Saints of Hysteria a Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry Edited by Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton & David Trinidad
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Saints of Hysteria A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry Edited by Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton & David Trinidad Saints of Hysteria A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry Edited by Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton & David Trinidad Soft Skull Press Brooklyn, NY 2007 Contents Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton & David Trinidad i Introduction Charles Henri Ford et al. International Chainpoem 1 Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg & Jack Kerouac Pull My Daisy 3 Copyright © 2007 by Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton & David Trinidad Jack Kerouac & Lew Welch Masterpiece 5 Cover art: Good’n Fruity Madonna © 1968 Joe Brainard John Ashbery & Kenneth Koch Used by permission of the Estate of Joe Brainard. A Postcard to Popeye 7 Crone Rhapsody 9 Credits & acknowledgments for the poems begin on page 389. Jane Freilicher & Kenneth Koch The Car 12 Soft Skull project editor & book designer: Shanna Compton Bill Berkson & Frank O’Hara St. Bridget’s Neighborhood 13 A note on the text: Because the poems in this anthology were created over seven decades Song Heard Around St. Bridget’s 16 by more than 200 authors, certain idiosyncrasies of style, orthography, and form St. Bridget’s Efficacy 17 have been preserved in order to present the works as their authors intended. These Reverdy 19 variations are characteristic textural effects of the collaborative process Bill Berkson, Michael Brownstein & Ron Padgett and should not be interpreted as errors. Waves of Particles 21 Ron Padgett & James Schuyler Soft Skull Press Within the Dome 22 55 Washington Street Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett Suite 804 Inner Landscapes 24 Brooklyn, NY 11201 Noh 27 www.softskull.com Ted Berrigan & Robert Creeley Think of Anything 29 Distributed by Publishers Group West Ted Berrigan & Anne Waldman 1-800-788-3123 from Memorial Day 30 www.pgw.com Tom Disch & Marilyn Hacker A Crown of Western Sonnets 44 Cataloging in Publication information for this book is Maxine Chernoff & Paul Hoover available from the Library of Congress Freeze the Moment 48 Slow Flurries 49 Eileen Myles & Anne Waldman Alice Notley, Douglas Oliver & Ron Padgett from Polar Ode 52 Hot Pink 106 Susan Cataldo & Susie Timmons Keith Abbott, Pat Nolan, Maureen Owen & Michael Sowl Masters of Suspense 57 All Ears 108 Driven North by Poverty 59 Martine Bellen, Elaine Equi & Melanie Neilson Allen Ginsberg & Kenneth Koch Renga 120 Today the Nuclear Bombs 61 Dodie Bellamy & Kevin Killian A Hilarious Sestina 64 Tenebrae 125 Maureen Owen & Rebecca Wright Samuel Ace & Kevin Killian Breaking Up Is Hard to Do 67 A Lover’s Complaint 126 Seven for Roy Rogers 68 T Begley & Olga Broumas Tom Carey, Helena Hughes & James Schuyler from Sappho’s Gymnasium 129 Milk Punch or Whiskey? 70 Norma Cole & Michael Palmer Helena Hughes & James Schuyler from A Library Book 140 Full Moon 72 Joe Ross & Rod Smith Debris 73 Chinook, 7 Poems (Like Non-existence) 144 Little Chinese Box 74 Cindy Goff & Jeffrey McDaniel Black Mink 75 The Secret 151 Allen Ginsberg & Ron Padgett Robert Bly & Yorifumi Yaguchi Thundering Undies 76 Listening to a Storyteller 153 Eileen Myles & Alice Notley Stephen Dunn & Lawrence Raab I Got Easy 77 In the Cities of Someone Else’s Anxiety 154 Bernadette Mayer & Alice Notley The Bluest Day 155 From a Continuing Collaboration 78 The Night She Removed Her Pearls 156 Bernard Welt & Terence Winch Sky 157 Strategy 83 The Other Side of the Sky 158 Olga Broumas & Jane Miller Joanna Fuhrman & Jean-Paul Pecqueur from Black Holes, Black Stockings 85 Dental Records Prove We Were All Children 160 Dennis Cooper & David Trinidad Joanna Fuhrman et al. S.O.S. 97 To My Kidney Near My House 161 Bob Flanagan & David Trinidad Joanna Fuhrman & Chris Martin Strawberry Blonde 98 Four Attempts toward a Theory of True Names 163 Anger Turned Inward 100 Joanna Fuhrman & Noelle Kocot Allen Ginsberg, with Bob Rosenthal & Brooklyn College MFA Class The Singing Animal World 166 Graphic Winces 102 David Lehman & Karen Pepper Allen Ginsberg, Lita Hornick & Peter Orlovsky Enchainement 168 Cataract 104 David Lehman & William Wadsworth Lita Hornick & Ron Padgett Falstaff 169 White Mink 105 Stacey Harwood & David Lehman Violet Snow & Sparrow The Literary Community 171 Waiting for the Cat Food to Come 243 David Lehman & Joseph Lehman Sparrow & Mike Topp The Bus 173 Dollar Store 245 Daniel Shapiro & David Shapiro Thomas Fink & Timothy Liu The Car in a Maze 175 The New Prosperity 246 Carson Brock & James Brock Art in America 247 from Vacationland 2 176 Kendra Dwelley Guimaraes & George Tucker Jack Wheeler & Susan Wheeler Derivative of the Curve: 2 248 The Red-Tailed Monkey 178 Robotics 249 Annabel Wheeler & Susan Wheeler Maureen Seaton & Terese Svoboda The Spring Years 180 Cereal Monogamy 250 Jeffery Conway, Lynn Crosbie & David Trinidad Jacqueline Johnson & devorah major Chain Chain Chain 182 Somonka 252 Amy Gerstler & Benjamin Weissman Patricia A. Johnson & Christina Springer Haiku 199 Somonka 254 Lyn Hejinian & Leslie Scalapino Opal Palmer Adisa & Reginald Lockett from Sight 201 A Game of Chance 257 Jack Collom & Lyn Hejinian Reginald Shepherd & Gene Tanta from Sunflower 210 Romeo’s Half-Wake 258 Samuel Ace & Margo Donaldson Screen Memory 259 No More Linda Smukler 216 Jim Elledge & Kristy Nielsen James Bertolino & Anita K. Boyle Lessons from the Kitchen 262 Social Etiquette 218 Nick Carbó & Eileen Tabios Crawl Space 219 Ifugao Red 263 Observer of the Obvious 220 Nick Carbó & Eric Gamalinda Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton Logogriph 265 A Crown of Spells to Ward Off Susans 222 Guillermo Castro & Ron Drummond Madame Bovary 226 All Saints’ Day 267 Madame Bovary 2 227 Virgil Suárez & Ryan G. Van Cleave Caprice 228 The Great Cuban Sculptor 269 The Origin of Olive Oyl 230 Connie Deanovich & Rachel Loden Denise Duhamel et al. Sestina for Horse & Destiny 271 82 Reasons Not to Get out of Bed 232 Julianna Baggott & Norman Minnick Bernadette Geiser, Zoe O’Banion, Sarah Odishoo, Soul #1 273 Maureen Seaton & Ginny Sykes Laura Bandy & Shirley Stephenson Five Orgasms 237 Spin 275 Lisa Glatt & David Hernandez Paulette Beete & Danna Ephland Gay Parade 240 Days of the Week 276 Mercy 241 Michael Hettich, Claudia Livini, Susan Parsons & Yair Segal Tom Breidenbach & Nathan Kernan Where We Live Now 277 Alaska 351 Alice George & Cecilia Pinto The Slave 353 Thirst 279 D. A. Powell & Rachel Zucker What Is She Doing Right Now? 280 Ghazal As Menu or with Adumbration 355 Soldier 292 Maggie Anderson & Lynn Emanuel Pamela Gemin & Julie King Now It’s Tomorrow As Usual 357 Fugitive Car 294 Douglas Kearney & Harryette Mullen Nin Andrews & Mary Beth Shaffer Sprung Flung 364 The Life 296 Haya Pomrenze & Brenda Serotte Another Avenue 297 About the Contributors 367 Cathryn Cofell & Karla Huston Acknowledgments 389 She Dreams about Being Jung 299 About the Editors 397 Ronald Koertge & Charles Harper Webb Horror Movies We’d Like to See 301 Kate Gale & Terry Wolverton Term 305 Testament 306 Joshua Beckman & Matthew Rohrer Jangling 308 Architecture Believes in Formalism 309 A Note on Process 311 William Fuller & Tom Raworth Equitable Deviation 313 Tom Clark & Anne Waldman Zombie Dawn 314 Andrew Schelling & Anne Waldman Riparian 329 Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan & Karen Weiser As If I Was a Cloud Expert 334 I Think You Get the Privilege O 335 Terri Carrion & Michael Rothenberg from Cartographic Anomaly 336 Veronica Corpuz & Michelle Naka Pierce from TRI / VIA 343 Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser from Braided Creek 349 Introduction Collaborative poetry is perhaps as old as song and story. It has flourished for centuries in oral traditions. It served as an integral source of entertainment and competition in Japanese court life as early as the twelfth century. It’s an honored and a healthy practice, mysterious to many who think of writing as a solitary act, and a bastard branch to those who hold that solitary act sacred. We, the editors in this historical volume of duets, fugues, and polyphonic word inventions, bring our biases with us, of course: for us, as for the multitude of poets who inhabit these pages, poetic collaboration is part holy, part hell. It’s intimate, insane, it’s love, it’s the Fool of the Tarot, it’s the path to Oz, it’s terrifying and postcoital. The twentieth century resurgence of collaboration fas- cinates us. We’re hooked bad and we’re deep in the impulse—to connect with each other, to stymie the purists, to transgress aesthetic boundaries. We’re no saints, it’s true, but our relationship to these poems is certainly one of spirit and awe. And our laughter, in many cases, can be called hysterical. A Brief History: In the 1930s, a group of Japanese poets called the Vou Club began to create collaborative poetry and translate it into English for a pamphlet published by New Directions (New York City). In 1940, American Charles Henri Ford adapted this practice into what he dubbed the “chainpoem,” which he defined as an “intellectual sport … an anonymous shape laying in a hypothetical joint imag- ination.” Ford and his collaborators mailed their lines all over the world. As the poets continued to pass on their lines to other poets, they believed that the chainpoems would “revolve to completion.” Anyone could decide to write the concluding line; that poet would then make copies of the completed chainpoem and send one to each chainpoet on the list. Because chainpoems were coauthored by different poets, they found their way into obscure literary magazines rather than into solo collections. The chainpoets and the Vou Club were preceded by (and perhaps inspired by) the French poets of the early 1900s who defined Surrealism and were among the first in the West to create collaborative poetry on an ongoing basis. Surrealist “chain games,” used as prompts to create impromptu poems, included Exquisite Corpse, Syllogisms, Echo Poems, and the Game of Variants.