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BEAT
HAPPENING and MARGARET ATWOOD
* Beat Happening *
Allen Ginsberg, "My
Alba"
Allen Ginsberg, "Supermarket
in CA"
e.e. cummings, "since
feeling is first"
e.e. cummings, "next
to of course god and america i"
e.e. cummings, "crazy
jay blue) "
e.e. cummings, "I Am
a Little Church (no great cathedral)"
e.e. cummings, "what
if a much of a which of a wind"
Jack Kerouac, "The Moon"
Paul Simon, "Poem on The
Underground Wall"
Liam Rector, "In Snow"
* Margaret Atwood *
Margaret Atwood, "This Is a Photograph of
Me"
Margaret Atwood, "Girl and Horse"
Margaret Atwood, "Dreams of the Animals"
Margaret Atwood, "Departure from the Brush"
Margaret Atwood, "The Animals in That Country"
Margaret Atwood, "It Is Dangerous to Read
Newspapers"
Margaret Atwood, "A Voice"
Margaret Atwood, "Daguerreotype Taken in
Old Age"
Allen Ginsberg, "My
Alba"
Now that I've wasted
five years in Manhattan
life decaying
talent a blank
talking disconnected
patient and mental
sliderule and number
machine on a desk
autographed triplicate
synopsis and taxes
obedient prompt
poorly paid
stayed on the market
youth of my twenties
fainted in offices
wept on typewriters
deceived multitudes
in vast conspiracies
deodorant battleships
serious business industry
every six weeks whoever
drank my blood bank
innocent evil now
part of my system
five years unhappy labor
22 to 27 working
not a dime in the bank
to show for it anyway
dawn breaks it's only the sun
the East smokes O my bedroom
I am damned to Hell what
alarmclock is ringing
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Allen Ginsberg, "A Supermarket
in California"
Click
here to hear it read by Ginsberg himself!
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both
be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
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e.e. cummings, "since
feeling is first"
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady I swear by all flowers. Don't cry
the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death I think is no parenthesis
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e.e. cummings, "next
to of course god america i"
"next to of course god america
i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of natural beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
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e.e. cummings, "crazy
jay blue)"
crazy jay blue)
demon laughshriek
ing at me
your scorn of easily
hatred of timid
& loathing for (dull all
regular righteous
comfortable)unworlds
theif crook cynic
(swimfloatdrifting
fragment of heaven)
trickstervillain
raucous rogue &
vivid voltaire
you beautiufl anarchist
(i salute thee
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e.e. cummings, "I Am
a Little Church (no great cathedral)"
I am a little church (no
great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
I do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
I am not sorry when sun and rain make april
my life is the life of the reaper and sower;
my prayers are prayers of life's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness
around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and I wake to a perfect patience of mountains
I am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and angusih) at peace with nature
I do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
I am sorry when silence becomes singing
winter by spring, I lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)
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e.e. cummings, "what
if a much of a which of a wind"
what if a much of a which
of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
-when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man
what if a keen of a
lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of things
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
-whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring
what if a dawn of a
doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't: blow death towas)
-all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live.
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Jack Kerouac, "The Moon"
The moon her magic be, big
sad face
Of infinity. An illuminated clay ball
Manifesting many gentlemanly remarks
She kicks a star, clouds foregather
In Scimitar shape, to round her
Cradle out, upsidedown and old time
You can also let the moon fool you
With imaginary orange-balls
Of blazing imgainary light in fright
As eyeballs, hurt & foregathered,
Wink to the wince of the seeing
Of a little sprightly otay
Which projects spikes of light
Out the round smooth blue balloon
But full of mountains and moons
Deep as the ocean, high as the moon,
Low as the lowest river lagoon
Fish in the Tar and pull in the Spar
Billy the Bud and Hanshan Emperor
And all wall moongazers since
Daniel Machree, Yeats see
Gaze at the moon ocean marking
the face -
In some cases
The moon is you
In any case
The moon.
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Paul Simon, "Poem on
The Underground Wall"
The last train is nearly
due,
The underground is closing soon,
And in the dark deserted station,
Restless in anticipation,
A man waits in the shadows.
His restless eyes leap and snatch,
At all that they can touch or catch,
And hidden deep within his pocket,
Safe within its silent socket,
He holds a coloured crayon.
Now from the tunnel's stony womb,
The carriage rides to meet the groom,
And opens wide the welcome doors,
But he hesitates, then withdraws
Deeper in the shadows.
And the train is gone suddenly.
On wheels clicking silently
Like a gently tapping litany,
And he holds his crayon rosary
Tighter in his hand.
Now from his pocket quick he flashes,
The crayon on the wall he slashes,
Deep upon the advertising,
A single-worded poem comprising
Four letters.
And his heart is laughing, screaming, pounding,
The poem across the tracks resounding,
Shadowed by the exit light
His legs take their ascending flight
To seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night.
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Liam Rector, "In Snow"
With the window sitting
with you,
and with glass, with air to see with,
there I came with you to be with,
asking if and ever were.
And with snow, with wet and moving,
there we brought the afternoon in.
Soon with gin we poured the ache down
and with window sitting with us
soon we felt the air we moved with.
Now in snow and later raining
we went out and moved the walking
and in snow resumed the drifting
of the past that we'd been speaking.
I was cold and you were raining
I had stayed while you went leaving
and the life that I was walking
turned to air, and then went dark.
You now mentioned all your leaving
(now that afternoon had left us)
and you rained with need and grieving
for that staring boy you'd left.
I recalled the boy who saw you
as you moved through girl, through bleeding,
and I mentioned movement boyward
where in snow we'd lain all needing.
We lie down, within this window,
and in snow, in rain and moving,
we give back our time its longing
over field and snow and leaving.
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Margaret Atwood, "This
Is A Photograph of Me"
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up,
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
in the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to way where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)
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Margaret Atwood, "Girl
and Horse, 1928"
You are younger than I am,
you are
someone I never knew, you stand
under a tree, your face half-shadowed,
holding the horse by its bridle.
Why do you smile? Can't you
see the apple blossoms falling around
you, snow, sun, snow, listen, the tree
dries and is being burnt, the wind
is bending your body, your face
ripples like water where did you go
But no, you stand there exactly
the same, you can't hear me, forty
years ago you were caught by light
and fixed in that secret
place where we live, where we believe
nothing can change, grow older.
(On the other side
of the picture, the instant
is over, the shadow
of the tree has moved. You wave,
then turn and ride
out of sight through the vanished
orchard, still smiling
as though you do not notice)
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Margaret Atwood, Dreams
of the Animals
Mostly the animals dream
of other animals each
according to its kind
(though certain mice and small rodents
have nightmares of a huge pink
shape with five claws descending)
: moles dream of darkness and delicate
mole smells
frogs dream of green and golden
frogs
sparkling like wet suns
among the lilies
red and black
striped fish
have red and black striped
dreams defence, attack, meaningful
patterns
birds fream of territories
enclosed by singing.
Sometimes the animals dream of evil
in the form of soap and metal
but mostly the animals dream
of other animals.
There are exceptions:
the silver fox in the roadside zoo
dreams of digging out
and of baby foxes, their necks bitten
the caged armadillo
near the train
station, which runs
all day in figure eights
its piglet feet patterning
no longer dreams
but is insane when waking;
the iguana
in the petshop window on St. Catherine Street
crested, royal-eyed, ruling
its kingdom of water-dish and sawdust
dreams of sawdust.
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Margaret Atwood, "Departure
from the Brush"
I, who had been erased
by fire, was crept in
upon by green
(how
lucid a season)
In time the animals
arrived to inhabit me,
first one
by one, stealthily
(their habitual traces
burnt); then
having marked new boundaries
returning, more
confident, year
by year, two
by two
but restless: I was not ready
altogether to me moved into
They could tell I was
too heavy: I might
capsize;
I was frightened
by their eyes (green or
amber) glowing out from inside me
I was not completed; at night
I could not see without lanterns.
He wrote, We are leaving. I said
I have no clothes
left I can wear.
The snow came. The sleigh was a relief;
its track lengthened behind;
pushing me towards the city
and rounding the first hill, I was
(instantaneous)
unlived in: they had gone.
There was something they almost taught me
I came away not having learned.
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Margaret Atwood, "The
Animals in That Country"
In that country the animals
have the faces of people:
the ceremonial cats possessing the streets
the fox run
politely to earth, the huntsmen
standing around him, fixed
in their tapestry of manners
the bull, embroidered
with blood and given
an elegant death, trumpets, his name
stamped on him, heraldic brand
because
(when he rolled
on the sand, sword in his heart, the teeth
in his blue mouth were human)
he is really a man
even the wolves, holding resonant
conversations in their
forests thickened with legend.
In this country the animals
have the faces of
animals.
Their eyes
flash once in car headlights
and are gone.
Their deaths are not elegant.
They have the faces of no one.
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It Is Dangerous to Read
Newspapers
While I was building neat
castles in the sandbox,
the hasty pits were
filling with bulldozed corpses
and as I walked to the school
washed and combed, my feet
stepping on the cracks in the cement
detonated the red bombs.
Now I am grownup
and literate, and I sit in my chair
as quietly as a fuse
and the jungles are flaming, the under-
brush is charged with soldiers,
the names on the difficult
maps go up in smoke.
I am the cause, I am a stockpile of chemical
toys, my body
is a deadly gadget,
I reach out in love, my hands are guns,
my good intentions are completely lethal.
Even my
passive eyes transmute
everything I look at to the pocked
black and white of a war photo,
how
can I stop myself
It is dangerous to read newspapers.
Each time I hit a key
on my electric typewriter,
speaking of peaceful trees
another village explodes.
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Margaret Atwood, "A
Voice"
A voice from the other country
stood on the grass. He became
part of the grass.
The sun shone
greenly on the blades of his hands
Then we
appeared, climbing down
the hill, you
in your blue sweater.
He could not see that
we did not occupy
the space, as he did. We
were merely in it.
My skirt was yellow
small
between his eyes
We moved along
the grass, through
the air that was inside
his head. We did not see him.
He could smell
the leather on our feet
We walked
small
across
his field of vision (he
watching us) and disappeared.
His brain grew over
the places we had been.
He sat. He was curious
about himself. He wondered
how he had managed to think us.
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Margaret Atwood, "Daguerreotype
Taken in Old Age"
I know I change
have changed
but whose is this vapid face
pitted and vast, rotund
suspended in empty paper
as though in a telescope
the granular moon
I rise from my chair
pulling against gravity
I turn away
and go out into the garden
I revolve among the vegetable,
my head ponderous
reflecting the sun
in the shadows from the pocked ravines
cut in my cheeks, my eye-
sockets 2 craters
along the paths
I orbit
the apple trees
white white spinning
stars around me
I am being
eaten away by light
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