Another Student Assignment Poem - After "Lyke Wake Dirge"

Another Student Assignment Poem - After "Lyke Wake Dirge"


Allen's January, 1980 Naropa class. Allen begins with a spontaneous couplet 

AG: "Turn in your homework this or next hour /and mark them with paradigms if it is in your power"

"And if you haven’t got it to turn it in now/ mark it up with your accents and I’ll pick it up Thursday, anyhow"

Next..what was it? –there were some paradigms, some imitations of “This ae night” (Lyke Wake Dirge).  [to Student] - You got that one? want to try  it?

Student:   Okay.  It’s called "Boulderado’s Blue Brew" – [Student begins reading] 
- One round will do will do/As we drink a brew/a shot of booze one or two/ and damned to be are you/ /Sing so sweet, sing so sweet,/ as we drink a brew/Home to Mom to suck her teat/ and damned  to be are you.."

AG: And damp?  are what?

Student: "And damned to be are you" - [continues] - "..Tip the glass, enrich the soul/As we drink a brew/Smash smash, bang the bowls/ and damned to be are you/O, I hear them calling blue/ as we drink a brew/a shot of booze/a slimy screw/And damned to be are you/Take the knife, cut the tongue/ as we drink a brew/(cool here young, cool here young)/ but damned to be are you/So place your feet most fast/while we drink a brew/Until the time has come to pass/ that damned to be are you/One round will do, will do/ As we drink a brew/ A shot of booze one or two/ and damned to be are you"

AG: That's pretty good. Actually, that’s interesting. I never had any.. I never worked in community with people trying to write rhythmic verse, rhythmic rhymed verse, so.. I'm sort of aghast…

Student: It’s fun.

AG: ..to find  sometimes, when people don’t have a clear picture in mind, at least they can swing - which is nice.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-one-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately forty-three-and-three-quarter minutes in] 

A Ginsberg Class at Naropa - Parodies - Various Student Assignment Poems

Today’s installment from the on-going transcribed Allen-Ginsberg-at-Naropa lectures, shows Allen working directly with the students (he had assigned them to make their own versions of one of the early lyrics he’d been teaching, either "I Syng of A Mayden" or "Lyke Wake Dirge").

The results, regrettably, while vigorous, are a tad sophomoric (Allen will remark on this later)

AG:  I made some kind of a copy of “I Syng of A Mayden, I made my own. Has anybody else got a sample here? Has anybody else done theirs? their homework? I think Rizzo (sic - one of the students)  is still in Lake Tahoe [to (another) student] Do you have one? – 

Student: Yeah, but I think you've blown that to the sky now. 
AG: No, you know, because I didn’t know how to pronounce it [the poem] properly, (so) I’ve got to be going and do mine all over again, and put my music (in) all over again, while listening to his proper pronunciation. So let’s see what you did, let’s see what you did.

Student: It’s called  “I sing of a hooker”!

AG:  Everybody...   To each his own!

Student: “I sing of a hooker that’s a rip-off/ Whore of all whores, I did say suck off/ I came in her where her gold teeth was/As any man should, well, just because/I came in her good as my crotch exploded/As any man should, whether straight or loaded/I came in her good with my full-squirt load/As any man should/ And then hit the road/ Harlot and hooker was never one as she / Quite well does such a hooker give orgasm to me.”

AG: Pretty good (parody). Did you make a little rhythmic paradigm, to figure that out too? – Does it fit?

Student: I have it on my (rough) copy, but..

AG: Okay, when you turn it in, why don’t you make a paradigm with yours. Let me compare it, compare it to the … My paradigm (paradigm means outline). My outline is not inevitably final, fixed. If you’ve got a different interpretation, lay it on. Anybody else got one?

Student: I did mine to the other one – a Lyke Wake Dirge?

AG: Okay, We’ll get to that next then – Does anybody else have one to " I Syng of A Mayden"?

Student: I've one.  It’s called “I Crave A New Pleasure”

AG:  (Go)

Student: “I crave a new pleasure/ one to satisfy the deepest of my cravings/ like a sponge I search/I crave also better a bowl of fresh meade/Things so particular silence my greede/ I crave also better a cake of great (sweetnesse)/ things so particular to shame great (neediness)/ I crave in particular/ an ale of great taste/things so particular such to soften rough day/ Searching and (eating), (Can it be) a noble fight?/When I’m hungry, tantrums/ne’er to see the light."

    

AG: Does yours follow any kind of a basic pattern?
Student; I don’t believe so. (I just put the words where I have them, somewhere).

AG: Yeah, Well, one thing, if you do one (because everyone should do one), one thing you should figure - it’d make it a lot easier if you count the number of syllables line by line, to follow the syllabic number, the number of syllables too. Do it, “down to the last syllable (of recorded time)”. In other words, as you’ll notice, I’ve got the syllable-count there – six-five-six-six – “I sing of a mayden” is six, “that is makeles” – one, two, three, four, five. Anybody else?  [to Student] - Got a specimen?

Student:  “Trash and Play”

AG: Pardon me?

Student: Its called“ Trash and Play”

AG: “Trashing Play”? – good title          

Student: (Securing the trash, the flag is useless/Trash is abuse of the world of play/If the world has its trashed flags' imperialism/ For this they are news, this scrutiny will bear/The flag always will, with its amount of skill,/ outweigh the trash if rightly it is held/The flag can be stretched and the trash (will) stay/the stains in the cloth remain, red white and blue /People are trashing flags, in the world of flags/Create trash and flags/ finally dead for more.) 

AG:  ("Having bodies dead for more"?) – Uh huh -  Does that follow? More or less precisely? I mean, I can’t tell by ear completely.

Student: I don’t have the things like “Aprille” -  that I left out by accident at the end because I did this before the class  session…

AG: Yeah. Okay. It’s really worthwhile working on this because this is, in a sense, the earliest, most archetypal, poem that we have, and almost all poetry comes out, all English poetry sort of slowly comes out of this, like, you know, like something out of the seed, a tree growing out of the seed. Yeah?

Student: I’m pretty sure that mine comes down to the syllables, but, as far as the accents go, to  coordinate that, it’s very subjective

AG: Yeah, Well, most of the (accents), except for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, about twelve accents are subjective and I think all the rest are pretty much marked out and clear – “syng”, “mayden”, ”mak”, “king”, “kinges”,” here” ,”ches”, “cam”, “stille”,  “moder”, “was”, “dew”, “Aprille’, “fall” “gras”, “cam”, “stille”, “moderes” ‘bower”, “dew”, “Aprille”, “fall”, “flower”, “cam” “stille”, “moder” ,” “lay”, “dew””Aprille” , “fall”, “spray”, “moder”, “mayden”, “non", “che”, “wel”,”lady” “Godes” , “moder” , “be”  - most of, almost all of, those are pretty fixed . I tried one going all through them and trying to stick with it. Anybody else got one?

I sing of a maiden
  That is makeles
King of alle kinges
  To here sone che ches.

He cam also stille
  Ther his moder was,
As dew in Aprille
  That fallith on the gras

He cam also stille
  To his moderes bower,
As dew in Aprille
 That fallith on the flower,

He cam also stille
  There his moder lay
As dew in Aprille
  That fallith on the spray

Moder and maiden
  Was never non but che,
Wel may swich a lady
  Godes moder be

Student: Yeah – “I sing of a dildo most insensate/That can do naught but grow, finding no fit mate/ When the (heat has) begun, it /can get very hot/It can come for no luck, frustration’s its lot/For when it has begun another to make/ it can come for no-one, joy it cannot take/For when it has begun to fulfill its lust /it can come for no-one, it’s balls will not bust /With tears overladen most often it seems/ This dildo's ambition is never to be”

AG: Next-to-last.. next-to-last stanza – What’s the last line?

Student; “Is never to be”.. It doesn’t quite (rhyme)

AG: And that’s a six-syllable line in the original - “that fall’th on the spray"..

Student Yeah

AG: ..is now made to be five, yeah?  Are most of yours five syllables?

Student: Yeah

AG: Well, you see, most of the poem is six syllables

Student: It’s not right according to the…

AG: Well, actually, you don’t have to (match) exactly. The point of the exercise is just to get the measure of the footstep here, of this giant footstep forward. But the closer you get your measure, the more sensitive you’ll be to how delicate the measure is, the closer you try to imitate it. 

Anyone else? Anyone else? Some even more filthy?

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-two-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty nine-and-a-quarter minutes in. The audio is not especially clear in the above-quoted student poems so there might be a few brief errors of transcription. Readers are invited to make amendments wherever they feel necessary] 

Allen Ginsberg & David Henderson at Naropa 1981 (part one)

                                                   [David Henderson - Photo by John Sarsgard]
                                     

                                                                           [Allen Ginsberg]

Last weekend it was a triple-X reading, this weekend it's an interrupted reading. Well, we've had those, of course, several times before here on the Ginsberg Project (notably, with the participant, the agency of disruption, being a rambuncious Gregory Corso - see, for example here and here). It's not Gregory this time, but an oblivious insistent audience-member, who finally has to be escorted from the room, not before causing some considerable mayhem and clearly affecting Allen (he amends his first poem - "Birdbrain is a poet talking to you/Birdbrain interrupted the poet talking to you") - Allen loses his temper ("What a pleasure! It's just a pleasure to get mad like that! It's so rarely allowed") - and with some justification, it would seem, (even though he tries to maintain his composure - "The Buddhist thing is co-emergent wisdom, that's right, co-emergent wisdom..").

The transcript today takes in David Henderson, his co-reader,'s first set (Henderson is only momentarily waylaid by the heckler), through to the moment of distraction.

Tomorrow we'll have the rest of Allen's set and more poems by David.

Audio for the reading (including the uproar, beginning at approximately twenty minutes in and concluding approximately twenty-five minutes in) can be heard here

The reading (from June 24, 1981) starts off  (on the audio, approximately thirty-seconds in) with an introduction by Peter Orlovsky 

Peter Orlovsky:  "Good evening… Each poet.. Dave Henderson will be the first poet to read, and he’ll read for twenty minutes, and then Allen Ginsberg will read for twenty minutes, and then Dave Henderson will read for twenty minutes, and then intermission, and then Allen will sing some songs – and maybe Dave too!"

"Dave Henderson was born in Harlem, educated in City University in New York, the New School For Social Research and the East-West Institute of Cambridge. He was a founder of the East Village Other and editor of Umbra magazine. He has given numerous poetry readings and is widely anthologized. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese. His books include Felix of the Silent Forest (Poets Press), Da Mayor of Harlem (Dutton).. Introducing Da Mayor of Harlem  -  Introduction to Nothing (Best Company Press (uh?))  that’s the.. that’s the what?

DH: That’s the non-existent book I wrote!

PO: That’s the non-existent book he wrote….  [Editorial note - "Re Peter Orlovsky's intro" - "there is no such publication as Introduction to Nothing - (or Introducing Da Mayor of Harlem, for that matter) -  "All I did was say that it was non-existent. It was neither the moment (the time) nor the place to further deny an obvious misstatement" (DH, 2015, in recollection)] 

PO:  ..and a biography entitled Jimi Hendrix –Voodoo Child of the Aquarian Age  – David Henderson… [Editorial note - later re-titled "Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky],  The Low East (Is this from the Lower East Side of Manhattan?) - [Yes]  – aha! –published by North Atlantic Books, Richmond, California, "Dedicated to Langston Hughes/ And to Calvin C Hernton,  Eddie Krasnow, & "Max".    

And Dave has been living in Berkeley, and now in Manhattan – a very young, handsome eager fellow! – Dave Henderson" 

DH: "Thank you, and it’s a pleasure to be reading at the Naropa Institute and to be reading with Allen. I’m going to read some poems from New Orleans.

This is called "Burgundy Street" (Burgundy Street – if you’re from New Orleans, and you go to a street that looks like Burgundy Street and you say "Burgundy" there, they know that you’re from somewhere else – "Burgundy Street" –  (“Four stories high..”..”the train from Congo Square is lost”) 

This (next) is called – “In Williams” – (“In Williams I would drink all seven hundred springs of Texas…”..,”thread the needle, we’re gonna do it”)

and this is called  “The Murals of the Stations” (for Marilyn) – (“The mural of the train station tells of pain and passion..”…”ancestors from the sea, what look like roaches”)"

[Henderson continues] - "This is called “Sonny Rollins” (he’s a jazz musician – (“Sonny Rollins, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Rollins, seeking peace in the city…” “the most important thing to me is my sanity – refrain’)"

[Next, a longer, three-part poem] - "This is called “Time Zone Poem” (for Carol ( "By winter you find the sun down in the other river as the sky plays the hesitation blues…”there is blue funk in the near-unknown”)  -  Thank you

[The heckler is first heard here, throwing out the non-sequitor and uncontextualized comment -  "What do you think about the mercenaries in Africa?"]

AG: Oh, wait a minute, have we got to go through this? - No

[Heckler persists - "What does he think about mercenaries in Africa? [to David Henderson] Have you got any poems on that? It’s an important issue, you ought to be talking about it ,where the people are being murdered…"]

DH: I have a poem that I’m gonna read in the next set, alright?

This is called “Song of Devotion to the Forest” and it’s after the pygmies of the Ituri forest  (“This land is my block and my people..”.. and we love to sing, especially when you sing with us”)

This is called  “Alchemical Notebook #3 – (“War in Africa north will end the world as we know it”…”… “…he will be a bad muthafucka!”) 

[Heckler again - "He qualifies for freedom of speech. That’s what I qualify (for) too!]

DH: Okay

AG (to DH)  (joking!) You want me to beat her up?!

DH: She’s possessed! That’s great!  [he continues]

This is  a poem for a woman named Sally and her daughter. It’s called “Sally” (“Between two women, mother and daughter..”.. “... synchronizing eternity”)

Let's see, this is called " Alvin Cash - Keep On Dancing", and it’s for children of Intermediate School 55,  Ocean Hill, Brownsville, especially the ones who play hookey, like I did. I used to visit the school and I used to hang out in the candy store across the street when I wasn’t visiting and some of the kids there would be in there too  and they were doing the most amazing dances I ever saw. Anyway, the song they were dancing to was by Alvin Cash and it was called “Keep on Dancing” (“I Gotta Keep on Dancing..”..."I Gotta Just Keep on Dancing”)

[Heckler returns with an inaudible question]
DH:  To the what?

Heckler : (The) Sandinista (Revolution)?

DH: Oh, Allen has a poem on that!

[Heckler responds with another inaudible remark]

DH: (Okay) -  This is the last poem I’m going to read this set. It’s called “City Island” – (“Along summer homes near water barges.."... “...with love for no-one”) 

[At approximately twenty-and-a-quarter minutes in, Allen begins his set with a strict warning (to the heckler) - 
 AG: (You musn't) interrupt me, or I really will… I'll beat ya up, or something! I'll do something. I don't want to be interrupted. Period."
 [Heckler immediately interrupts]
AG: Goddam!... What is it?  The Buddhist thing is co-emergent wisdom, that’s right, co-emergent wisdom,

Heckler (I don't like people who) beat up on women, you know.

AG: (Well), I’m a fairy and I do!  

[Allen attempts to begin the reading with a poem] "What's Dead".."What’s Dead.."

Heckler: It’s a good thing you don’t have a wife or you’d kill her! 

AG: Please, please. I want to read poems now.

Student(s): Throw her out!

[Heckler interrupts with inaudible remark]

AG: Now you’ve interrupted me three times?

[Allen attempts to begin the poem again] - "What's Dead…"

Heckler: (You're limiting) free discussion.

AG: It is not free discussion! - I really will have you kicked out - or taken out – I won’t put up with it. Now either you shut up now or you get out..

[attempts resuming once again!]... "What’s Dead"

Heckler: Okay, whatever you say, I expect you’re gonna call the CIA!’

AG: [now exasperated] - I’ll put her out myself -  Goddammit! Just leave! – I won’t take it - [There follows the inevitable moment - the sounds of an altercation . The heckler shouts and rants The audience is clearly very much on the side of Allen ]
AG: [to heckler] You’re giving me a nervous breakdown..I can’t stand it anymore.. Except... I’m letting her do it again! I knew that would happen.  [to Assistant] - Well, I wouldn’t follow her around, Susan [sic], but I don’t quite know what to do.

Heckler: [returning to the fray with irony] -  Okay, ..let’s hear it here for freedom of speech!

Student(s): Go home!

AG: Wait a minute. I have an idea. Let’s take a vote. Hold on, hold on a second. hold on, no hold on. There are three alternatives -  either.. even.. let’s see now, (one), if you’ll be quiet you’ll stay (either she is quiet and stays), or, two, she can talk and stay, or three, go out. We can take her. I’ll take care of it, So, one, quiet-and -stay is my preference. 

Heckler: I would say...

Student:  Not sure if she can be quiet and stay..

AG: Okay..second..   Is that sufficient?  [Allen to Heckler] Would you be quiet and stay?

Heckler: Yes, well, but ..

AG: Would you be quiet and stay?

Heckler: If I...

AG: Yes or no?!!

Heckler: I will read a poem and..

AG: [previously pent-up frustration but now exploding in anger] - NO!! , No!  You will not impose your fuckin' bad poems on everybody!  No. I  won’t do it. The alternative.. The alternative is…

Heckler: Don’t be a petty monster!

AG:   . (to) a captive audience..

Heckler: Don’t be a  petty monster!

AG: No? Okay, you gotta go. Okay, finish the vote. Shall we finish the vote?  Okay - Three or two? Number Three! -  (Three was "out"!) – Three is "out" . Is that a majority?

Heckler: I want the microphone

AG [exasperated]: I’m not sure if I can handle it anymore!

Student: [to heckler]  It’s not your microphone, nobody else hear wants to hear you!

[Among great shouting and commotion ("easy, easy") heckler is finally - eventually - escorted out]

AG: I can’t stand it anymore! - too much! – for too many years...!

What a pleasure! It’s just a pleasure to get mad like that!  It’s so rarely allowed.   
[Allen is now clearly rattled and breathing heavily]
"Birdbrain" - [Allen presents a version of the poem, understandably, incorporating several additional lines relating to the interruption, alongside other minor amendments] - "Birdbrain is a poet talking to you".."Birdbrain interrupted the poet talking to you".. "Birdbrain is Allen Ginsberg".."Birdbrain is still screaming about it"..."Birdbrain is angry.."Birdbrain's heart is beating", "Birdbrain's heart is beating shallowly".."Birdbrain gets madder than anyone".."Birdbrain commits murders on people who interrupt poetry readings in 1981..")
… [continues & finishes the poem] "while the sky thunders"..

to be continued tomorrow - more Allen Ginsberg and David Henderson

Per The Assignment

For the assignment:

Student: Does it rhyme?

AG: Does this [ "I sing of a mayden…"]  rhyme?

Student: Yeah. I mean (should) our (assignment) poems?

AG:  Well, "was-grass", "hour-flower", "lay-spray", "she-be" - it's pretty simple rhymes -  "makeles" - that is  "makele-" ("I sing of a mayden that is makeless? makeless? - I don't know how to pronounce "makeles", actually. I think 'mackalas" (probably "mackalas") - "I sing of a mayden that is mackalas" (because it means "matchless") - "I sing of a mayden that is makeles/"King of all kings/that her son she chose" - I don't know how it would be pronounced then.

Student: Should it be right up in front of your nose?

AG: The rhyme or the imagery?  The imagery or the rhyme?

Student: I beg your pardon.

AG: The imagery or the rhythm? Speaking of the…

Student: The..

AG: Close to the nose? You mean the subject-matter? If you can do it. However, the problem here is just getting the rhythm.  

Just write a little piece of rhythm is what I'm saying. Just write a piece of rhythm.

I just began the whole discourse by pointing out the fact that reality is real, and that you can deal with reality in poetry. Then, I switch now to the sound, to some classical sound, and I'm more interested right now in the sound, so you can write all the fairy...  fairy flake on the universal snow trees that you want, you can write as romantic and stupid as you want, or as meaningless as you want, or as misty, romantic, as you want, just as long as you can get the rhythm. (It'd be powerful) if you can do both. Then you got something going.
I'll probably wind up doing something nonsensical, but I'll try it (the assignment) too.

"I found out a teacher that was naked" -  That would be the rhythm - " I found out a teacher that was naked."

Student: What page is that on?

AG: "I sing of a mayden that is makeles" - I was just trying to parallel. I was just wondering what would be a parallel,  modern words parallel - "I  found out a teacher that was naked" - "I sing of a mayden that was naked" -

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-seven-and-three-quarter minutes in, and concluding at approximately forty-and-a-quarter minutes in]

Kenneth Koch Q and A continued

                                               [Kenneth Koch - Portrait of Kenneth Koch by Alex Katz]


Kenneth Koch Q & A from 1979 continues

KK:  Maybe we should have some more questions. What would you like me to tell you about?

Student: What do you at Columbia?

KK: I teach three courses there. I'm a regular Professor. I teach a writing course with twelve students. It's, I mean, in this writing course, it's not just a poetry-writing course, 
I have people writing poems and stories and plays. I even usually have them write, sometime in the year, one long lonely piece of criticism, because I think that anybody who's really going to be a serious writer, sometime in his life, is going to want to write some criticism, just because, you're going to know that some good writer is being neglected and you want to talk about it (and you want to know some that bad writer's being praised), so you might as well know a little bit about doing it, but.. What I think is important is that poets and fiction writers and playwrights don't think they're all doing completely different things. I think particularly now that poetry and fiction have… it's easier to see they're closer together. And, you know, there are these people who write stories and you.. like guys who write stories, and you tell them to write a poem, and they think you're asking them to put on perfume and a dress and high-heels and dance, you know!  And they're scared to death of doing it, and say,"No, I can't write poetry". And I say, "For god's sake, if you can write a story, you can write a poem." 
So I.. I have them read William Carlos Williams' poems and D.H.Lawrence's poems. Sometimes they change over into poetry! 

                                                           [William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

                                                                                [D.H.Lawrence ( 1885-1930)]

But also, I think it's very important for poets and good fiction writers to try writing for the theater. Because, I mean, the contemporary theater is really lousy (and it's been lousy for a long time, I think). The main..the whole main tradition is commercial theater (and almost all the schools of theater are run by people who have been experienced in Broadway theater and Off-Broadway theater, which is almost entirely commercial). Then there's this sort of kooky part of avant-garde theater, which is…there's some good things in it, not an awful lot, but there's some good things in it, but there's a kind of confusion of what's avant-garde in the theater, there's a confusion of..,sort of, a previously-forbidden idea, or a currently-interesting subject, with, actually advanced artistic practice. Like, it doesn't make a work of art artistic if you kill a pig in the middle of the stage and have some homosexual junkies jumping out the window nto the audience. I mean, that has nothing to do with avant-garde art. You can have a perfectly avant-garde work about a spinster sitting in New England, reminiscing. It's (you know, you have to have it in) the language and the staging, Anyway, the great lack in the theater is good scripts, and everybody knows that. And I, like, almost never..  I get really bright students at Columbia, talented students, every year, and in the fifteen years I've been teaching now, I think two of them have been interested in writing for the theater, (out of, you know, five hundred!). Like smart, really gifted, writers, usually aren't interested writing for the theater because they go to the theater and…they don't see anything, and if it is interesting avant-garde theater, (like Robert Wilson), there are no words, or the words aren't interesting, and I think that the real hope for the theater is…

Student: (that they don't notice the absence of it?)

KK:  ..poets writing for it, good writers writing for it. And, I mean, I mean I don't tell you that because I think, in the spirit of sacrifice, you're going to devote your life to the theater (to save it - why should you care?), but it's a great pleasure. Let me tell you, it's a great rush to see your words be acted out on a stage. I mean, it's fantastic. I read a lot of plays, and there was a time when I. . I usually write plays when I think there's a possibility of a production. All the plays I've written, except one, are just very short, one-act plays, and the same thing always happens, I mean..I have trouble with the director, I have trouble with the producer, the actors want to change their lines, the director wants to build a ramp, the producers doesn't want to do the play, and the critics in the newspapers don't like the play.  And (or) some critic at some weekly paper or some arty paper likes it, but that doesn't (matter, because) it's already closed. But ..It's still a tremendous pleasure to work in the theater and to see your plays done and there's always a hope that somebody good will actually get a theater-school going (so there'll be actors who can read verse, directors who know how to direct, good plays with good language, and there may be a theater where it will be done.) I remember Arthur Miller telling me fiftteen years ago,"Lincoln Center's going to have this small theater. We're really going to do avant-garde plays there", and I thought, "Like what?"

                                                       [Arthur Miller (1915-2005)] 

"You know, I've never done a damned thing there, I know of, that's really worth doing" - Well, anyway, that was then.  But, anyway, it really is, it really is a pleasure to write plays. It's also a good way out of the lyrical trap. I mean, the trap - that you can only express the main feeling that you're having - "Oh Nancy, where art thou?" - Like, you really have to say what you feel about the grapes, or about the grape-pickers, or whoever. To write a play, you can be the bad capitalist, the good grape-picker, the bad grape-picker, the grape, the tree, the wine, the orange, you can be everything. And it's like, you can be on all sides of everything (which, in fact, one is). What.. The position one takes is  the result of choosing. But there's a kind of poetic truth also in expressing everything. You know, one finally decides against violence, but there's that violent self in one too. And so you have this Ape-man in your play - It's very enjoyable. Yes?

Student: Did you find any problems writing for the theater, (working with a) different form, or..?

KK: I'm inspired by writing in different forms so I really liked it. I tell my students at Columbia, you know, to write a play for Monday (like, it's Wednesday) and they say, "What?!" - (but that was the idea that I had, when I was their age, that a play.. because plays are so boring, you think they take ten years to write). But you can write a short play as quickly as you can write a short story or poem. You just.. Since they're all poets, I give them rules, I say,"I will not read any play in which any of the followng characters appear - "Girl", "Poet", "Clown", "Old Man"..  (you know, all this stuff that poets seem to write about). 

Let's see.. If you're afraid of getting stuck in received ideas writing a play, try writing a play like Picasso did, Desire Caught By The Tail (Le Désir attrapé par la queue), in which all the characters are objects, you know (or all the characters are not human). Try writing a play in which there are no words, in which it's all stage-directions, that's a lot of fun - or try writing a one word play.

If you want to read some…if you want to escape, sort of,  from the commercial general theater idea, I'll suggest some kinds of plays to read which will inspire you, as poets.
Ezra Pound did some wonderful translations of Japanese Noh Plays [The Classic Noh Theatre Of Japan] (but, so, you probably know all this stuff, but I'll just kind of sum it up,write these down). Read any Japanese Noh plays, There are some translated by Pound, some translated by Donald Keene (that's a good book too, translations by Donald Keene).

There's a.. Another kind of interesting Japanese theater is the.. these puppet-plays, the Kabuki plays (but I  won't write all this stuff down [on the blackboard]) - There's a..  read Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry, that's a really inspiring play [Koch does write this down on the backboard] ..What (else) is there?  - There's a book called Futurist Performance, which is edited by a guy named Michael Kirby, and it's a lot of writing, it's a lot of writing about Italian Futurist plays - and the Italian Futurists. they did this just before, and during, and a little after. World War I.. But the second half of this book is a lot of texts of Futurist plays, and..I don't suppose you want to write plays like that but they're very shocking. 

There's one, by a writer named Cangiullo, for example, called "Light"- And this is the play (in its entirety)  - "The audience.goes into the theater. It's completely dark. They remin in the dark for a long time. Finally, the people in the audience get very  anxious. People start to scream out.. (wait, they don't yell out, somebody is planted in the audience doing it) - "Light! light!,  for god's sake, light!" - At which point, this blinding light comes on, and that's the end of the play - It's just called "Light" - That's a very short one,but there are others that are more complicated and more interesting, but just to give you a funny idea of the… you know..

There's some very interesting short plays by (Federico Garcia) Lorca (but any of his plays are likely to be inspiring) . There's one very short one called "The Promenade of Buster Keaton", which is all about.. it's about a four-page play and that all the action is Buster Keaton taking a bicycle ride, and he sees a girl, he sees a dog, he sees a kitten, and a baby, an old man… What's another good (play) to read?  - Yeats' - some of (W.B.) Yeats' verse-plays are interesting. You can get.. I think there's a book called Twelve Plays  [Twelve Classic One-Act Plays] by William Butler Yeats. [ (it) includes work by W.B.Yeats] He was very influenced by the Noh Plays, but he might interest you.. (I'm trying to think of the strange kinds of theater. Anyone we know?) Yes?

Student:  (Peter Handke's plays?) 

KK: Well, I don't know his plays but I hear that he's very good. I was trying to think of really short ones, you know that give a….   What should I read of Peter Handke? What should I pick?

Student (1): He's got some short ones

Student (2): (Offending The Audience is a (relatively) short one)...

KK: I can't recommend it because I haven't read it. But it's bad that I haven't because some people that I like and trust say he's good.

Student: What about things that are current, that are going on right now, that people are following..

KK: What? Like what?

Student: Is there anyone in New York who..? Any plays that you've seen there..?

KK: The most exciting things I've seen in the theater in the last few years have been by two directors. One is Robert Wilson (and have any of you seen his plays? - they're fantastic), but the words are nothing in them - but, if you can ever see a Robert Wilson play, it might be (wild). (Every once in a while there's (a lemon, but…) He's really, like a choreographer and architect as much as he is anything else, they're terribly dramatic

                                                                       [Robert Wilson]
  
The other two best things I've seen recently are by an Italian director named Luca Ronconi  If you can ever see anything where Ronconi directs..  Did any of you see the Orlando Furioso play that he did in Europe (and Harvard Square, and he did it under a tent in New York City at the Library)? - Orlando Furioso was an epic poem by (Ludovico) Ariosto, written in the Sixteenth Century in ottava rima, sort of like (Lord) Byron's 
"Don Juan", in full heroics and shouting and crazy love-affairs, and magicians and transformations and …And, he did an adaptation of this play (in which he had all the characters, all of whom were in carts, in his staging in Rome, and there it was done, like, outside in the public square, under a tent, it had these people (shouting) and pushing these carts, and the audience had to get out of the way, and it)  very accurately caught the spirit of this epic  whole poem - tremendously dramatic. 

                                                                       [Luca Ronconi ( 1933-2015)]

Another amazing thing I saw by Ronconi, which I just saw last year, in Italy, was, he did a version of The Bacchae by Euripedes. In case you don't know what that play is - it's a play about Dionysius or the God,  or, it's not Dionyius but some Dionysius-like figure who represents the Bacchic religion. You know,  So the idea is to.. it was a great Mystery Religion, which swept over Greece, which came from the coast of Asia Minor, and was a.. not rational, like a lot of  things in Greek life, (you were supposed to get drunk and have orgies and ride around with your clothes off, and everything - it was a religion that encouraged the expression of this, this part of  human nature) . And, in this play, the God comes to this town in Greece and begins converting people. But he's opposed by the ruler of the town, the great prude, he doesn't want that kind of thing, you know, and finally he drives this man crazy, (doing terrible things) - but it's a wild beautiful play. Well, Ronconi did it with one actor playing all the parts -  fantastic! - and he did it in a municipal building in Prato, in a suburb of Florence, in a municipal building .  And he (set all the scenes of) the play in this building. Only twenty-six people could watch the play, (I mean, sit down) -  I mean, it sounds gimmicky but it just happened to be great, he was a great director. So you sit there and watch this one scene and then you have to follow the actors into another room and you have to crane to see inside and it's like being in the play. But that's…that's not writing. You just have to see these particular productions when they come.. So Luca Ronconi….

I've been inspired a little bit in my plays by seeing certain movies.. like, particularly movies  with a high artificial content like old Mack Sennett shorts, where, like a million things are going on in five minutes before you can.. jumping off boats... (and) a whole bunch of Buster Keaton - I don't know, I find them quite inspiring.

                                                                          [Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)] 

Student: What do you think of  (Jean) Cocteau?

KK: Oh, some of  his plays are very good. Yeah, yeah. None comes to mind that…Yeah, they're good .
I don't know if I've said enough... .Anyway, that's enough to get you started

                                                               [T.S.Eliot (1888-1965)]

I like.. I like that very  gruelling  play by (T.S) Eliot called "Sweeney Agonistes".. Do any of you know that play?  "Sweeney Agonistes". He thought it was a failure. It's called "Sweeney Agonistes: A Fragment of an Agon"  - (Agon is some kind of Greek pleasure).  T.S. Eliot - Sweeney Agonistes. [ Koch writes it on the blackboard] . He was inspired by..  There's a kind of entertainment in England..I think it's called..  Do music-halls still (exist)  in England?

Student:  Some of them.  It's just like… almost like the museums,  but (backed by strong followers) 

KK:   Anyway, Eliot was inspired by the kind of language and the rhythm of the way comics talked in English music-hall, and he thought that would be a  good a good medium for a play. Poets of the twentieth-century get.. A lot of them have wanted very much to write poem-dramas.. And they've all found it - you know, regular Shakesperean drama in blank verse -  you write Shakesperean blank verse, you end up sounding like Shakespeare (did, and that wasn't quite it) - and they tried all kinds of things, but Eliot tried this play. I thought the results were very interesting - there was this kind of very quick rhyming, sort of like, "We've got to sit here and have this drink..".. . "We've gotta sit here and have this meal, we've gotta sit here and drink this booze" - I 've gotta use words when I talk to you.
I know this. You know that. Boo-boo-boo. Boo-boo-boo. That sort of very quick stuff -  and it's interesting, it's interesting, (for the poets anyway).

W.H.Auden  in his early days wrote some interesting poetic plays. One is called "Paid On Both Sides". That's probably the most inspiring one. Somebody should do the anthology of (Auden's plays) - that would be easier [Editorial note - It's now been done] - I don't know where to find "Paid On Both Sides", you probably have to go to the library. The trouble with the library is, (once you're in there), you can' t correct things or change things. There's no way of eliminating things he didn't think, you know, were up to his standards, (he didn't like some of his early stuff)

Student: There's another thing by (Auden) that's more recent. It's something like "Celebrating the Senses", (or something like that, or "Tranquilizing..?)  [Editorial note -  "The Entertainment of the Senses", an "antimasque" included in his last (posthumous) volume, Thank You. Fog ]...

KK: I don't know that. He wrote some plays in collaboration with (Christopher) Isherwood which were (interesting). I suggested to the… the Dean at Naropa asked me for some ideas, (since Naropa was always looking for good new ideas), and it seemed to me that one good thing that could be done here would be to make more of a.. I mean, to make some connection between the writers and the theater. I mean, it would be great to come here and know that  if you wrote a play there'd be some kind of performance of it. I mean it would be great if there was some place in America where people could write experimental plays and at least there'd be a reading of them, where you could see as many plays as you hear poems, I mean, it would be terrific. Because it's in in that kind of atmosphere that things really happen. You know, I can see a Robert Wilson play maybe once or twice a year, to see Ronconi I have to go to Italy. Every once in a while, I'll see a good Shakespeare,Chekov. There's not enough going on in the theater that's...There's not enough of a turn-over. There's a lot more turn-over in poetry. And that's really good for art. Anyway, I hope they do something about it here. You might re-suggest it.  
What shall we do in the last ten minutes? What shall I tell you? - Yeah?

Student: I wanted to ask you a question about work habits. You were talking about the speed of writing..  I was wondering about some of your longer poems, whether you returned to them in several  sittings, whether you've got several pieces going on at the same time?

KK: Ah, well, let's see. It's varied from time to time.I always try to finish a poem the first time I write it but I almost never do. As I said to the class last time, talking about the poems in my book The Art of Love, the title poem took me more than three years to write, and, of course, I mean, I was writing other things at the same time, I ..after a certain.. I would concentrate on it for days a week at a time, but then, seeing I hadn't gotten where I wanted to get, I'd do something else. "The Art of Poetry," which I read last night, I wrote in two days. (I think that's the longest thing I ever wrote so fast.) So, " Some General Instructions", which is in that book, I wrote in one day, "On Beauty" took me a month. Usually.. I mean, I find it a good idea to concentrate on.. if I'm writing a long poem, or even a not-so-long one - usually I'll try to not write anything else at the same time. On the other hand, on the other hand, sometimes one gets.. I don't know, it's just depends and you.. I would suggest trying it different ways. Sometimes the long work that you're working on that you think is so important won't turn out to be the best thing you're writing. You know, some lyric that gets inspired in the middle of your epic may be better. So it's hard to tell. 
When I wrote.. I wrote two.. I wrote a book-length poem called Ko, [Ko,or A Season  on Earth] in ottava rima, when I wrote that I.. I just disciplined myself, I didn't write anything else.

Student: : What about your prose, like The Red Robins?

                                             [Kenneth Koch -The Red Robins (1975) - cover by Larry Rivers]

KK: The Red Robins? - Well, it took me about fifteen years to write The Red Robins, so I would have to be writing other things. I would try not to, but..  I just kept getting stuck, I didn't know what to do with it, and..   Well, what sort of (doubt) is that in the question?, what.. 

Student: Oh, I was just thinking about continuity of occasion.. 

Student; (How a) poem could be a single poem written over a long period of time and the self-consciousness of knowing that a part of the poem is a  (section of what) you wrote next…

KK: Yeah, well it  does get into that effect, but both effects are kind of nice. I believe one gets a different effect if one writes something straight on, or if one stops, and then has (the) writing the first part of the poem already in one's head, and then one's … I always try to (go) straight on, like I say, because I think I will get...

Student:: Have you changed the tone, changes of intensity...?

KK: Yes

Student: : A poem that would seem to be very inclusive on one day (on Monday) might not be the next day

KK: Yeah  - Did you have a question? - If you could ask me something more precise about that. I usually try to work straight through. On the other hand, sometimes I find it hard to do it. Sometimes I find when I've written a good poem or something that I think is good, that it's not a bad idea to write another one - instantly, you know, in the same day, because, it's as though one has gotten into the… into poetry country. You know, you feel so good for having written the poem that I'm inspired to write another one (like there's a big clearing for a minute). Sometimes I find that.. (well I said that in a poem last night, didn't I), that completing a poem that I've been working on is inspiring. What happened with those poems in The Art of Love is, after working on them (studiously) for over three years, 
I finally finished it, but, in the next week, I wrote "Some General Instructions", which is a ten-page poem and "The Art of Poetry", which is twenty pages, just because I had all that energy from the other poem. I don't know what "energy" (that's a spooky word - I don't know what that means). Anyway, that happened.

Q: What about a poem like "The Pleasures of Peace"?

KK: "The Pleasures of Peace" was very hard for me to write. That took me a couple of years. I was doing other things but I kept saying, "No, I musn't do anything else" and then I thought,"Well, I'm not a masochist, I don't want to... you know, I'm stuck"..That was very very hard. Parts of it were very easy and then other parts were very very hard. I talked about that last time too that I..I decided I wanted to write a poem about the Vietnam War because I was very concerned about it. And I kept writing all these parts about suffering and everything, and they just jumped out of the poem, the way the body rejects an artificial heart sometimes, you know, they wouldn't stay in. So I finally had to figure out how to write this poem about the pleasures of peace, you know. It was hard, it was very hard because of the subject-matter. It makes it a little easier sometimes if you have a regular form. For the two book-length narrative poems I wrote, where I used ottava rima  I really liked to do that sometimes..

Q: Yeah , I just wondered if there's a book that you can suggest that has different styles different forms of writing in them and explains them...?

KK: (A book to) explain the different forms.?  I know, there are some books around, like The Poetry Handbook, [Editorial note - Perhaps Koch is referring here to Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms, most-recently updated, indeed superseded by Ron Padgett's edition of The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms] but - or Rhyming Dictionaries in the front (of dictionaries)  - but, if you get one of these books, I advise you (you can read them, (but with caution) - they're often somewhat hacky.. you know they have conventional ideas about poetry - "And you must come to a climax in the last three lines" and all that stuff… But I don't.. does anybody know the name of any little book? There are little books which have all the poetic forms in them.

Student: (There's someone at the back there)

KK: Yes?

Student; When you leave something unfinished, does that create, like, a nervousness in you, that affects you with the things that you're at work on?

KK: Well, of course, it's better if one could finish things, but.. I don't know.. What do you mean?

Student: If I'm not inspired that day, I may decide to come back to something, (but then)
I feel, like, "Oh,  I can't do it. Maybe I'm not a good writer? and  then...

KK: Oh yeah, right, right, okay. That's one of the depressive type of experiences that writers always have.  When you.. when you write the first version (I'll be brief, I have to stop in a few minutes), when you write the first version, it often feels like everything is alright because you know, you're this superior person doing the thing you didn't know you could do, and it's all working out, it's wonderful, it's like somebody running up to you (and taking your face) and kissing you and saying, "Isn't this wonderful! I mean, everything's alright, after all". It's alright (that) I was mean to grandma, it's alright I forgot to buy the groceries, it's alright, this and that. It's okay. It makes you feel like winning a tremendous amount in gambling, You feel wonderful. Well, you go back the next day, you look at it, and realize the high is over, you know. You may be okay or you may not be okay, but the poem is.. doesn't prove it. And you have to work on it (the way that one has to work on almost everything - I mean maybe there are a few lucky moments, but..) So you realize.. I think it's coming down from a kind of euphoria.It's hard, one thing that's hard about revising. I mean it's so exciting and then.. but I don't think there's anything you can do about that. I mean, one of the pleasures of writing, you write a poem and it seems wonderful. (And) the reason it all seems more wonderful in the first version than it seems afterwards is that when you're writing it, the poem seems to actually contain your spirit, and the air, and the roses, and  lips, and everything. And then when it dries out, it just doesn't work. And sometimes they still contain the experience and sometimes they don't. I was giving a poetry reading and my friend, the painter, Alex Katz, asked me "What are you reading?' - And I said "I'm going to read some things I just wrote." And he said, "Ah, you're reading some wet ones". 
And, like paintings, when they're wet, you know, and they're all shiny with paint. But, yes,
I found some ways (that) I like revising as much as I like writing the first version. At one point I found  revising... I have a messy desk and I just write the poem and then I find it in a week, or a month, forgetting I've written it, that way there's no pressure on me. The problem with (my writing) is pressure - "Okay, I've started it. I've had this baby, you know, I've got to educate it. And you can.. There's no obligation. When you sort of .. Under pressure, it's hard to feel that freedom that you need to write well. I don't know, just try various ways to revise. Don't be afraid to cut things out though (as you can always put them back).

I have to go as I have to leave town   Let's see, about the sestinas [the class assignment], I think I have to.. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to read them all (I didn't think I would). Why don't I..  Why don't you come and get them (so you'll have them) -  and thank you. 

[Audio for the above can be heard here , beginning at approximately sixteen-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at the end of the tape]