A List of List Poems

December 21, 2017Simon Pettet
AG:  But by this anaphoric rapture, or anaphoric repetition, it {Crashaw’s poem “The Flaming  Heart”] actually builds up to rapture. So this is what Anne Waldman calls “a list poem”, actually, an early list poem. I taught a little poetry workshop this weekend and checked out list poems and the samples I used were (the) thirteenth and twenty-eighth chapters of Ecclesiastes (because there is “..or the golden bowl be broken”), and then I read Christopher Smart, I used “Like to the flaming of a star.”,  the little.. – I used that as a list
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Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 331

September 1, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, 1968.  Photo: Larry Keenan Jr.]

More Ginsberg memories (see last week) – Judy Goldhaft, director of The Planet Drum Foundation, recollects an unusual seder:

“For the first time since the crucifixion, there was a total lunar eclipse on the night of the seder in 1968. That apparently happened also on the night of the Last Supper and we were all aware of this. We had a seder near Duboce Park. [San Francisco] The Hells Angels were there and the Diggers were there. My son asked the Four Questions, and…asked  Allen Ginsberg [as tradition … Read More

Jack Collom (1931-2017)

July 2, 2017Simon Pettet

Following the death of Larry Fagin, news reaches us this morning of the death of another of the great Naropa poet-teachers, Jack Collom. When Allen and Anne Waldman set up the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in 1974 in Boulder, Colorado, Colorado already had one distinctive inventive joyful maverick poet at hand, Jack Collom. He was swiftly engaged in the experiment and soon (not soon enough, as we recall) became an integral part of the faculty. This page (from the Naropa University Archive) provides links to countless instances of Jack’s participation. We might, arbitrarily, single out … Read More

Larry Fagin (1937-2017)

May 28, 2017Simon Pettet

Larry Fagin, poet, editor, teacher, long-time leading member of the so-called “New York School” of poetry, died yesterday. He was 79 years old. An important co-worker with Allen at Naropa (and, coincidentally, upstairs neighbour in his 12th Street tenement in Manhattan), he was, (though not himself a Buddhist), alongside fellow St Marks poet, Anne Waldman, one of the key figures in the initial years of that on-going experiment. Allen himself was quite unequivocal – “I don’t know of a better editor and teacher of poetry and prose than Fagin”, he once declared. Larry’s early teaching there can … 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, 

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Spontaneous Poetics – 91

June 19, 2013Simon Pettet

 

[The List Poem by Larry Fagin (2000, from Teachers & Writers Collaborative) – cover design by Trevor Winkfield]

Student: I feel I have to defend myself against (you and) the rest of the class

Allen Ginsberg: Do you have a “self” to defend? – okay, if you insist on having a “self”

Student: Well you said (my comparison with set theory wasn’t so helpful) but why I said that was, that if the members don’t interact, then that means that, just like in a sentence, that means there’s no articulation, (group consciousness) is not being put … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics – 81 (Form Is Just An Extension of Content)

May 28, 2013Simon Pettet

AG: ..In this case, the form is no more than an extension of content. Got that? Form is no more than an extension of the content? Does everybody understand that in this case? Does anybody not understand that. In this case, the form is no more than an extension of the..

Larry Fagin: I don’t understand that and I want a complete explanation. I’ve never understood it and I don’t believe you!

AG: You don’t understand it in this case?

Larry Fagin: No

Student: Oh, yeah

AG: I was talking about this case. I was talking about this

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