Harvard's Woodberry Poetry Room (like San Francisco State on the West Coast, who we've reported on earlier) are in the process of digitalizing and putting on-line their extraordinary collection of poetry-recordings. We urge you to check them out here, on their web-site, at the so-called "Listening Booth" - unique recordings by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, John Wieners, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, to name but only a few of them. Allen's contribution consists of three tapes - the first, a joint-reading with Peter Orlovsky from 1964 - the second, (as he announces it), "Allen Ginsberg, November 17, 1964, reading a scattered random selection of poems" - the third, 22 years later, with Steven Taylor, in 1986, a considerably more focused set. The "set-lists" as follows:
tape one - opening with Hare Krishna chant - The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express - Sanskrit strota chant (invoking Saraswati) - Why is God Love, Jack? - I am Victim of Telephone- Sunflower Sutra [- Peter Orlovsky reads [from Straight Hearts' Delight] Peter Jerking Allen Off (Sex Experiment) - Morris - Second Poem] - Allen closes with Describe: The Rain on Dasawamedh Ghat [from Indian Journals]
tape two - Allen reads Pull My Daisy - then [from Empty Mirror] "I feel as if I am at a dead end" - "Tonite all is well.." (2 takes) - After All, What Else Is There To Say - The Trembling of the Veil - Metaphysics - In Death, Cannot Reach What Is Most Near - In Society - This Is About Death - Sunset - A Poem on America. - then [from Reality Sandwiches] - The Green Automobile - Love Poem on Theme by Whitman - Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo - Dream Record, June 8 1955 - "Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square - To An Old Poet In Peru - [from Kaddish] - The End - Magic Psalm - concludes with (unpublished) poem-journal notation, To Boston (November 11, 1964)
tape three - (following introductions by Vivian Wong & Michael Blumenthal) - Gospel Noble Truths, Hard-On Blues - Airplane Blues - Don't Grow Old - Father Death Blues - Plutonian Ode - After Whitman & Reznikoff (excerpt) - Do the Meditation Rock - [Steven Taylor sings Just Like a Jail (words by Tuli Kupferberg) - [from White Shroud] - The Little Fish Devours the Big Fish - Those Two - Why I Meditate - 221 Syllables at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center - Arguments - White Shroud - Surprise Mind - Written in My Dream by W.C.Williams - Reading Bai Juyi - Prophecy - Moral Majority - Jumping the Gun on the Sun - concludes with two settings of William Blake, The Nurse's Song and The Tyger
