Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 258

[Allen Ginsberg in China, 1984  - Allen Ginsberg caption: "Downtown Baoding, Hebei University English Language school student guide that afternoon, November 1984, he was a friend of the young translator-student who rendered "Homework" poem into Chinese" - Photograph © The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

Another poem from the UnCollected - Wait Till I'm Dead - "Poem ("3'd day down Yangtze River, yesterday"):

3'd day down Yangtze River, yesterday
passed vast mountain gorges and hairpin
river-bends, mist sun and cement factory
soft coal dust everywhere, all China
got a big allergic cold. Literary dele-
gation homebound after 3 weeks, now I'm
traveling separately like I used to — except
everywhere omnipresent kindly Chinese
Bureaucracy meets me at airports & boats
& takes me to tourist hotels & orders meals. I'm
trying to figure a way out — envious of 2
bearded hippies traveling 4th class in
steerage eating tangerines & bananas —
sleepers in passageways on mats, Chinese
voyagers playing checkers. Saw Beijing,
Great Wall, tombs & palaces, Suchow's
Tang gardens, Hangchow's West Lake walkway
dyke to hold the giant water in years of drought
built up by governors Tsu-Tung-Po and Po-Chu-I.
Saw Cold Mt. Temple w/ Snyder who'd
heard its bell echo across ocean.

- China, November 11, 1984

David Cope gives a little of the background: "Allen's poem began as the prose script of  a November 11, 1984 postcard he sent me from China, but I noted how tightly it was written, the complexity of what it expressed, and I suggested to him that I could publish it as a poem in Big Scream #20. He agreed and it was published in the 1985 issue….it occurred to me that this poem is a superb tightly-written late example of Allen's use of Objectivist focus, containing ecological and community health observations, Chinese government thought-control bureaucrats, landscape appreciation, older famous man's envy of freer hippies, travelogue & completion of life circle dream of Han Shan with Gary Snyder.

Speaking of Snyder, Keith Abbbott , "Charter Member of the New Black Bart Poetry Society", has unearthed a terrific December 1957 letter that Jack Kerouac wrote to him (on the back of a letter from Allen!). Abbott explains: "The letter reprises what Kerouac did that summer to go up to the Lookout in Washington (State). Snyder was on board the ship Sappa Creek, since August-April 1957 and he only received the letter when he returned to Japan and then left for the United Stats to live in Marin County, California….Kerouac's letter to Snyder scattered some brilliat haiku throughout his crammed version of hitch-hiking up to Skagit Valley and its adventures.." (many of which, but not all appeared in "Desolation Pops"). The full letter and Abbott's annotation can be read here    

[Han Shan ("Rough and dark…")  - Calligraphy & brushwork by Keith Abbott] 

Paul Bowles' Moroccan music anthology (noted here a couple of weeks ago) is written up by Amanda Petrusich, "The Sheltering Sound",  in last week's New Yorker
For a taste (of these extraordinary field recordings, from back in 1959), listen to  Si Mohammed Bel Hassan Soudani  ( "Fulani  Iresa") - here - and also here and here

 [Si Mohammed Bel Hassan Soudani, Marrakesch, 1982 - Photograph by Alberto Rainolter]

Brion Gysin. Brion Gysin - "Here To Go & Back Again: The Lives and Arts of Brion Gysin" by Matthew Levi Stevens appears over at our friends at Beatdom - here

Soon-to-be ninety-seven-year-old Lawrence Ferlinghetti is interviewed by the Italian media (la Repubblica) here - "Non vado in pensione scrivero finche posso" ( "I won't retire, I will write as long as I can")

Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady (in Spanish) - Jack Kerouac y Neal Cassady en San Miguel de Allende 

Hot news of the week - the discovery and sale of the Bob Dylan Archive - (letters between Allen and Bob are among the many treasures in the collection) 

Now here's a rare item - (from Five Seasons Press, from 1979, one of only 350 copies - the poem itself, was, of course, written more than a decade earlier, in situ, in 1967)  (the image and a photo inside are by Tom Maschler)

and, following the recent 50-year celebration,

KPTS, The Kansas Public Telecommunications Service, have produced, on its anniversary, a fine documentary honoring Allen's epic poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra"  . 
Watch it here

Poems from Tea at The Kalapa Court

Randy Roark's been posting some pretty interesting Ginsberg miscellanea over on Our Allen.  This is one of the most interesting. - "Poems from Tea at the Kalapa Court". 
As Randy, in a note about it, explains:

"On July 26, 1982, Chogyam Trungpa, the founder of Naropa Institute and Vajracarya (Buddhist priest), invited the artists who were present for the On the Road Jack Kerouac festival—hosted by Naropa Institute—to tea at the Drawing Room at his Kalapa Court house in Boulder, for a spontaneous poetry party. (I’m not certain they knew this before they arrived.) Later the poems were typed up by Trungpa’s students and Allen got a copy, hand-corrected it, and gave it to me to publish in Friction 2/3 -  The Kerouac Conference issue. It not only includes what may be Robert Frank’s sole published poem, but also a poem directed to Ginsberg by Trungpa and Ginsberg’s reply, which I don’t believe have been published elsewhere.

Vajracarya (Chogyam Trungpa)

Ginsberg is sometimes my teacher of poetry
He is sometimes a fool
Nonetheless, fool could be teacher
Jack Kerouac vision is gold sword for us
I appreciate Ginsberg beady eyes, sweet smile
Who taught me a lot and nonetheless I taught him too
Nonetheless, we have lots of full stops, commas, inverted commas, circumflexes, umlauts
However, I love Ginsberg’s gift to me
How to write poetry in American fashion
I salute, bow down to Ginsberg
The teacher who is unteachable
Therefore he is Vajrayana student
Let the sun shine to Ginsberg
Let the moon shine to Ginsberg
Along with the black stars be around Ginsberg
My profound devotion to Ginsberg who showed me American poetry
With or without punctuations

Allen Ginsberg

Having bowed down my forehead on the pavement on Central Park West
By the car wheels of the guru
Whose vehicle I had once stolen in the presence of my father
Having taken a vow to be his love-slave
For this and other lifetimes, if any
Having been humiliated in my Ginsberghood and praised for the same Ginsberghood
I accept the homage of my teacher-pupil and remain with my forehead on the pavement at his feet."

"By the way", "Randy adds,  "I resent Trungpa calling Allen a fool—even as a Buddhist student—and I found the scorn evident in his voice in the audio recording even more distasteful. There are a lot of words to describe Allen, but “fool” is not one of them. And I consider Allen’s response and insight (“Having been humiliated in my Ginsberghood and praised for the same Ginsberghood”) as proof."

The aforementioned Robert Frank poem:

Iced tea at Doylestown

I'm thinking of Pablo

Because they're drinking iced tea in a mental institution

Words

(the assignment was for a four-line poem)

Among the other participants, Peter Orlovsky, Michael McClure, Joanna McClure and Abbie Hoffman...

As well's as four-liners, the poets wrote haiku
Trungpa's - "Turqu(o)ise vase/Sometimes breaks/Should I kill myself (?)"
Allen's - "Although the rain has stopped/The t(e)achers consider hari-kari/After not eating their ice cream sandwiches"

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 242

Just out this month, from Blackberry Books, Franco Beltrametti's posthumous collection, From Almost Everywhere 

Gary Snyder on Franco Beltrametti: "Franco Beltrametti's smooth-barked Muse leads him across the grids of latitude and longitude to the source of good medicine poems. A suavity masks these elemental songs - or rather, gives these elder faces a modern "human" mask. Civilized in the best sense".

and Joanne Kyger: "From "a crowded place called "future" Franco Beltrametti arrives, once again, with subtle eloquence to surprise us with his unexpected nuances and turns. These poems give us his presence….calling up poets and ancestors of every sort and show us the transparency and modesty of his world." 

Franco Beltrametti can be seen, talking in eternity, on video - here

A full run of mini , "the smallest review in the world",  that he edited, can be found here 

The Franco Beltrametti Archive (plenty to look at) may be accessed here.

Franco would be amazed by this - "More than two hundred previously-unknown poems by leading Edo period (1603-1867) haikuist and artist Yosa Buson have been found in an anthology at the Tenri Central Library"

Blackberry Books, incidentally, are also the publishers of the wonderful Collected Poems of Nanao Sakaki - How To Live On The Planet Earth

                                                            [Nanao Sakaki (1923-2008)]

John Wieners remembered and recollected last week in Harvard  can be seen here

and here's John Wieners reviewed by Dan Chiasson in (of all the unlikely places) the current New Yorker

                                                            [John Wieners (1934-2002)]

Harry Smith was reviewed in The New Yorker a couple of weeks back.  Can this be the start of a trend? 

The Allen Ginsberg "Still Howling" event (also a couple of weeks back)  reviewed in The Mancunion

Allen Ginsberg in Halifax, Nova Scotia, here's a memoir by Martin Wallace - "I was a young poet in 1986 when I heard that Allen Ginsberg was coming to Halifax…"

More Randy Roark Ginsberg discoveries

Randy notes:
"Another manuscript poem with Allen's corrections. This one points out one of his mannerisms - to turn a phrase like "the root of his cock" into the more condensed "his cock root", which I often, as in this case, find an affectation. I'd have a lot more to work with as an orator in the cadence of "the root of his cock" than the awkward "his cock root"."

Cock root?

More Ginsberg on Kerouac - 1982 at The Kerouac Conference

["Portrait of Jack Kerouac w/ Brakeman's Manual in Pocket, 1953" - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg c. The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

We've been featuring transcripts this past week from Allen Ginsberg's 1982 Naropa poetry workshop at the gathering there that year celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On The Road. We continue with the follow-up class, July 25th. Beginning in media res, Allen is presenting (as he was here), several pithy slogans (later, gathered together and codified as Mindwriting Slogans)

AG: "No ideas but in..facts", "The natural object is always the adequate symbol", "Things are symbols of themselves" "Pay attention to minute particulars, take care of the little ones", "Close to the nose" (William Carlos Williams), "Only objectified emotion endures" (Louis Zukofsky), ""Only objectified emotion endures". So if you have a big freak-out and say, "Agh! I saw the light! , I saw the light! - and it's all over me! - I saw the light!", rather than  "tin flash of sun dazzle on the waters" [Editorial note - from Canto II of Ezra Pound's Cantos] or, "the church's towers crooked mirrored on the glassy surface of the Venetian canals" - "The church's towers crooked mirrored on the glassy surface of the Venetian canals", or "tin flash of sun dazzle" (the "tin flash of sun dazzle" is Ezra Pound's description of the flash of light on water in the Mediterranean - "tin flash of sun dazzle". So, whatever charge he got out of that, he was able to objectify (objectify, in this sense of making little objects out of it of words) - "Crooked mirrored on the glassy surface" was my own attempt at an imitation of the description of light on water in Venice (which I presented to Pound as a sample of following his method of direct treatment of the object, quote, unquote - a direct treatment of the thing - or, to paraphrase Pound - direct treatment of the object).   So all these are basic grounding that I was talking about, in terms of where you begin if you don't know how to write. At least you begin with real things, or with something that is objective  (objective, in the sense of something you can see, smell, taste, touch, hear - or think). Think is another… I mean, thought is another sense - of the six senses - sight smell, sound taste, touch - and thought (because there is the mind). So, if you quote your own thoughts, those are objects also. If you get lost in your thoughts, well, then you're just lost in your thoughts, in that sort of watery, imprecise abstraction, but if you quote your own thought, that's alright. Like, "Yesterday, I was walking down the street, and, as the sun glinted off the car, I thought, "tin flash of sun dazzle":. So you can quote your thought. If you stand outside of your thought and quote it, it becomes another object. So you don't have to worry about whether or not you can include your subjective thoughts, you sure can, as long as you treat them as objects.

So all this is pretty abstract, but I'm presenting basic slogans, useful to beginners, middle practitioners and advanced practitioners of poetry. All need and begin with a basic grounding in some sense of reality (and it's not very far from journalism, actually - who, what,where, when, why, or whatever, whatever sequence of facts that a journalist will have to do for reporting (because he's not really allowed to editorialize, theoretically, but he is allowed to present the details that lead to a conclusion, rather than just refer to them and give the conclusion. And so Pound also has a term - reference and presentation - how many have heard of that? - in Pound, reference versus presentation? - In conversation with Pound in 1967 in Venice, he said, "The Cantos are a mess". And I said, "What's the matter?". And he said, "Too much reference, not enough presentation". And "reference" means, "It's a lovely day", "presentation" is "...No cloud in the sky, sun over green flatirons of heat shimmering from the sidewalk", or whatever -  So, in other words, you present the facts of the situation rather than a generalization. So, the poetic exercise we've been doing was grounded on the idea of  waking up where you are in space, to recapitulate - where we left off, waking up where you are in space, noticing it, noticing the place,place-name, or the idea, or the conception, or te map, or the street, or the name of the building, or the fact that  you're a human being, or the fact that you're panting tired, or, just had lunch, or… And then,  having given name and form to the immensity of the space, and name and form to the spot you are in the space, you then have your emotional reaction, so to speak, or your comment, or your after-thought. In a way, it's like that famous Basho haiku - an Old Pond…the sound of the frog jumping..and then the after-thought, or commen,t or after ripple of thought - Splash!   

(Jack) Kerouac has got a lot of good haiku. Someone brought me a copy of Scattered Poems to suggest that I read some and that's a great idea. He said "Some Western haikus" and they're based on flash-moment perceptions. So.. What I was saying..when I was talking about the three stages, of space, recognition and comment, I was trying to analyze, "What is a thought?". Actually, bring it down to that. What is, actually, a thought? What does a thought consist in? If you were trying to define the structure of a thought, what is it? - Or how.. the best is "How can a thought be remembered?" or "How is a thought remembered?", or "In what form does a thought arrive in the mind?. So I was thinking in..I was describing picture and I was describing word, but also I was trying to give a skeleton of the thought. So I am suggesting this is the skeleton of a thought-form - flash-recognition-and-after-comment. Or its flash-recognition-and then you suddenly realize you had the thought. In other words, you have a thought and then you realize you had the thought. You have a thought, recognize it, and then you realize you've just had it, and then all of a sudden you have another thought and you recognize it and you realize you had that! - And that actually is probably is the way the mind works. And it probably could happen..I think the fastest synaptic reaction is.. a synaptic reaction is one fiftity-two asecond - fifty two times a second. Anybody know?  It's as swift as synapses give messages across the nerve patterns, nerve junctures. So you can probably have fifty two thoughts a second..and, broken up into that form

So Kerouac's haiku are just a little..things that he noticed, things that he just noticed he noticed, things that he noticed and then he noticed he noticed them and wrote them down. So it wasn't that he invented anything. It's just that he noticed something and then he noticed he noticed it, and then he wrote it down. So it's the same thing you notice, you notice you notice, and then your comment is writing it down.

"Arms folded/ to the moon,/ Among the cows" -  "Birds singing in the dark/In the rainy dawn" - "Elephants munching/ on grass - loving /Heads side by side" - Its..the funny thing of that, it just seems to be big heads, big loving heads, side by side, munching on the grass - The one I like the best, actually, one of  the best  - "Missing a kick/ at the icebox door/.It closes anyway" - He's really funny! - His own anger he's got there, as well as the uselessness of it, in a way.  "Perfect moonlit night/ marred/By family squabbles" - "This July evening,/ A large frog/ On my doorsill" - (actually, haiku is very often seventeen syllables and he very often does it that way - that's only twelve actually - "Catfish fighting for his life,/ and winning,/Splashing us all" - "Shall I say no?/- fly rubbing/ its back legs - &   This is my favorite, actually - "Unencouraging sign/ - the fish-store/Is closed" - that's pretty funny 'cause, you know, it's like unencouraging sign, drugstore is closed or the liquor store is closed - and the way he says "Unencouraging sign" - sort of like out of the I Ching, a very, a sort of Daoist discouragement. "Straining at the padlock/the garage doors/ At noon" - One of the things I liked about that is, it's the wind that he's talking about. He doesn't have to mention the wind because he's got the garage doors straining at the padlock, which is like that frog haiku of Basho, I think - (actually, the original haiku was just the old pond and then the sound of water splashing and then "kerplunk", I'm not sure that the frog is even mentioned in the original Basho haiku about the frog splash) - "Straining at the padlock/the garage doors/ At noon" - Kerouac is here presenting the wind, by presenting the effects of the wind on the garage door, without having to say "wind" and without having to say, "It's a windy day". Instead of saying "It's a windy day", he says  "Straining at the padlock/the garage doors/ At noon". That's one of the most perfect, because he's conjured up the wind by the effect of the wind passing through the universe, or passing through the scene - "And the quiet cat/ sitting by the post/Perceives the  moon" - "Juju beads on the/ Zen Manual:/ My knees are cold"  -  "The bottoms of my shoes/ are wet/from walking in the rain" - [to Students] - Do you all know these by any chance? - How many here don't know these haiku? Never heard? - How many have? - About half and half. Well, Kerouac is probably the greatest American haiku maker, just by accident, simply because his mind flashed and he could write it down fast, and he wasn't worried about literature, he was just going direct to the perception - "The bottoms of my shoes/are wet/ from walking in the rain" - Now how.. so the question is, "How come he would notice the bottoms of his shoes anyway?" Well, doesn't everybody notice the bottom of their shoes? - but nobody pays attention to the bottoms of their shoes, and nobody notices that they notice the bottom of their shoes. Everybody notices it, but nobody notices that they noticed it. So, it's sort of like the first thought that you have, but then you're not sure that you had it, because you didn't think you could use it, or it didn't seem to have any function, it was just another, like, "look at the wall", "look at the ceiling", "(look at) the bottom of your shoes". Except he was constantly noticing the wall, the ceiling and the bottom of the shoes -  and "the inside of the medicine cabinet". 

So from that comes another phrase, "First thought, best thought". Did we use that yesterday? Did I mention that?..Yeah…and was that understood, what "First thought, best thought" means? It doesn't mean first cheap remark, it doesn't mean first self-conscious talk-babble to the self, it doesn't mean first shallow self-conscious snide remark, it means the first inadvertent thought, the first undirected thought, the first unborn thought, that is the thought you can't trace how you got to it, the first thought that just came up by itself, without your straining and without your being self-conscious. Like "the bottoms of my shoe are wet". That kind of thought is a first thought. That's (Chogyam) Trungpa's phrase - "First thought, best thought". And a corollary with that (which I don't think I did get to yesterday) is "If the mind is shapely.." (which is to say unembarrassed, unselfconscious, unstrained) - "If the mind is shapely, the art will be shapely". Did we get that one yesterday? So, Lucien Carr reduced that to "Mind is shapely - comma - Art is shapely" - he shaped that up - "Mind is shapely, art is shapely" (mainly, because the mind itself is one mind and is shapely and notices the bottom of the shoes, wet from walking in the rain, therefore any poem which depends just on straightforward mind will be shapely. You don't have to worry about shaping it up. You have to worry about shaping up your mind not shaping up the poem. You don't have to worry about shaping up your mind if you just look at your mind, because the mind is already in shape. You may not be in shape but your mind's in shape. So.. Just look at your mind and you'll find it's in shape, because what is..  the shape of the mind is what is..what it notices. So what the mind notices is the shape of the mind. What the mind notices is the object, so to speak. When (Louis) Zukofsky said, "Only emotion objectified endures", he means only what the mind notices in a state of emotion can be written down to express what that emotion was. Only what the mind notices outside of itself, in a state of high emotion, can be written down, and so that will serve as an objective co-relative (objective correlative) to give a picture of the mind itself. Or, the mind is the pictures it perceives, really, (because the mind is empty, actually, it just has flashes and then empties, and has flashes and empties). And so if you wanted to describe the state of your mind or emotions then you describe what you see outside of your  eyeballs, outside of your skull.



"In my medicine cabinet/the winter fly/ has died of old age" - And this is a really subtle piece of noticing - "November - how nasal/ the drunken/ Conductor's call" - on the railroad - (have you ever heard that (one)? - [Allen mimics the railroad man - "Paolo Alto!") - "how nasal/ the drunken/ Conductor's call"  - He has a lot in that - "nasal", "November", nasal sounds, you know - we all know what that is - "drunken nasal sound" - the "drunken Conductor" - it's a whole railroad he's got going there, calling the stations. So it's a whole lifetime, or a whole novel packed up into those "November - how nasal/ the drunken/ Conductor's call" - thirteen syllables?. Thirteen syllables, it's amazing. "A big fat flake/ of snow/ Falling all alone" - Everybody's seen one big fat flake of snow falling all alone, except he noticed he noticed it, "The summer chair/ rocking by itself/ In the blizzard" - That's a little bit like (the one about) the padlocks and the garage door - "Straining at the padlock,/ the garage doors/ At noon" - You get the  wind of the blizzard rocking  the chair - (the) "summer chair rocking by itself in the blizzard". So it's kind of inadvertent (like I say, that's the only way you can define it), it's like inadvertent noticings. Now that's ordinary mind, basically. It's not super-mind, supernatural mind, it's not crazy mind, it's not insane mind, it's not supreme poetic mind, it's not transcendental mind, it's everyday mind, every day ordinary mind. And those of you who are big subtle philosophers will recognize that phrase, "ordinary mind", as being the classic traditional description of the highest state in Zen Buddhist practice. Ordinary mind - in other words, getting rid of projections of transcendental weirdo apocalypse light-blast flashes and getting grounded in what is already there visible but unnoticed. So the way you would widen the area of consciousness is to notice what you're not noticing, or be aware of what you hadn't noticed you 'd noticed. Or the description of the state of ordinary mind is to notice what you hadn't noticed you'd noticed. You begin in meditation practice with the breath. In poetry, you begin by noticing the thoughts you had, just like in meditation you begin with noticing your breath, the poetic yoga (yoking together of  body and mind) is noticing the thought that you had. So that's the beginning of poetry. And the simplest form is the first flash, So you call it haiku because the Japs [sic] were smart at it, and got it there, like, in one little fire-cracker. So the three-line poem assignment that we had was to get us involved in that particular practice of  noticing, noticing that we noticed and then writing it down.

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at the beginning of the tape and concluding at approximately eighteen-and-three-quarter minutes in] 

Basho Revisited

                                         [Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) -  "Old pond/a frog jumps in/kerplunk"]

AG: Okay. There might be some…I finished that haiku, or the Basho haiku, which wound up to be - "Old pond/a frog jumps in/kerplunk"(It was "Old pond/frog jumps/kerplunk" but that doesn't quite sound American - you could say "Old pond/a frog jumps in/kerplunk" -so I filled out a few more syllables to that to make it clearer. And then I realized it would be a great end to a country n' western song! - like [Allen begins singing] ""Old pond/the frog jumps in/kerplunk" - I wrote a whole bunch of verses to go with it. I'll sing those and get onto…  

"Papa why'd you hide your head?
Mama, whatcha doin' on the bed?
Hard road, I walked til both feet stunk
Old pond the frog jumps in kerplunk

Left home to get a job today
Sold coke got busted every way
Daydream but still I'm just a clunk
Old pond the frog jumps in kerplunk

Got hitched I bought a frying pan
Fried eggs my wife just like a man
Won't cook her oatmeal tastes like funk
Old pond the frog jumps in kerplunk

Drop dead exactly what she said
Drink wine it went right to my head
Chucked up they all said I was drunk
Old pond the frog jumps in kerplunk

Sorrow grapes at six o'clock today
Midnight if I feel the same way
Headache as if my eyeballs shrunk
Old pond the frog jumps in kerplunk

Hot dog I like my mustard hot
Hey rube I think I just got shot
Drop dead she said, you want some junk
Old pond the frog jumps in kerplunk

The ideal there in a translation was to get a translation that was exactly American, so American that (it) could be used as a (country n' western song) (to accurately convey) the taste  of that haiku  - "Old pond/a frog jumps in/kerplunk" - That could be, actually, just ordinary country speech.. totally ordinary mind..ordinary speech..southern American thought, identical enough that you could really make a refrain out of it in (a) country 
'n western (mode). There's a sort of funky taste about that haiku, which brings it back home (as in country n' western). It's so ordinary that it's subtle… that is, (it is) the embodiment of the tri-partite thought-form.. (thoughts) unborn, leaving their ripples behind in the mind (thought), and, at the same time, a sort of country farmer's humor about it. That is, it's so ordinary it isn't anything at all. But eternity is so ordinary it isn't anything at all.  Just "kerplunk" - no meaning at all. 

Some significant variants and several extra verses  in the published version:    

The old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk!
Hard road! I walked till both feet stunk -
Ma!Ma! Whatcha doing down on that bed?
Pa! Pa! what hole you hide in your head?

Left home    got work down town today
Sold coke     got busted looking gay
Day dream,  I acted like a clunk
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Got hitched, I brought a frying pan
Fried eggs, my wife eats like a man
Won't cook, her oatmeal tastes like funk
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Eat shit            exactly what she said
Drink wine     it goes right down my head
Fucked up       they all yelled I was drunk 
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Saw God    at six o'clock tonight
Flp house  I think I'll start a fight
Head ache  like both my eyeballs shrunk
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Hot dog!  I love my mustard hot
Hey Rube! I think I just got shot
Drop dead  She said you want some junk?
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Oh ho    your dirty needle stinks
No, no I don't shoot up with finks
Speed greed I stood there with the punk
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk!

Yeh, yeh,    gimme a breath of fresh air
Guess who    I am well you don't care
No name     call up the mocking Monk
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk! 

No echo, made a lot of noise
Come home     you owe it to the boys
Can't hear    you sceam your fish's stunk
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk! 

Just folks, we bought a motor car
No gas   I guess we crossed the bar
I swear we started for Podunk
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk! 

I get his banjo on my knee
I played it like an old  Sweetie
I sang plunk-a-plunk-a-plunk, plunk plunk plunk
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk! 

One hand  I gave myself the clap
Unborn     but still I took the rap 
Big deal, I fell out of my bunk
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk! 

Hey hey!   I ride down the blue sky
Sit down with worms until I die
Fare well Hum  Hum Hum Hum Hum Hum Hum!
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk! 

Red barn   rise wet in morning dew
Cockadoo  dle do oink oink moo moo
Buzz buss - flyswatter in the kitchen , thwunk!
Th' old pond - a frog jumps in, kerplunk! 

and for three recorded versions:

listen   here and  here - and here 

Q & A - 1 ( On Haiku Sequence)

Student: (You said that all haiku were flash, recognition, and comment, yes?)

AG: (Well, we were looking at the) texts and (the) theoretical ground in the background. I'm guessing that, though.. but, actually, for proof of the pudding, we'd have to go check back through all the classic haiku and see if they fitted that pattern at all, (that's the only way we'd do it). My original thought was that it was, simply, just two images, as you remember - two images, completely separated, not joined by a moral, but joined by a …contrast..  -  (turns to his student) -  Chuck (Carroll) (sic)?

Student (CC):  Yes (I asked somewhat) the same question (about sequence in classic haiku formulation) and we worked out one, as an example, that (speaks to something direct) and that is the red flower in the vase on the table - and we applied the flash-recognition-comment (procedure) as follows. So, I came up with something like this -  "red flash/rose in a vase/a woman's lipstick"

AG: Not very… not a terrific haiku, necessarily…

Student (CC):  No 

AG: …but just an example of what..a thought was, (actually)

Student; (Yes). The first is just the observation of the stimulating red, then the recognition of the flower, and then the association.

AG: Actually, to be more precise, it was one of those Australian…

Student: Hawaiian

AG: …giant flowers. Where's it from?

Student: Red Hawaiian flowers

AG: It's like a giant… the color of someone's quite-red balls, but, you know, heart-shaped, and then it's got a giant proboscis phallus thing sticking out of it, and it looks like it's made of wax.

Student: Anthurium

AG: What is it?

Student: Anthurium

AG: Anthurium? Yeah, I think anthurium. You've seen them, I think. It's so odd a flower that the first time you look at it, you're not quite sure it's a flower. But you do get that red phallic flash. That was the first thing we noticed. Because I came in and looked at it, and, not knowing what it was, then recognized it. And then the comment, "Wow, it looks like a prick!" or something. It was the order of the thought - actually, that was the order of thought-form - or - those were the forms that the thought went through. That was the sequence. 

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

Trungpa Visits Allen's Class - 1

                                                  [Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche 1939-1987)]

AG: Welcome..to the poetry class.. [to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche] - does it make sense (you sitting), here?  [Allen points to location] - and there’s room for David (Rome) [Trungpa's personal assistant], there. Welcome to my poetry class. This is Bobby Myers, my teaching assistant – and this [Allen continues with formal introductions] is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tibetan poet and meditation teacher - and David Rome here.

So.. We had been reading haiku today, both Japanese (and American), talking about space in haiku – "A wild sea/ and stretching across to the isle of Sado/the Milky Way" – also some haiku in (Jack) Kerouac – then we were reading some of (William) Blake, a long poem called Auguries of Innocence... in which he says – ”To be in a Passion you Good may Do/ But no Good if a Passion is in you” -  That make sense? –And we were comparing that to Jamgon Kongtrül's Direct Path toEnlightenment.

CT: Oh my goodness!

AG: And I have been talking about Hinayana – sitting,  and how that might lead to jumps of perception from one thought to another and spaces in-between

CT: Yeah

AG:  ..(which are like haiku). So, we can take off from there - [to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche]  Do you have any thing on your mind?

CT: Well, it’s hard to say.. We’ve been talking about the construction of a threefold logic. Have you discussed that at all, in any sense?

AG: No, I haven’t, so  that would be good to..

CT: So that might be interesting actually… Can you hear me?

Students: Louder!

Student: If you use the microphone...

CT:  Is this.. oh yes, is this…Can you hear me now?

The notion of what’s called threefold logic - which applies to a general state of mind, how we experience our phenomenal world (and obviously poetry comes from an expression of one’s phenomenal world - in the written form - it could either be prose or poetry form). 
It’s not so much, from (the) Buddhist point of view, (is that) (if) you write good poetry, particularly, but how your thought-patterns become elegant, that you see (the) phenomenal world as a process, stages, as a review, from a state of mind - That, first, we have what’s known as the ground (which we perceive is the general sense or idea of how things work – like a bright, and heavy, sense of brightness, and then you begin to have some idea that it is sunshine, and then, because there is a sense of brightness, then you experience the sense of  sunshine, and having experienced the second stage that way, then we have a conclusion,  which is "(it) dispels (the) darkness”. So those (three stages) are what is known as the threefold logic, which actually does apply very much to the haiku approach – that there is an idea, and then there is a complimentary remark with (the) idea, and then a final ending, (sometimes which is punctuated by humor, or sometimes punctuated by opinion, or (it) could be just an open ending). So that seems to be an interesting kind of training and it seems that's how one thinks when you look at the real world and then just write that down. And then by doing so, a person's approach begins to become very methodical and nothing is jumpy, and everything is somewhat organized in your mind, and therefore it creates a  sort of chain-reaction, probably, to the reader of  (the) poetry as well, those who read your work, their thought-patterns begin to have some sort of systematic situation rather than just things jumbled together. And , in turn, the theory is that having such (an) approach, you develop a…you’re helping the world to destroy chaos and you create order in the universe

AG: Well, in your thought process, do you systematically check out what of previous thought was ground or was flash, what moment you made the transition to recognizing the conception of the flash (sun) and then what further development and comment is made? In other words, do you constantly examine your thought-forms that way? or is it that when you have a striking thought that you try to analyze it? (or you analyze it in that form, or find its structure in that form?)

CT: Well, it’s mostly.. The thought-patterns are free form thought-patterns which usually involves the threefold process.  
And what you do is then, actually, analyze  - it’s not so much analyzing…

AG: As recognizing?

CT: It’s just another after-thought of that whole thought process.
AG: Uh-hmm

CT:So, there’s no scholarship involved, particularly. It’s just ..

AG: By analyzing it, I just mean checking (it) out..

CT: Yeah

AG further thought – “Oh yes, that was the thought, that was the flash, that was…

CT: That was it.  That was it. Yeah.

AG; Do you ever compose haiku consciously, using that as a method?

CT: You could, as training process - and then a starting person (can) begin to gain more confidence in themselves, and so they can actually flow.

AG: So it’d be like driving. First, you have to figure out the gears.
CT: Yes.

AG: Do you actually train yourself in checking out the triple.. the triad? Did you?

CT: In some sense, yes, I think you do. You can always do that. And also  connect it with  the Śūnyavāda– like Madhyamaka – Buddhist philosophy , you have a case and then you have a reference coming out of that case and then you have a final conclusion. It’s always a threefold process

AG: Can you give an example of that ? – Case-Reference-and Conclusion

CT:  Well, some things (like) what we were saying, like.. You could say that - the Mind is Empty - Free from Conceptions - (It is) Enlightenment.

AG: Okay -  How would you make a haiku of that? In other words, what situation would give rise to something substantial rather than the abstraction?

CT: Haiku?

AG: Yeah

CT: Well, you could have...

AG: (Well),  that would come automatically, but you (could have)...

CT: (What?) Which one?

AG: ….a situation where you recognize your mind was empty, free from distraction...

CT: Concepts.

AG:  Concepts, yeah. That’s enlightenment. -  See, that would be, say, the.. a… that would be the basic structure of almost all noticings.

CT: Uh-hmm – That’s what we’re trying to say…Yes, that's how all things should work.  There could be…  some discipline (that) goes with that..

AG: (So) that would be...

CT: Training people.

AG Well, would that be.. would that involve simple samatha sitting, or a further application of it, or special case?

CT: I think samatha sitting awareness is some sort of awareness – mindfulness in daily life. You know, that it brings things into a cohesive situation

AG: What you’re describing is also a bi-product of samatha, isn’t it?

CT: Well, you could say that, yeah. 

[David Rome at Naropa reading the poems of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche - Photograph by Robert Del Tredici]

                                                                        [David Rome]

(Trungpa turns to David Rome) What do you think? Do you have anything to say?

DR: About samatha?

CT: No, (about) the whole thing.

DR: Well,  that kind of threefold process is not a gimmick. It’s a very basic pattern by which perception occurs and also (when there’s) creation occurs. So your finished poem might actually show those three levels – or it might not (all that specifically) but nevertheless the process that you went through (in order) to create the poem must... It does anyhow follow that kind of process but to the extent that you’re somewhat clear in following it will affect the elegance and accuracy of the poem . So you have some kind of first impulse to express something, and that impulse carries with it some sense of the texture of what you want to express. In some cases, it’s the texture of a certain emotion, in some cases, (particularly of poets I mentioned), it’s one detail that has struck you and you feel that there is something further that could be made of that, or presented from this – or even just trying to present that one detail involves some further process. So then you begin fleshing it out, so to speak, which is finding the further reference to that detail of that basic texture, and that process contains openness as well as narrowness, which I think is what becomes very important about these three steps, They're about (doing) something, without having it all figured out to begin with, but, on the other hand, not going off in every direction so that you end up purely with chaos, a jungle . So your middle stage is (feeling) that texture further (following) that detail up further, making new discoveries, but also beginning to focus it down towards some kind of single statement, single message, and that becomes the third level (which could be contained in the great last line, or it might even be contained in the space that’s left after the poem is over) – and there’s some unified event which has actually taken place.

AG: I wonder how that would apply to the last haiku?  - but we don’t have… we’re doing this in English translation and it may be reversing the order of the perceptions but it was 

"A wild sea/and stretching across to the isle of Sado/the Milky Way"?

CT: I think that hangs together.. very much so

AG: In relation to that structure somewhat, actually. The "wild sea" is the first flash. (Well, actually, you’d have the sea and then the heaven…

CT: Yeah

AG: Reversed, maybe?  is it?

CT: Well, you have a sense of the wilderness

AG: Yeah and the engulfing waters

CT:  And then a  sense of nostalgia – the island – a sort of dwelling-place, and then finally so what, you know? - Milky Way

AG: Well, it’s actually “and stretching across to the isle of Sado” – So you get that enormous space all of a sudden (whether all of Sado is visible we don't know) - "and stretching.. to the isle of Sado/the Milky Way” – and then he recognizes it in a comment, or conception, with a name.

CT:  (...moved) on the water of the island.

AG: Do you know that book of haiku by R.H.Blyth at all?

CT: Very much so. Yes.

AG: Do  you have any favorites from that?

CT: Well, a lot of them (in fact all of them!)

AG: We were (studying). I read about a hundred of them the other day, here…must have been.. there were a couple that I liked  - There was a.. "Not a single stone/ to throw at the dog/ The wintry moon” – which was actually.. first flash there was anger, you know, wanting to grab a stone, a stone to throw at the dog, and the frustration at that because of the frozen ground. And then, recognizing the frozen situation, seeing the moon, which was irrelevant in a sense  but related to the cold frozen-ness (the moon being a comment on his anger or a sudden opening-up…

CT: Yes, that's what (it could be)
AG: ..or a distraction from it

CT: Yes Yes

to be continued

[Audio for the above may be heard here, beginning at approximately sixty minutes in and concluding at approximately seventy-four-and-a-quarter minutes in]