Composed on The Tongue

June 19, 2017Simon Pettet

AG: (It’s a collection of) ..spontaneous writings, at different times. And some of the stuff is (from quite (recent), here,) at Naropa (The last piece from (19)74-(19)75, and some interviews done here around (19)75. And then a long conversation with Michael Aldrich, Edward Kissam & Nancy Blecker, (in Cherry Valley) ,”Improvised Poetics” { editorial note – subsequently reprinted in Spontaneous Mind] …..done in 1968.  And then, 1967, about twenty-five pages– twenty pages – of conversations, laconic conversations, with Ezra Pound about the Cantos and about what he thought about life – All this has been published in Loka or … Read More

Jim Carroll workshop continues – 3 – (Bob Dylan)

August 20, 2016admin

This weekend, following on from last weekend, transcription of the 1980 Jim Carroll music and poetics workshop at Naropa continues. For the two previous segments – see here and here

JC: And also I mean, like, people, eventually, knew where his [Bob Dylan‘s] influences were coming from, whereas they didn’t know where Lou (Reed)’s influences were coming from. Not as many people had read Delmore Schwartz as Allen Ginsberg and Rimbaud. And so, I don’t know, there were certain songs of Dylan’s which just got…I lost faith in, for a while, you know. And then I … Read More

Jim Carroll Workshop – 1

August 13, 2016admin

                           [Jim Carroll – album cover – Catholic Boy (1980) – cover photo by Annie Liebovitz]

Beginning today, serialization of transcription of Jim Carroll’s June 30, 1986 Naropa Poetics and Music class.  [see here for Jim Carroll reading]

Larry Fagin: Ladies and gents, welcome to the second week of Naropa [July, 1986] poetry summer camp. I’m pleased tonight to have.. and honored and thrilled to have, Jim Carroll with us, who first came to light at aged fifteen, with a book called, (an) amazing book called, 

… 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

Spontaneous Poetics 82 (Edward Marshall – 2)

June 4, 2013Simon Pettet

[Leave the Word Alone – Edward Marshall (title page spread, including print by James Kearns), Pequod Press, New York, 1979]

This July 5 1976 “Spontaneous Poetics” lecture (a continuation from the July 2 1976 class, the opening class of the second session, recently transcribed) is introduced as “Lively Poetics” (which as Randy Roark notes, “may be the name given to this second-semester class to differentiate it from the session one class”). That class also had the interim moniker – “Spontaneous and Improvised Poetics”.

Roark goes on to note that “this class is recorded a great distance from the speaker…which will … Read More

Spiritual Poetics – 10

August 11, 2011admin

Allen Ginsberg’s 1974 Spiritual Poetics class continues from here 

Student: When you’re using the notebook technique, how do you deal with the whole problem of the breath? Do you read it out loud as you’re writing it down?

AG: Sometimes. It’s an interesting question whether it’s breath or whether it’s mind-unit. I’ve never figured that out entirely.

Student: That was the next question.

AG: That’s a rule-of-thumb thing and it’s very interesting. What I would suggest is experiment, sit down and experiment with it. The art of poetics is your sitting down alone at a desk, trying to figure how … Read More