Another (and final) video tape from the Lenore Herb Archive held at The Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive, VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver. This is a continuation from a previous posting – see here. The first part of the tape features Allen but the bulk of it is Peter Orlovsky
Tape begin with enigmatic footage of spinning of a drum, before Allen appears in media res (and reads for approximately four-and-a-half minutes) unpublished work from that previous summer, from his 1979 journals
AG: (“….(It’s time you) learned how to meditate. Stop shouting about mysticism!….”….”Let yourself go/ Keep on breathing” – Thank you. Next poet, Peter Orlovsky
PO: This is my first book of poems. It’s called Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs and it took me twenty years to get it out and if you buy a copy I’ll plant you a nut tree in New York or Vancouver or a persimmon tree.
“My Bed Is Covered Yellow” (My bed is covered yellow – Oh sun, I sit on you….” “…all the news of the world/ lay on you at one time or another”)
“Snail Poem” (“Make my grave shape of heart so like a flower….”… “…become a snail & go curiousely/ on its way”)
AG: [to PO] Warren Tallman asked me to make one announcement now about these cars blocking traffic) – [to audience] Warren Tallman asked me to tell you there are three cars blocking traffic a Ford Wagon, ESG156, a Volkswagen 2KBB896, and a Scirocco, KCHO14. Ok, so if you’ve got that car lift it up by ordinary mind.
PO: [continues] – “Woe – It’s Waring Time Again in the Armey..” (“WOE – It’s Waring Time Again in the Armey/and the sargent sees/that faraway look in my eye…”….”…but I was young & strong/ & could take it.”)
“& the tea will seem golden” – (“OH, oh Mama, where did you go?….”…. & pat bellies again and tickle each other’s feet.”)
“Let the subway be our Greek meeting place”…. (“Let the subway be our greek meeting place/for there is whare everybody goes…”…..”…No snow or yelloo leaves in the dark iron subway”)
“Morris” – (“Go on Morris, piss up your room..”…. ”…Just a minute I’ll get a new set of pajamers”)
“Creedmore State Mental Hospital” (“By now he’s dead and buried/in a corner of my eye”…”Piss & food”)
“4DMan” (“Laff and I go to movies at see 4D Man..”…”….all the work is done”)
“Someone liked me when I was 12” – (“When I was a kid in summer camp…”… “…that we just might have given each other”)
“Love Poem to A.J Muste” – “Daydreaming last night I went down… – A.J. Muste was a pacifist, religious fellow, very slender. I thnk he died at sixty..seventy-nine. He was very active in the Vietnam War movement, bringing all the different political Left groups, and moderate groups, and even Right groups, bringing them together, so that they could sit around the table and plan a strategy to stop the war in Vietnam. (“Daydreaming last night I went down to visit A J Muste’s grave…”….“Did you pay, dear A.J?”)
“America Give A Shit! – New York City – Get Your Shit Together” “(“You have to sit and think this thing out, Peter-/How many pounds does my city shit & piss a day?”… “…looking up/ at the clear blue sky/listening to mama’s human fertilizer song).”
AG: [returning to the mic]: I want to thank Warren Tallman for inviting us here and I think we all owe him (the poets, and listeners as well, together) a debt for having had the courage and enterprise, and the imagination and genius, and the suffering, to organize us all to get here together and have this whole series of readings all this week (Writing In Our Time Poetry Conference, Vancouver, 1979)
Peter and I will be teaching meditation and poetics on the… (which is to say, calm and equilibrium, and willingness to endure boredom, willingness to ride through our own hysteria and come down to settle in some kind of grounded place where everybody can be together, rather than a..a single solipsistic scream under the heavens (sic)
So we’ll be teaching meditation in relation to poetry at the Russian Community Center, which will be all day, an hour lecture on poetics, instruction and meditation, sitting an hour, talking, sitting, talking, till five pm. The cost is fifteen dollars for the all-day sitting and the money will go to the Dharmadhatu. And then – Gordon Taylor, who’s a friend from Naropa, is out there at a table to pick up your names, or, if you want to register, or, he can give you some information on it. And our meditation teacher, Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche will be here in Vancouver for a public talk, Septermber 27th at the Sheraton Plaza 500 (12th and Cambie) on September 27th. He’s a Tibetan meditation teacher who came from Tibet and organized Naropa Institute in Boulder. where we teach with Anne (Waldman). The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics – a very interesting man who digs (Jack) Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues as great manifestation of poetic mind. So we have intelligent American slang approach. He’s got a weekend seminar, September 27 to October 1 at Van Dusen Gardens Floral Hall (37th and Oak) and you can call the Dharmadhatu for information on his lecture on the 27th of September. Chogyam Trungpa here in town or Peter and I teaching poetics and meditation this Sunday. And after the reading tonight, there’s a band? [Audience member – Honky-Tonk Heroes!) Honky-Tonk Heroes to entertain you. Thank you.