Allen Ginsberg April 1981 Naropa class continues from here (Allen is filling in for Tom Pickard)
Student : He … Tom said in his opening lecture that the first time he went and showed a lot of his poetry to (Basil) Bunting and Bunting said, “Cut out everything that isn’t active.”
AG: Yeah. Is that what Bunting said?
Student (Joel Lewis): Yeah. Well, actually, we typed the transcription …
Student: (William Carlos) Williams said it to you, too.
AG: Yeah.
Student (Joel Lewis): …he cited in …
AG: That’s why….
Student (Joel Lewis): … we transcribed…
AG: Okay, now did Bunting use the same word?
Student: No.
Student (Joel Lewis): No. No.
AG: Oh.
Student (Joel Lewis): No, he, uh … the…. okay, Tom Pickard used the example …
AG: That’s kind of….
Student (Joel Lewis): … (looking through notes)… I think I know where it is.
AG: What I’m interested in is what was Bunting’s term for it?
Student (Joel Lewis): (continues looking through notes) Okay, I could read you … yeah, he’s talking about, uh … okay. “I went to Bunting with a bunch of poems that he saw. I’ll read you a brief account of one encounter. Why should I read you, I’ll tell you. He looked at a poem and crossed out a bunch of lines fairly faintly and gently and looked carefully at the poem and he would rearrange on the page and throw out a lot and maybe leave you with a third, a quarter, maybe two lines out of a big poem and he would say that it was enough, or “That made a poem.” And I would say, “But that doesn’t really. That’s not what I wanted to say.” And he’d say, “Well, it’s not relevant to the poem. It doesn’t matter to the poem, it’s not important to the poem.” And he has these..
AG: That’s sort of pitiless and he’s creating …
Student (Joel Lewis): Yeah.
AG: ..this character of the poem over there, that’s independent of you and what you want to do.
Student: Yeah, he goes on after that…
Student (Joel Lewis): Yeah.
AG: Yeah.
Student: Like a chess game..
AG: I’m not sure I agree, exactly.
Student (Joel Lewis): Yeah.
AG: I’m not sure I like that.
Student (Joel Lewis): And he … he….
AG: But, anyway, it’s interesting.
Student (Joel Lewis): And he has the account of you going to …
AG: Yeah.
Student (Joel Lewis): … Williams, too.
to be continued
Audio for the above can be found here, beginning at approximately forty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty minutes in