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"The Bishop, Lawless" and "All Night By The Rose" (Early English Lyric - 2)

October 29, 2015, 3:00 am
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AG: I read this about a year ago and understood it for the first time and really dug it."The Bishop, Lawless"? - without law?, without any learning?.. You got it? - Page six. 

Bishop lawless,/ King guideless,/ Young man reckless,/Old man witless,/A woman shameless - I swear by heaven's king,/These be five bitter things."
    
evil things - bitter/evil - it'll be five evil things -  "I swear by heaven's king,/ These be five evil things."

It's a pretty interesting set-up as like now. The bishops, without learning; kings, without any common sense counsel,"young man reckless, old man witless" (old man witless, it's just a funny idea - "young man reckless , old man witless" - I say that's a great rhyme - "young man reckless , old man witless" - Perfect - The reason I like these is .. ,"young man reckless , old man witless" buck starts..who is it? ""Bullock starts, buck farts" ("Bulluc sterteth/bucke verteth") The rhythms, if they get in your bones actually, will issue forth from your hand when you're writing, will affect your rhythms in writing, or will sensitize your ear, or sensitize your musical bones. So it's interesting if you take these like pills, like, "drop these poems like acid", or something like that, and let them enter your nervous system. It's actually exposure of your nervous system to these particular rhythms that sensitizes you to.. sensitizes one (you, me) to rhythm, and these are sort of real basic, classic, fantastic.."old man witless, young man reckless", that's pretty.. you know, that's perfect..fast.



"All night by the rose, rose /All night by the rose I lay/ Dared I not the rose steal/And yet I bore the flower away" - 

That's kind of mysterious. I like the rhythm - "All night by the rose, rose" - "All night by the rose, rose" - that's a good one  - "All night by the rose I lay/ Dared I not the rose steal.." - "All night by the rose, rose", /"Dared I not the rose steal" - bomp-bomp,/ bomp-bomp -  (rose-rose,/ rose-steal) - So that the two solid words at the end of those two lines (will) parallel each other, first and third line.  If you tune your ear in to that, it's not just like a sing-song rhyme rhythm, it's a very interesting song power you can get - "rose, steal, rose, rose." - You know what I'm talking about? Everybody noticing that? how pretty that is, yes? - I guess, probably affected by Latin prosody, which counted the duration of syllables, the duration of vowels, rather than the accent on syllables (old Latin and Greek prosody was a count of long vowels and short vowels, not so much preoccupied with accent). And, it sounds like the guy who wrote that in English was… had his ear affected by hearing "rose, rose, rose, steal" -  "All night by the rose, rose/all night by the rose I lay/Dared I not the rose steal/And yet I bore the flower away."
It's probably good as song (for those who are interested in song),  you know (Allen breaks into a sung version)- "All night by the rose, rose /All night by the rose I lay/ Dared I not the rose steal/And yet I bore the flower away" ) -  "Da,da, dum, da-da, da, da-da-da, da, da-da, da, Da,da, dum, da-da, da, da-da-da, da-da-da" - So it's out of music, and out of Latin.. probably out of Latin-Greek quantitative prosody. It's hearing the length of vowels, sensitivity to the length of vowels, and probably the music


What we got next?  - Yeah, there's a poem by H Phelps Putnam of the twentieth century that takes off from this,  "All night by the rose",  I'll bring it in next time…..

"In Springfield Massachsetts..", (under the single bulb that hung from the hotel ceiling, I lay all night and) "devoured/ The mystic, the improbable, the Rose.." - "In Springfield Massachusetts.." -  H. Phelps Putnam, 1927.  - I'll bring in the poem, it's real beautiful, but it's a take-off on that.

[from "Hasbrouck and the Rose"]
"In Springfield, Massachusetts, I devoured 
The mystic, the improbable, the Rose,
For two nights and a day, rose and rosette, 
And petal after petal and the heart, 
I had my banquet by the beams 
Of four electric stars which shone 
Weakly into my room, for there,
Drowning their light and gleaming at my side. 
Was the incarnate star 
Whose body bore the stigma of the Rose. 
And that is all I know about the flower; 
I have eaten it - it has disappeared. 
There is no Rose."

[Audio for the above can be heard here, starting at approximately  fourteen-and-three-quarter minutes and concluding at approximately twenty-one-and-a-half minutes in]
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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 242

October 30, 2015, 3:00 am
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Just out this month, from Blackberry Books, Franco Beltrametti's posthumous collection, From Almost Everywhere 

Gary Snyder on Franco Beltrametti: "Franco Beltrametti's smooth-barked Muse leads him across the grids of latitude and longitude to the source of good medicine poems. A suavity masks these elemental songs - or rather, gives these elder faces a modern "human" mask. Civilized in the best sense".

and Joanne Kyger: "From "a crowded place called "future" Franco Beltrametti arrives, once again, with subtle eloquence to surprise us with his unexpected nuances and turns. These poems give us his presence….calling up poets and ancestors of every sort and show us the transparency and modesty of his world." 

Franco Beltrametti can be seen, talking in eternity, on video - here

A full run of mini , "the smallest review in the world",  that he edited, can be found here 

The Franco Beltrametti Archive (plenty to look at) may be accessed here.

Franco would be amazed by this - "More than two hundred previously-unknown poems by leading Edo period (1603-1867) haikuist and artist Yosa Buson have been found in an anthology at the Tenri Central Library"

Blackberry Books, incidentally, are also the publishers of the wonderful Collected Poems of Nanao Sakaki - How To Live On The Planet Earth


                                                            [Nanao Sakaki (1923-2008)]

John Wieners remembered and recollected last week in Harvard  can be seen here

and here's John Wieners reviewed by Dan Chiasson in (of all the unlikely places) the current New Yorker
                                                            [John Wieners (1934-2002)]

Harry Smithwas reviewed in The New Yorker a couple of weeks back.  Can this be the start of a trend? 

The Allen Ginsberg "Still Howling" event (also a couple of weeks back)  reviewed in The Mancunion

Allen Ginsberg in Halifax, Nova Scotia, here's a memoir byMartin Wallace -"I was a young poet in 1986 when I heard that Allen Ginsberg was coming to Halifax…"

More Randy Roark Ginsberg discoveries



Randy notes:
"Another manuscript poem with Allen's corrections. This one points out one of his mannerisms - to turn a phrase like "the root of his cock" into the more condensed "his cock root", which I often, as in this case, find an affectation. I'd have a lot more to work with as an orator in the cadence of "the root of his cock" than the awkward "his cock root"."

Cock root?

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Ezra Pound's Birthday

October 30, 2015, 7:00 am
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                                                        [Ezra Pound (1885-1972)]

We featured acouple of days ago, the early English lyric, "Summer is Icumen in"(commonly known as "The Cuckoo Song")

Ezra Pound made a playful parody of it

AG:    ...And I forgot there's this little paraphrase by Ezra Poundof "The Cuckoo Song". Has anybody heard that or seen that?..How many know of Pound? (It's) called "Ancient Music" - So let's go back to that. where is that? " The Cuckoo Song"? - " Sumer is Icumen in,/Loudly sing, cuckoo!/Grows the seed and blows the mead,/And springs the wood anew." 

(and Pound):


"Winter is icummen in,/Lhude sing Goddamm./ Raineth drop and staineth slop,/ And how the wind doth ramm!/ Sing: Goddamm./ Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,/ An ague hath my ham./ Freezeth river, turneth liver,/ Damn you, sing: Goddamm./ Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,/ So 'gainst the winter's balm./ Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm./ Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM."

 And then, (a) note, "This is not folk music, but Dr. Ker writes that the tune is found under the Latin words of a very ancient canon." (here he's being mock-pedantic/campy) 

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

Ezra Pound's birthday today. We draw your attention to previous birthday postings -here,here,hereand here

Harvard's Woodberry Poetry Room has recently preserved a rare acetate from 1939 of Pound reading - see here

The publication of the curiously-named Posthumous Cantos is noted here 

Here'sPasolini and Pound together (Pier Paolo Pasolini reading to Pound (in Italian) from his Cantos  (Canto LXXXI) ("Pull down thy vanity")  




Quello che veramente ami rimane,
il resto è scorie
Quello che veramente ami non ti sarà strappato
Quello che veramente ami è la tua vera eredità
Il mondo a chi appartiene, a me, a loro
o a nessuno?
Prima venne il visibile, quindi il palpabile
Elisio, sebbene fosse nelle dimore dinferno,
Quello che veramente ami è la tua vera eredità

La formica è un centauro nel suo mondo di draghi.
Strappa da te la vanità, non fu luomo
A creare il coraggio, o lordine, o la grazia,
Strappa da te la vanità, ti dico strappala
Impara dal mondo verde quale sia il tuo luogo
Nella misura dellinvenzione, o nella vera abilità dellartefice,

Strappa da te la vanità,
Paquin strappala!
Il casco verde ha vinto la tua eleganza.

Dominati, e gli altri ti sopporteranno
Strappa da te la vanità
Sei un cane bastonato sotto la grandine,
Una pica rigonfia in uno spasimo di sole,
Metà nero metà bianco
Né distingui unala da una coda
Strappa da te la vanità
Come son meschini i tuoi rancori
Nutriti di falsità.
Strappa da te la vanità,
Avido di distruggere, avaro di carità,
Strappa da te la vanità,
Ti dico strappala.

Ma avere fatto in luogo di non avere fatto
questa non è vanità 
Avere, con discrezione, bussato
Perché un Blunt aprisse
Aver raccolto dal vento una tradizione viva
o da un bellocchio antico la fiamma inviolata
Questa non è vanità.
Qui lerrore è in ciò che non si è fatto, nella diffidenza che fece esitare…


What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lovst well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lovst well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lovst well shall not be reft from thee
The ants a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
Paquin pull down!
The green casque has out done your elegance.
Master thy self, then others shall thee beare
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen mag pie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowstou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity
How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
But to have done instead of not doing
This is not vanity
To have, with decency, knocked
That a Blunt should open
To have gath ered from the air a live tradition
or from a fine old eye the uncon quered flame
this is not vanity.
Here error is all in the not done,
all in the diffidence that faltered
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Halloween

October 31, 2015, 6:00 am
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Vintage Paul McCartney mask, vintage Allen Ginsberg stoned, Halloween face-painting, followed by a serious (and still timely) song by Messeurs Ginsberg and McCartney - with lyrics sub-titled in Spanish!



Happy Halloween!



Here are a few previous  Allen Ginsberg Project Halloween posts - 2014, 2013, 
and  2012 (once, just that once - too easy! - we went there!) 
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Poems from Tea at The Kalapa Court

November 1, 2015, 3:02 am
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Randy Roark's been posting some pretty interesting Ginsberg miscellanea over on Our Allen. This is one of the most interesting. - "Poems from Tea at the Kalapa Court". 
As Randy, in a note about it, explains:

"On July 26, 1982, Chogyam Trungpa, the founder of Naropa Instituteand Vajracarya (Buddhist priest), invited the artists who were present for the On the Road Jack Kerouac festival—hosted by Naropa Institute—to tea at the Drawing Room at his Kalapa Court house in Boulder, for a spontaneous poetry party. (I’m not certain they knew this before they arrived.) Later the poems were typed up by Trungpa’s students and Allen got a copy, hand-corrected it, and gave it to me to publish inFriction 2/3 -  The Kerouac Conference issue. It not only includes what may be Robert Frank’s sole published poem, but also a poem directed to Ginsberg by Trungpa and Ginsberg’s reply, which I don’t believe have been published elsewhere.
Vajracarya (Chogyam Trungpa)
Ginsberg is sometimes my teacher of poetry
He is sometimes a fool
Nonetheless, fool could be teacher
Jack Kerouac vision is gold sword for us
I appreciate Ginsberg beady eyes, sweet smile
Who taught me a lot and nonetheless I taught him too
Nonetheless, we have lots of full stops, commas, inverted commas, circumflexes, umlauts
However, I love Ginsberg’s gift to me
How to write poetry in American fashion
I salute, bow down to Ginsberg
The teacher who is unteachable
Therefore he is Vajrayana student
Let the sun shine to Ginsberg
Let the moon shine to Ginsberg
Along with the black stars be around Ginsberg
My profound devotion to Ginsberg who showed me American poetry
With or without punctuations
Allen Ginsberg
Having bowed down my forehead on the pavement on Central Park West
By the car wheels of the guru
Whose vehicle I had once stolen in the presence of my father
Having taken a vow to be his love-slave
For this and other lifetimes, if any
Having been humiliated in my Ginsberghood and praised for the same Ginsberghood
I accept the homage of my teacher-pupil and remain with my forehead on the pavement at his feet."
"By the way", "Randy adds,  "I resent Trungpa calling Allen a fool—even as a Buddhist student—and I found the scorn evident in his voice in the audio recording even more distasteful. There are a lot of words to describe Allen, but “fool” is not one of them. And I consider Allen’s response and insight (“Having been humiliated in my Ginsberghood and praised for the same Ginsberghood”) as proof."
The aforementioned Robert Frank poem:
Iced tea at Doylestown
I'm thinking of Pablo
Because they're drinking iced tea in a mental institution
Words
(the assignment was for a four-line poem)
Among the other participants, Peter Orlovsky, Michael McClure, Joanna McClure and Abbie Hoffman...





As well's as four-liners, the poets wrote haiku
Trungpa's - "Turqu(o)ise vase/Sometimes breaks/Should I kill myself (?)"
Allen's - "Although the rain has stopped/The t(e)achers consider hari-kari/After not eating their ice cream sandwiches"






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Kerouac / Shakespeare

November 2, 2015, 3:00 am
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Allen's  1979 Naropa  class on Basic Poetics continues. He continues surveying the early English poems in the Norton Anthology    

AG:  "Merciles Beaute" by Chaucer - (page)  53  -  What I'm hitting are the prettiest.. the prettiest rhythms, prettiest rhythms and images that I remember, that I've learned when I was going to high school and college. Apparently, (except, to say. maybe in Canada), most of these texts are no longer taught, even in college, so that most of you who have gone through some sort of schooling haven't run into them. What really got me was, the first year I taught here [at Naropa], I was trying to teach that last course of Kerouac (thinking that this is the Jack Kerouac School of practicing poetry, so I teach perfect Kerouac). And I started reading aloud the last chorus of Mexico City Blues, which begins, "The sound…" - "The first sound in your mind is the sound you would hear if you were standing at a cash register, singing, with nothing on your mind. But when that Grim Reaper comes to get you, look out my lady, he will dangle with your jangle, and, having robbed you, vanish like John o' Twill. T'were better to be gang-raped by John o'Twill than sit here amorting in your eternity, like some old, poor, haphazard, lack-love, lastingly on the steps, beweeping his moan and befouling his woe.." -  Something like that. So it was.. (I'm having to improvise).. So it was a paraphrase of a soliloquy by Hamlet, where he's sitting on the steps, bewailing his pack of miseries. And then I said that that's really great if you know (Hamlet).. and, all of a sudden, there was this blank look. And I said, "How many here have read Hamlet?", and over half the class had never read Hamlet!  And that was sort of taken-for-granted. How many here have read Hamlet? [show of hands] - And how many have not? -  how many have not? - come on, come on, raise your hands if you haven't read Hamlet… One, two.. come on.. Okay, well that used to be, like, you couldn't get through high school without reading Hamlet (or Macbeth, or something), and you certainly couldn't get through college, and you certainly couldn't get into the Buddha fields, without having read Hamlet. So I found it was in vain to try to teach Kerouac, when Kerouac had such a sensitive and intelligent ear for all the poetry before him, and part of the fun of Kerouac's… of reading Kerouac.. was his sweet intelligence of antique poetry, with his paraphrases of it, and his improvements on it in American vernacular (his making American vernacular sound like classic "rose, rose"). So that's why it winds up that, years later, we're beginning with basic poetics here now, the idea being, the point of that being that "rose, rose", that kind of rhythm, got into Kerouac, and gets into any great poet, and then begins to flavor and inform and prick up his own rhythmic ear, and you begin to hear "rose, rose" in  "bus stop", in your own language, in your own vernacular, and begin to see the physical character of sound that's intriguing and interesting, in your own speech, that really sounds just like Shakespeare, or Medieval Latin lyrics.  So, if you get these in your head, like…"Merciles Beaute" - Chaucer, a poem that Ezra Poundreally loves and that influenced Pound a lot   

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-one-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately twenty-five-and-three-quarter minute in]
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Chaucer - Merciles Beaute

November 3, 2015, 3:00 am
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Merciles Beaute 

Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly, 
I may the beautè of hem not sustene, 
So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene. 

And but your word wol helen hastily 
My hertes wounde, whyl that hit is grene,       
Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly, 
I may the beautè of hem not sustene. 

Upon my trouthe I sey yow feithfully, 
That ye ben of my lyf and deeth the quene; 
For with my deeth the trouthe shal be sene.  
Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly, 
I may the beautè of hem not sustene, 
So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene  




















 [Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1345-1400)]

AG:  Merciles Beaute -  (Geoffrey) Chaucer - (Ezra) Pound keeps quoting throughout The Cantos - "Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly,/ I may the beautè of hem not sustene" -  that's really a perfect heart-pierced, love-look, lyric. You've all had the experience, I take it, of being "slain by two eyes suddenly", unable to to sustain actually the "piercing delight"? - "(an) eye for eye" - "And but your word would  "helen hastily.."?  - " heal" - "will heal me", "will heal it, fast" - "just one word and you'll heal me fast" - "And but your word wol helen hastily/My hertes wounde" - "will heal my heart's wound fast"- - "And but your word wol helen hastily/My hertes wounde, whyl that hit is grene" -" while that it is still fresh as a wound."

[Audio for the above (Ginsberg reading Chaucer) can be found here, beginning at approximately twenty-five-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately twenty-seven-and-a-half minutes in]







Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;
Their beauty shakes me who was once serene
Straight through my heart, the wound is quick and keen.

Only your word will heal the injury
To my hurt head, while yet the wound is clean -
Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly;
Their beauty shakes me who was once serene.

Upon my word, I tell you faithfully
Through life and after death you are my queen;
For with my death the whole truth shall be seen.

Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly 
Their beauty shakes me who was once serene
Straight through my heart, the wound is quick and keen.

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"I Sing of A Maiden.."

November 4, 2015, 3:00 am
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What else? - "I syng of a mayden…." page 56 - This has a real uncanny sound. Does anybody know this one? Has anybody run across this ever? - "I syng of a mayden that is makeles" - matchless - makeles, matchless

"I sing of a maiden/That is makeles;/King of all kings/To her son she ches./ He came al so still/There his mother was,/As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the grass/ He came al so still/To his mother's hour,/ As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the flour" - [that's so pretty] - "He came al so still/There his mother lay,/As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the spray/ Mother and maiden/Was never none but she;/Well may such a lady/Goddes mother be." 

- Mary, he's talking about. Robert Creeley has a poem, I think, paraphrasing  this, the poem in the Don Allen anthology, the rhymed poem by Robert Creeley in the Don Allen anthology. You've got that? - "As dew in April/That falleth on the flower" - I've forgotten..Do you know Creeley's work at all..? enough to remember that?

I think it may paraphrase that one, or something like that, some early poem of Creeley's paraphrases that - [Editorial note - It's not entirely clear what poem of Creeley's Allen is referencing here, presumably, "the rhymed poem..in the Donald Allen anthology" - "Ballad of the Despairing Husband"]

I keep.. I hear that, you know, in, you know, while writing, I hear "As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the grass", "As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the flour",  "As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the spray". That's pretty the way it's spelled - A-P-R-I-L-L-E - ""As dew in Aprille" - it's like long April. Next time I write a poem about April, I'll spell it that way. It's just a pretty way to spell April - "Aprille" ("Aprilly") -  Maybe, "He came al so still/To his mother's hour,/ As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the flour" - I don't know how they pronounced it then, but it looks like they pronounced it "Aprilly".  "He came al so still/There his mother was" - to see what it sounds like - "He came al so stille/There his mother was,/As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the grass" -  He came al so stille/To his mother's hour,/ As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the flour", "He came al so stille/There his mother lay,/As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the spray" - it's so pretty! - it's like candy!  - What is it actually? - [Allen reads measured and slowly] -  "He came - al so still -There his mother - was - As dew - in Aprille - That falls - on the grass". Actually, to analyze the rhythmics of this and imitate it would be kind of interesting, because it's a very variable.. there's a.. it's a very variable meter going on (it's real simple, it sounds simple - "I sing - dada da-da da-da - da da dada-da -  "I sing of a maiden/That is matchless" - I sing of a maiden/That is makeles;/King of all kings/To her son she ches./ He came al so stille/There his mother was,/As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the grass" - da da-da da-da, da da da-da, da da-da da, da-da da, da da - datta-da, dede dada, da da da-de-da, de-da, de datta de da, da  - "That falleth on the grass - de-da de-da da, de-da, da-da da-da de, da-da de-de da-da, da-da-da-da da-da - "That falleth on the flour" - da-da, de da-da de da dada da - "He came al so stille/There his mother lay" - "That falleth on the spray" - Da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da-da - Maid. it's like musical, the musical coda now, you know, the summary of it  - Da-da-da,  da-da-da, dada-da-da-da" - "Mother and maiden/Was never none but she" - da-da, da-da, da-da, dada da-da-da - "Well may such a lady/Goddes mother be." -  "Well may- such a lady - Goddes mother be." - So, if you sing it just as sound, you get the bones of the rhytmics. You find that it's real simple but with tricky little variations musically. It might be interesting. Would anybody.. It might be interesting to try and write a poem in those meters. So that's the assignment for next time - write a poem in those metetrs… yeah, "I sing of a maiden" - Write a poem with those meters, and, also, if you can, put a tune to it (you know, if you can remember a tune). I'll try it too. It's just so pretty, it might be interesting to get inside of the poem by trying to imitate it.

You want to know how to analyze it? - There's several ways to dig it. I mean, the variations of it are.. the variations within it, or the ways of digging what is going on are interesting. First of all you can.. first of all, it's assumed that you can pronounce it aloud . So why don't we all pronounce it aloud - simultaneously! - Yes? - One, two, three [class gives a choral performance of "I sing of a maiden.."] - That's pretty good! - Well, yeah, super nursery-rhyme, celestial nursery-rhyme. So, okay, you've got some.. if you were wondering how to parse it out, the sound, how to parcel out the sound, first rule is, if you're wondering where the accents fall, figure out what it means - "I sing of a girl that's got no sense, I sing of a maiden that is makeles" - For that, you know, you'd get an accent - "I sing", "maiden", "makeles" (and you might have some funny little "that is makeles" - "I sing of a maiden that is makeles" - that's some funny line - that thing is makeles - "that" has some little weight on it but), "I sing of a maiden that is makeles" - like "I sing of a girl that makes pancakes" (that's the way you'd say it if you were saying it for making sense - (it's) the way you find out how a rhythm fits on the tongue. You know, if there's no other… The golden rule here is  find out what the sense of the poem is and then pronounce it as if you were talking vernacular and then you'll find out what the rhythm is. -"King of all kings/To her son she ches " - in other words, "King of all kings/For her son she chose" - da da-da da, da da datta-da . Does that make sense? (because you don't say "King of all kings", unless you want to say, "King of all kings", if you want, you can have "sing of a maiden that is makeles/ King of all kings/To her son.." - Well, you could do it either way  - ""King of all kings", "To her son she chose.." - "King of all kings/that her son she chose" - So, it's pretty much up to you how you want to interpret the speech of it. And that happens in most poems, tho' there's a little bit of possible variation, tho' it's always interesting to know what the original poet would have said (which you can nowadays find by listening to records). 

So if you want - "He came al so still", actually  (because it means all-so-still), where you coulde emphasize  the "al so still" - Oh, as he came all so still to his mother's bower".  

Okay, why don't we try and do that one at home. Is that...

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



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Per The Assignment

November 5, 2015, 3:00 am
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For the assignment:

Student: Does it rhyme?

AG: Does this [ "I sing of a mayden…"]  rhyme?

Student: Yeah. I mean (should) our (assignment) poems?

AG:  Well, "was-grass", "hour-flower", "lay-spray", "she-be" - it's pretty simple rhymes -  "makeles" - that is  "makele-" ("I sing of a mayden that is makeless? makeless? - I don't know how to pronounce "makeles", actually. I think 'mackalas" (probably "mackalas") - "I sing of a mayden that is mackalas" (because it means "matchless") - "I sing of a mayden that is makeles/"King of all kings/that her son she chose" - I don't know how it would be pronounced then.

Student: Should it be right up in front of your nose?

AG: The rhyme or the imagery?  The imagery or the rhyme?

Student: I beg your pardon.

AG: The imagery or the rhythm? Speaking of the…

Student: The..

AG: Close to the nose? You mean the subject-matter? If you can do it. However, the problem here is just getting the rhythm.  

Just write a little piece of rhythm is what I'm saying. Just write a piece of rhythm.

I just began the whole discourse by pointing out the fact that reality is real, and that you can deal with reality in poetry. Then, I switch now to the sound, to some classical sound, and I'm more interested right now in the sound, so you can write all the fairy...  fairy flake on the universal snow trees that you want, you can write as romantic and stupid as you want, or as meaningless as you want, or as misty, romantic, as you want, just as long as you can get the rhythm. (It'd be powerful) if you can do both. Then you got something going.
I'll probably wind up doing something nonsensical, but I'll try it (the assignment) too.

"I found out a teacher that was naked" -  That would be the rhythm - " I found out a teacher that was naked."

Student: What page is that on?

AG: "I sing of a mayden that is makeles" - I was just trying to parallel. I was just wondering what would be a parallel,  modern words parallel - "I  found out a teacher that was naked" - "I sing of a mayden that was naked" -

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

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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 243

November 6, 2015, 3:00 am
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          [Allen Ginsberg's 437 East 12th Street, New York City kitchen (looking out on the corridor/hallway), November 1987 - Photograph byGordon Ball - (images of Rimbaud, TrungpaandWhitmanvisible on the wall)] 

We're a little behind "Our Allen" with this stuff, but wanted to share with you a few more ofRandy Roark's treasure-trove of old Allen pages





His observations on these two: 

"By popular demand, this is the other poem I photocopied from Allen's notebooks so he could take it on an airplane and decode the words I couldn't decipher. It was so casual that when I realized I'd cut off the first lines by using letter-sized paper rather than legal, I just wrote in the words that I'd missed. What's the difference, right?'

Big news - big international news - the announcement of an exhibition in Paris in June (June 2016) on the Beat Generation (co-curated by Philippe-Alain Michaud and Jean-Jacques Lebel.

"L’exposition "Beat Generation", imaginée et présentée au Centre Pompidou, est la première grande rétrospective sur ce thème en Europe. Inédite, elle met l’accent sur cet épisode parisien, souvent oublié d’un mouvement qui allait profondément marquer la création contemporaine".
("The exhibition, "Beat Generation", designed and presented at the Pompidou Center, is (will be) the first European major retrospective on this topic. Uniquely, it will place an emphasis on the oft-neglected Parisian period of  a movement that would have a profound effect on contemporary creation)

Geographically-organized -  "Suivant un parcours géographique, cette exposition épouse le nomadisme Beat, de New York à San Francisco, Mexico, Tanger et Paris."("Following a geographical track, this exhibition links Beat nomadism, from New York to San Francisco,  (to) Mexico City, Paris and Tangier")

And also - "Elle est l’occasion de montrer comment le mouvement Beat a correspondu, peut-être pour la première fois dans l’histoire, à un usage systématique des techniques analogiques par les écrivains et les artistes (magnétophone, disque, radio, téléphone, appareil photo, caméra…" ("It's an opportunity to show how the Beat movement corresponded, perhaps for the first time in history, with a systematic use of analog techniques by writers and artists (tape, disc, radio, phone, photo devices , camera(s)...)
"….et de confronter l’œuvre de cinéastes (Christopher MacLaine, Bruce Baillie,Stan Brakhage, Stan Vanderbeek...) à celle des photographes (Allen Ginsberg et William Burroughs en collaboration avec Robert Frank, Charles Brittin, John Cohen,Harold Chapman...) ou encore de montrer les extensions de la culture Beat à la scène artistique californienne (Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner,George Herms, Wally Hedrick, Jay DeFeo…") - ("…and (a chance to) confront the work of filmmakers (Christopher MacLaine, Bruce Baillie, Stan Brakhage, Stan Vanderbeek ...) (and) photographers (Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, in collaboration with Robert Frank, Charles Brittin, John Cohen, Harold Chapman ...) or, again, show the extension(s) of Beat culture to the California art scene (Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, George Herms, Wally Hedrick, Jay DeFeo…")
               More on this groundbreaking exposition in the months ahead.



                                                       [Anne Waldman at the ESBN Conference]


The (fourth) annual European Beat Studies Network (EBSN) Conference took place last week at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and was, by all accounts, a rousing occasion, a great success. Anne Waldman was there to give the first keynote address - "The Beat Legacy in the Anthropocene"

Anne's own recent Jaguar Harmonics.. (along with Ammiel Alcalay's truly significant
alittle history) is reviewed by Jay Murphy in The Huffington Post - here

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Writing Across The Landscape, his travel writings, is reviewed in the same forum - here

Joanne Kyger interviewed in the San Francisco papers - here
Gary Snyder interviewed in the Santa Barbara paper - here 
Gary Snyder,Michael McClure andAlan Watts words weaved into - and intelligently used in "Off The Trail" by Manchester filmmaker, Nick Jordan
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"Mugging"

November 7, 2015, 3:00 am
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Allen Ginsberg reads "Mugging" at the University of Cincinnati's Elliston Poetry Room on April 23, 1975 

Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s dusk— 
Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking neighborhood 
Tonite at seven walked out past garbage cans chained to concrete anchors   
Walked under black painted fire escapes, giant castiron plate covering a hole in ground 
—Crossed the street, traffic lite red, thirteen bus roaring by liquor store,   
past corner pharmacy iron grated, past Coca Cola & Mylai posters fading scraped on brick 
Past Chinese Laundry wood door’d, & broken cement stoop steps For Rent hall painted green & purple Puerto Rican style 
Along E. 10th’s glass splattered pavement, kid blacks & Spanish oiled hair adolescents’ crowded house fronts— 
Ah, tonite I walked out on my block NY City under humid summer sky Halloween, 
thinking what happened Timothy Leary joining brain police for a season?   
thinking what’s all this Weathermen, secrecy & selfrighteousness beyond reason—F.B.I. plots? 
Walked past a taxicab controlling the bottle strewn curb— 
past young fellows with their umbrella handles & canes leaning against a ravaged Buick 
—and as I looked at the crowd of kids on the stoop—a boy stepped up, put his arm around my neck 
tenderly I thought for a moment, squeezed harder, his umbrella handle against my skull, 
and his friends took my arm, a young brown companion tripped his foot ’gainst my ankle— 
as I went down shouting Om Ah Hūm to gangs of lovers on the stoop watching 
slowly appreciating, why this is a raid, these strangers mean strange business 
with what—my pockets, bald head, broken-healed-bone leg, my softshoes, my heart— 
Have they knives? Om Ah Hūm—Have they sharp metal wood to shove in eye ear ass? Om Ah Hūm
& slowly reclined on the pavement, struggling to keep my woolen bag of poetry address calendar & Leary-lawyer notes hung from my shoulder 
dragged in my neat orlon shirt over the crossbar of a broken metal door   
dragged slowly onto the fire-soiled floor an abandoned store, laundry candy counter 1929— 
now a mess of papers & pillows & plastic car seat covers cracked cockroach-corpsed ground— 
my wallet back pocket passed over the iron foot step guard 
and fell out, stole by God Muggers’ lost fingers, Strange— 
Couldn’t tell—snakeskin wallet actually plastic, 70 dollars my bank money for a week, 
old broken wallet—and dreary plastic contents—Amex card & Manf. Hanover Trust Credit too—business card from Mr. Spears British Home Minister Drug Squad—my draft card—membership ACLU & Naropa Institute Instructor’s identification 
Om Ah Hūm   I continued chanting Om Ah Hūm
Putting my palm on the neck of an 18 year old boy fingering my back pocket crying “Where’s the money” 
“Om Ah Hūm    there isn’t any” 
My card Chief Boo-Hoo Neo American Church New Jersey & Lower East Side 
Om Ah Hūm    —what not forgotten crowded wallet—Mobil Credit, Shell? old lovers addresses on cardboard pieces, booksellers calling cards— 
—“Shut up or we’ll murder you”—“Om Ah Hūm    take it easy” 
Lying on the floor shall I shout more loud?—the metal door closed on blackness 
one boy felt my broken healed ankle, looking for hundred dollar bills behind my stocking weren’t even there—a third boy untied my Seiko Hong Kong watch rough from right wrist leaving a clasp-prick skin tiny bruise 
“Shut up and we’ll get out of here”—and so they left, 
as I rose from the cardboard mattress thinking Om Ah Hūm    didn’t stop em enough, 
the tone of voice too loud—my shoulder bag with 10,000 dollars full of poetry left on the broken floor— 

November 2, 1974


    This is an excerpt (one poem) from Allen's reading. The full reading will be posted here tomorrow
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Ginsberg in 1977 at Cincinnati

November 8, 2015, 3:00 am
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"Mugging", we featured yesterday. Here's the rest of Allen's reading from 1977 at the University of Cincinnati

The opening chant, (a long mantric repetition of (shri ram jai ram jai jai rama),  is followed by a rendition of William Blake's "Spring", ("Words by William Blake, tune by myself, dances by yourself, and voices by yourself"" - "Merrily, merrily, to welcome in the year") - This is followed by a second chant - ( AHHH– "Best done if you sit up straight on your spine. Eyes open. Not tripping. Not tripping but appreciating the actual spacious  space that we share. So it’s actually an appreciation of our presence in the enormity of the universe")

Allen's own reading proper begins with "Continuation of A Long Poem of These States"  ("Philadelphia city light boiling under the clouds…") and a section from "Wichita Vortex Sutra".  This is followed by "Uptown New York" (see above) and "First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels", "Wales Visitation" and five songs ("NY Youth Call Annunciation", "CIA Dope Calypso","End the Vietnam War", "Blues" ("I come from New Jersey and I'd love to suck your prick…" (sic!)), and "Dope Fiend Blues")
The reading continues with poems, "Flying Elegy" ("Over Denver in the air no place to take revenge..."), "To The Dead" ("Teacher, bring me to Heaven or leave me alone…") , "Ego Confession" ("I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America.."), and 
"Mugging" (see yesterday - "Tonite, I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth Street…") The reading ends withmore chanting- this time the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra - Allen sounds out the syllables of The Perfect Wisdom Sutra to perfectly conclude. .
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"Devil and Man"

November 9, 2015, 3:00 am
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AG continues his review of early English lyrics

AG: Okay, so going on to (page) 60 - This is… I was looking at this today, and it reminded me what (Bob) Dylan is laying down on his latest album, so I thought…

"I have labored sore and suffered death,/ And now I rest and draw my breath,/But I shall come and call right soon./Heaven and earth and hell to doom/And then shall know both devil, and man,/What I was and what I am."

It was  Slow Train Coming - "And then shall know both devil, and man" -  and that's the origin of "Slow Train Coming",  the origin, that's an early precursor of that particular mode of moral… moral judgment  and apocalyptic prophesy. It's pretty good though - "And then shall know both devil, and man,/What I was and what I am." - It's a good.. it's a good rhythm. "I have labored sore and suffered death" - (that was Christ talking) - "And now I rest and draw my breath."

The syncopation of "And then shall know both devil, and man" is then cut by the simple "What I was and what I am." -  "then shall know both devil, and man" - da-da-da da da-da-da, da-da-da da da-da-da.  So that you've got a real complicated syncopation, followed by a resolution that's real simple -  "And then/ shall know/both devil/ and man,/What/ I was/ and what/ I am." - Four accents, each line. So, with the four accents.. However, there's a.. "And then shall know both/dev-il and/man", eight syllables with four accents - "What-I-was-and-what-I-am", six sylllables with four accents.   So if you got eight syllables, you got to speed it up and syncopate, or it syncopates by itself (what, is it seven?) -  "And- then-shall-know both-devil-and-man" -or, well, you could say nine? - "And -then-shall-know both-dev-il-and-man" - or  - "And-then-shall-know both-devil-and-man" (depending on if you want "devil" as… "dev-il" as  nine -So nine syllables to six (that's a pretty funny syncopation) . If you cut down the syllables when you're rhyming and if you're writing in meters, in accentual meters, if you have a four-beat line and cut down the syllables, it has a funny kind of directness if you want to set it next to something syncopated - "And then shall know both devil, and man" - It's actually..  he does that throughout the poem, come to think of it -"I have labored sore and suffered death,/ And now I rest and draw my breath," - So the first line is a little syncopated, the second line is plain, but then the third line is plain - "But I shall come and call right soon" - Then he syncopates in the fourth -  "Heaven and earth and hell to doom" - he's got the syncopation of "Heaven and earth" in the fourth - "And then shall know both devil, and man/What I was and what I am." - So that's interesting. You dig? - the fourth line, "Heaven and earth and hell to doom", the syncopation's at the beginning of the line. ""And then shall know both devil, and man", the syncopation comes towards the end of the line. So he's got syncopation here, syncopation there. 
Are you following? Is it (clear)? Is anybody  not following (this)? Is that unclear? Just say so - Huh?

Student: (Can you repeat it again/)

AG: Okay..I was just now, while reading, noticing how he alternately syncopates and then has a straight four-square line and then syncopates at the end . The.. also I noticed that in lines..in the fourth and fifth line - "Heaven and earth and hell to doom/And then shall know know both devil, and man", that the part of the line that syncopates, in " "Heaven and earth and hell to doom" syncopates at the beginning of the line, and then, in the next line, "And then shall know know both devil, and man", the syncopation falls towards the end of the line. So it isn't that he repeats the same syncopation over and over, but he varies it so that it's symmetrically within the line. And, furthermore, the first line is a syncopated line - 
 "I have labored sore and suffered death". The second line is sort of four-square and straightforward - "And now /I rest/ and draw/ my breath" (no syncopation necessary, because you don't have extra syllables). Then the next line is also a non-syncopated straightforward line - "But I/ shall come/ and call/ right soon" - (no extra syllables there). So he's reversed it, and so the following line of that couplet is a syncopated line. So you've got syncopated, unsyncopated, unsyncopated, and syncopated, right?  In other words, a jazz line, square line, square line, jazz line, for the first four lines - and then the fifth line is another jazz line (but the jazz comes at the beginning instead of the end like in the one before).
Is that clear now? clearer?  In other words, I was just trying to find out where he jazzes it up. He jazzes it up in the first line, he jazzes it up in the fourth line, and he also jazzes it up in the fifth line (the fourth line he jazzes it up at the beginning, and the fifth line he jazzes it up at the end). And then the last line is the simplest, squarest of all the lines - "What I was and what I am." So the thing is built like a brick shit-house. I mean, it's just.. hammering on spot, what makes the poem tick rhythmically, or how it ticks, rhymically, And, actually, if  you're writing, if you get into writing this style, this kind of verse, you know, rhymed rhythmic verse, it's good to know that there's that much variation possible, that you don't make it just automatic, metronomic, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, the same way every line. You see, what it is is the playfulness, what happens is a kind of intelligent funniness and playfulness in the way it varies. It's just like when you listen to a jazz musician blow choruses, you follow the way he varies from chorus to chorus, or varies his rhythm, various the little licks, so the licks are varied here in these little Fifteenth Century anonymous poems. 

That…Please tell me, did anybody not understand what all that was just about? can't follow?. If you didn't follow, tell me.  Don't be.. I mean, I'm talking a bit abstractly, I probably should do it on the blackboard. Next time I'll do it on the blackboard, so it'll be visible. I was assuming we all had the that text.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-and-a-quarter minutes in , and concluding at approxinately forty-eight minutes in]
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"I have a young sister"/The Riddle Song

November 10, 2015, 3:00 am
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"I have a young sister" (page  63). Oh yeah, everybody knows this one. Joan Baez sings it, I don't know…does anybody know the Joan Baez song, "I sent my love a cherry, without any stone.." Do you know that?  [Allen starts singing] - "I gave my love a cherry, da-da, da-da.." - Does anybody know that?  heard it? - Anybody remember what the first line is in the modern version?  - Ah well, let's see what it is here [Allen turns to book] -  
"I have a yong suster/ Fer beyonde the see/Manye be the drueries/That she sent to me" - ("which she sente me",  which is fine). My automatic thing was "sent-to-me" (it's actually, "sente me") "I have a yong suster/ Fer beyonde the see/Manye be the drueries/That she sente me" - "She sente me the cherye/Wythouten any stoon/And so she did the dowse/Wythouten any boon/She sente me the brere/Wythouten any rinde/She bad me love my lemman/Wythoute longynge" - [well, that's a funny part, "Wythoute longing" - he cuts it] - She sente me the brere/Wythouten any rinde/She bad me love my lemman/Wythoute longing  - [wow! - that's really amazing! - you know, the big hole in that, the big rhythmic hole that's left there. That's like .. like what we were talking about .."What I was and what I am", cut short, cut it down, you know, just the minimum number of syllables - but here it's almost like under the minimum number of syllables!  - so that you have to..  It comes from singing, obviously - " She bad me love my lemman/Wyth-oute long-ing" (as the song does go) -  "How sholde.." [Allen begins singing again] "How sholde any cherye/Be without…", no, ""How sholde any cherye/Be wythouten stoon?/And how sholde any dowse/Ben wythouten boon?/How sholde any brere/Ben wythouten rinde?/How sholde I love my lemman/Wythoute longing?""When the cherye was a flowr/Thanne hadde it non stoon/When the dowve was an ey,/Than hadde it non boon./When the brere was unbred,/Thanne hadde it non rinde/When the mayden hadde that she loveth,/She is without longing ." - (I don't know if that's in the modern version) - "When the brere was unbred" - (What is "unbred" here? - "still in the sea") - "When the brere was unbred,/Thanne hadde it non rinde/When the mayden hadde that she loveth,/She is without longing ." - "When the brere was unbred,/Thanne hadde it non rinde/When the mayden hadde that she loveth..", "When the mayden hadde that she loveth", probably "When the mayden hadde that she loveth" (that was probably the rhythm), "When the brere was unbred,/Thanne hadde it non rinde/When the mayden hadde that she loveth,/She is without longing." (so the "that" would be emphasized there, that would make that trip properly). Is that making sense now?. In other words, I misread rhythmically first time - "When the mayden hadde that she loveth" - it doesn't trip properly - "When the mayden hadde that she loveth" - When the maiden hadde that she loveth/ She is without longing", then there is some kind of parallelism between those, the last lines. It's really interesting to pronounce these aloud, because, unless you pronounce them aloud, you don't see the actual physical beauty of the rhythm. And as it is, they were songs. How many know that song the…  How many have heard that?  And how many have not? It's a real.. it's actually a big modern pop piece - "I gave my love a.." - I don't remember the words, has anybody.. [Allen begins singing again] - "I gave my love a cherry, that has no stone, I gave her a… a baby?

Student: A baby,  a baby that doesn't grow old, yeah..

AG: No, "I gave my love a baby, without crying" That's it. Yes, "I gave my love a baby with..", "How can there be a baby without cry-ing, how can there be a…"


Student: Chicken, chicken without a bone

AG: Without a bone. Yeah, dove

Student: No, that's a chicken

AG: Whoever said it, "I gave my love a baby, without crying". That's almost as good as the original. Whoever added that was a genius. So the genius isn't over.

Student: So what was the answer to that?

Student (2): Yeah..

AG: When the cherry was a flower it had no stone. Well, when the dove was an egg it had no bone - I gave my love a baby without crying? - Either she didn't weep when they were making love or the baby's still in the womb. I don't know. What was the answer? Does anybody remember? It's probably given in the song. I forgot. Does anybody know folk music well enough to look that up and find out, know where to look that up? - Is anybody familiar with folk music that would have the Joan Baez Songbook and know where to find it?

Student: I don't think she ever recorded it?

AG: Who did then?

Student: A whole bunch of people from that time..

AG: Peggy Seeger?  Pete Seeger?… Peggy Seeger?.. someone like that…







Student: There's a whole bunch of people…

AG: Judy Collins? - I've heard it a million times but I wonder who?

Student: Joan Baez certainly recorded another one, page ninety-six…...

AG: Yeah, and there's "Mary Hamilton" too ….

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-eight minutes in, and concluding at approximately fifty-four minutes in]

I have a young sister
Far beyond the sea;
Many are the gifts
That she sent to me.

She sent me the cherry
Without any stone,
And the dove
Without any bone.

She sent me the briar
Without any bark,
She bade me love my lover
Without longing.

How should any cherry
Be without a stone?
And how should any dove
Be without bones?

How should any briar
Be without a rind?
How should I love my lover
Without longing?

Whan the cherry was a flower
then had it no stone;
When the dove was an egg,
Then had it no bone.

When the briar was a seed,
Then had it no bark;
When the maiden has her love,
She is without longing
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'I have a Gentil Cock"

November 11, 2015, 3:00 am
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AG: Now what's next, oh I like that "Gentle Cock" that's pretty funny. I think. I couldn't believe it when I read it! - "I have a gentle cock,/ Croweth the day/He doth me risen early/My matins for to say./ I have a gentle cock,/Comen he is of great;/His comb is of red coral,/His tail is of jet./ I have a gentle cock/Comen he is of kind.." - ("coming from", "coming he is kind") - His comb is of red coral,/His tail is of inde.." - (indigo) -  "His legged be of azure,/So gentle and so small;/His spurres are of silver white/Into the wortewale…." ("wortewale" is what? - "up to the root" - "white, up to the root" - and he's talking about genitals -  that's pretty funny!) - "His eyen are of crystal,/Locked all in amber;/And every night he percheth him/In my lady's chamber" - (I couldn't believe, when I got to the end, it was really that! -  but he's taken a dirty lyric and made it so ornamental and pretty that you couldn't possibly..couldn't possibly get upset about it.  

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately fifty-four minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty-five-and-a-quarter minutes in] 
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Lord Buckley

November 12, 2015, 3:00 am
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[Richard Buckley - Lord Buckley (1906-1960) - Photograph by Charles Campbell]

M'lords, m'ladies of the Royal Court" - Fifty-five years since the passing of the great Lord Buckley.  Just re-released by City Lights this year - what Buckley scholar, Oliver Trager has called, "this sacred artifact, this holy talisman" - Hiporama of the Classics - "First published in 1960, this new expanded edition contains, in addition to Buckley's hip-semantic raps, a new foreward by Al Young and photographs by legendary music photographers, Jim Marshall, Jerry Stoll, and others"




















Lord Buckley.com is a pretty good place to go for more. Not the least, for its transcriptions of the routines - 
Not the least for the immortal "Nazz" (Buckley's routine on Jesus of Nazareth)
- Ah! but there are so many!


["...And a great love came on his face and he noticed the power and beauty all of a sudden -"Oh great swingin' flowers of the fields!" - And they said "Oh great natural song of the stomp of beauty!". And he said, "Stomp upon the terra!" - They hit it. He said "Lift your hands from the body" -  The body went up - He said, "Straighten your arms!" - The arms went up. He said "Higher! - They went higher. He said "Dig Infinity" -  And they dug it!"]

Here's a few of our favorites

- The Nazz (complete) 
Hipsters Flipsters And Finger-Poppin' Daddies  (Mark Anthony's oration in hip-semantic)
Subconscious Mind
The Gettysburg Address  (likewise rendered in hip-semantic)
Cabenza De Gasca, The Gasser 
His version of  Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven  

"And now because I think rhythm is the key to everything, rhythm in attitude, rhythm in attention, rhythm in execution, rhythm in consummation, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. Rhythm runs the whole swinging gate.."
Martin's Horse



Not so much extant footage of Buckley but here's two rare early treats.

First, from, circa 1949, an appearance on the tv show "Club 7" (he's seen doing an impression of "a great American and great artist, Mr Louis Armstrong", performing "When The Saints Go Marching In", followed by a Lord Buckley parable - "The Lord and the Sinner" ("The great master was sitting in his rosy rockin' chair one Hallelujah morning…")
 - "Take a little and leave a little", that's what the Lord said"


The second clip is an historic combination. "Mr R.M.Buckley" appears on Groucho Marx's tv show, You Bet Your Life  (Buckley comes on about two minutes in)



Here's the legendary interview with Studs Terkel


Here's an interview with Allen's cousin Oscar Janiger (remembering him and pioneering research)

Here's the notorious police transcript 
(censored, like Lenny Bruce, on account of draconian cabaret laws)  

Oliver Trager's Dig Infinity is an essential book (if you can find it). Here's him talking about the book and about Buckley -  here and here
He recently just brought it to the stage, performing this year at the New York International Fringe Festival. Here's Hilton Als preview of that.



Heathcote Williams spreads the word about His Lordship in the International Times  


"“Did I say all?”, said Lord Richard Buckley before he died”  (Jack Kerouac from Desolation Angels) 


[People, people are the true flowers of life, and it has been a most precious pleasure to have temporarily strolled in your garden"]
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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 244

November 13, 2015, 3:00 am
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            [Howl & Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg - recent edition -  Mojo Publishing House, Taipei,Taiwan (2015)]

All this talk about Allen Ginsberg's ubiquity. "Did you know", I said, "Did you know that there are Columbia students, Columbia undergraduate students, who don't know who Allen Ginsberg is!" (Betsy Ladyzhets, writing in Bwog, Columbia Student News)




[Steve Silberman, Allen Ginsberg and Marc Olmsted, San Jose, California, 1986
 - Photograph by Marc Geller]

Steve Silberman might also be considered ubiquitous these days. A wonderfully positive response to his new book on autism -"Neurotribes - The Legacy of Autism and How To Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently" (he was recently awarded the prestigious 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize)  has led to a whole lot of press including this (from last weekend's UK Guardian - "My Hero - Allen Ginsberg" - "Allen's voice had an expressive range and gravity that atttested to his belief that, "the only poetic tradition is the voice out of the burning bush". Allen seemed like the happiest, most-awake middle-aged man I had ever seen" 


We've spotlighted before Allen and ASL (American Sign Language) - here. 
Here's more, and a more recent manifestation of it - Crom Saunders signing Allen's "Homework",  (the poem he wrote, in parody of and hommage to Kenneth Koch). 



John Sinclair -It's All Good - A John Sinclair Reader - Fifty years of poetry and prose. Read about it in the Detroit News 

Poetry Summit in Woodstock tonight - read about it here.

Michael McClure, a rare appearance at the opening of his wife's show (Amy Evans McClure). Read an extended account in the San Francisco Chronicle  

Hydrogen Jukebox presentation this weekend in Nashville  This version, "a slightly altered version" - "Instead of a poet-narrator…(John) Hoomes (Nashville Opera's dramatic director) has substituted an actor (Henry Haggard) who will serve as kind of guide during the performance. Otherwise, Hoomes is staging (it) as it was first presented - uncut - and, most importantly, uncensored".

You're a regular Allen Ginsberg Project follower? (you follow our daily posts?)
Then sign up as one of our "Google Friends" and let us know. You've delved into our voluminous archives? (if you haven't, check them out immediately, at the bottom right hand corner of this page). You're conversant not only with Allen but much of "the Beat Generation" (in both its literary and social manifestations)? 
The recently-published compendium/survey from Backbeat Books, The Beat Generation FAQ - All That's Left To Know About The Angel-Headed Hipsters by Rich Weidman, seems to be pitched to you. 
You know everything, but still maybe there's a few things you should know.
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William Burroughs (1989 - Part 1)

November 14, 2015, 3:00 am
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[William S Burroughs - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg © The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]



Always a pleasure to feature William Burroughs here on the Ginsberg blog. Today, a reading from July 1989

- "Art Now - A Day of Contemporary Art" - "A William S Burroughs reading, compiled from a number of works" - Burroughs covers topics from miracles and magic to the Titanic, narcotics, the supernatural and hospitals".

WSB: Yes,Brion (Gysin) always told me that an artist has to go around and flog his paintings like a rug-merchant. He's got to show up at all of these openings.  [so Burroughs shows up]

"This is from Ghost of (A) Chance, which also concerns Christ and the whole subject of miracles and magic.




[Burroughs reads from Ghost of (A) Chance]  

"The portents and signs that surround his birth have a sort of flashback retroactive tinge. Magi's came bearing gifts. Did these gifts sustain the family in the ensuing years before Christ found his vocation? What about poor John [Joseph] married toImmaculate Mary? She must have been the worst lay ever to say, "Sorry darling, not tonight, got a sick headache"! - One man's sure that long-suffering John had to hustle his saw and adages since Christ had not yet learned to make bread breed like rabbits. Difficult to believe that Christ was ever a full-time carpenter. He was arguing with people in the synagogues when he was nine years old. So here is thirty - time for a stint in the desert with Satan. Well, of course, the devil's bargain is always a fool's bargain. It takes a modicum of common sense to say, "Piss off, Satan, and don't take me for dumber than I look, for Christ's sake!". 


[Jesus Tempted In The Wilderness ("Jésus tenté dans le désert)"-James Tissot (1836-1902)  - opaque watercolor  on graphite over grey wove paper - 8 7/8" x 13 5/16" courtesy, Collection of The Brooklyn Museum ]

The question arises did Christ actually commit the miracles attributed to him? My guess is that he did certainly perpetrate some of these acts. The Buddhists consider miracles and healing as dubious if not downright reprehensible. I remember Wynn Chamberlain's guru (I forgot his name), he said, "If you can, don't". The miracle-worker is arbitrarily upsetting the natural order with incalculable long-range consequences and may often be motivated by self-glorification. Granted that Christ did work miracles, what he did was not so remarkable. Any competent magic man can heal sometimes - ("You can't win 'em all") - and cast out devils (especially the ones, the devils, he installed in the first place! ) Many practitioners can do weather magic. But Christ established a miracle monopoly, which was codified by the Church over the centuries. Miracles can only be performed by authorized personnel, and subject to meticulous verification. (We can't let these miracles get out of hand!) 
   
Puts me sort of into a commandment mood. "Thou shalt not be such a shit that you do not know you are one". Is there anyone in this room who has never said to himself, "My God, I acted like an absolute shit". If so, let him stand forth so that we can declare him a latter-day saint. Any takers? (Don't look at me!). I recall an interview with some retarded reporter and he asked me, "Mr Burroughs, is there anything in your life you regret, anything you would do differently if you had to do it over?"
What did you say? No, don't repeat it. Well, I'm lucky if I get through a day without something I did wrong, something I regret. And here you're talking about a lifetime! Think of the real mistakes.  "There are mistakes too monstrous for remorse/To tamper or dally with" -Can anyone place that quotation?  (Allen, you're disqualified, I told you - Anyone else? 


                                                     [Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)]


Can anyone place it ? - It's Edward Arlington Robinson - He's really a neglected poet (and he wrote a whole poem [Merlin]  about the Arthur legend). Anyone who never made mistakes like that and paid for this mistakes, I trust him little in the commerce of the soul. No experience. Young thief thinks he's got a licence to steal. Young lawyer who never botched a case? Young doctor who never killed a patient?



                                                        [J.Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)]
 
"Thou shalt not drop an atom bomb or shit one out in the first place". Yes, I'm talking to you,Dr Robert Oppenheimer (known as "Oppie" to his friends). If you've got an atom for a friend your only enemy is a dud. When Oppie heard the good news aboutHiroshima he said, "Thank God it wasn't a dud." -  What God are you thanking for Hiroshima, Oppenheimer? And (Harry)Truman said, "God has given us the atom bomb and he will show us how to use it" - Oh God! 
It has to be remembered that on the occasion of the first atomic explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico (that translates, roughly, as "fat soul"), so on this fat occasion, Robert Oppenheimer, the founding father, entertained the possibility of a chain reaction that would ignite the atmosphere. "You're theorizing way over our heads, Oppie" said the General, (well, there were a lot of General's around), "And speaking for the Pentagon, I don't like it." Twenty years later Oppie still believed that nuclear fission would destroy the planet. "We are become death's shatterer of worlds", he said. ["Now we have become death, the destroyer of worlds"] He said it on tv and wiped a tear out the corner of his eye with one skinny finger (he was dying of cancer at the time). And various highly-placed officials appeared to say, "It was a very difficult decision…", (the decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima). And I thought, God defend us all from a "difficult decision" in the Pentagon!  Nobody does more harm than folks that feel bad about doing it!" 
So, one goes on signing petitions and supporting nuclear freezes, what else can one do? One sounded a word of warning. 



Brion Gysin had the all-purpose nuclear bedtime story, the all-purpose bedtime story, in fact. Some trillions of years ago, a sloppy dirty Giant flicked grease from his fingers. One of these gobs of grease is our universe on its way to the floor. Splat! "Clean it up ,women," growled the Giant (for he was a male supremacist). 

Meanwhile, life, such as it is, goes on. I am frequently asked if I have any words of advice for young and old. Well, I think the most important is this - that good things and bad things come in streaks. So plunge when you're winning and fold when you're losing. You got a winning streak, ride it, but don't ride it too far too fast, or you can hit a losing streak doing ninety miles and hour, and that isn't good. You never know when your streak ends. If you did it would be too easy.

 "Never interfere in a boy and girl fight." Never. "Beware of whores that say they don't want money". The hell they don't! What they mean is they want more money. Much more money. 

"If you are doing business with a religious son-of-a-bitch, get it in writing." - His word isn't worth shit (not with the Good Lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal!) 
"If, after having been exposed to someone's presence you feel as if you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia". We don't like to hear the word "vampire" around here, we're trying to improve our P.R., build up a kindly avuncular benevolent image - "Interdependence" is the key word. "Enlightened interdependence". Life in all its rich variety. Take a little, leave a little. However, by the inevitable logistics of the vampiric process they always take more than they leave. And why, indeed, should they take any? Sure, a wart is better than a cancer, but who wants either one? 
"Avoid Fuck-Ups." FU's I call them. You all know the type. Everything they have anything to do with turns into a disaster, no matter how good it may sound. They're trouble for themselves and everyone connected with them. A FU is bad news and it rubs off. Don't let it rub off on you. 

"Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill" - it's a bottomless pit. Tell them firmly I am not paid to listen to this drivel! You are a terminal FU! And avoid confirmed criminals, they are a special malignant strain of FU. Look what Norman Mailergot himself into by involving himself with that archtypical criminal FU Jack Henry Abbott. To quote fromhis book:"I would sell my soul for freedom but I won't give an honest days work or behave myself for an instant for that same thing." - I think Abbott is the F.U-ist of the F.U's. 


                              [Norman Mailer (1923-2007) at a press conference, New York City,1981]

Now some specialized advice - If there are any aspiring young thieves in the audience.. "Don't ever try and hit a Chinaman - He will die before he gives up his money!" I remember a young hoodlum named Eddie who learned the hard way. Eddie and two other bums need some money on a Saturday-night, so they decide to heist this Chinese laundry. Below street-level, One little skinny Chink down there ironing shirts. All they have to do is flash a gun and he will fork over. (Or so they think). Instead, he comes up with a meat cleaver screaming, "Fluck you, fluck you, fluck you..." - and they, wisely, heed the words ofthe Immortal Bard- "Stay [Stand] not on the order of your going but go at once..". Out in the street this one kid is laughing about it, "Ah, you can win 'em all", and imitating the Chinaman, you know,  "Fuck you, fuck you…" - "What are you all looking at me so funny for?" [says the kid]. "Man, you've got a meat-cleaver stuck in your head!." So the kid reaches up and feels the meat-cleaver, and, "Ugh…", passes out cold. So they steer him to a hospital and pour him through the door. 

Now some of you may encounter the Devil's bargain if you get that far. Any old soul is worth saving at least to a priest. But not every soul is worth buying - so you can take the offer as a complement. Try his money first, you know, all the money there is. So who wants to be the richest guy in some cemetery? So money won't buy it. Not much left to spend it on, eh gramps? Gettin' too old to cut the mustard... Well, time hits the hardest blows, especially below the belt. So how's a young body grab you? Likethree-card monte pea-under-the-shell "now-you-see-it-now-you-don't..." Old fool is going to rush out and realize all his wet dreams. Haven't you forgotten something, gramps? In order to feel something, you have to be there. You have to be eighteen years old. And you aren't eighteen, you're seventy-eight. You just simply are not there. Old fool sold his soul for a strap-on. Well, I always try the easy ones first, so how about an honorable bargain? You always wanted to be a doctor, well now here's your chance. Right back there in medical school. Why, you could become a great healer and benefit humanity, what's wrong with that? - Just about everything. There are no honorable bargains that involve exchange of quality [sic qualitative]  merchandise, like souls, for quantative merchandise, like time. Yeah, that's always a bargain for him, the Devil's bargain. A wise old junk pusher told me years ago, "Watch whose money you pick up" and "Watch who's time you pick up." 

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

This reading will continue tomorrow
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William Burroughs, 1989 - Part 2

November 15, 2015, 3:00 am
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William Burroughs audio (see yesterday) continues

WSB: Cambridge Mass 1938 - that was the year of the big hurricane - Kells Elvins and your reporter were writing a shipwreck story based on the sinking of the Titanic . The Titanic was supposed to be sink-proof. It was all divided up into segments, you know, so if you have a leak here, the other compartments will keep the thing afloat. But the iceberg just sliced right through all the compartments, like a can opener. The ship went down in three hours with twelve hundred passengers. The Captain went down with the ship on this occasion. It was the maiden voyage, there were a number of rich and fancy people on board, and, I think it was Mr Astor, he and his valet put on full dress suits and said, "We're going down like gentlemen" - Imagine a frame of mind like that! - going down "like gentlemen" - glug!, glug!, glug!  So along came Colonel Clinch Smith, who was right on the deck when the Titanic went down, got clear, and latched on to a chicken-coop and survived.
And that's the name of the game


[John Jacob Astor IV (1894-1912)]

In our story, "Twilight's Last Gleamings", the Ships' Captain puts on women's clothes and rushes into the first lifeboat. And also in this lifeboat is the ships' doctor. There is precedence for this I quote from a contemporary chronicle: "Somewhere in the shadow of the Titanic disaster slinks a cur in human shape, today the most despicable human being in all the world. In that grim midnight hour he found himself hemmed in by the band of heroes whose watchword rang out across the deep - 'Women and children first.' What did he do? He scuttled to the stateroom deck put on a women's skirt, a women's hat and a women's vale and, picking his crafty way, he filled a seat in one of the lifeboats and saved his skin. His identity is not yet known, though it will in good time. This man still lives - surely he was born, and saved, to set for men a new standard by with to measure infamy and shame". You get to thinking about it, you wonder if they don't yet know his identity how they know about this at all. Something really funny there.  
Anyway, this story commemorates the first appearance of Dr Benway written in collaboration with Kells Elvins
 - "Twilights Last Gleamings" - 
"SS America off Jersey coast ... ladies and gentleman there is no cause for alarm we have a minor problem in the boiler room but everything is now under ... sound effects of a nuclear blast. Explosion splits the boat. 
A paretic named Perkins screams from his shattered wheelchair, "You pithy assed son of a bitch..." Second class passenger Barbara Cannon lay naked in a first class stateroom.
Stewart Hudson stepped to a porthole, "Put on your clothes honey there's been an accident."
 Dr Benway, Ships Doctor, drunkenly added two inched to a six-inch incision with one stroke of his scalpel. "Perhaps the appendix is already out doctor..." the nurse said peering dubiously over his shoulder. "I saw a little scar." "The appendix out... I'm taking the appendix out what do you think I'm doing here." "Perhaps the appendix is on the left side doctor, that happens sometimes, you know." "Stop breathing down my neck, I'm coming to that. Don't you think I know where an appendix is? I studied appendectomy in nineteen-oh-four at Harvard"He lifted the abdominal wall and searched along the incision dropping ashes from his cigarette... thrust a red fist at her. "And get me a new scalpel this one's got no edge to it." The doctor flattened against the wall a bloody scalpel clutched in one hand. The patient slid off the operating table spilling intestines across the floor. "Sew her up I can't be expected to work under such conditions." He swept instruments, cocaine and morphine into his satchel and tilted out of the operating room. 



Mike Dweyer, a politician from Clayton, Missouri rushed into the First Class Lounge where the orchestra, coked, junked and pilled to the gills, wallowed in their instruments. "Play The Star Spangled Banner", he bellowed. "You trying to corn somebody, Jack?". Mike crossed to the jukebox and selected The Star Spangled Banner With Fats Terminal at the Electric Organ and shoved home a handful of quarters…..By the dawn's early light ... Dr Benway pushed through a crowed rail and boarded the first lifeboat. "You all alright? He said seating himself amongst the women, "I'm the doctor." Oh say can you see... Captain Cramer putting the finishing touches to heavy makeup? Now a green cloche hat and fox stole. Rather Sadie Thomson he decides, slipping a .32 automatic into his handbag. O'er the ramparts we watched… Radio Operator Finch mixed a bicarbonate of soda and belched into his hand. SS America… SOS - URP - Goddamned captain's a brown artist. SOS - Off Jersey Coast. Might smell us - SOS - Son-of-a-bitching crew - SOS Comrade Finch - Comrade's a pig's ass - SOS - URP-URP.. The Captain stepped into the Radio Room and shot Finch in the back of the head. He shoved the body aside and smashed the apparatus with a chair.By the twilights last gleamings the Captain stiff-arms an old lady and fills the first lifeboat.The boat is lowered jerkily by male passengers. Dr Benway casts off. The Captain pats his bulging suitcase and absently looks back at the ship. Obviously he cleaned out to sea. Our flag was still there…

 It happens in every shipwreck something folks don't like to talk about. People keep trying to get in the lifeboats that are already full and someone has to cut their fingers off with a butcher knife. In our story a paralyzed paretic named Perkins (paralyzed from the waist down anyway) is the instrument of destiny. Someone gives him the knife and tells him what he has to do. By the rockets red glare ... A cry goes up from the tilting deck. Bodies hurtle around the boat. A hand reaches out and closes on the boat side. Spring-like Perkins brings down the knife. The hand slips away finger stubs fall into the boat. "That' a boy comrade don't let them swamp us." The crew pull on the oars and Perkins works feverishly cutting on all sides. His false teeth fly out with the speed of a snapping snake, he snaps them back into is mouth. "Bastards, sons-of-bitches, bastards, sons-of-bitches..."Oh say, does that spangled banner yet wave... Barbara Cannon showed your reporter her souvenirs of the disaster. A lifebelt autographed by the crew and a severed human finger. "I dunno" she said, "I feel so bad about this old finger." The land of the free and home of the brave.


         [Federal Medical Center (Federal Narcotics Hospital), Lexington, Kentucky, "United States Narcotic Farm"] 


This folkloric text is from the Federal Narcotics Hospital at Lexington, Kentucky. There is an exclusve wing at Lexington reserved for the "Do-rights" who are considered good rehabilitation prospects. They get better rooms and more medication and a much slower withdrawal. A "Do-right" always shows up with letters from his employer, clergyman, congressman, you know, the type (that) falls all over himself to light the bosses' cigarette. The doctor walks into the ward. "Rather warm in here". As one man, the "Do-rights" break out in a sweat and rush around opening windows - "A bit cold in here, isn't it?". Immediately the "Do-rights" see their breath in yhe air, and snatch blankets, and bundle themselves up to a chorus of chattering teeth. Front office brown-nose fink to the bone. "Doctor, when I die, I want to be buried right in the same coffin with you. You're the finest, most decent, the most deeply humane man I've ever known:, "I'm puttin' you down for additional medication, son". "Thank you, doctor. Pushers should receive the death penalty".
Such staff are "Do-rights" made. It's the old army game - "from here to eternity" - get there firsted with the brownest nose. While, down in the dim grey wards and dayrooms, where the "Do-wrongs" hawk and spit and shiver and vomit, "Fuckin' croaker wouldn't give me a goofball. He asked me what the American flag means to me and I tell him, "Soak it in heroin, doc, and I'll suck it". He tells me I got the wrong attitude. I should see the Chaplain and get straight with Jesus". And then, with the tears streaming down their lousy fink faces, the "Do-rights" leap up, as one man, and bellow out The Star Spangled Banner" 

More folklore. Daddy Long Legs looked like Uncle Sam on stilts and he ran this osteopathic clinic outside East St. Louis and took in a few junky patients. For two notes a week you could nod out in green lawn chairs and look at the oaks and grass stretching down to a little lake in the sun. And the nurse moves around with a silver tray feeding in the junk in. We called her Mother wouldn't you? So Benway needed after a rumble in Dallas involving this aphrodisiac ointment and Doc goofed on either and mixed in too much Spanish fly and burnt the prick of the police commissioner. So they come to Daddy Long Legs to cool off and we find him cool and casual in a dark room of potted rubber plants and a silver tray where he likes to see a week in advance. The nurse showed us to a room with rose wallpaper and we had this bell where any hour of the day or night just ring and Mother charges in with a loaded hypo. One day we were sittin' out on the lawn chairs with lap robes all day leaves turning sun cold on the lake. Doc picks up a piece of grass. "Junk turns you on vegetable. It's green, see. Now a green fix should last a long time." So we check out of the clinic and rent a house and Doc starts cooking up this green junk and the basement is full of tanks smell like a compost heap of junkies. So finally he draws off this heavy green fluid and loads it into a hypo big as a bicycle pump. "Now we must find a worthy vessel," he says. So he flushed out this old goofball artist and tells him that it is pure Chinese H from the Ling Dynasty. And Doc shoots the whole pint of green right into the main line. The yellow jacket turns fibrous grey green and withers up like an old turnip. "And I say I'm getting out of here me," Doc says. "An unworthy vessel obviously, I withdraw from the case!"

Actually, I've been reading a lot of these doctor books lately and Benway sort of shines as a model of competence.. and responsibility in terms of what's actually going on in hospitals. Well here's a sort of typical doctor, this is one of the better of the lot, Mike Todd. So, anyway, he has fallen for a young nurse, he has proposed and she has accepted. Then she comes down with bone cancer and they have to take off the left leg. Scalpels crossed, it hasn't spread. Does he still want her? She tells him take five days and think it over. He does. With bleak clarity he see the years to come. Oh yes, he can he see where his own interests are involved. He's striding towards surgery a big man on campus now. "It takes guts to practice surgery," he says, and it sure does. Striding towards surgery though the patient is clearly terminal. He would operate on a mummy. And she is shamming along on her new prosthetic. "Will you shake the lead out?' "I'm doing the best I can, darling." Why don't you go back to your crutches?" he thinks irritably. Aloud, he says, "Why don't you jet propel on your stinking farts." Admittedly his words were somewhat unkind. But cancer does stink. Of course it is not her fault that she is in this disgusting condition - or is it? His mother always said, "Son in this life everyone always gets exactly what they want and exactly what they deserve." People tend to believe it so long as they are getting what they think they deserve. Incongruously, Mike thinks of an old joke the eternal traveling salesman protagonist of the eternal dirty joke. Salesman spots an attractive woman in the club car. As fate would have it she is in the lower bunk just opposite his upper bunk. And he is givin' her the eye. She takes off her wig, she pops out a glass eye, she spits out her false teeth, she unhooks her wooden legs, looks up at him pertly and says, "Is there anything that you want?" "You know what I want, take it off and throw it up here.." He starts laughing, you see, and she demands to know why, and finally he tells her, and she hits him with her prosthetic requiring five stitches. Yeah, he's been thinking it over darling and…



It is Colonel Bradfield's job to investigate the practical potentials of ESP, sorcery,
witchcraft, the lot. He doesn't give a shit for natural laws or what is and isn't possible all he cares about are results. "Bring me the one's who work. "What ya bring this old beast in here for?" A withered old man dressed only in a loincloth stiff with yellow piss stains
stinking like a snake cave in spring sits down in a leather arm chair. Fumigating the chair will be inadequate the Colonel decides. "He's a natural, chief, he can throw an operative curse." -  "I don't doubt he can kill by proximity." - "He's got a good track record, chief." -  "Sure, sure and eighty years in the making." So how'd he get that way? To be a magician you've got to be inhuman in some way. Easiest is to eat your own shit and eat it steady. You eat in and shit it out and eat it in again it gets eviler and dirtier a stink that nobody can smell and live. But who am I to be critical? Trouble is it just isn't practical. "But, chief, no trace, no way it can be traced to us." -  "The hell there isn't. You think the islanders are into this shit up to the ass. They can make up the evidence. We all do it. No way to trace it big deal. Eighty shit-eating years to turn out an old human centipede that can throw out a curse if you hold him steady on target. I can train an agent in hours with untraceable poisons and toxins, electronic devices to produce arhythmical heart beats." -  "But, chief, we can't just throw a thing like this away? and, indeed, where can we throw it? - it's radioactive." - "Get it out of here for starters and take the chair out with it!" 



Kim has never doubted the existence of God so the possibility of an afterlife. He feels that immortality is the only goal worth striving for. He knows it is not something he will automatically get for believing in a dogma like Christianity or Islam. It is something you have to work and fight for like everything in this life or another. The most precarious, short sighted and arbitrary immortality blueprint was drafted by the ancient Egyptians. First you have to get yourself mummified and that is very expensive making immortality the monopoly of the truly rich. And you also need a reservation in an accredited necropolis. So all the new rich is trying to crack a good necropolis you see like a good country club. The whole society revolves around death. Extraordinary - all of their art was funerary. And then your continued existence in The Western Lands - that's Egyptian Paradise - is entirely contingent on the continued existence and welfare of your mummy. That is why they had their mummies protected by potent curses and hid good. And also you had to know the right names. Page after page in The Egyptian Book of the Dead you shall not pass until you pronounce my name. Harry is plain Gl horrors. He's got enough vitality to survive his physical death. That's known as the first bit. He won't get far he's got no mummy, he's got no names, he's got nothing. So what happens to a bum like that a nameless mummiless asshole?  The demons will swarm all over him at the first checkpoint. He will be dismembered and thrown into a flaming pit where his soul will be utterly consumed and destroyed forever while others with sound mummies and the right names to drop in the right places sail through to The Western Lands. However, there are some second-class souls who just barely squeeze through. Their mummies is not in a good sanitary condition. These creeps are relegated to flophouse accommodations just beyond the last checkpoint where they can smell the charnel house disposal ovens from their skimpy balconies. "You see that sign..." the bartender snarls, "Maggoty mummies will not be served here." Well might as well face facts my mummies going down hill - cheap job to begin with? God, maggots is crawling all over it. The way that demon guard sniffed at me this morning. Transient hotels. So here you are in a luxury condominium deep in The Western Lands. You got no security. Some disgruntled former employee sneaks into your tomb and throws acid in your mummies face or sloshes gasoline all over it and burns the shit out of it. Ugh... someone is fucking with my mummy. And, brother you are fucked. Mummies are sitting ducks - no matter who you are or what can happen to your mummy is a Pharaoh's nightmare. The dreaded mummy-bashers! Grave robbers, scavengers, floods, earthquakes, fires, explosions! My God, the worst thing can happen to a mummy. Mummies, all mummies is strong pacifists - no nukes is good nukes to a mummy! 



Consider the impasse of a One-God universe. He's all knowing, all powerful, he can't go anywhere since he's already everywhere, can't do anything since the act of doing something presupposes opposition. His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic, having no friction by definition. So he has to create friction, war, fear, and death to keep his dying show on the road. Sooner or later, "Look boss we don't have enough energy left to fry an elderly women in a fleabag hotel fire." Well, we'll have to start faking it. Joe looks after him sourly and mixes a bicarbonate of soda. "Sure, start faking it, and leave the details to Joe." Look, from a real disaster you get a bit of energy - sacrifice, heroism, grief, heroism, and, above all, violent death. Life in all its rich variety. So from one energy surplus you can underwrite the next one. But if the first one is a fake you can't underwrite a  shithouse. Try and explain to Almighty God where his One-God universe is heading. Asshole doesn't know what buttons to push or what happens when you push them. Urp, Abandon ship, goddammit, every man for himself. Like The Great Gatsby, Kim believes in the green light the orgiastic future.He believes in a magical universe, unpredictable, spontaneous, alive. A universe where anything is possible. A universe of many gods often in conflict. So the paradox of an all-knowing all-powerful god, who, nonetheless, permits suffering, evil and death, does not arise. "You got a famine here, Osiris, what happened?" - "Well you can't win them all
Hustling myself" - "Can't you give us immortality?" - "I can give you an extension, maybe. Take you as far as the first trick... You'll have to make it from there on your own. Most of them don't. Figure about one in a million. And, biologically speaking, that's very good odds". 
I think we might all believe in a magical universe because that's about the only thing that could save spaceship earth at this point. A miracle. Thank you.

[Burroughs returns for an encore] 



An old number …("Doctor Benway"): "The lavatory has been locked for three hours solid I think they're using it for an operating room. Nurse: "I can't find her pulse doctor." Dr Benway: "Cardiac arrest Goddamit it." He looks around and picks up a toilet plunger. He advances on the patient. "Make an incision Dr Limph," he says to his bald assistant, "I'm going to massage the heart." Dr Benway washes the suction cup by swishing it around in the toilet bowl. Nurse: "Shouldn't it be sterilized doctor?" "Very likely but there's no time." He sits on the suction cup like a cane seat watching his assistant make the incision. "You young squirts couldn't lance a pimple without an electric vibrating scalpel with automatic drain and suture. All the skill is going out of surgery, all the know how and make do. Ever tell you about the time I performed an appendectomy with a rusty sardine can? And once I was caught short without instrument one and removed an intrauterine tumor with my teeth. The was in the Upper Effendi and besides the wench is dead." Dr Limph: "The incision is ready doctor." Dr Benway forces the cup into incision and works it up and down. Blood spurts all over the nurse, the doctors and the wall. The cup makes a horrible sucking sound. "I think she's gone doctor." "Well it's all in a days work." He walks across the room to a medicine cabinet. "Some fucking drug addict has cut my cocaine with Saniflush. Nurse - send the boy out to fill this RX on the double!" 

 Thank you. Thank you. 

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

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Queer Beat -1

November 16, 2015, 3:00 am
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Gay Ginsberg. The poster's a vintage one (1977) - a bearded Allen at Naropa - a benefit for Gay Liberation 

The significance of Allen in the Gay Liberation struggle need hardly be stressed, one of the real heroes, one of the acknowledged key LGBT pioneers.

Here's his plaque on the Castro (San Francisco)'s Rainbow Honor Walk

Here's (again) that wonderful photo (with Peter Orlovsky) by Richard Avedon 
[front cover of Evergreen Review, August 1970]

But, of course, it wasn't always like that - the endless benighted years before Stonewall
(that Evergreen cover coming a full year after the breakthrough of Stonewall)

Allen, in his famous concluding lines to his 1956 poem, "America" - mock-ironic to America (straight America)  - "America, I'm putting  my queer shoulder to the wheel"

The Mattachine Society had been established as early as 1950

One, America's first nationally-distributed gay-themed publication, first appeared as a monthly magazine in January of 1953  

The dour 'Fifties climate, making for a closeted climate, though Allen and the Beats helped significantly to free it, and, by the end of the decade...

By 1959 Wallace de Ortega Maxey, an independent Catholic, later, pastor of his own Church, (the Liberal Universalist Church), and author of Man Is A Sexual Being (1958), 
was writing a cover-story on the sociology of queer Beat culture, (queer "Beatnik" culture, since the phenomenon had so clearly devolved) - "the beat-homo", (to use Maxey's quaintly dated phrase).  In part, he writes:


                                                         [Wallace de Ortega Maxey (1902-1992)] 

"There is a distinction to be made between the beat-homo and the nonbeat. The beat-homo has no inhibitions. Within his own consciousness he has accepted himself and is completely integrated. He is not fighting himself, much less the rest of the world. This applies to the male as well as the female of the species. He doesn't give one god damn what the world thinks about him. Like the rest of the beat generation he simply wants to be left alone. He has closed his mental door to the rat-race. He has cut himself off from the shams and shamans of the competitive world. He is usually of the aesthetic type, psychologically, not necessarily so physically."

                                          [front cover of One Magazine (issue 7) - July, 1959]


Maxy goes on:

"I have seen some gangling seamen and longshoremen, truck drivers, woodsmen and cement-construction workers [sic] that would surprise all hell out of you when you listen to their conversation. In their particular fields of interest and study they are extraordinarily well informed. There is one chap I am thinking of who has been a seaman all his life, who can keep you spell-bound when telling about the "history of erotica". Another, a female, could write a book about the world's historic prostitutes and how they have influenced political thought. Still another homo-beat has been in several mental institutions under observation, but can reel off anything you want to know about the religions of the Orient. Of course, I am speaking of the real Beats, the ones who have severed all ties with the square world, as far as it is humanly possible to do, and still live."

"It has been said that Allen Ginsberg is the St.Peter of the beat generation [sic]. He has been quoted in the New York Post (3/13/59) as saying: "I sleep with men and with women. I am neither queer nor not queer, or am I bi-sexual. My name is Allen Ginsberg and I sleep with whoever I want". It has been my experience in discussing life in general with a considerable number of Beats, that these words of Allen Ginsberg voice quite accurately the opinion of the majority of the real Beats." 

Maxy's not entirely sold (on the "beat-homo") - "They have a certain amount of juvenile crudeness in their writing", he declares - "with exceptions of course". However, "with all their vices and virtues, if they can teach the world by example, the evils of social conformity, I feel they will go down in history as having made a worthwhile contribution."

How prescient he was 

                                              [front cover of The Matachine Review, May 1959]

                                               [front cover of The Advocate, November 16, 1977]


                                           [Queer Beats - edited by Regina Marier, Cleis Press, 2004]

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