1986 Faculty Poetry Collaborative Reading – 1 Ginsberg-Taylor-Clausen-Waldman

January 16, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: 1986 Faculty Poetry Collaborative Reading – 2 (Ed Sanders and Steven Taylor)

≪ Previous: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 251

[Allen Ginsberg]

[Steven Taylor]

[Andy Clausen]

[Anne Waldman]

This rare Naropa Institute audio-recording, (dated July 12, 1986), introduced by Anne Waldman and featuring Allen with Steven Taylor, (here dubbed “bodhisattva of music”), alongside the respectfully-noted "Naropa All-Star String Quartet", (and followed by a reading/performance by Andy Clausen), comprises the first half of a memorable night, which, among other things, saw the premiere of Steven's setting of Allen's poem, "White Shroud" (and an invigorating-as-ever reading/performance by Ed Sanders, which will be featured in this space tomorrow)

[Anne begins by introducing three participants (her introduction to Ed Sanders will be included tomorrow]

Anne Waldman: Allen Ginsberg, Guggenheim Fellow, member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, author of Howl,Kaddish,Planet News, Fall of America, Mind Breaths,Plutonian Ode& the forthcoming White Shroud from Harper and Row. His Collected Poemswas also published by Harper and Row in 1985. He’s been quite peripatetic lately, traveling to Chinain the Winter of (19)85 (he toured and lectured at the invitation of the Chinese Writers Union), in the Fall of (19)85, he visited Russia. In recent years.. and recently, more recently, Nicaragua. Mr. Ginsberg is the co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Dismbodied Poetics, Naropa Institute, 1974 – The time, these times we have, these summer writing programs. seem to get more and more precious.. and fruition..more and more fruition level is going on… He has sung with Bob Dylan and The Clash He has recorded William Blake’s songs, as well as a double-album entitledFirst Blues for John Hammond Records. He’s been a major spokesman for the peace movement as well, as most of you know, is a member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and was involved at the Conference here [at Naropa], the strategies for peace-making. He’ll be continuing his teaching this week at Naropa Institute and reading and performing with other musicians at a rock club next Saturday night, the 19^th, (so if you want to get more, stay tuned!)

Steven Taylor is a musician and composer. He has toured as accompanist with Allen since 1975. From 1980 to 1983, he wrote orchestral arrangements for the singer Judy Collins, and in 1984, as a member ofThe Fugs, he performed in concerts in New York and on tour in Europe. He’s traveling with Ed Sanders to Oslo in the next few weeks to perform a recent opera, entitled Star Peace, which he’s worked on with Ed Sanders, which premiered in the last May and he’s recently been co-producing music for the song-poetKenward Elmslie.

Andy Clausen was born in a Belgian bomb-shelter, came to the USA at the age of six, grew up in Oakland, has lived in Austin, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado. He’s the author of The Iron Curtain of Love,which is for sale outside at the tables up front. He’s recently taught a lively class with our [Naropa’s] writing program on Zaum, a Russian literary movement, and read the poems of Mayakovsky. He’s currently running a very wonderful series, poetry series, in Boulder called the “Boulder Literary Voices”, (which has a reading coming up tomorrow night at the BCAC [Boulder Community Arts Center], with David Cope, Niko Murray, and Alison Bennett,yes, Alison Bennett coming from New York). He’s recently been published inBombay Ginmagazine, a long association with the wonderful magazine New Blood which came out of Boulder and Long Shot magazine from New Brunswick is featuring some poems of his. So, without further ado, lets get this show on the road. Thank you. Please no smoking in here or taping . Thanks

[Allen begins his reading approximately four minutes in]

AG: To begin this evening of music and poetry. with Andrea Hennessyon bass, and Steven Taylor (who will be present for most of the evening accompanying, as bodhisattva of music, most of the poets). We’ll begin with “The Nurses Song” by William Blakewhich I usually end concerts, making use of that as a kind of mantra for community singing. So this is a sing-along with me and Steven and those of you in the audience who’ve sung this before. The last mantric line is “All the hills echoed” (or, for the rhyme, “All the hills echo-ed”. So please sing along with us when we get into it and we’ll make the building resound and begin the evening right.

[At approximately five minutes in, Allen starts singing - "When the voices of children are heard on the green…"]

[At approximately ten-and-three-quarter minutes in, he introduces "The Naropa All-Star String Quartet"]

"The next presentation with The Naropa All-Star String Quartet (Eric Balderson, cello, Gregory Munna, viola, Jean Harrison, violin, John Oliver, violin, Steven Taylor. composer of the music - words by myself )- "White Shroud". This is the premiere performance of this poemwith music."

[Allen goes on] - "The procedure of the evening – After my reading of this poem with The Naropa All-Star String Quartet, Andy Clausen will read, then Steven Taylor and Anne Waldman will have a song, then we’ll have an intermission (brief), and then we’ll present Ed Sanders, and Steven Taylor, working together with two other musicians who will be announced as we go along

[At approximately twelve-and-a-half minutes in, Allen begins his recital of "White Shroud", with the accompaniment of The Naropa All-Star String Quartet - (“I am summoned from my bed to the great city of the dead…”) , concluding at approximately twenty-three minutes in – (“I kissed him and filled my pen and wept”)

[Andy Clausen’s reading then follows (beginning at approximately twenty-four-and-a-half minutes in)]

AC: " I will begin with a short poem that I wrote upon the Space-Shuttle Challengercatastrophe – “There are thirty thousand people a day starving to death/Of course they don’t do it live on national tv.” – The next poem is ”In The Garden State – The Fourth Bardo” - (“No mirror is empty/the cold sky goes on without me”.. “I want New Jersey to know how much I love her".."Kiss me, New Jersey, kiss me”) – The next poem "is from the new “Long Shot” - "This poem’s entitled, “What Kind of Hermit?” (“What kind of hermit whacks off a lot?/What is the sounds of no hands clapping?..” ... “...No hands clapping. no mouth laughing, no one dying, no-one born”)
[At approximately twenty-nine-and-a-half minutes in] Andy reads “Sacred Relics” - (“Red-nosed busted blue derelicts supported by lamposts and buildings in the typewriter rain, reeking of fermenting urine…"... “..take this senseless agony, these bag-ladies and bag-less men, take them into your bomb-shelters,/ take them with you./Now you will need their experience, take them”) - followed by “She Walks By the Crew” –("I’ve just rounded off the tamping machine,/ our shovels hot as noon-time at a down-town fast-food grill,/ our faces glistening,/ a gulp of water not cool enough…”….”Pull the rope, Andy, time to start the machine.)”

[At approximately thirty-three-and-three-quarter minutes in, he reads] an untitled rant -

(“O the fugacious melon squash brain cancerdesultory desolate unswept sleepless streets in your cavernous bloody miasmic…"… "....I shall be paid She shall be paid We shall be paid..”… “every dollar, every deniro, every rouble, we are owed”)

[This is followed by a slightly longer piece, “Deconstruction of an Erection”, the recording of which gets interrupted (it concludes approximately forty-three-and-a-half minutes in with the line, "I'll see you in New York") - (“Well, I’m blue-balled blue, I sang,/ as the fruit of desire flew/too jumping hard to drive eighty miles an hour to the Apple and eighty back for a deconstructionist salon..”…”thinking of that deconstruction woman and all that white space”]

"I’m going to read one more and then we’ll do it, Okay? Is that good? Am I on time? (I'm not even going to look!) - Okay, this is called “Chest Organ’ - [Andy reads his Zaum poem, "Chest Organ"] - (“Infinite Zaum, perpetual future, down-home fuse, erectile blues, New Woman muse…”…”..And Zaum will be Woman of the Future!”)

[Andy concludes his set (at approximately forty-eight-and-a-quarter minutes in) performing - singing/performing] “Fishing in the Acid Rain" (with Steven Taylor’s guitar accompaniment) - (“O when the catfish leap/upon the land to sleep..”... "….ain’t got no line, ain’t got no hook, what do I hear from my brain?”)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The final piece in this first half (beginning at approximately fifty-two-and-a-half minutes in, and concluding at approximately fifty-six-and-a-quarter minutes in), similarly with Steven Taylor's accompaniment, is a piece by Anne Waldman, "a piece called “Bardo Corridor” ("I had my ego & two grams of hash/Sat down in a corridor..")
- Thank you.

[For the last, approximately, three minutes of the tape, Anne delivers, "just a little brief fund-raising announcement"… 1986 fund-raising for Naropa Institute]

[Audio for the above can be heard here, starting at the beginning, and concluding at approximately fifty-six-and-a-quarter minutes in (the last approximately three minutes of the tape being taken up by that brief (Naropa) fund-raising announcement)]

part two of this reading, (Ed Sanders), continues tomorrow

↧

1986 Faculty Poetry Collaborative Reading – 2 (Ed Sanders and Steven Taylor)

January 17, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: "A Little Side-Trip in Auden"

≪ Previous: 1986 Faculty Poetry Collaborative Reading – 1 Ginsberg-Taylor-Clausen-Waldman

[Ed Sanders]

continuing from yesterday - The 1986 Faculty Poetry Collaborative Reading

Anne Waldman : Ed Sanders– graduated from NYU with degrees in Greek and Latin. He’s a poet-novelist-musician-inventor of strange electronic instruments. He plays the quilt frame . He was the founding member of The Fugs ,a political rock group most of you know from the Sixties, which has been reactivated (very active now), traveling around. He’s written an opera with Steven Taylorentitled Star Peace, which premiered in May in Syracuse and is going to be performed in Oslo in the next weeks. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985. He’s author of Fame and Love in New York andTales of Beatnik Glory, Volumes I and II, in addition to three novels. His most recent pamphlet is called Hymn to Maple Syrup and he has a Collected Poemscoming out from theCoffee House Press. He has recently recorded an album with the Fugs called Refuse to Be Burnt-Out, a tape entitled "Keeping The Issues Alive", and a record entitled No More Slavery. It’s a great delight and pleasure to welcome him back to Naropa Institute after too long a time, please welcome Ed Sanders. Thank you.

[Ed Sanders appears approximately sixty-one minutes in]

ES: Thank you. Well, we’ll.. I’ll start out with a few poems using my various little musical instruments, and then, after I do a few poems, Steve Taylor will come up and we’ll even do a rock number, and then we’ll do some various ballads that we’ve been working on, love songs and so forth. And then we’ll close and we’re going to bring back The Naropa-All-Star Quartet there for a string version of the title tune from the album, No More Slavery

[sound of electronic pulse-lyre, electronic gadgetry, tuning up] – “They came when the Tsar banished the Yiddish theatre in 1882…") - [Ed begins with a reading of “Yiddish-Speaking Socialists of the Lower East Side”

[At approximately seventy-six-and-a-half minutes in, Ed presents some of his equipment] This is called "the talking tie” [sic] – and this is called “the singing quilting frame” [sic] –
I was going to a poetry reading in upstate New York and you drive through the wonderful lake country up by Tupper Lake. I was driving through Tupper Lake and found this nice.. (item) there (I think it’s a quilting-frame, or an embroidery-frame), at a craft shop at Tupper Lake, New York, a few months ago, and I thought I… I went to Radio Shack and got a bunch of transistors and stuff and bought a Yamaha music computer, and, anyway, I hooked it up and it’s...[Ed demonstrates the sound] – and so it’s… I’ve got it tuned to F-sharp major because it’s the chord-system I like to sing to, but it’s just spaced...it’s randomly programmable. With this you can put any series of nine notes in here. I’m sort of learning how to play it now so.. (The problem with having all these instruments is that you have to develop chops for them, so I’m working on it). And you can get all kinds of sounds, like this is a harp (plays harp sound,s trums) and then you get individual.. (plays individual notes) - and then I get, you know, the bells of… the DX7 bells (plays bell sounds) - those of you who have the DX7, and then I like this violin patch that Yamaha makes (plays that) - So I’m going do a section, a hymn from the opera Star Peace, sort of a version of the final hymn – a question of how much male aggression do we want to put into a universe that we barely are beginning to understand. It’s called “Hymn to Star Peace” and it's dedicated to Gary Snyder (“Arise, O Star peace, arise, arise..")

"Well, so I’ll end this part with all these instruments. Anybody.. afterwards, if you want to see them, I can show them to you – a “show-and-tell”. I have many more I couldn’t bring with me from Woodstock."

"So this (next song) is sort of dedicated to some brothers and sisters, mostly brothers, in the poetry world who’ve passed on, a little too soon. So the names in here are just some… the guys who died of various maladies, too soon.- One jumped out of the building near the UN, one was run over by a subway, and one died of complications of needle habit. And it has a Latin phrase – “Noli in spiritu combueri, which is, of course, the Latin for “Refuse To Be Burnt-Out”-" [Ed performs "Noli in spiritu combueri"and, at its conclusion, announces, "Steven and I will do some tunes together"] - [There is a brief pause while instruments are being set up]

[Steven Taylor]

[The next stage of the show, (starting at approximately ninety minutes in), is songs - three songs - by Steven Taylor]

ST: Okay there’s a whole bunch of premier stuff on this program tonight. This is a premiere. I’m going to try working with the tape. And this is a lyric that I wrote.

Allen always gave me lots of good advice about my poetry, and one of the things he said was, “It’s easier than you think! - You just look outside your skull as if you’re looking through a window and put down the pictures. And when you pause, don’t think of the words but to see the picture better". So this is a result of that advice
[Steven sings his first song,"Picture of You", a compendium of visual perception(s)] - (“Hand moving on the Uptown E-train…”) . This is followed (at approximately ninety-three-and-a-half minutes in) by a second song, “Like A Star” - “This is called “Like A Star” and there’s a quote at the bridge, “Vaya la niña divina!”, which means “Go, divine child!”, and it's from a poem by Jose Marti, a Cuban poet, which has all kinds of personal significance) - (”In the cities...").
The third and final song was "written by a friend of mine, a poet in New York, he’s a native of Detroit and this is like what it’s like to grow up in an industrial..what do you call (them)? ...corporate parks" [Audience member enquires, "What’s his name? - ST replies, "Alright..George Moore] - Some silence before the song starts up (at approximately ninety-nine minutes in) - (“Watching the furnaces light up the sky…") - & after the song, more silence]

[Ed Sanders then returns to the mic]

ES: Okay this (1986) is almost the twentieth anniversary of the Psychedelicatessen, which sprouted on Avenue A and 10^th Street in the summer of 1967 and there was a young woman who was wont to stand outside of the Psychedelicatessen holding a peacock feather in the left hand and a piece of incense in the other hand. And her name was Sherry Bendel, who had run away from home after her mother had heard, on the local Pacifica radio station, that she had just taken her History Regents (exams) on acid. However, Sherri Bendel has come a long way. She’s now Dean of a prestigious medical school.

So this is for you, Sherri. I won’t tell them your real name.

- [Beginning at approximately one-hundred-and-seven minutes in, Ed & Steven perform a version of the Fugs' “Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side”]

ES: Are we going (on) too long? _ I don’t know.. What shall we do now?

Audience: Star Peace

ES: Well, no, you’ve got to come to Oslo for that. I thought we’d do.. since I.. well, in 1977, and I guess the last time I was here, I began, under the urging of my … the guy that kept me from operating an eskimo-pie franchise in Kansas City! – Allen Ginsberg – urged me to get into singing again, after I’d gotten out of it for years. So, this is a poem by Sappho that Steve and I are going to sing in the original Greek (it’s a four quatrain poem) - and I’ll do a translation – it’s for the.. the love poem..about watching a person get married – “Equal to the Gods” - “Equal to the gods/ is the man who sits/in front of you leaning closely/and hears you sweetly speaking/and the lust-licking laughter/ of your mouth, oh it makes/my heart beat in flutters/ When I look at you/Brochea, not a part of my/voice comes out/but my tongue breaks,/ and right away/ a delicate fire runs just beneath/my skin./ I see a dizzy nothing/my ears ring with noise/the sweat runs down/upon me, and a trembling/that I cannot stop/seizes me limb and loin/o, I am greener than grass, and death soon here"

[Ed follows this with a second classicly-inspired poem] – "This has an epitaph also from a Greek person, from Heraclitus, I won’t bother you with the Greek, but it’s to the effect of “You can’t go in the same river twice” - and it starts out with a four-quatrain poem from.. in "The Songs of Experience" by William Blake - ("The Lily") - (“The modest rose puts forth a thorn..”)

"Algernon Swinburne was a bit of a dour cjat in his later years when he was holed up with Watts-Duntonand whatever his name was.. But this is from "Atlanta In Calydon". It’s in the.. We did this in 1965, for the hell of it, in a little recording studio on Forty-Eighth Street, and I’ve sort of revived it. It’s not my personal philosophy really, but it’s an interesting philosophy - (“Before the beginning of years/, There came to the making of man/ Time, with the gift of tears/Grief, with the glass that ran..”… “His life is a watch or a vision/Between a sleep and a sleep”)"

"Alright, we’ll do two more and then…It’s been a pleasure being here again at Naropa. I’ve had a great time. So you can sing along with this one. It’s got one of the all-time hook-lines for the Anti-Nuclear War movement –“Ban The Bomb”

"Alright, we’ll bring on the Naropa All-Stars - it’ll take a couple of minutes to set it up but we’ll get it cracking here just as soon as we can."

"(This) song-poem was inspired by reading the love letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne when he was first discovered.. or when his consumption became apparent, around 1819 and 1820 and some of the most beautiful love letters and the most saddest in the literature. And it has as an epitaph a quotation from a poem by Charles Olson – "O souls, burn/ alive, burn now/ that you may forever/ have peace, have/ what you crave” - (“I remember seeing you upon the trembling bed and neither one constrained by will to shove the other’s soul..” – “No more slavery” -
Bye-bye! - The Naropa All-Stars, folks! -

[Encore]
ES: An encore wasn't in any way predicted, but we'll do..the first poem thatWilliam Blakeever wrote, in his first notebook, when he was between about thirteen and fifteen. and it's the four-quatrain - "How sweet I roam'd from field to field…" ("How sweet I rom'd from field to field,/And tasted all the summer's pride.."…"Then stretches out my golden wing/And mocks my loss of liberty") - Thank you..

[Anne Waldman thanks the participants]

AW: Thank you Allen Ginsberg, Andy Clausen, Steven Taylor, whose beautiful delicate musical arrangements (gave) incredible continuity to the whole evening
- and Ed Sanders, thank you for the beautiful sounds.

AG: And tonight, I think we witnessed some of the combination of Naropa Institute's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poeticsand the union of poesy and music, the refinement out of our suffering of an exquisite beauty which transcends our grumpiness and despair.

AW: Thank you William Blake and Sappho.

AG: So, in order to continue, the refinement of beauty out of our lives, we'll have to continue with Naropa Institute, and the communion of poets, and to do that, we'll have to seek for gold, which is the sign of our majesty

AW: Here here!

AG: And so, as Anne, earlier, asked you to participate, to help in sustaining Naropa Institute with your contribution, please do help us to continue for the next century

AW: Thank you audience too. Goodnight.

[Audio for the above may be heard here, beginning at approximately fifty-nine-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at the end of the tape. This tape (also including the first half of this reading) supplements the tape-source cited here)

↧

"A Little Side-Trip in Auden"

January 18, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: W.H.Auden - Age of Anxiety - 1

≪ Previous: 1986 Faculty Poetry Collaborative Reading – 2 (Ed Sanders and Steven Taylor)

AG: So what comes on then with (W.H.) Auden (Auden's a pretty sophisticated man) is a profuse version [of alliterative verse]. It's not an early muscular version of alliterative writing but, every once in a while, as we had in that piece I read last time where he's just giving the news broadcast, that's more like the older Anglo-Saxon - "Now the news. Night raids on/Five cities. Fires started.." Do you remember that? - So I'm going to go on with a few more speeches by the characters in "The Age of Anxiety". Quant is talking about the seven ages of man, and this is, like, kid-time, a kid with his play (except it's located in the Industrial landscape). So it's a vision of the Industrial landscape seen through the eyes of a kid playing behind the factories in somewhat lax but real alliterative verse.

"Secret meetings at the slaughter-house/ With nickels and knives , initiations/Behind the billboards. Then the hammerpond looked/So green and grim, yet graciously its dank/Water made us welcome - once in, we/ Swam without swearing. The smelting mill/We broke into a big chimney/And huge engines, holding our breath, we/Lighted matches and looked at the gears,/The cruel cogwheels, the crank's absolute/Veto on pleasure. In a vacant lot/We built a bonfire and burned alive/Some stolen tires. How strong and good one/Felt at first, how fagged coming through the urban evening/
Heavy like us/Sank the gas-tanks - it was supper time/In hot houses helpless babies and/Telephones gabbled untidy cries,/And on embankments black with burnt grass/Shambling freight-trains were shunted away/Past crimson clouds."

- [actually, it's pretty good for twentieth-century landscape, but is one grey.. Like,"Heavy like us/ Sank the gas-tanks" - my god! it's awful! - but it is, that is, almost, like a primaeval vision of the Industrial landscape like out of Beowulf  - "Heavy like us/ Sank the gas-tanks"
So.. there actually is a real use for this kind of verse, if you really want to punch home -"now the news" - now the primaeval news - if you want to punch home the primaeval news

Let's see what else? - I hadn't, as I said, I hadn't read this for many years, but things came up, like perfume out of the past, it was like Proust dipping on a little madeline cookie into the tea and remembering childhood afternoons.

"Quant: [in reply to the cliche, "Time flies"] -" No, Time returns, a continuous Now/ as the clock counts. The captain sober/Gulps his beer as the galley-boy drunk/Gives away his water/William East is/ Entering Olive as Alfred West/Is leaving Elaine, Lucky
McGuire/Divides the spoil as Vacuous Molly/Joins in the joke, Justice van
Dieman/Foresees the day when the slaves rise and/Ragamuffins roll around the block/His cone-shaped skull, while Convict 90/Remembers his mother. We move on/ As the wheel wills, one revolution/Registers all things, the rise and fall/In pay and prices,
peregrinations/Of lies and loves, colossal bangs and/Their sequential quiets in quick order./And who runs may read written on walls:"Teddy Peterson/Never washes""I'm not your father/You slobbering Swede""Sulky Moses/Has bees in his bush""Betty is thinner/But Connie lays".."

(that's the beginning of a much longer, longer, soliloquy. I'm just reading, sort of, the high points..)

Then what he [Auden] tried to do (which was a later development)…  See, the Old English verse was alliterative, but then there were Norman invasions, French language overlay on the Anglo-Saxon, and so, apparently, there was, like, a progression in the verse forms toward a lengthening-out (of) the alliterative thing, it becoming less and less accentual and more and more like the prosody of the Continent, of France particularly, which was, I think, in those days, counted syllables, and some Latin aspect, of, like, the vowels. So the element of counting the length of vowel and counting the number of syllables began smoothing out the line a little bit, as time went on. In other words, the.. there was this.. the French prosody fucked (the) English prosody and what came out was this hybrid, which finally emerges later later later..well, first in Chaucer and then, later on, up to Shakespeare's blank verse. But, as part of that, then they began making little song forms, verse stanzas instead of these heavy stark lines, then they began making verse form. So Auden has made a little funny verse form (you know, like a stanza form) instead of just the alliterative lines (he's used alliteration but made a stanza form out of it) and in it are some of the.. .one of the greatest lines, I think, of the century, actually, one of the most interesting trick, trick-strange, classic lines (but not very well know yet, I'm sure it'll be in anthologies in a hundred years).

Rosetta, the advertising girl, is talking:

"Opera glasses on the ormolu table/Frock -coated father framed on the wall/IN a bath chair facing a big bow window/With valley and village invitingly spread/I get what is going on./ At the bend in the Bourne where the brambles grow thickest/Major Mott meets Millicent Rusk,/Discreetly the kingfisher keeps his distance/But an old old swan looks on as they/Commit the sanguine sin/ Heavy the orchards: There's Alison pinching/Her baby brother, Bobby and Dick/Frying a frog with their father's reading glass,/Conrad and Kay in the carpentry shed,/Where they've no business to be./ Cold are the clays of Kibroth-Hattaavh/ Babel's urbanities buried in sand/Red the geraniums in the rectory garden/ Where the present incumbent reads Plato in French/And has lost his belief in Hell./ From the gravel pits in Groaning Hollow/To the monkey puzzle on Murderer's Hill/From the Wellington Arms to the white steam laundry,/The significant note is nature's cry/Of long-divided love:/ As I watch through my window a world that has fallen,/The mating and malice of men and beasts/ The corporate greed of quiet vegetation/And the homesick little obstinate sobs/Of things thrown into being."

I guess those last lines - "Of things thrown into being", "Commit the sanguine sin", "I get what was goin gon""Where there's no business to be" and "And has lost his belief in Hell" - there's something there of old Greek Sapphic stanzas or Alcaic stanza  - I've forgotten how to identify it.
But I love that "Cold are the clays of Kibroth-Hattaavh/ Babel's urbanities buried in sand" - I remember that. People walked around Columbia University campus in 1946 saying "Cold are the clays of Kibroth-Hattaavh/ Babel's urbanities buried in sand"!  I hadn't seen it through all the years, but it stuck, so it must be good.

Student: What does it mean?

AG:"Cold are the clays of Kibroth-Hattaavh.."? Kibroth-Hattaavh? Well, Kibroth-Hattaavh - I never found out where that was, but presumably that's where Ayatollah Khomeni [sic]…is, is making some scene - [this is 1980] - Kibroth-Hattaavh, I guess, is a Middle Eastern, Mesopotamian, archaelological site, most likely. Babel - the tower of Babel, where many languages were spoken, where all the urbane diplomats got together to speak many languages - just like right now. "Babel's urbanities"? - Well, the foreigners all assemble in Babel to build the tower that would reach heaven and overtake the Gods. All the sophisticates with their Afric clay, their Afric red clay and their brown clay from Northern Germany and their giant cartwheels with iron rims from Kibroth-Hattaavh, all getting together, all these urbane fellows having tea and drinking wine together and making big plans for the neutron bomb! -"Babel's urbanities buried in sand"! And, right now, about where the Tower of Babel was (there's a great sandy desert).. In fact, I think some Japanese.. I read in the (New York) Times that some Japanese architectural association has just been.. has signed a contact to rebuild the Tower of Babel! - Actually! - Just in time! - Actually! - They're going to build the Tower of Babel! - Right on the spot! They're having a little difficulty, because the…

Peter Orlovsky. That's right, that's right..

AG: …the whole place has just sunk into the mud, it's hard to find some firm foundations.

Student: The Tower of Pisa?
AG: No, it's the Tower of Babel that they're going to do..
Peter Orlovsky: the Tower of Babel, right, the Tower of Babylon, in Iraq - Iraq
AG: ...The Tower of Pisa's still standing...
Student: Who's going to build it? Wall Street?
Peter Orlovsky: The Japanese

AG: No, no, they didn't ask Americans or other Westerners, they asked the Japanese because the Japanese were technologically superior, and were more urbane! these days - and they had more money! - (they'd more gold around) - "Japanese urbanities buried in sand" - "Cold are the clays of Kibroth-Hattaavh" - I guess, that must have been , Kibroth-Hattaavh must have been.. I looked it up in the Classical Dictionary but it was a Shorter Classical Dictionary and I didn't find it, but I assume it's some place where they.. some archaeological dig where they found lots of cuneiform (clay) - "Cold are the clays of Kibroth-Hattaavh" - (hyphenated - K-I-B-R-O-T-H - hyphen - H-A-T-T-A-A-V-H - Hattaavh) - "Cold are the clays of Kibroth-Hattaavh// Babel's urbanities buried in sand"
Now that's a little side-trip in Auden

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

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W.H.Auden - Age of Anxiety - 1

January 19, 2016, 3:00 am

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[Allen Ginsberg on W.H.Auden's Age of Anxiety Continues]

AG: Then, there is a very magnificent long speech, I think, by Rosetta - oh no, a real funny one - oh yeah, another form he did was alliterative (which was to make a little sort of Broadway love song where the lovers are vowing to each other). "If you..", well, there are

"Which vows they now alternately swore" [swore - using this kind of alliterative verse] - "If you blush. I'll build breakwaters./ When you're tired, I'll tidy your table./If you cry, I'll climb crags./When you're sick, I'll sit at your side./If you frown, I'll fence fields./ When you're ashamed, I'll shine your shoes./If you laugh, I'll liberate lands./When you're depressed, I'll play you the piano./If you sigh, I'll sack cities./When you're unlucky, I'll launder your linen./If you sing, I'll save souls./When you're hurt, I'll hold your hand./If you smile, I'll smelt silver./When you're afraid, I'll fetch you food./If you talk, I'll track down trolls./When you're on edge, I'll empty your ash-tray./If you whisper, I'll wage wars./When you're cross, I'll clean your coat./If you whistle, I'll water wastes./When you're bored, I'll bathe your brows." - Again they embraced."

Well, the scene here is they've left the bar, a group of four people, have left the bar and gone home for a nightcap, and, as they're all around sort of horny and not knowing what to do), one guy's like, a little soldier, and Rosetta.. And the soldier and Rosetta get together and dance, and finally, this guy's involved in.. the young kid and the older girl are going to make out (the others are going to go home). So the other two guys there take it with good (graces), make a good scene out of it...

"Quant poured out the dregs of the glass on the carpet as a libation and invoked the local spirits" - (So, you know, alliterative, playful alliterative speech)

"Ye little larvae, lords of the household,/Potty, P-P, Peppermill, Lampshade/Funnybone, Faucet, Face-in-the-wall/Head-over-heels and Upsy-daisy/And Collywobbles and Cupboard-Love/Be good, little gods, and guard these lives/Innocent be all your indiscretions,/That no paranoic notion obsess/Nor dazing dump bedevil their minds/With faceless fears, no filter passing/Virus invade, no visible germ,/Transgressing rash or gadding tumor/Attack their tissues, nor, taking by/Spiteful surprise, conspiring objects/With slip or sharpness or sly fracture/Menace or mangle the morbid flesh/Of our king and queen."

(a funny old (toast)...

to be continued

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

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Martin Luther King

January 19, 2016, 7:55 am

≫ Next: W.H.Auden - Age of Anxiety - 2

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[Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968]

Allen Ginsberg on Martin Luther King: “I met him a couple times. Once with LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and Peter (Orlovsky) at a fundraiser when they first began SNCC, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, in Dorothy Norman’s house in, maybe, 1963. We’d just got back from India. And then we went off with her and him to a Chinese restaurant to eat and Peter asked him if he had any dreams. He said, ‘Yeah, I had a dream that I was dead and that my enemies hid my funeral so that my friends would not know where the funeral would be.’ And I saw him again in ’67 at Duke University. I asked King whether he knew anything about marijuana, psychedelics, LSD. He didn’t. But he was tolerant, he just said ‘I don’t know, I’d have to ask my friends.’ And if he knew anything about the Beat Generation literature. He knew who I was as a poet.”

- with thanks to Chuck Pirtle and Our Allen for this citation

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W.H.Auden - Age of Anxiety - 2

January 20, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Allen Ginsberg in 1987 on The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's

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Continuing with selected readings from W.H.Auden's The Age of Anxiety

AG: So then they all go home except for the lovers, who wind up in bed. The lady.. takes them... (Rosetta went with them to the elevator. And they wait for it and they go down the elevator and then Rosetta and the girl go back to her apartment to.. finally she's going to make it with the soldier. They sank from her sight an hour later

"When she got back to her apartment, she found that Embel had gone into her bedroom and passed out . She looked down at him, half relieved, and thought thus "

And then he gives a very very beautiful melancholy speech -Hebrew in nature, actually. Rosetta, a sharp Jewess from New York, who's in advertising . Auden who was mixed up in the 'thirties you know in Germany and mixed up with a lot of Jewish intellectuals - (Berthold) Brecht, Thomas Mann, Elizabeth Mann. So it comes out of that ambience of thirties forties Hitler-time, a kind of prophetic Hebraic..prophecy, coming in this alliterative verse.

"Blind on the bright bed, the bridegroom snores/ Too aloof to love. Did you lose your nerve/And cloud your conscience because I wasn't/Your dish really? You danced so bravely/Till I wiahed I were. Will you remain/Such a pleasant prince? Probably not./But you're handsome aren't you? even now/A kingly corpse. I'll coffin you up till/You rule again. Rest for us both and/Dream, dear one. I'll be dressed when you wake/To get coffee. You'll be glad you didn't /While your heartache lasts, and I won't shine/In the sobering sun. We're so apart/When our ways have crossed and our words touched/On Babylon's banks. You'll build here, be/Satisfied soon, while I sit waiting/On my light luggage to leave if called/For some new exile, with enough clothes/But no merry maypole.Make your home/With some glowing girl; forget with her what/Happens also. If ever you see/A fuse forming in the far distance, /Lots of police, and a little group/In terrible trouble, don't try to help/They'd make you mock and you might be ashamed./As long as you live may your lying be/Poetic only, I'd hate you to think/How gentile you feel when you join in/The rowdy cries at Rimmon's party/ "- Fasten your fig leaf, the Fleet is in/Caesar is sitting in solemn thought,/Do not disturb. I'm dying tonight with/The tragic poets -" for you'll trust them all/Be at home in there where a host of creatures/Shot or squashed, have insured good luck to/Their bandit bodies, blond mausoleums/Of the inner life. How could I share their/Light elations who belong after/Such hopes end? So be off to the game, dear,/And meet your mischief. I'll mind the shop./You'll never notice what's not for sale/To charming children. Don't choose to ask me/You're too late to believe. Your lie is showing./Your creed is creased. But have Christian luck./Your Jesus has wept; you may joke now,/Be spick and span, spell out the bumptious/Morals on monuments, mind your poise/And take up your cross, attract Who's-Who/Ignore What's-Not. Niceness is all and/The rest bores. I'm too rude a question./You'd learn to loathe, your legs forget their/Store of proverbs, the staircase wit of/The sleep-walker. You'd slip and blame me/When you came to and couldn't accept/Our anxious hope with no household god or/Harpist's Haven for hearty climbers./So fluke through unflustered with full marks in/House-geography; let history be./Time is our trade, to be tense, our gift/Whose woe is our weight; for we are His Chosen,/His ragged remnants with our ripe flesh/And our hats on, sent out of the room/By their dying grandees and doleful slaves,/Kicked in corridors and cold-shouldered/At toll-bridges, teased upon the stage,/Snubbed at sea, to seep through boundaries,/Diffuse like firearms through frightened lands,/Transpose our plight like a poignant theme/Into twenty tongues, time-tormented./But His People still. We'll point for Him./Be as obvious always if he won't show/To threaten their thinking in their way,/Nor his strong arm that stood no nonsense,/Fly, let's face it, to defend us now/When bruised or broiled our bodies are chucked/Like cracked crocks onto kitchen middens/In the time He takes. We'll trust. He'll slay/If his Wisdom will. He won't alter/Nor fake one fact. Though I fly to Wall Street/Or Publisher's Row, or pass out, or/Submerge in music, or marry well/Marooned on riches. He'll be right there/With his Eye upon me. Should I hide away/My secret sins in consulting rooms,/My fears are before Him; He'll find all,/Conceal from Him the semidetached/Brick villa in Laburnum Crescent,/The poky parlor, the pink bows on /The landing-curtains, or the lawn-mower/That wouldn't work, for He won't pretend to/Forget how I began, nor grant belief/In the mythological scenes I make up/Of a home like theirs, the Innocent Place where/His Law can't look, the leaves are so thick./I've made their magic but their Momma Earth/Is His stone still, and their stately groves,/Though I wished to worship, His wood to me./More boys like this one may embrace me yet/I shan't find shelter, I shan't be at peace/Till I really take your restless hands,/My poor fat father. How appalling was/Your taste in ties. How you tried to have fun./You so longed to be liked. You lied so,/Didn't you, dad? When the doll never came,/When mother was sick and the maid laughed/ - Yes I heard you in the attic. At her grave you/Wept and wilted. Was that why you chose/So blatant a voice, such button eyes/To play house with you then? Did you ever love/Stepmother Stupid? You'd a strange look,/Sad as the sea, when she searched your clothes./Don't be cruel and cry. I couldn't stay to /Be your baby. We both were asking/For a warmth there wasn't, and then wouldn't write/We musn't, must we? Moses will scold if /We're not all there for the next meeting/At some brackish well or broken arch,/Tired as we are. We must try to get on /Though mobs run amok and markets fall/Though lights burn late at police stations,/ Though passports expire and ports are watched/Though thousands tumble. Must their blue glare/Outlast the lions? Who'll be left to see it /Disconcerted? I'll be dumb before/ The barracks burn and boisterous Pharaoh/Grow ashamed and shy. Sh'ma Yisra'el,/ 'donai lohenu 'donai echad.

AG: It's very Jewish. It's very - huh?

Peter Orlovsky: What was the name of that again?

AG: Well, the whole thing is The Age of Anxiety and it is the last speech by "Rosetta" on page three-hundred-and-forty four - page three-hundred-and-forty-four to three-hundred- and-forty-seven - That's World War II - Hitler -World War II -"Though mobs run amok and markets fall/Though lights burn late at police stations,/ Though passports expire and ports are watched/Though thousands tumble. Must their blue glare/Outlast the lions?"
- a really wild moment

So Rosetta's speech (there's a last speech) and that's all done alliterative. It's amazing what can be done with that. He was a very great poet, Auden - like I guess, since Tennyson, or Swinburne, one of the few English poets that had a fantastic range and command of all varieties of English prosody that we were talking about (He also, incidentally, edited a really interesting selection of Tennyson, who was also quite a prosodist, quite a good… actually, the key is having a recollection of quantity (the length of vowels) and classical meters.
There is a final speech in here but I think that was about the best. So I would recommend that, if you ever get a chance, and if you're interested in this kind of alliterative verse, this is… Auden's "Age if Anxiety" is a whole twentieth-century handbook of how to handle it.

Student: How long is that poem..?

AG: Well, "The Age of Anxiety", it's not.. I would say.. (but).. It's broken into different.. It's like a play. It's a play with four characters and a bit of narration, and a little prose front, a little prose front, and it goes, in this book, from three fifty-five.. from two fifty-five to three fifty-three (so it's a hundred-page poem) - a long long long beautiful thing. It's really nostalgic to me now because it's really New York during, and right after, the War - the bar-life, the gay scene there, sophisticated, urbane babblers.. urbane babblers in advertising agencies. Very much New York, very much a cosmopolitan New York, with a lot of German refugees and intelligent idiots on the street corners.
Auden had a whole group around him. It was that group around Auden that slowly gave rise to the whole…what's presently known as the New York intellectual Jewish scene with the New York Review of Books(that was an outgrowth of Auden's original cultural cultivation, culture that he cultivated, coming over from England and with some past in Germany and Austria - then he went back and died in Austria)

Student: Did he originate the phrase "the age of anxiety"?

AG: Yeah, I think that comes from him. Yeah, that was his bugle-blast. Nineteen forty… or, when was it? (19)40... The Age of Anxiety, I think it was.. I'm not exactly (sure).. it was in the late 'forties probably.. forty-six or forty-seven? (so it was probably written forty-five-forty-six) - Let's see if it says (it) here - Well, no, I'd have to look through more carefully to find out when.. It's quie good, though.

So there is a copy in the library (or several copies).. There's one I borrowed from the Boulder (Public) Library and I'll put my own in now in the Naropa library if you want to look through it. If we ever get on to Shakespeare, there' some very great commentaries on the sea, on The Tempest called "The Sea and the Mirror"by Auden (another long poem in here, which was equally celebrated in its time).

So where are we now? I was trying to get on to "Lament For the Makers", but it's a bit late for that. So, therefore, as a final thing, let's try and do the "Lie-Awake Dirge" ("Lyke Wake Dirge"), (that's also been running through my head - and we never did that as a unison thing) - What page is that on? - Lyke Wake Dirge?

Student: Fifty-nine.

AG: Yeah. I keep hearing it as music over and over again as .. [Allen begins singing] - "This ae night.." - or "This one night.." - "This one night, this one night, every night, and all/Fire and sleet and candle-licht, and Christ receive thy soul" - Anyway, remember "every night.." and "And Christ receive thy soul" to put in that, as part of the.. Don't forget those.
I'm going to get my own libretto here.. [Allen searches for the poem.. yes, okay.. and then leads the class in a group reading of the poem] - Alright. That's really good. Those syncopations are amazing,

Student: (It reminded me of "Jingle bells"!)

AG: [Allen sings - and compares - the melody] "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way'", "This ae night, this ae night, every night and all" - Yeah - What is the next line? - Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way...'"?

Students: "Oh what fun it is…"

AG: "Oh what fun it is to ride", "Fire sleet and candle-licht" - "On a one-horse open sleigh",
"And Christ receive thy soul"

Student: I thought it sounded better as a dirge.

AG: Well, how would it go as a dirge?
[Student (& AG) recite - "This ae night, this ae night, every night and all/ Fire and sleet and candle-licht, and Christ receive thy soul"

Student: Beautiful!

AG: I keep getting, tho, - pa-pa bom, pa-pa bom, pa-pa bom bom - paa - badda-da pom badda-da-da ba pom pom pom pom ba… You know.. tubas, I keep hearing tubas, tubas and trumpets! - Incidentally Ross (sic) told me that (Bob) Dylan is supposed to be singing in Denver.. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…Well, I send word that we needed tickets for the whole class but I doubt we'll get them. (So) I'm going to try and go, but I won't be going Monday, I guess, so I'll go.. we've got a class Monday (if I can get tickets for everybody we'll go Monday. If not.. tho' we're going to have to find some way of notifying everybody, I'll go Tuesday…

[Allen concludes this class - and previews the next class] - Ok, what are we doing next time. Well, finally, we'll get onto DunbarandSkelton, and we may backtrack again to "I Sing of A Mayden" if you can get the originals, and if we can get a recording of "Piers Plowman", we'll have that - And, Kalevala (Kaleva-la) - Kalevala - [class ends] - [tape concludes with the microphone still on, recording ambient room/student sounds]

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

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Allen Ginsberg in 1987 on The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's

January 21, 2016, 3:00 am

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John Sheppard's 1987 documentary"It Was 20 Years Ago Today", an examination of the classic Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, (and of 1967, the year of its debut), features, at one point, Allen surveying the album and giving a brief track-by-track assessment.

AG: It [Sgt Pepper's..] opens with a real interesting nostalgic recall of old vaudeville and good old times..it goes on “with a little help from my friends”, a statement of communal purpose – the next is, like a statement of imagination , Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds, as being elements of importance. The next song is making everything get better….the next song he’s dealing with his mind itself and fixing a hole. Having discovered that open mind, the adolescent is leaving home, The next is a kind of a magic show or acrobatic show. The next is a little statement aboutillusion and space itself and space between people’s minds. The next is a look ahead to when I’m 64, growing old. The next is appreciating the ordinary everyday lovely Rita meter-maid. And the next is like going to work and saluting the day and dealing with the everyday business of the day. Then there’s a reprise, reminding us that we’re still in the old tradition. The last is A Day In The Life which I thought was the best poem. So it has a sort of thematic unity that’s kind of interesting.

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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 252

January 22, 2016, 3:00 am

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Elsa Dorfman ("Ellie"), Allen's dear friend, "friend of the poets", doyenne of the oversized Polaroid, a "fixture in Cambridge (Massachusetts) for decades", celebrated here on The Allen Ginsberg Project a few years back (on the occasion of her 75th birthday, in a must-read piece), recently announced her retirement.

As reported in the New York Times, she "is trying to adopt something like a pose of total acceptance (she doesn't know the Japanese word for it or whether she'll achieve it) towards retirement… The main reason is that the film and chemicals she depends upon have not been mass-produced since 2008, when Polaroid, which had gone into bankrupcy years before, stopped making them. And the stockpile to which she has access is diminishing, despite post-Polaroid efforts by enthusiasts to keep the cameras running."
- "It's dwindling and I'm dwindling", she declares.

Ellie on Allen (in another must-read piece - her 2012 interview with Michalis Limnios):

ML: Would you like to tell your best memory about Allen?
ED: My best memory of Allen is watching the Democratic Convention with him. Estes Kefauver was a contender. I forget who actually won the democratic convention that year. We were at his father's home in Paterson… Also, when Allen recorded Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac late at might after he had arrived in Cambridge from a long trip. My nephew, writer Matthew Power, was with us. Allen probably started at midnight. We finished in the wee hours of the next day. Allen had the most inexhaustible energy. I would drag myself around behind him. He worked soooo hard..
ML: Would you mind telling me your most vivid memory from your shootings with the nude Allen and Peter?
ED: Oh, I knew them so well that seeing them nude was nothing!. The first time I did see Allen naked was when he opened his front door for me at his apartment. I forgot what apartment it was (wherever he was living in 1959-60). And Allen had an impeccable sense of presentation. I learned from every minute I turned my camera toward him..

For more of this interview - see here
For more Ellie photos of Allen - see here
For Ellie's detailed and riveting website - see here

More photography news - the New York Public Library's recent large-scale digital distribution has revealed this previously-unseen photo (from the collection of Walter Silver (1923-1998))
Two (additional) alternative snaps can be seen on the contact sheet - here
The image is dated, rather vaguely, as "ca.1950s", and the woman also in the shot, as, possibly, the American poet and activist Margaret Randall (tho' Randall herself has denied it). Whoever her identity (and will we ever discover it?) it's certainly a wonderful "stolen moment".

And yet another interesting photography story. Read about Chris Earnshaw in the pages of The Washington Post-

[Allen Ginsberg - Lafayette Park, Washington DC 1972 - Photograph by Chris Earnshaw]

"Wait Till I'm Dead" - the countdown - still waiting on the new (posthumous) Ginsberg volume. In the meantime, here's an early (pre-publication) review from Evilcyclist

"Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know" - Friday January 22nd - (today) - (1788) is/was the birthday of the legendary Lord Byron

[George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, aka Lord Byron (1788-1824)]

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Vintage Naropa Audio - John Ashbery and Dick Gallup, 1976

January 23, 2016, 3:00 am

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[Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Dick Gallup, Anne Waldman and Michael McClure at Naropa Institute, 1976]

Dick Gallup and John Ashbery, June 23, 1976

Another from the Naropa Archivesthis weekend– John Ashbery and Dick Gallup in June of 1976(Allen does the introductions, noting that, in fact,Ashbery had already read therethe previous year,giving a reading withW.S.Merwin).In this reading, he reads a selection of poems from his collection, Houseboat Days. Dick Gallup gives a rare reading (mostly from poems that would appear in his collection Above the Treeline - subsequently reprinted, with additional poems, a quarter of a century later,in the Coffee House Press collection, Shiny Pencils at the Edge of Things)

[Allen begins]

AG: The third reading of this Summer writing program of the JackKerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, third all-star reading of the season with Dick Gallup and John Ashbery, who are friends, representing to some extent what was once called “TheNew York School” of poetry (tho’ John is from Sodus in New York and Dick is from Oklahoma, but Dick counted John Ashbery as one of his teachers). John is a friend of Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Kochand many of the painters and poets in New York in the early (19)50’s, where I first encountered him in New York City, and so formed a very powerful group of intelligences working in the expanding art world and mind world, post-war America. Friends of painters, friends ofAbstract-Expressionist folk, of (Willem) de Kooning,and (Franz) Kline and Larry Rivers, and.. I think originally from Harvard, wasn’t it? – [to John Ashbery] – Did you go to Harvard with Frank O’Hara? - same time? - Kenneth Koch?] – So, there was, like a community, from the (19)40’s came down to New York from Harvard, just as from Columbia there was a community of (Jack) Kerouacand myself and William) Burroughs (, hanging around the Village and, in the early and late (19)50’s, the Cedar Bar. His books, as published, were Turandot and Other Poems,The Tennis Court Oath (Wesleyan University Press, 1962), The Double Dream of Spring, Some Trees(published by Corinth Books, [which is a whole series of books, CorinthBooks, they published an early set of poems of mine [Empty Mirror] and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)’s poetry,and (Jack) Kerouac’s Scripture of The Golden Eternity], Rivers and Mountains (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, in (19)66), Three Poems,(Viking Press, 1972), and a celebrated Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror (Viking Press, 1975), which won Pulitzer Prizethis year, National Book Award prize, and also (National) Book Critics Circle prize, so, what’s really elegant is to be able to welcome John here (as well as Dick) for the second year in a row. So we’ve begun establishing a longer-range family relationship here (at Naropa) in Boulder, as some kind of poetic family relationship had already been established in the sanghaof poets in the Big Apple.

[John Ashbery]

And in that sangha, younger, in the late (19)50’s a group of poets came in out of Tulsa, fluttering up with The White Dove Review,edited by Dick Gallup and I think it was Ted Berrigan?.. or Ron? – Ron Padgett– So, I was engaged in correspondence with Ron, and indirectly with Dick (Gallup), back in (19)58, as was (Jack) Kerouac. We all sent in poems to Tulsa, Oklahoma for The White Dove Review. And then Dick came to New York and.. I think White Dove.. was 1959, Dick went to Tulanefor three years, and in the streets of New York as a school, and Columbia(graduated Columbia in 1968). Big Sky Press published Above The Tree Line - will publish- a big long collection of poems, Above The Tree Line (those’ll be his poems from 1970-1975 – Big Sky Press, edited by Bill Berkson, out there in Bolinas, California. In 1970 Harper & Row published a hardback book of poems (some copies of which may still be available in paper cover) – Where I Hang My Hat, and in 1976, the Toothpaste Press in West Branch, Iowa, published a pamphlet, The Wacking of the Fruit Trees. He’s living in California now, Dick Gallup, with a ten-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son. He’s had long years experience, teaching poetry in the schools to children. He conducted a poetry workshop atSt Marks Poetry Project back in 1969 and (19)70, and is..among his major influences have been John Ashbery and Ted Berrigan and Frank O’Hara, as well as (Robert) Browningand Ben Jonson.

As the evening wears on, probably, there may be an intermission. Earlier poetry readings from Naropa are on sale at the back at the booths, on cassette, a rare reading of my own of Howl,a reading of (Chogyam) Trungpaand Anne Waldman, and a mixed-bag anthology of tapes (which will be available all term) as well as Sitting Frogmagazine (a lot of the work of students of last year’s poetic activities) for three bucks in the back. We’ve had (Robert)Duncan, the first reading, and Helen Adam representing an old tradition of West Coast poetry, Duncan’s method was a kind of divination into language. My own method, having read last week, and (Michael)McClure’s, is also involved with hearing.. transcribing the language that we hear in our head – and (John) Ashbery is, perhaps, the most brilliant inheritor of a tradition of recording present consciousness, the divigations, bravery and brilliances, innocencies, irrelevancies, jumps, gaps, contradictions, of a consciousness during the time of writing. So, actually, from a Buddhist point of view, an advanced inspector, mindfully aware of his own mind, consciousness, language. So..

I don’t know who will begin.. Who wants to? Who’s first? – Oh, okay, then Dick (Gallup) . Well, lead the way – and I’ll get out of the way

[At approximately seven-and-a-half minutes in, Dick Gallup begins reading]

[Dick Gallup]

Dick Gallup: Thanks Al..[glances at microphone– ridiculous!] - I’m going to read some poems vaguely in chronological order (if you give or take five years) The first poem is “String Quartet"(“The darkened mills of intricate compassion/Are lifted from silence”…”Into the technical night full of technical anti-freeze/To clutch the broken bowl”).
This is followed by some further attention to the microphone (“I have to do something with this thing so that I can hear what’s.. (move it) to the right? - to the right?..I.. yeah - (not that it helps much").,
Then - "This is called “To The Other Side of the Mountain” ( “The pillow is for sleeping/keeping the unending appointments..”…”..snow ready to fall, past the veranda railing, to the ground”).

"This is a poem I wrote called “Folding Cash” (“Blasted yellow peaches are sitting/On the arm of the armchair”..”And when I touch you/I feel the money coming/Down from the bank/And into my pockets)"

"This is a poem called “Beneath the Surface of The Field”(“Often I’ve thought words/Exist in vast reaches of meaning”…”Beyond the architecture of bone/Arch as a keystone cold as stone”)

"This is a poem I wrote called “Christmas Poem”, in which I try to imagine that Santa Claus was a woman and then I would write a poiem addressed to Santa Claus, but it’s not Mrs Santa Claus - “Christmas Poem” (“Your eyes give a little bit/You know..”…”You are a goddess on a god’s birthday/Your voice is on the radio when I turn it off/You are your own electricity/And you turn me on.”)

"Okay, and to go with that, this is is a nasty poem (to go with that one). This is a poem called “You” (“You don’t know if you’ve got what it takes/ To walk down the street in the morning”…”I couldn’t help you/You wouldn’t let me in.”)

"This is a poem called “Comet Tails” - “Comet Tails” (“It looks easy from a balcony/the patterned rushing we see..”…”And the foundation of a house/Set in a field of starlight.”)

and this is a poem called “Private Dick” - "Private Dick" (“I was eating dinner in a diner without a front door..”/ ..”Stupidity, I tell myself, is just a state of mind”)

“Brains By Lamplight” (“Love is a sand land/A sand lady/Running through a glass/On a glib tongue/Eating energy”…”Maybe I should learn to bite”)

"This is a poem I wrote called “Corvette Dude” – I don’t really know too many people who drive Corvettes - “Corvette Dude” (“He runs in the surf trailing/Reflections in the wrinkled surface..”…”Roses grow in his empty wallet/ He picks the petals off the hot/Pavement of the freeway/And keeps trying”)

"And this next poem is called “Raising Water” - "Raising Water" (“Passing by the trees of the reservation..”..”Reserved/For our own water supply/For everyone’s water supply”)

"A short poem called “The Feast” -"The Feast" - (“There’s another way/Without using nature/As a crutch/You got another head/Inside that one/Climb out of the soup/It’s only the first course.”)

"This is a poem called “Things To Do”– Things to do. Five things to do. Five – (“Modulate your feelings/make the spaces real/keep the intellect in tune/charge your batteries regularly/remember what happens.”)

"This is a poem called“Making With the Clicks” (“clicks” being kilometers) (“Like a child wiping boogers off its face/ This world shrugs off my thoughts..”..”My stereo tape deck/My nickel plated automatic/And $4,000 dollars worth of Dodge truck”) - That is a New York City escape story! – Who stepped on it? Well, I guess I took that foot off.

"This is called “Threading the Needle” - "Threading the Needle" (“Terrific clothes are more than vain..”…”That place outside your skin”)

“Chasing Snakes With A Stick”(“In other words/You asked for it/No shining days up ahead”…”The children have been sent away unwanted/While all the lonely people/Ride rollercoasters/In the dark”)

“No Planned No Parenthood”(“Have you noticed how gloomy everything becomes/Thinking about the future in terms of today”…”You will regret it/But they won’t”)

DG: Let’s see…I’ve just got a few more poems I want to read to you. I think there’s.. Okay this is called “Lights Float on the Water” (“Stop sail/Walk in a trance across spider-web..”…”The world is strong,/Reinforced by cables between the species”) ..So much for that. I have a couple more. I have no idea how long I’ve been reading

AG: Not very long

DG: I don’t think so, either..It doesn’t seem like very long,

AG: Three minutes

DG: Three minutes? Something like that..

AG: Three-and-a-half.

DG: Okay

DG: This is a poem I wrote called “Charged Particles” (“Bright red, where the sky dips towards heaven…”…”along a new highway with burlap-covered signs”)

"For some reason I really wanted to read this next poem. It’s called “On the Meat Wheel”. I wrote about a strange mess.. a strange method - a messy method, and this is what came out, a sort of long process - “On the Meat Wheel”(“At the edge of the forest, she sings/With her pale lips…”…”You’re a pip, they say, if you can breathe”)

AG: What was the method?

DG: The method was I wrote about a page-and-a-half of prose off the top of my head, and then I cut that up into about twenty-five pieces and put it back together, and then I cut out the parts which didn’t pertain, and then I put it into lines and made a poem out of it. I think that’s what I think I did.. I hadn’t done.. I hadn’t written a poem in that fashion in..oh, between five and seven years, and so it was very interesting to do."

"This poem is called “Marksman First Class” (“The table lamps burn through the night/Birds call to each other across the meadow”…”The great-grandchildren of pioneers/Yawn and go to bed/Their lives like sawed-off shotguns”)

"I think I’ll read two more poems and that’ll be the end of this. This is called “What The Dickens” and it has a character n it whose name is Steinmetz, who was an electrical engineer who made millions of dollars for General Electric. He was a dwarf, almost, a dwarf with a slight hunchback, and he lived reclusively in Schenectady in New York. I’ve always identified with him because..for some reason - “What The Dickens” (“It’s nice to sit down in the evening/With the rain out of doors/And the dog lapping water from the toilet bowl/To a dinner given in your honor”/ Everyone sits around in the dark/Trying to guess who’s speaking from the sound/Ah! Mr Steinmetz is here. Hear the thunder..”…”Reading a newspaper headline,/”FIREMAN CHOP DOWN BLEAK HOUSE”)

[Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923)]

Maybe I should stop there. This is the last poem that I’ll read. It’s called “Destination Moon”. And the poem is dedicated, I guess, or it’s to, for, or something of the sort, Ted Berrigan, who thought up the title, Destination Moon”, (although it was a movie in 1950), but I wrote this poem last December when I was leaving New York City. I wrote it on the 23^rdof December 1975. It’s sort of sentimental but I like it -“Destination Moon”(“The snow blows in the silence/Like lazy money that/Crosses my eyes/Which try to follow each bill across the street light”…”Soon I’ll hold the syntax in my head/Under a roof with a sky above/Instead of friendly human soot”)

Thanks - John is going to read next/now, and I would just like to say that I consider it a great pleasure to read with John because, as Allen mentioned I said, I consider(ed) him one of my teachers - and I feel I've learnt a great deal about the art of writing poetry from John Ashbery. It’ll be a pleasure to listen to (him).

[There is a brief stretch of silence before John Ashbery begins reading, at approximately forty-four-and-a-quarter minutes in]

John Ashbery: I’m going to begin by reading some recent poems and then perhaps a few earlier ones. The first one is a kind of bicentennial poem. It was commissioned for a catalog of a show of paintings of the American landscape which is circulating around the country. (I believe it’s now in Washington, where it opened recently). It was commissioned by the Department of the Interiorand ran into some difficulty when I finally sent it in because they didn’t want to pay for it because whoever..I don’t know, some bureaucrat.. saw it and said that, even if he knew what the title meant, he wouldn’t know what the poem meant! So I.. And then I found that most people don’t know what the title means (although it’s a very ordinary, or to me anyway, very ordinary word) - “Pyrography”– it’s that old wood-burning kit that you used to have as a child, making pictures on leather book-bindings and wooden box-lids and so on - “Pyrography”(“Out here on Cottage Grove it matters/The galloping wind bulks at its shadow…”..“Out toward the junctions and to the darkness beyond/To these bare fields, built at today’s expense”’

“Bird’s–Eye View of the Tool and Die Co.” (“For a long time I used to get up early,/20-30 vision, hemorrhoids intact..”…:”..You turn/To speak to someone beside the dock and the lighthouse /Shines like garnets. It has become a stricture”).

"This one is called “Collective Dawns”, the name “Grettir” (“Night of the world, Grettir is coming back to us”) refers to the hero of an Icelandic saga - Collective Dawns”(“You can have whatever you want/Own it, I mean. In the sense/Of twisting it to you..”..”Know it and fall to the ground, though no doom/Says it through the long cool hours of rest/While it sleeps as it can, as in fact it must, for the man to find himself.”

“The Couple in the Next Room” (“She liked the blue drapes. They made a star/At the angle. A boy in leather moved in..”…”Another day. Deliberations are recessed/In an iron-blue chamber of that afternoon/On which we wore things and looked well at/A slab of business rising behind the stars”)

“Variant” (“Sometimes a word will start it. like/Hands and feet, sun and gloves. The way/Is fraught with danger, you say, and I /Notice the word “fraught” as you are telling/Me about huge secret valleys some distance from/The mired fighting..” -and the rest of the poem is in quotation maks being spoken by another speaker - “ – but always, lightly wooded/As they are, more deeply involved with the outcome…”…”Until the whole thing overflows like a silver/Wedding cake or Christmas tree, in a cascade of tears”.)

This one has.. It’s called “Wet Casements”.It has a quotation from (Franz) Kafkaat the beginning, from "Wedding Preparations in the Country”, the first line of that story – “When Eduard Raban, coming along the passage, walked into the open doorway, he saw that it was raining, It was not raining much” - “Wet Casements” (“The conception is interesting: to see, as though reflected/In streaming windowpanes, the look of others through/Their own eyes.”…””I shall keep to myself/I shall not repeat others’ comments about me.”)

“The Wrong Kind of Insurance” (“I teach in a high school/And see the nurses in some of the hospitals.”… “Each night/Is trifoliate, strange to the touch.”)

“Unctuous Platitudes”– (“There is no reason for the surcharge to bother you./Living in a city one is nonplussed by some/Of the inhabitants..”..”..Every invitation/To every stranger is met at the station.”

[John pauses, to rifle through some papers]

"This one, I had some things that seem to require footnotes, which I’m very much against, as a rule, but I wrote.. anyway, it has a lot of French words in it and things that might be explicated, The only really important ones are the words “carte du Tendre”, (“A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner..”), which is a kind of allegorical map of the country of Love, “chalets de necessite” (“chalets de necessite on its sedgy shore”) is a French comfort-station, usually built in a rustic style, like a chalet, “algolagnic” means sado-masochistic, (“The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches..”) “garance” (“the puckered garance satin/Of a case..”), which is the name of the heroine of Les Enfants du Paradis, also means a dark rouge, red. I think those are the only ones that I really care to have anybody be certain what they mean. In the middle of the poem, there’s a conversation between two women, Aglavaine and Selysette (which are/were characters in a play by (Maurice) Maeterlinckof that title, which I haven’t read), But, anyway, they seem to be having a long conversation about the poem and the person who’s writing it, (whoever that may be). It’s called “Daffy Duck in Hollywood” - I assume everybody knows about Daffy Duck. I’ve always identified with Daffy Duck! There’s one Daffy Duck movie in which he ends up saying, in which he captures the Tasmanian monster because there’s a big reward and he says, “I may be a coward but I’m a greedy little coward!” Anyway, he’s the protaganist, in a way, of this poem - “Daffy Duck in Hollywood” (“Something strange is creeping across me..”…”Always invoking the echo, a summer’s day.”)

"I’ll read, I guess, three more. I had one about a String Quartet that I wanted to read because of Dick (Gallup)’s [sic], but I don’t seem to have that with me, I won’t read that one. This is called “Street Musicians” - "Street Musicians" (“One died and the soul was wrenched out of the other...”…” …smeared on the landscape to make of us what we could”)

"This one is called “Friends” and has a quote from Nijinsky’s Diary at the beginning, which is “I like to speak in rhymes,/because I am a rhyme myself” – It also has other lines from Nijinsky’s Diary collaged here and there in it (though, actually, not the ones that sound as if they were quotations from Nijinsky’s Diary) - “Friends” (“I saw a cottage in the sky/I saw a balloon made of lead..”… “The feeling is a jewel like a pearl.”)

"This one is called “Business Personals”, (It’s the last one I’ll read), which, you probably know, are those ads that come in between the personals and the classified ads in the “want-ad” section of newspapers sometimes. They don’t seem to be either “Business” or “Personal”, and I think I was wondering about that problem when I started to write the poem. “The disquieting muses again”, the words that begin the poem, refers to a painting by (Giorgio) De Chirico, which Sylvia Plath also uses as the title of a poem. - “Business Personals” (“The disquieting muses again; what are “leftovers”?/Perhaps they have names for it all…” …”It will dissipate like the pale pink and blue handkerchiefs/That vanished centuries ago into the blue dome/That surrounds us, but which are, some maintain, still here”.

[The evening concludes with a brief note from Allen]

AG: You want to read any more, Dick? – no – ok – Next week’s reading wil be Diane Wakowski and Anne Waldmanand tomorrow night, Chogyam Trungpa, a poet and dharmachakra teacher will be improvising here, and I think tomorrow night’s dharma lecture will be open to all members of Naropa Institute who don’t have enough money to take his course.. So those of you who have been studying other fields who haven’t yet had a chance to lay eyes on Trungpa or attend one of his lectures are invited for a general mass meeting of the entire school here tomorrow night to discuss the situation of the school entire and also to hear original dharma.

↧

"..A Mayden.." - Accentuated

January 25, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Ed Sanders' Archive

≪ Previous: Vintage Naropa Audio - John Ashbery and Dick Gallup, 1976

I syng of a mayden þat is makeles, kyng of alle kynges to here sone che ches.	I sing of a maiden That is matchless, King of all kings For her son she chose.
He came also stylle þer his moder was as dew in aprylle, þat fallyt on þe gras.	He came as still Where his mother was As dew in April That falls on the grass.
He cam also stylle to his moderes bowr as dew in aprille, þat fallyt on þe flour.	He came as still To his mother's bower As dew in April That falls on the flower.
He cam also stylle þer his moder lay as dew in Aprille, þat fallyt on þe spray.;	He came as still Where his mother lay As dew in April That falls on the spray.
Moder & mayden was neuer non but che – wel may swych a lady Godes moder be.	Mother and maiden There was never, ever one but she; Well may such a lady God's mother be.

We’re continuing with these, perhaps overly-attentive, analyses of tone and accent

(specifically with regard to early English poetry, and, specifically with regard here to the anonymous, “I Sing of A Mayden”)

Given the nature of what he’s doing, it’s pretty essential in these particular transcriptions, that you listen to the actual audio (starting approximately three minutes in) to catch the precise distinctions that Allen is making. That audio is available here

The January 1980 tape begins, first, with three recorded versions by Allen of “I Syng of A Mayden” (accompanied on harmonium - and accompanied on the third version by Peter Orlovsky– that latter version, broken into, at one point, by Allen intoning acapella from "Lyke Wake Dirge", another of the early English lyrics under review)

AG: Charlie [sic] came up with something. He said, he tried to make in the copy of the poem, an imitation of the poem, as an exercise, but he found that all the stanzas were slightly different. And that was a big revelation, I think. I don’t know what he thought originally that it was supposed to be - that everything was supposed to be exactly the same? with exactly the same syncopations and exactly the same accents? But, of course not. That’s the whole point. Now, basically, I guess the development (is) of an alliterative first line “I sing of a mayden that is makeles” (or, “I sing of a mayden that is makeles”). In other words, two accents on each side of the line (and sometimes it sounds like three and sometimes it sounds like two-and-a-half). So it’s syncopated and varied rhythmically. So what I tried to do for my own sake, and for Charlie’s [sic],was to make a rhythmic paradigm, and try to analyze it, roughly. So does everybody have a copy of this? – [Allen distributes a hand-made flyer] - Anybody not have a copy of this? – Everyone got one now?

I foolishly tried to make caesurasin between the half lines – “I syng of a mayden // that is makeles”, but I don’t think that makes sense. So I would discount those caesuras. You all see what a caesura is and where it is there? Does anybody not know what I’m talking about? – Does anybody here not know? – a caesura’s a double-line - see the double line? – that’s called a caesura. If you cut the line in half.,, Actually, ”I syng of a mayden” – caesura –“that is makeles” – The caesura comes.. the caesura would come..right here [Allen points to the spot] – Are you following? - The caesura would come between “I syng of a mayden” and “that is makeles”, but I mistakenly tried to break the half-line into their parts too (and some of them break and some of them don’t). Like “I syng" (well, "I sing") “of a mayden/ that is/ makeles” (maybe?) / “Kyng of/ alle kynges/ to here sone/ che ches/ He cam/also stylle…” – So maybe you could do it that way . We’re just trying to hear the breaks in it, try and hear it by ear, as well as mark it out somewhat rationally (it doesn’t actually work out that well). Then, I put the accents, the light and heavy accents, above the syllables, and then, after the column called paradigm, I just transferred it over so you can see it clearly. And those circled accents that are light are the ones that struck me as being half-and-half, neither light accent nor heavy accent, but sort of (a) hovering accent . Is that clear? Still, it winds up, more or less, two accents to each line - “I syng of a mayden/ that is makeles/Kyng of/ alle kynges/ to here son che ches”. You can, now, cut it either way you want. I’ve made.. Actually, “to here son che ches” , I thought half-accent on “here”, half-accent on “che” - “to here son che ches” , You could say “to here son che ches” or “to here son che ches” – or “”..here son che ches” (that was half-and-half) –”here son che ches” would be the accents. Is anybody lost? Everybody following? If anybody gets lost along the way, stop me. If I’m not explaining particularly enough, not explaining specifically enough. I thought “Hecam/ also stylle” (so “cam” had a half-accent)– “He cam alle so stille” (the “cam’ and “stylle” were obviously accented but I thought that “also” was sort of a half). So that was the way I laid it out . I also noted out the way the rhyme-scheme went, (well, the number of syllables in each line), the way the rhyme-scheme went, and then the reverse rhythm.

If you notice, at the beginning, all the lines begin on a light accent and go to a heavy accent (“I syng”, “that is mak..”, “He cam“ – except “Kyng of alle kynges”, maybe “where his moder was“ - “where” may be a half accent on the first syllable. And the “moder” and “mayden” is a reverse rhythm, “Well may such a lady” might be a reverse rhythm’ and "Godes moder be” also is a reverse rhythm. You know what I mean by reverse rhythm? - that it starts, the line starts, on a heavy accent, instead of starting on a light accent. Is that hard to figure out? – (“I syng” , “to here”,”He cam”,”as dew” “was never”) – but on the other hand, “Moder & mayden”“Godes moder be”. Those lines at the end are called reverse rhythm because you reverse the rhythmic pattern of the line by starting on a sharp, heavy accent. Is that clear? Anybody lost? Is anybody lost here with my explanation? (unless you say so, I won’t know if I’m talking, you know, gibberish, or you might be daydreaming and not… like lose out and then get lost for the rest of the afternoon), so.. so, if anybody..So it’s really simple, so there’s no need for anybody to get to.. to get to space out on it. ..

So now next is, because my pronunciation is not correct. Could Pat O’Brien [sic] read it out of his old Middle English text correctly? Actually, it might be better if he read (from this text [sic], because that’s got the right spelling and the right line-up –[to Student] Good and loud tho’

Student (P O’B) reads/recites “I Syng Of A Mayden” in its entirety

Yeah, could you do it one more time here, closer to the mic – come on up and do it. Also, to hear it again, because I’ve been mispronouncing it all along (but I think I got the rhythm right)

Student: What is “che” – “here sone che..”?

AG: She - "neuer non but che" - none but she - Translation - I sing of a maiden that is without a mate. King of all kings. For her sone, the king of all kings, for her son, she chose. He came as still where his mother was, as dew in April that falls on he grass. He came as still to his mother’s bower, as dew in April that falls on the flower. He came so still where his mother lay, as dew in April that falls on the spray. Mother and maiden. There never was anyone like her (was never none but she, was never nobody but she). Well may such a lady God’s mother be. So, right.

Student (P O'B) reads the poem again

AG: "swych a lady"? – read it off of the page – Well, I didn’t have the right pronunciation but I did work out a paradigm, but before I worked out the paradigm, I also worked out a tune, so I’ll play the tune .. (I transformed it) …into (a) tune.. (transformed) vowel-pitches into tune or vowel-tone into tune ( something I think I referred to once or twice here but have never gone through). In..

It’s a real simple proposition. First thing I did to find a rhythm was to reduce it to vernacular cadence – “I syng of a mayden that is makeles” – as if you were talking to someone – “that is makeles” – which is something I’ve said before . Is that clear? Is that processed?. In other words, you get away from the…da da da-da dad a datta da dada – and just pronounce it as if you were making sense of it (as far as you know how to pronounce it). So - ”I sing of a maiden that is makeles” (“mayden that is makeles”) (I sing of a maiden that’s matchless). Then..”king of all kings (to) her son she chose” – (or, I would interpret the vernacular cadence according to what kind of significance I would want to lay on each syllable, and, naturally, accent the syllables that have more significance and more weight), and, also, naturally, in English, the tendency is, when you accent a syllable, you raise the pitch – right? - When you accent a syllable, you raise the pitch - raise the pitch – You raise the pitch. So, actually, there are varying pitches in ordinary speech. In ordinary vernacular speech there are varying pitches, (especially if the speech is colored with intelligence and emotion). If the speech is sharp and precise, and you know what you’re talking about, you make it a point then to be absolutely musical! - So, if you have a poem which is sharp, precise and absolutely musical, it’s, like, a piece of cake to interpret the pitch or tone of the vowels, to find out whether the tune or melody goes up or down (in relation to prior vowel – it goes up and down in relation to the vowel that went before).

So if you’re sensitive and listen to the pitch or tone of the vowels, you can extrapolate from those tones, or magnify from those tones (turn up the volume, or, push them out, or exaggerate the tones to clear distinct melody-notes . In other words, you’re extrapolating or exaggerating the normal vernacular tones into melodic sequences. This is.. This notion is somewhat inspired by (Ezra) Pound’s phrase, in his preface to the Selected Poems in 1950 0f Basil Bunting– “Follow the tone-leading of the vowels” (advice for the poet who’s not so much into music, but just sensitive-eared to the repeated cadences of line). Now the cadence might be rhythmic, but it also might be tonalsequences. In other words, you might repeat.. repeat parallel musical-like tones from line to line.
Is this all being clear? Are we still on this? For those who are not into music at all, it may be a little.. unworkable, but still, still, the notion of there being pitch or tone (highs and lows in conversation) in vernacular speech, that’s clear. And the idea that you could transfer them into the tunes is actually a very old idea, probably, but one that has not been very much circulated outside of Pound and his circle or Louis Zukofsky and his circle.

[Audio for the above can be heardhere, (starting at the beginning with the three performances of the lyric), the discussion of the lyric begins at approximately three minutes in, concluding at approximately sixteen-and-a-half minutes in]

↧

Ed Sanders' Archive

January 25, 2016, 9:43 am

≫ Next: Louis Auchincloss

≪ Previous: "..A Mayden.." - Accentuated

[Ed Sanders and Janis Joplin, Fillmore East, New York City, Opening Night, 1968 - Photograph by Elliott Landy]

Our dear friends at Granary Books have currently on offer an extraordinary trove - the legendary Ed Sanders Archives.

"The archive contains approximately 354 boxes (primarily "bankers' boxes"), 54 spring binders (exceeding 8,300 pages, 39 3-ring binders, 27 archival boxes of audio and video tapes, 7 filing cabinets, approximately 60 books, 21 shelf-feet of chronological and alphabetical files, 1 mimeograph machine, 11 electronic musical instruments (The Electronic Bard System), the Peace Eye Bookstore sign, and assorted other items."
"Over a ten year period Ed Sanders organized his archive and created The Archive of Edward Sanders, a 219-page finding aid/inventory/narrative document. It not only details the archive's contents, but also its location at Ed and Miriam Sanders' Woodstock home.."

[section of Ed Sanders' Archive, currently based at his Woodstock property in up-state New York]

The archive, as the generous Granary prospectus observes, is unparalleled - "a remarkable record of the legendary poet, writer, editor, publisher, activist, Fugs founder, and icon of American counterculture. Beginning with his first poems written while he still lived in Missouri (1955), it encompasses all of Sanders' expansive life and career." It is "a unique resource that allows for the exploration into Sanders' seminal contributions to the Mimeo Revolution and American poetry, as well as his legacy in the American underground and counterculture with his political activism and his music.. (It) has long been spoken of by scholars as well as fans."

The Ginsberg-Sanders relation is absolutely primary (Ed has long acknowledged his discovery of "Howl" as his life-defining moment, and has consistently championed Allen as, not only his life-long friend, but, unequivocably and avowedly, his hero and guru). In 2001, he published a book-length poem on Allen

and the feeling (camaraderie and respect) was mutual:

For some of the specifically Ginsberg-related items in the archive - see here (altho' in these voluminous archives, Allen is just one of the many "friends" featured - Granary also spotlights Ed's relations with John Sinclair, the late d.a.levy, Claude Pélieu, and cartoonist, Spain Rodriguez amongst others).

Here's a fugitive little thing - from October 1969 - a pencil sketch of an artesian well for his Cherry Valley Farm:

Here's a singular note of bonding - Allen and Ed crucially together in Chicago, in '68, (peacefully) demonstrating against the atrocities of the Vietnam War

"Introduce me as Prague King of May - Ed - in my turn, you explain I lost my voice chanting Aum in the park so please you read my piece - then I'll do 3 minutes of Silence Mind consciousness and belly breathing" ("At the Big Lyndon Johnson UnBirthday Party in Chicago [1968] - 6000 people on hand, Ginsberg's voice has not yet returned from his many hours of chanting om to quell the violence so he passed me a note to read to the audience" (Ed Sanders))

[Allen Ginsberg, Chicago, August 1968 - Photograph by Frank Losi - ("I bought a bunch of daisies and handed them out. Allen Ginsberg holds some…" (Ed Sanders) - Losi photograph included in the Ed Sanders Archive)]

The Granary Prospectus also contains further sections (broken down into "Writing and Projects" (Poetry, Glyphs, Musical Instruments, Manson Family (after Ed's 1971 book), (Charles) Olson Lectures), " Chronological Boxes", and "Activism and Assorted", as well as "The Fugs","The Peace Eye Bookstore" and The "Fuck You Press". Documentary evidence of a extraordinary life.

[Allen, c.1966, browsing the shelves of Ed Sanders' Lower East Side Prace Eye Bookshop]

[Flyer for Allen Ginsberg at Th Creative Music Studio, Woodstock, May 19. 1978]

[Poster for The Fugs playing with Allen Ginsberg and Country Joe McDonald at the Byrdcliffe Barn, Woodstock, August 13 & 14, 1989]

Here's Ed in Prague in 2005, singing in praise of Allen

[Ed Sanders and his wife Miriam Sanders, photographed at their home in Woodstock, April 18, 1983 - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg - © The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

↧

Louis Auchincloss

January 26, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Zukofsky's Music

≪ Previous: Ed Sanders' Archive

[Louis Auchincloss (1917-2010) at Dostoyevsky's writing desk, Dostoyevsky House Museum, Leningrad, November 30, 1985 - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg - © The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

Five years gone by now since the death of the mandarin lawyer-novelist-historian Louis Auchincloss ("New York lawyer, thoughtful high society belleletteriste biographer, aristocratic novelist, member of American Institute of Arts and Letters"). Auchincloss was among the company in 1985 in a PEN-sponsored delegation of American writers visiting the Soviet Union.

Here's Philip Taubman's contemporary account in the New York Times:

Moscow, December 2nd - A group of American writers left Moscow today after talks with Soviet authors that touched on the role of homosexuality in literature and other subjects normally considered taboo in the Soviet Union.
The discussions, which involved formal talks in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and informal meetings in other cities, were the seventh in a series of exchanges between American and Soviet writers that began in 1976.
Several of the Americans said they received a cool response from their hosts in the Writers Union when they raised issues such as the Government's treatment of authors who fail to follow the political line enforced by the Kremlin.
The American group, which was led by Norman Cousins, also includedArthur Miller, William Gass, Louis Auchincloss, Allen Ginsberg [sic], William Gaddis, Charles Fuller, the author of A Soldier's Story, Harrison E Salisbury and Dr. M Norvel Young, the chancellor emeritus of Pepperdine University in Los Angeles."

The piece continues, under the sub-header "Ginsberg Sets Off Debate":

"Mr Ginsberg touched off a series of sharp exchanges when he declared that writers everywhere should strive to reflect a broader range of human passions, including homosexual love, in their work, several of the Americabs reported.
"Allen was very direct in his discussion of homosexuality," Mr Salisbury said.
Mr Salisbury added, "The Soviet bureaucrats, but interestingly not the writers, immediately responded by talking about the perversion and pornography that they believe permeates Western culture."
Mr Ginsberg said in an interview, "I was trying to make the subject fit for discussion. My main proposition was that we should all try to break down the barriers between our private thoughts and our public expression."
"I mentioned my own homosexuality in passing," Mr Ginsberg went on, "and I said I didn't mean to offend them. But some of what they said sounded like the Moral Majority."
Mr Ginsberg said today that Soviet authorities had turned down his request to extend his visit for several weeks."

Auchincloss, looking back, (in a piece published in the New York Times, two years later), recalled, with a wry smile, the distinct contrast between Allen and at least one of his fellow delegates:

[William Gass, Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, outside Dostoevsky's apartment house in St Petersburg, 1985]

"Perhaps the most amusing contrast in our group was (that) between (the novelist, William Gass) and Allen Ginsberg. Allen, shaggy and bearded, chanted his verse in loud, emotional tones as he pounded a species of accordion [a harmonium] that he always carried with him. Will, on the other hand, reserved and quiet, impeccably clad, with the patient composure of a man of the world and the piercing eye of a wit, spoke in measure tones of the small sales that the serious novelist might expect. If Danielle Steel counted her sales in the millions while he had to make do with a few thousands, he said, it was because she wrote books and he wrote "literature". Asked for pointers as to future conferences, he glanced obliquely down the table at Allen and suggested that the novelists and poets be separated, so that the accordion would be heard only "down a long corridor, through a closed door"

Auchincloss and Allen, fellow-members of the American Institute of Arts and Letters, got on well, even if, as he told one journalist (in 1986), he had to "chide" Allen sometimes, "in a friendly way", reminding the poet how "disgusting" and "revolting" Allen could be at times.
Restraint and reserve were more the manners of Auchincloss - WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) manners. As his obituary in the London Daily Telegraph pointed out, "he was both inhabitant and observer of the world about which he wrote". The London Independent headed itsobituary notice - "Louis Auchincloss - Writer who chronicled lives and times of America's WASP elite". George Plimpton's 1994 Paris Review interview with him may be read here . A later interview (three years later, with Bomb magazine) may be read here. Here's Auchincloss on C-Span in 2005. Here's his obituary notice as it appeared in the New York Times.

↧

Zukofsky's Music

January 27, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: "..A Mayden"& Blake Accentuated

≪ Previous: Louis Auchincloss

[Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978)]

[Celia Zukofsky]

AG: I took part in a.. Louis Zukofsky was an Objectivist Imagistfriend, poet, of (Ezra) Pound, (William Carlos) Williams (Pound and Williams), a great man from the (19)20s to the (19)70s, and, after he died, there was a memorial to him at the PEN Clubin New York. So Robert Creeley and I and..Celia (Thaew), his wife, took part in a little symposium, and during this symposium, she explained the relation between his music and poetry.

Many… One book of his, called Autobiography, had been published, which had all of his early lyrics (or a sequence of crucial lyrics of his lifetime) set to music by his wife, so, put into music-staves and notated. And, at the end of his publishing career, there was one giant volume of his of Pericles, a play, Shakespeare’s Pericles, set to music syllable-by-syllable by his wife, and, certain poems he'd asked her to set to music (She was a musician – and their son, Paul Zukofsky is a famous (nowadays) [1980] famous young classical avant-garde violinist - genius – you know, boy-genius).
Well, she explained that actually Zukofsky was tone-deaf ! He couldn’t carry a tune hardly, but, he liked to hear music and he did speak sensibly, sensitively, with pitch, when he read his lyrics aloud to her. So he would read a little lyric to her aloud and she would note, first, the cadence, which, as a musician, she could translate into 4/4 time or 3/4 time, or whatever time she felt it was - it was some specific cadence that she could find the musical equivalent for, or the notational equivalent for - but she listened especially to his tones, (whether his voice rose or fell, syllable by syllable, whether the pitch of the vowel went up or down, up or down). So, from that, she derived her notion of the melody. So that’s the practice I had been using with setting (William) Blake’s songs, and I was amazed to find that’s precisely the practice she used.
I don’t know what the ancient practice is but I suspect it must have something to do with that.

So a number of us here are involved with, involved in music – guitar or lyrics.. And so I was talking with Jim Cohn [sic] about it before, and, apparently, this general idea, the practice of this, the practicality of this, was a clear idea but a novelty to him, (he hadn’t heard it (really) spoken of before) – [Allen to Jim Cohn] - Is that so? - You see, that’s why I’m trying to clarify it here, or repeat it again, in class. [again, to Jim Cohn] - Is there anything I’ve left out that we were talking about? basically?

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

↧

"..A Mayden"& Blake Accentuated

January 28, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Amnesiac Thirst For Fame

≪ Previous: Zukofsky's Music

More detailed technical analysis. Again (as with an earlier posting this week), it is strongly suggested that the reader follow along with the original audio (which is available here(beginnning at approximately nineteen-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-two minutes in)

Student (JC): You could maybe talk a little bit about (William) Blake and your settings?

AG: Well, we’ve got a case here ["I Syng of A Mayden'], applying the same method here - “I sing of a maiden that is..” –"I syng of a mayden.." [Allen begins singing]– “I syng of a mayden that is makeles…(that is make-less, makeles) - "I syng of a mayden that is makeles" (“that is makeles”) – "king of all kings for her son she chose” (sings– “kyng of alle kynges/ for her sone che ches” - “kyng of alle kynges/ for her sone che ches” - “He came also (as) still/ where his mother was.." (sings - "He cam also stylle where his moder was”) - "He cam also stylle where his moder was" (sings -"He cam also stylle where his moder was) – simply following in tune from the suggestions of the pitch of vernacular recitation of the lines.

By reading.. By vernacular, I mean, if you were talking the lines aloud to your best friend as if they made sense, (instead of just stiff poetry to be intoned as if it were hi-faultin’ but bombastic and meaningless )– “He came also still to his mother’s bower" (sings - “He cam also still to his moderes bower" - "to his muderes bower"– "He cam also stylle.." (came also still to his mother’s bower") - (sings - "cam also stylle to his moderns bower’), "as dew in april that falleth on the flower" (“as dew in aprille that fallyt on the flour”) (sings - "as dew in aprille that fallyt on the flour” – “that fallyt on the flour” – that fallith on the flower. So for “grass’, “flower’ and ‘spray”, I lifted the pitch up (”that fallyt on..). The first.. “to here sone..” – the last line of the first stanza – “to here sone che ches” - “to here son che ches” – but then, (in) the last line of the next three stanzas, the last syllable is lifted up (“that fallyt on the gras", "that fallyt on the flour", "that fallyt on the spray" - (that falleth on the spray, that falleth on the flower, that falleth on the grass) – up, you lift it up. The “fallyt” goes down (“as dew in aprille that fallyt on the gras”) - da-da dada – da – Is that clear? Going down on the "fallyt", going up on the "gras". The pitch going down on the "fallyt" (because it’s falling) , the pitch going up on the grass, and on the flower, and on the spray. Is that clear?

The first impulse I had was just to have “falleth on the grass”, but it was “fallyt on the gras” (not “falleth on the grass”) – but [sings - "... fallyt on the gras”] - – up...

With (William) Blake, the procedure was the same – “Piping down the valleys wild”– (sings– "Piping down the valleys wild”) – "Piping down the valleys wild", so in that line it’s…the pitch (there) of “Piping down the valleys wild”, you start high and end high, right? Piping? wild? down the valleys? – both for sense and pronunciation go down in pitch ((sings – Piping down the valleys wild” or “Piping down the valleys wild”) –da da da da da da da-da– wild – you say “wild”, you say da-da, right – wi-old – one “o” – wi-old – “piping down the valleys wild”. (That’s) simply following the indications of tone that you’d speak it . What’s the next line?

Peter Orlovsky: "On a cloud I saw a child"…?

Student: Piping songs of pleasant glee...

AG: "Piping down the valleys wild/Piping songs of pleasant glee" (sings - "Piping songs of pleasant glee") "Piping songs of pleasant glee "(sings -"Piping songs of pleasant glee") Because if you say “Piping songs of pleasant..“ (da-da-da-da da-da), -"Piping songs of pleasant.. " - "Piping songs of pleasant glee", "Piping songs of pleasant glee" (well, you might reverse it a little) - (sings - "Piping songs of pleasant glee") - whichever way you want to go. “On a cloud I saw a child" (sings -"On a cloud I saw a child”) – You can always say “child” like that - “On a cloud I saw a child”) – “And he, laughing, said to me"– (sings - “And he laughing said to me"– “Piping down the valleys wild… [Allen now sings/ recites the whole stanza] - “Pipe a song about a Lamb" - "Pipe a song about a Lamb" - I can’t sing - “Pipe a song about a lamb” or “Pipe a song (about) a Lamb”, or something like that , some playful little high-toned, high note. - “Pipe a song about a Lamb/. So I piped with merry chear' (sings - So I piped with merry cheer"). "Piper, pipe that song again" (sings – "Piper pipe that song again”) .”So he piped, I wept to hear" - (sings - ”So he piped, I wept to hear" ”So he piped, I wept to hear")

Peter Orlovsky: "Piper…"

AG:Piper. "Piper, sit thee down and write.."

Peter Orlovsky: "In a book that all may read."

AG: (No). "In a book that all may read"– So - “Piper, sit thee down and write in a book that all may read”, "Piper sit thee.." (sings -"Piper sit thee down and write in a book that all may read") - "So he vanished from my sight" (sings"So he vanished from my sight" -(naturally, (right) out of sight!) – "vanished from my sight". "And I plucked a hollow reed" ("and he’d vanished from my sight/ and I plucked a hollow reed") (sings: "And I plucked a hollow reed…")

PO: "And I stain'd the water clear..."

AG : (What's the next one? - "And I made a rural pen" (sings – "And I made a rural pen..""And I made a rural pen") - "And I made a rural pen"- And I made a rural pen, and…I..stain'd the water clear? ..

PO: "Every child…"

AG: No, that's the next one.. (let me see)/"And I sat me down to write" - or something - "And I sat me down to write..""Every child.." - Is that it, Peter

Student (turning to anthology) (page) five-four-five

AG: Pardon me?

Student: Five-four-five

AG: (consulting anthology) "And I made a rural pen"–wish I had this all along - "And I made a rural.." - [sings - "And I made a rural pen"] - "And I stain'd the water clear" - [sings, "And I stain'd the water clear"] - "And I wrote my happy songs"- [sings - "And I wrote my happy songs"] - "Every child may joy to hear" - [sings - "Every child may joy to hear"] - Well, I didn't follow exactly, but close enough

So, if you’ve got it on page five four five, I’l just sing it once through, accapella –

[Allen, along with Peter Orlovsky reads/sings entire poem]

The difficulty there was (not) to get into too much of a dumpty-dumpty-dumpty rhythm and miss the syncopation of “And I made a ruralpen/And I stained the water clear/And I wrote my happy songs/ Every child mightjoy to hear". You might get into “Every child may joy to hear", instead of “Every child may joy to hear”. You get a little syncopation into it, (without breaking the basic rhythmic progression - but you can syncopate, in and out, too - just (that) the syncopation would go according to the vernacular statement of it, the vernacular way you’d say it - ”And I made a rural pen”, you wouldn’t say” And I made a rural pen”. You would say "And I made a rural pen”, [sings– "And I made a rural pen"] – "And I stain'd the water clear" , "And I stained the clear water", "And I stain'd the water clear" - [sings, And I stain'd the water clear"]...

Peter Orlovsky; You might sing that song and.. I've sung it up in the farm [in Cherry Valley], and you've got the wind blowing and the noise of the trees, and you're working, working doing a job outside , you might sing it altogether differently…

AG: Yeah, see, I was just trying to suggest.. whatever differences you make, I was trying to suggest here whether the direction will go up or down, if you're following the tones, and if you're translating it from the book, from the booke, into vernacular rhythm. And a good sample of the need for vernacular rhythm (well, I have it, well, here we go..) - [Allen rifles through anthology] - We'll get onto Blake another time, we'll get onto more of this….

Well, I'll say, "The Lamb"- Dig "The Lamb" - for vernacular. Can somebody.. Is anybody not familiar with this poem? - Okay - [to Student] Can you read it aloud? -
[Student reads the poem out loud - "Little lamb, who made thee?"] -

AG: Thank you., that's not bad. Were you doing it vernacularly, perfectly..

Student; No, I was just…

AG: Well, that was alright. What I like is "Little lamb, god bless thee" - "Little lamb, god bless thee" - Actually, it made sense that way, because you'd say, "god bless thee", you wouldn't say " "Little lamb, god bless thee", "Litt;e lamb god bless thee. You'd say, "Litt;e Lamb, God.." you'd hesitate and say "God bless thee" - "God bless thee" . So when I set that to music it was "Little lamb, god bless thee, Little lamb, god bless thee", it wasn't "Little lamb god bless thee" (boom-boom-boom), instead was "god bless thee" (da da-da). In high school, I learned it as, "Little lamb, I'll tell thee little lamb I'll tell thee. He is call-ed by thy name for he calls himself a lamb. He-is-meek-and-he-is-mild, he-became-a-little-child, I-a-chlld-and-thou-a-lamb We-are-call-ed-by his-name Little lamb god bless thee little lamb god bless thee"! - or, it confounded me for years, "Little lamb god bless thee, little lamb god bless thee (swallowing the "god") "Little lamb god bless thee, little lamb god bless thee" in order to just go on with the actual rhythm accenting "bless", so if you turn to vernacular, as you would say it, "Little lamb god bless thee, Little lamb god bless thee", or "Little lamb, God bless thee" [sings - "Little lamb god bless thee", "Little lamb god bless thee"]. So that's a sample of making use of vernacular rhythm to interpret the poem. But where do you get the vernacular …where do you get the vernacular, or spoken, inspiration? where do you get the idea how you're supposed to put these accents? - Well, you've got to figure out, with your common sense, what the line means. And, like, what the line means - and then you put your accents where the line means it. Right? - instead of "god bless thee", instead of swallowing the "god" and emphasizing the "bless" just automatically, mechanically.

Piping down the valleys wild

Piping songs of pleasant glee

On a cloud I saw a child.

And he laughing said to me.

Pipe a song about a Lamb;

So I piped with merry chear,

Piper pipe that song again—

So I piped, he wept to hear.

Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe

Sing thy songs of happy chear,

So I sung the same again

While he wept with joy to hear

Piper sit thee down and write

In a book that all may read—

So he vanish'd from my sight.

And I pluck'd a hollow reed.

And I made a rural pen,

And I stain'd the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee

Gave thee life & bid thee feed.

By the stream & o'er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing wooly bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice!

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I'll tell thee,

Little Lamb I'll tell thee!

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb:

He is meek & he is mild,

He became a little child:

I a child & thou a lamb,

We are called by his name.

Little Lamb God bless thee.

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

↧

Amnesiac Thirst For Fame

January 28, 2016, 11:30 am

≫ Next: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 253

≪ Previous: "..A Mayden"& Blake Accentuated

Amnesiac Thirst For Fame

An “autograph hound” armed

with a golden platter and a

gun

kneeled before John and

killed the Beatles.

A stringy-haired artist

tiptoed thru St. Peter’s

and unsculpted

   Michelangelo’s

polished marble elbow with a

   hammer,

Christ defenseless lying in his

   stone Mama’s arms.

Staring out of the canvas

   under their Feathered Hats

Rembrandt’s Night Watchers

were blind to the Slasher

that tore thru their coats with

   a razor.

Did someone steal Mona

   Lisa’s smile forever from

   the Louvre?

Originally published in Rolling Stone magazine, January, 1981, though written a month before, around the time of John Lennon's assassination, December 8, 1980, "Amnesiac Thirst For Fame" is one of the one-hundred-and-three poems soon to be made available in Wait Till I'm Dead - UnCollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg to be published by Grove-Atlantic. Two further short earlier poems are available here

↧

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 253

January 29, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Philip Glass - 1

≪ Previous: Amnesiac Thirst For Fame

Wait Till I'm Dead, the eagerly-awaited new Ginsberg book, is officially out next Tuesday (the UK edition, cover seen here, has a pub date of the 25th of February)

Here's Rachel Zucker from the introduction:

"When I first read Allen Ginsberg's poems as a teenager, they worked on me like a gateway drug. Leading me deeper and deeper into a life of poetry, Ginsberg's poetry woke me up and whet a poetic appetite I've spent years trying to satisfy. I saw the world differently after reading "Howl", "Kaddish", "Sunflower Sutra" and "America". Language became clamorous and mystical in my brain, words delicious and unwieldy on my tongue.

Reading Ginsberg gave me the chutzpah to complain to the chair of my high-school English department that there wasn't enough poetry on the syllabus. The chair shrewdly offered to give me poetry on the side - as much poetry as I could manage. The poets he proffered - Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens - sounded tame or impregnable to my adolescent ears. The chair gave me Sylvia Plath, but even Plath failed to turn me on (then), failed to bother me the way Ginsberg did, the way I wanted poetry to bother me. No, no, no! I wanted POETRY!: disruption, danger, mind-blowing, dirty-talking, proselytizing prophecy! I wanted the kind of Talmudic Beat-babble queer broken-guitar-Bob-Dylan American song that only ALLEN GINSBERG had the nerve to sing!…"

And, confronted by the UnCollected:

"What a delight it is to read these old-new poems! It's a bit like watching a memorial slideshow of someone I loved dearly. How beautiful he was in younger years! How innocent-looking! How wise! One marvels at what has come back into fashion or never went out of fashion, at the images that feel familiar but are, actually, seen for the first time. "Of course!" one thinks. Or, "I never knew!" I'm so grateful for these unearthed poems, for the moreness of them, which is not just memory but new connection, new discovery. I love Ginsberg's fearsome prolificity, but the massiveness of his published oeuvre makes it difficult to get a sense of Ginsberg's development across time…"

Zucker concludes:

"In an age so full of fear, so obsessed with quarantine, isolation and self-protection, an age in which educators are instructed to provide trigger warnings to students about potentially disturbing material in the classroom and our government issues color-coded advisories about our current threat-level, Ginsberg's poems remind us that art must infect, contaminate, upset, disturb, question, invade, threaten and excite. Ginsberg's poems have always done that and continue to do so. They are dangerous. They are fearless. We need them."

Uncle Howard, Aaron Brookner's documentary, opened this week atSundance (two more showings, tonight and tomorrow). Here's the official trailer

Variety's review of the movie is here
Hollywood Reporter's review of the movie, here

Neal Cassady's birthday's coming up. Theannual (seventh!) Neal Cassady Birthday Bashwill take place on Saturday in Denver at the Mercury Cafe - "At the event, local poets, family members and other devoted artists like Jami Cassady,Molina Speaks and Jennifer Dunbar Dorn will pay tribute to the man with live performances. David Amram, a longtime friend of Cassady's and an acclaimed composer and avant-garde musician who connected with the Beats back in Cassady's heyday - will perform with his quartet".
More on Amram here (and, for that matter, here)

Ed Sanders new book, a follow-up on his legendary 1971 book on the Charles Manson murders,The Family, is a biography of the victim, Sharon Tate

Alexandra Molotkow's somewhat luke-warm review of the book for The New Republiccan be foundhere

Ed's friend and fellow Woodstock resident, Raymond Foye writes: "During the writing of the book he told me he learned a valuable lesson: Never do anything for the money. But then at the end of the process he told me he was glad he did it, because he wanted to give people a portrait of a woman who he truly admired, a really talented comic actress. And also he felt the need to fulfill Sharon Tate's mother's request that he please explore the case more fully, as she never accepted many of the claims made (for example, that the murder was committed to set off a race war). Her mother felt there wasa connection with Sirhan (Sirhan) and the RFK assassination. For that story you must read the book...".

[Sharon Tate and Her Mom - illustration (from Sharon Tate- A Life by Ed Sanders) by Rick Veitch]

Our posting, earlier this week, on the sale, by Steve Clay's Granary Books, of the legendary Ed Sanders archives, incidentally, can be accessed here

"Pseudo-anthropologist"? - Huh? - We're not quite sure what the author, Margaret Rhodes, means in her Wired note on the recently-published Harry Smith Catalogue Raisonné, of paper airplanes (nice, we guess, at least, to see it noticed). Some confusion in the chronology (the actual nature) of Harry's collecting in there too. That, and its companion volume - (on string figures - Harry Smith Catalogue Raisonné, Volume II), are, of course, essential purchases.

Tom Pickard on Basil Bunting - His 1966 note (in acknowledgment of the 50th anniversary of Bunting's epic poem,"Briggflats") was reprinted by the Poetry Foundation and can be accessed here.

[Allen Ginsberg and Basil Bunting, 1965]

Speaking of Poetry - "New York to San Fran", the longest poem in Allen's new book, an epic 1965 airplane meditation, first published in the City Lights Journal, will be published, in its entirety, in next month's issue of Poetry magazine

The concluding section of Nick Sturm's excellent two-part series for Fanzine on Ted Berrigan's art writing recently appeared and can be accessed here (the first part, that appeared last July on that forum, can be accessed here)

[Ted Berrigan by Alex Katz]

Three years on, we remember our dear friend Anselm Hollo

[Anselm Hollo (1934-2013]

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Philip Glass - 1

January 30, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Philip Glass - 2

≪ Previous: Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 253

We celebrate tomorrow the actual birthday of Philip Glass, but here on the Ginsberg Project, a Philip Glass weekend

Here's how Philip brought in the New Year in New York earlier this month

& from the memoirs:

"Some years later when my sister Sheppie's husband, Morton Abramowitz was the Ambassador to Turkey, Allen Ginsberg came with me and some other friends on a tour of Greek theaters on the Ionian coast. I was interested in the acoustics and how they worked, so Allen would go on the stage and recite the famous W.B.Yeatspoem "Sailing to Byzantium". The tourists who were around would sit down in the seats in the amphitheater and listen, because here's someone with a big head of hair who looks like a professor - I don't think anyone knew it was Allen Ginsberg - and the guards didn't stop him. He would walk to the center of the stage and recite, and it is amazing how beautiful and clear the poem would sound in that open environment."

[Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass & company at Ephesus, Turkey, 1990 - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg, courtesy the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto]

"When Allen met Gelek Rimpochesoon after they immediately became close friends. From then on, he was at all the teaching sessions that would happen in New York and traveled frequently to Ann Arbor. During those years, Gelek Rimpoche's Jewel Heart organized two retreats a year - one in the winter and one in the summer - and Allen and I went to both every year. There were usually three of us sharing a room, the third person being either Stokes Howell, another writer friend of mine, or Kathy Laritz, Gelek Rimpoche's assistant at that time. During thr retreats, I often saw Allen wake up at night, turn on a flashlight, and begin writing poetry."

"One summer, Allen and his lifelong friend Peter Orlovsky came to visit me in Cape Breton. I remember many evenings after dinner when Allen would recite poetry. There was no TV near us and the radio offered very little of interest, but Allen knew volumes of poetry by heart. He could recite hours of poetry by Shakespeare, Blake and Tennyson, to list just a few."

[Philip Glass -Photograph by Allen Ginsberg]

"He told me that his father, Louis Ginsberg, himself a poet of some recognition had gotten him and his brother Eugene as children to memorize poetry. At times there were readings when both Allen and his brother read poems, a performance I found both moving and beautiful."

[Philip Glass & his sister in Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, Turkey, 1990 - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg, courtesy the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto]

"Allen was outspoken and honest to a fault up to the very end of his life. From time to time I witnessed his encounters with people who knew him only by name, but had no idea what a warm and spontaneous person he truly was. I remember a dinner in the 1990s at the house of Hank Luce, the publisher of Time and Fortune magazines. Hank was a big loud guy and part of the Luces - a powerhouse family in New York and throughout the country. Hank didn't really know Allen, but at dinner began poking around conversationally, clearly looking for trouble. But Allen, at that moment, was not interested in getting riled up. He answered Hank amiably enough. Finally Hank said, "I hear you write pornographic poetry?" - "I do" - "Let me hear some" - At that point Allen let loose with some real hair-curling pornographic poetry. Not only was it pornographic, it was really vulgar too. I could see that Hank was deeply impressed. Finally, when it looked as if Allen might be slowing down, he said, "Well, well, well…that certainly is pornographic. After that they fell into a friendly and very lively conversation . In fact Hank and Allen had a very good time together."

to be continued

↧

Philip Glass - 2

January 31, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: A Ginsberg Class at Naropa - Parodies - Various Student Assignment Poems

≪ Previous: Philip Glass - 1

More Glass - Philip Glass's birthday today - continuing from yesterday, a Philip Glass weekend.

PG: "I had met Allen Ginsberg many times after I returned from Paris and India in 1967. He, of course was close to William Burroughs, whom I knew from the Chappaqua film work when I was assisting Ravi Shankar. We had shared the stage quite a few times at music-poetry events and at the Nova Convention in 1979 in New York City, a celebration of Burroughs' work. But we didn't do any work together until 1988. It then happened that a theater group that emerged from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War was organizing a fund-raising event that had, as its major event, an evening at the Shubert Theater on Broadway. Tom Bird from the theater company called me and asked if I would participate. I agreed but really had no idea what I would do.
A few days later I was in the St. Mark's Bookshop and Allen happened to be there, in the poetry section. I was inspired to ask him if he would perform at the event. He immediately accepted. I then asked if we could perform together, using a poem of his and new music which I would compose. In a flash, he picked up a copy of his Collected Poems off the shelf, deftly opened to the section, "The Fall of America", and in a few seconds his fingers pointed to the lines, "I'm an old man now", from "Wichita Vortex Sutra". I went home and, starting with that line, in a few days had composed the music, stopping after the line, "..stop for tea and gas". We only had a few weeks before the Shubert performance and we rehearsed at my house, where I had the piano. This, our first collaboration, came together quickly.After that we began to see each other often, and since we lived not far from each other in the East Village, our regular visits were no problem."

See further selections from Hydrogen Jukebox on the Allen Ginsberg Project - here

See other Ginsberg Project Glass postings - here and here

Here's Philip and Patti Smith celebrating Allen together

↧

A Ginsberg Class at Naropa - Parodies - Various Student Assignment Poems

February 1, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: A Ginsberg Parody - "I know of a baby.."

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Today’s installment from the on-going transcribed Allen-Ginsberg-at-Naropa lectures, shows Allen working directly with the students (he had assigned them to make their own versions of one of the early lyrics he’d been teaching, either "I Syng of A Mayden"or "Lyke Wake Dirge").

The results, regrettably, while vigorous, are a tad sophomoric (Allen will remark on this later)

AG: I made some kind of a copy of “I Syng of A Mayden, I made my own. Has anybody else got a sample here? Has anybody else done theirs? their homework? I think Rizzo (sic - one of the students) is still in Lake Tahoe [to (another) student] Do you have one? –

Student: Yeah, but I think you've blown that to the sky now.
AG: No, you know, because I didn’t know how to pronounce it [the poem] properly, (so) I’ve got to be going and do mine all over again, and put my music (in) all over again, while listening to his proper pronunciation. So let’s see what you did, let’s see what you did.

Student: It’s called “I sing of a hooker”!

AG: Everybody... To each his own!

Student: “I sing of a hooker that’s a rip-off/ Whore of all whores, I did say suck off/ I came in her where her gold teeth was/As any man should, well, just because/I came in her good as my crotch exploded/As any man should, whether straight or loaded/I came in her good with my full-squirt load/As any man should/ And then hit the road/ Harlot and hooker was never one as she / Quite well does such a hooker give orgasm to me.”

AG: Pretty good (parody). Did you make a little rhythmic paradigm, to figure that out too? – Does it fit?

Student: I have it on my (rough) copy, but..

AG: Okay, when you turn it in, why don’t you make a paradigm with yours. Let me compare it, compare it to the … My paradigm (paradigm means outline). My outline is not inevitably final, fixed. If you’ve got a different interpretation, lay it on. Anybody else got one?

Student: I did mine to the other one – a Lyke Wake Dirge?

AG: Okay, We’ll get to that next then – Does anybody else have one to " I Syng of A Mayden"?

Student: I've one. It’s called “I Crave A New Pleasure”

AG: (Go)

Student:“I crave a new pleasure/ one to satisfy the deepest of my cravings/ like a sponge I search/I crave also better a bowl of fresh meade/Things so particular silence my greede/ I crave also better a cake of great (sweetnesse)/ things so particular to shame great (neediness)/ I crave in particular/ an ale of great taste/things so particular such to soften rough day/ Searching and (eating), (Can it be) a noble fight?/When I’m hungry, tantrums/ne’er to see the light."

AG: Does yours follow any kind of a basic pattern?
Student; I don’t believe so. (I just put the words where I have them, somewhere).

AG: Yeah, Well, one thing, if you do one (because everyoneshould do one), one thing you should figure - it’d make it a lot easier if you count the number of syllables line by line, to follow the syllabic number, the number of syllables too. Do it, “down to the last syllable (of recorded time)”. In other words, as you’ll notice, I’ve got the syllable-count there – six-five-six-six – “I sing of a mayden” is six, “that is makeles” – one, two, three, four, five. Anybody else? [to Student] - Got a specimen?

Student: “Trash and Play”

AG: Pardon me?

Student: Its called“ Trash and Play”

AG: “Trashing Play”? – good title

Student: (Securing the trash, the flag is useless/Trash is abuse of the world of play/If the world has its trashed flags' imperialism/ For this they are news, this scrutiny will bear/The flag always will, with its amount of skill,/ outweigh the trash if rightly it is held/The flag can be stretched and the trash (will) stay/the stains in the cloth remain, red white and blue /People are trashing flags, in the world of flags/Create trash and flags/ finally dead for more.)

AG: ("Having bodies dead for more"?) – Uh huh - Does that follow? More or less precisely? I mean, I can’t tell by ear completely.

Student: I don’t have the things like “Aprille” - that I left out by accident at the end because I did this before the class session…

AG: Yeah. Okay. It’s really worthwhile working on this because this is, in a sense, the earliest, most archetypal, poem that we have, and almost all poetry comes out, all English poetry sort of slowly comes out of this, like, you know, like something out of the seed, a tree growing out of the seed. Yeah?

Student: I’m pretty sure that mine comes down to the syllables, but, as far as the accents go, to coordinate that, it’s very subjective

AG: Yeah, Well, most of the (accents), except for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, about twelve accents are subjective and I think all the rest are pretty much marked out and clear – “syng”, “mayden”, ”mak”, “king”, “kinges”,” here” ,”ches”, “cam”, “stille”, “moder”, “was”, “dew”, “Aprille’, “fall” “gras”, “cam”, “stille”, “moderes” ‘bower”, “dew”, “Aprille”, “fall”, “flower”, “cam” “stille”, “moder” ,” “lay”, “dew””Aprille” , “fall”, “spray”, “moder”, “mayden”, “non", “che”, “wel”,”lady” “Godes” , “moder” , “be” - most of, almost all of, those are pretty fixed . I tried one going all through them and trying to stick with it. Anybody else got one?

I sing of a maiden
That is makeles
King of alle kinges
To here sone che ches.

He cam also stille
Ther his moder was,
As dew in Aprille
That fallith on the gras

He cam also stille
To his moderes bower,
As dew in Aprille
That fallith on the flower,

He cam also stille
There his moder lay
As dew in Aprille
That fallith on the spray

Moder and maiden
Was never non but che,
Wel may swich a lady
Godes moder be

Student: Yeah– “I sing of a dildo most insensate/That can do naught but grow, finding no fit mate/ When the (heat has) begun, it /can get very hot/It can come for no luck, frustration’s its lot/For when it has begun another to make/ it can come for no-one, joy it cannot take/For when it has begun to fulfill its lust /it can come for no-one, it’s balls will not bust /With tears overladen most often it seems/ This dildo's ambition is never to be”

AG: Next-to-last.. next-to-last stanza – What’s the last line?

Student; “Is never to be”.. It doesn’t quite (rhyme)

AG: And that’s a six-syllable line in the original - “that fall’th on the spray"..

Student Yeah

AG: ..is now made to be five, yeah? Are most of yours five syllables?

Student: Yeah

AG: Well, you see, most of the poem is six syllables

Student: It’s not right according to the…

AG: Well, actually, you don’t have to (match) exactly. The point of the exercise is just to get the measure of the footstep here, of this giant footstep forward. But the closer you get your measure, the more sensitive you’ll be to how delicate the measure is, the closer you try to imitate it.

Anyone else? Anyone else? Some even more filthy?

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-two-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty nine-and-a-quarter minutes in. The audio is not especially clear in the above-quoted student poems so there might be a few brief errors of transcription. Readers are invited to make amendments wherever they feel necessary]

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A Ginsberg Parody - "I know of a baby.."

February 2, 2016, 3:00 am

≫ Next: Another Student Assignment Poem - After "Lyke Wake Dirge"

≪ Previous: A Ginsberg Class at Naropa - Parodies - Various Student Assignment Poems

[Detail from "Virgin and Child Adored by the Infant St John" - Lucas Cranach, the Elder - oil on panel, 36.5 × 27.5 cm (14.4 × 10.8 in) circa 1512-14]

Following yesterday's student presentations, Allen presents his own "I Syng Of A Mayden" parody

AG: I have a poem that’s practically virginal (in comparison), virgin but I switch sexes. Anybody else got one? - (because I'm eager to get on with mine) - Okay, well I’ll give you mine then, anyway, then I'll get on with it - “I Know Of A Baby”

[Allen proceeds to reads his poem - "I know of a baby..”]

“I know of a baby which is never born/ Deathless human wisdom and lovers heart forlorn./ He sits down in silence there in mindfulness/. So we and our violence are calm as for a kiss. He sits down in silence that we guess at his power/ so we with our violence are calm as for the hour/ He sits down in silence there to speak so clear/ that we with our violence are calm that we can hear./ Born not a baby, made never not one cry/, Little lonely laddie will not close his eye.”

So it was switching from…same paradox, of a maiden that was without a mate to a baby that was never born. I switched the sex, and put it in from a theistic angle to a Buddhist unborn (to the Buddhist, you know, double-negative unborn) and included mindfulness of body, speech and mind. Violence? - that the mindfuness, power and speech.. (some rough equivalents of body-speech and mind there - or mind, body and speech) So, I had a little bit of theology in it of one kind or another..

Student: Maybe you should read it once more

[Allen obliges and reads the poem once more]

“Laddie”’s a bit corny there. Also, (what) I was trying to do was imitate – even the rhymes, I think “power and hour” for “shower” and “flower” – and “mindfulness” and “kiss” for, they had, “ches".. So let’s see where are we now?

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

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