Queer Beat - 2 - (Straight Hearts' Delight)

November 17, 2015, 3:00 am

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One of the great (sadly out-of-print)  Ginsberg titles (but something well worth hunting down) is the selection published in 1980 by Winston Leyland's pioneering Gay Sunshine Press - Straight Hearts' Delight - Love Poems and Selected Letters 1947-1980 by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky.

             [Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky, 1963 - Photograph by Richard Avedon - c. The Richard Avedon Foundation]

Leyland in his introduction notes:
 " Three years ago [1977] I conceived the idea of publishing a "lovers handbook" by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. My intention was to include poems and letters by the two poets in one volume, concentrating on those which related to gay love and consciousness and those with special bearing on their own love relationship. I have known both men for several years and have published their work many times inGay Sunshine Journalduring the past decade, including an in-depth interview with each of them. Allen's poems also appear in the two anthologies of gay literature edited by myself - Angels of the Lyre(1975) and Orgasms of Light (1977)...Both poets reacted with enthusiasm to the idea, and the book took form.."

Although a goodly number of the poems can be found in other collections, a number of the materials can't, (most notably the (Peter) Orlovsky materials). Where else to find the clinically graphic and rivetingly transcribed "Sex Experiments"? (you have been warned!) -
 (A rare recording, from 1964, of Orlovsky reading from them can, incidentally, be found in the archives of Harvard' s Woodberry Poetry Room - here - he also can be heard (briefly) reading from them - here)

or (where else to find a gathering of the) delicate sensitive line-drawings by Bob LaVigne?

                                                               [Peter Orlovsky by Robert Lavigne]

Even more precious, the Ginsberg-Orlovsky correspondence.  As Leyland notes:
"In the past twenty-five years hundreds of letters were exchanged between Allen and Peter during their periods of separation (mostly when travelling abroad). There obviously was insufficient space to print their collected correspondence in one modest volume. I therefore decided to select the most interesting letters from a nine-year period of literary and personal accomplishments (1956-1965)."

Maria Popova, writing recently, in brain pickings - Their letters, filled with typos, missing punctuation and the grammatical oddities typical of  writing propelled by bursts of intense emotion rather than literary precision, are absolutely beautiful."

(More letters have recently published and can be found here)

Here's a brief - very brief -  sampling:

Allen (in Paris) to Peter (in New York) Jan 20, 1958
"Dear Petey,  O heart O Love everything is suddenly turned to gold! Don't be afraid don't worry the most astounding beautiful thing has happened here!…last night finally Bill (Burroughs)& I sat down facing each other across the kitchen table and looked eye to eye and talked. I confessed all my doubt and misery - and in front of my eyes he turned into an Angel!…".."We talked a long time got into tremendous rapport very delicate. I almost trembled, a rapport much like yours and mine like yours and mine, but not sexual, he even began to dig my feelings about that, my willingness but really I don't want to, has stopped entirely putting pressure on me for bed - the whole nightmare's cleared up overnight, I woke this morning with great bliss of freedom & joy in my heart, Bill's saved, I'm saved, you're saved, we're all saved, everything has been all rapturous ever since - I only feel sad that perhaps you left as worried when we waved goodbye and kissed so awkwardly - I wish I could have that over to say goodbye to you happier and without the worries & doubts I had that dusty dusk when you left…"

Peter (in New York) to Allen (in Paris), Feb 10, 1958
"…but I do feel good and so don't worry dear Allen things are going ok - we'll change the world yet to our dessire [sic] - even if we got o die - but OH the wor'd's got 25 rainbows  on my window sill.."

Allen (in London) to Peter (in New York), Feb 15, 1958
"Got your letter yesterday, was so happy to receive it and your sweet sex talk. I had been running around with mad mean poets & world-eaters here & was longing for kind words from heaven which you wrote, came as fresh as summer breeze & "when I think on thee dear friend/all losses are restored and sorroews end", came over & over in my mind - it's the end of a Shakespeare Sonnet - he must have been happy in love too - I had never realized that before…" 

Allen (in Paris) to Peter (in New York), April 1, 1958
"O mustache besweetened, hey Peter, what's up? Drinking yea  & typing under light on table - I finally fixed Gregory (Corso)'s broken radio. So have a l'il music nowadays. Gregory finally got along well with (Peggy) Guggenheim, she almost took him to Greece. Alan (Ansen)going to Greece the first time in 2 weeks.  We could talk in bed all night…like praying over my typewriter..hey Peter across th'atlantic in midst Manhattan….turn over…I not masturbating much but once had long fantasy screwing you, remembering last night the smile on yur face when I did..was that Ok, at last?  I felt such freedom that you were mine, & wanted to stay together with you for good…."……"ah, I remember how melancholy I was at night by hedges by church in Paterson wondering what the ache in my chest was for…and now to be old & know what for, & it be there like sweet belly gold for us…O Shoe bubblegum Lafcafio'd Pete, boom, boom, titty to tit. Write me little letter soon, please doan leave me wait too long, honey please honey - Love Allen"

Allen (in Paris) to Peter (in New York), June 21,1958
"…What did I do rape you pink in Barcelona? I don't remember! Where, How?  I remember here, & Madrid, I wish we were in the same room now and able to touch… I wrote you letter same day (& sent it) or day before I got yours, here's another. Well I'm sure I'll be home July but don't know how yet and July is coming close..".."Happy ready to come home soon- Love Love Allen

Peter (in New York) to Allen (in Paris), July 6, 1958
"…Here take this letter,  hold it in your hands for eternity or untill we die. ByBy toots, keep the shade up, scratch when you itch…" 

Allen (in Chile, c/o US Embassy, Santiago) to Peter (in New York), Feb 9, 1960
"..I have had some weird dreams - one that I left you behind in some city in the south, and took off with a professor to another city 50 miles away - then realized I hadforgot you, and you had no way of getting in touch with me, so got worried in the dream that you'd get lost, and felt guilty that I'd neglected to think of you, & realized you were suffering maybe lost in some southern city not speaking spanish, thinking I'd forgot you…"

Peter (in New York) to Allen (still somewhere in South America), March 24, 1960
"Its spring, the cats are again screwing on the floor I'm jeliuus, but she layes on her side with one foot into his belley so he can't get in, my how they talk togeteather when he tries…"

Peter (in New York) to Allen (in Paris), June 21, 1960
"Don't worry Allen if you want babies they will come yr way by the tons & then we grow chicken coops full of tickleing babies & you can starve them with poetry, don't worry, I always wondered why yoou had that bregual [Bruegel] childrens games painting above yr bed & know you know why & that kid shitting in the corner way back the stone wall is your son and yr eye caught him for a second. At least Allen I could stay around the back porch  & maybe if you feel like throw me a few penies & do yr nailing up screen to keep flies away, & Allen you won't boot me off the back porch too often, I won't know what to do with myself…."

Peter (in New York) to Allen (in Lima, Peru), June 23, 1960
"Dear Allen with dark Indian Death Eyes"…. "I also thought, Yesterday, that you…feel I do harm to myself if we separated & you get married (children) or I get mad at you & so  I think now whatever we do (weather I turn into cockerroch cralling alomg 1st Ave coblestones & get Xed by truck) (both get married or just you) (as you fall in love with John Wieners) or bring back new boyfriend from Lima as you want to go away alone by yr self to india hill cave - or sit on my cock & talk it over & lay down & do it again, as you get married, & I take care of yr baby while you blink in Jungle Storms or open the door & say, "Now Peter you can't just stay around and do notheing all the time" - or be happey to each other at important times - maybe I am yr Child and you don't know it Allen - Allen, I love you. Allen, Please Allen give me a sapey (sap) kiss…."

Allen (in Tangier, Morocco) to Peter (in Athens, Greece),  August 3, 1961
"..I guess your leaving must've robbed me of last prop, and it was courageous of you to do the same thing for yourself & take off and be a cloud & no more a part of the idea we had together, which was partly beautiful idea, but as idea doomed to fail after Zen-cut-up-loss of role-identity. The beautiful shiver tho' always remains.
As to sex, talked with Bill (Burroughs) about that - his objection is to the use of sex as part of the idea of identity, as part of re-affirmation & support of me-ness & ego - he admitted that sex might be a way of merger of souls on ego-less basis like we have had it, - and so he doesn't put it down, finally, in itself, but only where it is corrupted especially in civilized countries where it is part of power-ego grab. There's no real argument between you.." 

Allen (in Athens, Greece) to Peter (in Israel), October 21, 1961
"…Thank you for all letters sorry you not receive mine, some were crazy. I was lonesome for you.   Love to you from your old  Lover   Allen"

Peter (in Varanasi, India) to Allen (in San Francisco), September 15, 1963
"Dear Belley Allen love"…"...I'm so glad you wrote me saying what you said. I take you as my devine Love Gerhu [guru]. you kept humming belly-Love in my ear & letters until I got yr meaning - swing open yr Blake gates. I can almost hear you sound to hear - I be alright now my Love…I can make it back to  N.Y.C. Overland - Like you say - we meet in N.Y.C. in X-Mass my Love - I be good & Happey so much thanks - Kiss to you…."

Peter (in Pakistan, traveling to Istanbul) to Allen (in San Francisco), September 25, 1963
"Hello Hinde Long Sweet Beard Hair Eyes - Was just crying thinking you may die before we meet again….I cry to think I may die or my money get robbed & I not get back home to see you again. I am sorrey (to) worry over such things. There is so much joy good things of help & love to give in the world that I don't want to die before it's done…"

Here's a further sampling (from Straight Hearts' Delight) - two poems of Allen's 

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Allen to Peter, 1961 (on Dissolution of Ego)

November 18, 2015, 3:00 am

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                           [Allen Ginsbergand Peter Orlovsky - Photograph by Robert Frank]

The Ginsberg-Orlovsky correspondence. Mindful thatyesterday we provided you only with selected snippets. Here's one uninterrupted letter from that voluminous correspondence (only a small segment of which was made available in Straight Hearts' Delight - and only the Orlovsky side in Peter Orlovsky - A Life In Words.)  

Here's Allen writing from  ℅  U.S. Consul, Tangiers, Morocco, August 3rd, 1961, (to Peter in Athens)

Dear Peter,
Strange day yesterday, woke up depressed, thinking I am a poet, & all along had been your lover - I amAllen Ginsberg- and all along that has been me, and I didn't want to go thru with it any more felt like suicide - then during the say something slowly happened, ideas changed a little - and I realized I was not tied down to being Allen Ginsberg - not being a poet - so decided to let my identity drop & my awareness grow & went thru a day of bliss as I found I was free - lots happened, I saw Bill (Burroughs) and since my eyes had changed, he changed too & I saw that his cut-up meant also this cut-up of identity, nothing worse really. (Timothy) Leary was great here, calmed everyone. Bill dug him & Gregory (Corso) went out to Casino with him happy - Bill meeting him in England late this month, they both go to Harvard where Bill will experiment with white noise & sensory deprivation machines, etc. 

 [Timothy Leary and William Burroughs, 25+ years later, on the porch at Burroughs' house in Lawrence, Kansas ("Friday March 13, 1987 8.30 a.m") - Photograph ©Philip Heying]

Leary told me that he agreed with Bill that Poetry was finished. Because he felt the world was really moving on to a new super-consciousness that might eliminate words and Ideas.
It's just this point that had bugged me with Bill & hurt my pride - so I realized that at any rate part of my hurt was pride  - or better dependency for security on my identity as a poet and my life work as a poet.
Well gee I better get this off this I thought - & once I decided, sort of, to be free of thinking of myself in such strict ways, I was able to accept once more ideas.
Since then, Leary left & (Alan) Ansen left - yesterday, both gone. I told Bill I wanted to see him alone  & he says yes & then we began a rapport again - I think aside from my own vanity pride (which his basic ideas were attacking and so it hurt me  temporarily) - and aside from his own carelessness & vanity & sloppiness because he is busy - that Michael (Portman) has been in the way . He kept hovering around the door when we were talking inside, & when Bill and I went out for lunch, he said, "I guess I'll come along"& intruded on us. Bill said while he was gone for a second "He's too dependent on me, that's his problem" - so Bill sees that - I see it less as a conspiracy of Bill & Michael now - Bill does want everybody included - or thinks he does - probably truly does - but the basis of inclusion must be that we drop our minds, i.e. my mind says I am poet & Orlovsky's lover, so when I get high I vomited with anxiety when I realized I was not that separate self but the same as everyone else.   

                           [Michael Portman - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg - © Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

I guess your leaving must've robbed me of last prop, and it was courageous of you to do the same thing for yourself & take off and be a cloud & no more a part of the idea we had together, which was partly beautiful idea, but as idea doomed to fail after Zen-cut-up-loss of role-identity. The beautiful shiver tho' always remains.
As to sex, talked with Bill (Burroughs) about that - his objection is to the use of sex as part of the idea of identity, as part of re-affirmation & support of me-ness & ego - he admitted that sex might be a way of merger of souls on ego-less basis like we have had it, - and so he doesn't put it down, finally, in itself, but only where it is corrupted especially in civilized countries where it is part of power-ego grab. There's no real argument between you.
Lots came to a head when Bill & Mike gave Mark (new kid) majoun, we were at (Paul) Bowles', and Mark got panicked. - Bill & Mike were too high to notice - I took care of Mark who was suffering isolation - and realized they were too fucked-up to notice & care for him - I brought Mark out of it- & Bill said he was in error - I think it was nastiness on Mike's part.

[Gregory Corso,Paul Bowles, William Burroughs (crouched behind them Michael Portman and Ian Sommerville, Tangiers, 1961 - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg © Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

I think one trouble here was you were isolated, I was confused, and since I was clinging to my identity with you, I could not see thru your identity to your heart, and I think you wound up over-affirming your identity and pressing down harder on it while it was under attack, instead of just giving it up & coming out free.
However I guess by cutting off from us, you wound up cutting your identity in a way and coming out free - so I guess everything is O.K  - hurrah! - all works out - don't be mad at me. I love you - but the me-Allen that was loving you was a fake creep that could only bug you - it's over for me I hope I hope - and I hope now for you too, I mean just don't get hung on being Peter no more and all will be well and I guess that's going to be well -  

Now let's see lots other has happened - long talk with Jane (Bowles) - she told me about her stroke in detail - seems she got brain area damaged & can't therefore add or multiply and also, her vision is cut in that she only sees what's ten inches on each side of her, not thirty inches.

         







[Jane Bowles (1917-1973)] 

I will now take"Fall of America" and cut it up to get rid of my own self-assertion parts & recombine the images into a huge glorious poem expressing the Hope of the world for a vast new Consciousness, free of Names & Identities & Ideas of the self - 
I wish you had stayed here with me but if you has not gone I might not have been forced to change and we might have got worse into a tangle of fighting identities but sure we would have got out of it  - all in all I think our idea of sex was right & beautiful & led us (or me) forward - & thank you Peter

Gregory is still a little Gregory & that's all & that's why he picks on everybody, he thinks he's separate and superior, but he'll lose his mind too.

Leary says the drugs cut off the ego part of the brain in the cortex, and leave an "open brain", without ideas of self. That's what scared me to vomit while I held on to my idea of what I should be - beat poet.

No, I don't still think you are a firing-squad, I'm sorry I said that but I was defending my Idea and I think you were setting up a different Idea, and it was a firing-squad war of ideas in my mind when we both should have dropped - we both alas were too unhappy to drop our Ideas & get back in Union.

"Praise be the god that lasts" yes praise be - as long as we don't get hung up on the word or idea of god but be the gods.
"Man is only god that lasts" - yes & no - man is changing, I am changing, you are changing, god is growing in us but he has now grown so real that the word "God" is almost obsolete maybe -

I think Bill & Leary at Harvard are going to start a beautiful consciousness alteration of the whole world - actually for real - Leary thinks it's the beginning of a new world.
Anyway, I was wrong in calling you firing-squad because we are all one.

Anyway, I think you're right on Gregory's book [American Express]. Bill hasn't really read it either and doesn't realize how it intuitively does capture the whole situation here - all these different parties & warring identities trying each one to be right - not realizing that only if all are wrong can all get together and be one new person - all take on a new life together without ideas of Allen & Peter & Bill & Gregory as separate persons & plans. 

Anyway, I was wrong. So I'm sorry I laid all that woe of my own thoughts & fears on you while Allen was dying - I guess you had your own troubles too - I shouldn't have left you alone here when I went [with Paul Bowles] to Marrakesh, maybe - but I was afraid of imposing that week of anguish on you & fighting more -
Anyway, it's worked out magically for the best & you and I are both free now so forgive me & take me in thought hello & I'll see you soon whenever we both can on free basis, I hope sooner than ten years because that would mean it would take ten long years for both of us to be really free - and we should be able to do that this year yes? - be free, I mean - in fact, let's do it now - I see you - oops! - hello - goodbye - write me - how's Greece? - how's Peter? - Allen's happy - all love - everything will be allright.   love   Allen

p.s. I wrote this fast and am not re-reading - will send it now - I'll stay here another week - don't know where next - Maybe take boat to London to see the Queen - stay awhile there and then take boat in Oct(ober) to Israel or India - Love Allen

I just re-read it and it almost says what I want to but I'll write again and say it better.

Oyez Press Kral Majales

November 19, 2015, 3:00 am

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Kral Majales - We've spotlighted several times before  (here,here and here)
but today we wanted to spotlight the beautiful phallic 1965 Robert LaVigne-designed 
Oyez Press poster

And the Communists have nothing to offer but fat cheeks and eyeglasses and
lying policemen
and the Capitalists proffer Napalm and money in green suitcases to the
Naked,
and the Communists create heavy industry but the heart is also heavy
and the beautiful engineers are all dead, the secret technicians conspire for
their own glamour
in the Future, in the Future, but now drink vodka and lament the Security
Forces,
and the Capitalists drink gin and whiskey on airplanes but let Indian brown
millions starve
and when Communist and Capitalist assholes tangle the Just man is arrested
or robbed or has his head cut off,
but not like Kabir, and the cigarette cough of the Just man above the clouds
in the bright sunshine is a salute to the health of the blue sky.
For I was arrested thrice in Prague, once for singing drunk on Narodni
street,
once knocked down on the midnight pavement by a mustached agent who
screamed out BOUZERANT,
once for losing my notebooks of unusual sex politics dream opinions,
and I was sent from Havana by planes by detectives in green uniform,
and I was sent from Prague by plane by detectives in Czechoslovakian
business suits,
Cardplayers out of Cezanne, the two strange dolls that entered Joseph K's
room at morn
also entered mine and ate at my table, and examined my scribbles,
and followed me night and morn from the houses of the lovers to the cafes of
Centrum -
And I am the King of May, which is the power of sexual youth,
and I am the King of May, which is long hair of Adam and Beard of my
own body
and I am the King of May, which is Kral Majales in the Czechoslovakian
tongue,
and I am the King of May, which is old Human poesy, and 100,000 people
chose my name,
and I am the King of May, and in a few minutes I will land at London
Airport,
and I am the King of May, naturally, for I am of Slavic parentage and a
Buddhist Jew
who whorships the Sacred Heart of Christ the blue body of Krishna the
straight back of Ram
the beads of Chango the Nigerian singing Shiva Shiva in a manner which
I have invented,
and the King of May is a middleeuropean honor, mine in the XX century
despite space ships and the Time Machine, because I have heard the voice of Blake
in a vision
and repeat that voice. And I am the King of May that sleeps with teenagers
laughing.
And I am the King of May, that I may be expelled from my Kingdom with
Honor, as of old,
To show the difference between Caesar's Kingdom and the Kingdom of the
May of Man -
and I am the King of May because I touched my finger to my forehead
saluting
a luminous heavy girl trembling hands who said 'one moment Mr. Ginsberg'
before a fat young Plainclothesman stepped between our bodies - I was
going to England -
and I am the King of May, in a giant jetplane touching Albion's airfield
trembling in fear
as the plane roars to a landing on the gray concrete, shakes & expels air,
and rolls slowly to a stop under the clouds with part of blue heaven still
visible.
And tho' I am the King of May, the Marxists have beat me upon the street,
kept me up all night in Police Station, followed me thru Springtime
Prague, detained me in secret and deported me from our kingdom by
airplane.
This I have written this poem on a jet seat in mid Heaven. 

May 7, 1965               Allen Ginsberg

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 245

November 20, 2015, 3:00 am

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 [Allen Ginsberg's desk in his bedroom in New York, 437 East 12th Street , 1986 - Photograph by Dave Breithaupt]

Michael Schumacher's  The Essential Ginsberg has not been getting the attention we had hoped for, so we were pleased to find this notice in Ralph magazine this week. 
That word "essential" isn't used lightly. Buy this book!
























And here's a "sneak preview" (from Harpers)  from the next Ginsberg book - "1/29/84", one of the poems in Wait Till I'm Dead, a volume of uncollected poems that will be published by Grove-Atlantic this coming February.



Meanwhile, out next week (pub. date November 25), this little collection, from Il Saggiatore - Diario Indiano 1963 - sections from the Indian Journals(the Jan 28, 1963 section) - translated by Leopoldo CarraandMonica Martignoni, with an introduction by Leopoldo Carra 
  

Who's that dark Neanderthal ominous figure staring out from the back jacket?
 - Jon Gray/Gray 318's cover-drawing

 Anne Waldman, speaking in New York last night. Read an interview with her - here 

                                                      [Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg]

John Giorno, earlier this week in Paris - see here  (and more about his show at the Palais de Tokyo - here)

John Pitcher's review in the Nashville Scene of Nashville Opera's recent staging of the Ginsberg-Glass opera, Hydrogen Jukebox - "thought-provoking".."skillfully staged", "terrifically sung".  You can read more about that here 

& the Eastman Opera Theatre in Rochester, New York, also recently mounted a production.  More information about that presentation here.  

Charleville, birthplace of Rimbaud - the town now boasts a brand new Rimbaud museum.
For notes on Allen's 1982 visit to Charleville in the company of Simon Vinkenoog - see here

                                                      [Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) 

                                                            [Fork and Spoon belonging to Arthur Rimbaud - Photo by Patti Smith]

The Thai Allen Ginsberg? - Zakariya Amataya - "the Thai Allen Ginsberg"

David Amram's 85th birthday. Happy Birthday David! - Details of birthday celebrations (including a  free NYC birthday concert) here

We're not sure about the soundtrack (Steppenwolf?The Pusher?) but Francesco Carlo Crespolti's illuminating Allen-in-Italy photos have been animated here (continuing attention to that beard hair!)
                          



More Crispolti on Ginsberg images, from 1968 -  here and here 

                                                             [Allen Ginsberg - Photograph by Francesco Carlo Crispolti] 

Peter Orlovsky - A Triple-X Reading, August 1980

November 21, 2015, 3:00 am

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Peter Orlovsky - A Triple-X reading.  

Peter Orlovsky (from a reading given at Naropa Institute, August 13, 1980), introduced by Allen Ginsberg  

Listen to the audio here

Peter Orlovsky - A Triple-X reading.  (You have been warned)

AG: ..The next reader, who will conclude the evening, is the ever-popular, Peter Orlovsky, sometime Instructor at Naropa Institute (he has conducted a workshop for the last few years), sometime Ambulance Attendant, Farmer & Nut-tree Planter, Silk-screen Handyman, House-Cleaner, Newsboy, Postal Clerk, discharged from the military after telling a government psychiatrist that - quote - "an army is an army against love" - unquote, witness of the 1950'sSan Franciscan Poetry Renaissance, he was portrayed by Jack Kerouac as hospital-nurse-saint Simon Darlovsky, among Desolation Angels, learned driving speech from Neal Cassady and taught heart in return, partook of psychedelic revolution, a pillar of strength with Timothy Leary and Charles Olson in Newton Center outside of Harvard, companion (of) Kerouac, and also reader of (William) Burroughs in Tangiers in the early (19)60's, was one of the first American poets to make a modern Passage to India in the early (19)60's, accompanying Gary Snyder, Joanne Kyger, and myself, where he studied sarod, banjo and guitar, read poetry in Chicago, at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton,Yale,New York St Mark's Poetry Project, survived the speed plague of the (19)60's, and junk-hells as well, sang in jail at anti-war protest and political convention occasions, was published in historic Beatitude in San Francisco andDon Allen anthologies of New American poetry, played himself in early underground Robert Frank movies and, later, Vajrayana NaropaFried Shoes Cooked Diamonds movies, traveled with (Bob) Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue as resident banjo-philosopher-meditator and also helper-with-the-baggage, farmed solitary upstate New York (ten years, organic and herculean), fed and nursed decades of poetry families, and now an experienced Buddhist sitter and advanced Vajrayana meditation practitioner  (his dharma-name is "Ocean of Generosity"), Peter Orlovsky

PO:  I'll read a couple of sex experiments [sic] from Allen's and my new book called Straight Hearts Delight.

Beginning at approximately three-and-a-quarter minutes in, Peter does just that (reading  three sections, beginning with "Peter Jerking Allen Off (First Sex Experiment)","Second Sex Experiment" ("it was very lugubrious and Bruegel-like"), and "Allen Jerking Off On Bed" ("Sex Experiment Number 3")" 

At approximately eighteen-and-a-half minutes in, Peter picks up the guitar and begins strumming - "Oh, I've got a new one about Vitamin C .. (that) I take a.. because I've been smoking (I've got a cold, I've gotta stop smoking)..and I take ten grams, ten grams of Vitamin C" - [begins singing] - "You are my vitamin C, ten grams (chew it in the early morning time, so it don't sneeze away)".." You are my prostrations in the early morning time, three hours a day, work it up to four, five, six, especially in the wintertime..".."You are my tofu, twice the amount of protein…"...
"Just the other day, I jerked off four times in a row,  just yesterday, I jerked off four times in a row, much to my surprise, I just had to go.."
and, one more..
"Keep it clean in-between, when you're sucking your little girl or your big filly..""keep it clean with cold-water protein.."

PO: What time is it?
AG: Ten to
PO: It's ten of eleven. I've got to go. So many things to do. I just bought a new manure spreader..I just bought a new manure spreader, it cost two-hundred-and-fifty dollars, and I had to clean it and brush it clean and I had to paint it with oil so the wood, the boards, the floorboards don't rot. Nearest dairy farmer said I could keep the manure if.. we just have to shovel it - isn't that right, Allen?…  
 Thank you

AG: Thank you all for your attention and massive participation in the evening,
 and to William Burroughs for his brilliant performance, 
(to)Harold Norse for his historical honesty,
 and Peter Orlovsky for his baritone nakedness….. 

The first part of this reading (featuring William Burroughs and Harold Norse), the readings that preceded this, will be presented on the Allen Ginsberg Project in the coming weeks

"Western Wind" and "A Thousand Miles Away From Home"

November 23, 2015, 3:00 am

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Allen Ginsberg continues his discussion of early English lyrics

AG: "Westron Wynde" - Does anybody know that? - "Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow?" - Huh? - Before we get there - wait a minute- yeah, "Westron Wynde" (page sixty-nine). How many people… how many have heard of that before? - Raise your hand if you have [a scattering in the class raise their hands] - You mean there are (only) five people in this class that have ever heard of that? . Okay. This is maybe the greatest poem in the English language. Really! - Like, the archetype poem of the entire English.. history of English poesie!  

"Western wind, when wilt thou blow/That the small rain down can rain/Christ, that my love were in my arms/And I in my bed again!"

"Westron wynde, when will thou blow,/The smalle raine downe can raine./Crist, if my love were in my armas/And I in my bedde agine!" 

Some soldier in the fields of France, hoping to get back to England? - "Western wind, when wilt thou blow/That the small rain down can rain - (that's a really weird piece of rhythm there - "the small rain down can rain") - "Christ, that my love were in my arms/And I in my bed again!" -  It's really… Why is that so good, though? It's like some great haiku - On the verge of total deprivation and loss, you know, he's really in the soup, you know, life has changed, and it's never going to be the same again, and he's out on the battlefield, and… 

What is happening there, actually?  I never did figure that out. He's asking the Western Wind when it'll blow, and then there's a question mark. 

Because, the problem here is we don't have…  we may not have the original (Let me see, I've got another book that might have the original). No, this is an edited version, with the spelling changed, and maybe even the punctuation changed, and maybe the original manuscript has no punctuation in and maybe it's just oral tradition.. Yes?

Student: (Do you know if it's a soldier on the battlefield because it seems to me like a sailor?)
AG; Maybe, maybe.
Student:  (Because he needs the wind..)
AG: Maybe, yes..  Well, let's see..  Oh, listen, here's how it is in the original - "Westron wynde - (W-E-S-T-R-O-N) - Westron wynde, when will thou blow" (same) - "The smalle raine downe can raine" - (and there's an "e" after"small", "rain" and down" ) - "the smalle - (S-M-A-L-L-E, R-A-I-N-E. D-O-W-N-E), "Crist.." (C-R-I-S-T) - C-R-I-S-T not C-H-R-I-S-T, that's what I've got - (because I used that spelling of Christ in a poem called "Laughing Gas", or, "Aether",  and everybody accused me of being unscholarly, because I misspelt the word "Christ", but I said "C-R-I-S-T" too).

"Crist, if my love were (W-E-R)  in my armes" (A-R-M-E-S)/ And I in my bedde (A-G-I-N-E)"-  Westron wynde, when will thou blow//The smalle raine downe can raine./Crist, if my love were in my armes -  Crist, if my love were in my armes - /And I in my bedde agine" - 

Well, I guess he might be a sailor, might be a sailor, but he's somewhere far from home. It's like the  "All Along the Water Towers" [sic]

Student: Watchtower

AG: Watchtower. No, no, not  the (Bob) Dylan  (the Jimmie Rodgers)

…not the Dylan..what was that line? “a thousand miles from home?”…no, no, seriously now, I’m trying to find the line – “a thousand miles from home”...

Student; He wrote,  "All around the water tanks…"

AG: Yeah. How does it go?

Student: ".. waiting for a train/ A thousand miles away from home/ sleeping in the rain"

AG: Yes, "A thousand miles away from home,/ sleeping in the rain"– Jimmie Rodgers – It’s about as good as.. I mean, imagine Jimmie Rodgers lyric lasting six hundred years like this? - "Christ, that my love were in my arms/And I in my bed again!" - "A thousand miles away from home/ sleeping in the rain"? - " waitin in the rain?"

  - (AG begins singing) -  "All around the water tanks/waiting for a train/A thousand miles away from home/ sleeping in the rain"

It's classic. You can't get away from it.  

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

Lyke Wake Dirge - 1

November 24, 2015, 3:00 am

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AG: And then the next one, the Lie-Awake Dirge  the Lyke Wake Dirge - the Lie-Awake Dirge  - “the night watch kept over a corpse". So this is really the… this is really a great powerful (one). Does anybody know this (from) before – Lyke Wake Dirge – “This ae night..” Has anybody read this before?  [to Student]– I’m very curious. Where did you come across it?. In the Auden? [Auden-Pearson anthology] - Where did you get it? -
... Yeah – It’s really a great anthology that...You’ve got all five? –  I don’t know if you’ve seen this. We have maybe one volume of it in the library. But the Auden is..is just like a... maybe more extensive than the Norton  (sic). Auden picks it out with his ear and Auden was a great ear.

So - (Allen reads the poem) - "This ae nighte, this ae night,/Every nighte and aloe,/Fyre and slaete and candle-lights,/And Christe receive thy saule' - (Then, what you're supposed to do is repeat the refrain. The Auden-Pearson has it. They didn't repeat it here) - "When from hence away art past,/Every nighte and alle,/To Whinny-muir thou com'st at last;/And Christe receive thy saule." - (What's "Whinny-muir"? - [Allen looks it up] - "Whinny-muir" is the name given to various prickly shrubs, prickly (moor, the) furze, heather, buckthorn" - And so, "When from hence away art past", you at last come to a mournful or prickly thorn that you have to stumble through in the Land of the Dead. Okay.."When from hence away art past/Every nighte and alle,/To Whinny-muir thou com'st at last/And Christe receive thy saule"/If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon,/Every nighte and alle,/Sit thee down and put them on;/And Christe receive thy saule/ If hosen and shoon thou ne'er gav'st nane/Every night and alle,/The whinnes shall prick thee to the bare bane;/And Christe receive thy saule./From Whinny-muir whence thou may'st pass/Every nighte and aloe,/To Brig o' Dread thou com'st at last/And Christe receive thy saule./ From Brig o' Dread whence thou may'st pass,/Every nighte and aloe,/To Purgatory tyre thou com'st at last;/And Christe receive thy saule./If meat or drink thou ne'er gav'st name,/Every nighte and alle /The fyre will burn thee to the bare bane;/And Christe receive thy saule./ This ae nighte, this ae nighte,/ Every nighte and alle,/ Fyre and slaete and candle-lighte,/And Christe receive thy saule."

That puts it to you pretty straight. The moral of that is really amazing.. It's straight instant karma. If you ever gave away socks and shoes to somebody who was barefoot, then, when you come to "the prickly moor", you can sit down and put yours on, and get them back. And if you ever "gav'st meat or drink"…"(T)he fyre shall never make thee shrink" - (Funny syncopation in that, but the syncopation on the basis of bam-bam-baa, bom-bom baa,bom-bon-bom, ba-da-da - "This ae night", or "This one night" - "This/One/Night/Every/Night and All/Fire and Sleep/and/Candle-light/And Christ/Receive/Thy Soul". It's one of the most powerful rhythms in any poem that I know of - bom bom baa, bom-bom.. Probably it was chanted originally, a "dirge" - so what would a "dirge" be? - a dirge is a form of song - a chant, actually - [Allen sings/chants] - "This Ae Night (this one night). /Every night and all/Fire and sleet and candle-light/And Christ receive thy soul", "If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon/Every night and all/Sit thee down and put them on/And Christ receive thy soul" - Something like that, I bet. 

Student: (Sounds like a hymn) 

AG: "Dirge" -  You know, like [Allen mimics/sounds out  Chopin's funeral march] – Boum-boum-bi-boum Boum ba-doum ba-doum ba-doum  - [he then repeats the poem, emphasizing it, with percussive beat on the desk] -  “This one night/This one nght/ Every night and all/Fire and sleet and candle-light/ And Christ receive thy soul” - ”When thou… to Whinny-muir cometh at last / And Christ receive thy soul” – But you get that pom-pom-ba, pom-pom-ba, pom pom pom pom, ba” 

Student: This is great 

AG: It’s just too much, you know. It comes right out of the gut - (And)  There is music to this

Student: What a difference it makes when they don’t print the refrain here, when it’s left out

AG: The refrain is printed in the Auden book [Auden-Pearson book] -. Well, they just saved… they’re doing it to save space. It’s alright, you can read that in there  -“Every night and all"…"And Christ receive thy soul” – It’s so memorable, you don’t have to worry, you don’t have to... You can get them in a second and you can just put them in place . You can write it in? 

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately sixty-and-a-quarter minues in and continuing until approximately sixty-six-and-three-quarter-minutes in]

Lyke Wake Dirge - 2 (Metrics)

November 25, 2015, 3:00 am

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AG: Okay, let us say that (for an assignment for the class) either you do a version of "I Sing of A Maiden that’s makeles” or lie-awake dirge (Lyke Wake Dirge) – one or the other, rhythmically. They’re both interesting. 

Let’s see  [Allen, under his breath, sounds it out} Well, basically, if you want the Lyke Wake Dirge rhythmically (it) seems to boil down to four-three, four-three.  Four accents, three accents (four accents, three accents –‘This/one/night” “This/one.. one…one and two.. three and four. One-and-two, three-and-four, one and two and three – “Every night and all” – one and two, three and four, one and two and three – “fire and sleet and candle-light/ and..Christ receive thy soul” – one and two and three and four and five and six and seven – “And Christ receive thy soul”

So it’s a… four and three is the stanza – Does that make sense? Do you understand? – Four accents in the first line, three accents, the second line, four accents, the third line, three accents the fourth line. It’s really one long line – “This ae night  this ae night/ Every nighte and aloe/Fyre and slate and candle-lighte,/And Christe receive thy saule." -  Seven accents. Two lines of seven accents, something like that. That’s the famous ballad meter, by the way (or ballads of that meter).

But you know what you dig about it, at the beginning, it’s really – “This one night, this one night” – it’s like all the accents are heavy. It’s..  There’s no light accent in it. [to Students] - You know the difference between light and heavy accents? [Allen moves across to  the blackboard} -  (I’m speaking down perhaps to students too much but..)  -heavy! accent ! - - heavy accent – the “v” is less heavy than the “hea”  - “heavy accent” – when you talk, this is the way you talk – when you’re talking, - when/your/talking  (that’s not a regular line but)..where does the accent fall when you’re talking? ..when you’re talking.

So, the reason I’m going through this. Some people don’t know the difference between heavy and light accents and have never learned to count. How many here have learnt that much prosody that you know heavy and light accents? And how many have never had any training in that at all? – really? – well, it’s useful to know. I think maybe we’ll do more, do some more, go into it in some way or other in detail  with a whole range of meters, (it might be interesting, as long as we’re dealing with this kind of material). Okay, so you understand what that means then?  heavy?  The signs they use is this, for heavy, andthis,  for light, or sometimes they usethis and that(sic) , it depends – either that or that. {Allen is displaying the markings on the blackboard]/  The old schoolbooks usethat ..new schoolbooks use that, old schoolbooks used to use that. 

It’s just a way of marking it being heavy and light and  (working out) with poems you can make the rhythmic paradigm be anything  - (P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M) – The abstract rhythm, you can mark out and analyze it, if you want. It’s useful, but best to get it in your bones by knowing the poem so well so that - bahm-bahm-ba, bahm bahm-ba – then you can imitate it better. And you can also do it intellectually, abstractly, by making it abstract, you know, enjoying abstract form.

Student: Is that when they, you know, show you how to pronounce a vowel, in a dictionary, like short and long? is that comparable.Is that what you’re doing?

AG:  No..these are..these are dealing with accents. (returns to the board)  This line is similar. Thatline is similar (it just happens to look the same). Short and long – you have to know the different system. We were relating to short and long vowels….

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

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"The Maidens Came"

November 26, 2015, 3:00 am

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And for today just one more…. [Allen continues with his survey for his class at the Naropa Institute, in July 1980, on early English poetry]

AG: Now William Dunbar (next), page seventy-two….  (but),  let’s see, is there anything I should.. .Yeah, there’s one little thing (possibly) – Yeah, there’s a funny little thing before we get to Dunbar, there’s a funny little poem that isn’t in the Norton (anthology) (and) that is in the Auden anthologycalled "The Maidens Came". It has a line that (T.S.) Eliot repeats somewhere in The Waste Land, or paraphrases, and somehow it’s entered, that one line has entered into..modern poetic mentality. 
So I’ll just read that one poem  

[Allen begins the poem and then restarts] - I’m sorry, I’ll start again, because it’s just one perfect piece of rhythm
 – “The maidens came when I was in my mother’s bower/I had all that I would/. The bailey beareth the bell away/The lily, the rose, the rose I lay/ The silver is white, red is the gold./The robes they lay in fold./ The bailey beareth the bell away/The lily, the rose, the rose I lay/ And through the glass window shines the sun/How should I love and I so young/ The bailey beareth the bell away/The lily, the rose, the rose I lay".

It’s just very pretty – almost nonsensical, I mean, I don’t understand what he’s talking about – "The bailey beareth the bell away" is..  the bailiff carries the prize away. In ballads  the bailey is used often for carrying off, taking the prize – “For to report it were now tedius;/ We will therefor now sing no more/ Of the game joyus./ Right mighty and famus/ Elizabeth, our quin princis/ Prepotent and eke victorius,/Virtuous and bening/ Lett us  pray all/To Christ Eternall,/ Which is the hevenly King/ After ther liff grant them/ A place eternally to sing. Amen" - . That’s the end of it – it’s just that  -  "The bailey beareth the bell away/The lily, the rose, the rose I lay/ The silver is white, red is the gold./The robes they lay in fold"… [ Allen pauses - no, I haven’t got it)-"The silver is white, red is the gold./The robes they lay in fold./ The bailey beareth the bell away/The lily, the rose, the rose I lay/ And through the glass window shines the sun".." - "The robes they lay in fold"/" shines the sun" (some parallel rhythms there) - okay...

Okay – We’ll get on to William Dunbar – "Lament for the Makers"and check out Dunbar and John Skelton, page  seventy-five,  Dunbar  page seventy-two, seventy-five to seventy-seven,  Skelton – and then maybe read on through ballads, there’s a whole bunch of ballads in there, so check through the ballads section. And the homework is write a poem that is paralleling "I Sing of A Maid that is makless"or the "Lyke Wake Dirge"

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

"Jolly Good Ale and Old"

November 26, 2015, 3:01 am

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AG: So…  “Jolly Good Ale and Old”. Does anybody know that one? Did anybody ever sing that, Jolly Good Ale and Old?  

Student:  Yes. Many times.

AG: Where? Is there a song (to it)? Is there a tune? Anybody ever hear a tune to it?

Student: Yeah we sang an old tune. .

AG: You sang it? . Can you sing it?

Student: No

AG: Oh come on, I never heard it sung?

Student: ..”Jolly Good Ale..”..see, where is it?

AG: Page sixty-nine

Student:  Where’s the refrain, I can’t remember it?

AG: The refrain’s at the end (of the poem), at the bottom of the page, the first page, page sixty-nine – the last two lines – “I stuff my skin so full within/ Of jolly good ale and old” - how does it go?

Student: Yes. “Of jolly good ale and old..”, “Of jolly good ale and old” [offers up a melody]

AG: [takes it up]  “I cannot eat but little meat/ My stomach is not good./ But sure I think that I can drink/ With him that wears an hood” – “Though I go bare, take ye no care,/I am nothing am a-cold;/I stuff my skin so full within/Of jolly good ale and old.” -  Is that it?  huh?..

Student: Gilligan’s Island..

AG:  What? What is Gilligan’s Island? a television show?

Student: It’s an old tv show

AG; And do they have this song?

Student: They have the same tune

AG: Well..well, we just made it up on the spot...

Student:  (Original..)

AG: “Back and  side go bare, go bare/ Both hand and foot go cold/But belly, God send thee good ale enough/Whether it be new or old” -  “Whether it..”  I never.. You need to know the singing of that to know how it should be pronounced.

Student: Sounds like an old sea-shanty

AG: Yeah,well, it is, yeah, do you remember how that goes? That part

Student: That part?

AG: Yeah, could you sing it?

Student: . ..if you’ve got someone to sing it with – “Back and side fgo bare, go bare” -  something like that

AG: Please complete that quatrain, singing

Student: : Okay. “Back and  side go bare, go bare/Both hand and foot go cold/But belly, God send thee good ale enough/Whether it be new or old” 

AG: Ah – “ But belly, God send thee good ale enough/Whether it be new or old”

Student: I think it’s “belly, God send thee..”.  I think we just sang it “ale enough” – that would be more natural – “And belly God send me ale enough” would be more metrical..

AG: Yeah, I .. more square , more square metrical –  [sings] “But belly God send thee good ale enough/Whether it be new or old” ..  No, it’d be alright. I just.. I stumble on that too, you see. I don’t know how to put it. Because it’s there, it means it really is there and there must have been some fantastic syncopated melody to deal with that “good” there

Student: …."jolly good ale". that wouldstretch - "Jolly good ale"– but here...

AG: “But, belly, God send thee good ale enough” – ok “But, belly, God send thee good ale enough” – ok [sings] “But, belly, God send thee good ale enough/Whether it be new or old”

Student: (I like the first)

AG; I like it that way.  What’s the rest of it like?

“I cannot eat but little meat/My stomach is not good;/But sure I think that I could drink /With him that wears an hood./Though I go bare, take ye no care/I nothing am a-cold/I stuff my skin so full within/Of jolly good ale and old/I love no roast but a nut-brown toast,/ And a crab laid in the fire/A little bread shall do me stead/Much bread I not desire/Nor frost nor snow, no wind, I trow,/Can hurt me if I wold;/ I am so wrapp'd and thoroughly lapp'd/Of jolly good ale and old/ And Tib, my wife that as her life/Loveth well good ale to seek/Full oft drinks she till ye may see/The tears run down her cheek:/ Then doth she trowl to me the bowl/Even as a maltworm should,/And saith, "Sweetheart, I took my part/Of this jolly good ale and old/Now let them drink till they nod and wink,/Even as good fellows should do;/They shall not miss to have the bliss/Good ale doth bring men to/And all poor souls that have scour'd bowls/Or have them lustily troll'd/God save the lives of them and their wives/Whether they be young or old". 

That’s really good, good common sense and good  well-intentioned. That’s one of the, I guess that’s one of the early.. funny sort of best early lyrics that college students learn when they’re smart and hip and drink a bit, and used to live in the 1940s. That was famous as being the sort of outrageous poem in the anthologies that fitted going to the West End at Columbia College, going to the West End Bar

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

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 246

November 27, 2015, 3:00 am

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 [Guillaume Apollinaire by Picasso]

Guillaume Apollinaire - Zone - Selected Poems - "The fruit of poet-translator Ron Padgett's fifty-year engagement with the work of France's greatest modern poet" -  
(a bilingual edition) - has just been published by the New York Review Books. 
Don't miss it.  

For Allen Ginsberg on Apollinaire -  see (for example) his 1975 Naropa class here 
(which includes, among other things, a complete reading and commentary on the title poem, "Zone")  

and here, here - (and, again, here)

 [Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)]

"Guillaume, Guillaume how I envy your fame, your accomplishment for American letters/ your Zone with its long crazy line of bullshit about death/come out of the grave and talk through the door of my mind/issue new series of images oceanic haikus blue taxi-cabs in Moscow negro statues of Buddha/pray for me on the phonograph record of your former existence/ with a long sad voice and strophes of deep sweet music sad and scratchy as World War 1."  (from Allen Ginsberg - "At Apollinaire's Grave")



"America" - "America when will you be angelic?/When will you take off your clothes/When will you look at yourself through the grave?/Whe will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites.." We've been listening to and enjoying Robert Matheson's mix-up of double-bass and computer manipulation.   
"America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood."




No, we can not stop singing the importance of, and singularity of, John Wieners. 
Two recent manifestations, courtesy the Christina Davis and the HarvardWoodberry Poetry Room -
This - from 1962 (tho' written in 1955) - "Ode to the Instrument" 
(Robert Dewhurst's "Liner Notes", helpful annotations, may be found here)  
                      
 

and this - (a recent "Oral History Initiative") - Dewhurst oversees a spirited discussion amongst John's friends - Ammiel Alcalay, Jim Dunn, Raymond Foye, Fanny Howe and Gerrit Lansing - memories of John.
  

  ["screen-grab shows Fanny Howe and Gerrit Lansing] 

Other "Oral History Initiatives" from the Woodberry Poetry Room include sessions on Charles Olson, Denise Levertov,Frank O'Hara, & others 

Michael Seth Stewart answers questions  - here  on editing John's journals (his recent City Lights edition) 

Jerry Cimino on rock musicianJimmy Page visiting the Beat Museum ("ogling all the manuscrips and letters and digging on Ginsberg's typewriter")

[Beat Museum display - Photograph by L.W.Lindquist] 

[Jimmy Page and William Burroughs]

Paul Nelson's first-hand account of the recent 4th European Beat Studies Network Conference contains an interview with Polina McKay, one of the co-founders of the Network - listen to it here  

Four erstwhile Naropa faculty together for a recent reading in Woodstock, upstate New York - photo by Kim Spurlock

[Ed Sanders,Anne Waldman, Michael Brownstein, Peter Lamborne Wilson - Photo by Kim Spurlock]

Ashraf Fayadh Appeal - Urgent

November 27, 2015, 4:17 pm

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                                                              [Ashraf Fayadh]

From a letter presented this morning (Friday November 27)  to His Excellency Shaykh Dr Mohammed bin Abdulkareem Al-Issa at the Ministry of Justice in Saudi Arabia from a broad coalition of human-rights groups

"We, the undersigned organizations, all dedicated to the value of creative freedom, are writing to express our grave concern that Ashraf Fayadh has been sentenced to death for apostasy. 

Ashraf Fayadh, a poet, artist, curator, and member of the British-Saudi art organization Edge of Arabia was first detained in relation to his collection of poems Instructions Within following the submission of a complaint to the Saudi Committee for the Promotion of Virtue. He was released on bail but rearrested in January 2014.

According to court documents in May 2014 the General Court of Abha found proof that Fayadh had committed apostasy (ridda) but had repented for it. The charge of apostasy was dropped, but he was nevertheless sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes in relation to numerous charges related to blasphemy. 

At Ashrad Fayadh's retrial in November 2015 the judge reversed the previous ruling, declaring that repentance was not enough to avoid the death penalty.

We believe that all charges against him should have been dropped entirely, and are appalled that Fayadh has instead been sentenced to death for apostasy, simply for exercising his rights to freedom of expression and freedom of belief…..It is our understanding that Fayadh has 30 days to appeal this latest ruling and we urge the authorities to allow him access to the lawyer of his choice.
We call on the Saudi authorities to release Ashrad Fayadh and others detained in Saudi Arabia in violation of their right to freedom of expression immediately and unconditionally." 

and this statement of solidarity by poets and writers released by PEN  International

"We,  poets and writers from around the world,  are appalled that the Saudi Arabian authorities have sentenced Palestinian poet, Ashraf Fayadh,  to death for apostasy.

It is not a crime to hold an idea, however unpopular, nor is it a crime to express opinion peacefully. Evdry individual has the freedom to believe or not believe. Freedom of conscience is an essential human right 

The death sentence against Fayadh is the latest example of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's lack of tolerance for freedom of expression and ongoing persecution of free thinkers.

We, Fayadh's fellow poets and writers, urge the Saudi authorities to desist from punishing individuals for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and call for his immediate and unconditional release." 

Here's a report from Amnesty International  (available in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic)

This case is most urgent. Please do all you can do to spread the word and agitate for/insist upon Fayadh's release.

Here's Fayadha, from 2013, on Saudi tv, discussing, Mostly Visible, a show of artists from Saudi Arabia that he curated in the Saudi city of Jidda  (He was also, that same year, with Edge of Arabia, involved in  curating an exhibition at the Venice Biennale) 



Mona Kareem's translations of Fayadha's "disputed" poems can be accessed here

This story is on-going.

Allen Ginsberg & David Henderson at Naropa 1981 (part one)

November 28, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Allen Ginsberg and David Henderson at Naropa 1981 (part two)

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                                                   [David Henderson - Photo by John Sarsgard]
                                     

                                                                          [Allen Ginsberg]

Last weekend it was a triple-X reading, this weekend it's an interrupted reading. Well, we've had those, of course, several times before here on the Ginsberg Project (notably, with the participant, the agency of disruption, being a rambuncious Gregory Corso - see, for example here and here). It's not Gregory this time, but an oblivious insistent audience-member, who finally has to be escorted from the room, not before causing some considerable mayhem and clearly affecting Allen (he amends his first poem - "Birdbrain is a poet talking to you/Birdbrain interrupted the poet talking to you") - Allen loses his temper ("What a pleasure! It's just a pleasure to get mad like that! It's so rarely allowed") - and with some justification, it would seem, (even though he tries to maintain his composure - "The Buddhist thing is co-emergent wisdom, that's right, co-emergent wisdom..").

The transcript today takes in David Henderson, his co-reader,'s first set (Henderson is only momentarily waylaid by the heckler), through to the moment of distraction.

Tomorrow we'll have the rest of Allen's set and more poems by David.

Audio for the reading (including the uproar, beginning at approximately twenty minutes in and concluding approximately twenty-five minutes in) can be heard here

The reading (from June 24, 1981) starts off  (on the audio, approximately thirty-seconds in) with an introduction by Peter Orlovsky 

Peter Orlovsky:  "Good evening… Each poet.. Dave Henderson will be the first poet to read, and he’ll read for twenty minutes, and then Allen Ginsberg will read for twenty minutes, and then Dave Henderson will read for twenty minutes, and then intermission, and then Allen will sing some songs – and maybe Dave too!"

"Dave Henderson was born in Harlem, educated inCity University in New York, the New School For Social Research and the East-West Institute of Cambridge. He was a founder of the East Village Otherand editor of Umbra magazine. He has given numerous poetry readings and is widely anthologized. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese. His books include Felix of the Silent Forest (Poets Press), Da Mayor of Harlem(Dutton).. Introducing Da Mayor of Harlem  -  Introduction to Nothing (Best Company Press (uh?))  that’s the.. that’s the what?

DH: That’s the non-existent book I wrote!

PO: That’s the non-existent book he wrote….  [Editorial note - "Re Peter Orlovsky's intro" - "there is no such publication as Introduction to Nothing - (or Introducing Da Mayor of Harlem, for that matter) -  "All I did was say that it was non-existent. It was neither the moment (the time) nor the place to further deny an obvious misstatement" (DH, 2015, in recollection)] 

PO:  ..and a biography entitled Jimi Hendrix –Voodoo Child of the Aquarian Age – David Henderson… [Editorial note - later re-titled "Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky],  The Low East (Is this from the Lower East Side of Manhattan?) - [Yes]  – aha! –published by North Atlantic Books, Richmond, California, "Dedicated to Langston Hughes/And to Calvin C Hernton,  Eddie Krasnow,& "Max".    

And Dave has been living in Berkeley, and now in Manhattan – a very young, handsome eager fellow! – Dave Henderson" 

DH: "Thank you, and it’s a pleasure to be reading at the Naropa Institute and to be reading with Allen. I’m going to read some poems from New Orleans.

This is called "Burgundy Street" (Burgundy Street – if you’re from New Orleans, and you go to a street that looks like Burgundy Street and you say "Burgundy" there, they know that you’re from somewhere else – "Burgundy Street"–  (“Four stories high..”..”the train from Congo Square is lost”) 

This (next) is called –“In Williams” – (“In Williams I would drink all seven hundred springs of Texas…”..,”thread the needle, we’re gonna do it”)

and this is called “The Murals of the Stations” (for Marilyn) – (“The mural of the train station tells of pain and passion..”…”ancestors from the sea, what look like roaches”)"

[Henderson continues] - "This is called “Sonny Rollins” (he’s a jazz musician – (“Sonny Rollins, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Rollins, seeking peace in the city…” “the most important thing to me is my sanity – refrain’)"

[Next, a longer, three-part poem] - "This is called “Time Zone Poem” (for Carol ( "By winter you find the sun down in the other river as the sky plays the hesitation blues…”there is blue funk in the near-unknown”)  -  Thank you

[The heckler is first heard here, throwing out the non-sequitor and uncontextualized comment -  "What do you think about the mercenaries in Africa?"]

AG: Oh, wait a minute, have we got to go through this? - No

[Heckler persists - "What does he think about mercenaries in Africa? [to David Henderson] Have you got any poems on that? It’s an important issue, you ought to be talking about it ,where the people are being murdered…"]

DH: I have a poem that I’m gonna read in the next set, alright?

This is called “Song of Devotion to the Forest” and it’s after the pygmies of the Ituri forest  (“This land is my block and my people..”.. and we love to sing, especially when you sing with us”)

This is called  “Alchemical Notebook #3 – (“War in Africa north will end the world as we know it”…”… “…he will be a bad muthafucka!”) 

[Heckler again - "He qualifies for freedom of speech. That’s what I qualify (for) too!]

DH: Okay

AG (to DH)  (joking!) You want me to beat her up?!

DH: She’s possessed! That’s great!  [he continues]

This is  a poem for a woman named Sally and her daughter. It’s called “Sally” (“Between two women, mother and daughter..”.. “... synchronizing eternity”)

Let's see, this is called"Alvin Cash - Keep On Dancing", and it’s for children of Intermediate School 55, Ocean Hill, Brownsville, especially the ones who play hookey, like I did. I used to visit the school and I used to hang out in the candy store across the street when I wasn’t visiting and some of the kids there would be in there too  and they were doing the most amazing dances I ever saw. Anyway, the song they were dancing to was by Alvin Cash and it was called “Keep on Dancing” (“I Gotta Keep on Dancing..”..."I Gotta Just Keep on Dancing”)

[Heckler returns with an inaudible question]
DH:  To the what?

Heckler : (The) Sandinista (Revolution)?

DH: Oh, Allen has a poem on that!

[Heckler responds with another inaudible remark]

DH: (Okay) -  This is the last poem I’m going to read this set. It’s called “City Island”– (“Along summer homes near water barges.."... “...with love for no-one”) 

[At approximately twenty-and-a-quarter minutes in, Allen begins his set with a strict warning (to the heckler) - 
 AG: (You musn't) interrupt me, or I really will… I'll beat ya up, or something! I'll do something. I don't want to be interrupted. Period."
 [Heckler immediately interrupts]
AG: Goddam!... What is it?  The Buddhist thing is co-emergent wisdom, that’s right, co-emergent wisdom,

Heckler (I don't like people who) beat up on women, you know.

AG: (Well), I’m a fairy and I do!  

[Allen attempts to begin the reading with a poem] "What's Dead".."What’s Dead.."

Heckler: It’s a good thing you don’t have a wife or you’d kill her! 

AG: Please, please. I want to read poems now.

Student(s): Throw her out!

[Heckler interrupts with inaudible remark]

AG: Now you’ve interrupted me three times?

[Allen attempts to begin the poem again] - "What's Dead…"

Heckler: (You're limiting) free discussion.

AG: It is not free discussion! - I really will have you kicked out - or taken out – I won’t put up with it. Now either you shut up now or you get out..

[attempts resuming once again!]... "What’s Dead"

Heckler: Okay, whatever you say, I expect you’re gonna call the CIA!’

AG: [now exasperated] - I’ll put her out myself -  Goddammit! Just leave! – I won’t take it - [There follows the inevitable moment - the sounds of an altercation . The heckler shouts and rants The audience is clearly very much on the side of Allen ]
AG: [to heckler] You’re giving me a nervous breakdown..I can’t stand it anymore.. Except... I’m letting her do it again! I knew that would happen.  [to Assistant] - Well, I wouldn’t follow her around, Susan [sic], but I don’t quite know what to do.

Heckler: [returning to the fray with irony] -  Okay, ..let’s hear it here for freedom of speech!

Student(s): Go home!

AG: Wait a minute. I have an idea. Let’s take a vote. Hold on, hold on a second. hold on, no hold on. There are three alternatives -  either.. even.. let’s see now, (one), if you’ll be quiet you’ll stay (either she is quiet and stays), or, two, she can talk and stay, or three, go out. We can take her. I’ll take care of it, So, one, quiet-and -stay is my preference. 

Heckler: I would say...

Student:  Not sure if she can be quiet and stay..

AG: Okay..second..   Is that sufficient?  [Allen to Heckler] Would you be quiet and stay?

Heckler: Yes, well, but ..

AG: Would you be quiet and stay?

Heckler: If I...

AG: Yes or no?!!

Heckler: I will read a poem and..

AG: [previously pent-up frustration but now exploding in anger] - NO!! , No!  You will not impose your fuckin' bad poems on everybody!  No. I  won’t do it. The alternative.. The alternative is…

Heckler: Don’t be a petty monster!

AG:   . (to) a captive audience..

Heckler: Don’t be a  petty monster!

AG: No? Okay, you gotta go. Okay, finish the vote. Shall we finish the vote?  Okay - Three or two? Number Three! -  (Three was "out"!) – Three is "out" . Is that a majority?

Heckler: I want the microphone

AG [exasperated]: I’m not sure if I can handle it anymore!

Student: [to heckler]  It’s not your microphone, nobody else hear wants to hear you!

[Among great shouting and commotion ("easy, easy") heckler is finally - eventually - escorted out]

AG: I can’t stand it anymore! - too much! – for too many years...!

What a pleasure! It’s just a pleasure to get mad like that!  It’s so rarely allowed.   
[Allen is now clearly rattled and breathing heavily]
"Birdbrain" - [Allen presents a version of the poem, understandably, incorporating several additional lines relating to the interruption, alongside other minor amendments] - "Birdbrain is a poet talking to you".."Birdbrain interrupted the poet talking to you".. "Birdbrain is Allen Ginsberg".."Birdbrain is still screaming about it"..."Birdbrain is angry.."Birdbrain's heart is beating", "Birdbrain's heart is beating shallowly".."Birdbrain gets madder than anyone".."Birdbrain commits murders on people who interrupt poetry readings in 1981..")
… [continues & finishes the poem] "while the sky thunders"..

to be continued tomorrow - more Allen Ginsberg and David Henderson

Allen Ginsberg and David Henderson at Naropa 1981 (part two)

November 29, 2015, 3:00 am

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                                                [David Henderson - Photo by Michah Saperstein]

                                                                         [Allen Ginsberg]  

Allen's 1981 Naropa Institute reading with poet David Henderson continues, (following the earlier disruption), with two poems - "Grim Skeleton"  and "Meditations at Lake Louise" ("Reflections At Lake Louise") (both from Plutonian Ode & Other Poems 1977-1980) -   and a third, "Thundering Undies" (sic), an imitation after the Roman poet, Catullus, (his poem 11), made in collaboration with Ron Padgett 

David Henderson, beginning here in media res, presents a second set. And then Allen presents three more works ("Put Down Yr Cigarette Rag", "Capitol Air", and  "Broken Bones Blues"),  this time with musical accompaniment. 

AG:  "Grim Skeleton" ("Grim skeleton come back & put me out of Action/looking thru the rainy window of the Church wall.."…"Agh! Who I'll read this to like a fool! Who'll applaud these lies")  

"Meditations at Lake Louise" (“At midnight, the teacher lectures on his throne,/Gongs, bells, wooden fish, tingling brass,/ Transcendent Doctrines…."….."Where can I go, how choose, Either way my life stands before me,/mountains rising over the white lake 6 am mist drifting between water and sky.")

and, last [before the break] a chain-poem written with Ron Padgett, 21 April, 1981 - I'm paraphrasing a Sapphic ode by Catullus - 

"tunditur unda" is the Latin - "where the wave thunders underneath" - "If you go way beyond, where the wave thunders, there are the Asia Minor shores. Go tell my old girlfriend, if you see her before I do, that she can go suck off all those.. three hundred characters on the Broadway street corner.. (if) she wants to. As far as my love's concerned. it's nothing but a broken flower, cut by the plough, at the field's edge.." - That's a paraphrase of the Catullus poem. "tunditur unda" is the Latin for the wave thundering underneath, so the title of this is -"Thundering Undies" - Thundering Undies! 

“Passing through Manhattan’s sodium vapor sidestreet glare/ With pink electric powder puffs overhead,/mmmmm, that Catholic churchwall’s old as Science/, tho’ Science is older, but O, please don’t tell me about it tonight./ no pain please in the strange spring light/tho' my baby's waiting on the corner with 160 pounds of meat/on her 148 bones all for sale for 25 bucks./ Furius & Aurelius, friends, now that we’re back in town, tell her/ to take cosmetics from the air, and let the dark blue city/ sift slowly down to where lamplight shadows her cheeks/ & her lips shine dayglo purple, moist with the sperm of her 300 adorers./ - O come let us adore her, weird Madonna of the street/and not in great shape either tho' we’re in far off Elsewhere/with our sad souls, angers and aching teeth! Too late for old loves,/ but a little nosegay of pansies cut by Time’s tractor where/ the pasture meets the dirt road and my heart meets the flower-bed/ dug up years ago to make East 12^th Street where you float/ a little off the ground, thinking of the withered posy of pussy-/ willows, cox-stamens & rosepetal lips dumped in the garbage can/ by unthinking lovers that I used to sleep and giggle with/ crazed, hateful & disappointed Catullus."

At approximately forty-two-and-a-half minutes in, Allen declares: "We’ll take a break. We’ll take a break, ten minutes or so, and then David’ll come back, read fifteen, twenty minutes, and I’ll come back with a symphony orchestra [Editorial note - not a symphony orchestra, just a few accompanying musicians], and sing three songs."

[tape continues with David Henderson, catching him, in media res, reading from his poem, "The Exiled"] - ("…about a man without a country/that story/about this white dude who did something to America/something that made him have to sail the seven seas/never to touch land/never to have a country…"… "….to something farther away,/ materially across continent and water/ to nothing/ to nothing so real in its utter presence/ as to make him tremble/ at the scent of memory")

DH:  Thank you, thank you. This is called “Nobody” – Nobody -  (“For the Revolution, the Third World War, three eyes….Pan Africa forms, new Loa"

Speaking of Loa (which is a Voodoo term for Gods), there’s a woman I alluded to in the poems about New Orleans. Her name was Marie Laveau – and she was quite famous in New Orleans from the beginning of the19th century and almost until the end, a lot of interesting stories about her. This is a couple of ballads -  "Down in the Old Town, Old Mary, she know.."..."When there's fire on the shore/Mary, don't you weep no more") - 

Okay, this is called "Mexico City Subway Inaugeral"  - circa 1969 - ("Something did not tell me,.."…"It looked like a halo and I was afraid") 

"There was a photographer in North Beach who passed away recently who, actually, was lost out in the middle of San Francisco Bay and his name was Andre Lewis, and what was particularly important to me about Andre Lewis was that he was a person who made me feel very much at home in North Beach in San Francisco. He was an Afro-American photographer,, and he had a lot of.. (well, he still has) a lot of marvelous photos (especially of Bob Kaufman) and.. anyway, this is a poem written to the memory of Andre Lewis, Afro-American photographer of North Beach, San Francisco. It's called "In Greeting..", "In Greeting or Farewell" ( "He handled his camera like Nat Love"… "..captured so much, and maybe each other in greeting or farewell') 

"Okay, this is the last poem I'm going to read and people have told me, out in California, they said, "Well, you never write many poems about California". So I wrote a poem about California. It's called "California Thirteen" - I lived near a highway that was called California Thirteen and was actually Ashby Avenue, for any of you who know Berkeley"
[David Henderson concludes with a long poem]
("To rise with the rulers of the world.."…"into another world, into a third world, .Baha continuum of California town"]

[At approximately sixty-three-and-a-half minutes in, Allen Ginsberg returns] 

AG:  (The next) number will be a non-smoking, anti-cigarette, non-commercial, “Put Down Yr Cigarette Rag” (“Don’t smoke, don't smoke…")

This is followed by a version of "Capitol Air"  (" I don’t like the Government where I live"..)  and "Broken Bones Blues" ( "When you break your leg, there’s nothing to stand on…" ) with, as before, (see his rendition of "Birdbrain") improvisation - ("...my soul is a whore, my soul is no more"). 

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

H. Phelps Putnam - Hasbrouk and the Rose

November 30, 2015, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Ezra Pound - Background to Canto LXXXI

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                                                         [H Phelps Putnam (1894-1948)]


Allen's Basic Poetics class (today from July 1st, 1980)  continues. The tape begins approximately one-and-a-half minutes in. There is some brief delay at the beginning.
AG:  I’ll be right back, I’m going to get a chair  -  PO: Do you want me to get one?

AG: Sorry I didn’t get here earlier… There were a couple of little things I wanted to clean up that I mentioned before. We were talking about “All the night by  rose, rose” – what was that? anybody know where that is? – “All night by the rose, rose/All night by the rose I lay – “All night by the rose, rose" - (page six) –“All night by the rose I lay/Dare I not the rose steal" (actually, "dare I not the rose tree steal") – that is, he was scared to steal the whole tree but he bore the rose away – “Dare I not the rose steal/ Yet I bore the flower away"

So, there is a mention here of a poem, a twentieth-century poem by Phelps Putnamthat seemed to borrow from that, a poem I always liked, it’s obscure, a poem of H.Phelps Putnam, who was a friend of e e cummings and a lot of big-time poets of the (19)20’s, who had some kind of reputation in the (19)20’s and early (19)30’s, and then drank a good deal and fell into obscurity, and his Collected Poems were put out in the early (19)70’s, and didn’t make much of a splash. And he’s kind of an interesting figure of his time. And there’s one classic poem he wrote called “Hasbrouck  and The Rose”

[Allen reads the poem in its entirety] - (It was at a drinking party of his friends)

Hasbrouck and the Rose

Hasbrouck was there and so were Bill

And Smollet Smith the poet, and Ames was there.

After his thirteenth drink, the burning Smith,

Raising his fourteenth trembling in the air,

Said, ‘Drink with me, Bill, drink up to the Rose.’

But Hasbrouck laughed like old men in a myth,

Inquiring, ‘Smollet, are you drunk? What rose?’

And Smollet said, ‘I drunk? It may be so;

Which comes from brooding on the flower, the flower

I mean toward which mad hour by hour

I travel brokenly; and I shall know,

With Hermes and the alchemists—but, hell,

What use is it talking that way to you?

Hard-boiled, unbroken egg, what can you care

For the enfolded passion of the Rose?’

Then Hasbrouck’s voice rang like an icy bell:

‘Arcane romantic flower, meaning what?

Do you know what it meant? Do I?

We do not know.

Unfolding pungent Rose, the glowing bath

Of ecstasy and clear forgetfulness;

Closing and secret bud one might achieve

By long debauchery—

Except that I have eaten it, and so

There is no call for further lunacy.

In Springfield, Massachusetts, I devoured

The mystic…

[Allen is momentarily distracted]

Agh! – it’s hard to read if you guys come in late!

It’s hard to  put on an act, you know, get on stage [Peter Orlovsky arrives with a chair]

Okay. So..  “Long debauchery" might do it, "Except that I have eaten it, and so/ There is no call for further lunacy..."

Now he gets to the point. This is where the poem gets really great 

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.’

Young Smollet Smith let fall his glass; he said,

‘O Jesus, Hasbrouck, am I drunk or dead?’

Like a real good drunken poem . Phelps Putnam. There’s a whole series of poems about Hasbrouck and his friends, (Hasbrouck speaking, Bill & Smollet, Smollet, the poet, local characters, New England,) 1931, first published.

So, actually, it’s a little chapter of twentieth-century American poetry that might amuse you, see what happened to..

Probably, you know, in a hundred years. it'll be real  famous like, you know, the guy who wrote "Bishop, Lawless.." -  like some. you know…  go down in an anthology, and will be resurrected.  And his name is Phelps Putnam, and this book is in the library

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at the start of the tape (approximately one-and-a-half minutes in) and concluding approximately seven minutes in]

---

Ezra Pound - Background to Canto LXXXI

December 1, 2015, 3:00 am

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AG: …..And then I mentioned.. we had that little poem by Chaucer-“Your two bright eyes will slay me suddenly,/I may the beauty of them not sustain”  [ Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly,/I may the beautè of hem not sustene"]– Remember?  “Merciles Beautie”  (it’s on page fifty-three).. and I mentioned that Ezra Pound had dug it, dug that particular poem, and I wondered why, or… He quotes it inthe Cantos.So I looked it up,. And I thought I’d read you a little description of this Canto and a piece of Pound’s Canto which quotes the Chaucer – Canto.. This was part of the Pisan Cantos.. Has anybody ever read any of Ezra Pound here? ((I'm) presuming that you have. And if you have not, not, raise your hand? (okay, quite a few of you, not) -  Okay. He may be the greatest poet of the century in America, the most learned, the most researched, the most scholarly, the best ear, maybe. He was writing in a very special meter, which we’ll… Of course, he did a lot of (just as we were doing), listening to meters. He did..  (he) sort of broke ground in the twentieth-century in really hearing rhythms and putting them in effect in his own writing (or, actually, getting them physically into the body), so that William Carlos Williamssaid one day in his garden, “Pound has a mystical ear“ - a mystical ear?  (because his ear was so refined) . He was taken by the Allied troops in World War II and put in a prison camp near Pisa in a cage, where he wrote a series of Cantos, or sections of a long autobiographical 
life-long epic poem calledThe Cantos(or the Songs). And this is a description of Canto 81 In order to… So.. I’ll read you the (opening), because it’s a mosaic or cut-up, or a weave or a tapestry, or a collage, the Cantos, therefore none of us are expected to understand it, particularly, first off, except to get little glints of real pretty phrasing, or nostalgic beautiful language, or snippets of information, or gossip, or pieces of reading, or phrases, or quotes from Chaucer. So I’ll read you what the story is in The Cantos from a book by Clark Emery–Ideas into Action – A Study of Pound’s Cantos(University of Miami Press, Coral Gables, Florida, 1958)

If anybody ever wants to read Pounds’ Cantos. this is a great guide-book. It’s real short, about a hundred-and-fifty pages, and it will guide you canto-by-canto through the entire labyrinth of Pound’s Cantos and make it easy to read.  You can see it after, I’ve said it once, you can see it after, it’ll be on the desk - Ideas into Action – Clark Emory – University of Miami Press. And it’s also in.. it’ll be in the library at Naropa if you want it.

"Canto 81 in effect makes a distinction between the sabre-chop that kills and the scalpel-incision that cures. The lyrical evocation in Canto 8o of England's past is carried on into 81 - [which we’ll be reading part of] -  to make his point.

"On a visit to Maurice Hewlett’s house, ((a) friend of his), Pound had been strongly affected by a vision of England's long history. He expressed it in an early version of 
Canto 1 - "..procession on procession bySalisbury/Ancient in various days, long years between them/"Ply over ply of live still wraps the earth here".  In Canto 80, the concept remains but darkened by the recollection of bloody divisions that have brought England into its present state of  "rust, ruin, death duties and mortgages". (The War of the Roses, the long enmity between England and France, England's increased insularity after Henry VIII's break with the Church, Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and so forth) - So this Canto "shifts from political to literary history and draws a relation .."In the time of Chaucer (Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly,/I may the beautè of hem not sustene") there had been a European unity of  culture, in which men of all nations could participate. There had been a unity of word and music to produce singable song, but as nation was divided from nation, and as church underwent schism, word parted from music  - "and for a hundred and eighty years almost nothing" - (for a hundred and eighty years almost nothing worth listening to in poetry,until the Renaissance) - Then again the temporary impact of the Continent upon England, the Renaissance scholarship and music bringing word and music back into cooperation, and then, after that, again division, economic wars. destruction of France, decline of England culturally." 
[So Pound is pointing to this one little song, of the beauty of the song of Chaucer as being, like, the last great throw-up of construction of words and music together, with some kind of harmony of mind, before a long period of cultural and political degeneration, and he points out that, when the body politic and the mind of genius or intelligence get separated, when the body and mind become separated, when the poem and the song become separated, when the words and the music become separated, there is… it is a sign of the degeneration of the state, or a schizophrenia in economics and politics, as well as in the personal, psychological, life of creators or listeners. (That's why, for instance, in our own time, the bringing together of words and music by The Beatles and by (Bob)Dylan on a mass scale was hailed almost, like, as a sign of a political or cultural renaissance, or a new era, or Aquarian Age. It was some…) Pound has been working on this theory, Pound has been putting out this theory, working on it, and (proving) it and considering it for many decades. That was the basis of Pound’s thinking, and it is partly the basis of this class – the notion that when the words and the voice get separated, the art degenerates and the intelligence flees from the page, and all you have is a mental idea, or a shadow of an idea, rather than the actual idea, which is physical, accompanied by rhythm, accompanied by feeling, accompanied by imaginative reaction, accompanied by bodily direction - or inspiration – yes, inspiration, the breath, unobstructed, flowing into the body.

So he says – “Beyond this division..” - (this is Mr Emory talking)  - “Beyond this division, however humanely motivated is the prospect of uniting. In his Lawes & Jenkyns lyric (which I’ll read),Pound  himself writes singable song of the sort that Lawes and Jenkyns  set to music (that’s Elizabethan times) and that, in our century, Arnold Dolmetsch restored to a limited popular favor - (Dolmetsch, a friend of Pound, went back and found the original manuscripts for songs by Henry Lawes and (Edmund) Waller. In fact, Pound and his friend, I think, with Dolmetsch, began the revival of the singing of the music of (John) Dowland, (Henry) Lawes, (John) Jenkyns, (Edmund) Waller, and others, who were the great Renaissance pop poets, pop poet-musicians, lutenists.  So, I think probably next.. when I get to that period, I’ll bring in a phonograph and some recordings and we’ll listen to some of it). [to Student] Do you have them? Have you heard any of it?

Student: Yes

AG: How does it sound? Some of it is pretty.. the (Thomas) Campion is pretty good.

So Henry Lawes and John Jenkyns were two musician-poets of Elizabethan times 

“….thus Pound "gathers from the air a live tradition" but he is able to do so because he approached that tradition with an active, positive love so that it has become his "true heritage" Another uniting process is involved in this passage. One reason why words become divorced from music is that man becomes self-consciously and arrogantly man, sets himself qualitatively apart from other members of the created scale of beings to exist out of harmony with natural process . Pound, considering the ant, gets a new perspective, an enhanced humility and an increased accord with the process."


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

Ezra Pound - Canto LXXXI

December 2, 2015, 3:00 am

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AG: So I’ll just read that little fragment of  (Ezra) Pound - ["Your eyen two wol sleye me soddenly/I may the beaute of hem nat susteyne"]  - It’s a little bit of.. little bit of gossip. I’ll just read it, read it for what it sounds like to you. I’ll read the whole Canto - Canto 81 - for whatever sense it makes, as a collage of Pound’s prison mental gossip (thinking to himself in prison, notating down little...little nostalgic recollections of pre-World War I)

[Allen proceeds to read, in its entirety, (with passing notations), Ezra Pound's Canto LXXXI]

"Zeus lies in Ceres' bosom/Taishan is attended of loves/ under Cythera, before sunrise/And he said: "Hai aqui mucho catolicismo - (sounded/catolithismo/y muy poco reliHion." - [as much… "here there is much Catholicism and very little religion"] - "and he said: "Yo creak que los reyes desparecen" - ["I think Kings will disappear"] - "(Kings will, I think, disappear)/This was Padre Jose Elizondo/in 1906 and in 1917/or about 1917/ and Dolores said: "come pan non", eat bread, me lad/Sargent had painted her" - [John Singer] - "before he descended/ i.e. if he descended/but inthose days he did thumb sketches, /impressions of the Velasquez in the Museo del Prado/and books cost a peseta,/brass candlesticks in proportion,/hot winds came from the marshes/and death chill from the mountains.? And later Bowerswrote; "but such hatred/I have never conceived such"/And the London reds wouldn't show up his friends/(i.e. friends of Franco/ working in London and in Alcazar)/forty years gone, they said "go back to the station to eat/you can sleep here for a peseta"/ goat bells tinkled all night/and the hostess grinned: Eso es lute, haw!/mi marido es muerto/ (it is mourning, my husband is dead)/when she gave me a paper to write on/with a black border half an inch or more deep, / say 5/8ths, of the locanda/"We call all foreigners frenchies"/and the egg broke in Cabranez' pocket/ thus making history. Basil says.." - [Basil Bunting, he's talking about his friend] - "they beat drums for three days/ till all the drumheads were busted/ (simple village fiesta)/and as for his life in the Canaries.../Possum observed - [that'sT.S.Eliot, he spoke of Eliot as "Possum" - a nickname] -  "that the local portagoose folk dance/was danced by the same dancers in divers localities/in political welcome…/the technique of demonstration/Cole studied that (not G.D.H, Horace)/ "You will find", said old Andre Spire,/that every man on that board (Credit Agricole)" - [Credit Agricole - the bank - Credit Agricultural Bank] - " has a brother-in-law/ "You the one, I the few"/said John Adams/speaking of fears in the abstract/to his volatile friend Mr Jefferson/(To break the pentameter, that was the first heave)/ or as Jo Bard says: they never speak to each other/if it is baker and concierge visibly/it is La Rouchefoucauld and de Maintenon audibly./"Te cavero le budella"/"La corata a te"/In less than a geological epoch/said Henry Mencken: - [The reference here is to Mencken saying, "A new idea will never get through the public's skull in less than a geological epic" - I'd say, it's true. I saw the other day that the President is going to restore the secret powers of the CIA] - "In less than a geological epoch/said Henry Mencken/"Some cook, some do not cook/ some things cannot be altered"/ 'lugx.. ….'emon poti dwma aon andra/What counts is the cultural level./ thank Benin for this table ex packing box" - [Benin mask? - the African civilization  - Benin sculpture- His (Pound's) guard was a  black man, (a) soldier, - whose face was like a mask from Benin (he says earlier)) - "thank Benin for this table ex packing box/ "down yu tell no one I made it"/from a mask fine as any in Frankfurt" - [the great Frankfurt Museum of African Sculpture] - ""It'll get you offn th' groun"/Light as the branch of Kuanon/And at first disappeared with shoddy/the bare ram-shackle quasi, but then saw the/high buggy wheels/and was reconciled/ George Santayana arriving in the port of Boston/ and kept to the end of his life that faint thethear/ of the Spaniard" / "as grace quasi imperceptible/as did Muss the v for u of Romagna/and said.." -  [Santayana, that is] -  "the grief was a full act/repeated for each new condolers/working up to a climax/and George Horace said he wd/ "get Beveridge"(Senator)/Beveridge wouldn't talk and he wouldn't write for the papers/but George got him by campin' in his hotel/and assailin' him at lunch breakfast an' dinner/three articles/and my ole man went on hoein' corn/while George was a-tellin' him,/come across a vacant lot/where you'd occasionally see a wild rabbit/or mebbe only a loose one?AOI!/a leaf in the current/at my grates no Althea."

                                               

                                                           [Arnold Dolmetsch (1858-1940)]


"Yet/Ere the season died a-cold/Borne upon a zephyr's shoulder/I rose through the aureate sky/ Lawes and Jenkyns guard thy rest/Dolmetsch ever be thy guest,/ Hath he tempered the viol's wood/To enforce  both the grave  and the acute?/ Has he curved us the bowl if the lute/Lawes and Jenkyns guard thy rest/Dolmetsch ever be thy guest/ Hast 'ou fashioned so airy a mood.To draw up leaf from the root?/Hast 'ou found  a cloud  so light/As seemed neither mist nor shade?/  Then resolve me, tell me aright/If Waller sang or Dowlandplayed/ "Your eyen two wol sleye me soddenly/I may the beaute of hem nat susteyne"/And for 180 years almost nothing./ Ed ascoltando al leggier mormorio/ there came new subtlety of eyes into my tent/whether of the spirit or hypostasis/but what the blindfold hides/ or at carneval/ nor any pair showed anger/ Saw but the eyes and stance between the eyes' - [there's the description of some sort of mystical experience that he had in the height (or in the depths) of his depression in the prison camp] - "color diastasis,/ Careless or unaware it had not the/whole tent's room/nor was place for the full EidwV /interpass, penetrate/ casting but shade beyond the other lights/sky's clear/night's sea/green of the mountain pool/ shonefrom the unmasked eyes in half-mask's space./ What thou lov'st well remains,/the rest is dross/What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee/What thou lov'st 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 lov'st well is thy true heritage,/What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee/The ant's 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!" - [Paquin was a dress-maker, a chic dress-maker of the pre-War era (or between the Wars). It would be like, say, "Pull down thy vanity, who is the Frenchman now?.. Dior, yes, "Pull down thy vanity, Christian Dior, pull down!"] - "The green casque has outdone your elegance./"Master thyself, then others shall thee bear"/ Pull down thy vanity/ Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail./ A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,/ Half-black, half-white/Nor knowest'ou wing from tail/Pull down thy vanity/How mean tiny hates/Fostered in falsity/Pull down thy vanity,/I say pull down./But to have done instead of not doing/thisis not vanity./ To have, with decency, knocked/ That a Blunt should open" - [When Pound first went to England, he went to visit the Georgian poet, William Scawen Blunt, knocked on the door, just walked up to his house] - "To have gathered from the air a live tradition/or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame/ This is not vanity./Here error is all in the not done/all in the diffidence that faltered…." - [ It's kind of nice - ""To have gathered from the air a live tradition/or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame"] 

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventeen-and-a-quarter minutes in  [the reading of Canto LXXXI begins at approximately eighteen-minutes in) and concluding at approximately twenty-seven-and-three-quarter minutes in]

[Two readings of Pound himself reading Canto LXXXI (from the Pisan Cantos), recorded in Spoleto, Italy, in 1967, can be heard here and here]

Ezra Pound's Cantos - 2

December 3, 2015, 3:00 am

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                                                         [Ezra Pound (1885-1972)]

AG: So he [Ezra Pound]’s gathering (in Canto LXXXI) from "fine old ear" of Chaucer, that marriage of sense, intellect and song – "Your eyen two wol slee me sodenly"- and the only reason I read that was to see how that line re-echoes throughout the centuries and up to Pound’s time, and why he thought that line was so great, and why the particular kind of poetry we’re reading is so interesting, because it’s poetry where music is subtle (the music of the words is very subtle) and deliberate and clear, syllable-by-syllable, like pieces of iron put in place,  like “this ay night, this ay night,every night and all” or like that other poem we were looking at that had a pretty little sound  (you know, "I sing of a mayden/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" - the funny little syncopations that came there). I was looking at it again and it’s…  you hear them, it permenantly alters the molecular structure of your nervous system, (so) that subtle vibration, literally, alters the functioning of your nervous system, so that you become attuned to that kind of delicate vibration and language. As you can see from the Pound that I was reading - “Hast 'ou fashioned so airy a mood?" - Pound’s ear, also, like the author of “I sing of a mayden”, is like a kind of perfect balanced ear, that’s really delicate – for rhythmic syncopation, I guess, (it) would be….

[to Student]  - Were you able to find any of the Piers Plowman?

Student: No

AG:  Nowhere? – Okay, so what else did I have? I had a couple of other little things cued up – Oh yes, in Pound’sCantos - (page four-forty-one). The first day (in this class) I was paraphrasing something he said about a“phalanx of particulars”, remember? It comes from The Cantos. When I was looking for this, the passage about "Lawes and Jenkyns guard thy rest/Dolmetsch ever be thy guest"... Let’s see..

“But in Russia they bungled it and did not apparently/ grasp the idea of work-certificate/ and started the New Economic Plan with disaster/ and the immolation of men to machinery/and the canal work and gt./mortality, (which is as may be)/and went in for dumping in order to trouble the waters/in the userers' hell-a-dice/all of which leads to the death cells/each in the name of its god"- [whatever theory, the CIA, the Russians, the Afghanistanis, the Mullahs..] - all of which leads to the death cells/each in the name of its god/or longevity because as says Aristotle/philosophy is not for young men/their Katholou can not be sufficiently derived from/their hekasta/their generalities cannot be born from a sufficient phalanx/ of particulars”  (from Canto LXXIV)

- [that's a pretty funny idea. So ..I think he wrote it down in another form – so.. “their generalities cannot be born from a sufficient phalanx of particulars” is the tag line, or the quote - or Aristotle’s term, "the Katholou cannot be sufficiently derived from hekasta "-  (a good poem)  - So, remember that, remember, always derive your Katholou from a hekasta!

Student: (But what does it mean?  I don't understand, tho')

AG: Pound says it next. Their generalities..  their “philosophy’s not for young men”, because their generalities cannot be born from a sufficient phalanx of particulars" - [i.e. they haven’t had enough experiences, specific experiences, from which to draw conclusions, haven’t gone through the 'Sixties ten times, till they realize what to do the next time]  

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

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 247

December 4, 2015, 3:00 am

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From the audio-visual archives of RTBF, Belgium's public-broadcasting organization for the French-speaking community, this delightful footage of Allen (and Peter Orlovsky and Steven Taylor) in Belgium in 1983. Following a short introduction, Allen and company are glimpsed (briefly) walking the streets (of Liege) and then Allen is interviewed (speaking en francais!). Allen and Steven get down at the piano (sic - yes, really) to perform "Father Death Blues" 

and Allen-in-Austria footage (at theSchule Fur Dichtung/Vienna Poetry Academy - who is that woman sitting across from him at the table at the beginning?) - "I'll begin with music. Inspiration from William Blake, the poem "The Tyger", which is inspiration to breath and poetic inspiration".  Allen is then seen performing "Why I Meditate" (from White Shroud ("I sit because the Dadaists screamed on Mirror Street/I sit because the Surrealists ate angry pillows..") and"Proclamation" (from Cosmopolitan Greetings) spliced in ("I am the King of the Universe/I am the Messiah with a new dispensation/Excuse me I stepped on a nail..")  


 

We've already noted Bob Arnold (Longhouse)'s recent edition of Janine Pommy Vega's final completed manuscript, Walking Woman With The Tambourine. Now news of a new Pommy Vega miscellany,Janina.
"Some people call us the Beat Generation, we just called it living. To be present at that time as a woman took more moxie than a guy. You had to go in the face of mores. When guys were "sowing their wild oats", we were "being promiscuous". But what I really was exploring was consciousness..the desire to dig deeper and live freer."

                                        [Janine Pommy Vega (1942-2010) - Photograph - Monica Claire Antonie] 

Great news -  Really great news! - "And When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead",Billy Woodberry's Bob Kaufman documentary will finally soon be out. Here's advanced word from the Hollywood Reporter.
US premiere will be Monday January 11 in LA.

                                                           

                                                                                   [Bob Kaufman 1925-1986]    

Meantime, if you still haven't heard it, do check out (don't miss) David Henderson's exemplary radio documentary on Kaufman. 

Drummond Hadley'spoems were memorably described by Allen as  "like time and death".Voice of the Borderlands, a major collection of his work (with a foreword by his friendGary Snyder came out in 2007 (a brief selection of some of the poems can be found here - an NPR report on him - here  - Chax Press published The Light Before Dawn ("koans of mortality") in 2010). 

"A poet among poets".."not a cowboy poet exactly. But it's tough to separate the cowboy from the poet", Drum" had been (for those who didn't know) ailing for some time (following a near-fatal car collision). He died peacefully this past weekend. 
Libby Cudmore's obituary notice may be read here 

                                                              [Drummond Hadley (1938-2015)]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Writing Across The Landscape in the Chilean newspapers (article in Spanish)

A profile of Fernanda Pivano (video in Italian)

Ezra Pound's Posthumous Cantos reviewed in The Guardian

Two old codgers, Gerd Sternand Harold Channer get together - again - (yes, that Gerd Stern, the one mistakenly caught up in all that Kerouac-Cassady "Joan Anderson Letter"controversy. Stern's exhibition "Usco WhenThen" is still up at the Seton Hall University Walsh Gallery (if you happen to be in, or close to, New Jersey) until next Friday

William Burroughs 1980 Naropa Reading

December 5, 2015, 3:00 am

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            [William Burroughs - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg - © The Estate of Allen Ginsberg ]

Today, William Burroughs, from a three-person poetry reading that took place at Naropa Institute on August 13, 1980. (Peter Orlovsky, the concluding reader, we’ve already featured (see here)  - Harold Norse, the third of the readers, we’ll feature tomorrow.
We meant to run this last week but we got distracted(sic)

AG: The three readers tonight are William Seward Burroughs, Harold Norse and Peter Orlovsky and they will read in that order, Mr Burroughs will read first, for probably twenty-five, thirty minutes, then Harold Norse, then we’ll take a short intermission and then Peter Orlovsky will round-out the program

William Burroughs has been considered by many elite intellectuals as being perhaps the greatest of American late-twentieth-century prose writers, a satirist comparable to Jonathan Swift and an innovator in prose and prose-poetic techniques of the order of  (James) JoyceandGertrude Stein for his exploration of the“cut-up”technique. His first book was a straightforward hard-boiled detective-esque fiction, style-wise, an autobiographical book called Junkie , penned pseudonymously by William Lee, then published.. that was published in the early 'Fifties in New York as a double Ace paperback, along with theConfessions of a Narc.. [Narcotic Agent]

Then from Paris, 1958 or '9, the Naked Lunchwas published by Olympia Pressand later went through one of the great..useful censorship trials (along with Lady Chatterly’s Lover, some of the work of Lord Rochester, some of the work of Henry Miller,Jean Genet) with a trial that was effective in opening up all of American Literature which had been censored and opening it up to the public, just breaking the censorship barrier – and that was one of the major works, a series of trials, in fact, that involved Naked Lunch, Mr Burroughs then began more advanced experimental work with the idea of collage applied… the painters’ ideas of collage applied to prose composition, with the raw cut-up volume, Minutes To Go (on which he  worked with Sinclair Beiles and Gregory Corso and Brion Gysin, (whose conception the “cut up” was, originally, as a painter)  And then a more refined version of that experimental work, published by Auerhahn Press in San Francisco called The Exterminator, followed by a trilogy of novels fully expanding cut-up techniques into dream compositional prose – Nova Express, Soft Machine, and The Ticket That Exploded  (I think Soft Machine was first, then Nova Express, then The Ticket That Exploded). Then in England, where there was a considerable censorship of all this work, Dead Fingers Talk(a compilation of prose from all of the books) followed by a long exposition of ideas in the book, The Job, published by Grove Press, long interviews, Exterminator!, a novel, [Editorial note - short stories, actually], and Wild Boys, another novel, coming, I think, in the early (19)70’s, which made use of some vipassana notions of mindfulness  - the “Do Easy”method that Burroughs has spoken of  (that Burroughs spoke of  in his Monday lecture (sic) a filmscript,The Last Words of Dutch Schultz,Cobble Stone Gardens, in the last few years, an autobiographical memoir (of) St Louis recollections, published by Cherry Valley Editions, the Blade Runner, and Port of  Saints, recently put out on the West Coast by Blue Wind Press. The Third Mind, a how-to book, how to cut up, or how to make a third mind, published by Viking,  and Roosevelt After The Inaugeration, put out about a half year ago by City Lights, which also published Mr Burroughs’Yage Lettersin the early (19)70s. A Book of Breeething, as well from Blue Wind Press positions and ideas associated with the Egyyptian hieroglyphs, and, forthcoming, a book of letters to myself from 1953 to 1956 {Editorial note - 1957, actually] to be published by Full Court Press,  and a giant best-selling novel called Cities of The Red Night which will be published by Viking? – is that right Bill?

WSB: No, Holt,Rhinehardt

AG: Richard Seaver Books

WSB:  No…Holt, Rhinehardt and Winston

AG: Oh - Holt, Rhinehardt and Winston – edited by Richard Seaver

So, Mr Burroughs who has been to Naropa every year for the last four years will present his recent work

[Burroughs begins reading approximately five-minutes in]

                                                                     [Magnus Pyke (1908-1992]

WSB: Thank you.  I recollect some years ago I was on a panel in Newcastle-on-Tyne with a Doctor Pyke, he called himself a scientist and he was defending, in fact extolling, the expansion of nuclear installations. He said that “responsible politicians know what they’re doing and nuclear power plants in England have a splendid safety record”

And so I said to him – Well, Doctor Pyke, as a scientist yourself you are doubtless acquainted with the fruit fly experiments, in which generations of fruit flies, exposed to radiation, have clearly demonstrated that there are no favorable mutations resulting from such radiation levels as would be massively released in a major industrial accident. The fruit flies all mutated, to be sure, wouldn’t you? – And all the mutations that were observed were unfavorable, grossly unfavorable. Just let me ask you one question, doctor, do you want to see your own daughter born with two cunts? – Well, he didn’t know how to answer me.

                                                      [J.Robert Oppenheimer (1904- 1967)]

It is to be remembered that on the occasion of the first atomic explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico, Robert Oppenheimer, the creator and founding father himself entertained the possibility of a chain reaction that would ignite the atmosphere. Twenty years later, he still believe that nuclear fission would destroy the planet . In 1965 on a television program he  said, “We have no become Shiva, destroyer of worlds” ("Now we have become death, the destroyer of worlds") and wiped a tear out of the corner of his eye. And various highly-placed military officials appeared to say, "It was a very difficult decision…" (they’re talking about 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 who feel bad about doing it!"

Now with the.. well, let us suppose that the Earth is headed for destruction and just what are we going to do about it ? Well all this may have happened many times before in this old universe. Here we are trillions of years ago in Galaxy X, and a rally has been organized to protest the use of black holes as an energy source, (a bit late, as it turned out. “Closing-time, gentlemen”

Brion Gysin has a bedtime story. It seems that trillions and trillions of years ago, a Giant flicked grease from his fingers and one of these gobs of grease is our universe on its way to the floor- Splat!

"He entered the bar with the best intentions in the world of establishing a warm human relationship with the local people, who had been, up to now, a bit stand-off-ish.

“A man’s a man for a’ that”, he thought, lustily, as he walked into the bar with his fishing gear and a bit of a swagger. “You have to stand up to these people, you know, they respect you for it. He found himself somewhat stonily received and turning from the bar with his mug of beer to face the room, he maladroitly snagged an old peasant in the scrotum with his fishing plug. With a poorly-timed attempt at easy joviality, he whipped out his switchblade and said, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to cut the whole thing off” Turning away he made an ineffectual gesture from a New Yorker cartoon with his knife, inadvertently blinding the proprietor’s infant son. Seeing that all his friendly overtures had fallen lamentably flat, he saw fit to withdraw as unobtrusively and expeditiously as possible."

"A mad slasher with a meat cleaver is terrorizing the subways. He is described as a slender-light-complected black about eighteen years old carrying his meat-cleaver in a beige bag. So the man bought a tear-gas gun and patrolled the subways. He would quell the slasher and become a public hero and receive a medal from the Mayor. He recognized the slasher at once. There he was a slim yellowish kid with a little beige carry-all slung over his shoulder. A hush in the car as everyone sees the slasher, Then it happens. The boy dives into his bag and comes out hacking. The man’s voice cuts through the bedlam like a British officer quelling a room-full of noisy natives. “Put down that cleaver, boy”. The boy whirls toward him and the man gave that boy a face full of tear gas. The reaction is immediate and horrible. With a great inhuman bellow of pain, the slasher throws himself around like a stricken scorpion, hacking on all sides. People are screaming, clawing, piled on top of each other. Now he leaps up to the ceiling and comes down slashing with insane strength, lopping off arms with one stroke. Now he’s flopping around on the floor, striking up at legs and ankles. Considering that his attempt to benefit mankind and become a popular hero has entailed unforeseen consequences, it seemed advisable to fade quietly away, as the door burst open and the cops rushed in, screaming, “What’s going on, here?”, plying their night-sticks with impartial fury. And the man thought of the curse of the Pharoahs, but he told himself firmly, ”We are put on this earth to help our fellow men”    -

Thank you  Thank you very much 

Now this reading is, from a Western in progress, entitled “The Johnson Family” – Now “The Johnson Family” was a turn-of-the-century expression (used) to designate good bums and thieves and it was elaborated into a code of conduct, A Johnson honors his obligations, his word is good and he is a good man to do business with, A Johnson minds his own business but he will help when help is needed (he will not stand by while someone is drowning or trapped under a burning car).

“Alright BJ, so what is this novel-soon-to-be-an-epic-making-motion-picture about?” In the words  of a great American, Franklin Delano Roosevelt– “Freedom from Fear”. Atom bomb explodes over Hiroshima. "Freedom from Fear",  indeed! -  Er., in one word, this book is about safety.

Kim Carsons the protaganist becomes the shootist because he wants to be safe, having enough sense to be scared. He is an anti-hero and an archetypical punk. I have taken as the model of Kim Carsons an English writer named Denton Welch, who died in 1948 at an early age, a very great writer, in my opinion  (he’s now out of print) [sic] – So I have abducted Denton Welch, much like a defector to the West spirited out by the CIA, to be the anti-hero of this novel. And it’s my feeling that I am doing his ghost a favor and he is lucky to be out from under England (as we all are in these United States. Never forget what we owe to George Washington) 

Now this is the space age and we’re here to go but there’s a lot of ballast holding us back, Just look at England – a Royal family, a House of Lords, rules left over from the Middle Ages stipulating what can and what cannot be sold in certain shops, licensing laws left over from World War I.  “Sorry, sir, the bar is closed”.  Now the Lyons cafeterias and food shops are all over London. They sell bread and cake (and) horrible soggy sandwiches, milk, tea, coffee (but not sugar!). Ask the clerk for the sugar and it’s like you asked a respectable druggist to sell you a pound of cocaine.  “We’re not allowed to dispense it, sir”.  You’ll all remember the trouble the Sex Pistols had with their song, “God Save The Queen..and the Fascist regime”, it’s a flabby, toothless fascism to be sure. Never go too far in any direction is the basic law in which Limey-land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole stinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top.

Well, here is my hero, Denton Welch , nee Kim Carson and he’s in St Louis, Missouri. It’s called Progressive Education. When Kim was fifteen, his father allowed him to withdraw from the school because he was so unhappy there and so much disliked by the other boys and their parents. “I don’t want that boy in the house again”, said Colonel Greenfield, “He looks like a sheep-killing dog”. “It is a walking corpse”, said a Saint Louis matron
poisonously. “The boy is rotten clear through and he stinks like a polecat”, Judge Farris pontificated. This was true. When angered or excited or frightened Kim steamed off a rank ruttish animal smell. “The child is not wholesome:, said Mr Kindhart, with his usual restraint. Kim was the most unpopular boy in the school, if not in the town of Saint Louis.

“They got nothing to teach you anyway”, his father said, “Why, the headmaster is a fucking priest.”

His father had a large collection of books on magic and the occult and Kim drew magic circles in the basement and tried to conjure up demons. His favorites were the Abominations like Humwawa, whose face is a mass of entrails and who rides on a whispering south wind, and Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues, and especially Gelal and Lilit, who invade the beds of men, because he did sometimes experience a vivid sexual visitation that he hoped was an incubus. He knew that the horror of these demon lovers was a gloomy Christian thing. In Japan there are phantom whores known as “fox maidens” who are highly prized and the man who can get his hands on a fox maiden is considered lucky. He felt sure there were fox boys as well. Such creatures could assume the form of either sex.

Once he made sex magic against Judge Farris, who said Kim was rotten clear through and smelled like a polecat. He nailed a full-length picture of the Judge taken from the society page to the wall, and masturbated in front of it while he recited a jingle he had learned from a Welsh nanny

“Slip and stumble (lips peel back from his teeth)/Trip and fall (his eyes light up inside)/Down the stairs/And hit the walllllllllllllllllll”– His hair stands up on end. He whines and whimpers and howls the word out and shoots all over the Judge’s leg. And Judge Farris actually did fall downstairs a few days later, and fractured his shoulder bone. The Judge swore that a scrawny, stinking red dog, that must have gotten in through the basement window, suddenly jumped out at him on the stairs, with a most peculiar smile on its face too, showing all its teeth, wrapped its paws around his legs, tripping him up so that he fell and hit his shoulder against the wall at the landing.  No one believed him except Kim, and Kim knew that he had succeeded in projecting a thought-form. But he was not overly impressed. The Judge was dead drunk every night and he was always falling down. Magic seemed to him a hit-and-miss operation, and to tell the truth, a bit silly. Guns and knives were more reliable

Kim Carsons training as a shootist begins. He meets a wise old assassin, Whispering Kes Mayfield. "Uncle Kes, This is Kim Carsons". The old man spoke in a dead dry whisper. ”Your hand and your eyes know a lot more about shootin’ than you do. Just learn to stand out of the way”. Now his eyes, old, unbluffed, unreadable, rest on Kim as if tracing his outline in the air “City boy, did you ever see a dog roll in carrion?” - "Yes sir, I was tempted to join him, sir" -  "Did you ever see a black snake pretend to be a rattlesnake?” – The scene flashed in front of Kim’s eyes. Jerry Ellison and Kim had  chased and cornered a six-foot blacksnake. It was a Fall day, dead leaves on the ground. The snake coiled itself, opened its mouth, vibrating the tip of its tail in the dry leaves. Both boys saw immediately what was happening- “He’s pretending to be a rattlesnake, trying to scare us off, how does he know enough to do that?” “What do you think, Kim?”, the old man asked.”You think he once saw a rattlesnake scare someone?” – “No, sir, I think he just knows about other snakes” – “Kim, if you had your choice, would you rather be a poisonous snake or a non-poisonous snake?” – “Oh , poisonous, sir, like a green mamba or spitting cobra” – “Why?” – “I’d feel safer, sir” – “And that’s your idea of heaven?, feeling safer?” – “Yes, sir”  “Is a poisonous snake really safer?” “Not really but he must feel good after he bites someone” – “Safer?” - “Yes, sir, dead people are less frightening than live ones” – “Young man, I think you’re an assassin” – “I want to be one, sir” – Kim recruits a band of flamboyant and picturesque outlaws called “The Wild Fruits”. There’s the Crying Gun who breaks into tears at the sight of his opponent – “What’s the matter, baby, somebody take your lollipop? – “Oh signor, I am sorry for you”. And The Priest who goes into a gunfight giving his adversary the last rites and the Blind Gun who zeros in with bat squeaks. Kim trains his men to identify themselves with death. He takes some rookie Guns out to a dead horse rotting in the sun eviscerated by vultures. The vultures flop away heavy with carrion. Kim points to the horse steaming there in the noonday heat, “Alright, roll in it!” – “What? – “Roll in it like dogs of war, get the stink of death into your chaps and your boots and your guns and your hair.  The most of us puked at first but we got used to it and vultures followed us around hopefully. We always ride into town with the wind behind us. The townspeople gag and retch, “My god, what’s that stink?” – “It’s the stink of death, citizens" – Here’s the big shoot-out with Old Man Bickford’s guns – “Sixty of the best that money can buy”

They wait in the Charity Saloon.A Fifteen-year-old carrot-top sticks his head in – “Here they come”. Fifty horsemen are approaching with the speed of a tornado, a whirling black cloud of vultures above them, beaks snapping.

After that the Wild  Fruits seek a low profile and Kim sets up an organization known as the Johnson Family

Jerry Ellisor, the retarded boy from next door, went on to harrass timid WASPs from New Yorker cartoons, the type of person who doesn’t want to get mixed up in things, a passer-by on the other side… here’s a girl with both arms cut off trying to flag him down. He just swerves around something like that and keeps going. (I refer to the case of the fifteen-year-old girl who had both arms cut off by a rapist and she rushed onto a highway and three cars passed her by before one stopped and took her to a hospital).

And a friend of mine, Kells Elvins, was doing ninety in his town and country Chrysler on the way from far Texas to Laredo. And he comes up over a rise and there is a fucking cow right in the middle of the road on a bridge, So he slams on the brake and hits the cow, doing sixty. The car turns over and he is pinned under it with a broken collar-bone, covered from head to foot with blood and guts and cow shit . So along comes a  car of WASP salesmen, They get out reluctantly and he’s trying to explain to them how to jack the car up and get it off him. They see that blood, man, they don’t want to know they get back in their car and drive away. Then a truck driver comes along and he doesn’t need to be told . He knows exactly what to do. He gets the car off Kells and takes him to a hospital. Well, the truck driver was a Johnson and the salesmen were shits – like most salesmen – they’re selling shit and they are shit.

So here is this youngish exec WASP in a heathfood store after a diet lunch of watercress salad and carrot juice. And a youth sits down right at his table, although it’s three o'clock in the afternoon, the place is nearly empty. The WASP becomes aware of a horrible odor, like ferrets, only more piercing, it makes his eyes water and his stomach turn. The boy smiles showing yellow buck teeth – “I always smell like this, just before…you know”. 
The boy passes him a card on which is typed in red letters, “Hi, I’m Jerry. These are my instructions. When it starts to happen, stay calm, sit down wherever you are and quietly inform the helpful person nearest to you that you are going to throw a fit. When it starts you will wrap a handkerchief, towel or napkin around your finger and insert it in my mouth to keep me from biting my tongue off. With the other hand, you’ll be loosening my collar, belt and shoes and opening up my fly to relieve pressure on the groin. Erections frequently occur during my spells. It’s a fact of nature. Be careful during my recovery as I sometimes lash out at people or leap to your throat like a wild animal. God will reward you for your kind act. Your humble servant, Jerry Ellisor".  Without more ado, the WASP threw some money on the table and ran for his life. But he was too late. With a low throaty cry the boy threw himself in the WASP’s path, tripping him up, then wraps around his legs like a python. There was a sudden reek of urine and excrement as Jerry voided in his pants. The appalled WASP, seeing a policeman at the door, scream for help – “What are you doing with that kid, you filthy pervert!” – A nightstick crashed against his skull. Five hours later, trembling and near collapse, he was released from jail after his lawyer  called a CIA cousin in Washington.

In the course of a fit, Jerry would sometimes shriek out prophecies which mostly came true. On Red Tuesday he rushed into the stock market, eyes glowing, hair standing up on his head, tore off his clothes and stood there naked in front of the petrified financiers, his body brick-red and steaming off the stink of a hundred polecats. He collapsed on the floor flopping around and showing his awful yellow teeth as he ejaculated “Sell, sell, sell"– It was the worst crash since ’29, dazed brokers and speculators later reported. “It was a voice full of money, you had to believe it”. The terrible Pitboy, as he was called, was allotted a handsome remittance to stay out of the financial district – but he went on to train a whole troop of Pitboys – to terrorize the WASP community and exacted a huge tribute.

Thank you.. not quite finished…one more  

In last resort- the truth . A purple-assed baboon runs for President of the United States. It’s not so far-fetched at this point as it was then in 1968.

 "A.J. in his Uncle Sam suit steps to a mike. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my coveted privilege and deep honor to introduce to you the distinguished Senator and former Justice of the Supreme Court, Homer Mandrill, known to his many friends as the Purple Better One. No doubt most of you are familiar with a book called African Genesis written by Robert Ardrey, a native son of Chicago, and I may add a true son of America. I quote from Mr Ardrey's penetrating work: "When I was a boy in Chicago, I attended the Sunday School of a neighborhood Presbyterian church. I recall our Wednesday night meetings with the simplest nostalgia. We would meet in the basement. There would be a short prayer and a shorter benediction. And we would turn out all the lights and in total darkness hit each other with chairs". 
"Mr Ardrey's early training tempered his character to face and make known the truth about the origins and nature of mankind. 'Not in innocence and not in Asia was mankind born. The home of our fathers was the African highland on a sky-swept savannah glowing with menace. The most significant of all our gifts was the legacy bequeathed us by our immediate forebears a race of terrestrial, flesh-eating, killer apes…Raymond A Dart from the University of Johannesburg was the strident voice from South Africa that would prove the southern ape to be the human ancestor. Dart put forth the simple thesis that Man emerged from the anthropoid background for one reason only: because he was a killer. A rock, a stick, a heavy bone was to our ancestral killer ape the margin of survival…And he said that since we had tried everything else we might in last resort try the truth…Man's original nature imposes itself on any human solution."   

 "The aggressive southern ape, suh, glowing with menace, fought your battles on the perilous veldts of Africa 500,000 years ago. Had he not done so you would not be living here in this great city in this great land of America raising your happy families in peace and prosperity. Who more fitted to represent our glorious Simian heritage than Homer Mandrill himself a descendent of that illustrious line?"

Actually, there can only be one candidate, the Purple Better One, our future President.  This is the space age we are here to go. But the aggressive Southern ape, glowing with  menace may block your way to space. That is precisely his function. The human species is about a million years old, only about thirty-thousand years have been accounted for by pre-historians, (and that leaves a long question mark). Perhaps a number of previous civilizations disappeared, destroyed by destructive use of a technology that could have led to the exploration of space, instead  the human species reverted to its glorious simian heritage. It could happen again if we let that ape take the wheel…

Thank you.. Thank you, very much 

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