Gary Snyder per Kerouac

rotten porch slanted forward to the ground, among vines, with a nice old rocking chair that I sat in every morning to read my Diamond Sutra. The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, every-thing smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under and meditate on those cool perfect starry California October nights unmatched anywhere in the world. We had a perfect little kitchen with a gas stove, but no icebox, but no matter. We also had a perfect little bathroom with a tub and hot water, and one main room, covered with pillows and floor mats of straw and mattresses to sleep on, and books, books, hundreds of books everything from Catullus to Pound to Blyth to albums of Bach and Beethoven (and even one swing-ing Ella Fitzgerald album with Clark Terry very interesting on trumpet) and a good three-speed Webcor phonograph that played loud enough to blast the roof off: and the roof nothing but plywood, the walls too, through which one night in one of our Zen Lunatic drunks I put my fist in glee and Coughlin saw me and put his head through about three inches. About a mile from there, way down Milvia and then upslope."

Allen Ginsberg

 

Allen Ginsberg

Wild Orphan

Blandly mother 

takes him strolling 
by railroad and by river 
-he's the son of the absconded 
hot rod angel- 
and he imagines cars 
and rides them in his dreams, 

so lonely growing up among 
the imaginary automobiles 
and dead souls of Tarrytown 

to create 
out of his own imagination 
the beauty of his wild 
forebears-a mythology 
he cannot inherit. 

Will he later hallucinate 
his gods? Waking 
among mysteries with 
an insane gleam 
of recollection? 

The recognition- 
something so rare 
in his soul, 
met only in dreams 
-nostalgias 
of another life. 

A question of the soul. 
And the injured 
losing their injury 
in their innocence 
-a cock, a cross, 
an excellence of love. 

And the father grieves 
in flophouse 
complexities of memory 
a thousand miles 
away, unknowing 
of the unexpected 
youthful stranger 
bumming toward his door.

Allen Ginsberg

        Mark Ewert photographed by Allen

Crossing Nation

 Under silver wing 

San Francisco's towers sprouting 
thru thin gas clouds, 
Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure 
Berkeley hills pine-covered below-- 
Dr Leary in his brown house scribing Independence 
Declaration 
typewriter at window 
silver panorama in natural eyeball-- 

Sacramento valley rivercourse's Chinese 
dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed 
State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields 
to Sierras- past Reno, Pyramid Lake's 
blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands' 
brown wasteland scratched by tires 

Jerry Rubin arrested! Beaten, jailed, 
coccyx broken-- 
Leary out of action--"a public menace... 
persons of tender years...immature 
judgement...pyschiatric examination..." 
i.e. Shut up or Else Loonybin or Slam 

Leroi on bum gun rap, $7,000 
lawyer fees, years' negotiations-- 
SPOCK GUILTY headlined temporary, Joan Baez' 
paramour husband Dave Harris to Gaol 
Dylan silent on politics, & safe-- 
having a baby, a man-- 
Cleaver shot at, jail'd, maddened, parole revoked, 

Vietnam War flesh-heap grows higher, 
blood splashing down the mountains of bodies 
on to Cholon's sidewalks-- 
Blond boys in airplane seats fed technicolor 
Murderers advance w/ Death-chords 
Earplugs in, steak on plastic 
served--Eyes up to the Image-- 

What do I have to lose if America falls? 
my body? my neck? my personality?

William Burroughs

 

DISH SOPRANO MADE THE NIGHT FOR SHE OVATION

She said: “Some bath rub they are    people”

dish soprano
wins ovation
in “Met.”
    By John Mo” ” ” ”

one of the MOST in opera
tan opera
her hus
dish, , , ,

had not
good the
after and
to some opposed

in wait
with Portugal
tied Spain into
a government – – – –

Plan to broaden
the killers
tomorrow &&&

the Federal government
were taken. .

years   years
needed   because

She said: “Some bath rub they are people”

                                                Cut up Paris Herald Tribune articles

William Burroughs

 

Sinclair Beiles, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin: Minutes to Go (1960–)

21 February 2019

The original manifesto and manual of the cut-up method in literature.

First published by Two Cities Editions, Paris, 1960.

US edition
Publisher Beach Books / City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1968
63 pages

John Wieners

 

with Raymond Foye

The Lights in Town

Not as bad as you are

And the next time that I see you 

I shall be old, a figure

Couched from under acquaducts

 

Where you still remain abroad a silent

jet plane openly bound across velvet seas.

Stuck in town myself, to go back

for years on aird, rugged paths

 

Poetry appears that sure entrance to a 

storied paradisical garden, where pure 

patented mystique fulfills its indispensable acts 

your passion’s kiss maintained against our age.

John Wieners

 Artwork by Figgy Guyter

   — ‘From A Poem for Painters’ Pt. 7

At last. I come to the last defense.

My poems contain no
                  wilde beestes, no
lady of the lake music
of the spheres, or organ chants,

yet by these lines
I betray what little given me.

One needs no defense.

                  Only the score of a man’s
                  struggle to stay with
what is his own, what
lies within him to do.

Without which is nothing,
for him or those who hear him
And I come to this,
knowing the waste, leaving

the rest up to love
and its twisted faces,
my hands claw out at
only to draw back from the
blood already running there.

Oh come back, whatever heart
you have left. It is my life
you save. The poem is done.

         

John Wieners

 

 Poem for Painters

2

Pushed on by the incompletion

              of what goes before me

I hesitate before this paper

              scratching for the right words.

 

Paul Klee scratched for seven years

              on smoked glass, to develop

              his line, LaVigne says, look

at his face! he who has spent

             all night drawing mine.

 

       The sun also

rises on the rooftops, beginning

w/ violet. I begin in blue

knowing why we are cool.

Gary Snyder

 

Piute Creek

One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted   
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.   
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks   
Warm.   Sky over endless mountains.   
All the junk that goes with being human   
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail   
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge   
Gone in the dry air.

A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we are here.   
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow:
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.

Philip Whalen

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 

Gary Snyder

 

Riprap  

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

             placed solid, by hands

In choice of place, set

Before the body of the mind

             in space and time:

Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall

             riprap of things:

Cobble of milky way,

             straying planets,

These poems, people,

             lost ponies with

Dragging saddles—

             and rocky sure-foot trails.

The worlds like an endless

             four-dimensional

Game of Go.

             ants and pebbles

In the thin loam, each rock a word

             a creek-washed stone

Granite: ingrained

             with torment of fire and weight

Crystal and sediment linked hot

             all change, in thoughts,

As well as things.

Philip Whalen

  

Walking Beside the Kamogawa, Remembering Nansen and Fudo and Gary’s Poem

Here are two half-grown black cats perched on a
lump of old teakettle brick plastic garbage
ten feet from the west bank of the River.
I won’t save them. Right here Gary sat with dying Nansen,
The broken cat, warped and sick every day of its life,
Puke & drool on the tatami for Gary to wipe up & scold,
“If you get any worse I’m going to have you put away!”
The vet injected an overdose of nemby and for half an hour
Nansen was comfortable.

How can we do this, how can we live and die?
How does anybody choose for somebody else.
How dare we appear in this Hell-mouth weeping tears,
Busting our heads in ten fragments making vows &
promises?

Suzuki Roshi said, “If I die, it’s all right. If I should
live, it’s all right. Sun-face Buddha, Moon-face Buddha.”
Why do I always fall for that old line?

John Wieners

A Poem for Record Players

The scene changes 

Five hours later and

I come into a room

where a clock ticks.

I find a pillow to

muffle the sounds I make.

I am engaged in taking away

from God his sound.

The pigeons somewhere

above me, the cough

a man makes down the hall,

the flap of wings

below me, the squeak

of sparrows in the alley.

The scratches I itch

on my scalp, the landing

of birds under the bay

window out my window.

All dull details

I can only describe to you,

but which are here and

I hear and shall never

give up again, shall carry

with me over the streets

of this seacoast city,

forever; oh clack your

metal wings, god, you are

mine now in the morning.

I have you by the ears

in the exhaust pipes of

a thousand cars gunning

their motors turning over

all over town.

 

6.15.58

Philip Lamantia

  

McClure, Lamantia, Wieners, Meltzer

Michael McClure

 

Michael McClure. Thirteen Mad Sonnets.

Milan

ruth weiss

 

layer by layer

she peels the onion she is

and laughs with her tears

ruth weiss

 

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.”

Philip Whalen

 

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.

William Everson/Brother Antoninus

 

“Suffice it to say,” he explained in Birth of a Poet (1982), a little-known but major critical work, “that when I left the monastery for academe the method that I brought with me was meditative rather than discursive. For I had learned how concepts seemingly exhausted by endless repetition could suddenly, under the probe of intuition, blossom into life.”