Gossamurmur (12 page)
Women’s Poetry (male fantasies about women)
[I]t was men who determined the themes that were allowed in women’s poetry. They decided what types of poetry to preserve; what types of poetry they would write in the voices of women, thereby setting the parameters within which women could write; and what types of poetry were expected of concubines and courtesans (who were obliged to write such poetry out of economic necessity). Such poetry tends to emphasize certain male fantasies about women, centered on the woman as longing for an absent lover. It seems clear that independent-minded women must have written outside the limitations imposed by male expectations, but precious little of that work has survived.
—David Hinton, “Women’s Poetry in Ancient China,”
from
Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology
(Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008)
A classic case of Decider mentality.
AUDIO LINES OF POETRY
Lines 11–19 on
page 88
, lines 2, 6–7, 19 on
page 89
, lines 1–2 on
page 90
, line 9 on
page 91
, line 9 on
page 92
, from the Naropa University Audio Archive Collection. All these lines are spoken/read by the poets themselves and have been transcribed from the tapes. Discrepancies might occur in printed versions of the poems.
“a sweeping revision” and “embers of the rain” from “Unctuous Platitudes,” by John Ashbery
“the judge was the wind let the old things take over” from “Son of the Petrarch,” by John Ashbery
“Truancy of will where she let it fall,” “Door unlocked after the wounding,” and “Thinking is not worrying” from “Lily,” by Barbara Guest
“I made this book of sonnets” and “I, an island, sail” from
The Sonnets
, by Ted Berrigan
“I’m so in love with art that it will get me into the next world” from “It Springs on You,” by Robin Blaser
“First, there were the FIRST PEOPLE” and “where human feet can squish the living daylights out of cowering anemone” from “In Memoriam,” by Joanne Kyger
“I met Death—he was a sportsman” from “Cole’s Island,” Charles Olson
“the beauties of the Levant when we had them” and “not all the works of Mozart worth one human life” from
Revolutionary Letters
, by Diane di Prima
“a place so hip even the rats doing the hustle” and “think of what needs to be what needs to be” from “Afro-American Lyric,” by Amiri Baraka
“in this wilderness of stone” from “Blues Variations,” by Lorenzo Thomas
For further listening, access Archive.org and scroll down to “Naropa,” or access the generous PennSound web site and portal.
Anne Waldman is the author of more than forty books including the seminal
Fast Speaking Woman
, published by City Lights in 1975, and has concentrated on the long poem as a cultural intervention with such projects as
Marriage: A Sentence
,
Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble
, and
Manatee/Humanity
(all three books published by Penguin Poets), as well as the antiwar feminist epic
The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the
Mechanism of Concealment,
published by Coffee House Press, and winner of the 2012 PEN Center USA Award for Poetry. She has been associated with the innovative wings of the Beat, Black Mountain, and New York School literary movements. She brings a remarkable intensity of her own into highly original “modal structures” of language and montage both written and performed. Deemed a “countercultural giant” by
Publishers Weekly
, Anne Waldman is also a performer, professor, editor, librettist, and cultural activist. Her numerous anthologies include
Nice To See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan, The Beat Book,
and the coedited collections
The Angel Hair Anthology
,
Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action,
and
Beats at Naropa.
She has also collaborated with a number of visual artists, including Joe Brainard, Elizabeth Murray, George Schneeman, Richard Tuttle, Donna Dennis, Noah Saterstrom, and Pat Steir, as well as dancer/choreographer Douglas Dunn, musicians Steven Taylor and Ambrose Bye, writer/movie director Ed Bowes, and theater director Judith Malina. Her play
Red Noir
was produced by the Living Theatre in New York City in 2010. She is a cofounder with Allen Ginsberg of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics MFA program, and the artistic director of its Summer Writing Program at Naropa University, the first Buddhist-inspired school in the West. She has traveled for the U.S. State Department lecturing at Muslim colleges in Kerala, and she worked with schoolchildren in Marrakech, Morocco, in the spring of 2011 and 2012. Waldman is a recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, and is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her extensive historical literary, art, and audio/video archive resides at the Hatcher Graduate Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. See also fastspeakingmusic.com and the official web site www.annewaldman.org.
Penguin Poets
JOHN ASHBERY
Selected Poems
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
TED BERRIGAN
The Sonnets
LAUREN BERRY
The Lifting Dress
JOE BONOMO
Installations
PHILIP BOOTH
Selves
JULIANNE BUCHSBAUM
The Apothecary’s Heir
JIM CARROLL
Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems
Living at the Movies
Void of Course
ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING
Genius Loci
Rope
CARL DENNIS
Callings
New and Selected Poems 1974–2004
Practical Gods
Ranking the Wishes
Unknown Friends
DIANE DI PRIMA
Loba
STUART DISCHELL
Backwards Days
Dig Safe
STEPHEN DOBYNS
Velocities: New and Selected Poems, 1966–1992
EDWARD DORN
Way More West: New and Selected Poems
ROGER FANNING
The Middle Ages
ADAM FOULDS
The Broken Word
CARRIE FOUNTAIN
Burn Lake
AMY GERSTLER
Crown of Weeds: Poems
Dearest Creature
Ghost Girl
Medicine
Nerve Storm
EUGENE GLORIA
Drivers at the Short-Time Motel
Hoodlum Birds
My Favorite Warlord
DEBORA GREGER
By Herself
Desert Fathers, Uranium Daughters
God
Men, Women, and Ghosts
Western Art
TERRANCE HAYES
Hip Logic
Lighthead
Wind in a Box
ROBERT HUNTER
Sentinel and Other Poems
MARY KARR
Viper Rum
WILLIAM KECKLER
Sanskrit of the Body
JACK KEROUAC
Book of Sketches
Book of Blues
Book of Haikus
JOANNA KLINK
Circadian
Raptus
JOANNE KYGER
As Ever: Selected Poems
ANN LAUTERBACH
Hum
If in Time: Selected Poems, 1975–2000
On a Stair
Or to Begin Again
CORINNE LEE
PYX
PHILLIS LEVIN
May Day
Mercury
WILLIAM LOGAN
Macbeth in Venice
Madame X
Strange Flesh
The Whispering Gallery
ADRIAN MATEJKA
Mixology
MICHAEL MCCLURE
Huge Dreams: San Francisco and Beat Poems
DAVID MELTZER
David’s Copy: The Selected Poems of David Meltzer
ROBERT MORGAN
Terroir
CAROL MUSKE-DUKES
An Octave above Thunder
Red Trousseau
Twin Cities
ALICE NOTLEY
Culture of One
The Descent of Alette
Disobedience
In the Pines
Mysteries of Small Houses
LAWRENCE RAAB
The History of Forgetting
Visible Signs: New and Selected Poems
BARBARA RAS
The Last Skin
One Hidden Stuff
MICHAEL ROBBINS
Alien vs. Predator
PATTIANN ROGERS
Generations
Wayfare
WILLIAM STOBB
Absentia
Nervous Systems
TRYFON TOLIDES
An Almost Pure Empty Walking
ANNE WALDMAN
Gossamurmur
Kill or Cure
Manatee/Humanity
Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble
JAMES WELCH
Riding the Earthboy 40
PHILIP WHALEN
Overtime: Selected Poems
ROBERT WRIGLEY
Anatomy of Melancholy and Other Poems
Beautiful Country
Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems
Lives of the Animals
Reign of Snakes
MARK YAKICH
The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine
Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross
JOHN YAU
Borrowed Love Poems
Paradiso Diaspora
Click here
for more titles by this author
BOOKS, CHAPBOOKS, AND COLLABORATIONS BY ANNE WALDMAN
On the Wing
O My Life!
Giant Night
Baby Breakdown
Memorial Day
(with Ted Berrigan)
No Hassles
The West Indies Poems
Life Notes: Selected Poems
Self Portrait
(with Joe Brainard)
Sun the Blonde Out
Fast Speaking Woman
Journals & Dreams
Shaman/Shamane
Sphinxeries
(with Denyse Du Roi)
Polar Ode
(with Eileen Myles)
Countries
(with Reed Bye)
Cabin
First Baby Poems
