Awake in the middle how to sing French onion soup lalala
Mad cow disease and the unraveling of the human genome polka
Asheena MacNeil whom I’ve never met
Surfaces from the vast pain of existence a voice all her own calling
The world in a stew what’s new what’s new
Elizabeth uses computer I talk her through over cell phone to bring the Patti Trimble
Collab beginning “love & antidisestablishmentarianism” to last night’s reading Marj
Rushes to stage with “lost” copy of “How Kora was Born” at exact moment Vito’s Wrenchguitar blenders Papa Susso’s kora It’s About Women I will sing Mother
The way the Italians do I’ll edit bounteous anthology of Mama Poems my mother
To start there lalala my daughters not to end there Oedipus
The Chorus! as Daisy cries out what means the Seed of Nonexistence? we’re talking Spermatozoa I say to her my third child stepping forward into quote human genome Polka end quote Lisanne daughter-in-law nursing my first grandchild Anthony Don Dakota my son Mukhtar, you called me father, I am, and may I introduce
You to Asheena? The keyboard has no question mark my daughter
Sophie has uncurled it she exclaims Birthday snakes and crocodiles
What are they doing here What are we all doing here
It is International Women’s Day and the women of Eritrea are singing Happy
Birthday as I mull and tremble, setting sail for the next part
Which wants to write the next half
________________________________________________
Unscrew cap screw top improv in a bottle
In a book in a vein in a manner of drinking
Try blurts on two singing extend meet
The chorus of owes and I will talk about
The usual visual accompanying clack ovule
Challenge to split laugh tongue hoy olson
Typewriter g what do you sit for horizontal
Floor under floor shut up time for the poem
________________________________________________
There's a man in the funny papers we all know.
He lives way back a long time ago.
He don't eat nothing but bearcat stew.
Well, this cat's name is Alley Oop.
He got a chauffeur that's a genuine dinosaur.
And he can knuckle your head before you count to four.
He got a big ugly club and a head full of hair.
Like great big lions and grizzly bears.
He's the toughest man there is alive.
Wearing clothes from wildcats' hides.
He's the king of the jungle jive.
Look at that caveman go!
He rides through the jungle tearing limbs off of trees
Knocking great big monsters dead on their knees.
The cats don't bug him cause they know better.
Cause he's a mean motorscooter and a bad go-getter.
He's the toughest man there is alive.
Wearing clothes from wildcats' hides.
He's the king of the jungle jive.
Look at that caveman go!
There he goes.
Look at that cave man go.
He sure is hip, ain't he?
Like, what's happening?
He's too much.
Ride, Daddy, ride.
________________________________________________
This brown room this wood room
This carved room this sacred room
This Christ room this gargoyle room
Goat on throne room candle grill
Room this redolent red velvet back
Drop to life this skull stairway this
Floor coffin room lid ceiling blood this
Spike through Christ’s foot this cross
Table tears this dog crawling your leg
This room this room this room this room
________________________________________________
A new kind of poem is in the air!
It is the air, I mean
You don’t read it you breathe it
It’s around you woowoo
Now you are the poem too
You will wear the poem necklace, sail poem canoe
You’ve got something
In your eye
Wherever you
Look
Antique skateboards? The titring
Your mother had to remove for you
To suckle. It’s a great big beautiful
World. Get used to it.
________________________________________________
Birthday Praise Sonnet for Marc Levin, Feb 3 2001
Mark my words
Leaven the bread
Half a century’s nothing, the Wise Man said
When the slam slams
When the blowback blows
Lights speed action rolls rolls rolls
The Party will Last
The Future’s simulcast
And we’ll Babble On
With our Icon O’Class
Mark my words
Leaven the bread
Half a century’s something, the Wise Man said
Writ on Dante’s Tomb
Speak, o Poetry! O marble-encased everything but marble!
Looking over your shoulder – what word will these letters be?
A flying tourniquet, a brava cave opening. A quaint nothing
Doing anything ah a coin drops on your eyes – which is
It – heads or tales? Many people ask mutter and wander around.
But only you found the opening to the heart of the eye, the musty
Light we can see each other by touch, something more than infinity.
Something that would pay back the politicians for every lira they got
Without an element of public service, this place a shrine, a place
Ravenna can shout your name. The echo’s the same.
________________________________________________
A student writes
If only the World
Were like this!
As we toss beer empties
Into the dumpster
At Varsity Townhouses
And scan the horizon
For any Noncaucasians
Big Foot
Megacorp
Takes over
Handling personal
Relationships
15th & Canyon
All the beer
In the world
In a poem
Shop @ Alfalfas
Crane as in Buddhist crane
Rises from the new Boulder. Olé.
A station wagon burps a purple
Jogging suit. Bike racks rake
The cirrus. Weather uncertain.
Conservative attempts complexity:
The Lord did buy her a Mercedes
Benz now what? Watch the mall aisles
For sign. Deep image poetics, who
Will be the Po Pope? The jeep
Has very pretty beard-do.
________________________________________________
wassup down all around
wrap that finger ring that beat
slide ride key knee feet
You sent me the Rat Book
You sent me the Kora Poem
i’m a rat in a kora getting back
Some kinda singer, flinger the finger
some kinda stranger, swinger
set em up, Pops, we’ll shoot out
think of you in new Bayonne
living in the old Bayonne
come visit Poetry capital Bayonne
remember the day under the bridge,
a midget in a mask, ol Alan Granville
stuck a cigarette in a long pull
________________________________________________
For Koon Woon’s Birthday, 2001
What moony Monday, the Goldfish said
And the Cat not in hat and the window
This was a tune and the pen dances
Over the lines like the sea sea sea
To grow younger every year
With plenty of do nothing time
Ah! A slice of light just so crosses
The painting just as you cross your legs
________________________________________________
Birthday Praise Sonnet for Marc Levin, Feb 3 2001
Mark my words
Leaven the bread
Half a century’s nothing, the Wise Man said
When the slam slams
When the blowback blows
Lights speed action rolls rolls rolls
The Party will Last
The Future’s simulcast
And we’ll Babble On
With our Icon O’Class
Mark my words
Leaven the bread
Half a century’s something, the Wise Man said
________________________________________________
Nunzio, y’announce, hey, life crumbs to Roma!
Not bad, Bad Boy of Bleecker Street. Tears
Blossom like gondolas full of dead watches.
Nomenclature, natural. Take for instance time
You introduced me to “flavored grappa,”
Hallucinatory ichor, redolent, swagger
Poem direct “step on it!” you demandeth
The cabdriver/dealer same sweet sun
At your funeral where Mama ran her boyfriend
Who’d fucked her son in the ass the night
Before out Lady of Pompeii as the Priest
Suggests nobody look, in brogue. We gape.
Roger says blowjob from the pulpit, you
Streaking your own funeral (as you did
Lowell-Ginsberg reading, St Marks, to
Mark the Unity of Poetries), your baptism
In same church! as you were laid out
--Hey whattam I telling you! you were
The Star, per usuam, Comet, the Brilliance!
-- cross street from your birth, home
The long way round infinitum. Who to
Invent Poetry now? Finally to understand
Happy Birthday of Death: yours! 1/17/01.
“Happy Birthday, dear Nunzio, HBTY.”
Bob Holman
“Nunzio,” messenger or announcer, was Gregory’s first name. His ashes will be shipped to Rome, to be interred in the American Cemetery, next to Shelley and Keats, where he belongs.
________________________________________________
In a message dated 2/1/01 11:57:04 AM Eastern Standard Time, ucfbrokenspeech@yahoo.com writes:
<< my name is j. bradley and i am the producer and host
of ucf's broken speech slam....seeing you are one of
the greatest promoters and hosts of slams of all
time..i was wondering if you had any advice or tips
not listed in your how to host a slam essay...i love
your work and style btw..especially '1990.' thanks
for your time >>
Why, an excellent question, j!
I say, follow the poem. Let the poem lead. Be in awe of the poem but that means it's in the middle and you all (aud., po', strangers, ghosts) must love it, 10 Little Indian-style, so it becomes you(r own).
Ask the audience, Who murdered poetry? Those who left po in cold, those who loooked to someone else (a judge?) to explain it.
Don't explain.
Keep going.
Do it with love uncensored.
That's it.
Don't forget roots, those who came before. Generosity is taste. And when all is said and done, there's always something to say. And do. Pick up the chairs. Greet the sun. Write the poem.
________________________________________________
Deep in paper a line:
Push me over, artist
Clamber aboard train
Of Thought and Nonthought
Just look at it! He squealed
A ton of cake and on the walls
“Gentle Persuasion” for all
To see giving the Impression that
An Artist
As she stands there
Looking at me
I think about her
Looking at me
Until I stop
She does not
She paints on
I think on
Clearing my throat I ask
How is it going
She does not respond
I read her hands
The sounds they make
Red yellow blue green
My face my face
Dante’s Harmony
In a boat
We take a bath
A trail of clouds
In trousers
The Bar
The mirror is
More like it
The Ball
We are having one
April Moon
Only it is 2:29PM
In August
And all is well
Well among Dunes
Don’t whatever
You do look down!
You will see
Me looking up
Pail hits head ouch
Sand trickles from
Your squeezing instep
Only you and water
Makes two
Me and you
What Sky?
Look! Look!
The sky gets in here
Keep looking!
Or it will stop. Look!
Signature Gesture
Old Manet has signed his name
Quel horreur gesticulated
A bank clerk madly twirling
His pencil balance on his nose
The elbow is a lump of shape!
Before the Mirror
Behind her back
There is no me
Wrapped in gold brocade
Uphill
Death what else
Whatever else
Inconveniently located
Cemetery bottom of hill
Rereading
That water, in your painting,
From the well, on top of the hill
Manet in Venice
Blue pants unbuckled
Pour toi, ma Canale Grande!
Thwack thwack
The sound of the brush
On the rolling gondola
They Are Off
How fast can you see how fast
He painted the speed of the horse
Gallop on, my Love
A hoof on the brush in your eye
Moss Rose
Hand-worked fluff
Into the table gray
Death’s pink face
Mirror today
As I Was Saying
Monet was painting
Vivid wind
Not Indicate
Fly flow floats free
Paint not anything only
Canvas night Le Havre
Fleet
Easel down
Canvas up
Paint on
Take pee
While stroking
Sun onto beach
Drink beer
Blue umbrella
Salami white chair
Home done
Almost a black line
It’s a Big Mountain
A little village
A swell bay
A dirt road
Flowers trees
Occasional Spontaneity
Like now
B Horizon
Swam near Étreat
Today and went deep
Into what I thought
Was the sea
It was when
I looked up
You were looking
Down at me
Framed perfectly
By the sun
Waver
Stop me!
Trees are not red!
It is a cry for help!
La Gare St. Lazare (or, Been Here Before)
Perhaps on the way to Lyon
Or Rodiz you would
Smell the belch of the
Future inference a quick
Steam movement as in
“The Fifth Movement”
The Number 5 a lamp
In the heavy Paris morn
Celebrating Who Died, Who Is Born!
Quicker!
That Baby Carriage Scare
I will nit tell
But look away
Her Pipe
She’d smoke it
When no one watched
Impossible Catch
Berthe Morisot sits by the jetty
Nothing else does
Nothing else abandons gesture
She does
Crazy Hollyhocks
They go insane!
and jump in
The painting
Is water too
Duck
Cover, a duck
Floats by, a poem,
A book of poetry
Quacks alone
Just Stand There
And be twelve
Years old
Forever
Julie
Daisy Float
A bowl for you
Of flowers they float
As time streams
You can slow it down
Time slows just
Read this, and this
Sophie Singing
The melody covers the wall
Ears are retuned
What invention! Night
Is now knocking but
Day won’t answer
Your dancing
Hanging the Laundry Out to Dry
Waiting for rain
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
By my green candle
I’ll get the world
Into paint and shake
Like a dog the road
You want to take out!
Distance
From expression to impression
Lie on Grass
Lawn Motivator
Sunset
If it didn’t happen
We could paint it better
We
The reader on horseback
The painter with a whip
I am walking the other
Way and hope you do not notice
Rooster
Egg balance
On my head
Wouldn’t You Know
Alfred Sisley got lost
Painted his way out
Where are you
Byroad
Met you by the byroad
Have a word or three
Keep walking orange
Keep riding blue
The Flood
I forgot
But you wrote it
In your painting
Rain
The first step
Slips in glaze
With an eye full
Degas or The Bath
Lean over a little further
Edgar or I’ll get splashed
Now Ballet
The true dance ricochets
Clarinet unframed thrash
In the Chair
How to get more pregnant
At Home with Vincent
Your song swells
Makes trees lift off
Dancing roots tickle
My skin and the wind
Entrance
One more secret
Is that the secret
Isn’t anymore
Out of Shoes
Into bed
Just think
A crab on its back
Can teach you to fly
________________________________________________
reasons lectric dreams
agrarian vagrant varmints boojie fragments
banjokeydokey boommeans goat
the cheering saturnian
rembering ev’rything blue huh
windshielded pop bingo
freedom breaks loose from the chains of freedom breaks loose from the chains of freedom
sit down on the Universal Chair
*
night pusher
dabbling pop-upper hept keen
with dense democracy schemes
never held a childhood no never had no
-no-
*
Whoop It Up! (Jupiter)
planet rockin rocksteady
pergola premeth elemental
the thinking light
for numerous years
the symbol for idea
is the light bulb -ah!
now the bulb itself
perhaps wearing the psychedelic
mortar board of evolutionary consciousness
is a thinking entity
dynamic intensity
Ah! Light Thought! (light thought)
THOUGHT LITE!
Perfect for squintoid dullit quasintellectaleur
DUH
Caldor caldoric column
flubbed flutie brattle
glassy nullentity
O sweet flared Buddha Nature (in a hat)
Lost battalion microphone sock stock
Keep the piece of pie
Rolled into the Love Burrito
the just “the” the
*
shoulda
aughta
hadda
woulda
shoulda
aughta
hadda
woulda
wanta
didda
musta
beena
wanta
didda
musta
beena
multifloriated bilungular
drop the DNA track off at
the time locutionalarian
buy bubriv of fram Hybrider svamm’s
O! please S = W
*
In the passive mystery that is your eye
I see blue smoke congeal into portraits of catawauler
A pink shipper of poetry
Dashed against the African shores (or, shovels)
The mighty mighty canoe
The heliopeter of fragrant epiphanies
Kick up cadaver dust, my Trusty Wuss!
Blind with lovey dove Copernicus
Make that CD skip power into thy ducky groove
Zero zipper potash potato
All manner of inequities blow blow blow
Beribboned like sweet mother’s comb
Stuck just so in afterflow
Of another nuclear holocaust aplomb
*
keep keen clean sheen of if magazine
blaze maze craze stays days and days
sure pure fiery moiré mutant bible
truths proof enough roof goof booth
No joke, Oak
“The Condors wander the Corridors”
That’s what I woulda told em!
*
down
spiral
suit
moved
closer
snap tarpoa cocka noodle soup?
jaja, mein hair
und alvays rember:
Keep the frills trimmed
*
lose the empanadas
cross boarder guards
patrol the past
someone else’s
A rabbit building a trap will wait years just for you to walk by
*
non-end arose like phoenix cave-in
planting an idea
forcibly in the neck
of the world
________________________________________________
It’s Always About The Person – Elizabeth Peyton
Who are these people you could say
Walking into a room full of room what is there
To say with a beret? A barrette you mean
Cat gut your tongue, just dandy, bobby
Pin and what would you say Me Elizabeth
Not that I’d say “Do it fast” I digress
Make a field a county girl perhaps tennis
I thought let her sit on green she’s green
I could take her and do that unviolently
Practically every other line the way she sits masks
That word could never ever have occurred that night
Was so fantastic brushing it in like that flow drunken
Pillows of absent the shear color of everything
I would just put them tattoos all over everything
Just to look at the way he walks
Or lies down or sings what would they
Sing well not the Beatles well again
The Beatles after the “long and winding road”
I doubt it flatfooted I caught her
Striking the match with a fingernail
Illuminating it’s always about the person
They really are History
I just think it’s all in people’s faces.
They really are history. And it
Passes and they change and that’s that.
That word could never ever have occurred that night
Sex pistols sex pistols sex pistols sex pistols sex.
________________________________________________
Jerome Rothenberg Birthday Party/Action Poetry Event @ Kitchen, 3/31/01,
“Party of the Gathering” Award from the People at the Peoples Poetry Gathering
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
O what a coincidence that we needed a party they say
It’s your birthday!
We praise the hairs of yr chinny chin chin Jerry Jer Jer
Home Foam Loam Dome Jerome Jerome Jerome Jerome
You who woke up the world by gentle beetle breaths just off
The edge of page You who shook the pump till the kin flowed out Now we ken all yr kin
Children of the Rothenberg All Praise you now To you now
Speaking of which Alceheringa New Wilderness Lorca Dada Poland And the Game of Silence a Prophecy Khurbn Big Jewish Tongue Hawk’s well in no particular particular
Yes! we ethnopoetics! We ethnopoetics today!
Schwitters Millennium yes but which is both and all
We can say is give Jerry more birthdays
Come to praise Say Jerome Rothenberg Poet hey
He’s the one one now seven oh in oh one one
Dial his number he will hold you on hold you on hold forever
His style hello Diane
And of course Charlie the music Jerry the throat Jerry the larynx Jerry The teeth the lips Jerry the breath Jerry the windpiping yup the Sound sound the unsound sound the Unsuspecting dittlyboom lala Dada whawha sound of the peepiepo po it it by you
Oh we Praise love the raise the praise the dearly beloved in every Which all Dierewcxtion zaza strain way Jerome Rothenberg
J’Jer J’Jer we do to you
Finally
He Who Wrote Down The Oral Tradition Without Killing It
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jerry “Jerome” Rothenberg
Bob Holman
________________________________________________
Change is in the making
A blot -- A blot
Hello to the willing, good-bye to me
There is only one -- by the end of
Of end of by the forgotten
Sing it, Jules! “It’s in the undertaking”
Interval. Intermission. I sing of
Thee. Spectacularly
More than ever into the form of
Female of roundupaboutinof
Or simply of fortune may come
Your way twould re: King Pleasure
Tuneroo tweak gotta graphique grrowl
Ground sound see hmmm
The blues brang swing doer sang
What’s the use especially
Fraught with fresh fission
Of an of originally unthought
Till the media glowed hello
Unkempt cigar
Tiny tiny tiny finger burning
Tomorrow is another day
Jules Deelder Bob Holman
________________________________________________
Love & antidisestablishmentarianism – with Patti Trimble
all this whiteness simply rivers on hold
like a definition which means against
or a confusion no one agrees to name
So I was telling this joke to an oak :
three condors walked into a bar
Hey, how come you guys are walking?
looking for a way back to the first stanza
(“stanza” means room in Italian -- ed.)
La stanza era piccola ma c'era una corpo in mezzo
And this bar ain't big enough for the both of us
________________________________________________
(Poem to Provoke the Appearance of Saba Kidane)
--as sung by Papa Susso to Bob Holman
Manjugulong!
Manyinijugalong!
Bayayaylaylanna!
(I don’t know who is my enemy
I don’t know who is my friend
Everyone is laughing at me!)
Once long long long long well actually not so long ago
In Asmara we were sitting around as we are now sitting around here and
Saba Kidane!
She was something else!
Which means she was something
Her absence makes her presence felt
O Saba! We sing to provoke your appearance
Maybe -- we should just move New York to Asmara?
Maybe -- we should all speak one language?
Call it “Poetrysabakidane”
If only you were a 40-year old family man with a real job!
Instead of the great young poet you are -- we hear your poems today, Saba
O Saba! We sing to provoke your appearance
Manjugulong!
Manyinijugalong!
Bayay’yay’laylanna
(I don’t know who is my enemy
I don’t know who is my friend
Everyone is laughing at me!)
O Saba surely did like the way that Papa played the kora
She said those strings had magic power -- Super Power!
Now we know what “Super Power” means
It’s what it takes to keep a poet from her job
To continue to keep US apart from Africa’s heart
________________________________________________
The Other Side of What You Just Heard
When you express what you’re saying you’re automatically saying a moment that’s wanting it to happen
Saying a Moment
When you express what you’re saying you’re automatically saying a moment that’s wanting it to happen
The Perfection of Time
Unresolve
Free grammar
Poking in on the Angels
I was saying what can I say I was saying
What I said I was saying to say
The backbeat was leading the unusual
As something ground up thinking laid gentle derail
Amongst the top truth I’d-a yodel so swept
Filched magnificent resurrection and keep it beating throb throb
What was the yield patty isn’t a mister take
Come back here to where it is once belong
Branded squander factory (for fools)
2
Gobbling up the silence used to be’s
Now dance to that Eternity
I climbs out put that boat down
Water sinks below air, breathe volcano yell
Yellow springs binge just to tell the true take
Bury me with her and you and him and take us over carry by caravan
Love me like lies and never try excuse me lily disappear (who)
Singe since yes sir today since little closet
Closest tomb -- I’ll bring it down to you
In a message dated 2/1/01 11:57:04 AM Eastern Standard Time, ucfbrokenspeech@yahoo.com writes:
<< my name is j. bradley and i am the producer and host
of ucf's broken speech slam....seeing you are one of
the greatest promoters and hosts of slams of all
time..i was wondering if you had any advice or tips
not listed in your how to host a slam essay...i love
your work and style btw..especially '1990.' thanks
for your time >>
Why, an excellent question, j!
I say, follow the poem. Let the poem lead. Be in awe of the poem but that means it's in the middle and you all (aud., po', strangers, ghosts) must love it, 10 Little Indian-style, so it becomes you(r own).
Ask the audience, Who murdered poetry? Those who left po in cold, those who loooked to someone else (a judge?) to explain it.
Don't explain.
Keep going.
Do it with love uncensored.
That's it.
Don't forget roots, those who came before. genorosity is taste. And when all is said and done, there's always something to say. And do. Pick up the chairs. Greet the sun. Write the poem.
________________________________________________
Patricia Spears Jones Praise Poem 2/11/01
In the Myth that is Always
Queen Patricia parks head askance gentle
Disbelief not misbelief call it full-throttle relief
Mention the highlighted detail: pink handkerchief figleaf
Fresh from Arkansas...
Should we say sass? I say sass.
Her Can Sass! Sass the sass sure can can the can,
And Fresh didn’t go thisaway’s that or thataway’s this
Albeit whosomeever said “Queen”
The Once and Forever Dreamer dreams
Queen Patricia Jones Spears Jones Pat where that’s at
Is at! Birthday #50 a lighthouse for the crew that likes it dark
This birthday shines ordinary halo on you
All praise the day hallelu we first said Patricia
Hello to You and Welcome to the World as You Find It
Never be that way again! Patricia Jones’ been here! Walked these roads
Sung these songs wrote these poems
Made the story become the telephone and still
Had time for a dinner with friends that Guidebooks to Culture
Will ever characterize “spontaneity,” their “potluck pluck and liveliness”
Patricia Dance at Own Party Jones
Patricia Friend Who Knows What Friend Is Jones
Patricia Champion Human With a Sweettooth and a Laugh Jones
That Makes World Its Party Jones and Patricia Celebration Jones All Praises You Jones!
Patricia Spears Jones!
________________________________________________
Take stock if you would stock knock kock who’s there it’s the Ed Sanders Praise poem the Spirit of Woodstock Noli in Spiritu Combieri subscribe to the Journal of the Center of Time
Before the Beginning of time…
Hear now the praises of places dayses amazes scholarship hoot’n’hollership the Last Renaissance Man
His instruments
Now charitable bountiful munificent and liberal are not things we talk about these days without embarrassment considerable (unless we’re in Woodstock)
so I've borrowed this praise chant from the Family Dembele of the Djibasso region of Burkina Faso
Ya ya the oral tradition is a way to give praise to someone without humiliating them totally
And now if I keep going on like this/ you'll have a first hand experience/ of why the oral tradition probably died out in the first place
Or today maybe we'll survive it revive it make it live it pass it on and leave this Festival humming hmmhmmhhmm
Ooo sing praises Edward Sanders – Y Laurie Ylvisaker
and I think we've now established the fact my last poem here’s gonna be a praise song in the griot or jeli style of West Africa this one aimed at the beauteous curly-locked laurel wreath of our everlovin’ bard Ed Sanders of Kansas, Loisaida, Woodstock, Earth
So I guess I can stop this singing that is if you call this singing though personally I just call it "Reading the Poem"
And Ed never stopped me from reading my poems in fact he's always encouraged me so now you can thank him for this embodiment of the perf
Because we are naked and because we have baked it and because we shake it we can break down the walls
Thanking somebody, Praising him for friendship
Sending appreciations like flowers delivered in a fogstorm
Friendship = antipraise
love is a dailiness,
the eye of the day
and the you of the night
and so we come to huddle in the puddle of the ocean that is Woodstock
mark it this name chant on a
pause the shifting of asses in chairs
the memories colecting corny as kumbaya campfires and tight as tomorrow’s poems to be writ of today
Like Ed at the Olson conference seeding the future return in a rush to begin a tradition
someone's craning in the creek right now
someone's spirit is blowing blue out the window
Death don't stop here, a tree blossoms one
by one each a place you lived
and you shovel out the Mountainside as the big one
the sun rips the top of your head open
no it's gentle like can opener
peer inside slightly balding pate
of our dear mustachioed host I mean I know he's not the host
Laurie is is he would never have ordered chicken but it is his role to be centerpiece so we must we must let him
never looked so sweet as the moment when history became verse in his hand writ free of the Twentieth Century of dear Allen the Life and Times the warbling of the Fugs How sweet he roams to his Slum Goddess Miriam of the Creeks the deer as equals and the poem as language the pulsing of the lyre and stupid stupid stupid heart
What a marvelous idea it is to
celebrate verse
with a three-day Festival in such a physically beautiful place as Woodstock, New
York!
Festivals of course are among the most ancient of human activities,
and they chanted the poetry at the ancient Greek festivals,
including the Olympics.
Modern poetry is more free than it has ever been
in world history. Such diversity!
open verse, rhymed verse, chanted verse, spoken verse,
performance verse, musical verse, religious verse,
erotic verse, mad sonnets, sane sonnets,
or even sonnets that aren’t even sonnets!
If you want to write tiny rhymed couplets
on the back of postage stamps,
it’s okay!
Hear em at Woodstock’s best
performance zones,
F-Stop Cafe Center for Photography, Upstairs at Joshua’s the astounding
Maverick Concert Hall, Woodstock’s graceful Town Hall the Woodstock Youth
Center, the Woodstock Library, and even at the peaceful Woodstock Artists’
Cemetery. There will be an overnight poetry encampment at the nearby Opus 40
sculpture park. Was everybody there!
Woodstock Playhouse, now being
restored, The Byrdcliffe Theater, Legends of Woodstock with its virtual museum
of the Fletcher and the Hawthorn, My advice to everybody is to come hang out at
the Festival, August 24-25-26, and experience some of the eternal delight that
shines forth from the energy of poetry.
Organic food supply, safe air, nonpolluted water, a total end to poverty,
national health care, personal freedom and fun
So in the interest of public
tranquility, we list the following places in Woodstock for visitors not to smoke
pot:
!) The Artists Cemetary
2) Parking lot behind Houst's Hardware
3) Anywhere near the nightclub called The Joyous Lake
4) In the beautiful open space near the Woodstock town offices on Comeau Drive
5) In the Woostock Green
6) "Down by the old Mill Stream" a swimming hole after which the famous song was
named
7) The parking lot in back of the Chamber of Commerce information building
Comparing the handwriting of the rival Karmapas
Wherest puttest thou 800 pound elk on Rt 28
|
Ed Sanders The poet Ed Sanders was born August 17, 20,000 AD in Kansas City, Missouri. While reading Allen Ginsberg's "Howl and Other Poems" as a teenage boy in 1957 returned to school the next day chanting 'Holy holy holy holy holy holy', in long continuous singsong sentences, at least four or five thousand times a day. He felt great. Every care assumed before evaporated. He read the poem to anybody who would listen and got into trouble almost immediately." School officials' admonitions to stay away from such "despicable ravings of a homo" were ignored, and before the year was up he'd be suspended for refusing to stop bringing "filth" onto school property. Ginsb go to law school like his uncle Milton, work in his father's dry goods store. After graduating from high school, he and a friend "got really loaded and then said goodbye. 'I'm going to New York to become a poet.' " Sanders founded the Fugs in 1964 with Tuli Kupferberg and Ken Weaver (the name came from the "fornicatory euphemism Norman Mailer had utilized in his novel, "The Naked and the Dead"). They created the Fugs because it was "better than working or graduate school, and it gave us a modest hope of earning our livelihood from art." Peace Eye Bookstore on East 10th Street in Manhattan, and "Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts." Other books include 'The Family' about the Manson family and 'Hymn to the Rebel Cafe'. The Party, Sappho, Investagative Poetics In the late 90's he presented his "Amazing Grace" project at St. Mark's Church in the East Villagewith 100s contributing verses to the old gospel song. He lives in Woodstock, New York, where he publishes The Woodstock Journal, a community newspaper with poetry and art. -- hewitt_pratt -- |
Rise Up and Abandon the Creeping Meatball! (1968.2)
Dateline: 9/9/97
Woodstock is home to Ed Sanders, a poet who has inspired me, over the years, to write, to read, to redefine the job of poet to be, simply, a job. To be a bard. To search out and gain knowledge, be serious about maintaining it, and pass it on. To hold on to the rigor and the vigor. To invent the new lyre. To set poetry free to be the news: to investigate. Ed Sanders is the poet/scholar/creator of Investigative Poetics.
And now, with the deaths of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Huncke, I open up the pages of the new Sanders book of poetry, 1968: A History in Verse, full of Olson’s open form, Ed’s Egyptian glyphs, footnotes, jokes, photos, ephemera. In 1968 rock and politics shared the air, and Ed’s playful, incisive language serves as time machine: if you were there (1968 as Place), it will cause you to resurrect that other world; if you weren’t, you’ll never believe that that year was squeezed into a year.
Ed Sanders and His Magic Pulse Lyre, Ed Sanders, lead warbler of the Fugs, editor of Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, and now the editor of his own weekly, The Woodstock Journal, it is Ed we turn to to find, “What does the poet say in times like this? What do we sing?”
“We demand the Politics of
Ecstasy!”
our leaflets thundered
“Rise up and Abandon the Creeping Meatball!”
---though, 30 years later, it seems a tactical error
to announce that 500,000 people
were going to make love
in Chicago parks [p.17]
“I don’t care what you sing,
but if you jack off that microphone
one more time
I’m going to arrest you. [p.23]
Nothing overt occurred
no hover-job, no mist, no noise, no clank, no rustle
[during Exorcism of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s gravesite, p.25]
NB: This here part of the praise poem continues our homage and turn-on to Ed Sanders’ totally great 1968, the Poetry Book of the Year. We’ll be dipping into 68 often, as a compass to the future. Get your own copy by ordering here or by walking to your local indy libro lore store and forking over dough. The cover is amazing!
And then, as usual for a year
of bullets
we flew away,
and left the locals to sort out
the knots of what we had done. [p.26]
Drawing the Line: Ed Sanders’ 1968 is Poetry Book of the Year
Dateline: 8/26/97
My wife is an artist. I’m a poet. She draws, I end lines. This summer of 97 we lie in bed in early morning upstate New York and watch trees come to light. We drink coffee in bed, we read, we talk. Elizabeth is reading Middlemarch, and gasps amazed with the smarts of a writing circling the Reader until Reader is inside, is all the characters. The world vibrates. I am reading Ed Sanders’ investigative poetics text 1968, the most amazing year of the century seen afresh and personal as Ed led the Fugs through the year of Chicago and RFK assassination. Occasionally we will chortle or cry in surprise, and bring the Other up to date.
Mayor Daley’s people did not take kindly to Abbie Hoffman’s smoking pot in the Mayor’s chambers. I chortle. The image cracks me up: “Right On!” to Abbie’s refusal to bend to hypocrisy. I read the section to E. “This is why the 60s failed,” she starts in. “Little boys playing their games, getting even with Mommy and Daddy.” Wonderful passion -- yes, the participants were all white middle class men. The Yippie movement was so infiltrated by cops -- 1 in 6 at Chicago park demonstration were undercover. Daley had no plans to grant permits, anyway. The Motherfuckers and Chicago radicals were opposed to the demo sans permits.
Do you get a permit to have a revolution?
What did we know? Nothing.
Say he had granted a permit -- then it would have been “Stand over here in lines in a part of the City where no one would notice.” Hoffman began things on an even footing -- “your halls of power, my cultural mores.” I may not be good at analysis, and pot may not be an issue to kill over, but freedom is what Yippies were all about. . . Let Daley have his martinis. Smoke the pipe, as the Natives do.
By now E is back in Middlemarch. And I am reading about Terry Southern and William Burroughs joining with Ed and Allen in Chicago. . . . hours of Om to keep the calm, calm.
This is 1997, not the most amazing year of the century, the year of the Death of the Beat Generation -- Huncke, Ginsberg, Burroughs. But we have he who has refused to be burnt out, torch-bearer Ed Sanders, providing us with a way forward through the past.
1968 by Ed Sanders is the Poetry Book of the Year.
So that's how The FUGS got started. We played at the Peace Eye. We had our roots in the Dadaists and in the Cabaret Voltaire. We had our roots in the Happenings at Judson Church with Allan Kaplan. We had our roots in Jazz Poetry, with Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen playing together. We had our roots in the whole modern drama. We were influenced by Brecht's Living Theater, by Lennie Bruce, and by Beatnik Poetry.
BUT mostly, we were influenced by the Dadaists–and the civil rights movement. We played in churches surrounded by the Klan, where they were threatening to kill us. This civil rights thing really made us into tough and ready-to-face-danger musicians. I wouldn't write some of the same songs today that I wrote then, but we were just wild, testosterone-maddened young men having fun.
Jessa: You also published an Art Magazine?
Ed: It was called Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts! I published 13 issues from 1962 through 1965, which preceded the Peace Eye Bookstore era. In '62, it was an imperfect publication, but everybody wanted to be published then. I published Allen Ginsberg, Diane Wycoski, Diane di Prima, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Gary Snyder. I also published Ed Dorn, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, George Eklund, Rochelle Owens, D.A. Levy. Lots of people--men and women. Some of the best poems were by women in the Fuck You Magazine.
Our position for the magazine was non-violent, direct action, pacifism, and liberation -- personal freedom at a time when the Vietnam War was happening overseas and the civil rights movement was happening at home.
I was so revolted by what they did, that I decided to tell it like it really was, because there was support for them in the so-called 'counter-culture' at the time. I wanted to write the real horror of what these creeps did, so that this affection for them in the counter-culture wouldn't abide. Yet, I just saw a Charlie Manson tee-shirt in the filling station in Woodstock, New York. So I guess this guy is the devil-worshipper's darling, still!
Jessa: What about your performance schedule?
Ed: I've been barding around, traveling all over, like an American bard -- traveling throughout the country and in Europe.
Jessa: What do you see for the scene evolving into the 21st century?
Ed: Like the Captain in Star Trek says, "We don't know now, but maybe we'll find it out in the past."
'From now on, nothing holds us
back. Cacaphony forever. No stopping'
Ed Sanders, at the first Fugs recording session
If there's anyone to credit/blame for punk rock and progressive-rock poesy, it's got to be the Fugs, a group of New York City poets who decided to be a rock band in the mid-60's. Even today, their music is as crude as some of their lyrics- even the garbage bands at the time sound like symphony orchestras by comparison. While many other rock bands at the time were indulging in electronic experiments, the Fugs were proudly lo-fi. Giving the FBI migranes (the Chicago branch contacted the Washington main office at one point to ask if they should arrest the FAGS for obscenity and un-American activities). Far from being babbling idiots though, Sanders and Kupferberg were (and still are) incisive, accomplished poets. Their celebration of free love and marijuana was not done just to titillate but as an honest statement of purpose and freedom: you're not going to find Howard Stern or Marilyn Manson trying to exorcise and levitate the Pentagon. This is probably why the Fugs are not Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame residents or staples on VH-1 and are to be admired for it.
Hymn to the Rebel Café
Frenzy, Wet Dream and Ramses II Is Dead, My Love.
Miriam
Now I see I have taken time and not gone anywhere which is the purpose of a Praise Song to lead us right here
When here is Woodstock the Festival the zap coordinates this stage this mic this mouth these words for Ed Sanders our Bard
So without and with ado and adon’t and a will a way the man who gives us everything and we don’t mind accepting it
This is the fulfillment of the vision of the poem of the Mongolian cluster fuck as translated to a full mental jacket
________________________________________________
Locked souls made it clear there were
Such things, souls, middle night mid-
Flight locked memory in tongue delight
If lips could talk that thought flitted
Played with eyes lives and tongue that
Kiss teeth and life unrolling holy soul
________________________________________________
IN THE BEGINNING
there was the poem
& the poem was made of words & the words
were made of letters & sounds & the letters & sounds were
made by people & so the people had these poems
made out of words of letters & sounds all over the world
& so the people gathered the poems together which was
IN THE BEGINNING & it was THE BEGINNING:
the beginning of The People’s Poetry Gathering,
a living anthology, & Stanley Kunitz said
it was a populist bacchanal, & the poems were strung
on clotheslines provided by the cordel poets of Brazil &
the poems were played through the 21 strings of the kora
provided by the jeli of West Africa & the poems were four-hour long solo operas provided by the P’ansori poets of Korea &
the philosophical philological semioticianal deconstructivist poets argued long into the night about the Meaning of Meaning & whether the Gathering was a gathering of poETS or poEMS
& Gregory Corso sat up from his deathbed & shouted :
“Make the Poet’s Choice! Take both of ‘em!”
& the Dub poets proclaimed Bass Culture &
the Eritrean poets proclaimed poetry in nine languages
spoken in one country of 3.5 million people &
the cowboy poets rode in on the range which was arranged
in rhyme royale as invented by Chaucer who is also gathered here
as is Emily Dickinson & Walt Whitman, Li Po & Gwendolyn Brooks
& the Slam poets all get Tens & youth spoke for itself because
of their all being poets & the loggers logged on & the fishermen poets hooked us & the taxi poets proclaimed themselves Hack Poets & the poets who eschew any name for themselves but the word poet even they allowed as how they can gather when the purpose of gathering is poetry for the people of the people by the people & the words themselves ordered themselves to be made of the letters of the sounds all of which are actually people & when we get that far when people are not only the poets but are also the poems then
The Gathering becomes this poem
IN THE BEGINNING & IN THE END
& that’s why it’s called The Peoples Poetry Gathering.
Bob Holman
________________________________________________
To Lisanne (birth of first grandchild)
You are feeding Ant'ny
I am in the office backdoors
The sun is engaging smoothly
Our family's loving attendance
Nurture mush cooliness fills
Your home see Ko-man conquer
The family shuffle deck schedule
Like a pro, you pro, Ant’ny grows
A moment of clarity thanks you
A particle of time bounding fro
Interconnecting life simply at
The nipple & feeding this back to you
Whatever you say will do
Feeding this back to you
________________________________________________
Kuinderne fØrst: trappen op var en flerdobbelt spiral
Blodomlöb(et) -- bloedsombloep
milchairendubbel
careening O Porto’s slopes doubling woman man
Spring er interessante, livsvitige --
Men der er langt fra kuinder til militær,
en hiat
Kroznja Plens!
Soundbody bridge languages
Som også tiggerne uduikler her I gaden. Vi sidder I fØrste række
Ik mag sterreve azzet nie waar is....
Waar subje dan, Pa?
In eenkonijrenhok op Overschule!
From the Cafe Majestic break free
Afternoons lengthen into poetry
Wine greens. AFIXA CÁO PROBIDA. Ahimslen
er blå blå. MIDDAGSHEDE.
O Porto! O Poetry! Women last!
Pia Tildorp Jules Deelder Bob Holman
Triumvirate
Women first!
Up the multidouble spiral staircase
Bloodcircle Bloodloop Military double
Careening O Porto’s slopes doubling woman man
Spring is interesting -- life-giving
But there’s a long way from women to the military
A language gap Kroznja Plens!
And sound-body to bridge the languages
Which even the beggars are inventing
On the spot on the street
Where we sit in the front row
May I die if it isn’t true
But where are you, Dad?
From the Café Majestic break free
Afternoons lengthening into poetry
Wine greens. NO POSTERS ALLOWED.
The sky is blue-blue
Mid-afternoon heat
O! Porto! O! Poetry!
Women last!
Pia Tildorp Jules Deelder Bob Holman