Jim Carroll workshop continues - 4

Jim Carroll workshop continues - see here, here and here 

JC: I mean, that just has..you know. Like, I mentioned before about Henry Miller - the one book.. when they ask(ed) me what books people should read for this course, I mention(ed) the  Henry Miller book,  (The) Time of the Assasins, because, I mean, simply because it made me feel like..  That was he book that made me want to get into music, you know. 
I read.. 

I mean, it’s his assessment of Rimbaud – it’s really just as much his assessment of Henry Miller, of course – but I think that what it did was for me…I mean it had lines like, you know - ”Where are the poets now?” -  And I just saw that too many poets were writing in certain kind of scenes for other poets (and I (too) was certainly guilty of that). I mean, I saw that, you know, you could cover up a lot of bullshit in a façade of clever style and imagery. And there was a certain strength to that. But.. I mean, you know, a poet is.. you know,. It was a very naïve notion to me, but all of a sudden, you know, the way he put it., like -  Poets should change, you know, the fuckin’ world!!" – “What are they doing?" – and I thought, "Well, rock n roll is the only thing that can do that now, you know, It’s like that..  At the end of La-Bas, you know, they talk about (how) there can’t be any more saints now  - ( (J.K.) Huysmans' work) - and, you know, the Modern Age cannot accept that anymore. But, I think there can be rock 'n roll stars, and poets can somehow tap into that in a certain way without really changing . Because.. It’s.. I mean, there are vast technical differences between writing a song lyric, to me, and writing a poem, but, in a sense, the vision and power and rage and all the strength of a poem to evoke people spiritually.. 

I  mean, I can’t get in..  I… just.. on every record… because I knew the power of, like, music well after my first album by the second album.. I wrote a song called “Barricades” – it was a political song, (and I’d never written political poems), simply because I knew how strong rock n roll was. I mean, the first album did much better than I ever expected. I had this big audience all of a sudden. I felt, you know, you had a duty to write some kind of political song (but within that, not to get caught up in sloganeering and stuff, like certain English punk rock groups [The Clash] ( - who’s work I really liked in certain ways, but in other ways I didn’t - until Allen (Ginsberg) set me straight!)

What I..The thing was that I…You know, it was, like, politics, it was not that at all, it was, 
like..to get that quality that that song has, which was "the inner register" (where he (Miller) speaks about Rimbaud’s work and about Van Gogh’s work), where there’s this hard quality, like, (I’ve always described it as this wind moving through your veins, like a fist tightening underneath your heart). It’s like there’s some kind of feeling of.. you know, where a total functional illiterate can understand these words, you know, or the music, and get the same out of it as you could in an intellectual sense.. and you were relying too much on head-games and not approaching the heart, you know. And I mean, (in) rock, it was already built-in. I mean, what’s a hook, other than…? I mean you feel a hook or you hear a certain counterpuntal phrase in classical music, which makes that, you know, that incredible rush happen, you know. And so, I mean, that’s what "the inner register" is about. I mean, it’s a heart feeling. And so it was already there with music, you know. Someone could come along and put, you know, some kind of lyrics which evoked in a way also, both through the head and through the heart...

to be continued

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

Allen Ginsberg - Montreal 1969 (Q & A - 2)

                                                            [Allen Ginsberg in 1969]

Q: (One of the most disturbing themes I think I see studying your poetry deals with tragedy…)
AG: One of the most persistent themes that deals with..?.. that's appearing..?, studying my poetry.. - yes?..

Q:…that deals with.. the amount of pain and agony that life represents - (and) the 
liberation that death brings..
AG:  (Oh, so, curiously enough, the pain that life represents, and…?)

Q: The liberation…

AG: The liberation of death.. That's specifically in (Jack) Kerouac’ s sonnet-like poem ["211th Chorus'] -  “Poor! - I wish I was free/ of that slaving meat wheel/ and safe in heaven dead",  yes..

                                 [Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) - (Kerouac had just died a week previous to this interview]  

Q: (Of course),  but, at any rate. Do you find that life offers you, much more. like, a disproportionately greater amount of pain, more than pleasure.? - And if so, what prevents you from commiting suicide?

AG: The only reason is I'm scared of committing suicide!   Do I find that the life has a disproportionate amount of pain more than pleasure, and if so, what’s preventing me from committing suicide? - It’s like the Ol’ Man River – “I’m tired of living and scared of dying”. Also I’m afraid I’ll commit suicide and jump into the arms of some kind of giant octopus God who’ll say, “Aha, you thought you’d got away, eh?” – The usual acid-head fantasy.  I’ve found, at the moment, melancholy, (a bit), but not real pain. I’m not lonely, really. The thing that really bugs me is physical pain (as for anyone). (If) I’m not able to get around that.. I wouldn’t want to be in a state of continuous physical pain. I think that is the one thing that would drive me out. Kerouac had that, I think, towards the end, almost continuously. He had drunk so much that his actual liver was… he had cirrhosis of the liver, and he literally, like, in the phrase, “rot-gut”, he drank so that his stomach hemorrhaged. He drank a hole in his stomach, so that must have been extremely painful.

So I’m very heavily influenced by his love, or his tenderness, or his image of me and his image of himself, and of the universe, his particular Buddhism. You know the Buddhist doctrine is dukkha dukkha , you know, trouble, trouble, samsara, illusion, maya, the world that we’re in is primarily a restless place by its very nature, because of the change of..
[tape ends here and then resumes]

                                                                          ["Dukkha, Dukkha"]


… (It was) inexplicable that when I got out of Columbia, I still couldn’t read the financial page, I literally couldn’t read the financial page, I’d never been trained. I didn’t know how banks operated. I had to go to Ezra Pound in getting some conception of, like.. like actual basic theory of economics – the functioning of banks – banks are the con game, which is a hallucinatory con-game, which is something that still hasn’t penetrated (except some of the Birch-ites know it, oddly)

Q: But they don’t want to tell anybody about it

AG: Well, they don’t know how, you see.

Q: I’m not sure if they want to anyway

AG: So then in English?...they hadn’t.. The English novel in the twentieth- century, which was heavy on Edith Wharton and (said) nothing of Henry Miller, and both of them were roughly of the same time - or Willa Cather say, who was of the same age-group as Miller was  taught as a classic, Willa Cather – and Miller was obliterated completely, mainly because, though, a few of the teachers , professors, had read Miller in Paris, or had . had a secret copy of Miller, at one time, in their possession, they literally were scared of the illegality of proposing Miller as reading to class

Q: Do you..were you… I don’t know. Were you ever involved in the political McCarthyism of the 'Fifties  or was anything…

AG: Well, not entirely. I joined.. You see, I was at school in the 'Forties

Q: Yeah

AG: – 1944-48

Q: Were you teaching during the 'Fifties?

AG: No

Q: Just writing

AG: No, well, when I got out of school I couldn’t get a job. In school, I joined the Young Communist-type, early Young Socialists League . Everybody was scared of doing that at this time. Signing anything was..was.. Not that people were scared of it politically, like (with) (Joe) McCarthy , it was more that it was considered bad form and kind of vulgar to join a group like that, political.. (you) don’t want to challenge the entire system (because that was considered quixotic and immature at Columbia).At the same time, (Percy Bysshe) Shelley was considered a punk poet and (Walt) Whitman was considered a creep and an eccentric rather than in the main line of American letters. And William Carlos Williams was considered a  provincial jerk. And more rigid prosody was considered (the) high class.  Like Yvor Winters or John Crowe Ransom, were considered super and ok.  Classic ideas – singing, Zen Buddhism, tantra, any magic(al) tradition, were considered creepy and outside of the pail of formal propriety. So the 'Fifties…let’s see, (19)49 I was in the bug house, (19)50 I was in.. washing dishes in Bickford's, (1951), I was working for National Opinion Research Center (which did surveys into opinion-making. You know, like what people think about Korea or something, for University of Chicago). And then, from there, I went into advertising, applying that to do market research, pick people’s brains. So for about two years I went into that and learn the technology of (the) brainwashing for Ipana toothpaste, to find out how it was done, and how you mould public opinion (how at first you sample public opinion, and then make a feedback advertising campaign - like “Does Ipana "make your teeth sparkle"? or does it "make you glamorous"? - and then they spent a lot of money to find out that people associated glamor with furs and associated sparkling with pearls - so they spent another million dollars on advertising campaigns, you know, to kind of make you see teeth sparkling. So….

 And then, (so) I told the people that I was working for that the work I was doing could be done by an IBM machine. So they assigned me to make a transfer, and I did, and I got myself… did myself out of a job, and went on unemployment, started writing (about (19)53.  And that was the last time I worked..

[Allen is introduced to a guest -  then continues]  - Hi  …let’s see McCarthy was around (19)51-2-3….and was like a heavy symbolic thing around. The trouble is the reactions to McCarthy were all very square. I mean everybody got scared when they saw somebody being a fancy-pants intellectual..nobody had the humor to get up and take out his prick in the Congressional Hearing, like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman do. I mean nobody had the... Everybody accepted the terms of the argument, you know, and was intimidated by being called “UnAmerican” or “Communist”.

I mean, people were afraid of being called "Communist". People were afraid of words, actually!  Actually, McCarthy, you know, was like a faggot type, in a way. I mean there was a lot of rumor about it in fairy circles at the time. But everybody was afraid to talk about it like that, you know. What it was, basically, was Time magazine, or actually I think what it was was the CIA had so completely taken over all the intellectuals and paid everybody and the student groups in the mid 'Fifties -  that everything was official short-hair culture, secretly financed by the CIA, (because the CIA had subsidized the Congress For Cultural Freedom  and was running that and their magazines and that was where most of the independent intellectuals were supposed to be – and they were also running the student groups, running the NSA, in America. So there was an official culture that was, like..

And that’s still.. In other words, the virulence that is with us now with the SDS is a bi-product of the suppression of all anarchistic humanistic populist tradition by the CIA in the 'Fifties, when there should have been an expansion of heart and an expansion of consciousness in the Academy and among the students then. That was all bought off, diverted, and re-channeled by CIA manipulation, so that when it finally came out, in the 'Sixties, it came out in a much much more violent (way).  

[Audio for the above can be heard here, (third segment), beginning at approximately sixty-two-and-a-half minutes in, concluding at the end of the third segment, and then continuing on the fourth segment, concluding at approximately seven-and-a-quarter minutes in on the fourth segment ] 

Mind, Mouth & Page - 19 (Williams Early Surrealism)

["Unidentified Man with Pan Flute" (Williams?) - from the William Carlos Williams papers at the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library]

Student: (William Carlos) Williams was involved in the early Surrealist movement wasn't he? Didn't he have a hand in some of the journals they did or the magazines that they put out?

AG: Well, he edited Contact magazine, which published the first novel by Nathaniel West, "The Dream Life of Balso Snell", which was a Surrealist novel, which took place in the.. I think it was the rectum of the Trojan Horse! - a joke Surrealist novel, a home-made Nathaniel West Surrealism (but, oddly, that was published in Contact, Williams' magazine). If he was in America, he must have known the people who were connected to the 1913 Armory Show, where all the Dada and Surrealist and Futurist and Constructivist and Cubist works were shown, hanging around the Stieglitz "American Place" gallery. There were several (other) art galleries there where all the European influences were coming in. He was a friend of Charles Sheeler, who was a painter, who was making use of composition..a Cubist-style composition, or collage, a little bit. So he was in contact with all of that. And, I think, probably, "Kora in Hell" reflects his artiness of that period.

But the point I was trying to make was he gave specific instructions for how to notice things, how to pick out detail, to chose the detail by which an object differs itself from objects of the same class (I think his phrasing is similar to that). And that's actually an old prose, or poetry, trick, for those who've studied (Gustave) Flaubert or (Guy) de Maupassant. I think there was some story of de Maupassant being instructed by his elder, (perhaps Flaubert?, I've forgotten), that he should be able to make a quick fast sketch of somebody who jumped out of the window, before he hit the ground. He should be able to grasp some detail that fast, and be able to write it down before the guy hit the ground - if he was a real writer. He should really practice and be able to get it that swiftly and that perceptively, being trained to look for detail.

Student: Would you agree with this statement.. it's something I read in (a) Canadian journal three or four years ago.. they made the statement that (Bob) Dylan was the first to really bring Surrealism to American music effectively and convincingly in his later albums..

AG: I think Surrealism in painting had already been absorbed by the advertising industry.

Student: I mean, Surrealism in writing..

AG: Probably. I guess you could say so.

Student: (But) so many others did..

AG: Who else did, actually?

Student: I think Henry Miller sort of did, somewhat..

AG: Yeah, but Henry Miller never got to be that widespread until (after) Dylan came..(well, practically the same time, actually). Dylan was singing "The motorcycle black madonna/ two wheeled gypsy queen/ And her silver-studded phantom.." (which is) straight out of "Howl" (straight out of Apollinaire, actually).

Student: Allen, don't you think (Jean) Cocteau did a number on Hollywood a lot earlier?

AG: Yeah, but it was probably in French and published only in French.

Student: No, in the movies, you know, from his plays

AG: Yeah.

Student: "Beauty and the Beast" (La Belle et La Bete)

AG: Yeah, so there was the introduction by Cocteau much earlier. I'd say World War II, and later.. Well, when was (Le Sang D'Un Poete) "The Blood of A Poet" of Cocteau?

Student: Forty-nine

AG: Forty-nine? - made in (nineteen) forty-nine?

Student: Twenty-nine.

AG: 'Twenty-nine and 'thirty. Yeah, but we're talking about writing - and there's some emphasis here on actually penetrating American consciousness...

[tape continues..]

Rimbaud (Allen's 1975 Naropa Class 2)

[Allen is in the middle of discussing Rimbaud's "Parade"] - ...interzone teacher gypsy sadist, well, there's little elements of modernity in it, you could say, if it were called "Hell's Angels", it would be immediately apparent what the subject is - (a) Sideshow, (a) Parade (and romanticizing maybe, the traveling-circus). That's a great line - "J'ai seul le clef de cette parade sauvage" - I alone have the key to the circus, parade. I alone have the key to the savage mental sideshow - "J'ai seul le clef de cette parade sauvage" [in the John Ashbery translation - "I alone know the plan of this savage sideshow"]. [Allen continues reading from "Illuminations" (Vies, section 3)] - ..."In a loft, where I was shut in.." [Ashbery renders this "In an attic where I was shut up.."] - "Dans un grenier où je fus enfermé.."..."I'm really from beyond the tomb and I'm not taking commission" ("Je suis réellement d'outre-tombe, et pas de commissions" - Ashbery translates this as "I'm really beyond the grave, and no more assignments, please") - "Je suis réellement d'outre-tombe, et pas de commissions".

Then a sense of fatigue, à la Whitman, set in - Départ - departure - Assez vu - seen enough. La vision s'est rencontrée à tous les airs. The vision was met within every air [Ashbery has "The vision has been encountered in all skies"] - Assez eu - had enough. Rumeurs des villes, le soir, et au soleil.. - Sounds of the city and in the evening and in the sun. [Allen gives line-by-line translation of this short poem] - And a nice one called "Drunken Morning" (Matinee d'Ivresse) - O my good, o my beautiful.. O my good, o my beautiful - O mon Bien! O mon Beau!.." - "Cela commença sous les rires des enfants..." - It began in the midst of children's laughter - Rire des enfants... - laughter of children... - We pronounce you method! - Nous t'affirmons, méthode- Voici le temps des Assassins - Now is the time of the Hashashin - Now is the time of the Assassins - Voici le temps des Assassins - Now is the time of the Assassins (which is such a great line, (it) killed everybody in the 20th Century, (that) a kid like that could say something so heart-stabbing. I think Henry Miller wrote a book on Rimbaud, (The) Time of the Assassins - and of course (William) Burroughs too draws a great deal from that - Time of the Assassins. Well, there's this whole book called "Illuminations", the last of which I'll read is called "City" ("Ville") - It's very odd, it's like getting high and seeing city, the megalopolis, the movement of the city.

Wordsworth did it in his Sonnet rhymes overlooking London.."...On Westminster Bridge..", but there's, like, a dislocation from time in Rimbaud, as there probably is.. He wrote a lot of this on grass, or hashish, and - it's a model for hashish writing by the way. If any of you are involved with that kind of experiment with writing - and everyone's tried a little - but the dissociation of thought you're familiar with (while writing with hashish or not), the dissociation you're all familiar with, (instructive) to see how someone fresh and virginal, a master of his own mind, sort of almost naively eager, watching his mind, handles it, and keeps it all solid. I'll give you the beginning in the French - "Je suis un éphémère et point trop mécontent citoyen d'une métropole crue moderne.." - I am an ephemeral and not too discontented citizen of a metropolis considered modern - [Allen continues reading "Ville" - in English translation] - Petty crime howling in the mud of the street ("un joli Crime piaulant dans la boue de la rue") - I've always liked that line - "Petty crime howling in the mud of the streets". Well, there's others called "Cities II" (Villes II). I'll just begin it. "What cities! this is a people for whom these.. "Ce sont des villes! C'est un peuple pour qui se sont montés ces Alleghanys et ces Libans de rêve!" - there's a kind of nice thing he did there..

Actually, "Illuminations" is one of his last works according to some biographies. (A) great biography of Rimbaud by Enid Starkie - Enid Starkie - Rimbaud. It is one of the most interesting literary biographies of any figure that has been written, in that Starkie was a scholar at Oxford, a lady (dyke, I think), who wrote a book on Petrus Borel, the "wolfman" (who was a great literary figure), a biography of Baudelaire (which is [was] out-of-print) and a (this) great biography of Rimbaud (and a follow-up book called "Rimbaud in Abyssinia", 'cause Rimbaud ran off to Africa at the end (when he was 2o or something), he went to Borneo!, he quit poetry and went to Borneo, joined the circus and went all over Transylvania! He did everything that every kid I imagine wanted to do, he went "on the road", actually.. finally wound up in Harrar, in Abyssinia, died of cancer in a hospital in Marseilles.. of syphilis

nursed by his sweet "square" sister.. apparently reading great poetry in his last... (so she said - she was a Catholic, and so sweet, heart-rending a way as...

Student: How old was he when he died?

AG: 34, I think. Quite young. ..he had a boyfriend.. (he had a real funny career) - he ran off.. he came to Paris, lived with (Paul) Verlaine.. first he came to Paris and Verlaine put him up in the house of some poet in the Latin Quarter and (he created) some great scandal by throwing bed bugs out the window! ((he was) just a kid, like a mad kid coming to Paris), and (so he) moved in with Verlaine for a while, but Madame Verlaine really got bugged, and then they ran off together to London, and taught English for their living, (and) then Mrs Verlaine said come back, so Verlaine came back. I think Rimbaud went back to his home and then they got together again - then Rimbaud wanted to leave Verlaine (because Verlaine was basically like a creepy old fag trying (to make a) 17-year-old beautiful boy, with the most beautiful face in Europe, actually angelic face). There's a photograph of.. oh, maybe you can see it from here - (when this) was done he was maybe 15 or so.. a really mean eye! -

Student: That's his catechism..

AG: I was going to say.. Is it..? catechism? He's all dressed up with that funny bow-tie. This face has launched a thousand books! - I was in love with Rimbaud. I was, in fact, physically, erotically, in love with Rimbaud when I was 18. It was my first.. "Voici le temps des Assassins" - that turned me on completely - and I went downtown to Times Square to meet a local criminal world with their "petty crime howling in the mud of the streets". So this is "Vagabonds", him and Verlaine wandering around - Pitiable brother!..

(pitoyable frère..)..[Allen reads the entire poem - "Vagabonds" from "Illuminations" in English translation] - moi, pressé de trouver le lieu et la formule.

Well, I'm going to quit Rimbaud for a while..

So Illuminations is worth reading. It's a handbook of purest imagery, mind poetry, a little bit seductive because you can start writing these imaginary poems - "Mystique"-like - Angels whirl their woolen robes in emerald and steel pastures ("les anges tournent leurs robes de laine dans les herbages d'acier et d'émeraude") - Well now amateurs trying that can't get that "emerald and steel" - and "woollen" robes, angels in "woollen" robes. So there's this mixture of a real practical concrete observation. (Ezra) Pound translated one very famous rhymed poem called "Vagabond" [actually "Au Cabaret-Vert"] and pointed it out as a great moment in French poetry, European poetry, when Rimbaud compared the arm of the waitress in a country tavern, serving him beer, blonde.. beer over-flowing.. plate of ham.. I forget the precise wording, but (he) compares the color of the ham to the color of her thick fat right arm - with a sprig of green parsley! . .so, it's this idyllic wandering in the countryside, going to country inns, sitting down, foaming beers, plate of ham, like the waitress' fat arm (color of the waitress's fat arm.. [ "Pink ham, white fat and a sprig/ Of garlic, and a great chope of foamy beer/ Gilt by the sun in that atmosphere."]

Student: Could you read it?

AG: It's too good to read really (right now) and (but) there are many great lines in it, [in "Illuminations"] - like "J'ai embrassé l'aube d'été - beginning of the poem, Dawn ("Aube") - I embrace the summer dawn - and ends.. a little visionary thing, like Spring, seen, as a little girl describing it - Above the road, near the laurel wood, I wrapped her up.. ("En haut de la route, près d'un bois de lauriers, je l'ai entourée..") - "Au réveil il était midi." ("Waking, it was noon").

So, these Illuminations are like prose-poems and a long consecutive prose-poem called "Un Saison d'Enfer" (A Season in Hell) is like a tiny novel written in prose-poetry, with a central chapter describing his relationship to Verlaine.

Student: Didn't one of them try to shoot the other one?

AG: Yeah, they were in Belgium, in Brussels or some place like that.

Rimbaud was trying to get away from the old creep and shot him in the hand! So Rimbaud turned him in to the police! and got sent out for two years, got very religious, Verlaine got very religious in jail. But then Rimbaud wrote a letter to.. a letter of Rimbaud to a friend, when they met again, in which Rimbaud says, we met again and within 20 minutes he'd abandoned all the Stations of the Cross and cursed the rosary and was all over my pants again! - something like that. So here's Rimbaud's version of Verlaine's.. It's called "Délires", it's from the beginning of "A Season in Hell", it's too classic not to enter your brain - the phrasing is so.. sweet-and-sour like. It's an autobiography, a spiritual autobiography, in which, in a sense, he renounces the world and goes off on his wanderings, beginning with a recollection of childhood enthusiasm and open-ness ("Jadis, si je me souviens bien...") - "Jadis" - What's "Jadis"? - in French, you can't get it in English. "Jadis" is like a old.. like someone would sing an old blues "Jadis" - "In old times", "in old days", "formerly", "once", "early", "when I was young", "Jadis", so you get all these old French diseurs, old French art-sceners, who sing songs about "Jadis", you know, with flowers and violins and springtime and I-got-wrinkles-all-over-my-brow. But he's now 17, saying, "Jadis, si je me souviens bien", Jadis - "formerly", "if I remember well", - if, je (I), me (me), souviens (remember) bien (well) - "Jadis, - if I me remember well - if I remember myself well, what (would be) the implication in the French grammar. "A long while ago", "If I remember my history well", "si je me souviens bien" - ma vie était un festin - my life was a festival -où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs - where opened all hearts.. where all the hearts were open "où tous les vins coulaient" "where all wines flowed. So here - "once if I remember well, my heart was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.."

[Allen continues reading from this poem..] - (Un soir..) "One evening, I seated Beauty on my knee.." - (Rimbaud) goes on.."Charity is the key.." - the key to the way out of his fix - and he goes on to try to trace his ancestry back to the "tattooed narrow-skulled savages" of early Europe, saying that (that) was the reason he was so messed up, and then there's, like, a history of Europe enslaved by the Machine Age and.. and then a little chapter on his relations with Verlaine, which I'll begin to give you the tone of the, again, laconic, sardonic, funny sardonic kid, (and) such intelligent psychological perception. [Allen begins reading] - "The foolish virgin" - Vierge folie (presumably Verlaine) and the Infernal bridegroom - L'Epoux Infernal.

[Allen reads enthusiastically from Rimbaud's Délires in English translation]

It's like a great novel in about 12 pages. It ends "One day perhaps he will miraculously disappear" - "Un jour peut-être il disparaîtra merveilleusement" - (which Rimbaud did - he miraculously disappeared to his circus..)

- Drôle de ménage! - funny menage, funny household (queer couple, if you will, as it's translated here) - Drôle de ménage - which is Rimbaud's comment on the whole scene - Drôle de ménage - then that goes into "Delirium", a section called "Delirium (The Alchemy of the Word), which is like the first Western assault on language to make it mantra. It's so important, actually, in terms of later theory that I want to read that too. I think I have the tape-recorder here..

- "À moi. L'histoire d'une de mes folies." - Now for me the history of one of my..follies [Allen continues to read from "Delirium (The Alchemy of the Word)"] - For a long time.. (Depuis longtemps...) - "Ah, je souffre, je crie, je souffre vraiment.." - (I suffer, I scream.. - this is Rimbaud's version of Verlaine complaining - "La vraie vie est absente" - real life is absent - "L'amour est à réinventer" (that line, "love must be reinvented", also, was like a dominant theme in all later French poetry) - "L'amour est à réinventer", love is to be reinvented - "refrains niais, rythmes naïfs" (naive refrains and artless rhythms) - "Je fixais des vertiges -

then he puts a little poem in here - Chanson de la Plus Haute Tour (Song of the Highest Tower), which sounds very pretty in French - "Qu'il vienne, qu'il vienne,/ Le temps dont on s'éprenne." - Then let it come, let it come, time.. "O may it come the time of love/ the time we'll be enamored of" (the time that will seize us, the time that will really take us) - "Qu'il vienne, qu'il vienne" - This is where he finally says "I love the desert.." ( "J'aimai le désert..")- "Elle est retrouvée ! Quoi ? l'éternité. C'est la mer mêlée. Au soleil- It's recovered? What? Eternity. It's the sea mixed up with the sunlight (a little poem there).

Finally we get to..oh somewhere in here, I can't find it - finally, Et le printemps m'a apporté l'affreux rire de l'idiot" "In Springtime brought me the idiot's frightful laughter" - So he cut out there, actually went back home, stayed with his mother, wrote Illuminations and left Paris forever - and Verlaine gathered all his poems about ten years later, assuming that Rimbaud was dead, or gone beyond communication, and published them, and they just sensationalized everyone in Paris and turned everybody on.

Student: Wasn't Rimbaud a smuggler?

AG: Yeah, he smuggled guns to Emperor Menelik.

[Allen turns abruptly next to a letter he'd recently received from an acolyte in New Jersey, reads sections from it]

- I read that to show that the spirit of Rimbaud is not dead at all. It's actually.. Rimbaud seems to be a complete turn-on catalyst to every poet in small town isolated, or big megapolis, staring at the city lights over the roof. It has been for decades in America.. since Louise Varèse translated "Season in Hell" and "Illuminations", which came out in the.. I guess, in the '40's, early '50's - Louise Varèse, who translated these, was the wife of Edgard Varèse, the composer (a modern composer who worked with pure sound, also), so, it's odd - the tradition of Rimbaud was continued in America by the highest of the avant-garde here. If you haven't read Rimbaud.. (it's sort of) the ABC, to begin with, I would say, for any kind of poetry, because it'll turn you on, in the sense of inspire erotic ethics in your mind and give you a sense of the magic that you can do in total isolation (and also a sense of the companionship, the sangha of poets, you know), and the possibility of total direct communication or outrageous clarity and frankness - and selfishness! - So Rimbaud, aged 15 to 17, oddly, is "the poet's poet" for the last hundred years.

Audio source:

http://www.archive.org/details/Allen_Ginsberg_class_The_history_of_poetry_part_15_June_1975_75P016

(beginning at approx 45 minutes - and continuing until approx 81 minutes in)