A little bit of history, brought to us, courtesy of the Lyn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Picture Archives. In 1969, at a reading with his father, Louis Ginsberg, in Miami's Marine Stadium, Allen's microphone was egregiously and unceremonially cut-off. Manny Costa, the stadium manager (along with Paul Andrews, assistant city manager) interrupted and summarily curtailed the reading, arbitrarily declaring it to be "obscene". Allen took the incident to court, arguing that the action violated his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. The Judge, Judge Carl Clyde Atkins, ruled unequivocally in his favor:
"While Costa's actions may have been taken with the best of motives, they were clearly legally impermissible. Freedom of expression is a sacred constitutional right which the highest court in the land has constantly protected…Costa's action in restraining the remainder of Ginsberg's poetry reading was based on a determination which fell far short of the procedures required…It is true that obscenity is not entitled to the protection of the First Amendment but the fact of obscenity must be determined by proper judicial authority at an adversary hearing. Parenthetically, after a review of a tape recording of the performance which was in substantial conformity with the published poetry that Ginsberg was reading from, I do not find it obscene within the constitutional standards laid down by the Supreme Court…" Tobias Simon [shown on film] [representing Allen Ginsberg]: Many persons have contacted me offering money and support in the Ginsberg affair. Not a single city official, or state, or county law agency has expressed any concern in redressing the injuries suffered by the principals in this matter. I have therefore today written to the new United States District Attorney, Mr (Robert W) Rust, demanding a federal grand jury investigation, looking to federal indictments and ultimate punishments for those responsible for the outrages perpetrated in this matter. Now we were quite pleased, of course, with the decision of Judge Atkins permitting the resumption of the poetry reading of Allen Ginsberg and his father Louis Ginsberg. But there is another matter that I wanted to bring to your attention today. We believe that law amd order principles should be even-handedly applied, regardless of color or status. It is equally criminal to assault a man's rights as it is to assault his person. Officials of the city of Miami have deprived some of the citizens of their rights, thereby diminishing liberty for all of us. [next, approximately one minute in, and for approximately forty seconds, silent footage of Allen, then….] AG: The moment they turned off the microphones, I was pronouncing.. comparing the police bureaucracy in Prague and in Miami in its repressiveness [reading the poem "Kral Majales"] Interviewer: Did you use profanity in that.. AG: Not in that description, no. I had used four-letter words as part of the poetry that was read fifteen or twenty minutes earlier.. The mic was turned off on a poem exorcising the Pentagon, so I'll begin with that poem. Interviewer: And read it in its entirety AG: Read it in its entirety and then just go on through.. I'm sure the stuff I'll read is.. if anybody has a dirty mind and is looking for dirtiness, anything I read tonight will be just as dirty in their eyes as what I read last time but actually it's all not dirty really, it's just, like "in the eyes of the beholder". In other words, the people who turned off the microphone, it seems to me, have a kind of sex-fiend-ishness of their own. I mean, they're preoccupied with dirty words, and they're calling words dirty, so I guess it's their..their dirtiness that's concerned here, trying to lay it out on me. I'm just writing what goes through my mind and I'm sure what goes through my mind is not any different than what goes through your mind.
A brief respite from the ballads today (but more song!) - and more anon! - one recent You Tube-posted-video that we missed (from a few weeks back, from April of this year) - spry nonagenarian Lawrence Ferlinghetti attempting William Blake's joyous"The Nurse's Song" ("and all the hills echo-ed"), and, recollecting fondly the genius of his dear friend Allen. This short film by Mauro Aprile Zanetti - "Fernanda Pivano - Complice La Notte" begins with discussion and appreciation of Allen's great Italian translator, Fernanda Pivano, before moving in to more general discussion of the Beats and of Allen and, in particular, Allen's rendition of Blake's lyric. (Lawrence goes searching for the text, writes it out (for the interviewer's benefit), and then follows with his own croaky spirited rendition).
[Fernanda Pivano (1917-2009)] Interviewer: The Club Tenco [in Lecco] is going to have a night on May 13 dedicated to Fernanda Pivano, and here we are to ask you. She was, and she's considered as the muse by the Italian musicians, singer-songwriters that know about the Beat Generation, because she translated (them). So can you tell me how..when did you meet Fernanda? when was it? LF: Oh I met Fernanda when she came to San Francisco with her husband ,who was the…I think he was the designer for the original Olivetti typewriter. Ettore Sottsass was very sick and he came here to go to the hospital in Stanford, down in Palo Alto, and so 'Nanda came with him of course, and she came and visited me on Potrero Hill where I was living and I think it was just after Howl, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" was published (because I have a photo of her reading Howl, and I think it's a photo of her reading the first copy of Howl. It would have been 1956). She was enamoured of Allen Ginsberg but not really very much interested in the other Beats. She wasn't at all interested in my poetry, for instance. She lovedGregory Corso, but it was really Allen who turned her on. And it wasn't Allen as a singer (Allen hadn't become a singer and a chanter until much later in his career.In 1956, when "Howl" was published, he just recited his poems. There was no music. It was only much later when he became attracted to Indian music and Ravi Shankarcame to this country, and Allen took up doing his poems with the harmonium (a harmonium was a squeeze-box), and it was very beautiful some times what he did. Interviewer: So you met her in that moment? LF: Yeah, in 1956, in San Francisco. Interviewer: And what happened later? LF: I was in contact with her over the years but.. and I know that I was aware that she became known as the authority for poetry for the Beat poets in Italy. So, anything she said about the Beat Generation was taken as authentic and true, whereas I felt that many things she said about the Beats was not true, things that she'd imagined (things that she said about me that were totally imaginary). And I think she had a lot to say about Gregory Corso - and about (Jack) Kerouac (she liked Kerouac very much, it was more Kerouac's novels than his poetry that 'Nanda liked, Kerouac'sOn the Roadwas her interest, Kerouac was making the connection with American jazz, so that's the connection with the musicians in Italy). He was doing always with a Buddhist theme, like his chanting and using the harmonium, it usually sounded like Buddhist chants. And he used to sing William Blake. The Songs of Innocence bu William Blake. Allen Ginsberg would sing them to the harmonium and they were.. It was beautiful. - "Tyger, tyger, burning bright, /In the forest of the night/What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry" Interviewer; So Ginsberg used to play harmonium and (be) reading these poems..from William Blake? LF: Yes. And then he would do.. more and more he would do his poems with various kinds of sound, various music. Like, he had a poem called "Don't smoke" - "Don't smoke, Don't smoke, Don't smoke, Don't smoke" - and he would do it with he drums - "Don't smoke, Don't smoke, Don't smoke.." It went on like that forever. [LF begins singing, attempting to recall William Blake's "Nurses Song" from memory] "When the voices of children are heard in the land.." - That's William Blake - I wish I had the harmonium! - "When the voices of children are heard in the land, and…." - "My heart is at rest within my breast..and everything else is still" - "When the voices of children are heard in the land and everything else is still" - "And all the hills echo-ed" [LF & Interviewer browse through Lawrence's library for the text] LF: What about down the lower left? - I can't see anymore. Interviewer: It's a Beat book? LF: Yeah Interviewer: Ah, it's a collection [continues searching]… The Essential Neruda,….Coney Island of the Mind(oh, the Italian version!)... So, under "Blake", there is… in Italian.. poetry.. "Balthus".. "Barzelleta".. "Belgian".. "Ballad of the Ancient and Moderns".. "Beat poets"… [Interviewer gives up on the printed source] - Oh, on-line I can find it very easily. [Lawrence writes out the poem] Interviewer: Well, well, go and play till the light fades away ..and ..then go home to bed..The little ones.. LF "and all the hills echo-ed" - That's it, right? Interviewer: Yeah, you got it. Faster than the printer! LF: Okay [Lawrence attempts to read the poem] - Allen had a deep voice. "When voices of children are heard on the green,/And laughing is heard on the hill/My heart is at rest within my breast,/And everything else is still./"Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down/ And the dews of night arise/Come come leave off play, and let us away/Till the morning appears in the skies"./"No, no, let us play, for it is yet day/And we cannot go to sleep/Besides, in the sky the little birds fly/ And the hills are all covered with sheep."/"Well, well, go and play till the light fades away/And then go home to bed."/The little onesleap'd/and shouted and laugh'd/And all the hills echo-ed" - "an all..and all the hills echo-ed..and all the hills echo-ed..and all the hills echoed, all the hills echoed, all the hills echo-ed - "and all the hills echo-ed' - (Allen would get the whole audience singing this!) - this chorus - "And all the hills echo-ed, "And all the hills echoed, And all the hills echoed, And all the hills echo-ed"….
AG: Then there's another one that had a very… a ballad called "The Wee Wee Man", that had very pretty fairy imagery. You know, like, as you will find in Helen Adam's later ballads, there's that..like as "the bridge of golden beams" (sic). There is.. Well there is some combination of humor and delicacy, just like in Shakespeare.
A little dwarf, a "wee wee man", stops a Lady and takes her to her castle - "On we left, and on we rode/Till we came to yon bonny hall/ The roof was of the beaten gold/Of gleaming crystal was the wall/When we came to the door of gold/The pipes within did whistle and play/But 'ere the tune of it was told/My wee wee man was clean away" -
That's really amazing - The roof was of the beaten gold /Of gleaming crystal was the wall/When we came to the door of gold/ The pipes within did whistle and play" - A funny syncopation,but also a funny eerie music conjored up - "The pipers within did whistle and play' - So that's "The Wee Wee Man" [Audio for the above can be heardhere, beginning at approximately twenty-nine-and-a-half-minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-and-a-half minutes in]
AG: There are some other ballads I'd like to cover (because we didn't have a really good one with incest in it, or a stanza with incest), so there is "Brown Robyn" - (the) famous series, (the) "Brown Robyn" series - I'm working from the Penguin Book of Ballads by Geoffrey Grigson - and, maybe, if anybody has any other ballad books, there's variants of it. It's called (here) "Brown Robyn's Confession" - "It fell upon a Wadensday/Brown Robyn's men went to sea;/But they saw neither moon nor sun/Nor starlight with their e'e./"We'll cast kevels us amang;/ See where the man may be" -/The kevel fell on Brown Robyn,/The master-man was hee" - (who cast lots) - "It is nae wonder", said Brown Robyn,/Altho I dinna thrive;/For wi' my mother I had twa bairns/And wi' my sister five"- (with my mother I had two kids and with my sister five!) - So they throw him into the ocean - but he floats! - And he was in there three hours and Mary came, the "Blessed Lady" came to him, with Christ, and so she asked him.. "Will ye gang to your men again,/Or will ye gang wi' me?/Will ye gang to the high heavens,/Wi' my dear son and me?" - "I winna gang to my men again,/For they would be feared at mee;/But I woud gang to the high heavens,/With thy dear son and thee"." - So he goes to heaven - with incest! - that's pretty good! - The psychology of the ballads is not simple-minded at all. They're real smart. Whatever folk wisdom is there. Whatever common human insight is there. But, imagine, like, it's really outrageous, (the) idea that, "..nae wonder, said Brown Robyn,/Altho' I dinna thrive;/For wi' my mother I had twa bairns/And wi' my sister five" Student: What year was that written in? AG: I don't know. It's an early ballad, I take it (because it's early in the book). I think most of the ballads are.. the ballad years are apparently… most of the ballad years are a little bit pre-Shakesperean, (they'd be) about a hundred years before Shakespeare and up to Shakespeare's time, I think [Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately twenty-six-and-three-quarterminutes in and concluding at approximately twenty-nine-and-a-half minutes in]
