Watch Laurie Anderson’s Hypnotic Harvard Lecture Series on Poetry, Meditation, Death, New York & More

These days the term mul­ti­me­dia sounds thor­ough­ly passé, like the apoth­e­o­sis of the 1990s tech­no-cul­tur­al buzz­word. But per­haps it also refers to a dimen­sion of art first opened in that era, of a kind in which trend-chasers dab­bled but whose poten­tial they rarely both­ered to prop­er­ly explore. But hav­ing estab­lished her­self as a for­mal­ly and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dar­ing artist long before the 1990s, Lau­rie Ander­son was ide­al­ly placed to inhab­it the mul­ti­me­dia era. In a way, she’s con­tin­ued to inhab­it it ever since, con­tin­u­al­ly press­ing new audio­vi­su­al plat­forms into the ser­vice of her sig­na­ture qual­i­ties of expres­sion: con­tem­pla­tive, artic­u­late, high­ly digres­sive, and final­ly hyp­not­ic.

Ander­son­’s com­mit­ment to this enter­prise has brought her no few hon­ors. Biogra­phies often men­tion her time as NASA’s first (and, it seems, last) artist-in-res­i­dence; more recent­ly, she was named Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s 2021 Charles Eliot Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor of Poet­ry. This posi­tion entails the deliv­ery of the Charles Eliot Nor­ton Lec­ture, a series meant to deal with poet­ry “in the broad­est sense,” encom­pass­ing “all poet­ic expres­sion in lan­guage, music, or the fine arts.”

Nor­ton lec­tur­ers pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture include Leonard Bern­stein, Her­bie Han­cock, and Jorge Luis Borges. “I am pret­ty sure that the Nor­ton com­mit­tee at Har­vard made an enor­mous mis­take when they asked me to do this lec­ture series,” Ander­son told the Har­vard Gazette, “and it was real­ly my own sense of the absurd that made me want to say yes.”

Few could seri­ous­ly have doubt­ed Ander­son­’s abil­i­ty to rise to the occa­sion. She did, how­ev­er, face a unique chal­lenge in the his­to­ry of the Nor­ton Lec­tures: deliv­er­ing them on Zoom, that now-ubiq­ui­tous video-con­fer­enc­ing appli­ca­tion of the COVID-19 era. Despite belong­ing to a gen­er­a­tion not all of whose mem­bers demon­strate great pro­fi­cien­cy with such tech­nolo­gies, Ander­son her­self appears to have tak­en to Zoom like the prover­bial duck to water. Such, at least, is the impres­sion giv­en by “Spend­ing the War With­out You: Vir­tu­al Back­grounds,” her six-part Nor­ton Lec­ture series now avail­able to watch on Youtube. Its sub­ti­tle hints at one fea­ture of Zoom of which she makes rich use — but hard­ly the only fea­ture.

Through­out “Spend­ing the War With­out You,” Ander­son also super­im­pos­es a vari­ety of vir­tu­al faces over her own: Sig­mund Freud, Gertrude Stein, Loni Ander­son, and even her musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tor Bri­an Eno. This sort of thing would­n’t have been pos­si­ble even in the long­time fan­ta­sy she cites as an inspi­ra­tion for these lec­tures: host­ing a radio show at 4:00 a.m., “a time when real­i­ty and dreams just sort of merge and it’s hard to tell the dif­fer­ence between them.” That’s just the right head­space in which to lis­ten to Ander­son make her ele­gant­ly spaced-out way through such top­ics as her life in New York, tai chi and med­i­ta­tion, lan­guage as a virus, the death of John Lennon, the cul­ture of the inter­net, Cather­ine the Great, the com­bi­na­tion of sound and image, The Wind in the Wil­lows, non-fun­gi­ble tokens, and Amer­i­can cheese. Tak­ing advan­tage of her dig­i­tal medi­um, she also plays the vio­lin, explores vir­tu­al realms, and dances along­side her younger self.

The col­li­sion of all these ele­ments feels not unlike Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell, Nam June Paik’s tele­vi­sion broad­cast of New Year’s Day 1984. Ander­son also took part in that project, shar­ing with Paik an artis­tic will­ing­ness to embrace new media. “I’ve almost always been a wire­head,” she says in these lec­tures 38 years lat­er. “But it’s become a night­mare in some ways, with peo­ple attached now to their devices, with a death grip on their phones. At the same time, it’s the same machine that cre­at­ed celebri­ty cul­ture.” Look­ing back on a “humil­i­at­ing” clip of her­self and Peter Gabriel per­form­ing on Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell, she recalls her state of mind dur­ing the com­mer­cial and tech­no­log­i­cal onrush of the 1980s: “Every­thing was mov­ing fast, and I just was­n’t think­ing. That’s my excuse, any­way.” See the full lec­ture series here, or up top. The lec­tures will be added to our col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lau­rie Ander­son Read from The Tibetan Book of the Dead on New Album Songs from the Bar­do

Lau­rie Ander­son Intro­duces Her Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Instal­la­tion That Lets You Fly Mag­i­cal­ly Through Sto­ries

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Witness Maya Angelou & James Baldwin’s Close Friendship in a TV Interview from 1975

In the mid-50s, Maya Angelou accept­ed a role as a cho­rus mem­ber in an inter­na­tion­al tour­ing pro­duc­tion of the opera, Por­gy and Bess:

I want­ed to trav­el, to try to speak oth­er lan­guages, to see the cities I had read about all my life, but most impor­tant, I want­ed to be with a large, friend­ly group of Black peo­ple who sang so glo­ri­ous­ly and lived with such pas­sion.

On a stopover in Paris, she met James Bald­win, who she remem­bered as “small and hot (with) the move­ments of a dancer.”

The two shared a love of poet­ry and the arts, a deep curios­i­ty about life, and a pas­sion­ate com­mit­ment to Black rights and cul­ture. They forged a con­nec­tion that would last the rest of their lives.

In 1968, when Angelou despaired over the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King Jr., Bald­win did what he could to lift her spir­its, includ­ing escort­ing her to a din­ner par­ty where she cap­ti­vat­ed the oth­er guests with her anec­do­tal sto­ry­telling, paving a path to her cel­e­brat­ed first mem­oir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

The book wouldn’t have been writ­ten, how­ev­er, with­out some dis­creet behind-the-scenes med­dling by Bald­win.

Angelou con­sid­ered her­self a poet and a play­wright, and resist­ed repeat­ed attempts by fel­low din­ner par­ty guest, Ran­dom House edi­tor Robert Loomis, to secure her auto­bi­og­ra­phy.

As Angelou lat­er dis­cov­ered, Bald­win coun­seled Loomis that a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy would pro­duce the desired result. His dear friend might not con­ceive of her­self as a mem­oirist, but would almost assured­ly respond to reverse psy­chol­o­gy, for instance, a state­ment that no auto­bi­og­ra­phy could com­pete as lit­er­a­ture.

As Angelou recalled:

I said, ‘Well, hmmm, maybe I’ll try it.’ The truth is that (Loomis) had talked to James Bald­win, my broth­er friend, and Jim­my told him that ‘if you want Maya Angelou to do some­thing, tell her she can’t do it.’

“This tes­ti­mo­ny from a Black sis­ter marks the begin­ning of a new era in the minds and hearts and lives of all Black men and women,” Bald­win enthused upon its pub­li­ca­tion.

They became sib­lings of affin­i­ty. Wit­ness their easy rap­port on the 1975 episode of Assign­ment Amer­i­ca, above.

Every episode cen­tered on some­one who had made an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the ideas and issues of Amer­i­ca, and Angelou, who alter­nat­ed host­ing duties with psy­cho-his­to­ri­an Doris Kearns Good­win, colum­nist George Will, and oral his­to­ri­an Studs Terkel, land­ed an extreme­ly wor­thy sub­ject in Bald­win.

Their friend­ship made good on the promise of her hopes for that Euro­pean tour of Por­gy and Bess.

Their can­did dis­cus­sion cov­ers a lot of over­lap­ping ground: love, death, race, aging, sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, suc­cess, writ­ing, and the close­ness of Baldwin’s fam­i­ly — whom Angelou adored.

Those of us in the gen­er­a­tions who came after, who became acquaint­ed with Angelou, the com­mand­ing, supreme­ly dig­ni­fied elder stateswoman, com­mand­ing more author­i­ty and respect than any offi­cial Poet Lau­re­ate, may be sur­prised to see her MO as inter­view­er, gig­gling and teas­ing, func­tion­ing as the cho­rus in a room where code switch­ing is most def­i­nite­ly not a thing:

Bald­win: I think…the only way to live is know­ing you’re going to die. If you’re afraid to die, you’ll nev­er be able to live. 

Angelou: Hey, hey!

Bald­win: You know. 

Angelou: Hey, hey.

Bald­win: And nobody knows any­thing about that. 

Angelou: Yes, yes, yes.

She pos­es great ques­tions, and lis­tens with­out inter­rupt­ing to her friend’s thought­ful­ly com­posed answers, for instance, his descrip­tion of his family’s response to his deci­sion to base him­self in France, far from their Harlem home:

Sweet­heart, you have to under­stand, um, you have to under­stand what hap­pens to my moth­er’s tele­phone when I’m in town. Peo­ple will call up and say what they will do to me. It does­n’t make me shut up. You, you also got­ta remem­ber that I’ve been writ­ing, after all, between assas­si­na­tions. If you were my moth­er or my broth­er, you would think, who’s next?

There’s a lot of food for thought in that reply. The famil­iar con­nec­tion between inter­view­er and sub­ject, both tow­er­ing fig­ures of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, brings a tru­ly rare dimen­sion, as when Angelou shares how Baldwin’s old­er broth­ers would reserve a part of the pro­ceeds from sell­ing coal in the win­ter and ice in the sum­mer to send to Bald­win:

In France! I mean to think of a Black Amer­i­can fam­i­ly in Harlem, who had no pre­ten­sions to great lit­er­a­ture… and to have the old­est boy leave home and go to Paris, France, and then for them to save up enough pen­nies and nick­els and dimes to send a check of $150 to him, in Paris, France!

Bald­win: That’s what peo­ple, that’s what peo­ple don’t real­ly know about us. 

Angelou: One of the things I think, I mean I believe that we are Amer­i­ca. It is true. 

Bald­win: You believe it? 

Angelou: Well. 

Bald­win: I know it. 

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Maya Angelou Reads “Still I Rise” and “On the Pulse of the Morn­ing”

Watch a Nev­er-Aired TV Pro­file of James Bald­win (1979)

James Bald­win Talks About Racism in Amer­i­ca & Civ­il Rights Activism on The Dick Cavett Show (1969)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Sylvia Plath’s Tarot Cards (Which Influenced the Poems in Ariel) Were Just Sold for $207,000

We cel­e­brat­ed my birth­day yes­ter­day: [Ted] gave me a love­ly Tarot pack of cards and a dear rhyme with it, so after the oblig­a­tions of this term are over your daugh­ter shall start her way on the road to becom­ing a seer­ess & will also learn how to do horo­scopes, a very dif­fi­cult art which means reviv­ing my ele­men­tary math. 

Sylvia Plath, in a let­ter to her moth­er, 28 Octo­ber 1956

Sylvia Plath’s Tarot cards, a 24th birth­day present from her hus­band, poet Ted Hugh­es, just went for £151,200 in an auc­tion at Sotheby’s.

That’s approx­i­mate­ly £100,000 more than this lot, a Tarot de Mar­seille deck print­ed by play­ing card man­u­fac­tur­er B.P. Gri­maud de Paris, was expect­ed to fetch.

The auc­tion house’s descrip­tion indi­cates that a few of the cards were dis­col­ored —  evi­dence of use, as sup­port­ed by Plath’s numer­ous ref­er­ences to Tarot in her jour­nals.

Recall Tarot’s appear­ance in “Dad­dy,” her most wide­ly known poem, and her iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the Hang­ing Man card, in a poem of the same name:

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.

I siz­zled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eye­lid :

A world of bald white days in a shade­less sock­et.

A vul­tur­ous bore­dom pinned me in this tree.

If he were I, he would do what I did.

This cen­tu­ry has seen her col­lec­tion Ariel restored to its author’s intend­ed order.
The orig­i­nal order is said to cor­re­spond quite close­ly to Tarot, with the first twen­ty-two poems sym­bol­iz­ing the cards of the Major Arcana.

The next ten are aligned with the num­bers of the Minor Arcana. Those are fol­lowed by four rep­re­sent­ing the Court cards. The collection’s final four poems can be seen to ref­er­ence the pen­ta­cles, cups, swords and wands that com­prise the Tarot’s suits.

Ariel’s man­u­script was rearranged by Hugh­es, who dropped some of the “more lac­er­at­ing” poems and added oth­ers in advance of its 1965 pub­li­ca­tion, two years after Plath’s death by sui­cide. (Hear Plath read poems from Ariel here.)

Daugh­ter Frie­da defends her father’s actions and describes how dam­ag­ing they were to his rep­u­ta­tion in her Fore­word to Ariel: The Restored Edi­tion.

One won­ders if it’s sig­nif­i­cant that Plath’s Page of Cups, a card asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive mes­sages relat­ed to fam­i­ly and loved ones, has a rip in it?

We also won­der who paid such a stag­ger­ing price for those cards.

Will they give the deck a moon bath or salt bur­ial to cleanse it of Plath’s neg­a­tive ener­gy?

Or is the win­ning bid­der such a diehard fan, the chance to han­dle some­thing so inti­mate­ly con­nect­ing them to their lit­er­ary hero neu­tral­izes any occult mis­giv­ings?

We rather wish Plath’s Tarot de Mar­seille had been award­ed to Phillip Roberts in Ship­ley, Eng­land, who planned to exhib­it them along­side her tarot-influ­enced poems in a pop up gallery at the Saltaire Fes­ti­val. To finance this dream, he launched a crowd-fund­ing cam­paign, pledg­ing that every £100 donor could keep one of the cards, to be drawn at ran­dom, with all con­trib­u­tors invit­ed to sub­mit new art or writ­ing to the mini-exhi­bi­tion: Save Sylvia Plath’s cards from liv­ing in the draw­ers of some wealthy col­lec­tor, and let’s make some art togeth­er!

Alas, Roberts and friends fell  £148,990 short of the win­ning bid. Bet­ter luck next time, mate. We applaud your gra­cious­ness in defeat, as well as the spir­it in which your project was con­ceived.

via Lithub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Artis­tic & Mys­ti­cal World of Tarot: See Decks by Sal­vador Dalí, Aleis­ter Crow­ley, H.R. Giger & More

Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 18 Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Ethan Hawke Explains How to Give Yourself Permission to Be Creative

The most cre­ative peo­ple, you’ll notice, throw them­selves into what they do with absurd, even reck­less aban­don. They com­mit, no mat­ter their doubts about their tal­ents, edu­ca­tion, finances, etc. They have to. They are gen­er­al­ly fight­ing not only their own mis­giv­ings, but also those of friends, fam­i­ly, crit­ics, financiers, and land­lords. Artists who work to real­ize their own vision, rather than some­one else’s, face a with­er­ing­ly high prob­a­bil­i­ty of fail­ure, or the kind of suc­cess that comes with few mate­r­i­al rewards. One must be will­ing to take the odds, and to renounce, says Ethan Hawke in the short TED talk above, the need for val­i­da­tion or approval.

This is hard news for peo­ple pleasers and seek­ers after fame and rep­u­ta­tion, but in order to over­come the inevitable social obsta­cles, artists must be will­ing, says Hawke, to play the fool. He takes as his exam­ple Allen Gins­berg, who appeared on William F. Buckley’s Fir­ing Line in May of 1968 and, rather than answer Buckley’s charge that his polit­i­cal posi­tions were “naive,” pulled out a har­mo­ni­um and pro­ceed­ed to sing the Hare Krish­na chant (“the most unhar­ried Krish­na I’ve ever heard,” Buck­ley remarked). Upon arriv­ing home to New York, says Hawke, Gins­berg was met by peo­ple who were aghast at what he’d done, feel­ing that he made him­self a clown for mid­dle Amer­i­ca.

Gins­berg was unboth­ered. He was will­ing to be “America’s holy fool,” as Vivian Gor­nick called him, if it meant inter­rupt­ing the con­stant stream of adver­tis­ing and pro­pa­gan­da and mak­ing Amer­i­cans stop to won­der “who is this stu­pid poet?”

Who is this per­son so will­ing to chant at William F. Buck­ley for “the preser­va­tion of the uni­verse, instead of its destruc­tion”? What might he have to say to my secret wish­es? This is what artists do, says Hawke, take risks to express emo­tions, by what­ev­er means are at hand. It is the essence of Ginsberg’s view of cre­ativ­i­ty, to let go of judg­ment, as he once told a writ­ing stu­dent:

Judge it lat­er. You’ll have plen­ty of time to judge it. You have all your life to judge it and revise it! You don’t have to judge it on the spot there. What ris­es, respect it. Respect what ris­es….

Judge your own work lat­er, if you must, but what­ev­er you do, Hawke advis­es above, don’t stake your worth on the judg­ments of oth­ers. The cre­ative life requires com­mit­ting instead to the val­ue of human cre­ativ­i­ty for its own sake, with a child­like inten­si­ty that doesn’t apol­o­gize for itself or ask per­mis­sion to come to the sur­face.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Allen Gins­berg Talks About Com­ing Out to His Fam­i­ly & Fel­low Poets on 1978 Radio Show (NSFW)

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

David Lynch Explains How Sim­ple Dai­ly Habits Enhance His Cre­ativ­i­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Three Leonard Cohen Animations

Leonard Cohen, High Priest Of Pathos…

     Lord Byron of Rock and Roll…

          Gen­tle­man Zen

                Mas­ter Of Misery…Morbidity… Erot­ic Despair…

                    Prince of Pessimism…Pain…

                         Trou­ba­dour For Trou­bled Souls…

The grav­el-voiced singer-song­writer accu­mu­lat­ed hun­dreds of nick­names over a career span­ning more than half a cen­tu­ry. He wasn’t thrilled by some of them, remark­ing to the BBC, “You get tired, over the years, hear­ing that you’re the cham­pi­on of gloom.”

Tak­en all togeth­er, how­ev­er, they make for a decent com­pos­ite por­trait of a pro­lif­ic artist whose sen­su­al­i­ty, mor­dant wit, and obses­sion with love, loss, and redemp­tion nev­er wavered.

He took some hia­tus­es, includ­ing a 5‑year stint as a monk in California’s Mount Baldy monastery, but nev­er retired.

His final stu­dio album, You Want It Dark­er, was released mere weeks before his death.

Jour­nal­ist Rob Sheffield artic­u­lat­ed the Cohen mys­tique in a Rolling Stone eulo­gy:

This man was both the crack in every­thing and the light that gets in. Nobody wrote such mag­nif­i­cent­ly bleak bal­lads for brood­ing alone in the dark, star­ing at a win­dow or wall – “Joan of Arc,” “Chelsea Hotel,” “Tow­er of Song,” “Famous Blue Rain­coat,” “Clos­ing Time.” He was music’s top Jew­ish Cana­di­an ladies’ man before Drake was born, run­ning for the mon­ey and the flesh. Like Bowie and Prince, he tapped into his own realm of spir­i­tu­al and sex­u­al gno­sis, and like them, he went out at the peak of his musi­cal pow­ers. No song­writer ever adapt­ed to old age with more cun­ning or gus­to. 

Cohen also excelled at inter­views, leav­ing behind a wealth of gen­er­ous, free­wheel­ing record­ings, at least three of which have become fod­der for ani­ma­tors.

The ani­ma­tion at the top of the page is drawn from Cohen’s 1966 inter­view with the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Corporation’s Adri­enne Clark­son, short­ly after the release of his exper­i­men­tal nov­el, Beau­ti­ful Losers. (His debut album was still a year and a half away.)

Ear­li­er in the inter­view, Cohen men­tions the “hap­py rev­o­lu­tion” he encoun­tered in Toron­to after an extend­ed peri­od on the Greek island of Hydra:

I was walk­ing on Yorkville Street and it was jammed with beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful peo­ple last night. I thought maybe it could spread to the [oth­er] streets and maybe even … where’s the mon­ey dis­trict? Bay Street?… I thought maybe they could take that over soon, too.

How to tap into the source of all this hap­pi­ness?

The future Zen monk Cohen was pret­ty con­vinced it could be locat­ed by sit­ting qui­et­ly, though he doesn’t con­demn those using drugs or alco­hol as an assist, explain­ing that his fel­low Cana­di­an, abstract expres­sion­ist Harold Town, “gets beau­ti­ful under alco­hol. I get stu­pid and gen­er­al­ly throw up.”

8 years lat­er, WBAI’s Kath­leen Kendel came armed with a poem for Cohen to read on air, and also plumbed him as to the ori­gins of “Sis­ters of Mer­cy,” one of his best known songs, and the only one that did­n’t require him to “sweat over every word.” (Pos­si­bly the con­so­la­tion prize for his dashed hopes of erot­ic adven­ture with the song’s pro­tag­o­nists.)

(The ani­ma­tion here is by Patrick Smith for PBS’ Blank on Blank series.)

Ani­ma­tor Joe Don­ald­son riffs on an excerpt from Cohen’s final major inter­view, with The New York­er’s edi­tor-in-chief, David Rem­nick, above.

Rem­nick recalled that his sub­ject, who died a few days lat­er, was “in an ebul­lient mood for a man… who knew exact­ly where he was going, and he was head­ed there in a hur­ry. And at the same time, he was incred­i­bly gra­cious.”

The 82-year-old Cohen spoke enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly if some­what pes­simisti­cal­ly about hav­ing a lot of new mate­r­i­al to get through, “to put (his) house in order,” but also admit­ted, “some­times I just need to lie down.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Plays a Spell­bind­ing Set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Fes­ti­val

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

RIP Radical Poet and Revolutionary Publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919–2021)

“Democ­ra­cy is not a spec­ta­tor sport,” Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti pro­claimed on the wall of his City Lights book­store, a San Fran­cis­co fix­ture since the poet, activist, and pub­lish­er found­ed the land­mark with Peter D. Mar­tin in 1953. Fer­linghet­ti, who died on Mon­day at age 101, was him­self a fix­ture, a ven­er­at­ed stew­ard of the coun­ter­cul­ture. (See him read “Last Prayer,” above, in a clip from The Last Waltz). On his 100th birth­day–on which the city insti­tut­ed an annu­al “Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti Day”–Chloe Velt­man inter­viewed him, describ­ing the poet as “frail and near­ly blind… but his mind is still on fire.” It was the same mind that start­ed a pub­lish­ing house in the 50s with the intent to stir an “inter­na­tion­al dis­si­dent fer­ment.”

Fer­linghet­ti and Mar­tin start­ed their book­store with a mis­sion: “to break lit­er­a­ture out of its stuffy, aca­d­e­m­ic cage,” Velt­man writes, out of “its self-cen­tered focus on what he calls ‘the me me me,’ and make it acces­si­ble to all.” City Lights was the first all-paper­back book­store, opened at a time, he says, when “paper­backs weren’t con­sid­ered real books.”

For Fer­linghet­ti, lit­er­a­ture and democ­ra­cy were not sep­a­rate pur­suits. The idea was rad­i­cal, and so were his patrons. “A book­store is a nat­ur­al place for poets to hang out,” Fer­linghet­ti told NPR’s Tom Vitale, “and they start­ed show­ing up there”–“They” being East Coast Beats like Gins­berg, Ker­ouac, and the great, unsung Bob Kauf­man.

Like a North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, Ferlinghetti’s City Lights became the phys­i­cal embod­i­ment of a lit­er­ary move­ment, espe­cial­ly after the infa­mous pub­li­ca­tion of Allen Ginsburg’s Howl and Oth­er Poems, for which Fer­linghet­ti stood tri­al for obscen­i­ty, an event that “pro­pelled the Beat gen­er­a­tion into the inter­na­tion­al spot­light,” writes Evan Karp. “For the first and–arguably–only time, lit­er­a­ture became a pop­u­lar move­ment in the U.S.” Young peo­ple around the coun­try real­ized that poet­ry was rel­e­vant to their pol­i­tics (and lives), and vice ver­sa.

Fer­linghet­ti pub­lished his own first book of poet­ry, Pic­tures of the Gone World, in the same year he pub­lished Ginsberg’s, but he has not received his crit­i­cal due along­side the oth­er Beats, despite the fact that his sec­ond book, 1958’s A Coney Island of the Mind, “sold more than 1 mil­lion copies over the year, rank­ing per­haps sec­ond to Howl as the most pop­u­lar book of mod­ern Amer­i­can poet­ry,” Fred Kaplan notes at Slate. (See him read the book’s first poem, “In Goya’s Great­est Scenes We Seem to See…,” from his City Lights office, above.)

Fer­linghet­ti him­self nev­er want­ed to be iden­ti­fied with the move­ment. In a 2013 doc­u­men­tary, he emphat­i­cal­ly says, “don’t call me a Beat. I was nev­er a Beat poet.” He described his poet­ry as an “insur­gent art”:

If you would be a poet, cre­ate works capa­ble of answer­ing the chal­lenge of

apoc­a­lyp­tic times, even if this mean­ing sounds apoc­a­lyp­tic.

You are Whit­man, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emi­ly Dick­in­son and Edna St. Vin­cent Mil­lay, you are Neru­da and Mayakovsky and Pasoli­ni, you are an Amer­i­can or a non-Amer­i­can, you can con­quer the con­querors with words.…

His pur­pose, he writes, was to pierce a cul­ture he calls “a free­way fifty lanes wide / a con­crete con­ti­nent / spaced with bland bill­boards / illus­trat­ing imbe­cile illu­sions of hap­pi­ness.” From his Navy ser­vice in WWII–in which he saw the after­math of Nagasa­ki weeks after the drop­ping of the atom­ic bombs–to the last days of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, he kept his keen eye on Amer­i­ca’s abus­es. His “poet­ry is noto­ri­ous­ly crit­i­cal of politi­cians and the sta­tus quo,” Karp writes, and he was “unafraid to name names and take stances pub­licly” as a writer and a life­long activist.

“Ger­ald Nicosia, the crit­ic,” Vitale points out, “says Ferlinghetti’s two great­est accom­plish­ments were fight­ing cen­sor­ship, and inau­gu­rat­ing a small press rev­o­lu­tion.” What did Fer­linghet­ti him­self think of his place in the cul­ture? “In Plato’s repub­lic, poets were con­sid­ered sub­ver­sive, a dan­ger to the repub­lic,” he told The New York Times in 1998. “I kind of rel­ish that role.” As for what might final­ly shake the coun­try out of the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic spir­it that has held its peo­ple hostage to cor­po­ra­tions and a hos­tile gov­ern­ment, he was not san­guine: “It would take a whole new gen­er­a­tion not devot­ed to the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem,” he said. “A gen­er­a­tion not trapped in the me, me, me.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti Turns 100: Hear the Great San Fran­cis­co Poet Read “Trump’s Tro­jan Horse,” “Pity the Nation” & Many Oth­er Poems

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Reveal­ing the Beat Poet’s Cre­ative Process

2,000+ Cas­settes from the Allen Gins­berg Audio Col­lec­tion Now Stream­ing Online

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Reveal­ing the Beat Poet’s Cre­ative Process

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Amanda Gorman Read “The Hill We Climb,” “Making Mountains As We Run,” “Fury and Faith,” and More

Led by celebri­ty host Tom Han­ks, the Biden inauguration’s enter­tain­ers, A‑listers all, were safe bets, reli­able sta­di­um-fillers with instant mass appeal. They “did exact­ly what we need­ed them to do,” remarked Stephanie Zacharek at TIME, offer­ing the reas­sur­ance that “we no longer need to live in dread.” They were “singers you actu­al­ly know,” Alex­is Petridis wrote at The Guardian. The com­ment was a dig at the pre­vi­ous administration’s C and D‑list line­up, and also, per­haps, an admis­sion that what Amer­i­cans most crave is the famil­iar, which, of course, means, first and fore­most, a nation­al focus on celebri­ties we all know and love.

For a moment, how­ev­er, this rep­e­ti­tion of com­fort­ing house­hold names was punc­tu­at­ed by an entire­ly new young face and voice—that of a poet, no less, a stan­dard bear­er of the form that has held the nation’s rapt atten­tion in the work of Whit­man, Frost, Hugh­es, and Angelou.

Aman­da Gor­man, cho­sen as the first Nation­al Youth Poet Lau­re­ate in 2017, chan­neled a tra­di­tion of Amer­i­can lyric writ­ing about Amer­i­ca in her inau­gu­ra­tion poem, and she brought to it her own expe­ri­ences as a Gen Z black fem­i­nist and activist who over­came a speech imped­i­ment to address the coun­try at one of the most sig­nif­i­cant tele­vised pub­lic events in recent his­to­ry.

Gorman’s resume is a tes­ta­ment to her generation’s com­mit­ment to art and activism in the face of com­pound­ing crises, and to her per­son­al com­mit­ment to change in a coun­try that promis­es lit­tle for young black artists in par­tic­u­lar. Named youth poet lau­re­ate of Los Ange­les in 2014 at age 16, she pub­lished her first book of poet­ry, The One for Whom Food is Not Enough, the fol­low­ing year. She then went on to found a non­prof­it writ­ing and lead­er­ship pro­gram, open the lit­er­ary sea­son for the Library of Con­gress in 2017, and grad­u­ate cum laude from Har­vard Col­lege with a degree in soci­ol­o­gy in 2020.

While chart­ing her own lit­er­ary path, Gor­man learned to use her voice as “a polit­i­cal choice,” as she says in her TED-Ed stu­dent talk above, in which she con­fi­dent­ly asks a small audi­ence of her peers, “whose shoul­ders do you stand on?” and “what do you stand for?” These are the ques­tions she asks stu­dents in work­shops, she says, to shake them out of the idea that poet­ry is for “dead white men who were just born to be old.” Then she shares her own answers. Gorman’s pub­lic appear­ances tend to focus on process as much as on pol­i­tics and prosody. In a talk on “Pre­sen­ta­tion and Read­ing” at the Acad­e­my of Arts & Sci­ences in Cam­bridge below, she reads a poem, then has a brief dis­cus­sion of “how it came to be.”

Gor­man is as skilled a sto­ry­teller as she is a poet and edu­ca­tor. In her 2017 Moth Grand­SLAM appear­ance in Boston, fur­ther up, she tells the sto­ry of try­ing to catch her big break audi­tion­ing for Broad­way, an aspi­ra­tion shaped by her child­hood love of The Lion King. Her inau­gur­al poem, she tells PBS, was writ­ten to “be acces­si­ble to any­one who might be watch­ing, that they can feel that they are rep­re­sent­ed and well-estab­lished in this poem,” an act of writ­ing she calls “a real­ly dif­fi­cult dance to do.” The effort did not blunt the poem’s most inci­sive lines, how­ev­er, includ­ing its ref­er­ence to “the bel­ly of the beast,” in which “we’ve learned that qui­et isn’t always peace.”

For Gor­man, speak­ing out is a per­son­al imper­a­tive she honed as “a form of a pathol­o­gy,” over­com­ing her speech issues “by embark­ing on spo­ken word over and over and over again and recit­ing my poems. No mat­ter how ter­ri­fied I was, because I had the sup­port of oth­ers, I was able to kind of slow­ly climb my way to the place I am at today.”

For mil­lions of young peo­ple who watched the inau­gu­ra­tion, it will be Gorman’s sto­ry of per­se­ver­ance, com­mu­ni­ty, per­son­al growth, and refusal to be pas­sive and silent in the face of social injus­tice that will most res­onate, per­haps for the rest of their lives, amidst cel­e­bra­tions of a longed-for return to the famil­iar. See Gor­man read more of her poet­ry above and below, includ­ing a poem for anoth­er inau­gu­ra­tion, that of Har­vard Pres­i­dent Lawrence S. Bacow, in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Joy Har­jo, New­ly-Appoint­ed U.S. Poet Lau­re­ate, Reads Her Poems, “Remem­ber,” “A Poem to Get Rid of Fear,” “An Amer­i­can Sun­rise” and More

Lis­ten to Robert Frost Read ‘The Gift Out­right,’ the Poem He Recit­ed from Mem­o­ry at JFK’s Inau­gu­ra­tion

Ani­mat­ed Poet­ry by US Poet Lau­re­ate

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

A Look Inside William S. Burroughs’ Bunker

When every­body had one or two vod­kas and smoked a few joints, it was always the time for the blow­gun. —John Giorno

From 1974 to 1982, writer William S. Bur­roughs lived in a for­mer lock­er room of a 19th-cen­tu­ry for­mer-YMCA on New York City’s Low­er East Side.

When he moved on, his stuff, includ­ing his worn out shoes, his gun mags, the type­writer on which he wrote Cities of the Red Night, and half of The Place of Dead Roads, a well-worn copy of The Med­ical Impli­ca­tions of Karate Blows, and a lamp made from a work­ing Civ­il war-era rifle, remained.

His friend, neigh­bor, tour­mate, and occa­sion­al lover, poet John Giorno pre­served “The Bunker” large­ly as Bur­roughs had left it, and seems to delight in rehash­ing old times dur­ing a 2017 tour for the Louisiana Chan­nel, above.

It’s hard to believe that Bur­roughs found Giorno to be “patho­log­i­cal­ly silent” in the ear­ly days of their acquain­tance:

He just would­n’t say any­thing. You could be there with him the whole evening, he wouldn’t say a word. It was not the shy­ness of youth, it was much more than that, it was a very deep lack of abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate. Then he had can­cer and after the oper­a­tion that was com­plete­ly reversed and now he is at times a com­pul­sive talk­er, when he gets going there is no stop­ping him.

Accord­ing to Bur­roughs’ com­pan­ion, edi­tor and lit­er­ary execu­tor, James Grauer­holz, dur­ing this peri­od in Bur­roughs’ life, “John was the per­son who con­tributed most to William’s care and upkeep and friend­ship and loved him.”

Giorno also pre­pared Bur­roughs’ favorite dishbacon wrapped chick­enand joined him for tar­get prac­tice with the blow­gun and a BB gun whose pro­jec­tiles were force­ful enough to pen­e­trate a phone­book.

Prox­im­i­ty meant Giorno was well acquaint­ed with the sched­ules that gov­erned Bur­roughs’ life, from wak­ing and writ­ing, to his dai­ly dose of methadone and first vod­ka-and-Coke of the day.

He was present for many din­ner par­ties with famous friends includ­ing Andy WarholLou ReedFrank Zap­paAllen Gins­bergDeb­bie Har­ryKei­th Har­ingJean-Michel Basquiat, and Pat­ti Smith, who recalled vis­it­ing the Bunker in her Nation­al Book Award-win­ning mem­oir, Just Kids:

It was the street of winos and they would often have five cylin­dri­cal trash cans to keep warm, to cook, or light their cig­a­rettes. You could look down the Bow­ery and see these fires glow­ing right to William’s door… he camped in the Bunker with his type­writer, his shot­gun and his over­coat.

All Giorno had to do was walk upstairs to enjoy Bur­roughs’ com­pa­ny, but all oth­er vis­i­tors were sub­ject­ed to strin­gent secu­ri­ty mea­sures, as described by Vic­tor Bock­ris in With William Bur­roughs: A Report from the Bunker:

To get into the Bunker one had to pass through three locked gates and a gray bul­let­proof met­al door. To get through the gates you had to tele­phone from a near­by phone booth, at which point some­one would come down and labo­ri­ous­ly unlock, then relock three gates before lead­ing you up the sin­gle flight of gray stone stairs to the omi­nous front door of William S. Bur­roughs’ head­quar­ters.

Although Bur­roughs lived sim­ply, he did make some mod­i­fi­ca­tions to his $250/month rental. He repaint­ed the bat­tle­ship gray floor white to coun­ter­act the lack of nat­ur­al light. It’s pret­ty impreg­nable.

He also installed an Orgone Accu­mu­la­tor, the inven­tion of psy­cho­an­a­lyst William Reich, who believed that spend­ing time in the cab­i­net would improve the sitter’s men­tal, phys­i­cal, and cre­ative well­be­ing by expos­ing them to a mys­te­ri­ous uni­ver­sal life force he dubbed orgone ener­gy.

(“How could you get up in the morn­ing with a hang­over and go sit in one of these things?” Giorno chuck­les. “The hang­over is enough!”)

Includ­ed in the tour are excerpts of Giorno’s 1997 poem “The Death of William Bur­roughs.” Take it with a bit of salt, or an open­ness to the idea of astral body trav­el.

As per biog­ra­ph­er Bar­ry Miles, Bur­roughs died in the Lawrence Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal ICU in Kansas, a day after suf­fer­ing a heart attack. His only vis­i­tors were James Grauer­holz, his assis­tant Tom Pes­chio, and Dean Ripa, a friend who’d been expect­ed for din­ner the night he fell ill.

Poet­ic license aside, the poem pro­vides extra insight into the men’s friend­ship, and Bur­roughs’ time in the Bunker:

The Death of William Bur­roughs

by John Giorno

William died on August 2, 1997, Sat­ur­day at 6:01 in the
after­noon from com­pli­ca­tions from a mas­sive heart attack
he’d had the day before. He was 83 years old. I was with
William Bur­roughs when he died, and it was one of the best
times I ever had with him.  

Doing Tibetan Nying­ma Bud­dhist med­i­ta­tion prac­tices, I
absorbed William’s con­scious­ness into my heart. It seemed as
a bright white light, blind­ing but mut­ed, emp­ty. I was the
vehi­cle, his con­scious­ness pass­ing through me. A gen­tle
shoot­ing star came in my heart and up the cen­tral chan­nel,
and out the top of my head to a pure field of great clar­i­ty
and bliss. It was very powerful—William Bur­roughs rest­ing
in great equa­nim­i­ty, and the vast emp­ty expanse of
pri­mor­dial wis­dom mind.

I was stay­ing in William’s house, doing my med­i­ta­tion
prac­tices for him, try­ing to main­tain good con­di­tions and
dis­solve any obsta­cles that might be aris­ing for him at that
very moment in the bar­do. I was con­fi­dent that William had
a high degree of real­iza­tion, but he was not a com­plete­ly
enlight­ened being. Lazy, alco­holic, junkie William. I didn’t
allow doubt to arise in my mind, even for an instant,
because it would allow doubt to arise in William’s mind.

Now, I had to do it for him.

What went into William Bur­roughs’ cof­fin with his dead body:

About ten in the morn­ing on Tues­day, August 6, 1997,
James Grauer­holz and 
Ira Sil­ver­berg came to William’s
house to pick out the clothes for the funer­al direc­tor to put
on William’s corpse. His clothes were in a clos­et in my
room. And we picked the things to go into William’s cof­fin
and grave, accom­pa­ny­ing him on his jour­ney in the
under­world.

His most favorite gun, a 38 spe­cial snub-nose, ful­ly loaded
with five shots. He called it, “The Snub­by.” The gun was my
idea. “This is very impor­tant!” William always said you can
nev­er be too well armed in any sit­u­a­tion. Of his more than
80 world-class guns, it was his favorite. He often wore it on
his belt dur­ing the day, and slept with it, ful­ly loaded, on
his right side, under the bed sheet, every night for fif­teen
years.

Grey fedo­ra. He always wore a hat when he went out. We
want­ed his con­scious­ness to feel per­fect­ly at ease, dead.

His favorite cane, a sword cane made of hick­o­ry with a
light rose­wood fin­ish.

Sport jack­et, black with a dark green tint. We rum­maged
through the clos­et and it was the best of his shab­by clothes,
and smelling sweet of him.

Blue jeans, the least worn ones were the only ones clean.

Red ban­dana. He always kept one in his back pock­et.

Jock­ey under­wear and socks.  

Black shoes. The ones he wore when he per­formed. I
thought the old brown ones, that he wore all the time,
because they were com­fort­able. James Grauer­holz insist­ed,
“There’s an old CIA slang that says get­ting a new
assign­ment is get­ting new shoes.”

White shirt. We had bought it in a men’s shop in Bev­er­ly
Hills in 1981 on The Red Night Tour. It was his best shirt,
all the oth­ers were a bit ragged, and even though it had
become tight, he’d lost a lot of weight, and we thought it
would fit.  James said,” Don’t they slit it down the back
any­way.”

Neck­tie, blue, hand paint­ed by William.

Moroc­can vest, green vel­vet with gold bro­cade trim, giv­en
him by 
Brion Gysin, twen­ty-five years before.

In his lapel but­ton hole, the rosette of the French
gov­ern­men­t’s Com­man­deur des Arts et Let­tres, and the
rosette of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Arts and Let­ters,
hon­ors which William very much appre­ci­at­ed.

A gold coin in his pants pock­et. A gold 19th Cen­tu­ry Indi­an
head five dol­lar piece, sym­bol­iz­ing all wealth. William
would have enough mon­ey to buy his way in the
under­world.

His eye­glass­es in his out­side breast pock­et.

A ball point pen, the kind he always used. “He was a
writer!”, and some­times wrote long hand.

A joint of real­ly good grass.

Hero­in. Before the funer­al ser­vice, Grant Hart slipped a
small white paper pack­et into William’s pock­et. “Nobody’s
going to bust him.” said Grant. William, bejew­eled with all
his adorn­ments, was trav­el­ing in the under­world.

I kissed him. An ear­ly LP album of us togeth­er, 1975, was
called 
Bit­ing Off The Tongue Of A Corpse. I kissed him on
the lips, but I did­n’t do it .  .  . and I should have.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Call Me Bur­roughs: Hear William S. Bur­roughs Read from Naked Lunch & The Soft Machine in His First Spo­ken Word Album (1965)

How William S. Bur­roughs Influ­enced Rock and Roll, from the 1960s to Today

William S. Bur­roughs’ Class on Writ­ing Sources (1976) 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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