Damn, Fred,
You force me from my barely awake self, shaking with lack of sleep but need
to Do Errands On Saturday before the hordes descend in their gas-guzzling
suv's........etc.
Another damn, Fred. You force me to acknowledge that Yes, one can like a
poem and dislike the person of the poem.
Not a damn, Fred. This one was sparer than the others, wasn't it? If I'm
right, tell me why bcuz I'm too asleep to want to figure it out plus you're
the one who wrote it and you may have been aware of your sparerness. If
it's not sparer, then I wonder why I felt it was. You can tell me that,
too, for the same reason I said before.
Jeez, Fred. Whatup with the east coast of this country today? I mean we're
gittin that spring rain thing for days now. Same in DC? Nice that it's way
mild, tho.
o.k. Please write me back bcuz I wanna know what you think about your
stuff. And try to th'ow some philosophical stuff in there, too. And mebbe
a fairy tale or two. oh, and a funny story. I am SO needy this morning!
The Handicapper General (from short story "Harrison Bergeron" by Vonnegut,
1961) aka Judy
PS And DAMN US! You wanna tinker, then you go the hell ahead and tinker,
damn it!!!!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2005 7:54 AM
Subject: revised "Fiftieth Anniversary"
Thought this was done; then, in the yellow morning ... Will spare you any
further tinkering.
On the Fiftieth Anniversary of Ginsberg’s “Howl”
First public
reading, Six Gallery, San Francisco
October 7, 1955
No lasting shame
accrues to his later
vanity – the water glass,
the microphone and cushion placed
just so or else he wouldn’t read.
The consumption
of Orlovsky, the playing
Goebbels to a drunk Tibetan Hitler
might stop the conversation
if there were any; but
with fifty useful pages in eight hundred,
there isn’t.
Incredibly, never bourgeois; slept anywhere.
Few levitate the Pentagon, he at least tried.
A month from death, he said:
“I thought I’d be afraid, but I’m EXHILIRATED!”
And, to have been there …
Being born too late
is no excuse, is actually false:
everybody was there!
Kerouac passing the hat
and bottles and yelling “Go!
Go!”, Creeley
off to one side smiling – less
importantly present
than the familiar, beetle-browed,
mustachioed, sickly, peering,
unnoticed figure heard
laughing twice that evening.
The first laugh was unpleasant
as he thought, This is the Slave
as poet, inciting
his insincere revolt.
The second laugh was joyous,
embodying the mood of the crowd – seeing
in this Jew “shaking with shame”
the Overman, the revaluator of values.
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