I recently came across this from Amiri Baraka in Anne Waldman and Andrew Schelling’s collection of essays, Disembodied Poetics: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School … For those of us in the arts or the…
The following passages are from an interview with U.S. poet Anne Waldman, co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics… Poetry needs the breath. It needs the voice. It needs the body. It needs…
It’s easy to be in the present moment With Anne Fitzgerald I want to listen I want to be receptive I want to assure her That Jesus was right: You, Annie Fitzgerald, are the light…
That is why I want to use short chapters, each with verselike heading, and very many such chapters; slowly, deeply, moodily unfolding the moody story and its long outreaching voyage into strange space. And to…
I take both grace and insult With cheerful equanimity — Du Fu Dear Wendy, Congrats on your decision to move to China and, as Kerouac advised, be in love with your Shanghai life. I marvel…
For Dianne Lee and Lynette D’Amico When I first read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Americus,I just before The Book of Mev was published, I was energized by discovering how much it is a mish mash, full of…
Dear Mark, Here is my reflection of Dear Layla, I thought at first that I should apologize for the scatter-brained style of writing I’m sure this letter will take. Then I thought, he probably doesn’t…
for Emily, Kelley, and Lindsay 1. In reality every reader is, while she is reading, the reader of her own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to…
Dear Bella Levenshteyn You come to my mind More times than you could imagine I won’t quote Kerouac (You’ve had enough of him, I’m sure) I’ll quote the Jewish poet and tell you: “You are…
Writing to Wake Up: A Course in Creativity and Community Think about it: Even with all our technologies and modes of communication, who has enough time? And yet, we need time, as community activist Grace…