from my desk, which isn't really my desk but my boss' desk. But I get to sit in it because it''s the only computer here with InDesign. So, nice chair, big screen, good view.
Joanne Kyger''s reading was pretty fabulous and made me go back and read Again, again. (I took pictures but left the camera at Joe and Sara's, so will have to upload them later after I get the camera back sometime this week). I now want to look at her earlier poetry that I don't know as well, especially the Japan and India journals. It's not hard to imagine why I want to read these:
"Nemi I do hope my humah was not so heavy handed in my last letter that you misinterpreted my zealous social and political goals. Do not worry. I still hate everybody."
and
"We met the Dalai Lama last week right after he had been talking with the Kind of Sikkim, the one who is going to marry an American college girl. The Dal is 27 and lounged on a velvet couch like a gawky adolescent in red robes. I was trying very hard to say witty things to him through the interpreter, but Allen Ginsberg kept hogging the conversations by discribing his experiments on drugs and asking the Dalai Lama if he would like to take some magic mushroom pills and were his drug experiences of a religious nature until Gary said really Allen the inside of your mind is just as boring and just the same as everyone else's is it necessary to go on; and that little trauma was eased over by Gary and the Dalai talking guru to guru like about which positions to take when doing meditation and how to breathe and what to do with your hands, yes yes that's right says the Dalai Lama. And then Allen Ginsberg says to him how many hours do you meditate a day, and he says me? Why I never meditate, I don't have to. The Ginsberg is very happy because he wants to get instantly enlightened and can't stand sitting down or discipline of the body. He always gobbles down his food before anyone else has started. He came to India to find a spiritual teacher. But I think he actually believes he knows it all, but just wishes he Felt better about it. "
Have a look at the Joanne Kyger feature in Jacket 11, edited by the fabulous Linda Russo.
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i read as ever, kyger's recent penguin selected, straight thru a while back. took a while for me to get a good feel for her work and i'm not sure i can articulate a response. best i can come up with is: precise, descriptive of visual/mental details but in a very calm, deliberate, selfless way. unlike, say, whalen, whose attentions are always hyper, scattered, neuro/physical ("nerve movies" was his term for it) even tho he too was buddhist.
i never got too far with the india/japan journals but as a traveller/dweller in the orient lorraine i'm sure you'd dig 'em.
p.s. listening to that skip spence solo CD "OAR" (pretty sure mark has it), very lowdown acoustic trippy...
t.
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