We have also presented several other episodes from this series – see for example – here, here, here and here and here and here
San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center, an extraordinary and unique archive of American poetry, have long been the repository of these remarkable tapes, and indeed, the unused footage (establishing the NET Outtakes Series)
As they explain:
“The NET Outtakes Series was produced by The Poetry Center American Poetry Archives staff in the late 1970s. The videos are composed of outtakes from the series USA Poetry, produced for National Educational Television in 1965-66 by Richard O Moore and the film unit KQED-TV San Francisco. Videos in the outtakes series preserve in actual shooting sequence all retrievable footage not used in the 15 minute USA Poetry television broadcasts. Footage was shot on 16mm film in the poets’ home environment or settings of their choosing.”
The Allen Ginsberg outtakes were recently made available on You Tube. We wanted to spread the word.
The videos (there are two of them) both begin with an opening sequence of Allen on finger cymbals with Peter Orlovsky (Peter tuning his guitar) and conclude with a soundtrack of Bruce Connor on harmonica and tambourine with Michael McClure.
The first tape begins with a classic sequence of footage of Allen, in July 1965, with Neal Cassady in City Lights Bookstore
AG: So? more poetry?..or..shall we go on to the poetry..this is what I’m supposed to be doing anyway, so I might as well read poetry – “Who Be Kind To“ – June 8th – (looks around) – Is it quiet out there?..(is reassured) – there is someone there – ok.. Oh, this I was.. this is for Albert Hall, with Albert Hall in mind. It’s sort of.. screwed up by that, self-consciously.
So what I was reading from before, when the camera ran out of film was a piece of a long poem that I had written for a large reading we had all given before seven thousand people in Albert Hall in London last month.
So, next, if the camera can follow, I want to show.. or turn this around to.. a poster I carry here. Here (Allen displays it) is one that I blacked in town..
…to picket, to picket in front of the Palace Hotel to protest Madame Nhu
(And) over here is Three Fishes with One Head – being three bodies with one consciousness.. In Buddhist India, I saw on a carved stone footprint of Buddha in Bodh Gaya in India, under the famous Bodhi tree where Buddha was supposed to have been enlightened. It was the mark of the unity of Man, I suppose, Soul..
Then here -(reads out) “War Is Black Magic/Belly Flowers to North and South Vietnam/Include Everybody/End the Human War /Name Hypnosis..”(“Like Capitalism, Communism”, Allen interjects)..”and Fear is the/ Enemy Satan Go Home!/I accept America and Red China/To the Human Race/ Madam Nhu and Mao Zedong are in the same boat of meat”
Then the other side:
“Man is naked without secrets Armed men lack this joy/How many million persons without names?/What do we know of their suffering?/ “How wounded, How wounded”, says the Swami (Allen notices – it says the “guru”)/ “Thine own heart”, says the Swami /”Within you”, says the Christ/”Till his Humanity awake says Blake/ I am here saying seek mutual surrender tears that /There be no more Hell in Vietnam/ That I Not Be In Hell Here In This Basement” (Allen improvises – the written text is “Not Be In Hell Here On The Street”)
Well, anyway, I carried that around last year
Neal Cassady: He came home I recall, fourteen hours later and showed me the blisters on his feet.”What have you done Cassady for humanity today? I’ve suffered…..
AG: I wouldn’t be surprised if I wound up in jail this trip in America, because the whole Vietnam War‘s getting to be such a horror and such a mess. Something’s got to be done somehow to stop it because the I don’t think..I don’t think the American government hasany idea what it’s doing at all. I think they’re completely off their rocker, mainly because they have no coherent information, from Vietnam, because I remember at the time, when I was there (this was at the time that the new government was falling, when the.. the day that the French Buddhist burned himself! I talked to people who were in the lower echelons of the propaganda service there, minor bureaucrats in the embassy and cultural attaches, as well as newspaper people, and what they were all saying was that the new government was going to fall but what the President was saying and what the Ambassador of that time, and what Harkins, the General at that time, were reporting to Washington was that the new government was stable. In other words, that they were the.. Kennedy, at that time, wasn’t even getting responsible information. So that they finally had to send in a special detachment of CIA men to interview the Buddhists to find out who they were because the Ambassador wasn’t even reporting it straight. So now, what’s going on now, is the same kind of a mess… Well, the Ambassador at that time was.. I’ve forgotten..
(Interviewer) Did you just set out on a trip across the United States?
AG: Yeah, I’ve got a grant this years I got a little money so I’ll buy a Volksvagen microbus and with Peter Orlovsky, the friend of mine that I’ve been living with for the last fifteen years or so, ten years, and his brother, who came out of bughouse after having been in the bughouse eleven years. So we’ll all go in a microbus and visit Detroit! (I’ve never been in Detroit!) and old Pocatello and New Orleans and see what’s happening in the United States. It can’t be as bad as it sounds in the newspapers, I mean.. I wonder, like, if the people of the United States are ready for this kind of…
The first tape concludes here – second tape tomorrow