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The New American Poetry, 1945-1960 Edited by Donald Allen THE NEW AMERICAN POETRY, 1945-1960 EDITED BY DONALD ALLEN UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON CONTENTS The New American Poetry: 1945-1960 Preface .......... jri I. Charles Olson (1910-1970) The Kingfishers 2 I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You .... 8 The Songs of Maximus . 11 Maximus, to himself ....... 14 The Death of Europe 16 A Newly Discovered 'Homeric' Hymn ... 22 The Lordly and Isolate Satyrs 24 As the Dead Prey Upon Us 27 Variations Done for Gerald van de Wiele ... 34 The Distances 37 Robert Duncan (1919-1988) The Song of the Borderguard ..... 40 An Owl Is an Only Bird of Poetry .... 41 This Place Rumord To Have Been Sodom ... 44 The Dance 46 The Question 48 A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar ... 49 Food for Fire, Food for Thought .... 57 Dream Data 58 XV Contents xvi Denise Levertov (1923-1997) Beyond the End 60 The Hands 61 Merritt Parkway 61 The Way Through 62 The Third Dimension 63 Scenes from the Life of the Peppertrees ... 64 The Sharks 66 The Five-Day Rain 66 Pleasure 67 The Goddess 68 Paul Blackburn (1926-1971) The Continuity 69 The Assistance 69 Night Song for Two Mystics ...... 70 The Problem 72 Sirventes ......... 72 The Once-over ........ 75 The Encounter 76 Robert Creeley (1926) The Innocence ........ 77 The Kind of Act of 77 The Immoral Proposition ...... 78 A Counterpoint ....... 78 The Warning 78 The Whip . 79 A Marriage ........ 79 Ballad of the Despairing Husband .... 80 If You 81 Just Friends 82 The Three Ladies 83 The Door 83 The Awakening ....... 86 The Way 87 Paul Carroll (1927-1996) Father 88 xvii Contents Larry Eigner (1927-1996) A Fete 90 Noise grimaced ....... 90 B 91 Environ s ......... 92 Open 93 A Gone 94 Passages 95 Keep me still, for I do not want to dream ... 95 Do it yrself 96 Edward Dorn (1929) The Rick of Green Wood 97 Vaquero ......... 98 The Hide of My Mother 98 Are They Dancing 103 The Air of June Sings 104 When the Fairies 105 Jonathan Williams (1929) A Little Tumescence 107 The Switch Blade (or, John's Other Wife) ... 107 Those Troublesome Disguises 108 The Distances to the Friend 108 Fast Ball 109 Joel Oppenheimer (1930-1988) The Bath 110 The Bus Trip . 110 The Feeding Ill Mare Nostrum ........ Ill Blue Funk 112 II. Helen Adam (1909-1992) I Love My Love . 114 Brother Antoninus (1912-1994) Advent 118 A Canticle to the Waterbirds . 118 The South Coast 121 Contents xviii James Broughton (1913) Feathers or Lead? 123 Madeline Gleason (1903-1979) Once and Upon ....... 125 Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) Pictures of the Gone World 128 A Coney Island of the Mind 130 HE 134 Robin Blaser (1925) Poem by the Charles River 138 A 4 Part Geometry Lesson 138 Poem 139 Herons 140 Poem 141 Jack Spicer (1925-1965) Imaginary Elegies, I-IV 142 Lew Welch (1926-1972) Chicago Poem 148 After Anacreon ........ 150 Richard Duerden (1927) musica no. 3 ........ 151 Dance with Banderillas ...... 152 Moon Is to Blood 152 Philip Lamantia (1927) Terror Conduction ....... 154 "Man is in pain" ....... 155 Morning Light Song 156 Still Poem 9 157 xix Contents Bruce Boyd (1928) This Is What the Watchbird Sings, Who Perches in the Lovetree .... 158 Sanctuary . 158 Venice Recalled 159 Kirby Doyle (1932) Strange 161 Ebbe Borregaard (1933) Some Stories of the Beauty Wapiti . .163 "Each Found Himself at the End of..." . 165 in. Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) Mexico City Blues : 12 Choruses .... 168 Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) The Shrouded Stranger 178 Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo 179 Sunflower Sutra 179 A Supermarket in California ..... 181 Howl, Parts I and II 182 Sather Gate Illumination 190 Message 194 Kaddish, Parts I, III, IV, V 194 Gregory Corso (1930) Birthplace Revisited 202 Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway .... 202 Zizi's Lament 203 Uccello 204 But I Do Not Need Kindness 205 Dialogue - 2 Dollmakers 206 Paranoia in Crete 207 A Dreamed Realization 208 From Another Room ....... 208 Notes After Blacking Out 208 Marriage 209 Contents xx Peter Orlovsky (1933) Second Poem ........ 213 IV. Barbara Guest (1923) Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher . 216 Sunday Evening 216 Santa Fe Trail 217 Piazzas 218 James Schuyler (1923-1991) Salute 220 February 220 "The Elizabethans Called It Dying" .... 222 Freely Espousing ....... 223 Edward Field (1924) A View of Jersey 225 The Floor Is Dirty 227 Kenneth Koch (1925) Mending Sump 229 Fresh Air 229 Thank You 236 7 Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) Chez Jane 239 For James Dean 239 Ode 242 Why I Am Not a Painter 243 In Memory of My Feelings ..... 244 Ode to Joy 250 To Hell with It 251 Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets . 253 Ode to Michael Goldberg ('s Birth and Other Births) 254 The Day Lady Died 264 You Are Gorgeous and I'm Coming .... 265 Poem 266 xxi Contents Poem 267 In Favor of One's Time 268 Hotel Transylvanie 269 John Ashbery (1927) A Boy 271 The Instruction Manual 272 "How Much Longer Will I Be Able To Inhabit the Divine Sepulcher ..." . 275 V. Philip Whalen (1923) Martyrdom of Two Pagans 280 2 Variations: All About Love 281 Sourdough Mountain Lookout ..... 284 Denunciation: or, Unfrock'd Again .... 289 The Same Old Jazz 290 Forty-five Years Since the Fall of the Ch'ing Dynasty 292 For C 293 Take I, 4:11:58 294 Gilbert Sorrentino (1929) A Classic Case 296 The Zoo 297 Stuart Z. Perkoff (1930-1974) Flowers for Luis Bunuel ...... 298 The Recluses . 299 Feasts of Death, Feasts of Love . 300 Gary Snyder (1930) Praise for Sick Women 307 Riprap 308 For a Far-out Friend 309 This Tokyo 310 Myths & Texts, Part III: Burning .... 312 Edward Marshall (1932) Leave the Word Alone 323 Contents xxii Michael McClure (1932) The Breech 334 The Rug 335 Hymn to St. Geryon, I 335 Canticle 339 Peyote Poem, Part I 339 Ode for Soft Voice .343 For Artaud 344 The Flowers of Politics, I 349 The Flowers of Politics, II 350 Ray Bremser (1934) Poem of Holy Madness, Part IV 352 Blood 356 LeRoi Jones (1934) In Memory of Radio ...... 357 Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note . 358 Way Out West 358 One Night Stand 360 To a Publisher . cut-out 361 Ostriches & Grandmothers! 363 The Turncoat 364 John Wieners (1934) A poem for painters ....... 365 A poem for the old man ...... 369 A poem for museum goers ..... 371 A poem for the insane ...... 373 A poem for trapped things 375 Ron Loewinsohn (1937) Pastoral 376 Insomniac Poem . 376 The Thing Made Real 378 The Stillness of the Poem 378 Mrs. Loewinsohn &c . 379 My Sons 381 xxiii Contents David Meltzer (1937) Revelation ........ 382 12th Raga / for John Wieners 382 15th Raga / for Bela Lugosi 383 Prayerwheel / 2 383 VI. Statements on Poetics Charles Olson: Projective Verse .... 386 Letter to Elaine Feinstein 397 Robert Duncan: Pages from a Notebook . 400 Robert Creeley: To Define 408 Olson & Others: Some Orts for the Sports . 408 Denise Levertov . 411 Lawrence Ferlinghetti . 412 Jack Spicer: Letter to Lorca ..... 413 Jack Kerouac ........ 414 Allen Ginsberg: Notes for Howl and Other Poems . 414 James Schuyler: Poet and Painter Overture . 418 Frank O'Hara 419 Philip Whalen 420 GarySnyder 420 Michael McClure: From a Journal .... 421 LeRoi Jones: "How You Sound??" .... 424 John Wieners: From a Journal ..... 425 Biographical Notes 427 Afterword 447 A Short Bibliography 451 Index (of Authors & Poems) 453.
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