Anyone care to post those poems written by Allen on the subject of our Bobby?
no iain…
it was allen and te jean…
of course a rogue gallery of others too…!!!
one should always remember whitman and what whitman did for poetry when considering ginsberg. ginsberg took the ball from walt and took it to the next level.
here’s some ginsberg/dylan reading material for you all, including ginsberg’s poem about dylan (not sure if all these links work…they’re from an old post i made elsewhere once):
“If he needed someone or some event to kick him out of the
doldrums, he found it in late January while listening to Bob Dylan’s new
recording, Blood on the Tracks. After completing an enormously
successful comeback tour with The Band in 1974, Dylan had returned to the
recording studio and laid down tracks for what was without question his
best album in years. Allen was awed by what he heard. Dylan’s lyrics
and vocal phrasing were in top form, as fresh and gripping and courageous
as any of the Dylan songs Ginsberg had heard. Allen was particularly
impressed with “Idiot Wind,” Dylan’s excoriating attack on hypocrisy and
mindless stupidity. “His genius intuition’s become scientific art,” Allen
gushed in a lengthy journal entry that examined the song line by line.
Dylan had beaten Ginsberg at his own game: He had found a way to introduce
elements of meditation into his music. This is what Allen hoped to
accomplish in his poetry, and he had to congratulate Dylan for showing him
a practical way of doing it. “What an unexpected victory for Dylan and
the generations whose consciousness he carries forward into common sense,”
he wrote. “I want to see the words written out on the page, in stanzas,
divided by pauses and breaths, into dependent droop’d symmetries.”
Michael Schumacher’s DHARMA LION: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg, p. 591
—
ginsberg’s liner notes for desire –
[listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu]…
the liner notes for desire –
[www.bobdylan.com]
—
who’s who – allen ginsberg
[www.expectingrain.com]
—
(Bob Dylan is) “one of the most powerful blues singers ever heard in the
west, peer of ma rainey and leadbelly in the long unobstructed ecstatic
breath, his body consciousness, a column of air, stopping time, inspired at
the international microphone, poetus magnus at the piano of conscience, so
hardworking got no time to answer telephone.”
– ginsberg, 1965 revisited booklet
—
ginsberg box set notes –
[listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu]…
—
ginsberg poem about dylan, 1972
Blue Gossip
I guess he got sick of having to get up and get
scared of being shot down
Also probably he got sick of
being a methedrine clown; /* !!! around New Morning?
Also he wanted to go back explore
Macdougal Street New York town /* when left Woodstock
I guess he got sick of a Cosmic
consciousness too abstract
I guess he wanted to go back
t’his own babies’ baby shit fact
Change his own children’s diapers not get lost
in a transcendental Rock & Roll act.
I guess he thought maybe he had
enough gold for the world
Saw red white & blue big enough now ?* Newport?
needn’t be further unfurled
I guess he felt prophet show good example,
bring himself down in the world.
I guess he took Zen Chinese vows
and became an anonymous lout
I guess he figured he better step down off stage
before he got kicked out
I guess he felt lonesome and blue
and he wanted out.
I guess he did what anyone
sens’ble would do
Otherwise like Mick Jagger go out on stage
wearing curtains of blue
And fly around the world with great big
diamonds and pearls made of glue.
I guess he felt he’d used up
’nuff of the ‘lectric supply /* John Welsey
I guess he know that the Angel
of Death was nigh –
I guess he sighed his
next mortal sigh.
I guess he guessed he could
find out his own mortal face
I guess he desired to examine
his own family place
I guess he decided to act with
more modest silent grace
I guess he decided to learn
from ancient tongue
So he studied Hebrew
as before he blabbed from his lung
I guess he required to learn new
tender kind songs to be sung.
I guess he thought he was not guru
for Everyone’s eyes
He must have seen Vajra Hells ??
in old visions he’d divined
He must’ve seen infernal assassins
stealing his garbage supplies.
I guess he decided to die
while still alive
In that way, ancient death-in-life,
saint always thrive
Above all remember his children
he already picked a good wife.
I guess he decided to Be
as well as sing the blues
I guess he decided like Prospero
to throw his white magic wand into the Ocean blue –
Burn up all is magic books,
go back to Manhattan, think something new.
I guess he decided like Prospero
World was a dream
Every third thought is grave
or so Samsara would seem –
Took Hebrew Boddhisatva’s vow
and saw goden light death agleam.
I guess he decided he
did not need to be More Big
I guess he decided he was not the
Great Cosmic Thingamajig
I guess he decided to end that sweet song
and such is his Suchness I dig.
23 October 1972, Davidson College
—
This interview was recorded in February 1976 during a drive from
Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, MD, and in Allen’s apartment in New York
City as well as on the streets and subways of New York. Allen was 49,
about to turn 50, at the time.
[members.aol.com]
—
and from the archives…just to make twisted people smile when they hear the
song…
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 10:49:00 -0700
From: Renaldo
Subject: Just like Allen Ginsberg
I read this week-end an interview of Marianne Faithfull
where she says that the subject of Just like a woman was
Allen Ginsberg. Had this ‘theory’ been put forward before?
—
and although the site seems to be down now, edlis has this interesting little
story about bob supposedly breaking down during desolation row and, if memory
serves, breaking down because of allen’s death…but i could be wrong…so could
the story…
[www.edlis.org]
—
that’s about all. oh, here’s a story i like.
“does this face bother you?” bukowski asked the young woman. they were at a
party in santa cruz after a benefit reading where he had appeared with beat poets
allen ginsberg, lawrence ferlinghetti and gary snyder. “i mean, you find it
revolting?” he asked, touching his bulbous noise and oatmeal complexion.
“no,” she answered carefully, “i think you should judge a man by the inside
of him.”
“well good,” he said, “let’s go and fuck then.”
although nervous to the point of sickness earlier in the evening, drinking
from a flask of vodka and orange to steady himself on stage, “one shot for each
poem he read” recalls ginsberg, bukowski manipulated the crowd of sixteen hundred
with consummate skill, asking them disarmingly: “isn’t this boring?” before
giving a captivating reading.
ginsberg came on afterwards and was chanting a blues litany when he was told
there had been a bomb threat. “so i turned to rhymed improvisation and explained
the situation in friendly song, the audience began to understand and began filing
out of the theater calmly. all the poets followed, after the audience left, and
bukowski looked at me and said, surprisingly, ‘ginsberg, you’re a good man.’ i
was a little apprehensive he’d disapprove of me as ‘academic’ or a four-eyed
queer, but he was agreeable and friendly.”
when ginsberg arrived at the party that evening, bukowski announced with
mock-seriousness: “ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got allen ginsberg as guest of
honor tonight. can you believe it? allen ginsberg!” he called for the music to
be turned down and, when it wasn’t, said to ginsberg, whom he’d put it an
affectionate headlock: “a man of genius, the first poet to cut through the light
and consciousness for two thousand years and these bastards don’t even appreciate
it.”
ginsberg rubbed bukowski’s back to try and calm him.
“that feels good, allen, real good, ” said bukowski. “have a drink.”
ginsberg said he’d already had enough.
“everybody knows that after *howl* you never wrote anything worth a shit,”
said bukowski, angry his offer of a drink had been rejected. he turned to the
people around them, and asked: “has allen written worth anything worth a shit
since *howl* and *kay-dish*?”
“*kaddish*,” ginsberg corrected him.
“allen, you’re tearing me apart. you’re a barracuda, allen, eating me up
with your tongue,” he laughed, contemptuously, and reeled off into a drunken
bear-like dance, as ginsberg recalls “his big pants falling down halfway from his
behind.”
—
just ’cause i like it, on another occasion, in his piece called “a rambling essay
on poetics and the bleeding life written while drinking a six-pack (tall),” hank
said
“call me a hardhead if you wish, uncultured, drunken, whatever, i’ve never said
this before but i am now high enough as i write this to perhaps say that ginsberg
has been the most awakening force in american poetry since walt w. it’s a god
damn shame he’s a homo. it’s a god damn shame genet is a homo. not that it is a
shame to be a homo but that we have to wait around and let the homos teach us how
to write.”