To the me of my own making, seeing I am here,
I’d speak a gesture sudden and precise
to show Time’s inconsiderateness where
to head in, and Death, that busboy,
his vanity of speed.
But always here and before me,
the rude lullaby: “Sleep, Mighty Mouth; sleep and die.”
And I would like to leave,
or bring other words and worlds miles closer
as a wakeful company, and out of plain talk spin
Truth and Falsehood, the greatest weapons in the world.
Alex Katz, Kenward Elmslie, 1978
Aquatint in six colors
Sheet: 14 1/2 x 19 inches
Plate (max.): 6 x 6 1/8 inches (printing plates cut along the contour)
Edition: 25
Artist Proofs: 9
J. Green HP paper
Printed by Prawat Laucheron, New York
Co-published by Brooke Alexander, Inc., New York, and Marlborough Graphics, Inc., New York
Portfolio: Face of the Poet
Elegy for Loosha
Ambidextrous eliminators, langorous Elvises,
get roughed up bad by soused chimpanzees
notating your daily round. Like me, all Elvises
are riveted by visceral effluvia: human ashes
sifting down from a huggable blue bowl—
[zenith of a prairie sky.
A recurrent street screech exacerbates my stage-fright
at windows of, building opposite—starer-outers,
lotus-eaters flogging their dot.com wounds.
Dead skin spin-offs flake onto a wondrous panoply,
similar to my dreams of a fertile nation
of miscreant beloveds who can replicate,
post-impact, Vanilla Conga, back aways
[a flame dance, so they say.
----Alex Katz
And I am a poet. There's no question about that, because I have these books, you see, with my name on them. And so I am a poet. You'll find, that's not so funny, actually; you'll find that it'd be very difficult for a long time after you start writing poetry and get interested in it, to have any way to verify the fact that you're a poet. When you go to get a passport and you write down your occupation, you'd be surprised how few people ever write "poet." When you're sitting on the airplane next to a man with a briefcase, and you're going to give a reading, and he's going to a business conference, and he says to you, hello my name is Herman Bluewinkle, and you say, my name is Ted Berrigan, and he says, I'm in electronics, what do you do? And you say, I'm a poet, and he says, holy shit, man. And his eyes get completely glazed over, and he's sure that you're going to whip out all of your poems immediately and read them all to him. Which is the last thing that you want to do. You don't really want to read your poems to anyone, unless a, they want to pay you for doing it, or b, they ask you to do it, or c, you're stoned out of your brain, and you just feel like doing something like that. But at this age - I'll be forty-two this year - there's no question in my mind that I'm a poet, and that's really all that I am. I've been a schoolteacher, a university professor; I've done a number of other things, too, but essentially I'm a poet; that's my profession. In that sense, I'm a professional poet; it's my career. Lots of people don't like that idea, that one could be a career poet. I mean, lots of people don't like lots of ideas, you know; that's not really so important. Lots of people don't like the idea of using professionalism with, in conjunction with the idea of being a poet. But . . . it's like the story about John Wayne showing up on the set of one of John Ford's movies one morning when they were about to shoot, about seven o'clock in the morning, and John Ford said to John Wayne, as they were about to shoot, he said, Are you ready, Duke; do you know your lines, and John Wayne said, I'm always ready; I'm a professional. And I thought that was terrific, actually. I mean, he didn't mean it like if he said, I'm going to shoot you in the head right now, that John Ford couldn't say move your left arm while you're doing that. He only meant, I know my lines. This is my business.
from "Incredible Masterpieces"
Frank O’Hara and Bill Berkson at O’Hara’s apartment on 441 E. 9th St., NY, 1961 (
photo by John Button)
Song Heard Around St. Bridget’s
When you’re in love the whole world’s Polish
and your heart’s in a gold-stripped frame
you only eat cabbage and yogurt
and when you sign you don’t sign you own name
If it’s above you want and you know it
and the parting you want’s in your hair
the yogurt gets creamy and seamy
and the poles that you climb aren’t there
To think, poor St. Bridget, that you never got
to see an Ingmar Bergman movie
because you were forbidden our modern times
but you’re not as old as all that, you’re not a mummy
you saw the Armory Show and Louis Jouvet
and Mary of Scotland and ANCHORS AWEIGH
and we’re sure
that you’ve caught up with La Vie et Espirit poetically pure
and indeed quite contemporary and just as extraordinary
as ice cubes and STONES and dinosaur bones and manure
When you’re in love the whole world’s a steeple
and the moss is peculiarly green
you may not be liked or like people
but you know your love’s on your team
When you’re shaving your face is a snow bank
and your eyes are particularly blue
and your feelings may be fading and grow blank
but the soap is happy it’s you!
Capitán profundo, capitán geloso,
Ask us not to sing standing in the sun,
Hairy-backed and hump-armed,
Flat-ribbed and big-bagged.
There is no pith in music
Except in something false.
Bellissimo, pomposo,
Sing a song of serpent-kin,
Necks among the thousand leaves,
Tongues around the fruit.
Sing in clownish boots
Strapped and buckled bright.
Wear the breeches of a mask,
Coat half-flare and half galloon;
Wear a helmet without reason,
Tufted, tilted, twirled, and twisted.
Start the singing in a voice
Rougher than a grinding shale.
Hang a feather by your eye,
Nod and look a little sly.
This must be the vent of pity,
Deeper than a truer ditty
Of the real that wrenches,
Of the quick that’s wry.
"My sense, for that matter my ambition, has been to create a character named I, in the poems, that, when the actual writing goes on, is speaker, hearer, notater, perceiver, even judge when that is called for." - Ted Berrigan, from Author's Note to So Going Around Cities, 1980
Help me rude the imperfections thrown my way.
Torrential past — the mortars I duck.
Let me invent my downward spire, trench the worm.
Who, in the name of telling, leaves their tower tallest?
Fire born, of distant breath, wrecks
distant come. Taut,
the devil’s gun, run aground
by stun.
Do you know actual poetry things
they ask, no I say.
Trapped in stanzas, wearing feet
for meters.
Deflategrets
we might as well start with the artificial hill on governor’s
isle, or we might as well start with the way local street
violence deflates the pompous, the pretentious, the
grandiose dose of instant critical appraisal, no, we might
as well begin with the neglect of certain experiences
pumpkin carving say, due to tiny domestic compromises
anywhere’s a place to be for the roach family, we might
as well count bag leafs, they’re banned in Paris, I see
one know, shredded, I mean now, in a blank tree in
Sauer Park on 12th near B, where I write this amidst
people disguised as people, who don’t kind of know me
maybe, the playground scene, a place where I’m getting
a degree in performing what realism looks like it means
to me, sitting quietly between negotiations, i.e., five year
old June just handed some gum to me, I chewed it &
handed it back and she fled with horrified glee, today
we both hate the letter e, the gum competes with a
browning yellow leaf for cheap mortality, & we might
as well start with an overpriced cup of lukewarm coffee
we might as well start with the addict on the C standing
nearby smelling like lower Manhattan in 1983, I fucked
up today (this tiny little dude just came by to say hi to me
anyway), not bringing the candy, & now J asks me to say
my name, but I make her do it: me & we no like that game
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.(excerpt)
(
At the Smith and Jones | looks like nothing ever happened except everything's wet, singed cork rubbeth face, pay concierge/owner in red-checked pjs for Ross' 8 nights decapitate writer head and sacrifice to gods of buried vocals |
how we like it, I'll break your heart, break mine.
from
A I D /I/ S A P P E A R A N C E
for Stefan Fitterman
B H J C E R T
fo fn Fmn
1. n on w mn of onnuy n uomy pon
2. of nu nvly of qunum of on qu n nl
3. lmn of onnuy plly ppn oug uon of
4. nu of lg o o yng n lug ll ly
5. l uy of nu moon wx un o o wn wn
6. o ung lp o wn ngng on ng mkng n ng
7. pp n no pl o n on n ngly w gl
F G K Q U
o n mn
1. no n w m no on ny no my pon
2. o n nvly o nm o on n nl
3. lm no onny plly pp no on o
4. no l o o yn nl ll ly
5. l y o n moon wx no own wn
6. o n l pow n n no n n mn n n
7. pp n no pl o no n n nly w l
historian of the Beats Jerry Cimino to Sam Whiting. More:
Weiss’ performance art usually happened in spontaneous fashion. It would be late at night at the Black Cat on Montgomery or the Cellar on Green Street. A combo might be honking Bebop or improv when out of the smoke would come Weiss, 5 feet tall, her hair cut short and dyed teal, after the war-orphan hero in the 1948 film “The Boy with Green Hair.”
One of her most popular poems was “Ten Ten,” describing her arrival in San Francisco, where she found a $10 room at 1010 Montgomery, later home to Ginsberg. Jack Kerouac would come by after midnight and they’d go up on the roof with a bottle of cheap red wine. Weiss drank only beer, and always took a bottle with her onto the stage, along with a lit cigarette.
Once up front, her poetry moved along like a locomotive, and the musicians would encourage it along.
“When you see it with the drama and the force of the music, it brings (the poetry) to life,” said Cimino. It was a style of cadenced riffing that Kerouac later took to New York City and took when he read from his novel “On the Road,” accompanied by Steve Allen on piano, during a famous episode of the “Steve Allen Show.”
“Kerouac got all the credit,” said Cimino. “But the accepted understanding in San Francisco is that Ruth was performing her words to music even before Jack was doing it.”
excerpt from Ginger
FURTHER NOTICE
I can’t live in this world
And I refuse to kill myself
Or let you kill me
The dill plant lives, the airplane
My alarm clock, this ink
I won’t go away
I shall be myself—
Free, a genius, an embarrassment
Like the Indian, the buffalo
Like Yellowstone National Park.
Santa Fe Trail I go separately The sweet knees of oxen have pressed a path for me ghosts with ingots have burned their bare hands it is th...
