Allen Ginsberg’ s April 1 1981 Naropa class continues from here
AG: Okay, texts. What have we got? I’ve been talking enough.
Student: I have a poem that I worked on..
AG: Did you say we xeroxed things, or something?
Student (Joel Lewis): Yeah. I have xeroxes. I don’t know who else….
AG: You have xeroxes of what?
Student (Joel Lewis): My poem.
AG: And does he have … do you have xeroxes of yours?
Student: Uh-huh.
Student: I have xeroxes.
AG: You mean I’ve been talking all this time and people have all these poems waiting and xeroxed?
Student: Yeah.
AG: Okay. I didn’t know you were actually running a clean ship. Okay. Well, then let’s get to it. You start.
Student (Tom): I’ll pass it around first.
AG: Shall we pass them around?
Student (Tom): Well, let us do one at a time.
AG: Okay, pass one around at a time. Pass Tom’s (sic) around. We’ll have to do them fast then, huh? Condense it. Condense the whole process.
Tom: This..
AG: One fit. One glance.
Student (Tom): This is a poem I wrote Monday afternoon and then it was … I brought it into Tom ‘s freebie class and got some suggestions.
Joel Lewis: Tom (Pickard
Student (Tom): And uh … but, you know … so it’s still in progress, but it’s been..(I’ve been)
…working on it.
AG: Okay. So now he said not to accept anything but what people could memorize.
Student: Right.
AG: Is that still…?
Student: We thought we could cheat on you.
AG: Go on.
Student: I thought he wouldn’t say anything.
AG: I won’t tell him. Don’t tell him. Don’t snitch. Don’t cheat. Don’t snitch on me. Go on. Read it aloud. We don’t have much time, I see, so let’s do it fast. I’m sorry.
to be continued (and concluded) tomorrow
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventy-nine-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately eighty-one-and-three-quarter minutes in