means doing whatever you do in the easiest, most relaxed way you can imagine, which is also the quickest and most efficient way, as you will find as you advance into D.E."

If you think this Buddhism is paranoid, listen to Burroughs:

"You can start right now tidying up your flat, moving furniture or books, washing dishes, making tea, sorting paper. Consider the weight of objects. Exactly how much force is needed to get the object from here to there? Consider its shape and texture and function. Where exactly does it belong? Use just the amount of force necessary to get the object from here to there. Don't fumble, jerk, grab an object. Drop cool possessive fingers onto it like a gentle old cop making a soft arrest. Guide the dustpan lightly to the floor as if you were landing a plane. When you touch an object, weigh it with your fingers. Feel your fingers on the object, the skin, blood, muscles, tendons of the hand and arm. Consider these extensions of yourself as precision instruments to perform every movement smoothly and well.
Handle objects with consideration and they will show you all their little tricks. Don't tug or pull at a zipper. Guide the little metal teeth smoothly along, feeling the sinuous ripples of cloth and flexible melt. Replacing the cap on the tube of toothpaste…(and this should always be done at once. Few things are worse than an uncapped tube maladroitly squeezed, twisting up out of the bathroom glass, drooling paste, unless it be a tube with the cap barbarously forced on all askew against the threads). Replacing the cap, let the very tips of your fingers protrude beyond the cap, contacting the end of the tube, guiding the cap into place. Using your fingertips as a landing gear will enable you to drop any light object silently and surely into place.
Remember, every object has its place. If you don't find that place and put that thing there, it will jump out at you and trip you or rap you painfully across the knuckles. It will nudge you and clutch at you and get in your way. Often such objects belong in the wastebasket but often it's just that they are out of place. Learn to place an object firmly and quietly in its place and do not let your fingers move that object as they leave it there. When you put down a cup, separate your fingers cleanly from the cup. Do not let them catch in the handle and if they do repeat movement until fingers separate clean. If you don't catch that nervous finger that won't let go of the handle, you may twitch hot tea across the Duchess.
Never let a poorly executed sequence pass. If you throw a match at a wastebasket and miss, get right up and put that match in the wastebasket. If you have time repeat the cast that failed. There is always a reason for missing an easy toss. Repeat the toss and you will find it. If you rap your knuckles against a window jam or door, if you brush your leg against a desk or bed, if you catch your feet in the curled-up corner of a rug, or strike a toe against a desk or chair, go back and repeat the sequence. You will be surprised to find how far off course you were to hit that window jamb, that door, that chair. Get back on course and do it again. How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can't find your way around your own apartment. It's just like retaking a movie shot until you get it right. And you will begin to feel yourself in a film moving with ease and speed. But don't try for speed at first. Try for relaxed smoothness, taking as much time as you need to perform an action. If you drop an object, break an object, spill anything, knock painfully against anything, galvanically clutch an object, pay particular attention to the retake. You may find out why and forestall a repeat performance. If the object is broken, sweep up pieces and remove from the room at once. If the object is intact or you have a duplicate object, repeat sequence. You may experience a strange feeling, as if the objects are alive and hostile, trying to twist out of your fingers, slam noisily down on the table, jump out at you and stub your toe or trip you. Repeat sequence until objects are brought to order…"

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

[Spiderman and Allen Ginsberg cartoon - Tom Gauld]

From the current issue of Poetry magazine – more Howl parodies – (we've featured several such before - - Amy Newman - “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by wedding  planners, dieting, in shapewear,/ dragging themselves in cute outfits through the freezer section for the semifreddo bender/blessed innovative cloister girl pin-ups burning to know the rabbi of electricity in poverty, obedience, in the dream stick of opium and the green Wi-Fi fuse.."

From the Paris Review - "Supplication to the Muses on A Trying Day" - quite a discovery! - a hitherto unpublished Hart Crane poem - "Thou art no more than Chinese to me, O Moon! A simian chorus to you/and let your balls be nibbled by the flirtatious hauchinango…"

Ai Weiwei being finally granted a passport – a not insignificant cultural moment. We send you back to 2011 and the Allen Ginsberg Project here and here - andhere

Auction news - Christies First Open On-line auction this week (Post-War and Contemporary Art) featured three of Allen's Chinese photos (from his visit there in 1984). Here's one of them:

[Caption: "Downtown Baoding, across from Department store, behind walled gate, this huge public garden's kept up - it was attached to some rich Merchant-official before Revolution - Photo snapped by student interpreter, everyone seemed interested. I liked the moon-bridge's mirror-mouth oval - November 1984. Allen Ginsberg"]

The above photo went for an estimated selling-price of three-to-five-thousand-dollars

The Kerouac letter from 1968 that we reported on earlier, in another auction (to Sterling Lord, detailing plans for his never-completed book, Spotlight), surprisingly, didn't sell, failing to meet its reserve price (ten-to-twelve-thousand-dollars). Another item, a 1953 photograph of him by Allen (with typically-detailed hand-written caption added), however, did sell (that one, for just over five-thousand-three-hundred-and-sixty dollars)

On The Roadmapped out and more. See more about Richard Kreitner and Steven Melendez's quaintly obsessive map-making here

Sad news - the death this past weekend, aged 76, of the great English poet and translator, Lee Harwood. Robert Sheppard remembers him - here, John Harvey - here. Shearsman Books in 2004 published his Collected Poems (and his Selected Poems in 2008).
Most recently, The Orchid Boat appeared from Enitharmon Press in 2014

Here's John Yau, from last November, on "Why I Am A Member of the Lee Harwood Fan Club" - Rest in peace, Lee.

[Lee Harwood (1939-2015)]

Congratulations, Anne Waldman for the Lifetime Achievement Award in this year's (Before Columbus Foundation's) American Book Awards!

Congrats Levi Asher on twenty-one years of Literary Kicks!

Jonah Raskin on Peter Coyote

[Peter Coyote]

Jed Birmingham on Carl Weissner

[Carl Weissner (1940-2012]

& the new Beatdom - Beatdom #16 - is just out ( it's "the Money Issue"). Among the articles - Delilah Gardner - "Ginsberg in the Underground, Whitman, Rimbaud and Visions of Blake"; editor David S Wills on "The Burroughs Millions"; Hilary Holladay on Herbert Huncke, and essays on two key "Beat women", Hettie Jones and Bonnie Bremser, as well as a review of a book of Gregory Corso interviews (see our note on this tomorrow)

Another of our film-recommendations - American Rimpoche - "exploring America's introduction to Tibetan Buddhism" (we've noted it before in the context of Gelek Rinpoche - but see further notes on it, a portrait of Allen's (and Philip Glass)'s teacher - here).

[Philip Glass, Gelek Rimpoche & Allen Ginsberg]

Another of the summer's essential books (we're only just now getting round to profiling it)

Rick Schober's stellar collection of theCollected Interviews with Gregory Corso -

over a dozen pieces, plus an illuminating memoir-introduction by Dick Brukenfeld, (Corso's first publisher, of the 1955 Harvard volume, "The Vestal Lady on Brattle"), plus footnotes, index, dramatis personae...

a faithful capturing of that irascible, wayward, prison-smart, poetics-smart, uniquely vocal, unapologetic, Beat poet

Corso, in 1980, to a patient and respectful poet-interviewer, Gavin Selerie:

"But if you take this tape here and transcribe it, people will read it on the page - they're gonna think I wrote that shit on the page. So that you better make sure, right off the bat, that I did not write this, that this just a talk one night"

(Selerie gives him his "Shelleyan promise" that he will be faithfully represented.
Corso needn't have worried)

In the course of this volume Corso gets to range on a vast array of topics, what he would characteristically get to describe as "the whole shot".
To take just two of the more focused moments (tho' Gregory's never anything less than "focused"!)

[Gregory Corso - c.1958 Photograph by Harold Chapman]

From a fairly early (1962) interview with poet Anselm Hollo:

Anselm Hollo: Now "Beat Movement" means what - that the movement that, lets say we gave a thrust to, was to be a movement of poets getting up reading their poetry, is that what you mean?

Gregory Corso: Oh well, that would be absurd - to get up and say, well here this is what I'm doing and now I hope everyone else does this - No, I believe that you have to have something to fall back on, you have to have it, and it should always be You - it should never Follow, from something else - that's where the danger of Fad and Monotony can get into it by the Relay…
Now "Beat Movement" if there was anything intended by that - to take the other angle - if it was something as a movement then it was for people to Wake Up! The poetry that was read by myself and Allen and a few others at the time was not altogether social , but a lot of it was Social - and a lot of it has come true: what we said - and a change in the Consciousness has happened.
Now a beat person in the United States is not a person who has a beard - exactly. The consciousness is changed by the beat - it is entering the lives of people who go to college, who are married, who have children. They do not then, by their learning lock themselves up in a room and sleep on floors and don't take baths; that's not it - the Consciousness has altered there through everyone… it has changed completely now and taste has become refined,
What once took a hundred years seems to take a decade now; one doesn't read what was said but one listens to what is being said - I think the main thing of the readings and the poems and all of it that came out was meant to aid and benefit man - to blend with the new consciousness! - It was to give sounding that Here it is and to get everything into that light, see it into that light. So therefore I think that the Beats really have done something tremendous and beautiful. And I'm only down on the fact that the beat today - who came up as beat - are being Monsters of Frankenstein Replicas of the Mass Media - of the newspaper interpretation of Beat, But as for, let's say the original standards of the Beat -
and it's almost I think as important as the Early Prophets - what the Beat did was to speak of Love, and it was to benefit man, and nothing else.
It was Me - but in association with Everyone: the lyric poem itself is "I" but it associates with all Man, and therefore it is a compassionate form of Poesie. A poet is supposed to See: and what he Sees, he puts within himself - and records outwardly - in Poetry"

[Gregory Corso, New York City, 1996. c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

[Gregory Corso, Boulder Colorado, 1985 c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

from Michael Andre's 1972 interview:

Michael Andre: In your poem, "After Reading "In The Clearing"" [in Long Live Man], you said - I can't quote it exactly - "Ginsberg is all I care to understand of the living". ["Poe is my only American poet sir/and my homeland were Greece and England/Shelley is my ichor - Demeter is my mother/And of the living Ginsberg's metaphor/is all I care to understand"] - Is that still true?

Gregory Corso: That's probably generalizing too much. Allen's work to me is the sharpest thing that's being said. I like the early (W.H.) Auden, the"Christmas Oratorio" and "In Praise of Limestone". I really got to digging (Ezra) Pound. You say (Robert) Creeley. Yes, some Creeley is really fantastic. But then, I couldn't put everybody's name down.

[Gregory Corso - Boulder, Colorado, 1985 c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

from a 1974 interview with Robert King(on the occasion of the University of North Dakota's Writers Conference):

Robert King: Your name, at least in the 'Fifties, was really connected with Ginsberg, more than any of the others we've had here this week

Gregory Corso: We were the two poets. They're novelists, you know [Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs]. And Allen and I were poets. When Allen and I read poetry; early in those days, he would read "Howl", very serious; and I was, like I said, giving the humor number. That's what saved it. It would have been too heavy otherwise. Gregory came over with his "Marriage" or something like that, and everybody was happy and laughing. So it worked, it was a nice balance. We were the poets, Allen and myself.

RK: So you complemented each other

GC: Oh sure, sure, sure.

RK: Ginsberg's really published a lot, has all these political connections, movement connections - he may be the most famous Beat. So you could be in a position to say, "Gee, I wonder if I should do more things like Allen".

GC: Right, and I did not. I stayed out of it in the Sixties and for good reasons too. I figured that was the route they'd taken, let thm go with it because something's going to have to happen after that; and conserve some of the energy, Gregory. Let Allen take care of it nice, ad he did. You know, this man's got all his strength and all his energy. You dig? I don't have to be throwing myself out like that. That's when Allen got to understand me. He was burnt up in the beginning, saying, "Gregory, where are you, man, like, help us along". I said, "No, this is where you've got to understand Gregory. This is what I do now. If I'm going to go towards dope, if I'm going to make babies like I did and all that, that's my shot.

Like we say (and there's so much more) - an essential volume

[Gregory Corso & Allen Ginsberg, Paris 1957. c Allen Ginsberg Estate]

[Allen Ginsberg & Gregory Corso, Tangier, 1961. Photo c Allen Ginsberg Estate]

[Gregory Corso & Allen Ginsberg, 1989 - Photograph by Pamela Hansen]

[Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)]

Allen Ginsberg's Jack Kerouac workshop continues. Allen proposes an in-class writing assignment

AG: Okay, now, next thing, how do you appply these [30 precepts from Jack Kerouac's "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose" ] actually? What is the condition of mind that (you) might apply them? You do it not by thinking about it, but by making your mind blank.
So, now, let us conduct an exercise (because we've got a couple of minutes - end this class), writing. What I would like us to do is… for an experiment of writing in the tendency of Kerouac, and in the tendency of classical mind-consciousness awareness, write a three-line poem, consisting in.. (and get your notebooks now - wait a minute, no observers here, get your notebooks out, everybody, nobody can be in this class that does not participate, that means you, come on, that means you with your face behind the red dot [sic], no..no voyeurs around here, come on, - everybody got a notebook?)

Okay, first of all, the way of doing it, a classic way of doing it (which I'll go into later because we're going to run out of time soon - what time have we got? three fifteen? - three seventeen, okay - we have another ten minutes, there's plenty of time) - Flashing on the immense space of the universe, where we are, waking up in this universe in the space. Step two (that was Step one). Step two - Recognizing the exact place where you are (in this case Glenn Miller Ballroom, University of Colorado, Kerouac Conference, or whatever). So you have the flash of space, undifferentiated space or universe, waking up, coming back to yourself, coming back to yourself, first, the flash, then second, the recognition where you are, the names (the name and the form, the actual distinguishing social characteristic of the scene - auditorium, tables, chairs, Ginsberg, yourselves, whattever you are, microphones, summer (mid-summer, July 24th) - the name and the form, where it is in space (Colorado in the United States on the Planet Earth in the Universe - any way you can locate the flash - you wake up, you're here, then you figure out where you are or what you're doing, right? - Are you following so far those two stages of mind? And this is what happens naturally every time you stumble on the stairs, anyway. Third, the after-thought, or, ripple of comment, or what did you think next?, or, coming in in a sort of zig zag, what thought zoomed in from..Mork and Mindy…or from..the hairdresser.. So, in other words, flash of space, recognition of the place, name and form and.. The mind, conceptual mind I'm talking about. Non-conceptual space. Conceptual recognition of it, and then - your personal comment, or your after-thought, a ripple of after-thought. So there are three seperate distinct operations of the mind, that takes place every… probably takes place every… fifty times a second! - You know, like waking up, seeing it's an OM! AH! - (to put it very simply in Tibetan stylization - OM! - AH! - HUM! - That's very precise, actually. It's a dharmakaya, the vast space, the body of law, AH! - the recognition - HUM! - the appreciation or manifestation of it - or, Larry Fagin's phrasing, American-ese phrasing for this was perception-recognition-articulation for space-flash, recognition-name, and after-comment. Now is this clear? I'm dividing our minds, our thought-forms, instant by instant, into three separate stages of development, waking, coming to and seeing where it is and saying "oh yeah, right". Now is that not like the mind somewhat? Actually this is basic Buddhist psychology, as I think it is also basic Kerouac-ian art style, as, I think, it does parallel to (Charles Olson's) "Projective Verse" - "One perception mst move instanter onto another". I'm trying to correlate Buddha dharma psychology with Kerouac-ian spontaneous mind bop prosody with traditional open-field poetic form, trying to put all that stuff together in….because it's only one mind, it's only our mind. It is our mind that we are talking about and the articulation of our mind. And I'm breaking it into.. suggesting a traditional break, break-up of the.., or division, or classification - for working purposes. So you can compose poems on that ground, actually. So, you see, it's something workable for composing (particularly three-liners - bam-bam-bam, yeah?). So.. the equivalent, the Confucian equivalent would be - Heaven (Space) - Earth (where we are) - Man (a commenter) - Heaven and Earth and Man - Man (or Poetry) joining Heaven and Earth . The Word (our own Intelligence) recognizing Emptiness and Form simultaneously, recognizing the space and then wakening into the space and recognizing the form and joining them, joining heaven and earth.

So.. now..the method for accomplishing this. What I would suggest is..we're going to write a poem, in other words. The way to do it really properly is stand up (in a moment, I'll explain the whole procedure), stand up..with your notebooks (in a moment, I'll ring a bell or something) and I want the whole cycle. We will be silent for three minutes, letting our minds go empty and blank, not trying to write poetry, instead of trying to write poetry the opposite (just like I was starting with the bow), bow out, allow the mind a little bit of liberty so that you're not forced to write anything or think of anything, that you're not forced to me smart, that you don't have to be anything at all, you don't have to think of nothin' - Three minutes of complete blank, then (you know, eyes open, maybe paying attention to your breath, if you can't think of any other way of letting your mind go blank, then, we'll write, for, say, three minutes or four minutes, and then sit down and be quiet for another three minutes, and er.. well, let's write (we'll figure what to do with it after, because we've only got six minutes to accomplish our creation. So now let us all stand and I'll give you a signal when three minutes is up. (You don't have to look at me or anybody, you can look in any direction, it's just… [There follows a period of silence]

Now, remaining standing (you don't have to close your eyes, please open your eyes), now remaining standing, stand, and for three minutes, write a poem standing up - three-liner - flash-recognition-after-thought - that's writing on our feet [further silence] - okay, three minutes up, sit again. This is a poetry writing workshop so I would like to do some writing in the workshop. The homework for (the) next meeting is five times in the next twenty-four hours, before we meet, when you wake up and return to yourselves, no matter where you are (in the bathroom, out on the street, out on the campus), at least five times, wake up, and come back to yourself, come back to the universe, stand there for three minutes, blanking out your mind, or empty-minded, and then write a three-line poem, reflectuing flash-recognition-after-thought. Do it five times and bring in five poems plus this (the sixth) as homework next time. We'll do more in class. So it's a very definite assignment involving operation of the mind, involving awareness, and involving spontaneity. It doesn't matter if the poems are any good or not. The guidelines are try and keep it to things, you know, not just thoughts, but things, try and be as specific and for-instance-like as possible. In other words, begin training your mind to think in more concrete…think concretely, and the very act of waking up to do this is kind of, like a joining heaven and earth, anyway. So let's have five poems for the next class. Please, recopy them, five poems plus the one you did now. Try not to change them, try to stick to the originals, because you've got more (time), you can do it all your life, I mean, you don't have to…it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't even have to be any good, but we'll have six poems, see if you can…(one now and five more).. see if you can recopy them neatly on a page by the time you get back, so they're really legible and…because (with) a lot of people here, I would really like to have a chance and go through the poems. I'll go through them after our class next time (Maybe we'll have a chance to recite one each in class, but I promise I will read them if you write them legibly, slowly, carefully, and legibly, so it's… or print/type them if.. print them, because it's impossible to read if you don't, so many poems, if you don't write really clearly. So be kind to my eyes because I'm really trying to work with the situation. So you've got to work too, cooperate there) Put the three-liners on a page detatched and hand it in and I will grade them or mark them or comment or star what I like and leave them for you in our office before the end of the Conference. So I'll go to that trouble if you'll go to the trouble to prepare the texts. And if we get any really good stuff we may use it in some kind of poetry-reading later in the week. So is that a deal? Yeah.

Student: Can you give us an example of the style?

AG: Yeah, well, ok my poem was "On my feet in the ballroom on stage/Is this the teaching of te crazy Chinaman/keep scribbling idiot" - Oh, flash is… The traditional thing is.. (you remember) Kerouac's "In my medicine cabinet/The winter fly/has died of old age" or "The bottom of my shoes/are clean/from walking in the rain", or "Sitting on a tree-stump/With half a cup of tea.. ", "Sitting on a tree-stump in the Rocky Mountains/ With half a cup of tea/Nothing to do", or.. - the haiku form, basically. Flash is "Well here I am in the Glenn Miller ballroom/hung with banners of Tibetan drunkards/Whatever happened to the 1937 jitterbugs?" - You know, where you are, what's happening, and then whatever flash after-thought comes. Does that make sense? - So what I'm saying is don't do it all here, We're all doing the same flash right in this room, but outside. If you're walking on the campus, great, on the middle of the mountains, or the middle of a crowded street, just stop the traffic and stand there three minutes! - and then write down what flows through your mind as you wake up, you know, after the three minutes are up. So that's the homework. Is anybody unclear? - and write it out clearly and hand it in - and we meet again tomorrow at two, right? Is that correct? - ok - thank you. Wait a minute, wait a minute , slow everything down again. Thank you.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately sixty-nine-and-three-quartes minutes in and concluding at the end of the tape]

A great spirited reading of the Moloch section of "Howl"(from circa 1989) on the CBS News Nightwatchprogram - "Well, it's the climax and actually the definition of the poem" declares Allen. "What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?/Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars.." - Reaction shot(s) from fellow-guest Christopher Buckley (William Buckley's son) and a seemingly unfazed host

Here’s an intriguing little memoir (from back in 2012 – don’t know how we missed it) of Allen-at-Columbia and the early days - by Charles Peters, a fellow classmate, and founding editor of The Washington Monthly. Just a teensy bit patronizing, perhaps? ("I came to understand that Allen was an active participant in creating his own myth..", he writes), but, well, still, very much worthy of a read.

[Hal Chase, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S Burroughs, Morningside Heights, New York City, circa 1944-45 c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

"A Calcutta Story" by Deborah Baker - Allen in India - We've noted her work before (see here and here) - recollections "about how the author came to write her book (about the Beats in India), A Blue Hand"

More (in Italian) on therecent Italian edition ofGregory Corso's Gasoline - here and here

& here's a vintage 1959 letter - Corso to Ferlinghetti

& Ferlinghetti to Ginsberg (from the recent I Greet You at the Beginning of A Great Career) - February, 1959, a couple of months before the above note:

"...I'm getting literally stacks of manuscripts every month now, and I just can't publish all that's good that comes my way. I dig all you say (Allen) about the United Front (sic!) [Allen had spoken of "the romance of us all having the same publisher and United Front"] - but I don't wanna! You're a movement in yourself, but you carry this little band of cohorts around with you in portfolio like a prospectus for the Revolution, as if their writing had very much in common with yours. Gregory's certainly does, and I'm not out to run a press of Poets That Write Like Allen Ginsberg' [In the margin of the letter, Corso writes, the editor notes, "Dat's a lie, a big dirty lie, I don't write like Allen Ginsberg - Gregory"]

Ferlinghetti goes on: - "but Gary (Snyder) or Philip Whalen [to take two examples] couldn't be further from you, given a sort of great type dharmabums base, and I certainly see nothing classical [Allen had described them as such] about either Gary or Phil, except classic Northwest American sawmill buddhism.."

Allen's response: "Yes, I agree. Gary and Phil are miles away from me stylistically, which goes to prove that I've not been urging you to "run a press of Poets That Write Like Allen Ginsberg". I thought of them as classical because they work on an old Williams-Pound shortline measures, Snyder more than Whalen, and their content is more (like Pound) literarily learned and allusive, than freestyle a la French poetry"

Of Corso:

"Our writing (his and Gregory's) is similar, tho' his line is shorter, but he has influenced me in the last two years -"Ignu", for instance, (and) the Vachel Lindsay poem ["To Lindsay"] imitates his shorts in Gasoline (elliptical jump) - and other things in the mad phrasing I try to learn from him - so that it is a two-way process, as it should be. I see him as having a rich Shakespearean line. As the end of [the poem] "Food" - "when this table goes/I'll music my eternal meal to the dew". Like, I think he's a more imaginative poet than I am , in his phrasing, more free, and that's why I study him, and that's loosened my own phrasing. It's the weird quality of phrasing and those long poems are great examples of it, even when he has comedy enuf to parody it as in "Marriage" with shots like "Pie-glue", "telephone-snow"

[Gregory Corso]

There's plenty more where that came from.

Janine Pommy Vega's last (posthumous) poems, Walking Woman with the Tambourinewas just published, just this past week, (lovingly and beautifully) by Bob Arnold's Longhouse Books

Jonah Raskin in the Huffingtom Post reviews Amy Newman's "Howl" ("There's no bullshit in Newman's epic poem")

and in the San Francisco Chronicleprofiles the new City Lights Pedro Pietri - Selected Poetry

Here's Pedro Pietri (from 1973) reading "Puerto Rican Obituary"

Peter Robinson in the UK's Guardian pens a thoughtful Lee Harwood obituary

[Richard Cupidi, Lee Harwood, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky outside Brighton's Public House Bookshop via The Evening Argus& Tom Raworth's Notes]

This Sunday, August 23^rdis the day the NWPC (Newton Writing & Poetry Center) bestows the inaugural Allen Ginsberg Literary Community Contribution Awardupon Doug Holder, "Somerville (Massachusetts)’s most cheer-leading diplomat of poetry".
Congratulations on the honor, Doug

[Doug Holder]

["Portrait of Jack Kerouac w/ Brakeman's Manual in Pocket, 1953" - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg c. The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

We've been featuring transcripts this past week from Allen Ginsberg's 1982 Naropa poetry workshopat the gathering there that year celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On The Road. We continue with the follow-up class, July 25th. Beginning in media res, Allen is presenting (as he was here), several pithy slogans (later, gathered together and codified as Mindwriting Slogans)

AG: "No ideas but in..facts", "The natural object is always the adequate symbol", "Things are symbols of themselves""Pay attention to minute particulars, take care of the little ones", "Close to the nose" (William Carlos Williams), "Only objectified emotion endures"(Louis Zukofsky), ""Only objectified emotion endures". So if you have a big freak-out and say, "Agh! I saw the light! , I saw the light! - and it's all over me! - I saw the light!", rather than "tin flash of sun dazzle on the waters" [Editorial note - from Canto IIof Ezra Pound's Cantos] or, "the church's towers crooked mirrored on the glassy surface of the Venetian canals" - "The church's towers crooked mirrored on the glassy surface of the Venetian canals", or "tin flash of sun dazzle" (the "tin flash of sun dazzle" is Ezra Pound's description of the flash of light on water in the Mediterranean - "tin flash of sun dazzle". So, whatever charge he got out of that, he was able to objectify (objectify, in this sense of making little objects out of it of words) - "Crooked mirrored on the glassy surface" was my own attempt at an imitation of the description of light on water in Venice (which I presented to Pound as a sample of following his method of direct treatment of the object, quote, unquote - a direct treatment of the thing - or, to paraphrase Pound - direct treatment of the object). So all these are basic grounding that I was talking about, in terms of where you begin if you don't know how to write. At least you begin with real things, or with something that is objective (objective, in the sense of something you can see, smell, taste, touch, hear - or think). Think is another… I mean, thought is another sense - of the six senses - sight smell, sound taste, touch - and thought (because there is the mind). So, if you quote your own thoughts, those are objects also. If you get lost in your thoughts, well, then you're just lost in your thoughts, in that sort of watery, imprecise abstraction, but if you quote your own thought, that's alright. Like, "Yesterday, I was walking down the street, and, as the sun glinted off the car, I thought, "tin flash of sun dazzle":. So you can quote your thought. If you stand outside of your thought and quote it, it becomes another object. So you don't have to worry about whether or not you can include your subjective thoughts, you sure can, as long as you treat them as objects.

So all this is pretty abstract, but I'm presenting basic slogans, useful to beginners, middle practitioners and advanced practitioners of poetry. All need and begin with a basic grounding in some sense of reality (and it's not very far from journalism, actually - who, what,where, when, why, or whatever, whatever sequence of facts that a journalist will have to do for reporting (because he's not really allowed to editorialize, theoretically, but he is allowed to present the details that lead to a conclusion, rather than just refer to them and give the conclusion. And so Pound also has a term - reference and presentation - how many have heard of that? - in Pound, reference versus presentation? - In conversation with Pound in 1967 in Venice, he said, "The Cantos are a mess". And I said, "What's the matter?". And he said, "Too much reference, not enough presentation". And "reference" means, "It's a lovely day", "presentation" is "...No cloud in the sky, sun over green flatirons of heat shimmering from the sidewalk", or whatever - So, in other words, you present the facts of the situation rather than a generalization. So, the poetic exercise we've been doing was grounded on the idea of waking up where you are in space, to recapitulate - where we left off, waking up where you are in space, noticing it, noticing the place,place-name, or the idea, or the conception, or te map, or the street, or the name of the building, or the fact that you're a human being, or the fact that you're panting tired, or, just had lunch, or… And then, having given name and form to the immensity of the space, and name and form to the spot you are in the space, you then have your emotional reaction, so to speak, or your comment, or your after-thought. In a way, it's like that famous Basho haiku - an Old Pond…the sound of the frog jumping..and then the after-thought, or commen,t or after ripple of thought - Splash!

(Jack) Kerouac has got a lot of good haiku. Someone brought me a copy ofScattered Poems to suggest that I read some and that's a great idea. He said "Some Western haikus" and they're based on flash-moment perceptions. So.. What I was saying..when I was talking about the three stages, of space, recognition and comment, I was trying to analyze, "What is a thought?". Actually, bring it down to that. What is, actually, a thought? What does a thought consist in? If you were trying to define the structure of a thought, what is it? - Or how.. the best is "How can a thought be remembered?" or "How is a thought remembered?", or "In what form does a thought arrive in the mind?. So I was thinking in..I was describing picture and I was describing word, but also I was trying to give a skeleton of the thought. So I am suggesting this is the skeleton of a thought-form - flash-recognition-and-after-comment. Or its flash-recognition-and then you suddenly realize you had the thought. In other words, you have a thought and then you realize you had the thought. You have a thought, recognize it, and then you realize you've just had it, and then all of a sudden you have another thought and you recognize it and you realize you had that! - And that actually is probably is the way the mind works. And it probably could happen..I think the fastest synaptic reaction is.. a synaptic reaction is one fiftity-two asecond - fifty two times a second. Anybody know? It's as swift as synapses give messages across the nerve patterns, nerve junctures. So you can probably have fifty two thoughts a second..and, broken up into that form

So Kerouac's haiku are just a little..things that he noticed, things that he just noticed he noticed, things that he noticed and then he noticed he noticed them and wrote them down. So it wasn't that he invented anything. It's just that he noticed something and then he noticed he noticed it, and then he wrote it down. So it's the same thing you notice, you notice you notice, and then your comment is writing it down.

"Arms folded/ to the moon,/ Among the cows" - "Birds singing in the dark/In the rainy dawn" - "Elephants munching/ on grass - loving /Heads side by side" - Its..the funny thing of that, it just seems to be big heads, big loving heads, side by side, munching on the grass - The one I like the best, actually, one of the best - "Missing a kick/ at the icebox door/.It closes anyway" - He's really funny! - His own anger he's got there, as well as the uselessness of it, in a way. "Perfect moonlit night/ marred/By family squabbles" - "This July evening,/ A large frog/ On my doorsill" - (actually, haiku is very often seventeen syllables and he very often does it that way - that's only twelve actually - "Catfish fighting for his life,/ and winning,/Splashing us all" - "Shall I say no?/- fly rubbing/ its back legs - & This is my favorite, actually - "Unencouraging sign/ - the fish-store/Is closed" - that's pretty funny 'cause, you know, it's like unencouraging sign, drugstore is closed or the liquor store is closed - and the way he says "Unencouraging sign" - sort of like out of the I Ching, a very, a sort of Daoist discouragement. "Straining at the padlock/the garage doors/ At noon" - One of the things I liked about that is, it's the wind that he's talking about. He doesn't have to mention the wind because he's got the garage doors straining at the padlock, which is like that frog haiku of Basho, I think - (actually, the original haiku was just the old pond and then the sound of water splashing and then "kerplunk", I'm not sure that the frog is even mentioned in the original Basho haiku about the frog splash) - "Straining at the padlock/the garage doors/ At noon" - Kerouac is here presenting the wind, by presenting the effects of the wind on the garage door, without having to say "wind" and without having to say, "It's a windy day". Instead of saying "It's a windy day", he says "Straining at the padlock/the garage doors/ At noon". That's one of the most perfect, because he's conjured up the wind by the effect of the wind passing through the universe, or passing through the scene - "And the quiet cat/ sitting by the post/Perceives the moon" - "Juju beads on the/ Zen Manual:/ My knees are cold" - "The bottoms of my shoes/ are wet/from walking in the rain" - [to Students] - Do you all know these by any chance? - How many here don't know these haiku? Never heard? - How many have? - About half and half. Well, Kerouac is probably the greatest American haiku maker, just by accident, simply because his mind flashed and he could write it down fast, and he wasn't worried about literature, he was just going direct to the perception - "The bottoms of my shoes/are wet/ from walking in the rain" - Now how.. so the question is, "How come he would notice the bottoms of his shoes anyway?" Well, doesn't everybody notice the bottom of their shoes? - but nobody pays attention to the bottoms of their shoes, and nobody notices that they notice the bottom of their shoes. Everybody notices it, but nobody notices that they noticed it. So, it's sort of like the first thought that you have, but then you're not sure that you had it, because you didn't think you could use it, or it didn't seem to have any function, it was just another, like, "look at the wall", "look at the ceiling", "(look at) the bottom of your shoes". Except he was constantly noticing the wall, the ceiling and the bottom of the shoes - and "the inside of the medicine cabinet".

So from that comes another phrase, "First thought, best thought". Did we use that yesterday? Did I mention that?..Yeah…and was that understood, what "First thought, best thought" means? It doesn't mean first cheap remark, it doesn't mean first self-conscious talk-babble to the self, it doesn't mean first shallow self-conscious snide remark, it means the first inadvertent thought, the first undirected thought, the first unborn thought, that is the thought you can't trace how you got to it, the first thought that just came up by itself, without your straining and without your being self-conscious. Like "the bottoms of my shoe are wet". That kind of thought is a first thought. That's (Chogyam) Trungpa's phrase - "First thought, best thought". And a corollary with that (which I don't think I did get to yesterday) is "If the mind is shapely.." (which is to say unembarrassed, unselfconscious, unstrained) - "If the mind is shapely, the art will be shapely". Did we get that one yesterday? So, Lucien Carr reduced that to "Mind is shapely - comma - Art is shapely" - he shaped that up - "Mind is shapely, art is shapely" (mainly, because the mind itself is one mind and is shapely and notices the bottom of the shoes, wet from walking in the rain, therefore any poem which depends just on straightforward mind will be shapely. You don't have to worry about shaping it up. You have to worry about shaping up your mind not shaping up the poem. You don't have to worry about shaping up your mind if you just look at your mind, because the mind is already in shape. You may not be in shape but your mind's in shape. So.. Just look at your mind and you'll find it's in shape, because what is.. the shape of the mind is what is..what it notices. So what the mind notices is the shape of the mind. What the mind notices is the object, so to speak. When (Louis) Zukofsky said, "Only emotion objectified endures", he means only what the mind notices in a state of emotion can be written down to express what that emotion was. Only what the mind notices outside of itself, in a state of high emotion, can be written down, and so that will serve as an objective co-relative (objective correlative) to give a picture of the mind itself. Or, the mind is the pictures it perceives, really, (because the mind is empty, actually, it just has flashes and then empties, and has flashes and empties). And so if you wanted to describe the state of your mind or emotions then you describe what you see outside of your eyeballs, outside of your skull.

"In my medicine cabinet/the winter fly/ has died of old age" - And this is a really subtle piece of noticing - "November - how nasal/ the drunken/ Conductor's call" - on the railroad - (have you ever heard that (one)? - [Allen mimics the railroad man - "Paolo Alto!") - "how nasal/ the drunken/ Conductor's call" - He has a lot in that - "nasal", "November", nasal sounds, you know - we all know what that is - "drunken nasal sound" - the "drunken Conductor" - it's a whole railroad he's got going there, calling the stations. So it's a whole lifetime, or a whole novel packed up into those "November - how nasal/ the drunken/ Conductor's call" - thirteen syllables?. Thirteen syllables, it's amazing. "A big fat flake/ of snow/ Falling all alone" - Everybody's seen one big fat flake of snow falling all alone, except he noticed he noticed it, "The summer chair/ rocking by itself/ In the blizzard" - That's a little bit like (the one about) the padlocks and the garage door - "Straining at the padlock,/ the garage doors/ At noon" - You get the wind of the blizzard rocking the chair - (the) "summer chair rocking by itself in the blizzard". So it's kind of inadvertent (like I say, that's the only way you can define it), it's like inadvertent noticings. Now that's ordinary mind, basically. It's not super-mind, supernatural mind, it's not crazy mind, it's not insane mind, it's not supreme poetic mind, it's not transcendental mind, it's everyday mind, every day ordinary mind. And those of you who are big subtle philosophers will recognize that phrase, "ordinary mind", as being the classic traditional description of the highest state in Zen Buddhist practice. Ordinary mind - in other words, getting rid of projections of transcendental weirdo apocalypse light-blast flashes and getting grounded in what is already there visible but unnoticed. So the way you would widen the area of consciousness is to notice what you're not noticing, or be aware of what you hadn't noticed you 'd noticed. Or the description of the state of ordinary mind is to notice what you hadn't noticed you'd noticed. You begin in meditation practice with the breath. In poetry, you begin by noticing the thoughts you had, just like in meditation you begin with noticing your breath, the poetic yoga (yoking together of body and mind) is noticing the thought that you had. So that's the beginning of poetry. And the simplest form is the first flash, So you call it haiku because the Japs [sic] were smart at it, and got it there, like, in one little fire-cracker. So the three-line poem assignment that we had was to get us involved in that particular practice of noticing, noticing that we noticed and then writing it down.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at the beginning of the tape and concluding at approximately eighteen-and-three-quarter minutes in]

Continuing from Allen Ginsberg's July 25, 1982 Naropa workshop, and following up on the previous day's writing assignment

AG: So I think what I would like to do now, if we could, would be to have a fast anthology (you each should have six poems, altogether). So I what I would like to do is run along the.. let us say, beginning on this side, over there [Allen points in one direction], run along the first row, and coming along that way, then going along that way - each one, fast, get up and deliver their haiku. No apologies, no explanations, no side-comments, please no speeches, just so that everybody gets a chance and also speak loud. In fact it might be….

[There follows several minutes of technical difficulties, Allen wishing to effectively mic the experiment - "I don't think we'll have time to do it all…would it be possible to pass the microphone, do you think?..I should have thought of it before I'm sorry I didn't prepare that..How can we organize this without confusion….]

Student: "Floating nuclear flash sore ass sitting in the light leaving last level of consciousness/where Kerouac leaving the colors of summer and autumn on the wall air thin tired cultural shock/Where have any of us gone on a conveyer belt at the Stapleton airport?"

Student: "Mountains seem to have some eye on us t-shirted comrades/highwaying into Boulder past hot elms/ O poet flasher how bright you want to appear."

Student: "The guru wants a flash in three lines/Shit! /and homework too."

Student: "My drawings are my haiku/ the mouth is beautiful crooked sonnets/ so many words come out."

AG: Can everybody hear

Student(s): No

AG: Can you stand up.. Each one speak.. emphasizing consonants

Student: "The yellowed walls surround/ here my body sitting up on bed/Sheeeted…"
AG: Emphasize the consonants and put a tiny space between each word.
Student: Okay. Yeah
AG: You have to learn how to speak as well
Student: Yeah - "The yellowed walls surrounds/ here my body sitting up on bed/Sheeeted with porous gold"
AG: There has to be more space between the words.
Student: Okay/

Student: "In the dead of night/ lamplight becomes me/what do I become?"

Student: "World breeze/The bee lands on the flower/my thoughts floating in me."

Student: "The heater stands in the room/ with the proud bare ribs/ of a museum dinosaur."
AG: Of what?
Student: "museum dinosaur"…

Student: "Moon sand and burning eyes/Third planet Boulder/ My ass is sore."
AG: I cannot hear. Can you out there hear? - How far should you be from the microphone? - HOW FAR SHOULD YOU BE FROM THE MICROPHONE?, the mouth..?
Student: How far..?
AG: How many inches?
Student 2 (Technician): Three inches.
Student; "Moon sand and burning…"

AG: He said three inches.

Student: How's that?

AG: In other words, pay attention to the space around you!

Student: "Moon sand and burning eyes/ Third planet Boulder/ My ass is sore."

Student: "Everybody's from outer space/ No disgrace/Noticed grace."

Student: "Novice disapproval/ poets' advice/ self -recognition - love your life."

Student: "Can't help but wonder why I'm here/literary heros, drugs, beer/I think for you, you dharma queer."

AG: Just take care of the space around you.

[Allen's increasing irritation is evident. Student (Technician): We've got that other mic now, if you want it, Allen? - AG: Ok, can we use it?. Maybe someone could hand it to….]

Student: "Snoozing in the ground cloud/plopped feet-first on Glenn's ballroom floor/stop gazing, T.J., I'm not yet awake."

AG: I couldn't hear. You know, this is part of poetry, which is, majestic pronunciation, with no mumbling, and a clarity of consonants, so that people can hear you. It is part of the awareness of space around you that you be.. take into account what other people can hear! - real -(a)wake - here - so that others can hear, so that you speak into the microphone, aware of where your voice reaches, and whether or not it reaches, rather than mumbling to yourself solipsistically. Now, I could not hear what you said, so could you do it one more time, please, with the microphone three inches from your mouth, as the gentleman who was in charge suggested..You're..one-inch away. Literally, really, awareness of space. Right.

Student: "Snoozing in the ground cloud/plopped feet-first on Glenn's ballroom floor/stop gazing, T.J., I'm not yet awake."

AG: It also would be helpful if you would stand up, because that gives some sense of the space around when you stand up

Student: "Teeth find no subtance in these greens boiled beyond recognition/The hunger spreads/ The street below is walked by three stick figures."
AG: I couldn't hear. Would you raise your hand if you could hear.. yeah.. is there anybody who couldn't hear, beside me?. Okay, there's about twelve of us who could not hear…
Student: Once more?
AG: ..would you pronounce it so that we can hear more clearly. That means enunciation.
Student: "Teeth find no subtance in these greens boiled beyond recognition/The hunger spreads/ The street below is walked by three stick figures."
AG: Street walked?
Student: "Street below is walked by.."
AG: Street below?
Student: Yes
AG: Okay. Thank you

Student: "Entranced by the curios in the museum-case/I step back bump someone/I make dumb apology to the pillar."

Student: "Stars are surrounding us/not washed out as the town/but I miss the ground stars of the buildings."
AG: I couldn't hear the last line.
Student: Okay
AG: But I miss…?
Student: "But I miss the ground stars of the buildings."
AG: The ground stars?
Student; Yes
AG: Okay.

Student: "At Naropa party one thirty a.m/ a woman danced/ her arms swimming like the arms of the sea anenome, her hair swinging like cilia."
AG: Like cilia?
Student: Yeah

Student: "Now it's sad Sunday Student Union/a deserted little coffee cave/Strange to think of my parents here."
AG: That's the comment alright.

Student: "Let us not look at each other as heroes/sitting in this auditorium/We are all one."
AG: Well, there isn't.. You're quoting your thoughts, but it's all just quoting a thought. Maybe the "auditorium" is here?

Student: "Beautiful Boulder sky/the parching dry air/A mean gulp of Pepsi."
AG: A what gulp?
Student: "Mean". "mean"
AG: A mean gulp of Pepsi?
Student: "Mean gulp of Pepsi", yes, ok

AG: The gentleman in the beard, did you have one?

Student: Sure. I can read something, I didn't do anything for this (assignment)
AG: A three-liner? - that is, a brief one?
Student: Alright
AG: Three-liner, four-liner
Student: "To fight effectively, pursue imperatives which ever inspire radical solutions, liberating will to resist opposition to justice…."
AG: No, no facts!
Student: Alright, facts, facts, facts. [he simply reads faster] - "To fight effectively, pursue imperatives...ever inspire radical solutions…"
AG: No. Facts, slowly
Student: "To fight effectively, pursue imperatives...ever inspire radical…"
AG: Please! sir… Facts. Slowly.
Student: Facts, ok, too fast. Facts slowly.
AG: I cannot hear a single word.
Student: I'm sorry, I.. ok… "To fight effectively, pursue imperatives which ever inspire radical solutions, liberating will to resist opposition to justice/Yield never to indifference since to evade issues structures means."
AG: It's pretty abstract!
Student: That's what..
AG: ...but you weren't in the first class.

[Microphone difficulties, technical difficulties continue - "I don't want to tear it up any further because it'll make too much trouble, so maybe folks could… Is the other mic on? - ok]

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

[The Glenn Miller Ballroom at the University of Colorado in Boulder (recently newly-renovated) was the location of the 1981 Ginsberg workshop]

The presentation at Naropa of three-line student poemscontinues (see yesterday's post). Allen continues to be frustrated by student's projection and comprehensibility -"The reason I'm trying to, dictatorially, trying to enforce vocal clarity is because that will lead to visual clarity"

Student: "My big desk/filled with papers/I don't know what to do".
AG: Your what filled with papers?
Student: "I don't know what to do"
AG: Your what?
Student: "My big desk - My big desk/filled with papers.."
AG: I still cannot…
Student(s): "My big desk!"
AG: "My big desk"? - My big desk? - ok, "My big desk filled with papers"
Student: "I don't know what to do."
AG: Next..

Student: "Rhythmic island kisses warning in red and white tag /I smile/and must remember not to try so hard".

Student: "Short-haired girl in flower-print shorts/rolls a curl around her finger/and shakes heaven with blonde tango music".
AG: Hanger music? Hanger?
Student(s): "Tango"
AG: Tango!

Student: "Awaken in a sidewalk cafe/Campari umbrellas and Burroughs look-alikes passing/the waiter has reflecting eye-sockets".

Student: "Ballroom wooden floor/Moon ring - no cow jumping over/My life - a celebration"
AG: I didn't hear the first line actually - "Ballroom..?"
Student: "Ballroom wooden floor"
AG: Could people help with the line? - Just be aware of the space around you. I keep saying..

Student: "Great Eastern sun shining/through this Sunday morning window/What a beautiful day!"

Student: "Black and red car/sitting but ready/an Anarchist-colored car!"

Student: "Graveyard ghosts/conjuring grains of sand/Milk pails full of cottonwood".
AG: Do that again, please.
Student: "Graveyard ghosts/ conjuring grains of sand/Milk pails full of cottonwood".

Student: "Yellow layers of jagged substance/The Geology building is made of stone/I have been asking too many questions".

Student: "Bread so dry it looks like chocolate/bought in Beaver, buttered in Boulder/Home is where my ass is".
AG: Home..? What was the last line?
Student: "Home is where my ass is".

Student: "Okay, it's quite possible that I have a crush on Anne Waldman/ Now under the stars, Boulder/thinking of her chants and new hair-style".

Student: "Flat on my back in Boulder/Umbrella-ed by under-side stripes and springs of an upper bunk/ Bunk - the catchword for showbiz mattress".
AG: "The catchword for?"
Student: "Showbiz mattress"
AG: Right

Student: "Layers, layers,/ cantilevers, multi-layers /First voice - ha! To visit - si!"

Student: "Mr. Man, Mr. Big Man/You think you are Mr. Somebody/But you are Mr. Nobody and Mr. Everyone".

Student; "Pulling the sun my chariot swift, soothe my eyes with morning mist, awakened by her tender kiss/ the sun pries at my eyelids, somebody unplug that bird/ It's not the way she looks, the way she is"

Student: "Naked on white sheets/I wake to the heat/What matter if I write this or go back to sleep?"

Student: "Her heart opened/like the almond nipple/I'd like a beer"

Student: "Jaded rock, grasping for heaven/inside a pitcher of water/ice down Ginsberg's throat"
AG: That reminds me…

Student: "Saw the hit-men of glory/ eyes aglow…"
AG: Couldn't hear.
Student: "Saw the hit-men of glory.."
AG: I still couldn't hear, (pause a bit) between the words
Student: "Saw the hit-men of glory/ eyes aglow/yes, old but not gone"
AG: I can't hear! I cannot understand ONE SINGLE WORD!!! Come on! - Slowly, pronouncing each consonant
Student: "Saw the hit-men of glory/ eyes aglow/ oh yes, old but not gone".

Student: "Outside the art show/lenses click/eyelids in dream state".

Student: "A tunnel unending, at the end of which/a green prick with wings flying, Mystery time Manhattan angel/to the South for the Winter".

Student: "Bobbie bought no wine at the liquor store/I was angry with him".
AG: It probably needs a third line
Student: "Bobbie bought no wine…"
AG: It probably needs a third line. You got "Bobbie bought no wine at the liquor store", (then), "I was angry with him" - What's the comment? See, you…
Student: "Go get some,Bobbie".
AG: "Go get some Bobbie!" - In other words, just to interrupt a minute.. in other words, the structure suggests..check out your haiku to find if it has a punch-line.

Student: "In a death world without sex/Birds chirped in Colorado mountains/And I mourn the uncle shriveled too young".

Student: "Morning light waking beside Boulder creek/ rubbing up against your rich brown Brazilian skin/I feel sweet feather tickle of fuck Caliope".
AG: Rubbing up against your sweet something skin?
Student: Sweet.. "rubbing up against your rich brown Brazilian skin"
AG: Resilient?
Student: Yeah - "I feel sweet feather tickle of fuck Caliope"

AG: Yeah, see, if you're paying attention.. do you notice, I keep noticing words that pass by that are not comprehensible. And I think that most people just assume that poetry is so full of shit that it doesn't make any difference. And because it doesn't make any difference so the poetry is full of shit, because nobody can even hear it half the time, if you go to poetry-readings. If there is a vocal clarity… The reason I'm trying to, dictatorially, trying to enforce vocal clarity is because that will lead to visual clarity. Once you have to put it out really up-front vocally, then you can't get away with slurring over and swallowing words that you're not quite sure of. And most of the time people slur over or swallow words that they're not easy with, that they don't feel right about, or read them too fast. So the reason I'm sort of starting backwards (not starting inside, in the mind, but starting outside, in the air), saying, please pronounce your consonants, shape your words in the air, that'll lead back into the mind to shaping the picture in the mind, in the long run, ok.

Student: "The earth is round is flat/The world tilts back/I lean all I and age held gravely"
AG: I lean all I and what?
Student: "All I and age held gravely"
AG: I can't hear the last three notes - da-da da da-da-da
Student: "The earth….
AG: da-da. Four syllables I could not hear at the end.
Student: Okay - "all eye and age held gravely"
AG: Held gravely?
Student: Yeah
AG: Ok

Student: "A railroad spur a half block long/the Denver and the Rio Grande with nowhere left to go/Shaded by the same trees I am".
AG: Fine

Student: "If the sun lands on your mountain and…"
AG: On your what?
Student: "If the sun lands on your mountain and the river stays clean/how will you receive me then?"
AG: I couldn't hear the last line, I'm sorry
Student: "How will you receive me then?"
AG: How will you see me then?
Student: "..receive me then
AG: Ok

Student: "Om om om om shanti om/ cell-like dormitory room putting me through changes/ facing myself again - no colors to escape into"

Student: "When I was six, no-one was looking I sniffed my aunt's panties, they were just laying there, I pulled them out of a dirty laundry pile to see what a woman's cunt smells like, I guess/Boy, am I the only one?"
AG: Not likely.

Student: "Ten foot high Glenn Miller [in the auditorium] stares down black and white from wall/My legs are crossed like X/Listening's like meditation".

Student: "Hot tongue dog/ on a Boulder roof/saliva howl".
AG: That's condensed

Student: "Driving around town waiting for the parade/Penguins bobbing in the river/What a dream!"
AG: Er..wait a minute.. something bobbing in the river?
Student: Penguins
AG: Penguins? - here?
Student: It was a dream
AG: Oh, I'm sorry, what was the last line?
Student: "What a dream!"
AG: I thought you said "I want a drink". I literally thought you were saying, "I want a drink"! - I keep saying, can you pronounce so that others (everyone in the room) can hear clearly. It's part of awareness of space around you, to take in.. to be a bodhisattva, and take generous, kindly, concern forthe fact that there are other people in the room, at the furthest distance of the room, and at the furthest distance of the universe, for you to address when you get up to make your declaration. So that the poetry can be a declaration that can be heard everywhere.

Student: "Your back is toward me/ shoulders hunched/I will not ask to sit with you".
AG: That's a little bit like Charles Reznikoff!

Student: "Studying writing with Ginsberg's a ball/While Glenn Miller looks right at me/but wasn't it Benny Goodman who first played Carnegie Hall?"
AG: I guess, again, one more time, could you put more space between the words. Partly, you see, the loudspeakers go out there [pointing to the auditorium] so I'm at a slight disadvantage also. That may be why I'm so creepy about it.

Student: "Studying writing with Ginsberg's a ball/While Glenn Miller looks right at me/but wasn't it Benny Goodman who first played Carnegie Hall?"
AG: Ah

Student: "This year/ I have hated the sun/Perhaps I am facing the wrong direction?"

Student: This is called "More Glenn Miller" - "Glenn Miller eats sudden red sun sneak attack of Jack Kerouac/Red words spurt from the ceiling/All naked! - better hold on to your red ass".

Student: "Kind of lame jazz on a heaven sweet night/I've got a good place in line for the reading/There's hardly anything I want".

Student: "Pizza Hut's red hat stares at me/ with gold music in my ears/The beauteous spirit of Carolyn Cassady".
AG: I didn't hear the last line
Student: "The beauteous spirit of Carolyn Cassady".

Student: This isn't going to reach…
AG: You'll have to come forward to get the microphone. The last people up, please come forward for that

Student: "The open book again/The idea at hand/collecting my thoughts".
AG: In collecting my thoughts?
Student: Yeah

Student: "Read a poem in class/Mind reels/Relax."

Student: "Stomach cramps from God's blue gas sky/I don't like my cock touching the urine-painted toilet-seat/Allen's going to think I'm a scatalogical freak."
AG: Well, I hadn't thought of it before!

Student: "A plain feeling/Field off to my side/The borderline slides from horizon to home plate".

AG: Any more?

Student: I got one, Allen

AG: Okay, come forward and get it into the… oh, okay, yell it.

Student: "Isopropyl Alcohol Jelly/Nonsense/There ain't no such thing!"

AG: "Isopropyl Alcohol Jelly/Nonsense/There ain't no such thing!" - It'll be on the record now - Any more from the sound gallery?

Student: That's it

AG: That's it - ok - Next thing…

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

AG: Next thing. Gregory Corso-esque method,. Now Gregory's method is, having accomplished some grounding (whether or not we did it, we'll say we did it, so we'll go on to the next stage), having accomplished some grounding, and assuming that we're able to talk about real things and present some kind of real things. and assuming that we can get up on our feet and pronounce syllables into the great horn of space that will echo throughout the universe, pronouncing our consonants clearly, so that the geniuses of Mars can hear our thoughts vocalized, the next thing would be doing the same sort of shot but without having to worry to write it down on a piece of paper, but doing it like the ancient bards and the more classical and traditional poetry, which is not written down, or was not written down for maybe twenty-thousand years. They only started writing these things down a couple of thousand years ago, remember, which is just, you know, the blink of an eye in terms of human history. Most of the time people just talked or made them up or sang them or chanted them or made up their images and traded them to each other, or traded back and forth, or capped each others pronouncement. And it still is a tradition in America in the form of blues, in the form of street-corner rapping, in the form of funny drunken conversation between journalists at bars on Forty-first street and Second Avenue, or students goofing around in fraternity houses, or poetry classes, or peopkle making up dialogue in movies, (if they're funny, and if they're working for Robert Frank or something).

So, Gregory's form for this kind of thing is to take a one-word concept , like Death, Marriage, Bomb, Army,Hair, and then, figure all the funny lines possible, or, touch on all the conceptions that you can think of relating to hair - there's bald people, there's people with long hair, there's pony-tails, there's frizzy hair, there's red hair, there's dyed hair, there's no hair, there's baby hair, there's hair that's dead, there's hair in the graves, there's hair on the barber-shop floor, there's hair in the sky. So that's a little poem about hair. I mean, whatever comes to mind, all the different hair.

…it involves some kind of presentation of an idea or a fact or a thing, or - a think, a think that goes between one ear and the other, a think that occurs to you. And we might do this in the form of a chain poem. So what would be a good subject? Has anybody got a good suggestion for a good big serious subject that will evoke torrents of imagery?

Student: Sex.

AG: Well, but what kind of sex? - Sex - Sex? - Okay. Sex is not enough… Let us say, Affection. Affection, (which could mean anything from sex to good feeling), that's the basic, that'll be behind it, let us say. But lets choose a key word. relating to sex, or affection, or love, or good feeling, heart feeling, that would evoke.. that we could all handle with that (you know, some people don't want to go directly into sex and some people want to go right in).
Okay, what's a key word that we can say that we can begin it with?

Student: Wine
AG: Pardon me?
Student: Wine
AG: Wine-tender? Tender wine? - Tender wine. I like tender wine. So let's begin. Everybody begin their line with Tender wine - W-I-N-E.
Student: The wine of the grape?
AG: Yes, the wine of the grape. So it's got to be at the beginning of the sentence, like "Tender wine is my foot bath", or "I like tender wine when I go to the drugstore and buy aspirins", or something, whatever, or, I don't know. So, "tender wine" is built into the.. The title of the poem is "Tender Wine", right? - "Tender"and "Wine". And so, what we should do is, each one, get up and make a line, make up a line, using "tender wine" in it. I was suggesting in the beginning, but, you can put it anywhere in the line. So that's the rules of our game, children. Okay, so we have this big baby game with "tender wine"

AG: "Tender wine is what I drag in eternity from my baby shoes" - Shall we use a mic and get it down? - I'll repeat each line so it'll get recorded.

Student: "Tender wine filling a slipper in a yacht, throwing it over the side".
AG: Tender wine filling a slipper in a yacht, throwing it over the side.

Student: "Tender wine. Every time I drink with my friends I get gushy and love them".
AG: Tender wine. Every time I drink with my friends I get gushy and love them.

Student: "I want to swim forever in Tender wine".
AG: I want to swim forever in Tender wine. No, anything written down you may not use. Get up onto your feet and make it up out of your head. That's the rules!… It's alright, if you get up and you don't know what to say - that's good. Blank your mind first, and then the first thought that comes after the blank mind, see. So, if you get up and you can't think of what to say, you've got your advantage already! You make use of that, you make use of it, see, because then the thought springs unborn

Student: "Tender wine goes nice in the soft night with my thoughts".
AG: Tender wine goes nice in the soft night with my thoughts.

Student: "Tender wine bloated my stomach last night".
AG: Tender wine bloated my stomach last night.

Student: "Tender wine, give me a drink, o baby, o baby, o baby".
AG: Tender wine, give me a drink, o baby, o baby, o baby".

Student: "Tender wine, I drink so much".
AG: Finish more, a little bit more..a little more onto the line, add a little bit more on, just a little, add a few more words - Tender wine, I drink so much of you, that..?
Student: "Tender wine, I drink so much of you, that the place you sleep I floated".
AG: "the place you sleep I floated".

Student: "Tender wine falling from the clear blue sky and washing my dirty feet".
AG: Tender wine falling from the clear blue sky and washing my dirty feet.

Student: "Tender wine, so hard on Kerouac. My god, it makes me sick the next day".

AG: Tender wine, so hard on Kerouac. My god, it makes me sick the next day.

Student: "Tender wine, I fell in your eyes, Dionysus."
AG: Tender wine, I fell in your eyes, Dionysus.

Student: "Tender wine flows through my body an makes it tingle".
AG: Tender wine flows through my body an makes it tingle.

Student: "I waste my time on tender wine".
AG: I waste my time on tender wine.

Student: "I think I need some tender wine to help me pass my breakfast".
AG: I think I need some tender wine to help me pass my breakfast.

Student: "My words are soaked and sour with tender wine".
AG: My words are soaked and sour with tender wine.

Student: "A great chortle of friendship along with tender wine".

AG: A great chortle of friendship along with tender wine.

Student: "Tender wine is the time I spend with those I love".

AG: Tender wine is the time I spend with those I love - Get some dis-harmony in it -" tender wine is the time I spent with.. the dogs in the gutter", or something…

Student: "Tender wine that you drunk with me last night stained my lips".
AG: Tender wine that you drunk with me last night stayed on my lips.
Student: Stained my lips
AG: Stayed my lips?
Student: Stained
AG: Stained my lips!

Student: Tender wine makes me sweat profusely
AG: Right. Tender wine makes me sweat profusely

Student: Because I'm here, I don't drink tender wine
AG: Because I'm here, I don't drink tender wine

Student: I wandered through the cemetery with tender wine giving them to ghosts on either side.
AG: I wandered through the cemetery with tender wine giving them to ghosts?
Student: ..on either side
AG: "on either side". Very good, o ghost!

Student: I have no mind about tender wine
AG: I have no mind about tender wine

Student: All alone but for tender wine and red eyes
AG: All alone but for tender wine and red eyes

Student: Tender wine, please
AG: Tender wine, please?

Student: If it was all juiced on top and run in from the showers dripping tender wine would run from my ears into the small mole below your nipple.

AG: If it was all juiced on top and..?
Student 2: I don't remember it.
AG: I know, it would run down your small nipples to your balls..can somebody remember it? - "If it was all juiced on tender wine…"
Student: ...running into the showers...
AG: "running into the showers"
Student 2: it would be falling down my ears…
AG: "It would be falling from my ears down to the.."
Student 3: Belly-button
AG: "...to the mole beneath your nipple." We got it! - retrieved your tender wine, sir!

Student: Tender wine buried my mind like a rotted spine
AG: Tender wine buried my mind like a ?
Student: Rotted spine
AG: ."..like a rotted spine"? in thrall to rhyme! - You don't have to begin with "tender wine", you know.

Student: My two-year-old's whining - tender wine
AG: My two-year-old's whining - tender wine
Tender wine id a caress to the throat's center

Student: Tender wine stuffed up my sinuses could blow out my brain.
AG: Tender wine stuffed up my sinuses cuold block my brain?

Student: "blow out"

AG: "could blow out my brain"? - Tender wine stuffed up my sinuses could blow out my brain

Student: Tender wine served in two crystal glasses, one for me and one for you.
AG: Tender wine served into.. served in two crystal glasses, one for me and one for you -
Say something outrageous about tender wine. You don't have to be so sensible!

Student: Tender wine is good fun, but if you meet any of the old prophets, it's good if you've brought your own car
Student: Tender wine is good fun, but if you meet any of the old prophets, it's good if you've brought your own…?
Student: Car
AG: Car - C-A-R? - right - that's alright. Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. More and more outrageous now. Let's build it up in the imagination. What about them Tender Wine Saturns and…

Student: Tender wine warms my blood and makes me want to do nothing other than bay at the moon
AG: Tender wine warms my blood and makes me want to do nothing other than bay at the moon

Student: Tender wine-colored postage-stamps sends off my masturbation
AG: Tender wine-colored postage-stamps sends off my masturbation masterpiece

Student: Tender wine gives tender hearts tender mind

AG: Tender wine gives tender hearts tender wine?

Student: Tender mind

AG: Tender mind.

Student: Cold moon guzzles broken teeth soothes tender wine

AG: Cold moon guzzles broken teeth soothes tender wine

Student: When I drink too much tender wine then I become a weirdo and I start talking about people's ears
AG: When I drink too much tender wine then I become a weirdo and I start talking about people's ears.

Student: Tender wine, tender wine, I drink great sacramental blood of the ninety-proof Thunderbird
AG: Tender wine, tender you wine you drink…?"
Student: The great sacramental blood of the ninety-proof Thunderbird.
AG: The great sacaramental of the ninety-proof Thunderbird?
Student: Long live Charles Bukowski!
AG: Long live Charles Bukowski? Well, don't drink yourself to death, muscle boy!

Student: "Your tender wine opens beehives in my heart".

AG: Hmm, Surrealism - "Your tender wine opens beehives in my heart".

Student: "Pour tender wine into the hole in my head and feed the hawk".
AG: "Pour tender wine into the hole in my head and feed the hawk".

Student: "Bathe me in tender wine, you soft gushy grapes".
AG: Bathe me in tender wine of?
Student: "You soft…"
AG: Oh, "Bathe me in tender wine, you soft gushy grapes" - Gushy?

Student:Tender wine - truth and time
AG: Tender wine truth? at time?
Student: Tender wine - truth and time
AG: Truth and time? - See..say it again, say it loud, proclaim it!
Student: Tender wine - truth and time
AG: Okay but one more time. Get up there. Straighten your back. Literally, straighten your back, straight up and down, put your hands to your sides, take your hands out of your pocket, please, sir - now proclaim
Student: Tender wine - truth and time
AG: And one more time, pronouncing the "and" very clearly.
Student: Tender wine - truth and time
AG: Right. Much better to hear.

Student: "Last night, tender wine and hair in my mouth. This morning on my shirt hang over like twelve swedes.
AG: Hmm -  Last night, tender wine and hair on my shirt..
Student; No, in my mouth, not on my shirt.
AG: Right,  Last night, tender wine and hair in my mouth?
Student: This morning on my shirt hang-over like twelve swedes.
AG:  This morning on my shirt hang-over like twelve swedes. Hmm, that's a good one - " tender wine and hair in my mouth

Student: And you have cast your spell on me..
AG: I couldn't hear
Student; And you have cast your spell on me, tender wine, and I'm doomed forever (It refers to alcoholism)
AG: And you have cast your spell on me, tender wine, and I'm doomed forever - to alcoholism.
Student 2: To become an alcoholic
AG: Become an alcoholic. Yes..

Student: After a toke on a spliff, tender wine, right out of the bottle runs down...
AG: After a toke on a spliff, tender wine, right out of the bottle runs down…
Student: No, spills out my mouth, runs down your chest making a pool of your navel
AG: Tender wine runs down my chest making a pool of your navel - and?
Student: And a river between your thighs
AG: And a river between your thighs ("Spliff" is a nice word in there)

Student: Tender wine every gallon demands another
AG: Tender wine every gallon demands another
Student: I suck, I'm too fast!
AG: "I suck, I'm too fast", is that what you said?

Student: Envelopes filled with tender wine stuff my futon give me sweet dreams tonight
AG: Envelopes filled with tender wine stuff my futon, comma, give me sweet dreams tonight - "Stuffed" or "stuff"?
Student: Stuff
AG: Present tense, okay

Student: Tender wine turns the wheel, the wheel, the wheel, O what have they done to the grapes?
AG: Tender wine turns the wheel, the wheel, the wheel, O what have they done to the grapes?

Student: Even tender wine can't compete with beer cheer

AG: Even tender wine can't compete with beer cheer

Student (2): Wanna bet?

AG: Blow my mind with tender wine

Student:" I basted my brain in tender wine and brushed off my breast like the ash of my recreated eyes".

AG: Brushed off my brain with tender wine...?

Student: "I basted my brain in tender wine and brushed off my breast like the ash of my recreated eyes".

AG: "brushed off my breast like the ash of my recreated eyes" - that's a good mouthful - Next? Sir? Who's next?

Student: Tender wine on the brain.

[Allen notices Peter Orlovskydeparting]

AG: Hey Peter, what's your tender wine line before you leave?Peter Orlovsky.. One line at a.. what?.. It has to be a line with "tender wine" in it

PO: Tender wine is very good and very sweet and very round

AG: And round? Come on, give us a better line than that. Another line?

PO: (I gave you all that..)

AG: Have you been drinking tender wine?

PO: Not today, No.

AG: Toodle-oo - Next.

Student: My goldfish don't think tender wine and candles are romantic, get them out of my aquarium

AG: My goldfish don't think tender wine and candles are romantic, get them out of my aquarium

Student: Tender wine isn't when you piss it

AG: Tender wine isn't when you piss it - Louis Zukofsky wrote poems like that, that is, very intteresting little sounds - "Tender wine isn't when you piss it" - It's like "with hey with hey, the thrush and the jay"- or, William Carlos Williamshas a poem that ends, "I shall do my pees (the doctor, you know, taking care of pee and blood tests). "I shall do my pees instead", hmm, "Peggy has a little (bit of ) albumen/ in hers" - "Peggy has a little (bit of ) albumen/ in hers"..

Student (to Allen!): You must speak more clearly! Enunciate your consonants!
AG: "Peggy has a little (bit of ) albumen/ in hers" - " "I shall do my pees" - "Peggy has a little (bit of ) albumen/ in hers"

Student: "Tender wine , lick my Rockerbelly home."
AG: Tender wine , lick my Rockerbelly home? - Right

Student: "Tender wine.."
AG: No, get up, up.
Student: "Tender wine/ savage head/ beer for breakfast".
AG: Savage?
Student: Head
AG:  "Tender wine/ savage head/ beer for breakfast".

Student: "Don't put tender wine in milk bottles",
AG:  Don't put tender wine in milk bottles.
Student (2): Why not?

Student: "Tender wine, rice wine, sake, and first drunk delicately from porcelain cups, an hour later guzzled from green Shimane bottles now thunder wine".
AG: Well, let's see if I can remember that one- " Tender wine.. something sake what?..tender wine.."
Student: "Tender wine, rice wine…"
AG: "Rice wine, sake. At first drunk delicately from porcelain cups…"
Student: "an hour later, guzzled from green Shimane bottles, tender wine now thunder wine".
AG:  "an hour later, guzzled from green Shimane? bottles - guzzled from what?
Student: Shimane - sake was first made in Shimane.
AG: So...guzzled from green Shimane bottles?
Student: "now thunder wine"…
AG:Next..

Student: "Thunderbird ain't tender wine",
AG: "Thunderbird ain't tender wine" - Da-da da da da-da da - next..

Student; "With enough tender wine you don't need the hard stuff".
AG: With enough tender wine you don't need the hard stuff.
Student: That's a bit of a double-entendre!

Student: "Please bring me tender wine because it's half-time. That wine moves out of me in my sweat and makes me the wind".
AG: Okay, one more time, so I can repeat it properly.
Student: "Please bring me tender wine.."
AG: Please bring me tender wine
Student: "Because it's half-time.."
AG: Because it's half-time
Student: "That wine moves out of me in my sweat.."
AG: That wine moves out of me in my sweat
Student: "And makes me the wind."
AG: And makes me the wind?

Student: "Sometimes tender wine makes all the difference in the world".
AG: Sometimes tender wine makes all the difference in the world".

Student: "Tender wine soaks my mind clear of ancient horror"
AG: Tender wine soaks my mind clear of ancient horror.

Student: "Like pearls before swine, me and tender wine"
AG: Like pearls before swine, me and tender wine!

Student: "The railroad man says it was tender wine. Now I only walk through splintered morning streets".
AG: The railroad man says it was tender wine. Now I only walk through splintered morning streets

Student: "Give me another sip of tender wine, Father, for Christ's sake!"
AG: Give me another sip of tender wine, Father, for Christ's sake!

Student: "An open face and a broken mind, tender wine can have me on tenterhooks anytime".
AG: An open face and a broken mind, tender wine can have me on tenterhooks anytime -

AG: You can't stay here if you don't get up on your feet and pronounce your "tender wine", so please get up on your feet. You've shared our company, you have to share your mind, please.

Student: "Rachel's breasts are poisoned by tender wine".
AG: Grateful breasts are poisoned by tender wine? - Grateful's breasts are poisoned…" - Rachel's breasts are poisoned by tender wine.

Student: "Tender wine, foamy cells, seem to alert up the noise".
AG: "Tender wine - bovis cells seems.."?
Student: "Foamy cells seem to…"
AG: "..seem to alert up the noise. Is that "bovis" - the store? - bevos? - tender wine bevos cells? bovis cells? -What is bovis? or bevos? - Is that a store?
Student: No
AG: Then I didn't understand the word. "Tender wine…?"
Student: "Tender wine, foamy cells…:
AG: Bony cells?
Student: Foamy
AG: Foamy! - Foamy!
Student: "Foamy cells - seem to alert up the noise".
AG: "seem to alert up the noise". Okay

Student: I just walked in
AG: That's fine, You're here, come come..
Student: "Tender wine, you will not embarass me, Allen Ginsberg, on tender wine".
AG: Tender wine, you will not embarass me, Allen Ginsberg, on tender wine - You with the root-beer in your hand!
Well, is there anybody that didn't get any tender wine?

Student: I got one Allen
AG: Oh
Student: "Too much tender wine makes even Chogyam Trungpa sweet and sappy like a Second Avenue drunk".
AG: "Too much tender wine makes even Chogyam Trungpa sweet and sappy like a Second Avenue drunk". Well, that's pretty good

[Audio can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately seventy-two-and-a-quarter minutes in]

[Jack Kerouac with the scroll]

AG: I have three twenty-nine [looking at the clock]. I brought, as I said, those papers and so we will distribute them. There's two sets two different things. Maybe if we… they can pass them out themselves, if we just hand them.. Or we can put them in two piles here and people can pick them up as they leave, maybe? That might be the easiest way. The one who did all the xeroxing for you is a poet,Gregg R. (sic) from Indianapolis, So I have these sets.. one of these pages is the Kerouac"Essentials of Modern Prose" ["Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" [sic], the other is a list of all of the Greek rhythms - and - how long does this class have? - is it over now? So..we can stay a little bit.. okay..okay.. So what is the next step, any questions? yes?

Student: Will the second (next) workshop cover spontaneous poetics also?

AG: No, I think I'll go on to something else, I'll make it up next time. I would like to get more into.. In the workshops, having laid this ground, I would like to get further on into making up stuff, making up chain poems and actual exercises in class. I think I might go over a few more of the mind-trick things but one major mind-trick which we went through today was, when you get up, it's alright if you have a blank mind. In fact, it's an advantage, if you're unprepared. To be unprepared and unready is an advantage, because, then, whatever rises is really spontaneous on the spot. Better than.. I think, in this case, better than the situation.. better practice than if you write it down in your book and you've got it there and you can just get up and read it. Better to learn how to think on your feet, or better to learn how to remember what you just thought, on your feet, I think. That's the principle. Remembering what you just thought. rather than making up thoughts - Or, pronouncing your thoughts as they rise. Few people did that, you know, making up the words as they went along. That's the most interesting - stumbling along with the words. Yes?

Student: Allen how do you distinguish the automatic writings of the Surrealists from…

AG: Well, I don't know if the question rises, if one needs to distinguish them. I mean, is there any reason to make a distinction..?

Student: … Because some of the comments that were made to the effect that (Jack) Kerouac really created something completely new..

AG: Yes.

Student: ..in his approach, and..

AG: Well, what Kerouac would do, would be, say, to take the theme, run it through his mind once, the theme of a novel, the story, chronologically, maybe even making notes on the major items to be covered, like you might put on a…

Student (2): Can you speak up?

AG: ..like you might put on a card. Kerouac would run through the numbers of items to be covered (like he might put on a note card), run through once with hs mind, and then, when he's sat at the typewriter, expand and blow spontaneously. So you get your theme in mind first (that's why I suggested"Tender Wine", say - or something to begin with. And then you invent conceptions as you go along. In Surrealist writing, very often there wasn't some basic chronological story-plot-theme. He did follow a chronological story, or, in the case of Visions of Cody, a list of visionary, or epiphanous, moments that he wanted to describe. The structure of the novel of Visions of Cody was the..different moments.. the different vivid moments that he had experienced with Neal (Cassady). And so, instead of having chapters in a chronological novel, he had flashes that he was describing. So the flashes became huge chapters. And he tried to describe every association that he had with those flashes. Like one time going into a urinal with Neal and pissing and they were bonded, sort of, with each other and Neal saying,"I love you, man, don't you know it?". So that one moment of, like, truth between them, that one moment of heart-feeling, stuck as a kind of visionary moment, or epiphanous moment, or vivid moment. So he tried to… that was like the jewel-center of interest for that one chapter - and then, many different chapters with different centers of interest. So, in other words, there was a subject, so to speak. But it was the ravings of the mind on that one subject, or the extension of the mind on that one subject. Yeah?

Student: I remember something I was really impressed by…

AG: Maybe we can use the microphone so that it gets recorded properly?

Student: In this whole idea of spontaneous prose, I remember reading when I read the
Ramayana, (some people may be familiar with) that, when Valmiki,the poet, had sat under.. by the river, and had been covered up by the ant-hill and only his eyes showed through , and Narada, the music-maker came down and said, "You've got to write this great poem and save Sita", and all this. And he said, "But I can't, I don't know anything about the story". And Narada said (it seems to me, if I recall correctly) to reply, "You've been sitting there, you've been workiing on your mind, you've gained wisdom, don't worry about the details, here's the subject - the story ofRama and Sita - don't worry about it, the music will start, you just start telling it and it will all come to you. Interestingly enough, that seems to be exactly what we're now talking about, and, of course, that's one of the ancient poems of all times.

[Narada meets Valmiki - Kangra style, Pahari, early 19th century miniature (40.6 x 55.7 cms) from the National Museum, New Delhi]

AG: My advice from Kerouac, the advice Kerouac gave me was, "Just start writing from the middle of your mind, or start talking from the middle of your mind, and whatever comes up will be acceptable and more interesting than if you try and figure it out and craft it in advance". And I think there was a crucial moment when he proved it to me. I had the… I kept little notebooks, as I do now, and I had a couple of notes in there, a couple of pages of notes about the Statue of Liberty, and "the sea of darkness", and "copper green goddess waving", or something like that, and he said, "Why don't you type that out?". And I said, "Well, I have to work it up into a poem". And he said, "Well, you've got it there already, written down, why don't you just type it up?" - "Type it up" - Richmond Hill - so he sat me at his typewriter and he made me type it up, and I typed it up, and it spread all over the page like a William Carlos Williams poem - about 1950 - and I said, "Gee, I never wrote like that before?". And he said, "But you did. You've been writing all the time before in your book, you just don't think of it as writing, because you think of rhymes, and even verses, as writing". And I realized probably what I had written down there about the Statue of Liberty was just as interesting as anything else I was writing. In fact, more raw, therefore more readable. And I had a similar experience in (19)72 with Chogyam Trungpa, who said, "Why do you need a piece of paper when you get up on the stage to read off. Don't you trust your own mind?". I said, "What do you mean?'. He said, "Why don't you do like the great poets did, like Milarepa and all those other people, they just got up there and spoke, they pronounced from their spontaneous mind. So there is that possibility that we can do. It's what actually happens when you sit at a page anyway - you're doing the same thing, you're writing down what you think of. So you can do it when you get up. The idea is to.. to get up, to get up and have the courage to do it, and do it, and not be afraid to be a fool. Not being afraid of being a fool, because, as I said last night, everybody's a big dope to begin with! - And anybody who thinks they aren't, and tries to cover it up by making a smart poem, is just a hypocrite who's going to deceive himself and others and write boring poetry anyway! Most interesting poetry is foolish (or, as Kerouac said, "genius is funny"). So..Paul [sic]? A question?….

Q: (Will you be collecting these [workshop assignments that you've given] and giving them back in the next workshop?)

AG: No.. Will the same people be in the next workshop?, no. What I can do is collect (them), check them out - (it'll take me a day or two) - and then I'll find a way of leaving them out at the next workshop. Or, okay, to make it precise, I will leave them at the Naropa Information desk. Put your names on them so that you can identify them. And what I'll do with them is make a little star by the ones I think have some concrete, factual, presentative substance. I'll try and point out what I like. I won't do any criticism of what isn't there. I'll point out what I think is there, as active language, or active picture. Okay? - Yes?

Q: What is your view about editing, after you go through the spontaneous part?

AG: Well, I do. If it's... Kerouac burned his bridges behind him, and programmatically did not edit (he said). He did probably edit a little in typing up. I generally try to retain the first impulse, tho' I edit quite a bit. And five years later, if I still haven't published something, I find lots of excessive extra participles and words and pronouns, so I generally cut it, blue-pencil, but not alter the basic sequence of thoughts. I try and keep to the original sequence of thought, because that's organic.

Q: Does a poem take place as something outside the poet, that's discovered by the poet, or is it...

AG: I think it exists inside the poet and is discovered by the poet, inside, in the sense of, already-existent, a thought that he thought, maybe even in words thathe thought, but he didn't think was a poem until someone said, "Oh, that was interesting". Like, when Kerouac said,"Ah, this is a Beat Generation". He didn't mean to make a pronouncement that this was a Beat Generation. John Holmes said, "That's a great line!", so John Holmes made a big article in the New York Times -"This is the Beat Generation" - Kerouac didn't mean it that way. He just thought it was a beat generation, meaning, this is not a particular generation. The un-generation.. He meant to un-name a generation, not to name it. But his un-naming was so witty that it became, that when seen by somebody else it became a name poem, so to speak, a one-liner. But it was just a thought, a raw thought.

Q: In a recent interview, Richard Hell…

AG: Yeah

Q: ...had said that's what he meant when he coined the phrase "blank generation" - It's not blank as in stupid blank, but it was blank as in fill-in-the-blank…and he got all misconstrued too...

AG: You know Richard Hell lives in the same apartment building that me and Larry Fagin live in in New York. Fellow poets. And he comes from the St Marks Poetry Project too. Any other..Paul [sic]..did you have.. did somebody else have a question… Yes?

Q: Are you actually saying that when you go back over certain stuff that you've created that you have not frequently said "I don't like it", and, in fact, almost always keep it?

AG; Well, what I do is I write in a notebook, and then I have the notebooks typed up here at Naropa by my students, and then I go through it and correct the typescript, then, generally, more or less intact, it's publishable. The things that I consider poems are sort of the hot items that are written out in lines that look like poems, so I excerpt those and put them in books. Sometimes I condense those by going through and blue-penciling something I've said twice or where my attention has lagged in the sense that it doesn't make sense or the description is lacking in facts, or where I begin generalizing. But that doesn't happen too often. I try not to anymore. It's.. The reason I try not to generalize in my original work is that I write so much that it's too much trouble to edit. So I try to write so that I don't have to edit later, because I know I'll never get around to really editing later on. So it's just a question of labor-saving device. Don't write any bullshit to begin with, then you don't have to edit it! - Really, it's serious. I mean, if you're young and you've got days, twenty-four-hour days ahead of you, and you don't have anybody on your neck, and you don't have anybody to get laid with and you don't have any classes to teach and you don't have any airplanes to take,then you can take your time and, you know, write what's not interesting, but if you're pressed for time, you actually have to speak now or forever hold your peace, because you won't have time to go back and retrace your steps, is what I find. I don't have time to go back, so therefore I have to make it utter..utterly utter at the utterance (partly laziness also). Okay. Thank you for your attention.

[Audio can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventy-two-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately eighty-five minutes in

Jack Kerouac on Allen Ginsberg. We've been featuring Ginsberg on Kerouac, but here's a pretty candid Kerouac-on-Ginsberg notebook entry. Jack writes:

"Ginsberg - intelligent enuf - interested in the outward appearance and pose of great things, intelligent enuf to know where to find them, but once there he acts like Jerry Newman[sic] the photographer anxious to be photographed photographing. Ginsberg wants to run his hands up the backs of people, for this he gives and seldom takes - He is also a mental screwball - *(Tape recorder anxious to be tape recorded tape recording) (like Seymour Barab anxious to have his name in larger letters than Robert Louis Stevenson, like Stieglitz & Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire"

Rick Dale of The Daily Beat reminds us the annual, local-boy-makes-good, Lowell Jack Kerouac celebrations are coming up (early October) and offers a secret word.

Also in October, (actually, opening this weekend) - "We are continually exposed to the flashbulb of death" (the University of Toronto Allen Ginsberg photo show) travels to Nova Scotia - to the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery - see here

[Allen in India - "From Roof of Brahmin's house wherein we'd rented third floor room six months, December to May 1963, could see past temple mandir tops across Ganges River to other shore. Our balconieshung over vegetable-meat market one side, other side overlooked sacred street down to Dasaswamedh Ghat bathing steps peopled by pilgrims beggars & cows; monkeys visited and snatched our bananas, Peter Orlovsky held my Retina, Benares India Spring 1963." (Ginsberg caption) c. Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

Deborah Baker's Allen-in-India note, "Allen Ginsberg, A Calcutta Story", that we spotlighted here last week, (via The Sunflower Collective) has been republished on The Wire and is available - here

Doug Holder (who we also spotlighted last week) features his friend, Karen Alkalay-Gut and her thoughts upon visiting Allen's New Jersey burial site - here

Also on sites housing Allen's remains - in Colorado, see here

- and Jerusalem - here

Steve Silberman's review for the Shambhala Sun of the Philip Whalen biography, Crowded By Beauty, is, naturally, a rave one - "not only one of the most keenly observed books on the Beats ever published, but..also a fascinating exploration of the life and dharma of one of the first American-born teachers" - Steve on "The Beat of Philip Whalen" - see here - don't miss it

Here's Lynell George's review in the LA Times of the Ginsberg-Ferlinghetti Letters

and

Paris-based American poet passed away this week,
Stephen Rodefer RIP (1940-2015)

[Allen Ginsberg at the UMass (Lowell)]

Courtesy the video archives of the Jack and Stella Kerouac Center For Public Humanities (scroll down), Allen Ginsberg speaking on and reading from William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac,Philip Whalen,Nanao Sakaki, Robert Creeley, Gregory Corso, and John Wieners, recorded at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, 1991

Following a broef introduction by Bill Roberts, the head of the English department (who notes Robert Creeley is in the house) and Hamid Shirvani, Dean of Arts and Sciences, Allen begins speaking

AG: Actually, my understanding is that this is a class, or the core here is a class, in "Beat Literature"? - Is that right?. So that was what I was aiming at. So what other classes are there here? So there's the Beat class and then just miscellaneous students from other classes..?..."Modern Poetry" - What else? Anything else?… and of "Writing"

So what I thought I would do.. I've been teaching a class in "Beat Literature" also, at Brooklyn College, and also at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (and I taught that for years, on and off, and, in the course of that, made a little anthology of Beat, or pseudo-Beat, or Beat-allied, writing). So in the Beat class, did you study any of Gregory Corso's work? - John Wieners? - how many here have heard of John Wieners? - one? - Well, John Wieners is going to be reading tonight along with Robert Creeley and myself (and Robert is not exactly a "Beat" writer, but we've been friends and allies and is sort of an honorary Beat, or Original Beat, or Post-Beat, or Postmodern Beat, or…). So all three of us will be reading tonight, so you're welcome there. And Robert Creeley and I think that John Wieners is one of the major poets of this half of the century [twentieth century] in America, and so those of you who are studying either "Writing","American Poetry", or "Beat Literature" would do well to pick up on him.

So what I thought I would do is read a few poems from various different writers that are connected with the Beat movement and maybe you get acquainted that way (recognizing that) the subject is "Beat and Kerouac" for the Kerouac Convention here [Lowell Celebrates Kerouac]

[William Burroughs - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg]

So, (to begin with an elder, William Burroughs. How many have read some of Burroughs? - almost everybody, I guess. And I have a favorite passage of Burroughs which was used in that movie of Naked Lunch, called "The Market", from which.. I don't know if any of you saw.. what was it? - it was that cafe where Venusians and people from weird planets got together to get drunk? - [Star Wars] - Star Wars, yeah, actually..Star Wars ripped off Burroughs from "The Market" - Allen begins reading Burroughs] - "Panorama of the City of Interzone . Opening bars of "East St. Louis Toodle-oo"… "at times loud and clear then faint and intermittent like music down a windy street…The Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market……Gaming tables where the games are played for incredible stakes. From time to time a player leaps up with a despairing cry, having lost his youth to an old man or become Latah to his opponent. But there are higher stakes than youth or Latah, games where only two persons in the world know what the stakes are.." - (just like life!) - "All houses in the City are joined…."….
"In the City market is the Meet Café" - (this is where Star Wars comes in) - “In the City Market is the Meet Café. Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up harmine, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, liquids to induce Latah, Tithonian longevity serums.." - (Tithys was promised eternal life by the Gods, but they didn't promise him a young ever-youthful boy, so he wound up dust in a bottle, talking and wanting to be annihilated) - "Tithonian longevity serums.." - "...black marketeers of World War III, excusers of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, bureaucrats of spectral departments, officials of unconstituted police states, a Lesbian dwarf who has perfected operation Bang-utot, the lung erection that strangles a sleeping enemy, sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, brokers of exquisite dreams and memories tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface and the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war... A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum... Larval entities waiting for a Live One…”

So that’s quite a prose-poem actually. It’s a little like MTV. I think it was actually first published in Black Mountain Review number seven, by Robert Creeley, who, very early, recognized Burroughs’ quaint, precise, clear visual eye. So what you have is, like, a..panorama, (a) fast nightmarish panaroma, maybe more easy to understand these days when you have this sense of cut-up and jump-cut in music video, one image coming after another without explanation but building up a sense of.. well, futuristic-ness, or surreal nightmare intensity and outrageous post-Modern post-Scientific science-fiction end-of-the-planet ominousness. So that was Burroughs, the elder (gentleman) o that’s quite a prose-poem actually. It’s a little like MTV. I think it was actually first published in Black Mountain Review number seven, by Robert Creeley, who, very early, recognized Burroughs’ quaint, precise, clear visual eye. So what you have is, like, a..panorama, (a) fast nightmarish panaroma, maybe more easy to understand these days when you have this sense of cut-up and jump-cut in music video, one image coming after another without explanation but building up a sense of.. well, futuristic-ness, or surreal nightmare intensity and outrageous post-Modern post-Scientific science-fiction end-of-the-planet ominousness.

So that was Burroughs, the elder (gentleman)

As I’m going along, if you have any particular questions, you’re welcome to…

[Jack Kerouac - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg}

Next, I thought.. How many here know Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues? _ Not so many. So, I’ll read a couple of those.
(Jack) Kerouac was a very interesting poet, turned on a lot of poets, actually, and had a big influence on American poetry, although, interestingly enough, he’s very rarely represented in any academic poetry anthology (or the regular anthologies that you get here – has anybody seen any Kerouac poems in any of the Norton’s or Macmillan’s or any of the school anthologies?) – So if you were to define academic as being the English professors that make anthologies that are used in high schools and colleges, Kerouac, then, has been totally rejected as a poet by the academy, but, at the same time, he’s a favorite of many of the (living) poets - almost every open-form, avant-garde, poet in America.. digs his Mexico City Blues, including Bob Dylan, and those who have been influenced by Dylan, (the entire folk-rock, later punk-roc k and grunge ,world, really, up to Sonic Youth and U2, both directly influenced by Burroughs and by Kerouac indirectly)

"Starspangled Kingdom bedecked/in dewy joint - DON"T IGNORE OTHER PARTS/OF YOUR MIND, I think/And my clever brain sends/ripples of amusement/Through my leg nerve halls?And I remember the Zigzag/Original Mind/ of Babyhood/when you let the faces/crack & mock/& yak and change/& go mad utterly/in your night/ firstmind/ reveries/The endless Not Invisible/Madness Rioting/Everywhere" - (That's a pretty good description of everybody's subjective world of thinking and dreams - That was the 17th Chorus)

"All great statements ever made/abide in death/All the magnificent and witty/rewards of French Lettrism /Abide in death/ All the Roman Sculptor/of Heroes, all Picassos/and Micassos and/ Macayos/and/Machados/ and K e r o u a c o' s - /even Asvaghosha's Glorious Statement/and Asanga's and Holy Sayadaw/and all the good and kind saints/and the divine unabstractable ones/the holy and perfect ones/ All Buddhas and Dharmas/All Jesuses and Jerusalems/And Jordans and How are You's/ - Nil, none, a dream./ A bubble pop, a foam snit/in the immensities of the sea/at midnight in the dark" - ((24th Chorus) That's pretty vivid - and quite real psychologically)

What else is good? – (49th Chorus) - “They got nothing on me/ at the university/Them clever poets/of immensity/With charcoal suits/ and charcoal hair/And green armpits/and heaven air/ 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 cant surpass me/'Cause I'm dead/And being dead/ I hurt my head/And now I wait /Without hate/For my fate/To estate" - (So his "fate/To estate" is now his big monument)….

Allen continues with the 50^th Chorus - (“Maybe I’m crazy, and my parts/Are scattered still - didn't gather/Em when form was passin out…"…"Maybe I'm an Agloon/doomed to be spitted/on the igloo stone/ of Some North mad")  -  (must’ve been high when he wrote that!) -  and the 51st Chorus - ("America is a permissible dream..") - (So..kind of interesting, for nationalist chauvanists) - "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…"…."Afternoon, when men/gamble and 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/in Tathagata's /Transcendental/orb of the balloon"

- and the 54th (Chorus) - "One night in 1941 I was a kid/And ran away from college"…"Once I went to a movie/at midnight, 1940.."…"On both occasions I had wild/Face looking into lights/Of Streets where phantoms/Hastened out of sight/Into Memorial Cello Time" -
(I always liked that - "Memorial Cello Time" - it's like an old home movie).

So (74th Chorus) - ""Darling!"/Red hot/That kind of camping/I don't object to/unless it's kept/within reason./ "This 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."

What else? - What else? – oh yes, there’s a very interesting one here from Lowell. His whole point is that (this is) spontaneous writing, (you) let the mind free and what rises you accept and work with and write it down, and if you’re able to do that, actually, you wind up making some kind of sense. So there’s one preliminary (85thh Chorus) – “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/Wiliams/ Anyway,/An asinine form/which will end/all asininity/from now on/ That's a poem/The poem/Will end/Asininity".

So the poem that ends asininity is the 97th Chorus, describing his father coming home in Lowell, drinking a beer - "Meanwhile there's my Pa, alone in street,/Coming for supper, under heaven bleak/The trees of March black twigs/Against the red and gory sundown/ That blazed across the River/sinking in the ocean to the East/beyond Salisbury's latest & last/ grain of sand./ Then all's wet underneath, to Eclipse/ (Ivan the Heaven Sea-Ice King, Euclid,/Bloody Be Jupiter, Nucleus/Nuclid, What's His Name - the sea/ The sea drang Scholar with mermaids,/Bloody blasted dad flap thorn it/ - N e p p y T u n e -)/All's wet clear in Neptune's Seat/Sensing the aura, the news/Of that frost, my father/Hurries in his Woe Street/Conscious he is a man/Doomed to mortal destiny./"And my poor lil Ti Pousse," - ["little Jack", my poor little Jack] - "he thinks of me,/"He'll get it too".

That was really interesting. He just improvised whatever came to his mind including the time he got on the tip of his tongue the word “Neptune”, which was on the tip of his tongue, and he couldn’t..  and it sounds like Shakespeare! - "The trees of March black twigs/Against the red and gory sundown/That blazed across the River/sinking in the ocean to the East/beyond Salisbury's latest & last/grain of sand" - (Salisbury is down around here? yes? - so it makes sense, that word) - "beyond Salisbury's latest & last/grain of sand./ Then all's wet underneath, to Eclipse" - then the parenthesis - "(Ivan the Heaven Sea-Ice King, Euclid,/Bloody Be Jupiter, Nucleus/Nuclid, What's His Name" - dash "- the sea/ The sea drang Scholar with mermaids,/Bloody blasted dad flap thorn it/ - N e p p y T u n e"  - N-e-p-p-y-t-u-n-e!  - It’s so much fun, actually. It’s like a jazz musician, you know, skittering around until he gets straight on the tone.

So that’s Kerouac, I don’t want to go on too long (on) just one, except he’s so…so much a part of late twentieth-century American Literature, and, amazingly, not everybody really knows his work that well. I ran into the actor, Johnny Depp (do you know who that is? anybody? - yeah), who is a Kerouac fan, and who was trying to film reading a couple of Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues, which he knew quite well, and liked a lot. The one that he was favored was from (one of the last ones),  if I can find it, like a Shakespeare…yes?  like a Shakespeare sonnet. So all of Kerouac’s pessimism and Catholic horror of the flesh – “The wheel of the quivering meat/ conception.." (211th Chorus)….."Poor! I wish I was free/ of that slaving meat wheel/and safe in heaven dead"– (see how it rises to a climax with ”Poor!”, like real rhythm, real interesting rhythm, and American rhythm,.so that (Bob) Dylan thought that Kerouac.. So this book blew Bob Dylan’s mind. We were in the Edson cemetery here [in Lowell] filming, in 1975, and Dylan picked up Mexico City Blues and started to read from it, and I said..I asked him, how come & what he knew about it, and he said that, oh (that), it was his favorite book of poems, that someone had handed it to him in 1959 in St Paul and it blew his mind. And I said, why?, and he said, it talked to me, the first book to talk to me, in my own language, American language, and that seems to be Kerouac's power.

to be continued

Allen Ginsberg on Jack Kerouac (1982 Workshop at the Kerouac Conference)

Allen Ginsberg on Jack Kerouac - 1982 Naropa continues

Ginsberg on Mind Flow (Wittgensteinian Linguistic Analysis)

Ginsberg on Mind Flow - 2 (and Paying Attention)

More Writing Precepts/Slogans

Meditation Advice

The Kalevala

Jack Kerouac and Hart Crane's Proclamations

William Burroughs' Proclamation - (Do Easy)

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 229

Gregory Corso Interviews

Meditation and Writing Experiment

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 232

More Ginsberg on Kerouac - 1982 at The Kerouac Conference

Workshop Poetry Assignment - Part 1

Workshop Poetry Assignment - Part 2

Workshop Poetry Assigment - Part 3 (Tender Wine)

Ginsberg 1982 Kerouac Workshop Conclusion (Q & A)

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 233

Ginsberg at UMass, Lowell - part 1 (Burroughs and Kerouac)