Allen Ginsberg’s reading, following William Burroughs, at Marquette University, 1988 (beginning approximately thirty minutes in) is notated and transcribed here:
AG: What I’d like to do, it being quarter after nine, I’ll read for three-quarters of an hour or so, or half an hour, adjust the microphone since it’s been used…if you’ll excuse me, and start with one, as Mr Burroughs did inspiringly, with advice to the young – “Cosmopolitan Greetings” (to Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates & International Bards, 1986)” – (“Stand up against government, against God””….”Candor ends paranoia”)
Now back in time, and I’ll read forward chronologically, beginning with “Sunflower Sutra” – 1955. (“I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive….”….”under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision”)
and also from that same period – 1956, it’s dated in the poem – “America” – So what I’m reading are a few poems that are in your Norton Anthology, or whatever, and then (I’ll) skip on ahead to present time – (“America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing…”…”America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel”)
I was in Israel during the month of January and was invited to read at a Peace Now demonstration. I think some… January..the twentieth… January nineteenth, or twentieth, or so, where there were sixty thousand Israeli Peace Now partisans, so to speak, (a fact that I hadn’t realized – that there was so much internal opposition, the country split in half, more-or-less, on that), and they said friends, poet friends who signed petitions to recognize the PLO and talk, have said, “Go back, and, certainly if you’re Jewish in America, open your mouth and wash dirty linen in public, because it shouldn’t go on like this and we’re captive of American large-scale funding for the governments as they stand, (it) puts everybody in a tough position.I asked Burroughs what he thought about it. He said, getting towards Belfast, “Everybody’s right.”So what do you do then? -an immovable right meets an irrevocable right – Well, we’ve got the battle of the Gods – So this is the poem I read in Israel, in Tel Aviv, written in 1974, January thirteenth – “Jahweh and Allah Battle” – (“Jaweh with Atom Bomb/Allah cuts throat of Infidels….”..”OY! AH! HU! OY! AH! HU!
SHALOM! SHANTIH! SALAAM!”)
From a book White Shroud, (which are poems from 1980 to 1986) – “Those Two”. (‘That tree said/ I don’t like the white car under me…”…”O you’re always complaining/you’re a neurotic/ you can see by the way you’re bent over”) – “Airplane Blues” (“I drove out to the airport/on a blue sunny day”…” … Hearts full of hatred will outlast our old age”) “Maturity’ (“Young I drank beer & vomited green bile…”” Now I vomit air”) – Next, “Surprise Mind” – (“How lucky we are to have windows!…”..”I saw that boy in red bathing suit walk right down the street”) – “It’s All So Brief” – (“I’ve got to give up/Books, checks, letter…”..” …even the ache in my teeth”)
China – this 1984, November twenty-third, China Baoding, China, a dream encounter with an elder poet who gave me advice. So it’s titled, since it was.. he gave me advice and I remembered it from the dream and wrote it down, so the title then is “Written in my Dream by Willam Carlos Williams” (quote – ” As Is/ you’re bearing/ a common Truth…”…”..What began/as desire/ will end/ wiser”.”)
– “Prophecy” – ( “As I’m no longer young in life…”…” throw away old useless/ ties and pants that don’t fit.”) – “Moral Majority”, 1985, March – (“Something evil about you Mr Viguerie Mr Falwell Robertson, Swaggert/Not evil but ignorance..” ….”..come back happy laughing, generous/big mouth full of good cheer, not money,/ honey”)
I’ll finish with one or two short brief new poems and then… – “Tompkins Park” (it’s one single declarative sentence, (a) short seventeen-syllable shot, Tompkins Park, New York – [Editorial note – from “American Sentences‘] – “Four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain talking under an umbrella – [Allen repeats the line to re-enforce the emphasis]) – So… “Sphincter” – (“I hope my good ol’ asshole holds out.. “…”Hope the old hole stays young/till death, relax”) – “Graphic Winces” – (“In high school when you crack your front tooth bending down too fast/over the porcelain water fountain…”…”..you may wince tingling twixt sphincter and scrotum asubtle electric discharge”)
I’ll finish with a song. I was in….last Fall, in Warsaw, talked to some long-hair commune drum-makers who smoke grass in the interiors of Poland in their farm regions, who described the nuclear problems that they had, and so, with Steven Taylor, a musician friend, wrote this song, (at) the airport (and) in the airplane waiting to leave Warsaw, (that being, I guess, August 1977) – “All over..” – The title’s “Europe Who Knows?” – [Editorial note, again Allen presents a song acapella] – (“All over “Europe people are saying, “Who knows?…”….”If we didn’t eat poison we’d starve, Brother, everyone knows”).