Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room (like San Francisco State on the West Coast, who we’ve reported on earlier) are in the process of digitalizing and putting on-line their extraordinary collection of poetry-recordings. We urge you to check them out here, on their web-site, at the so-called “Listening Booth” – unique recordings by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, John Wieners, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, to name but only a few of them. Allen’s contribution consists of three tapes – the first, a joint-reading with Peter Orlovsky from 1964 – the second, (as he announces it), “Allen Ginsberg, November 17, 1964, reading a scattered random selection of poems” – the third, 22 years later, with Steven Taylor, in 1986, a considerably more focused set. The “set-lists” as follows:
tape one – opening with Hare Krishna chant – The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express – Sanskrit strota chant (invoking Saraswati) – Why is God Love, Jack? – I am Victim of Telephone- Sunflower Sutra [- Peter Orlovsky reads [from Straight Hearts’ Delight] Peter Jerking Allen Off (Sex Experiment) – Morris – Second Poem] – Allen closes with Describe: The Rain on Dasawamedh Ghat [from Indian Journals]
tape two – Allen reads Pull My Daisy – then [from Empty Mirror] “I feel as if I am at a dead end” – “Tonite all is well..” (2 takes) – After All, What Else Is There To Say – The Trembling of the Veil – Metaphysics – In Death, Cannot Reach What Is Most Near – In Society – This Is About Death – Sunset – A Poem on America. – then [from Reality Sandwiches] – The Green Automobile – Love Poem on Theme by Whitman – Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo – Dream Record, June 8 1955 – “Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square – To An Old Poet In Peru – [from Kaddish] – The End – Magic Psalm – concludes with (unpublished) poem-journal notation, To Boston (November 11, 1964)
tape three – (following introductions by Vivian Wong & Michael Blumenthal) – Gospel Noble Truths, Hard-On Blues – Airplane Blues – Don’t Grow Old – Father Death Blues – Plutonian Ode – After Whitman & Reznikoff (excerpt) – Do the Meditation Rock – [Steven Taylor sings Just Like a Jail (words by Tuli Kupferberg) – [from White Shroud] – The Little Fish Devours the Big Fish – Those Two – Why I Meditate – 221 Syllables at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center – Arguments – White Shroud – Surprise Mind – Written in My Dream by W.C.Williams – Reading Bai Juyi – Prophecy – Moral Majority – Jumping the Gun on the Sun – concludes with two settings of William Blake, The Nurse’s Song and The Tyger