Today, February 19, marks the anniversary of the death of “the Pope of Surrealism” Andre Breton
For more on Breton and Surrealism on The Allen Ginsberg Project – see here – and also here, here, here, here and here
Back in September of 1988, it was “Surrealist Week” at the Summer Writing Program at Naropa. Various faculty members were invited to give a presentation of some “Surrealist” text or texts and to provide a little bit of background. The resultant choices were surprising, to say the least, a little indulgent stretching-out of that term (we’ll take a look at some of these choices in the coming days). Allen’s choice was the most orthodox (a card-carrying member of the Breton fraternity – and the Ginsberg fraternity) – the then lesser-known
(this was twenty-five years before the publication of The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia) Philip Lamantia.
Here’s Allen’s remarks on that occasion:
(For more Lamantia on The Allen Ginsberg Project postings – see here here and here and here and here. – not to mention here, here and here and, for that matter, here and here)
So, when we were considering the program at the very beginning of planning one of the living poets that we wanted to invite was the foremost American Surrealist, Philip Lamantia, whose name you may have heard dropped during the week but whose work has not unfortunately yet (sic-1988) been taken up. So this is the right time, at the end of the week with a symposium (on Surrealism). So I’d like to read a few samples of his work from the late ‘Fifties to the early ‘Sixties. Lamantia was around New York at the San Remo bar that Kerouac, Burroughs, Carl Solomon, (and) Frank O’Hara (frequented), in the late ‘Forties. Then he was in San Francisco, where he came from, as part of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance (which) had an enormous influence on everybody’s education and thinking.
He had, as a kid, conceived of himself as an American Rimbaud, and, at the age of thirteen, run away to New York and stayed several days on the floor of the office of the magazine View, which, with another magazine, VVV, was the vehicle for all European Surrealists who had come to America as refugees from the war. So he began very early with a personal acquaintance with many of the great figures of Surrealism brought over from Europe and he developed his Surrealist technique to a kind of perfection. He’s now (1988) in San Francisco, continuing writing, with new books, combining Surrealism with study of American birds and American Indian lore.
So from 1958 (Allen begins reading) – “PUT DOWN/ of the Whore Of Babylon/ ‘High voltage wires got into her jaw/as she devoutly lit up her spine in front of Mammon…” NO!/NO!/ NO!/ not for this panic of idols coning our time/by false anglclocks/ but for the descended dove we make it to live!” – (That was one early). Then, better known in the Don Allen anthology is “The Morning Light Song” – I don’t know if folks have seen that – but you can look that up in the Don Allen anthology. It has, like, a tremendous forward-driving cadence.(“RED DAWN clouds coming up! the heavens proclaim you absolute God!”….”..That I am your BEAUTY, not of this world, and bring to nothing all that would stop me /From flying straight to Your Heart Whose Rays conduct me to the SONG!”)
Then there is the poem which has a combination of both Surrealist elan and the breath-stop idiomatic syntax developed by Williams and Kerouac. – “There is this distance between me and what I see”- (“There is this distance between me and what I see…”…”This nothing ravishes beyond ravishing/There is this look of love Throne Silent look of love”.)
And then “I have given fair warning” – (“I have given fair warning/Chicago New York Los Angeles have gone down…”…”I have given fair warning/at the time of corpses and clouds I can make love here as anywhere.”)
Then there is “High”, which was around 1959 when everybody was smoking and getting high – “O beato solitudo! where have I flown too?/stars overturn the wall of my music…”…”you break yr head/you make bloody bread!”.
Then later, a little later then, in the early ‘Sixties things get serious into the new world consciousness, So this is now (The)”Voice of Earth Mediums”, (followed by “Astro-mancy,”
– two poems) – (“We are truly fed up/ with mental machines of peace & war/nucleart monoxide brains, cancerous computers/motors sucking our hearts of blood that once sangthe choruses of natural birds!..”…Oh, William Blake!/thou can overseer, if it please thee,/this lesson of Aquarius Clean Sweep/that Earth’s beautiful spirit of purifying Ocean/shall stop these weights on and plunder of/her metal blood and very thin skin/to teach us Terra’s song of the taoist harmonica!”
And last of all “Astro-mancy”, which is a prophecy all believe in – “The stars have gone crazy/and the moon is very angry/The old civilization/that rolled the dice of Hitler/is surely bumbling/into a heap of catatonic hysteria…”…”the lucid panorama I telescope/ as, on this summer night’s/torpor, it passes from under my eyelid and/ grabs you , earth returned/ into the middle of Aquarius, one millennium forward.” – (that’s 1960, 1960, or so)
Audio can be heard here, beginning at approximately fourteen minutes in, and concluding at approximately twenty-five minutes in