Ben Jonson – (The Triumph of Charis)

March 29, 2017Simon Pettet

[Sandro Botticelli (c.1445-1510) – Primavera (Allegory of Spring)  (1482) – (detail) ]

 continuing with Ben Jonson

AG:   Yeah, well I want to get on to “The Triumph of Charis” – Charis? – Charis. Do you know what that is? It’s a play, originally, I imagine, from a play, or  a longer poem but I think a play Do you know anything about that, the origin of that, Stanley? (sic)

Stanley Lombardo : No

AG: Okay, the measure or the rhythm in the ending of this poem is really exquisite and powerful and really interesting maybe to get on … Read More

Ben Jonson – (“Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes”)

March 28, 2017Simon Pettet

AG:   To (Ben)  Jonson. What I wanted to get onto was page two-sixty, “The Triumph of Charis“.. oh no, before that, we did that, those two little epitaphs, on page two fifty-six, two fifty-seven – and, on the way out, (Ted) Berrigan reminded me of a poem he likes particularly, “On Gut”  – “Gut eats all day and lechers all the night..” – page two fifty-six – patting his belly and preaching on gut – “Gut eats all day and lechers all the night;/So all his meat he tasteth over twice;/Andm striving so to double his … Read More

A Ben Jonson Reading List

March 27, 2017Simon Pettet

[Ben Jonson (1572-1637)]

AG: I guess it’s nine-thirty. So we’ll go on to Ben Jonson next. And I think I gave you what I  suggested from Jonson was..  two.. do you still have that page?.. two-fifty-two –  (the poem) on his first son – “On My First Son” (“Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy..”)  – (then) – two fifty-six, Salomon Pavey – “An Epitaph on S.P.” (“Weep with me, all you that read/This little story”) – (and) – Little L.H. – “Epitaph on Elizabeth, L.H.”  (“Wouldst thou hear what man can say..”) – … Read More

Allen Ginsberg on Jack Kerouac – 1982 Naropa continues

August 16, 2015admin
[Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) at a “Beat”party, 1959 – Photograph by Burt Glinn./Magnum Photos]

 Continuing here from yesterday’s posting – Allen annotates Jack Kerouac’s “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose”     “2. Submissive to everything, open, listening” – so that’s an attitude of mind of..  submissive to any thought that comes along – about fucking your mother, or about…I don’t know, anything it is that is most.. common, and most forbidden, anything that comes along  in your mind that is.. fucking God, if you want to, anything that you wouldn’t want, necessarily, anybody to hear, but you hear yourself, and so, … Read More

Expansive Poetics – 122 (Greek Meters and An Angry Question)

October 8, 2014admin

AG: Vachel Lindsay’s “The Congo” – it used to be in all the high-school anthologies in the (19)30’s and (19)40’s,  the Louis Untermeyer anthology, and it might actually have been pushed out by Black Power, by the Black Renaissance movement when they objected to it as being a rip-off, basically, of their rhythms, a rip of their rhythms, although the rhythms are Greek rhythms – da-da-da da-da da-da-da are Ionic rhythms, I believe, are called Ionic – four syllable rhythms –  da-da-da da-da da-da-da  – three, or four, syllable rhythms- da-da-da-da – da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da- da-da-da-da is the famous Ionic… … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics – 42 (Ben Jonson)

February 25, 2013admin

[Ben Jonson (1572-1637) – portrait by Abraham Bleyenberch (c.1617), oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London]

AG: I want to move on to Ben Jonson, who’s not so read as a poet among lowbrows like ourselves. On a little elegy on his first son, who died. A few little poems of Jonson. What I’m following now are, like, those rests or caesuras or the time. I’m reading poets for their good time, or for the lyric poets that I am reading, (all) have a very sweet sense of rest in-between words, or little gaps in-between words which are … Read More

Ginsberg on…Ben Jonson (1980 class transcription 3)

November 3, 2011admin

[Pottery detail depiction of Ancient Greek Chorus]
The Ginsberg Ben Jonson class continues – and concludes
So what shall we do now? “Slow Slow..”? – “Slow slow fresh fount keep time with my salt tears”. What do you make of that? Page 266. A couple of really pretty pieces of cadence now. I’ve never examined this song particularly carefully. A couple of times it has struck me as being real.. just.. totally lovely music [Allen reads “Slow slow fresh fount keep time..“]. So it’s all about music. The division here is a musical term – division. Does anybody know … Read More

Ginsberg on.. Ben Jonson (1980 class transcription – 2)

November 3, 2011admin

[Ben Jonson (1572-1637)]

The Naropa class we transcribed  a couple of days ago was only the first part of a class on Pound, Ben Jonson, and the rudiments of Greek prosody (audio available via the wonderful Internet Archive here). Pound and essences of Pound form the first part, but the second part of the class also includes, significantly takes notice of, E.P. Allen reads from his famous Canto LXXI, breaking off occasionally to clarify or annotate (that reading is approximately 40 minutes in).

For convenience, we have broken this transcript into two sections – the first on Jonson … Read More

History of Poetry – 11 (Hesperus – Allen & Gregory – part 2)

October 24, 2011admin

[Hesperus – As Personification of the Evening (1765) by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779), oil on canvas, 6′ 3″ x 5′ 10″]

 Continuing where we left off, with Allen’s “History of Poetry” class. You might recall that there was some intervention from Gregory Corso, that intervention continues. Hesperus, the morning or the evening star? – a hart, a deer or a rabbit? – Ben Jonson or Samuel Johnson?. Fortunately Allen keeps his temper and things become clear. Allen reads Ben Jonson, John Fletcher and John Ford. Here is a transcript:
AG: Ah. Getting onto Shakespeare’s friend, (Ben) Jonson for a … Read More