Sunny South Kensington: Issa's Sunday Service, #147

  If the widget wonky, whack HERE

This is Donovan's third appearance on the Sunday Service and this number is particularly evocative of another time (60s) and place (London). There's a bit of name dropping and it is Mr. Ginsberg's that makes the lit connection :

Sunny South Kensington

Come take a walk in sunny South Kensington
Any day of the week
See the girl with the silk Chinese blouse on
You know she ain't no freak
Come balloon soon down Cromwell Road, man
You got to spread your wings
A-flip out, skip out, trip-out, and a-make your stand, folks
To dig me as I sing
Jean-Paul Belmondo and-a Mary Quant got
Stoned to say the least
Ginsberg, he ended up drying and so
He a-took a trip out east
If I'm a-late waitin' down the gate, it's such a 'raz' scene
A groovy place to live
In the Portobella I met a fella with a cane umbrella
Who must've used a sieve
So come balloon soon down Cromwell Road, man
You got to spread your wings
A-flip out, skip out, trip-out and a-make your stand, folks
To dig me as I sing
Hmm, hmm, hmm
Come take a walk in sunny South Kensington
Any day of the week
Come see the girl with the silk Chinese blouse on
You know she ain't no freak
If I'm a-late waitin' down the gate, it's such a 'raz' scene
A groovy place to live
In the Portobella I met a fella with a cane umbrella
Who must've used a sieve
Jean-Paul Belmondo and-a Mary Quant got
Stoned to say the least
Ginsberg, he ended up drying and so
He a-took a trip out east
Hmm, hmm, hmm
Come loon soon down Cromwell Road, man
You got, you got to spread your wings, yeah
See the girl with the silk Chinese blouse on, yeah
You know she ain't no freak, hmm, hmm

One must be a certain age to know who Mary Quant was and that's a fact. It seemed, however, a good time, mid-December, to take a bright, cheery walk through the paisley-tinged streets of an old school memory.

So to trim up things neatly, here's an amazing reading by Allen Ginsberg at the 93rd Street Y, February 26, 1973, with Gregory Corso acting the igniter to Ginsberg's dynamite (incredible focus - Louis Ginsberg, Allen's poet father, gives it a bit to Corso - & Allen, too, ultimately, lovingly, gives it - all is love, hare krishna, hare krishna - and Charlie, calm the fuck down, don't touch the angel - hallelujah):

------------------------ 

well, well
pale purple, this year's color...
for young bamboo

 Issa

 translated by David G. Lanoue 

best,
Don 

PS. Get 2 free issues. Get 2 more free issues

Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 146 songs

John Bennett: Rainy Day Rag Man (for Gregory Corso)

Rainy Day Rag Man
John Bennett

(for Gregory Corso  1930 - 2001)

He's barking at the moon. He's barking up the wrong tree. He's tangled up in blue. He's shoplifting dialects and dangling them with hangman's rope from his crash-pad ceiling. On come the black lights, the strobe lights, the bright lights, the stage lights--let there be light! he cries out, naked as a blue jay and flat-out on the shag rug, throwing darts at the ceiling.

He's seen rumors flying like wounded bats and false evidence stuck like gum to his shoe soles. He's seen dreams go up in smoke, grave conclusions dumped in body bags from hot-air balloons, fist-sized monkeys nailed to fence posts. He's grown gun-shy of false promise, mauled hope, pontifications and the fine-print of love. His soul is like an ironclad Merrimack sending volleys over the bow of a Nantucket schooner. The Lie is self--perpetrating, the dark stain is everywhere.

He's a rainy day rag man with a push-cart mind, a midnight tailor in the attic stitching pockets shut. He's the mutant love child of our unabashed sham.

He's the weather vane that tells how the wind blows, the dimpled vulva of the wicked queen, the death throe of our whacked self-importance as we prance around like wind-up toys with our chests puffed out. He's the last train to Brooklyn, the last prophet before Humpty-Dumpty takes the dive.

He has other names too if you're interested, but of course you're not, this being Sunday, a time for worship and contact sports.

-- John Bennett

Humanity

What simple profundities
What profound simplicities
To sit down among the trees
and breathe with them
in murmur brool and breeze —

And how can I trust them
who pollute the sky
with heavens
the below with hells

Well, humankind,
I’m part of you
and so my son

but neither of us
will believe
your big sad lie

Gregory Corso

Finally Corso reading from Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, the 230th and 19th choruses, from the Salen State Archives:







spring breeze--
a thicket mouse
caught by the dog

     Issa
     translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS. Get 2 free issues. Get 2 more free issues

Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 129 songs

Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso): Issa's Sunday Service, #101

This week was the birthday of the fab Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and so this week's selection for the Sunday Service comes from Sonic Youth and is entitled Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso).  Paste Magazine in a review of The Eternal album, from which "Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso)" comes, says that the song draws inspiration from the deceased New York beat poet and his poem “Leaky Lifeboat Boys,” comparing life on this planet to a vessel with a hole in it."

Here's the original Corso poem, which the song riffs off.

Sonic Youth has been a long time favorite of mine and here's why in a perfect, exhilirating live performance of "Leaky Lifeboat":






And finally, an interesting rendition of Corso's poem "The Whole Mess ... Almost," by someone sounding an awful lot like John Cale.  Enjoy.





--------------------


Prompted by this week's Wednesday Haiku feature on fireflies by Bob Carleton, Tom Clark posted a beautiful response, with amazing photographs and an even more amazing poem by Andrew Marvell.  Kindly, he dedicated it me.

Tom's regular sharing of wisdom, poetics, and wonder at his blog, Beyond the Pale, is one of the finest examples of poetry/poetics on the web.  It is well worth checking out regularly.  Tom is one of the finest poets of his generation and his generosity, wit, and lyricism come through with gentle, assured strength.


-----------------


This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review #95, from which 4 poems were featured in a previous post.

Riding the Curved Bowl

We're traveling together so we can't see
we're traveling at the speed of light--
our feet are years from our eyes;
To observers standing in another place,
on fulcra different from ours,
we look like we might be standing still,
when we're leaving before we've arrived.

                        Pendarvis

leaving my shoulder
for the Buddha's...
dragonfly

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues    Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 101 songs

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Gregory Corso, Joseph Campbell, & Robert Frost

Somehow, on February 26th the stars seem to align just so. Today is the birthday of Gregory Corso of Beat literature fame, subject of the recent documentary, Corso: The Last Beat. Well known for his grounding and homage to the classics, here's a poem from his early collection, Gasoline, that reflects that grounding:

Amnesia In Memphis

Who am I, flat beneath the shades of Isis,
This clay-skinned body, made study
By the physicians of Memphis?
Was it always my leaving the North
Snug on the back of the crocodile?
Do I remember this whorl of mummy cloth
As I stood fuming by the Nile?
O life abandoned! half-embalmed, I beat the soil!
For what I am; who I am, I cannot regain,
Nor sponge my life back with the charm of Ibis oil—
Still-omen of the dribbling Scarab!
Fate that leads me into the chamber of blue perfumes!
Is there no other worthy of prophecy
Than that Decker who decks my spinewith ostrick plumes?

No more will the scurvy Sphinx
With beggy prophets their prophecies relate—
The papyrus readers have seen the Falcon's head
Fall unto the Jackal's plate.

Gregory Corso

And one that captures a little more of the modern flavor, humor and honesty that he was known for:

I Am 25

With a love a madness for Shelley
Chatterton —Rimbaud
and the needy-yap of my youth
----------has gone from ear to ear:
------I HATE OLD POETMEN!
Especially old poetmen who retract
who consult other old poetmen
who speak their youth in whispers,
saying:—I did those then
-----------but that was then
-----------that was then—
O I would quiet old men
say to them:—I am your friend
------------------what your once were, thru me
------------------you'll be again—
Then at night in the confidence of their homes
rip out their apology-tongues
----------------and steal their poems.

Gregory Corso

Here's a taste of the documentary, in the form of a trailer:

*****************************************************************

February 26th seems to have a feel, too, for mythology; it is also the birthday of Joseph Campbell. Campbell has changed our lives and how we perceive, the dream of every poet. He looked at myth with a poet's eye, much like his mentor, Carl Jung. His Power of Myth was the summation of his life work and a translation of that into "popular" parlance for the common man. If you have never seen it, it is transformative. Most libraries have it; check it out. Here's a little excerpt of his views and directness:







*****************************************************************

Last, but by no means least, is the the master poet, Robert Frost. Often pigeonholed as the folksy, backwoods farmer/poet of "Stopped by the Snowy Woods" and "The Road Not Taken" fame, there is a thick streak of darkness that runs through his work and life which is apparent to those who delve beyond the most famous poems. In fact, I'd argue a shadow of that darkness pervades even these two famous pieces. Frost will be the subject of future discussion of the 3 Poems By group I co-moderate at the library; I'm thinking of using the following as one of the three poems:

Acquainted With the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain --and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost

This is a powerful poem that bears up with many repeated readings. One of the first things that occurred to me was, damn, sounds like Baudelaire. In a good way. The combination of "dropped my eyes unwilling to explain" and "the time was neither wrong nor rights" goes right to the core of things.

Sort of like what might have happened after you chose one of those two roads.

also consenting
to my loneliness...
frost on the window

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

Anne Waldman Rips It Up, Corso and Ginsberg Interview Doctor Benway

Here's Anne Waldman setting the place on fire - real nice to have the quality of the material match the poet's all out delivery. Many thanks to Christina for pointing the way.

And, because, that's just not enough, try this one on for size:

To round out a Beat kind of post, check out Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg "interviewing" William Burroughs in 1961.

Finally, the Twitter Lilliput Poem-of-the-day - actually, 2 poems, in just 140 characters, one by W. T. Ranney and one by John Martone.

Where else will you get that, folks?


best,
Don

Jack Kerouac: Pull My Daisy and Jazz and Jack Kerouac

Both Ubuweb and Google videos have got the famous loopy/goofy Jack Kerouac film, Pull My Daisy, for viewing. Here's the Wikipedia description that accompanies the film:

A short film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of a stage play he never finished entitled Beat Generation. Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It starred Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Peter Orlovsky, David Amram, Richard Bellamy, Alice Neel, Sally Gross and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's then-infant son.

Based on an incident in the life of Neal Cassady and his wife Carolyn, Daisy tells the story of a railway brakeman whose painter wife invites a respectable bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results.

The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece, until Leslie revealed in a November 28, 1968 article in the Village Voice that the film was actually carefully planned, rehearsed, and directed by him and Frank, who shot the film on a professionally lit studio set.

Pull My Daisy has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Here's the film in its entirety:







For me, this sounds much better than it appears. When you isolate the soundtrack, the improv/performance element of it is actually pretty amazing. If this legendary film actually lives up to its reputation, it is Kerouac's performance, unseen, that is the reason. It is interesting to see a young Corso and Ginsberg and all the others, but Jack is the only one who is actually acting.

The David Amram score is also quite good.

Speaking of sound, here's a public radio program entitled "Jazz and Jack Kerouac," from the program Night Lights, originally broadcast on WFIU Public Radio. There is some good work here, though there have been many stories on how some of the jazz guys, particularly in the "American Haiku" session (Al Cohn and Zoot Sims), were merely perfunctory and treated Kerouac with an indifference that shattered his dreams of a great blowing session. Here's David Perry's comments from the linear notes to The Jack Kerouac Collection:

Sims and Cohn, (Bob) Thiele (the producer) explains, thought of it as just another record date. Didn't even listen to him. Probably went out and got drunk. The incident also shows the vulnerable side behind the brawny voice. "When I found him, he was in a corner crying," says Thiele. "And he said, 'My two favorite musicians walked out on me. They didn't even want to hear this back.'"

In those days the typical thing was, the date's over and we'll see ya. These guys would head for the local pub. They could have been recording with Ellington or Benny Goodman and they still would've done the same thing.

This story somehow encapsulates the tragedy that was Kerouac; heartbroken by his jazz idols, yet misunderstanding that it wasn't personal, really to them it was nothing at all. Still, they weren't impressed and though Kerouac's understanding of jazz was deep, it's application to literature was more metaphoric than actual. For the jazz guys, it was non-existent. For them it was two different languages. It didn't translate. They didn't get it.

They didn't get it all.


best,
Don

Review: Corso: The Last Beat

As a follow to yesterday's posting about the new Corso: The Last Beat documentary by Gustave Reininger, here is a link to a solid review by Ron Silliman of an early cut of the film:


And a classic piece from the man himself:

The Mad Yak

I am watching them churn the last milk they'll ever get from me. They are waiting for me to die; They want to make buttons out of my bones. Where are my sisters and brothers? That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap. And that idiot student of his-- I never saw that muffler before. Poor uncle, he lets them load him. How sad he is, how tired! I wonder what they'll do with his bones? And that beautiful tail! How many shoelaces will they make of that!

Gregory Corso

best,
Don

Trailer: Corso - The Last Beat

For Beat fans, the latest news is a film about Gregory Corso, entitled "Corso - The Last Beat." If you thought you knew everything there was to know about the enigmatic, mercurial, conflicted Corso, think again. Here's the trailer:





"Corso - The Last Beat" Preview from Damien LeVeck on Vimeo
.


Contributor copies for issues #165 and 166 of Lillie will go out this week.

best,
Don