Allen Ginsberg and Robert Duncan: Words and Consciousness

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Words And ConsciousnessAuthor(s): ALLEN GINSBERG and ROBERT DUNCANSource: The American Poetry Review, Vol. 3, No. 3 (May/June 1974), pp. 52-54Published by: American Poetry ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40743370 .Accessed: 23/11/2013 01:35

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GINSBERG DUNCANfrom llen erbatim,dited yGordon allGordon all s a student t the University fNorth arolina. ehaswritten oetry ndfiction, ade ilmsnd farmed.

Allen Verbatim, o be published

in September of this year(McGraw-Hill),ombines onver-sations&informal ectures y Al-len Ginsberg ecordedduring across-country eading our fromWashington, .C.&Kent State toDavis, Ca. during he spring of1971.The talks were aped, ran-scribed, editedby GordonBall,who was travelling ith him. Be-low are two chapters from thebook, Words nd Consciousness"and "EarlyPoeticCommunity."

"Words and Consciousness"records an epistemology classmeeting t Wisconsin tate Uni-versity n which AG points outdiscrepancies etween henomenaapprehended nd same phenom-ena communicated throughoverly-used onventional peech.Proposed s relief rom peciouslymore ophisticatedanguage sageis mantra prayer-thought evel-oped by Hindus & Buddhists,most ommonly ne. r everal yl-lables, ungor repeated uietly rsilently), which can incorporateentire ody onsciousnesstry t).

In "Early Poetic Community,"Allen& Robert Duncan continuea discussion f human relation-ships within oetry, uring ArtsFestivalweek t Kent State. "Nowondrwe're n a common reathat can be defined," ays RD,"We know hat hepoem s an oc-casionof spirit," nd poetry ar-ries "a feeling of faith moving

through."uncan recounts

arlymeetingsw/Charles Olson & se-rendipitous ecognition f O. asnecessary oetguide&companionto fully become poet himself.UsingPon Allen'swatershed heNew American Poetry nthologyas touchstone or his discussion,RD contrasts atural ommunityof east fewest coast poets who'dnevermet but hared correspon-dence of spirit with the then-es-tablished credentialed poetsconfined to academy thinkingthey admonopoly npoesy.

"In this mode,perfection s ba-sic," wrote William Carlos Wil-liams to Allen Ginsberg f thelatter's rhymed ilvery ersifica-tion" composedwhen he was 21.This as well as approximately i-multaneous isionary-mysticalx-periences shifted AG towardsdirect notating f his own experi-ence n its own form, s shown n"The Brick-layer's unch Hour,""In Society," nd other youthfulworks recited below. Likewisefriendship w/Jack Kerouacbrought with t JK's attention opresent onsciousnesst momentof composition nd recognition fwriting as mortal- hence inef-fable-gesture. his nsight s con-firmed y RD in odd magicalway(see their discussion f Robert'svisit to Allen's hotel room) that

testifies othe presence fpoetry.

Poets (e.g. O'Hara, Ashbery;Snyder, Whalen) on oppositecoasts hough heyhad never metwere nited ate 1940's,Allen ug-gests, y common ffort f explo-ration f the contents f present

consciousnessuring omposition."AG'sownrecent from 971-) in-tensive improvisation f music(blues,rags, wn forms) poetryseems natural xtension f thiseffort.

Gorden all

Words nd onsciousnessEpistemologyClass, Wisconsin State UniversityPlatteville, Wisconsin, April 13,1971

Q: Would it be fair to say thatlanguagegets n the wayof truthor n the wayof btaining ruth?AG: Very often- ecause of theway language s used. But thereare one or two uses of languagethat re denticalwith ruth, s incertain oetry ractice, here an-guage s used as mantra, urely smagic spell, not as rational de-scription which one would usu-allyassume obenearer otruth),where ny attempt t rational e-scription s abandoned from hevery beginning nd it is under-stood that the anguage s purelymagic pell, nd that ts functionis to be onlymagic pell, r man-tra, r prayer, o to speak- hat tsfunction s only to be a physi-ologicalvehicle for feelings ndunderstood s such.

In other words if you knowyou're going to use language tosay"Oh " then he Oh " s denti-

cal with the body movement fsaying Oh '*or with the feeling.Orthe ry Oh ", he xclamation,the exclamatory se of anguage,is identical with ts function, oit's complete ruth n that ense.

When said magic pell or mag-ical use of languagethat's all Imeant- motional affective ex-clamatory se where he anguageis not attempting o carry anyweight f "reality" ther than apurely ubjective rojection romthe body. So that's a theory fmantra.

Basicallywhat am ayings hatexperience s well s reason howsthat when we have to reduce urmultiple-sensory onsciousness faneventwhichweknow bout ntowords, ehave o bstract omuchthat we eliminatemost of the de-tailsof he event. Right? o a lan-guage escription f n event snotidenticalwith he event, s an ab-straction f he vent. nd t s uchan bstraction hat tpicks ut nlycertain spects of the event thatwe'repreoccupiedwith t the mo-ment. And o in no waycan a lan-guage description f an event besaid to be comprehensivelyepre-sentative, eally, f the event. nfactwe don't venknow f n eventexists nd we only allthe hing nevent ecausewesee t and hear tand mell t nd hese re ll trictly

very pecialized umanfunctions,human unctions- eeing, melling,hearing.

What might ea big olor ventto us wouldn't e nuthin' o a dog'cause dogs see black and white.And bee eesmoremyriad acets.So it'is ur particular ensesthatcollaboratewith whatever's oingonoutside omake n event o be-gin with. And then when we re-duce everything rom whateverwent n outside, luswhatever ecouldpickup of t with ur scan-ning patterns, with our senses,plus the further emove f whatwe reduce t to when we say "Itwas an explosion," r "It was amusic concert," r "It was a bigbust, a big university ust"-bythe timewe've educedt to ust aword description t's so far re-movedfrom nything hat mighthave ever happened n eternitythat we can't claimto be talking

about nything oherently ealHowever,f omeone wanted o,they ouldredefine he wholeuseof languageand say there's n-other se of t which s purely x-pressive, ubjectively xpressive,where hebreath xhaled s a con-scious articulation of feeling...therefore he spoken breath,"Ah-om" or "Oh" or "Ah" or"Uuh," is identical with theevent hat t describes, ecause tis the vent. .. As Blakesays, Fora Tear is an Intellectual hing,/And Sigh s the Sword f n An-gel King."* The tear and thesigh...well, the sigh at any rateyou could speak of as language.The sigh rticulates learly bodystate, state of feeling, state ofconsciousness;not merely arti-culates t but s identical with tsown Idea. So, like the tear, t isalso presumably n intellectualthing. ust ike heorgasm s den-ticalwith tself, o a sigh s identi-calwithitself.Andthesoundfthe sigh-well it isn't the entiresigh because there's also thebreath moving- he sound of thesigh is identical with what itmeans, unlike most other state-ments, or unlike most othersounds.Most ounds re not com-pletely dentical with what theyrefer o.

Another spect of language s

not generally akenup in discuss-ing heuseof anguage ocommu-nicateknowledge,s not- enerallyconsidered henwetry o dissectandanalyzewhat anguage s,howit's functioning nd what t's beingusedfor: he one fvoice r ffectwith which t's pronouncedif helanguagespronounced loud),be-causethat makes t different romwhen t's just eye-read. ou canuse the samewords nd say themwith different ones, rom I loveYOU?" to "I love you." Twopeoplecan say exactly he samething with he ame ntention ndoneperson eallymean t and theother otmean t and youcan tellthe difference y whether thevoice omes rom hecenter f hebody r whether hevoice s ust alittle superficial weakened yakfrom he opof he arynx enter.

So between David Dellingersaying "We must end the war"and Kissinger aying "We mustend the war" there's ike differ-ence of content, hough they'reboth aying he amewords. oicetone is one aspect of sound Iwouldpoint oparticularly owa-days when we'reconfronted ith

the image of one single persontalking, ultipliedmyriad n tele-vision. eopleintuitively o hearit, but t s essential oconsciouslycheck hetone fvoice, fbody, sa way^offinding ut whether rnot the voice s genuine,whetheror not t means what t says.Andthe best way to do that s not toget confused y the intellectualpresentation r the associationalpattern presented for hypnoticpurposes y the words hemselvesbut to lookunderneath hewordsto the vehicle or hewords, hichis the voice, nd see f hevoice t-self-on he evelofvoice ffect- san acceptablevehicle.We have aright n that ense obe aesthetic,or to put t another way,we havea right obeemotional- ehavearight o our feelings, ost f ll, owe'vegot to check he feelings nthe voice, ealize ffect.

Sothere's one, r ffect, r feel-ing of the voice, nd that's con-nected very much with therhythm f the anguage-whetherit's a natural rhythm f anguageor whether t's a forced rtificialbureaucratic ry rhythm ffectedby multiple machinery, ffectedby ts being assed throughmanytypewriters, hether t's an au-thentic human personal voicetalking, r whether t's a voicethat has been filtered hrough omany machines hat the humanrhythm asbeen ost.

Most public speech s pseudo-event n the ense hat t snot heproduct f a literal human being;it's literally non-human. It'spassed through o many handsand so many machines hat t nolonger epresents human orga-nism nspiring nd expiring,nhal-ing and exhaling, rhythmically.The sentence tructure o longerhas any relation oany ffect hatcouldbe traced long the inesofinhalation and exhalation- inother words, ad to say, the voicecan finally e separated rom he*From Blake's "The pey ^Monk."Forsomepolitical omments n this oem, ee"War and Peace: Vietnam an,d KentState."

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get a prepackaged ieceof frozenmeat in a pieceof plastic. So italso required itting, atience, n-ternal observation, nd rhythmicchanting, ust to get buffalo, r toget rabbit ven- hepatience e-quired to sit under a tree andsmell nd wait nd isten.

That patience equired or oodgathering onditionedmind con-sciousness o greater ttention oimmediateminute particular e-tail around hebody, onditioned

the tribal food gatherer goingabout his practical usiness o amore direct elationshipthroughhis senses)with he outer world,just as our division f labor andmental absorption with writtenlanguage conditions our con-sciousness o accept as real thatwhich an be formulated n verbalsequence nd put downon paperand read silently nd Xeroxed. tmeans that to us only a writtenevent s credible r real, whereasIndians or members f other ul-tures would aketheir vent, heirreality, and act on it, moredirectly.

Whether ur ystem's n advan-tage or not I don't know. As it

stands,t seems o be ruining he

planet. The very nature of ourpower f abstraction oomsus tolosetouch with detail.And there-fore hevery oots f he trees reshriveling, withering, nd theoceansare being polluted implybecause we have reduced every-thing o a languagewhich an bepassed through machines. Ob-viously machines aren't sophis-ticated nough o take accountofall variables, aren't as sophis-ticated s men nd women n thatsense. We've lost our world bypursuing our kind of languagespecialization.

According o the Buddhist ia-mond Sutra, "All conceptions sto the existence f the elf s wellas all conceptions s to the non-existence f the self, s wellas allconceptions s to the existence fa Supreme elf, s well s all con-ceptions s to the non-existencefa Supreme elf, re equally arbi-trary ecausethey are only con-ceptions " and are not he ntity(or non-entity) hat we are ac-tually sitting n the middle of,whichhath no category, ame, rabstraction ut is itself, nd assuch s "open"- hat s, unlimitedby anguage.

Since "life" cannot be cate-gorized, agical ehavior ithin tcannot be ruled out, since thereareno rules. herefore, or ighestknowledge f he enter f t all,or

for ne aspect of knowledgef

t,one would have to use languagethat was denticalwith hebehav-iorof he entity tself, ather handescriptive f the behavior f theentity. And that anguagebehav-ior tself s prayer. o I would aythe highest orm f epistemologi-cal researchwouldbe prayer. yprayer mean a kind of mantra.In other words, se of rhythmiclanguage to rouse the senses,arouse perceptions, nd arousesenseof nner pace, o alter ll ofconsciousnesstself, ather han orearrange the language digitswithin nerealm f onsciousness.It couldbe quietor silent, t could

be prayerwithoutwords, .e., ust (pure attention, ttention maybe ]to breathing, r attention o no- 'thing. '

Recently read a Sadhana ofthe Nyingmapa ect of TibetanTantric Buddhism, he same sectwhieh teaches the Oh Ah HumVajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hummantra now n America. he rit-ual involved series of prepara-tory rayers o and visualizationsof deological eities, nd formed

an attitude f mind owardmedi-tation, nd toward heend of theSaddhana the instructionabruptly eads: "Rest in state ofnon-conceptualMind as long aspossible."

And that's ike the heart of t,the rest of the magicwas ust aninvocation f blessings reparingyouto sit till youknow, avingexhausted ll sorts f conceptionsof Buddha-formsitting n top ofyour head showering our bodywith mbrosia nd everything, i-nally you remain n nonconcep-tualmind.

There's a guru in New Yorkteaching his, and I asked him,"Howdoyoudothat?" CauseI'musedto doing mantra, ouknow,like sitting, meditating with amantra, o he said,"Oh,well, neway is to look in betweenthoughts, n the interstices e-tween thoughts." o that thattheory of knowledge s a verypragmatic, ractical hing: theseteachers ctually xamine hepro-cessionof thoughts n the head,dig. In other words, meditationdoesn't akefor ranted he xclu-sive reality of "thoughts," asWestern pistemology oes in asense. t doesn't ake for grantedthe substantialness f the lan-guage-thought rocesswhich on-siders the nature of knowledge.Meditationmeansnot merely x-amining hedefinition f words, t

means examining he mind-stuffof which he words re made, orthe mind-stuff f which he con-sciousness s made. And so onepractical suggestion or gettinginto hat s"Well,now, ook t thegaps n between houghts."Whichmeans that you have to actuallyliterally xamine hought- ot getlost in thought. n other wordsyou don't become art of thoughtand get wept way n t, ike n aboat.You get out of the boat andexamine henature f thought t-self, nd that I suppose s trueepistemology.. and that's whereWestern pistemology oes lead,ultimately, n certain writers. twouldhave to, unless t were toexistwithin his loseddream ys-tem, you know, nd never reallyget outside tself, or would m-agine real knowledge eginswithexamining he nature or stuff fthought bout knowledge, xam-ining the ground in whichthoughts akeplace.

In Western ulture he equiva-lent f hat kind f esearch ouldlie in the gnostic radition. ou'dhave to start with Heraclitus ndexamine orphyry nd amblichusand Jakob Boehme nd Pythago-ras. There is, in fact, a heavyWestern tradition n this area,though t's not tudied xtensivelyas part of formal hilosophy e-

causearoundA.D.- 00,when m-peror Constantine ook over theChurch, t got tomped ut by theso-to-speak IA of that time asbeing nti-authoritarian.

Around he 1750's n Englandthere was a greatGreek nd Latinscholar named Thomas Taylor,-who ranslated ll the ragmentsfthe church athers hat had sur-vived urning y Constantine ndthe Council of Nicea when theydamned ll the heretical octrines,

burned ll writtenecord f the

fact hat alternativemodalities funiversemight e seen or exam-ined; and reinforced he centralauthoritarian neofJehovah-Constantine-Emperor-Pope. ade adeal, that Constantine would bethe head of the Church nd alsothe head of the state,' nd alsohis boys would determine whattheories f the nature of realitywere cceptable othe Church ndState. n other words herewas anofficial reality imposed- ithinwords, Don'tget utside fwords,either " hat waspart f t.

SoTaylor got together ll thosefragments, nd his manuscriptswereexamined y WilliamBlakeat great ength ndby ll the revo-lutionaries fhisday, venThomasPaine.Coleridge rew great ealfrom aylor, s did Shelley.Bron-sonAlcottwent oEngland ogeta library f aylor'swork, hich ebrought back to Brook Farm-which ffected hewholeAmericantradition of Transcendentalism.When Brook Farm communistsweren't reading the Upanishadsand the Vedas, heywere rawingup on gnostic Neoplatonic extsfrom aylor. Whichmay have af-fected ermanMelville, hoprob-ably lsosawthose exts.Andthespecific ooks hat Alcott roughtbackfrom nglandwere oaned oEmerson nd annotated y Alcottand Emerson.

So examination f minds

verymuch part ofour ownAmericantradition. hat's where WilliamJames omes n,whenhe begins ogo into practical phenomenologyandgets t the raxis f ltered on-sciousnessn The Varieties fReli-gious xperience. nd hat etupasituation for pragmatic experi-mentswith ranscendentalnsightat Harvardwhich ed othe poeticsof Gertrude tein, whosepoetrywasa form f meditation r exam-ination f anguagetself ymeansof epeatingt ver ndover gain ndifferent ombinations o see if tcouldberemoved rom onditionedassociations,s f ssociations ouldbe leaned ff he words othat heywere ust man rie ounds.

That also led to the ituation n1919whenVirgil hompson latera friend f Gertrude tein) was ayoung musician round Harvardtalking with S. Foster Damon(whowas a great Blake scholar),and I think amon.gaveThomp-son Four Saints in ThreeActs orsometext by Gertrude tein s astudy of anguage nd conscious-ness. And in that old context fWilliam James (the anestheticrevelations hapter f The Vari-eties fReligious xperience), ir-gil Thompson gave S. FosterDamon two peyote buttons inHarvard ard.

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body. If the voice is completelyseparated rom hebody, t meansthat herhythm illbe fucked p,it means the affect ill be fuckedup, t means t no longer as anyhuman ontent, ctually. t prob-ably means t doesn't mean any-thing, even, finally- y mean,anything hat could be connectedback to the physicaluniverse rthe human niverse.

So the characteristics f man-tra, then- r poetics the seed ofpoetics s mantra)- re attentionto rhythm, onnectionwith thebreath, with heactual breathing,and affect, nd so connection iththe body. Charles Olson talksabout poetry s an extension fphysiology,anguage s an exten-sion of physiology.1 ainly fromthis point f view: hat the wordswe pronounce o connect finallyto our body> connect to ourbreathing, particularly, andbreathing onnects ofeeling, eel-ing articulated n language. Po-etry is a rhythmic vocalarticulation ffeeling nd the on-tent of poetry s feeling s wellaswhatever lseyou wouldcall it ifit were removed from feeling-

supposeconditioned reflex an-

guage hain ssociations.The Hindu proposition s that

there re faculties or ody oundlanguagethat have atrophied nthe ransient nd very ecent em-porary cultures that substitutemechanical reproduction f im-agery or nterpersonal ommuni-cation of imagery. Sort of inMcLuhan's erms, hevery atureofreading nd inear hinking ndreproduced language-languageimages reproduced nd read si-lently-has ended oabstract an-guagecommunication nd thin tout, ctually, ive t essbody, essmeaning. nd so faculties f bodysound and rhythmic deep-breathed anguagebehaviorhaveatrophied.But that's only a temporarycondition n the sensethat out ofsay twenty housandyears of n-tellectual history ecoidedfromthe Magdalenian avepaintings othe present, t's only n the lasthundred ears r so that we've ocompletely bandoned irect oicecommunication nd exercises fvoice communication ncludingchant which. re characteristic falmost every tribal group scat-tered all over the globe over amuch onger, iableperiod f imethan our ownvery ransientme-chanical ivilization.

Nowwe're xamining pistemo-logy under very specializedcir-

cumstances, using language todiscuss he imits f anguage.Wedon'thavethe philosophicalr theeducational armamentarium fmore ophisticated ribal ocietieswho have a much more variedknowledge f body ounds.Ameri-can Indiansdid community han-ting and dancing oo,as well asmeditation, s part of their ood-gathering ituals. n order o killbuffalo here would have to bemeditation n the soulof the buf-falo and imitation f the buffaloand a buffalo hant nd an identi-fication with the buffalo, nd asacramental nowledgef he buf-falo that we don't have when we



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So the Western gnostic radi-tion can best be studied n suchsavings as Pythagoras's Every-thing we see when wake s death,and when asleep,dream"; or, re-garding he use of language forgeneralization, he old Heraclitusstatement till holds: "You can'tstep in the same river twice."Meaning that you can't make ageneralization hichwillbe gooda minute ater, not exactly thesame generalization. ou can'tmake a statement bsolutely e-scriptive f an event even if thestatement is identical with it.Even an Om s not eternal, n thesense that the Om changeswiththe Om-er, romminute o min-ute, o there's o hiding lace evenin mantra. There's no rest fromcontinued reation r change.

Q: I have one on your tatementabout the chant and how n con-temporary ociety, at least inAmerica,t eems o have gone utof existence.Could you explainthat? Why re people hinking if-ferently, hy o they hink hat'snot of onsequencenymore?AG: Well, a lot of different ea-sons. t's not exactly ventrue osay t's gone ompletely ut of x-istence, ecause the Black tradi-tion keeps he chant going, n thesensethat the bodychant s stillthere n azz and in spirituals, pto the politicaluse of it in "Weshall Overcome"- here still areremnants f Afric hanting nddancing nd drumming.

But while n Black culture ome-thing ery eep-souleds the domi-nant mode, in white culturesomething ery hallow and un-chanty, ikeMantovani,Musak, rPat Boone s dominant, xcept orsome Promethean folk-rock.wouldsay the reason for hat ismaybe capitalism- hat is, usury.Peopletrying o make money utof mass production, onopolizingthe replicamachines, ominatingthe printing image reproductionmachinery) nd television nd ra-dio. The fact that the radio andtelevision ir pace sfor ale, snotcommon roperty ut s ust nte-grated nto he ommercial heel,means hat only uch body oundas iscommercial illbe broadcast.

Television s a connecting eu-rological ink between he sepa-rate cells of the body politic ourculture.And our communicationsnetwork s dominated y capital-istic usury- n other wordsyou'vegot to make money n it. To theextent hat the body chant s anassertion f a nonusurious om-mon communal communisticsharing f oul among ll membersof the body politic, not merelymembers f the body politic, utmembers f h body fnature, n-cluding he animals nd the treesand the grasses... o the extentthat the highest ommunal hantis a chant of unison nd onenesswith ll of nature, nd that capi-talism and our economic ystemrequire he excessive hopping pofnature nto umber, r the min-ing and exhausting f nature- othat extent think t's partly ureconomic ystem hat forbids sto chant. artly hevery ature fthe machinery.

Q: It's interesting oo that n thechurches owadays ouwon't indanything ikeGregorian hants.remember y xperience henwehad chants- not in a Catholicchurch ut in a Protestant ne-we'd do it, but it wasn't verypopular.AG: Embarrassing, robably. e-cause t's whole rea of eeling,fcommunal family ritual feeling,which sfeared. nd hereason t's

feared s because it's a break-through nto a whole new con-sciousnesswhich s not like thesocialconsciousnessnculcated ytelevision r radio rnewspapers rpolitics, t's another nimal mam-mal consciousness hat's unifiedwith he world- ouknow, he on-sciousnesshat weshare, he com-passionate consciousness f themind nd the heart hat we sharewith he bald eaglesand the bluewhales.And sincewe keep killingall the whales nd thebaldeaglestwouldn't be appropriate o voicethat consciousness- mean itwould be revolutionary o voicethat consciousness, o articulatethat consciousnessnd welcometto surface ront-brain wareness.

And that's why African itualjazz forms ere n a sensealways

revolutionary nd when heywerepassed on across the Atlanticthrough the Beatles and theStones, through Rock, throughelectronics, ackto the hildren fanother generation who beganshaking their hips and makingthat chant sound, t was part ofthe revolution, s the John BirchSociety aid n 1965, ery rophet-ically.They said the Beatleswereusinghypnotic hythms nd body

movements nd strange ibrationsto alter the consciousness f thekids nd to hypnotize hem nd toget nother onsciousnesshroughthat was not like American rea-sonable" morals. Rock was sup-posed to dissolve the rationalconsciousness of the Westernworld. hey aw t mmediately sa threat nd a danger- ememberthose amphlets n the ixties?

1.See Olson's Projective erse," nRobertCreeley, d.,SelectedWritings f CharlesOlson (New York: NewnewDirections,1966), p. 15-26; r same n Donald M.Al-len, d., The New American oetry NewYork:Grove ress, 960), p.386-397.2. Princeton niversity resshas recentlyissued n ts Bollingeneries homasTay-lor the Platonist dited yKathleenRaineand GeorgeMillsHarper. ollingen eriesLXXXVIII,Princeton, .J. 969.

Early oeticCommunity(with obert uncan)Honors CollegeKent StateApril 7, 1971

RD: In following ur discussionsthink you've already got an im-pression fhow mportant o me sa kind of continuity movingthrough oetry nd a relationshipboth of a fellowship f poets and,

through ime, f n inheritance fspirit. Since I've been here I'vetalked bout hebig nheritance fspirit n which you discover ourown fathers- ike Blake discovershe really s the next ncarnation fMilton and the antitype f Mil-ton.Aslater, or nstance, eats sgoing to discover himself, s hediscovers hat he is immediatelyrelated o Blakeand then o Mil-ton nd then o Spenser.

Today, though, want to talknot bout hat rea ofmagical is-covery n solitude, ut one thathappens when you belong to acompany fpoets.

When Don Allen's anthology1appeared n 1960, t causedshockwaves of outrage and horrorthroughout he Americanpoeticestablishment. e didn't edit itlike nthologies re usually dited.He felt here was a poetry very-where, nd he consultedvariouspeople, ariouspoets, nd had in-formants, nd t ooked othe hor-rified stablishment ike here wasanother establishment orming.Well,what there was,wasa com-munity. ome of those poets Ihadn't ead t all and didn't knowthe existence f- ike wason thewest oast; didn't know he exis-tence f he NewYork chool. Butyou can draw map and find utthat my poetry s intimately e-lated o the poetry fAshbery nd

O'Hara and Koch, and this s atrue, ctual community.

But what was revealed to uswasthat whereaswe'd hought ewere solated before, nd then wethought, well, there's a little

group of us, we suddenly iscov-ered that actually histhing hathad happened n poetry admanydifferent uises- he Beat Move-ment was one of hem. he ntelli-gence f Don Allen's nthology sthat it included hem all. Allen[G.] came bearing the messagethat there was Kerouac'spoetry-I'm sure you all know Kerouac'sprose, ut we still ry oget crossthe message hat Kerouac was apoet. Actually, Kerouac paid noattention o his poetry, hichwasall right, e was in prose nd hewas junior James Toyce r some-thing, nd so he let go these mar-velous Mexico City Blues. Thatwasn't part of what he projectedin message,but for Allen, andCorso, and... there must be an-other one in there- orso, Ke-rouac,you nd who lse?AG: I think hat Peter Orlovsky]waswriting little it.RD:At that ime. ut for nstancealsoproperly n the nthology, utin a different ectionwere peoplevery losely ssociatedwith Allen[G.] personally n the west coastscene, ecause nyder nd Whalenwere about a different usiness.See, that's the accuracy of thatanthology.

Now, hat's ust one ection. hesectionon New York poets s sobeautifully, ctually t, that youcan't find ne missing r one un-

fitting oet n there. don't meanthat the anthology ormed s- tshowedwhen t finally ppearedhowformed ewere.Andwewereformed aturally- e belonged oenvironments.t's the nly nthol-ogy know of, nd the first ne,there's never been another onesince that's been composed hatway that was-an environment fpoets the way they are. Usuallywe're xhibitedn nthologiesnno

waythat

anybodywhowanted o

get hefeel f hings ould ccept.Now, wasrefusing o be n the

anthology ecause hate antholo-gies, nd not until saw a table ofcontents id consent o be in it.Today I'm in anthologies ecauseI gaveup, finally, hree ears go.New Directions asdistressed,n-deed, hat wanted o refuse n-thologies, and that I had aformula, f an anthology s notedited y poet hat think nter-esting-I don't mean that agreewith him... f Edith Sitwell orYeats or Pound had ever wantedme in an anthology, es,regard-less of whether agreed bout t,and whenAudenwantedme n ananthology, es, regardless f myown distaste for Auden's role inpoetry. e is a poet, nd t's fasci-nating what's n that anthology-until he came to my generation.But then he must havebeenright,because here waswithH.D.andWilliams nd people really oved,and so didAuden, t turns ut. Sothis must be an entente f somestrange ind.

OK, I was in the Allen anthol-ogy. No," said, Don, don't be-long in that group, n the SanFrancisco Renaissance." neverreally ame home and discoveredthat had a placewheremy oulreally belonged ill after metCharlesOlson.Charleswas bothcontemporary nd at the sametime illed

paternalole. n Kab-

balism- t's all in those fathers etalked bout the other ay, Abra-ham, saac, Jacob forming fourwithAdam, alled chariot. ndhad three: Pound, Williams, ndD. H. Lawrence.And there was amissing heel n the chariot. ndI had that feeling nd all of sud-den there with great esounding-and my own contemporary- asOlson with "Protective Verse."Well, hat ounds ikewhen read"Projective Verse" and when Iread Charles Olson's poetry tcame like a light nd I immedi-ately saw what t was. Here wasthe man who is going o changeme- not change, didn't hange-he's going oopenup everythingam.And 'll tell you, t was a joy-ousexperience. had been writingpoetry ormore han ten yearsby1950, ince 37 or so, and Charleswas ust beginning owrite t, ndwas ust there.He had written o-etry s early s 47 or o met heman n 46,when e had a grant odo work on the migration ofpeopleto our west coast, and inour first meetings etalked boutthat and about my own conceptthat the disorder of our civil-ization s the fundamental oer-civedisorder hereby e all live ncities nd makefarmers aisefoodfor s. Now,did recognize lsonat once? Boy, his tory sgoing o

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Allen Ginsberg and Robert Duncan: Words and Consciousness

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