ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

The Many Loves of

Dobie Gillis (CBS, 1959-

1963)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Michael McClure

Gary Snyder

Allen Ginsberg

Jack Kerouac

ENGL 3370: Modern American

Poetry

Jack Kerouac’s fictional Gary Snyder:Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Allen Ginsberg, Howl (1955)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high satup smoking in the supernatural darkness ofcold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,who bared their brains to Heaven under the El andsaw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs

illuminated,who passed through universities with radiant cool eyeshallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedyamong the scholars of war,who were expelled from the academies for crazy &

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Allen Ginsberg, Howl (1955)

publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,burning their money in wastebaskets and listeningto the Terror through the wall,who got busted in their pubic beards returning throughLaredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentinein Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried theirtorsos night after nightwith dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, . . .

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Gary Snyder1930-

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

I am setting the Way Back Machine for 1975. A much publicized event at the University of Florida would bring some major figures from the Beat Movement--Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure--to campus to honor the great ecologist (and U of F faculty member) Howard T. Odum.

It was a fascinating week. I was teaching U of F's first-ever course on Native American Literature, and Snyder, who had made himself available for classroom visits, came to talk to my students. It was a wonderful 50 minutes, and Snyder struck me, as he had when I first saw him in Saint Cloud, Minnesota three years before, as just about the most fully-actualized human being I had ever met. (I should note that this was my LSD period, and I was attentive to such things.)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Michael McClure

Gary Snyder

Allen Ginsberg

Howard Odum

ENGL 3370: Modern American

Poetry

But the highlight of the week was a poetry reading to be held in a natural amphitheater around a small pond in the heart of the campus. For events such as these, a platform/stage was laid across the water, and Snyder, McClure, and Ginsberg would read from a podium placed upon it to the assembled multitude. A crowd of several hundred filled the outdoor theatre-in-the-round. (A couple of years later I remember hearing Norman Mailer and Hunter Thompson--who pleaded with the crowd to bring him any good drugs they had--read in the same location.)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

The reading would have been memorable in its own right (Snyder is the greatest reader of his own poetry I have ever heard in person)--even without the heckler. Wandering through the audience a very, very drunk guy in his twenties continued to harangue the poets on the pond. It seemed he wanted to be included on the program--wanted to read his poetry.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Finally, Snyder, who was acting as MC for the evening, took the mike and, in an effort to quiet the heckler (where was security?) offered to let him read one poem if that would shut him up. He accepted the offer and made an anything-but-straight-line for the stage over the pond.

The aspiring poet took the podium and pulled a large manuscript of his poetry out of his backpack (the size of the tome brought a moan from the audience) and threw it on podium. As he announced to the hostile crowd "I want to read you my first poem, "Getting a B*#@ J%*," he leaned forward, seeking to steady himself, on the podium, and it tumbled, the manuscript with it, into the pond.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

With barely a moment's hesitation, Gary Snyder, in what seems now over thirty years later a surreal moment, leaped down into the shallow pond and retrieved the manuscript. Soon after security arrived and hauled the drunk off, and the reading commenced without further incident.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

“The Pagan Poet”

“seeks to contact in a very special way an 'other' that was not within the human sphere, something that could not only be learned by venturing outside the orders and going into your own mind-wilderness . . ." (The Old Ways 36-37)

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

From ”Long Hair”

Once every year, the Deer catch human beings. They do various things which irresistibly draw men near them: each one selects a certain man. The deer shoots the man, who is then compelled to skin it and carry its meat home and eat it. Then the Deer is inside the man. He waits and hides in there. But the man doesn't know it. When enough Deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all at once. The men who don't have Deer in them will also be taken by surprise, and everything will change some. This is called "takeover from inside.”

a prose poem

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen

In the high seat, before-dawn dark,Polished hubs gleamAnd the shiny diesel stackWarms and fluttersUp the Tyler Road gradeTo the logging on Poorman creek.Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Changing Diapers

How intelligent he looks!on his backboth feet caught in my one handhis glance set sidewayson a piant poster of Geronimowith a Sharp’s repeating rifle by his knee.

I open, wipe, he doesn’t even noticenor do I.Baby legs and kneestoes like little peaslittle wrinkles, good-to-eat,eyes bright, shiny ears,chest swelling, drawing air,

No trouble, friend,you and me and Geronimoare men.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Song of the Taste Eating the living germs of grassesEating the ova of large birds the fleshy sweetness packedaround the sperm of swaying trees The muscles of the flanks and thighs ofsoft-voiced cowsthe bounce in the lamb’s leapthe swish in the ox’s tail Eating roots grown swollinside the soil Drawing on life of livingclustered points of light spunout of spacehidden in the grape.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Song of the Taste Eating each other’s seedeatingah, each other. Kissing the lover in the mouth of bread:lip to lip.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

By Frazier Creek Falls Standing up on lifted, folded rocklooking out and down-- The creek falls to a far valley,hills beyond thatfacing, half-forested, dry--clear skystrong wind in thestiff glittering needle clustersof the pine--their brownround trunk bodiesstraight, still;rustling trembling limbs and twigs listen. 

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

By Frazier Creek Falls This flowing landis all there is, forever We are itit sings through us-- We could live on this Earthwithout clothes or tools!

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

I Went Into the Maverick Bar

I went into the Maverick BarIn Farmington, New Mexico.And drank double shots of bourbonbacked with beer.My long hair was tucked up under a capI'd left the earring in the car. Two cowboys did horseplayby the pool tables,A waitress asked uswhere are you from?a country-and-western band began to play"We don't smoke Marijuana in Muskokie"And with the next song,a couple began to dance.

Merle Haggard

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

I Went Into the Maverick Bar

They held each other like in High School dancesin the fifties:I recalled when I worked in the woodsand the bars of Madras, OregonThat short-haired joy and roughness--America--your stupidityI could almost love you again. We left-onto the freeway shouldersunder the tough old stars--In the shadow of bluffsI came back to myself,To the real work, to"What is to be done."

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Prayer for the Great Family

Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day-and to her soil: rich, rare, and sweetin our minds so be it. Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leafand fine root-hairs; standing still through windand rain; their dance is in the nowin our minds, so be it. Gratitude to Air, bearing the roaring Swift and the silentOwl at dawn. Breath of our songclear spirit breezein our minds, so be it.

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Prayer for the Great Family

Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk;self-complete, brave, and awarein our minds, so be it. Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;holding or releasing; streaming through allour bodies salty seasin our minds, so be it. Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light throughtrunks of trees, through mists, warming caves wherebears and snakes sleep--he who wakes us--in our minds so be it

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

Prayer for the Great Family Gratitude to the Great Skywho holds billions of stars--and goes yet beyond that--beyond all powers, and thoughtsand yet is within us--Grandfather Space.The Mind is his Wife. so be it. after a Mohawk prayer

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

How Poetry Comes to Me

It comes blundering over theBoulders at night, it staysFrightened outside the Range of my campfireI go to meet it at theEdge of the light

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

What You Should Know to be a Poet all you can know about animals as persons.the names of trees and flowers and weeds.the names of stars and the movements of planetsand the moon.

your own six senses, with a watchful elegant mind.

at least one kind of traditional magic:divination, astrology, the book of changes, the tarot;

dreams.the illusory demons and the illusory shining gods.

kiss the ass of the devil and eat sh*t;f@#k his horny barbed cock,f@#k the hag,and all the celestial angelsand maidens perfum’d and golden--

ENGL 3370: Modern American Poetry

What You Should Know to be a Poet

& then love the human: wives husbands and friends

children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,the weirdness of television and advertising.

work long, dry hours of dull work swallowed and acceptedand lived with and finally lovd. exhaustion,

hunger, rest.

the wild freedom of the dance, extasysilent solitary illumination, entasy

real danger. gambles and the edge of death.