Written In My Dream…

Allen Ginsberg reads his poem, “Written In My Dream by William Carlos Williams” (included in the collection White Shroud – Poems 1980-1985) in September 1993 at the University of Vienna. Video text animation is by Niklaus Lesnik. The poem also appears on Holy Soul Jelly Roll (recently re-released by Ginsberg Recordings) – Volume 4: Ashes & Blues.

“I hear voices”. There was, of course, the hallucinatory voice of Blake in ’47, providing him, among other things, with his Blake melodies – Allen discusses that incident here.
Kubla Khan? “Channeling”? Surrealist experimentation? – and/or, perhaps, more recently, Jack Spicer’s poetics of a “Martian” dictation – but this is clearly something different, a whole poem served up in toto, verbatim, to Allen, in a dream, from his mentor, Doctor Williams – dream advice, dream counsel, dream admonition –   “No need/ to dress/ it up/ as beauty./ No need/ to distort/ what’s not/ standard/ to be/ understandable”.
Useful tips.

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