Category: Poetry Technology (Page 6 of 8)

Last year I went through the Geencine  library and marked for my que about 20 art and poetry documentaries.  The Life & Times of Allen Ginsberg (1993) is pretty basic. No fancy editing or music. It's no Searching for Sugarman. But enjoyed it nonetheless and learned much about Allen Ginsberg, mostly from interview footage of Ginsberg made specifically for the documentary.

Luckily, I saw Allen Ginsberg read twice in New York City before he died in 1997.  Both times he performed "Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (Don't Smoke)" which was a very funny poem as I recall it. But I have to tell you, I wouldn’t have gone to see Ginsberg read if my friend Julie hadn’t arranged it. Julie went to as many concerts, readings and events in New York City as she could and she often counteracted my shut-in-tendencies.

I don't know why I've never been much of a Ginsberg fan. Watching this video I surmised my hurdle must have been his buck teeth and fat lips, a pretty shallow reason indeed. I also think I assumed, as the king of all hippies, he was going to be untouchable and maybe somewhat spaced-out. The movie showed me he was neither out-of-it or full of himself.

The film chronicles his life with his own photos and in his own words with important interviews from his brother and step-mother. We also see footage of appearances at rallies and on TV  shows like William Buckley's and later Dick Cavett's.

Watching William Buckley's obvious distaste for Ginsberg, it occurred to me we've traded someone like Buckley for Rush Limbaugh. At least Buckley didn't echew intellectualism. We were better off with Buckley.

Ginsberg talks at length about his mother’s mental illness and how it affected him, how this produced his sympathy for "people in trouble." He says he inherited a kind of "poetic paranoia." We also learn about his father, poet and teacher Louis Ginsberg, how close they were and how his father influenced his poetry. We see footage of a poetry reading they did together.

The film also covers  interviews with the other Beat writers William Burroughs and Herbert Huncke. Jack Keroac and Neal Cassidy are discussed. Ginsberg talks about what they all contributed to the group, how they would meet at Foster’s Cafeteria.

Throughout, Ginsberg seems concerned with the social aspects of being a poet and writer. We can see how this would evolve into social protest. In this film, he's called a cosmic social worker or cosmic public defender.

I kept noticing how Ginsberg would talk and rub his chin and beard with his fingers. I couldn't remember who this reminded me of. Then it came to me: actor Jeff Goldblum does this!

We hear clips of Ginsberg reading "Howl" then and now and there's a long segment and reading of "Kaddish."

There are also interview clips with Abbie Hoffman, Joan Baez (who called Ginsberg colorful but serious), Ken Kessey and Tim Leary. We learn when Ginsberg met Dylan and how he ended up in the movie Don’t Look Back.

The disastrous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago is addressed and Ginsberg describes how it turned to violence. He calls the event a liberal failure and says the blood resulting from the remaining years of the Vietnam War are on the hands of the right and the left (due to how this event resulted in the election of Richard Nixon).

We see Ginsberg doing Buddhist chanting and learn about his involvement with Naropa University and his study with Chögyam Trungpa and how Ginsberg started (with Anne Waldman) the  Jack Keroac school of poetry where students study "spontaneous babbling."

Ginsberg also talks about his personal relationship with Peter Orlofsky and the lessons he had to learn about co-dependency. He talks about the death of his parents.

His Stepmother expresses amazement that Ginsberg can write about his life as it happens, as if he’s releasing his feelings "along the way." She says his father was very proud of him and that he was a good son.

Part of the point of this blog is to get to know some of the many, many poets out there past and present. This goal was helped along by The Poetry Foundation when they lured me into another level of membership by promising me this video and an award-winning book once a year.

The DVD they sent promised "intimate film profiles" with "Masters in the Art of Poetry Reading Their Work Discussing Their Craft, Recounting Their Lives." Pretty serious stuff.

My initial frustration was over the fact that no running times were listed on the cover or on the disc. Each of these PBS-style profiles turned out to be about 20 minutes long.

Each profile provided a scan of the poet's books strewn across a table. Each segment included discussions about writing and influences. Each poet read some of their poetry. To my happy surprise, Suzanne Pleshette narrated three of the five segments.

I could see getting addicted to these profiles (if any more were available).

John Ashbery read "Some Trees" (which we studied in that MOOC last year). He talked about The New York School and his interpretation of it, about O’Hara, Skyler, Koch and each of their roles in the group, how being a member involved meeting famous artists. He talked about Larry Rivers and Jane Freilicher (who are recurring characters in the O'Hara biography I'm reading). He read "At North Farm" and talked about life in France and his job as an art critic. In his late 30s his poetry career was not successful and he considered abandoning poetry. Then he thought, why deprive himself of something he liked doing? He read "This Room"  and talked about how a poem takes over and how a poem knows when to stop. The poem is smarter than he is. J.D. McClatchy commented that his language is never privileged; that he writes about ordinary things.

At first, Louise Glück reminded me of aging baby boomers as she sat curled up in a chair, thin and wearing black. She reminded me of second wavers who drink water from big wine glasses. She also reads like a poet, full of gravitas. Turns out she hates readings, giving or going to them, saying the poet is intervening with the poem and the reader and that the human voice can’t reproduce what’s on page. Although I enjoy poetry created to be spoken word, I agreed with this. Some poetry and prose performs better inside heads.  Same as some characters are a disappointment when you get to know them in a novel and you visit them later in a movie. We find out that Glück was once anorexic. This was the only documentary to mine old 1970s interview footage and readings. She sayed she can’t predict when she will receive “the stimulation” and didn’t want to write anything glib, facile phony, or ersatz…she uses a lot of synonyms in her commentary.  She said the poem banishes you and the doors don’t open anymore. She read "Landscape Part 3," "The Encounter,"  "Landscape Part 4," "Prism, Part 3," "Mock Orange," and "October, Part 3." She said she enjoys teaching because she's in the presence of the evolving mind versus the static, published unapproachable mind. 

Frank Bidart reads her "First Memory" poem, which I loved. Bidart looked like he had a hoarders office of books and DVDs. Robert Pinsky said he likes her use of plain language. I ended up relating to her much more than I anticipated. Maybe it was the anorexia thing. I'm looking forward to reading some of her books I have: October and The Seven Ages.

Anthony Hecht in his old age reminds me of actor F. Murray Abraham. I knew the least about Hecht but I liked his adjectives and long sentences. He said W. H. Auden taught him who would last as a poet with this question: do you have something urgent to express or do you like words and language? (The later is the right answer.)

Hecht wears a lot of bow ties and we are shown pictures of him as a cute young Hecht. In the military, he was at Buchenwald and he writes about it. He says poetry wouldn’t support anyone.

He reads "A Hill" which I loved, "An Old Malediction," and "More Light! More Light!"

Kay Ryan – I liked her short pieces. She said she writes without ideas, in a desire to stop doing nothing. She was the only poet of the bunch with an unexceptional, ordinary house. Like some of the other poets, she doesn't write with a computer. She said this is because she wants to save her mistakes. She initially self published. She writes to talk back to herself or other poets.

She read "Theft," The Past," "Home to Roost," and "How Birds Sing" which is installed at the New York Zoo. She loved the idea of kids running over her words. Dana Gioia read "Carrying a Ladder."

M.S. Merwin is someone whose poems I hated in graduate school. I even wrote an obnoxious-smelling review of him for a David Rivard class. But I like him now, which I can only chalk up to coming out on the other side of Zen Buddhism. But at the time, I was annoyed by what I felt were affectations: no punctuation and spiritual, airy, vague language.

In this video he discussed his feelings about punctuation, how it had been overused and he didn't like the long sentences hung together by punctuation. He hates the use of air commas by people. He feels there is an electric current in words. Myself, I'm still fond of punctuation and believe punctuation marks have their own energy. Maybe this is because I watched all those Victor Borge segments on Sesame Street in the early 1970s.

Merwin said he was not made to be academic and still loves Robert Louis Stevens' A Child's Garden of Verses (one of two poetry books stashed on my nightstand as a toddler) and the poem "Where Go the Boats." He said he visited Ezra Pound in the psych ward and Pound told him to write 75 lines a day which Merwin did by doing translations for practice. He said he was in a social group with Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. He read "Yesterday," "The Comet Museum,"  "Late Spring" (which I loved), "To Lingering Regrets," and I think one called "To the Worlds" about 911. Angelica Huston narrated that one.