How the Sestina (Yawn) Works by Anne Waldman I opened this poem with a yawn thinking how tired I am of revolution the way its presented on television isnt exactly poetry You could use some more methedrine if you ask me personally People should be treated personally theres another yawn heres some more methedrine Thanks Now about this revolution What do you think? What is poetry? Is it like television? Now I get up and turn off the television Whew! It was getting to me personally I think it is like poetry Yawn its 4 AM yawn yawn This new record is one big revolution if you were listening youd understand methedrine isnt the greatest drug no not methedrine its no fun for watching television You want to jump up have a revolution about something that affects you personally When youre busy and involved you never yawn its more like feeling, like energy, like poetry I really like to write poetry its more fun than grass, acid, THC, methedrine If I cant write I start to yawn and its time to sit back, watch television see whats happening to me personally: war, strike, starvation, revolution This is a sample of my own revolution taking the easy way out of poetry I want it to hit you all personally like a shot of extra-strong methedrine so youll become your own television Become your own yawn! O giant yawn, violent revolution silent television, beautiful poetry most deadly methedrine I choose all of you for my poem personally * BEAT POETS features the work of more than twenty-five writers from the great twentieth-century countercultural literary movement. Writing with an audacious swagger and an iconoclastic zeal, and declaiming their verse with dramatic flourish in smoke-filled cafés, the Beats gave birth to a literature of previously unimaginable expressive range. The defining work of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac provides the foundation for this collection, which also features the improvisational verse of such Beat legends as Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure and the work of such women writers as Diane DiPrima and Denise Levertov. LeRoi Jones’s plaintive “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” and Bob Kaufman’s stirring “Abomunist Manifesto” appear here alongside statements on poetics and the alternately incendiary and earnest correspondence of Beat Generation writers. Visceral and powerful, infused with an unmediated spiritual and social awareness, this is a rich and varied tribute and, in the populist spirit of the Beats, a vital addition to the libraries of readers everywhere. More here: knopfdoubleday/book/27863/beat-poets/
Posted on: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:45:00 +0000
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