Ruth Seymour‘s 1982 KCRW interview with Allen Ginsberg continues from here
RS: Let me ask you about another concern of poets (I’m not sure if concern is quite the right word). I want to talk about poetry and madness and figures like Delmore Schwartz, Maxwell Bodenheim, Robert Lowell himself, John Berryman.. Do you think that there is a connection, that poets are..
AG: There’s probably as much madness in poetry as there is in the Insurance business or the tv business or any business, but I think the…. the poets you mentioned are not necessarily the great poets of the century (tho’ they are excellent poets,) but when you have the great poets like Whitman, Pound (who maybe was a little cracked but still basically sane all through) Williams (who was the acme of poetic sanity and human sanity as a doctor and a baby doctor.. when you consider Gary Snyder, the whole new wave of poets, or Robert Creeley (who is like a family man and a father and a brilliant mind and a world traveler and teacher.. when you consider, like, a domestic author, Robert Duncan, when you consider Philip Whalen, who is by now I think he’s about the age to receive ordination as a Zen master, I’m impressed more by the sanity of the poets and even the maudit poet Gregory Corso survives at the age of fifty, that is a poet who’s had a very checkered history as far as his personal life nonetheless total sanity and greatness, as he approaches, as he’s 50 and his new book it’s a book called Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit displays tremendous sanity. Do we have a little time? a minute?
RS: Sure. Go ahead
AG I’d like to read the most sane poem of the century.
RS: Oh really? You’re going to read a poem by who?
AG: By Gregory Corso
RS: Oh, you know one of the wonderful things about… we once had an idea – we never did this – we’re going to go. a little longer if that’s ok with you –but we once had this wonderful idea of having a poetry reading by satellite all over the country, which poets (it would be different NPR stations, uplink stations, and they would read to each other, because there is a kind of brotherhood of poets (and I use that in the generic term not to slight the women poets) and we thought it would be wonderful if, in fact for you to read a poem to Corso and for Corso to read a poem to somebody in Topeka, Kansas, to somebody in Topeka… We still have to do that and..
AG: Well, we’re gonna do that in December 10th in Paris UNESCO has organized a world poetry reading called War Against War, in which (Andrei) Voznesensky is coming fron Russia and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and I are coming from America, just in about twenty days – in Paris, sponsored by the UN cultural representatives, UNESCO, and then we’re going to take show to Milan and it’ll be poets from Africa, from England, from France, sort of an international congress of poets, and all the poems will be translated into about fifty languages simultaneously.
AG: But I wanted to…
RS: Go ahead, read read!
AG: Gregory Corso’s sanity, from Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit, New Directions, 1980 – “The Whole Mess (Almost” – (Allen reads Gregory Corso’s poem) – (“I ran up six flights of stairs/to my small furnished room/opened the window/and began throwing out/those things most important in life…”… ‘The only thing left in the room was Death/hiding beneath the kitchen sink/:‘I’m not real!’ It cried/‘I’m just a rumor spread by life…’/Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all and suddenly realized Humor/was all that was left—/ All I could do with Humor was to say:‘Out the window with the window!’”)
RH: Aha! Wonderful!
AG: That’s the most sane and intelligent poem of the mid-century, I would say.
RS: Beautiful and a beautiful piece of.. It reminds me of his piece, I can’t remember the title of it, when he got married.
AG: “Marriage”
RS: Yes “Marriage” which is also has that, like, great human heart to it.
I wanted to ask you to read some of the work from the book that’’s won the LA Times book prize
AG: Okay. So the book is called Plutonian Ode & Other Poems 1977-1980, City Lights, 1982, and it’s got a lot of funny poems in it. The main one is about plutonian itself and that’s too long to read, then I have a little poem about punk rock that begins “Punk Rock You’re My Big Cry Baby” – but it’s too dirty to read here, I guess, then some love poems, then a little poem, visioning New York at midnight, and suddenly realizing it’s like walking around in ancient Rome or Ur – there’s the time – and then a little translation of a little poem by Neruda, and more love poems, and then there’s some poems to my father that are interesting after my father died, so, I think I’ll read one or two of those
RS: Okay.
AG: It’s called “Don’t Grow Old” (my father died, aged 80, of cancer) and I took care of him with Peter Orlovsky before he died for about half a year – “Don’t Grow Old” – (Allen reads) -. (“Twenty-eight years before on the living room couch he’d stared at me, I said/”I want to see a psychiatrist – I have sexual difficulties – homosexuality…”… “…he turned his head round/looking up ruefully to Peter to smile, “Don’t ever grow old””) – That’s one of a series of poems – and I have a little brief poem that I’d like to read – Lower East Side – (Allen reads from “After Whitman and Reznikoff – 2 – Lower East Side”) – (“That round faced woman, she owns the street with her three big dogs, screeches at me…”….”Big Jerk…you think you’re famous?” – reminds me of my mother”) – So I’ve got father and mother there. – Let’s see…
RS: Do you go back to your old work? How do you do that?
AG: Yes I read old work fairly often/
RS: Do you?
AG: I’m more interested in what I’m doing right now, generally.
RS: Picasso once said something like that , he said he never could understand why people would buy his paintings because he lost interest in it the minute after he stopped painting it, but I don’t feel the same about poetry but it may be different for the person who reads it than the poet himself.
AG: I read “Kaddish”..
RS: I was going to say..
AG: …maybe once a year
RS: ..I also read “Kaddish” maybe once a year .
AG: And I read “Howl’ maybe once a year when I go to a new state or a new country. Here’s a little brief haiku from the book – Spring Fashions” – (“Full moon over the shopping mall/In a display window’s silent light/the naked mannequin observes her fingernails”) – That’s a little haiku that’s sort of about the old Japanese haiku(s) about scarecrows, you know, giving them making them.. giving them …they give the appearance of being alive but they’re empty – so that gives that element of sunyata or emptiness
RS: Let’s do a final one. Do you want to do a final one or…
AG: Whie we’re on shunyata and emptiness I should say that one of my teachers of emptiness is coming to town, Osel Tendzin, the dharma-heir of Chogyam Trungpa, the Tibetan lama who’s the president of Naropa Institute, and he’ll be around giving public talks in Santa Monica and Los Angeles and Orange County, and then, December 3rd to 5th, doing an Intensive Meditation Workshop, training in meditation. And he’s quite a sharp observer of meditation practice, and he’s been very useful to me occasionally, when I get into tangles in my actual disciplined meditation practice, like mind wandering, don’t know what to do, generally I go to him for any good advice on internal phenomenology of consciousness, he’s a specialist. So his name is Ozel Tendzing and he’s coming to town in a week or so, and he wrote a book called Buddha In the Palm of Your Hand, which he’ll be signing on November 27th at 2 o’clock at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore. So if anybody’s interested in spiritual common sense or grounding in breath and meditation practice in the Buddhist, the old classical style, Osel Tendzin will be around.
RS: I should mention the last time you were here, you were talking about – I forget the name of it now – the Kerouac..
AG: Conference!
RS: Yes, the big Kerouac Conference and NPR was there and we covered it and we had five hours of it and it was absolutely fantastic
AG: Well,the plans for next summer now, The follow-up will be.. for the first time Gary Snyder is coming to the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado with Robert Creeley. And so Gary and Robert Creeley and. myself, Allen, and Anne Waldman, will be working together for one full month n an intensive poetry teaching workshop, sort of like a blitzkrieg on the students’ brains and language and spirit. That’ll be July 17th to August 13th next (year). 1983, Summer, a big workshop in poetry and its… Gary gets around the United States on and off but never to (this part of the country). (We’ll spend) a long time walking around….
tape ends here (the audio can be listened to – here)