Breath Poems

August 15, 2017Simon Pettet

[Zephrus. God of the winds (detail from “The Birth of Venus,” Sandro Botticelli]

AG: .. ..(I cited some lines)  from Hart Crane’s poem “Hurricane” as an example of dochmaic meter… and the whole poem is really interesting, and it’s just in the sequence of poems I’ve been referring to, one time or another, like William Carlos Williams’ poem about Thursday  (air – coming in and out of his nose) , Shelley’s “Ode To the West Wind – (“Make me thy lyre even as the forest is’”… “Be thou me spirt fierce (the wind)”, or, “The breath whose might I have … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 327

August 4, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and William S Burroughs, New York City 1953. (c)The Allen Ginsberg Estate]

Ann Douglas‘  rapturous New York Times review of The Best Minds of My Generation – “Professor Ginsberg’s Notes on the Beats”  leads off this Friday’s Round-Up  – “In a marvelous feat of editing and reorganization, Bill Morgan, Ginsberg’s longtime bibliographer, biographer and friend, has condensed the 100 or so lectures Ginsberg gave in the five courses he taught on the Beat Generation between 1977 and 1994, totaling almost 2,000 pages of transcripts, into a compact and often spellbinding text, preserving intact the … Read More

Buddhism and The Beats (Ginsberg 1993 – I – Introduction)

July 15, 2017Simon Pettet

A real treat this weekend – with gratitude to Robyn Brentano and students from the NYU Ethnographic Film Program – “Buddhism and the Beats.”. “In 1993, Allen Ginsberg spoke to a gathering of students of the Tibetan Buddhist monk, Lobsang Samten, about the impact of Buddhist thought and practice on himself, the Beat writers, and American culture at large”. The full hour-and-a-half tape is transcribed below (continuing tomorrow, and with the Q & A session to be featured here next weekend)

AG: Well, good evening, Rinpoche [Lobsang Samten Rinpoche] and I met very recently at the house … Read More

Keats and Shelley – (Keats’ Last Poem)

December 19, 2016Simon Pettet

keatsgrave

[John Keats’ grave at the The Cimitero Acattolico (“Non-Catholic Cemetery”) in Rome, Italy]

 On Keats and Shelley  continued

Student: Have you seen the grave (of John Keats)?

AG: Yeah, sure, many times. I went there with Gregory.. (I) went there alone once and I went there with Gregory (Corso)

Student: I went there and it was closed but there was a little chink in the wall

AG: Yeah, and you can look in..

PO: I don’t think I was there.

AG: I think we went this time with (Fer)nanda (Pivano)

PO: Oh my god!

AG: ..in June, that one … Read More

Adonais

December 15, 2016Simon Pettet

screenshot-2016-12-07-17-39-15

[Sketch of the poet John Keats, July  1819,  by Charles Armitage Brown]

AG: Then a similar thing to Shelley was a very great poet at this particular colossal rhyme, the colossal breath, heroic or colossal breath, I guess, is Adonais (do folks know that? Adonais? – how many have read through Adonais? – how many have not? – Adonais – well, that’s a great one. That’s his elegy on the death of poor old John Keats, (it’s on (page) 685, well the verses I want are on 685). That’s really best… You notice it begins on page … Read More

On Shelley’s “Ode To The West Wind” (Breathing)

December 14, 2016Simon Pettet

winged-seeds

[Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)]

AG: Another person who.. (we’re getting back to breath now) is Shelley’s “Ode To The West Wind” (in this book on page 669). How many have read Shelley’s “Ode To The West Wind” here? How many have not? How many have not read Shelley’s “Ode To The West Wind”? How many have heard it read aloud ? [show of hands] – Okay . And how many have read it aloud themselves? – Well, it’d be interesting.. Let me try reading it aloud once and then we’ll all read it aloud. It’ll be fun. But the only … Read More

Studs Terkel 1959 Radio Interview – Part 1

September 10, 2016admin
Studs Terkel with Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky,WFMT radio studio, Chicago, 1959
Studs Terkel: What did you say about Howard Johnson’s?
 
Gregory Corso: Well, you know, like, it’s almost a mental dictatorship, you know, because you can’t get off the highway. To go to another restaurant or something, you have to keep on the turnpike. And so they’re all similar. And it looks like a big bathroom as soon as you go in. And nothing is moving but the Coca-Cola machines and the cocoa machines, just turning, great symbols turning, great undersea silence.

Studs Terkel: 

… Read More

Kenneth Koch’s 1979 Naropa Class

October 3, 2015admin

                                                               [Kenneth Koch (1925-2002]Kenneth Koch last week – Here’s transcription of Kenneth’s (Summer Academy of Practicing Writers) May 26, 1979 Naropa class

KK: [on being confronted with a tape-recorder] –  Am I registering alright on the future? – ”nothing must be lost” – I don’t know when anybody’s going to find time to listen to all the things that are being recorded in the present. They’ll be wasting their … Read More

Q & A – 3 (“Love the breath of the moment”)

August 5, 2015admin

 

AG:  …. But to capture the spirit, the breath of the moment, you have to love it. You’re going to have to love the breath of the moment…(Understand it) that way. So I’m saying, “Love the breath of the moment”. Don’t be afraid to love the breath of the moment, even if it’s got garlic on it. It’s not a rule, it’s just sort of an opening, I’m saying. There’s an opening there (that you can) go into and…   (So many).. classical traditions (are) precisely this. … Read More

Meditation and Poetics – 51 (Bodhisattva Vows – 1)

February 23, 2015admin
[Human Tapestry – Sadegh Tirafkan (1965-2013)]

AG: I don’t know if Reggie (Ray) went over the Bodhisattva vows – all four? – did he? (I think he went over three or something) but I’ll go over it once (not as Buddhism, but just as ordinary mind thoughts, the sort of thoughts that you’d have as a kid, or that you’d find expressed in (Jack) Kerouac or in (Percy Bysshe) Shelley. Remember we began with Shelley’s, the end of, “(Ode to) the West Wind”  – “Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/ Like withered leaves to quicken a new … Read More