Anne Waldman on Allen Ginsberg’s Howl
It was a cri de coeur, an alarm, a vision. Its structure matched its energy, which seemed the voices of many, not one. It was a rhizomic collage, just like life, a pastiche of the…
Category: World Literature
The Essential Allen Ginsberg: Cafe Ventana Reading Group
“It occurs to me that I am America” –Allen Ginsberg, America Beat poet, antiwar activist, gay liberationist, free speech devotee, “First Thought, Best Thought” advocate, and cheerful Buddhist, Allen Ginsberg has been a major influence on U.S. counterculture…
On Ivan Ilyich
ahamkara [aham, “I”; kara, “maker”] Self-will, the ego mask, the principle in people which makes them feel separate from others. — Diana Morrison, A Glossary of Sanskrit from The Spiritual Tradition of India The Death of Ivan…
A Short Digression While Discussing a Tolstoy Story (Why I Love Siobhán)
At McGurks I asked Siobhán, “Did I ever tell you about the ‘Meanwhiles?’” “I don’t think so.” “Back in the days and nights When The Book of Mev wasn’t The Book of Mev (I was…
All Power To the Imagination
Have you ever tried to email chicken soup?Diane di Prima The Poetry Deal—It’s only 109 pages. But Diane di Prima—poet, printer, feminist, Buddhist, anarchist, pacifist, cultural revolutionary— packs a lot of life into those pages….
I Should Have Read This before Finishing “Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine”
“There’s just one request I have, Pan: please don’t stick me in any of your books. And if that’s too much to ask, do me a favor and at least leave my name out.” —…
Reading Du Fu
Some friends and I are reading Du Fu in David Young’s translation. Here’s what Ye Xie (1627-1703) had to say about him– “Take any one of Du Fu’s poems, or even one line, and everywhere…
He Would Have Never Gotten Tenure
The thing is to get under the students’ skin and arouse enough enthusiasm that they get under their own skin. This means allowing yourself to be yourself in class. My own best teachers were WC…
Comfort and Consolation
What I saw then was this fairly obvious faculty of art: that it goes on, it lasts a bit longer that our frail human lives—it offers comfort. The vision is more enduring than our persons—it…
Pass It On
A work of art is something you make, something you give to other people. It’s an object for use, and people can make many different uses of the same work. Susan Sontag