Anne Waldman turns 67 today. We’d draw your attention to the comprehensive list of links we provided here last year regarding the indefatigable Anne. But one year more, in her case, means a whole host of new links and new projects, new initiatives, new collaborations – she’s a veritable force of nature! To select just a few highlights – a November 2011 visit to Athens, Georgia resulted in two comprehensive and intriguing video-documents – Melisa “Misha”Cahnmann-Taylor’s “Misha’s Poetry Cast”, and a “Socratic Rap” (sic) at ATHICA (Athens Institute for Contemporary Art), the very next day (in five parts, here, here, here, here and here). Among her most enduring recent collaborations – those with her son, Ambrose! (check out fastspeakingmusic). Their performance together in Milan this past summer has been, happily, recorded. Here’s “Without Stitching Closed The Eye of The Falcon” (from 2006’s The Eye of The Falcon). Here’s “Fossil Fuel” (from the album, The Milk of Human Kindness and from the book Manatee/Humanity – Anne’s observations on that book can be listened to here)
Anne’s published work? – Well, the monumental Iovis (imminent last year) is now out (more details about that book are available here). Also, of note Soldatesque/ Soldiering: With Dreams of Wartime (her collaboration, with art by Noah Saterstrom) and Feminafesto and Matriot Acts, (two small books from Charles Alexander’s wonderful, Tucson-based, (now Texas-based) Chax Press).
Here’s an interview with Anne conducted by Majorie Tesser
and here’s how Anne began the New Year (2012) – at The Poetry Project, of course! – with an improvisation/rousing rendition of “Go Down Moses”
Also born on this day, (from the realms of the “New American Poetry“), the ever-cautionary, ever-watchful, ever-pertinent, not-forgotten Ed(ward) Dorn.
See him here, here and here reading
(three excerpts from the Joe Carderelli (and Jim Skipper) documentary “Black Mountain Revisited” that came out in 1990).