Lenore Kandel: Collected Poems

Due to a confluence of circumstances - being a woman in the male-centric mode of Beat literature, being involved in a motorcycle accident that abruptly postponed a burgeoning career, and virtually disappearing from the public eye altogether - the work of one of the Beat Generation's most talented poets has been virtually forgotten.

Until now.

The publication of The Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel, published by North Atlantic Books, is a major milestone in the history of Beat and I'm here to report, after finishing the volume, that it is everything an enthusiastic reader might anticipate and much, much more.

If you go through the literature - the anthologies, the studies, the critiques - you will find a real paucity of material by and about Lenore Kandel.  In some cases, her work is completely neglected.  She is missing, for instance, from Bill Morgan's recent The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete Uncensored History of the Beat Generation, from Anne Waldman's The Beat Reader (though she is in the Waldman edited The Beat Book) and minimally mentioned in Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation and Breaking the Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers and The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats.  For some, her late arrival on the SF scene, coupled with her relative obscurity (in one interview Anne Waldman characterized her as "a recluse"), may have led to this exclusion.

She is fairly represented in Women of the Beat Generation by Brenda Knight, Rick Peabody's A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, and there are interesting interviews with her in The Beat Generation by Bruce Cook and Voices from the Love Generation edited by Leonard Wolf.  There are plenty of more resources out there, both lacking and representational on Kandel, if you're willing to dig.

All this goes a long way to why this collection is so welcome.   A great majority of the poetry published in this volume is over 40 years old and has never been gathered together in one place until now.

A very fine piece on Kandel, by John M. Carey, can be found in Beat Culture:Lifestyles, Icons and Impact by William Lawlor.  As recounted by Lawlor, from the early age of 12 she was interested in poetry and Buddhism.  Her first published work appeared in 1959, collected in Complete Poems in the section "Poems from Three Penny Chapbooks."  In San Francisco she met other Beat poets interested in Eastern culture at the East-West House, notably Lew Welch and Gary Snyder.  Soon affiliated with SF Renaissance writers, she went to Big Sur with Welch and Jack Kerouac, and was later portrayed by Kerouac as Romana Schwartz in his novel Big Sur.

There are number of penetrating quotes from her about this period in Jack's Book, the oral biography by Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee, in which she perceptively portrays Kerouac as at once deeply troubled yet still notably giving and generous to those around him. A voracious reader, she was greatly influenced by Kerouac's poetics and his deep interest in Buddhism  She spent a number of years studying at the East-West House and became an important figure in the emerging Hippie movement, being the only major woman participant in the Summer of Love's Human Be-In and a member of the infamous Diggers.

The Love Book, published in 1966, became victim of a symbolic crackdown by newly elected California governor, Ronald Reagan.  In a raid of the Psychedelic Shop and City Lights Bookshop, the chapbook was confiscated and subsequently prosecuted as obscene.   Though the decision was eventually overturned, The Love Book was found by the jury to be obscene and, according to Charles Perry in The Haight Ashbury, the chapbook, which had sold only 50 copies up to that time, went on to sell over 20,000 after achieving notoriety. Kandel accordingly announced that she would donate 1% of the profits to the SF Police Retirement Association.

As can be seen from the cover below, a detail from a Tibetan scroll, her focus on sex and love was based in part on Hindi/Buddhist sources, something of a philosophy of transcendence as may be found in Tantricism as it is thought of in the popular imagination.  If ever there was a poetic document that might be thought of as representational of the Love Generation, the Sexual Revolution, and what was the hippie incarnation of the Free Love philosophy, this would have to be given due consideration as it.  Certainly it was in fact less a product of its time than it was in the vanguard of bringing these ideas to the attention of the artistic community and later the culture at large. 

The two primary volumes published during her lifetime - one being the transcendent, controversial chapbook The Love Book, as mentioned above, and the other the fine monograph Word Alchemy -  are here both in their entirety in the Collected Poems, along with over 150 pages of poetry seeing book publication for the first time.  The uncollected material is gathered into 4 sections: "Poems from Three Penny Press Chapbooks (1959)," "Poems from Little Magazines and Broadsides (1960-1992)," "Unpublished Works," and "A Fictional Sketch (1953)."

The Collected Poems is worth having just for bringing the first two volumes back into print, both of which are major works in the Beat canon.  What is found in the other four sections, however, will delight long-time Kandel fans and those new to her work.  Though there are a number of fine brief poems, it is the longer lyrical work, running from 1 to 6 pages, that is her forté and there are plenty of fine examples in Collected that have either never seen the light of day or were only published once and disappeared.

I've been a big fan of Kandel ever since I picked up a copy of Word Alchemy in a used bookshop many, many years ago.  Her work is, if you had to chose between one of the essential four elements, fire.  It is ecstatic, numinous, tapped into the original source. The love she writes of is highly erotized, highly sexualized, done in a manner which was shocking for the time and still might raise eyebrows today.  Her themes and style serves as a perfect bridge between the Beat movement poets and those of the Love/Hippie generation that followed.

What is of great importance is the context within which she worked.  There is a mystic quality to her musings, a struggle for transcendence that at once mirrored that of the 60s generation and prefigured the massive interest of things Eastern that the Beats were bringing to the cultural fore. She was balls out before the men even thought of showing up, and, though this may end up being her claim to renown, it is hardly all she encompassed.  Her work is straight forward, superbly paced and a bit surreal, with an occasional sweet, slightly dated naivete, but never more so than any of her contemporaries.  Erotized love is grounded with Kandel in Eastern spirituality; as mentioned above, there is a distinct Hindi flavor to her work, with Buddhist tones, and I found myself thinking of the Tantric tradition more than once while immersed in her work.   As such, "The Love Poem" reads and serves as a kind of sexualized/spiritual manifesto, one that continues in poems such as "The Love-Lust Poem," "Three/Love Poem," "Baby listen ..." and "Fuck/Angel" (From the Little Magazine section).

Sometimes, reading through the volume felt like working a dig site, excavating the past, its concerns, its excentricites and its delights.  As one progresses through, side by side with her love manifesto and the pursuit of a new way of engaging the world is the drug culture in its positive and negative aspect, the gradual dissolution of the 60s dream, and a world peopled with junkie angels.  A fine example that captures both sides of that dream may be found in the following:


Poem for Tyrants

sentient beings are numberless-
         I vow to enlighten them all
-The First Vow of Buddhism

it seems I must love even you
easier loving the pretty things
the children   the morning glories
easier    (as compassion grows)
to love the stranger

easy even to realize      (with compassion)
the pain and terror implicit in those
who treat the world around them
with such brutality     such hate

but oh   I am no christ
blessing my executioners
I am no buddha   no saint
nor have I that incandescent strength
of faith illuminated

yet   even so
you are a sentient being
breathing this air
even as I am a sentient being
breathing this air
seeking my own enlightenment
I must seek yours

if I had love enough
if I had faith enough
perhaps I could transcend your path
and alter even that

forgive me, then― 
I cannot love you yet


One of her oft anthologized poems, First They Slaughtered the Angels, captures the darkness, head-on.  Here is the first of 4 sections:


First They Slaughtered the Angels

I

First they slaughtered the angels
tying their thin white legs with wired cords
and
opening their silk throats with icy knives
They died fluttering their wings like chickens
and their immortal blood wet the burning ground

we watched from the underground
from the gravestones, the crypts
chewing our bony fingers
and
shivering in our piss-stained winding sheets
The seraphs and the cherubim are gone
they have eaten them and cracked their bones for marrow
they have wiped their asses on angel feathers
and now they walk the rubbled streets with
eyes like fire pits


This is a poem from the section "Poems from Little Magazines and Broadsides (1960-1992)," dealing with transcendence in an almost matter of fact manner, with sometimes the eye of a botanist, at other times the eye of an archeologist, always the eye of All:


Hawaiian Mountain

Up here on the mountain there is nothing to forget
whatever is is incontestable
The sun rising over the eastern trees
starts the earliest birds
spiraling their songs against the sky
and the luminous light of dawn exposes the land
the coarse thick grass of the pastures glows with a living green
lush, vibrant, a brilliance that accosts the eye
the trees are various,
groves of a darker green edging the hilly ridge
silver leaved solitaires, and dead bare branches
mock foliated with pale green and vivid orange lichens
not many flowers grow this high
small crimson secrets that bloom hidden in the grass
a million insects scuttle through the larder of the day
the spider hanging watchful in his web
Full moon and the sun illuminates my mind
I sit on the edge of the cliff, trying to discern the difference
between my body and my thought
watching the white waves of the ocean stand frozen
twenty six hundred feet below my toes
brown-and-white and black the cattle dot the pastures
eating their way through bovine eternity
chewing oblivion with their grass-pale white lashed eyes
The clouds blow white across the sky
descending now and then to hang in the tree tops
or drift across the valleys below the mountain
and I look down on clouds
At evening the sun rolls below the ocean horizon
banners of light across the sky-glass of the Pacific
black lava coast, and the waters roll out
toward the sunset horizon
At night I listen to the stars, articulate prisms of the night
the resonance of light is music
and the air vibrates with rainbow flickers
connecting star and star across the plains of space
the moon hangs liquid in the sky, mad mirror of my dreams
sweet silver light chime-tinkling in my brain
later the wind blows, playing the planetary harp
arpeggios that echo in my breath

Up here on the mountain there are no façades to the universe
defenses of the civic mind negate themselves
and the search for the spirit totem claims the star
not earth alone has built this mountain nor this me
but earth one facet of the universal jewel
this light that pulses through the sky is part of me and I of it
this mountain and myself, life-rooted in oceanic earth
I stand upon its slopes of dormant fire
learning to listen
one more expansion of the unexpectant eye


Lastly, here is a poem from Word Alchemy, one that marries the erotic and the philosophical to the lyric, followed by a reading by Lenore from The Love Book.  Those who are language sensitive or easily offended (how you ever made it here, or this far, is a wonder) be forewarned:



Invocation for Mitreya

to invoke the divinity in man with the mutual gift of love
with love as animate and bright as death
the alchemical transfiguration of two separate entities
into one efflorescent deity made manifest in radiant human flesh
our bodies whirling through cosmos, the kiss of heartbeats
the subtle cognizance of hand for hand, and tongue for tongue
the warm moist fabric of the body opening into start-shot rose
         flowers
the dewy cock effulgent as it burst the star
sweet cunt-mouth of world serpent Ouroboros girding the
        universe
as it takes its own eternal cock, and cock and cunt united
        join the circle
moving through realms of flesh made fantasy and fantasy made 
        flesh
love as a force that melts the skin so that our bodies join
one cell at a time
until there is nothing left but the radiant universe
the meteors of light flaming through wordless skies
until there is nothing left but the smell of love
but the taste of love, but the fact of love
until love lies dreaming in the crotch of god. . . .


This is but the merest taste of what will prove to be one of the major original primary source documents of 20th century Beat culture published in the 21st century.  If you are at all inclined to the Beat ethos, don't miss this one, folks: it is poetry, it is culture, it is history, it is religion, it is life.  Kudos to North Atlantic Books, to Vicki Pollack, to Evan Karp, and to Lisa Kot for all helping to bring this fantastic volume together.

And most of all to Lenore Kandel for a spirit, a love, and a creativity that continues to reverberate down through the years.

The following youtube video is of Kandel reading from (and commenting on) her poem To Fuck with Love, Phase 2 from The Love Book.  



Addendum:

Along with the main text of Collected Poems, there are some other aspects of great interest.  First and foremost is Kandel's wonderful other manifesto, published separately and later in Word Alchemy, usually known as Poetry is Never Compromise, which is one of the finest statements of purpose to come out of the Beat Movement and is provided here as an introduction and is essential reading.  Diane di Prima, a long time friend of Kandel, provides a lyric, anecdotal, stream of consciousness preface entitled "Invitation to the Journey: An Homage for Lenore Kandel."  Also there is a necessarily brief biography, an index, and a Notes section which contains bibliographic info that is particularly helpful with the Three Penny Chapbooks and Little Magazines and Broadsides section.

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

nightingale--
from one corner to another
his searching eyes

  Issa
  translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Lenore Kandel: Reading/Book Launch

A major new publication, The Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel from North Atlantic Books is just out.  For those of you within striking distance of San Francisco and The Beat Museum, this is an event to check out.

I'll be posting a review of this book sometime soon - stay tuned.

Rebirth

   Whom shall I with tender touch destroy
   and then what nicety of fate
   waits for my quiet step
   as like a mindless mouse I walk the lotus wheel
   wearing desire as a phoenix chain
   this time again

Lenore Kandel
from The Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel

the snail-Buddha
curls up
to sleep

  Issa
   translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Sartori in Tangier: Issa's Sunday Service, #35

Tangier, 1961




Here's a little something I never expected to happen on Issa's Sunday Service: a LitRock instrumental. Not only is it appropriate but, considering the circumstances, it's perfect. This week saw the birthday of guitar impresario, Adrian Belew, whose studio and solo work, and contributions to the groups The Bears and King Crimson, are the stuff of legend. Particularly his instrumental contributions are legendary, though his lyrics are pretty amazing, too.

So, how is an instrumental, in this case "Sartori in Tangier," LitRock? For those who know a bit of Beat history, Tangier looms large. It is where Bill Burroughs went while avoiding legal complications, following the path of Paul and Jane Bowles. On my wall right now I'm looking at a famous photo of Burroughs, Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Alan Anson, Corso and Bowles posing in Burroughs' garden in Tangier, 1961 (Photo above). In addition, it alludes to Kerouac's novel, Satori in Paris, in its title. Satori, of course, is what all were seeking; in English parlance, enlightenment (NOTE: as pointed out in the comments, the actual title is Sartori, not Satori, but the pun seems intended and, in the end, seems a wash) .

This cut comes from the King Crimson album, Beat, which also supplied the sixth song in this series, "Neal and Jack and Me." Also included on the album is a cut entitled "Heartbeat," which may be an allusion to the Beat Heart Beat by Carolyn Cassady, wife of Neal. "Neurotoica," another cut on the album, refers to a Beat magazine of the same name and "Howler" gets its name from the original, Mr. Ginsberg himself. So, if ever there was a Beat rock album, this is it.

Ironically, "Sartori in Tangier" actually features the work of the other guitar impresario in the band, the incredible Robert Fripp. On this cut, Belew ably backs up Bill Bruford on a 2nd set of drums. Just watch the following live performance and attempt to keep your jaw from hitting the floor.





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

This week's poem comes from issue #55, April 1994. The issue was previously featured in a post back in January of this year.

Exceptions

Here is the mountain
from which no one has fallen.
Here is the lake
where no swimmer has drowned.

Here is the gun
that was never loaded.
Here are the toys
that have never drawn blood.

Here is the revolution unbetrayed.

Here is the poem that saved a life.

Robert Edwards

autumn mountains
one by one
the evening falls

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS For a list of all 45 (and a half) songs to date, click here.

Lenore Kandel Gone

Lenore Kandel has died. More on this in a future post. Meanwhile, some info and and poems. And more info.

Here is To Fuck with Love Phase III.

And Issa, letting us all know how it is:

year's end--
the bell of my death place
tolls too

Issa
translated by David G. 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 Micheline, One of a Kind

Back cover: One of a Kind

Here's a little something from the most recent collection of Jack Micheline's work, One of a Kind, from Ugly Duckling Presse, with original spellings retained:



Intercommunication Satellite 1

Dear Charles:

---------------I have come to come to a decision, about
freedom and responsibility, about loneliness and curiosity
about greed and more greed. About America and its des-
tiny, about dreams and fantasy, about cats and dogs, about
love and hate, about history and demagogues, about mass
murderers and comic relief, about desire and the fulfillment
of a lifetime is predestined before our birth; do not judge, do
not judge, do not judge, do not judge, and let me be, I did not
seek fame, I did not seek money, I only sought to con-quer
the unknown, the vast territories of the unexplored mind.
No one gives a shit for the artist, Power is respected.
--------------------------I deal in color and truth
--------------------------I deal in unknown quantities
--------------------------I deal in the zodiac
--------------------------I deal in preson and prisms
--------------------------I deal in shit kicking
--------------------------I deal in fear
--------------------------Knowing that fear runs the
--------------------------wheel of the world
--------------------------I cannot deal with cunning
-------------------------------------hustlers
-------------------------------------con men
-------------------------------------and cliques
-------------------------------------I can only be me
-------------------------------------I can only be
-------------------------------------That is all I can do
-------------------------------------The best I know how
-------------------------------------That is all I can be
----------------Be patient
----------------It is all coming
----------------in its own time
----------------The rainbow of colors in the night
----------------The rainbow of my dreams
----------------Be patient
----------------It is coming like the sun
----------------in a dark cold day
----------------like a hot iron and a forge
----------------Each being is a different species
----------------There is no two fish alike
----------------You turn the knob on the clown
----------------Not on me, The fishtank of your childhood
----------------disturbs me throw the fishtank away and dance
----------------in the street, My car is not in your driveway
----------------Love the crazy Jew
----------------Keep the faith
----------------Keep the faith
----------------Relax
----------------Laugh in your belly
----------------Smile brother it is just beginning
--------------------------------------Farewell—Jack Micheline



best,
Don

Jack Micheline's "Manifesto"

(Note: an incomplete version of this post went out this morning. My apologies.)

Earlier this week, stuck home with a bad cold and no voice, I sat down with a pile of books I've been going through: two by James Wright, an R. H. Blyth, the "new" translation of Anna Karenina, Paintings in Proust, Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt by Richard Brautigan, and Outlaw of the Lowest Planet by Jack Micheline.

Yes, I was feeling miserable, but what a way to go.

I read the Tolstoy in chunks, slept, ate soup, picked up some poetry, read more Tolstoy etc. It was a plan.

In between some incidents of high Russian soap opera, I picked up the Micheline book and this fell out:

Click on the image to read

What a treat! What starts out as a manifesto, dips into Beat history, than personal history, and ends up as one hell of a wacked publisher's blurb written by the wild man poet himself. I loved it.

And the book itself - Outlaw of the Lowest Planet - I enjoyed very much, overall for me much better than River of Wine, his most often cited work. The poems here come from three different decades yet have a cohesive feel, Micheline's voice never wavering over the years. Over at Outlaw Poetry, there is an article by another small press icon, Todd Moore, on Micheline, entitled chasing jack micheline's shadow that is worth a look.

Here's a couple of poems from Outlaw of the Lowest Planet that give a good feel for Jack's work.





Beauty is everywhere Baudelaire

Beauty is everywhere Baudelaire
Even a worm is Beautiful
The thread of a beggar's dress
The red eye of a drunkard
on a rainy night
Chasing the red haired girl
Baudelaire across the sky
Your raggy paints
Laughing in the rain
Beauty is everywhere Baudelaire







A Look Back at My Youth

A highway crosses the playground of my childhood
the shoemaker is still on Archer Street
the druggist
the same faces inhabit the wilderness of the Bronx
its superstitions
its narrow minds
the synagogue of old hebrews
the church of black cloth Catholoics
its Irish sons with yellow ties
the football field is still there
night descends over the houses
Willy the mad Russian where are you
Tullo carrying ten men over the goal line
lost junky after the cheers died away
wild Murray where are you
Joey Cohen pimples on your face where are you
Little Abie do you laugh that loud anymore I wonder
voices of the children playing in the park
the boat house is deserted
the grass is still green in October
night is descending over the Bronx
the wilderness is but a memory
The Ritz movie is long gone
the whores have all moved away
It is time to gon on
time moves so quickly
My mother still prays nightly
I used to play hooky and go to Bronx Park
and look at the lovers in the grass
the leaves are brown and green now
water flows down the fall of the Bronx River

------------------Spring 1959








River St. Poem

Out on the walk
by the Louisiana shore
the early morning light meets the darkness
the waves roll in slow but sure
one star
one red floating light
one freighter from Tampico
one barge
one riverboat
one bridge
one radio tower
the waves consistent with the tide
one slogan painted on a wall
"Be Yourself Forever"
Algiers, Savannah, Tampa, Santiago, Havana,
the do shakes its shaggy tail
the human condition remained the same
nothing really changes but the drone of engines
Mindanao, Monterrey, Madagascar,
-----------------------Montego, Montana, Montezuma
the dark freighter crawls into port
4 monks statue-like on River Street
A green light flashing
The sky turning black to pink to red
Evers to Tinker to Chance
A triple play
One solitary bird saluting the universe
the sky grey to white
the early morning smoke rising
the dark freighter crawls into port
the hooker walks on

----------------7-11-87, New Orleans, LA




These are poems to be heard, to be read aloud, to be chanted. They are poems of wonder and beauty and horror, all encompassing and spontaneous, poems of a tradition but not in it.

These are Jack Micheline poems.

It seems that Outlaw of the Lowest Planet is still available from the original Zeitgeist Press. Toggle down about halfway on the page (or hit control "f" and search "planet") to see the listing.



best,
Don

A. D. Winans on Jack Micheline

Jack Micheline, pictured above with jazz legend Charles Mingus, was one of the great unsung poets from San Francisco in the later half of the 20th century. A. D. Winans, another small press poet from SF of considerable renown, remembers his friend in this fine three part article, here (part 1), here (part 2), and here (part 3).

Here is the write up on Micheline from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, along with a few poems. For more poetry by Jack, check out the webpage for his Selected Poems. From that page, comes the following touching piece, composed with fellow neglected Beat poet, Bob Kaufman:

Poem For The Children Of The World

A child walks in a dream
Her eyes dance in the night of stars
Someday when the moon is full
The gypsies come home
They will come home forever
And all the boats that never sailed will sail forever
And all the flowers that have not grown will bloom forever
A child walks in a dream
And all the stars that have not shone will shine forever
And all the children that could not dance will dance forever
A child walks in a dream

Jack Micheline and Bob Kaufman

Thanks to Ron Silliman for pointing to the original posting.

best, Don

Gary Snyder & Allen Ginsberg: Selected Letters

Snyder and Ginsberg, Walking Not Talking

A spring night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.
Gary Snyder

Allen Ginsberg - Father Death Blues

For those interested in all things Beat, a little something to brighten up a day: The Selected Letters of Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, as reviewed by Jeff Baker at The Oregonian.

Here's the publisher Counterpoint's blurb:

One of the central relationships in the Beat scene was the long-lasting friendship of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ginsberg ventured west in 1956 and was introduced to Snyder by Kenneth Rexroth, a mentor to the Beats and the man who knew everyone. Snyder, a graduate student in the department of East Asian languages at the University of California, was living in a tiny cottage in Berkeley, sitting zazen, making tea, and writing poems. He had already spent some time as a merchant mariner and as a solitary fire lookout in the Cascades. Ginsberg introduced Snyder to the East Coast Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, while Snyder himself became the model for the serious poet that Ginsberg so wanted to become. Snyder encouraged Ginsberg to explore the beauty of the West Coast and, even more lastingly, introduced Ginsberg to Buddhism, the subject of so many long letter exchanges between them. Beginning in 1956 and continuing through 1991, the two men exchanged more than 850 letters. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's biographer and an important editor of his papers, has selected the most significant correspondence from this long friendship. The letters themselves paint the biographical and poetic portraits of two of America's most important--and most fascinating--poets. Robert Hass's insightful introduction discusses the lives of these two major poets and their enriching and moving relationship.

As Snyder more succinctly observed of their relationship: "I made him walk more, he made me talk more."

Yes, many an old fart's holiday list is now complete.


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

Buddha Beat: Snyder, Kerouac, and the End of the Beginning of the End

Two Beat items of interest: 1) the reemergence of the Beatnik Questionnaire and 2) a short but very deep interview with Gary Snyder, entitled The Koan Ranger. I first saw item 1 in a posting by the glorious Bookslut and then had it forwarded by a friend giving me a gentle nudge, the second comes courtesy of the Poetry Foundation.

The Snyder interview is more Buddha than Beat: no, wait, that's the same thing or maybe not.

No, wait, that's Zen: is that Buddha and Beat or Buddha or Beat or Buddha or Beat or what?

Yeah, or what.

Ok, so there is a third Beat related item: one of my favorite sites since forever is Lit Kicks, which has morphed over the years and is now the Literary Kicks blog. It is always at least interesting and frequently much more. Check it out.

Yes, as you probably already suspected, there is a fourth thing Beat: since it ain't a poetry blog if there ain't no poems, here are a couple of haikus from one of the Near Perfect Books of Poetry. I decided to open Kerouac's Book of Haikus at random and here are three of the eight haikus on facing pages (now I lost the page and can't find it again to let you know - can you beat that?):


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

Just woke up
-----afternoon pines
Playing the wind

Ah the birds
--at dawn,
my mother and father

You paid yr homage
--to the moon,
And she sank

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

Right, four Buddha related items, three Buddha related poems. Not too shabby, and that's Beat thing number five.


best,
Don

Note: If you would like to receive the two current issues of Lilliput 
Review free (or have your current subscription extended two issues),
just make a suggestion of a title or titles for the Near Perfect Books
page, either in a comment to this post, in email to lilliput review at
gmail dot com, or in snail mail to the address on the homepage.

PS pp. 146-147 ... I found it.

Mary Oliver, Pantheism, and the Big G

Cover by Kevin Friend

Lots of very interesting poetry related news this week, beginning with Mary Oliver. As something of an early preview to my posting of a review of her new book of poems, Red Bird, on Eleventh Stack (a blog from my day job), here's that post, which will be appearing next week, possibly in a slightly different form:

"Even at her most agnostic, her most atheistic, Mary Oliver was always a spiritual, even a religious, writer. Her embracing of nature is all-encompassing, recalling the preoccupation of no less a poetic figure than William Wordsworth. In recent years, as seen in her last few books, she has evinced a new found faith beyond the more general pantheism that always seemed to be just below the surface of many of her finest poems.

I have to admit, I approached this newer work with the kind of trepidation one has when hearing of a life-altering event involving a close friend; confronting a new found faith in others that one does not necessarily share can be a daunting thing, most especially when it concerns an old friend. I'm happy to report that, as may be seen in her new collection of poems, Red Bird, this faith is not only a logical extension of her previous beliefs, it in fact firmly accentuates what has come before.

Mary Oliver's wide appeal beyond the usual poetry reading community is easy to understand; her poems are rendered in simple basic vocabulary, are no less beautiful for that simplicity, and concern the every day world around us. Her perception of things is acute; she points out in nature what we all might see if we took the time and had the patience to truly look. Beyond capturing the moment, she also supplies the resonance from which meaning may flow. When she is good, she is transcendent. When she is average, she is at least always interesting. Red Bird is a volume that may be read straight through and then bears, in fact induces, repeated readings. It is cohesive in that its overarching theme is present throughout. There are more than a handful of excellent poems here. Listen to this excerpt from Straight Talk from Fox:

Don't think I haven't

peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons

making love, arguing, talking about God

as if he were an idea instead of grass,

instead of stars, the rabbit caught

in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought

home to the den.

Highlights include this poem, along with Invitation, Night and the River, There is a Place Beyond Ambition, We Should Be Prepared, This Day and Probably Tomorrow Also, the fabulous Of Love, I am the one; well I could go on. There is even a powerful political poem, Of the Empire, that telescopes the general to the particular in a most damning fashion. If you listen closely, you may find there is a message just for you, as in the beginning of Invitation:

Oh do you have time

to linger

for just a little while

out of your busy

and very important day

for the goldfinches

that have gathered

in a field of thistles …

There is a wisdom here, the wisdom of long life, of loss, of longing, and of acceptance. But most of all there is beauty, a beauty not to be missed."

Oddly enough, while reading this book through a second time, I got to thinking once again about the idea of a near perfect volume of poems. Red Bird contains many, well, not very good poems. Yet, still and all, it is a very good collection, precisely because the inferior work in this case informs the overall collection. The overarching theme is consistent throughout and, in one sense, though obviously supplying its subject, it also strengthens its voice. Here is a little 4 line poem that perfectly captures what I try to get at in the review:



So every day

So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,

one of which was you.



Now, if the G word puts you off, so be it; for me, the spiritual element is almost Buddhist, especially in light of Oliver's preoccupation with nature and its resonance in our lives. If you do nothing, pick this book up in your local independent shop or Borders or B & N (or, better still, your library) and read one poem: Of Love. It alone is worth the cover price (and more).

Some interesting tidbits around the web include the Village Voice reprint of an article from April 1958 written by Kenneth Rexroth on the Beats. Ted Kooser, the subject of a recent post here, is participating in a project sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and the Library of Congress entitled American Life in Poetry, which supplies "a free weekly column for newspapers and online publications featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet and a brief introduction to the poem ..." Poetry bloggers take note: at 161 columns and counting, that's a lot of presupplied content. For poetry lovers there are a lot of new poems to be exposed to, by both well and relatively unknown modern American poets.

In addition, there is a great 20 minute documentary on one of my favorite contemporary poets, Gerald Stern, entitled Gerald Stern: Still Burning, at the website Poetry Matters Now, which features a parcel of video readings and is worth a bookmark.

And, finally, in the news department, can it be true that the poetry volume that moved an entire generation, A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is really be 50 years old? And, of course, anyone that would ask that question ... If by some chance you haven't read this one, don't hesitate; it most certainly would be on my list of the most important books of poems of the last century.

Well, believe it or not there is more, but the day job beckons. So, in closing, here are some sample poems from Lilliput Review #94 (December 1997), the cover of which appears above.


the rain
knits us
with threads
of silver

Albert Huffstickler

from Epistles

A word, once sent abroad,
flies irrevocably.

Quintus Horace

And then there is this one line gem - I do love one line poems:




celibacy, a masking forcibly redundant

Sheila E. Murphy

Finally,




Cosmoses were
swinging in the war-ruined city:
softly like now.

Kiyoe Kitamura

Till soon (or next Thursday, whatever comes first),

Don