Poetrymind

Coming Soon--My Annual Losar Poem for Year of the Water Dragon

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:56:00 +0000

Ruth Stone In Memorium (1915-2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:09:00 +0000

NY Times Obituary

Chard deNiord's Obituary in The Guardian

The American Academy of Poets page on Ruth Stone

Coming Soon A Review of Louise Landes Levi's The Book of L

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:15:00 +0000

New Poem

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:05:00 +0000

In Praise of Mediocrity

Didn’t it used to be part of the Golden Mean—that balance

Between heaven and earth

The phi of perfect harmony

Its distance measurable in aquiline pentagrams

A magic lintel betwixt and between lacking in status

All perfections linked to the median

Between becoming and completion

That naked cipher of valuation

Among worldly configurations

No worries for me walking down streets

To the hoots of male orangutans

Or jealous vixens wishing me dead

Clinging sycophants wanting my money

Stabs in the back

The queen of mediocrity is barely noticed

Her paucity a mantle of invisibility

To the ultimate zero

A sublime nothingness

The simple fact is:

Genius prefers a C minus like Einstein

With freedom to ruminate unwatched

And unwashed in heavenly exploration

Playing every angle

Then stand bewitched before elemental fractals

If beautiful, everyone wants to own you, have a piece

Or circle in for the kill for standing out sublime

But ordinary is profound too

When lit from within

A brief glimmer

Its luminescence spreading

They will always love you for your mind

My mother said

Jacqueline Gens

Tsegyalgar East, July 2011

Broadside № 2

Chogyam Trungpa & Allen Ginsberg on Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:06:00 +0000

Chogyam Trungpa died in 1987 on April 4. Almost to the day ten years later Allen Ginsberg died on April 5, 1997.

Year of the Iron Rabbit

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:06:00 +0000

Image from: ewamchoden.org

Year of the Iron Rabbit

Losar Poem

Be fruitful

when you wander the warren

of your mind

Burrowing deep into the ground of stability.

To broaden your field of vision,

Scan the sky for predators of distraction.

Then, stop in your tracks,

O Fearsome Bunny--

Proverbial Trickster whose cunning

Outwits pundits of sophistry.

For your path

is a zig-zag

To liberation.

Time to change course in a flash

Defy convention

Give into laughter like Bugs BUNNY

Show your mettle and step up to the plate.

For this is your lucky year!

Jacqueline Gens

Tsegyalgar East

2011

Poem by Verandah Porche for my 61st Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:52:00 +0000

Jacqueline (1982)

Rock walls hold the forest like a cash crop:
...some massive stand of late maturing corn.
A cellar hole, a hearthstone topped with
beaten brick, a spring box like a covered dish:
some raw ingredients of myth. Time is still
the laughing chef. Her favored trick: tectonics.

Six burner blaze on our modern stove.
You whip or simmer with no recipe;
know what to coddle,
when to bruise. Try glacier.
Use avalanche.

Verandah tweaked this older poem circa 1982 for my 61st birthday on January 20, 2011, which she posted on Facebook. We lived together for a time at Total Loss Farm AKA Packer Corners Farm in Guilford, Vermont (1976-1982) which she founded in the late 1960 along with friends Raymond Mungo, Marty Jezer, Richard Wizansky among others. Verandah has continued to live on the farm for decades raising her two daughters and scribing her poems.

Listen to a great VPR interview with Tom Fells originally of Montague Farm and Verandah Porche of Total Loss Farm

PHOTO: V. Paige

Packer Corners Farm

The Small Light at the Turning of the Solstice Dark

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 23:08:00 +0000

Photo: Dharamsala by Rosemary Rawcliffe

Solstice Greetings and wishing you all endless possibilities of harmony, good health and prosperity in the New Year and such small light to illuminate our path

I dwell in Possibility – (466)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

E. Gene Smith (1936-2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:16:00 +0000

On December 16, 2010 E. Gene Smith, founder of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center passed away. Gene was universally known among both Western born and Tibetan scholars as the man responsible for saving the vast treasury of Tibetan Literature. His digital library is the most comprehensive in the world. The leap from the centuries old tradition of printing with carved woodblocks to storing an entire library of millions of pages in the palm of your hand is one of digital technologies most interesting stories.

A memorial service is planned in NYC at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on February 12.

There is a blog dedicated to Remembering Gene Smith with a rapidly growing list of eulogies.

NY Times Obituary

I met Gene once on a trip organized by the Shang Shung Institute where a number of us (Jim Valby, Stephanie Scott and myself) accompanied Chogyal Namkhai Norbu to visit Gene at his home in Cambridge, MA. Every square inch of the multi-storied townhouse was filled with colorful cloth-covered Tibetan texts in various stages of digital scanning. Not only was Mr. Smith responsible for collecting rare Tibetan texts over the past 40 years but his digital library with over 4 million scanned pages preserves for future generations the vast treasury of Tibetan culture. The availability of these texts also ensures access by everyone of complete manuscripts, a major advantage of digital formats over printed folios used in Tibetan books. To read more about his contribution to Tibetan Culture, see the links below. A film about his work is currently in production.

Biographical details from Wikipedia

Smith was born in Ogden, Utah to a traditional Mormon family. He studied at a variety of institutions of higher education in the U.S.: Adelphi College, Hobart College, University of Utah, and the University of Washington in Seattle.

At Seattle, he was able to study with Dezhung Rinpoche and members of the Sakya Phuntso Phodrang family who had been brought to Seattle under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation grant to the Far Eastern and Russian Institute. He studied Tibetan culture and Buddhism with Dezhung Rinpoche from 1960 to 1964 and spent the summer of 1962 traveling to the other Rockefeller centers in Europe to meet with other Tibetan savants.

In 1964 he completed his Ph.D. qualifying exams and traveled to Leiden for advanced studies in Sanskrit and Pali. In 1965 he went to India under a Foreign Area Fellowship Program (Ford Foundation) grant to study with living exponents of all of the Tibetan Buddhist and Bönpo traditions.

He began his studies with Geshe Lobsang Lungtok (Ganden Changtse), Drukpa Thoosay Rinpoche and Khenpo Noryang, and H.H. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. He decided to remain in India to continue serious studies of Tibetan Buddhism and culture. He traveled extensively in the borderlands of India and Nepal. In 1968 he joined the Library of Congress New Delhi Field Office. He then began a project which was to last over the next two and a half decades, the reprinting of the Tibetan books which had been brought by the exile community or were with members of the Tibetan-speaking communities in Sikkim, Bhutan, India, and Nepal.

Announcement on the Tibetan Resource Center's site of Gene Smith's passing

Buddhadharma article on "Gene Smith's Mission"

Click here for News about the Lifetime Achievement Award Bestowed on Gene Smith by the Nyingma Sect

Click here for Patron King article on Gene smith and TBRC

Click here for BBC article on the Tibetan Resource Center

A few videos on You Tube about Gene's work and achievement on behalf of Tibetan culture. There are probably more on the internet.

Homage to E. Gene Smith from Gelek Rinpoche

Produced by Jewel Heart

The Politics of Candor--Why Howl Endures: A Review of Howl the Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 21:03:00 +0000

The film Howl accomplishes much to convey the back story of Allen Ginsberg’s enduring appeal to generation after generation of readers. The film skillfully weaves original transcripts from the 1957 censorship trial, a recreated interview with Ginsberg in his own words (1959 & 1974) with an anonymous journalist, the Gallery Six reading of Howl, and animations of the poem’s text by Eric Drooker, a personal friend of the poet who endorsed his animations.

Not leaving the poem’s legacy to chance, Ginsberg on the occasion of its 30th anniversary in his 1986 introduction to the facsimile edition of Howl sets forth his aesthetic as a manifesto for the primacy of feeling or what Ezra Pound coined, “Only Emotion endures.” There, Ginsberg writes, "The appeal in Howl is to the secret hermetic tradition of art "justifying" or "making up for defeat in worldly life."

Film makers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman shine a light on the single most turning point of Ginsberg’s fate as a writer, which was not whether or not his signature poem Howl would be blacklisted as ‘obscenity,’ but that Ginsberg would choose the life of his “hearts desire,” which was simply to be himself over the life of the “mad men” he was living at the time (marketing researcher in advertising) —a life of stylish deception, wealth and cultural acceptance over authenticity. With that defining gesture, Ginsberg chose a kind of perpetual freedom ride in the “green automobile”* of his heart’s desire, whether it be with Neal Cassidy, Jack Kerouac, Peter Orlovsky his new found love, or the eternal youths of later years. Ginsberg chose tenderness and likely social failure with what he would later come to call sacred friendships. Ginsberg's notion as portrayed in the interview portion of the film, "That if you could be frank about homosexuality, you could be frank about anything" is at the heart of his aesthetics of candor. The significance of this statement proves the springboard for arguments in favor of the poem's literary merits. The film’s treatment of his homosexuality skillfully conveys Ginsberg’s heroic unfolding to be true to himself which ultimately led to his avocation as a poet.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ginsberg did not crash and burn but mustered his considerable intellectual and poetic gifts tirelessly working on behalf of his friends—assembling their manuscripts,promoting the legitimacy of their writing and in some cases supporting them financially. While working for Ginsberg, every year we, his office associates, filed recommendations routinely for poets Gregory Corso and Amiri Baraka to that august institution, The American Academy of Arts & Sciences to join the ranks of Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder and Allen among the established. Ginsberg’s fraternal loyalty remained undying to the end as did his dedication to civil liberties. When I first came to work in his office in 1989, Ginsberg was compiling long affidavits for the ACLU to counter FCC regulations which then banned the poem from being read on public radio although it had previously enjoyed nearly 30 years airtime. On the occasion of the poem's 50th anniversary, WBAI, the most progressive of pacifica public radio stations refused to air the poem.

For me the most affecting aspect of the film is James Franco’s reading of Howl. He captures the subtle nuances of Ginsberg's speech, his tonality and gestures and those oh so juicy Semitic lips that convey, at times, Rabbinic wit and wisdom with the depth of the speaker’s clarion call to truth infused with a moral certitude that the truth sets one free. As a trained poet himself, Franco knows his speaker well and knows how to read a poem—deliberate, rhythmically, and with distinct enunciation entering into the body and mind of the text. He rides the ebb and flow of Ginsberg’s startling imagery as it hurls itself into crescendos of ecstatic speech. Where the human voice falls short, Drooker’s vibrant animation takes over in glowing images reminiscent of Disney's Fantasia that convey the complex meanings. But mostly, Franco gets the poem which is not so much an angry rant but an empathetic howl over the human condition. Howl is above all else a work of immense compassion and Franco conveys this affect perfectly. Like many close associates of the poet, I was prepared to cringe in anticipation of an off-key voice, but Franco pulled it off. I found myself close to tears a number of times. This movie will be around for a very long time.

Late in Life, Walt Whitman summoned the poet of the future.

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a
casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.

Ginsberg the poet surely delivered on the ‘main things.” The movie, Howl, arouses us to justify the universal bardic voice of great poetry.

Some clips from the movie

As an after thought, there's one more aspect about the film that I very much appreciated. For many years, I worked with Allen's photos in his office. Almost all the set designs remain true to the original photographic record of the period down to every detail, even the texture of fabrics. Ginsberg's extensive archive of photography chronicles the magic of that moment in time before they were "Beats" with a clear and loving eye in homage to his friendships. The movie, Howl, captures hints of the magic for posterity.

*In a class at Naropa, I think it was 1987's spring semester workshop "American Values," Ginsberg said that the poem "Green Automobile" (read here by John Turnbull) was the first poem he wrote in his own voice--a kind of wish list for his "heart's desire" and a precursor to Howl. In the poem with strange prescience he predicts founding a college in the Rocky Mountains.

Cherche La Vache, Some Thoughts on Creative Writing Program Rankings and Advice to Prospective Applicants.

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 01:28:00 +0000

At last a response to the misbegotten rankings of MFA programs with David Fenza’s bold message on behalf of AWP (Associated Writing Programs). While I abhor at times the madhouse frenzy of AWP’s annual writers conference (anticipating 10,000 attendees in 2011), nonetheless, I appreciate AWP’s dedicated pursuit of professional standards for creative writing programs. Like any organization, it has its strengths and weaknesses. Some years ago, I called David asking him to arbitrate a faculty dispute in my MFA program. His response, off the record, was to initiate fair equity practices in hiring—unusual among low-residency MFA programs. He got right to the point about nepotism –friends of friends was no way to run a program.

Fenza’s message in AWP’s most recent missive reminds me of Evans Pritchard, the renowned anthropologist, who once said about studying the Nuer—Cherche la Vache—In this case, look to the faculty. In regard to the culture of creative writing programs today, he encourages prospective students shopping for a program that meets their needs to look to the faculty, not the rankings (which do not consider faculty). And I agree with his raw assessment that such rankings are to writing programs what pornography is to love. You might get off initially but how good is it really. They also promote a ‘cash cow’ industry in academia for a few schools but leave many others worthy of consideration bereft of applicants or scrambling for an increased advertising budget.

As in any endeavor it serves us well to land in an environment where we are loved for whom we are, not what we aspire to be. If going to the #1 or the top-rated five schools, for that matter, means a lot to you, then by all means go for it. Once while I was working for the late poet Allen Ginsberg, I visited him at Lenox hospital after his gall bladder operation. While I was there, Robert Frank, the photographer stopped by. Allen launched into extravagant praise about his ‘great’ doctor. I’ll never forget Robert’s chuckling response—something along the lines I guess we’re all invested in thinking our doctor is “great.” Allen ‘s response was: “But my doctor loves me.” Faculty need not love their students but they certainly need to care about them. The relationship between mentor and student is psychologically sensitive as the act of writing carries a high degree of exposure of one's inner life. Try to land yourself where you and your aesthetic are appreciated, otherwise, as Fenza points out, you could be miserable. The illusion of being part of ‘greatness’ according to external criteria such as rankings (we're the best of the best) might very well be an unfulfilled waste of money. Sadly, the urge to rub up against greatness more often than not perpetuates a hungry ghost realm of forever seeking endorsement but rarely being sustained by it.

I can’t speak much for fiction or non-fiction writers but over 30 years working with poets—some famous others obscure-- what comes to mind is the primacy of community. MFA programs might lead to quantifiable success for some—prizes, publication, teaching jobs. For everyone MFA programs always offer some kind of community. So it’s also useful for prospective students to investigate the creative writing community one is applying to; some are riddled with competitiveness and toxic academic politics, while others are supportive, meeting the individual needs of their students. Some favor their “stars,” others are more egalitarian. There is something for everyone. And as Fenza points out, the burden of choosing a program should focus on the investigative skills of the individual writer, not on subjective rankings.

The hallmark of faculty/mentor excellence, in my experience, resides in their ability to enter into the students’ work in an unbiased way and to provide students guidance to achieve intended goals in their writing. Sometimes the last horse becomes the best horse. Good faculty know this. Over the years, I’ve seen some of the best students who are brilliant poets never go beyond that initial blaze. And then too, I’ve seen some rather hard-working graduates set forth on a path to launch themselves into the world community of writers by curating reading series, founding literary journals and small presses, engaging in guerrilla publishing and ultimately “arriving” as established poets. Ambition may be a great motivation for productivity but if misplaced can lead to unscrupulous endorsement of the dark side or “selling out,” in my generation’s nomenclature. Isn’t it better to get published or win a prize by an anonymous selection process rather than find yourself propelled by nepotistic practices? Great mentors make writers not careers. So choose wisely. Beware of programs or mentors who promise more than they can deliver.

To read David Fenza’s AWP response to MFA creative writing program rankings, click here.

An article from the Economist about MFA program rankings

Variation on the Lonely Impulse of Delight

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:38:00 +0000

We don’t need to seek a solitary place;
To be without preconceived ideas is the real solitude
Khongtrul Lodro Thaye

Between a rock and a hard place
Platitudes of shock
When attitude unleashed to wilds
And tempers cooked crisp
To be without preconceived ideas
Is the real solitude
Flatten each thought as it rises
Mind-hut panoramic view
Of vast sky all the time
Problems dissolve
World the world is always with us
Each jewel
A singular perfection
No need for a solitary place
The world the world
AH, the world
Liberate

Peter Orlovsky's Memorial September 22, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 01:24:00 +0000

PHOTO: Philip Glass and Patti Smith performing Ginsberg'e poem, "On the Cremation of Chogyam Trungpa"

A You Tube variation here:

Peter Orlovsky's memorial at St. Mark's Church on September 22, 2010 brought together the extended family of Allen and Peter for a final farewell. We began the evening by meeting outside The Thirsty Scholar before making our way to Vaselka's famous Ukrainian restaurant on Second Ave for dinner and then on to the church for the memorial.

Here are some photos from the evening.

PHOTO: Anne Waldman and Family

PHOTO: Peter Hale of the Allen Ginsberg Trust who organized the event

PHOTO: Juanita Lieberman & friend outside The Thirsty Scholar

PHOTO: Gordon Ball

PHOTO: Steven Taylor

PHOTO: Shiv Mirabito & Andy Clausen

PHOTO: Ambrose Bye and Anne Waldman performing Peter's St. Francis poem

PHOTO: Miriam Sanders & Bill Morgon

PHOTO: Bev Isis and Peter Hale

PHOTO: Juanita & Ed Sanders

PHOTO: Rosebud & Bill Morgan

PHOTO: Juanita and Robert Frank

The Red Silk Scarf by Barbara Paparazzo

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:45:00 +0000

I am happy to announce that Barbara Paparazzo's chapbook, The Red Silk Scarf, has been published by Shivastan Publishing ( Woodstock & Nepal) The Red Silk Scarf is the record of a pilgrimage to Bodhgaya, India, showing how grief can become an opening into something larger than ourselves.

The chapbook is $12 including shipping. To order, please contact Barbara Paparazzo at blp@stuaf.umass.edu.

(Excerpt]

[12]

Not knowing better, we hired
a blue canoe and rowed
through reflections of snow-capped
Himalayas
to a small Hindu temple
where black and white goats played
in the sunshine. We snapped
pictures, sat on sun-warmed rocks
& admired the animals about to be
sacrificed, we found out later
& all that gamboling turned inside out
reminding me of that slice
unexpected, brutal
between my life when you were alive
and my life now.
Two pieces, both dead.

Memorial Reading for Peter Orlovsky (1933-2010) at St. Mark's Church on September 22, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:30:00 +0000

There will be a memorial Reading for poet, Peter Orlovsky on Wednesday, September 22, 8pm. St. Mark's Church. 10th St at 2nd Ave, NYC. The event is free.

Peter Orlovsky (July 8,1933-May 30, 2010) Poet, singer, farmer, yodeler, banjo-picker, Buddhist practitioner, Allen Ginsberg's lifelong-companion, Kerouac's Simon Darlovsky in Desolation Angels & George in The Dharma Bums, the generous & wonderfully whimsical Peter Orlovsky, was an unforgettable & hugely colorful presence in the East Village, and in and around the Poetry Project.

Please join us in a night of music, video, song and poetry, as some of his closest friends pay tribute to him including: Chuck Lief - Philip Glass - Ed Sanders - Steven Taylor - Hal Willner - Janine Pommy Vega - Andy Clausen - Patti Smith - Anne Waldman - Gordon Ball - Rosebud Pettet - Simon Pettet - Bill Morgan - Anselm Berrigan - John Godfrey - and others TBA

The following photos were taken at Peter's Sukhavati ceremony at Karme Choling, June 2, 2010

Photo: left to right: Peter Hale, Bev Isis, Bill Morgan, and Juanita Plimpton (nee Lieberman)

Photo: Juanita, Anne Waldman, and Bev in the Karme Choling Parking lot.

Photo: "Wake" in the packed shrine room at Karme Choling after Peter's Sukhavati

Account of Peter's Death by poet and long time friend, Anne Waldman who was able to be with him at the time of his death during her residency at the Vermont Studio Center :

Death of Peter Orlovsky “The Shellean farmer astride hid Pegasusian tractor” as Gregory Corso once knighted him passed on today, May 30 2010 to the elysian fields, a bardo of becoming. First glance hour earlier Peter was resting with “trach” in throat in orange sheets at the kind Vt Respite Center in Williston, Vermont ( but no extra tubes/ heroic measures for this advanced cancer on his lung!), a copy of the Songs of Saraha by his pillow, photo of beloved Allen Ginsberg companion of many years on the wall, other Buddhist images, iPod of music he loved including chants by Buddhist nuns, cards from friends and out the window a bird feeder with finch and red-winged blackbirds landing/taking off. Chuck and Judith Lief, faithful guardians and friends at his side. He had been moved less than 48 hours earlier from intensive care at a hospital in Boston, finally to hospice. His body we were touching we noticed suddenly turned cold like death was in the room. We got the nurse. Judy and I stepped out when suddenly Chuck called us back. Peter had opened his eyes. Chuck said “It might be the last time”. By his side now, looking into his eyes told out love, I thanked him for his presence in our lives, his poetry his care and love for Allen, his work at Naropa. Ah, I thought a flash of recognition shivering through! slight movement of mouth, light coming in on his handsome face through the window now, and Judy singing om a hum vajra guua padma siddhi hum in crystal voice said “don’t be afraid”. Joined in. Last breathes, one coming late, staggered: his heart/breath stopt. Poet Christina Lovin in room with nurse gave gentle witness who checked the clock 11:39 I think or so a.m. Earlier we’d played recording of Peter singing his Raspberry Song with great heart-soaring yodel and “how sweet you are”. “Make my grave shape of heart so like a flower be free aired and handsome felt” ( “The Snail”). Tibetan Book of the Dead readings, in full final repose arranged with blue shirt, hands folded, consciousness a joyful gardener sprite? no fear, no fear working its way out… Anne Waldman 5.30.2010 Vt Studio Center

Photo: Peter looking peaceful in the Karme Choling shrine room.

Photo: Peter with rose petals in honor of his gesture upon Allen's Sukhavati in 1997.

The following links provide additional information or memorials:

Internment of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky's Ashes at Shambhala Mountain Center, August 28, 2010

"Impossible Happiness: An Eulogy for Peter Orlovsky" by Steve Silberman

Visit Facebook group: "Our Allen"

Year of the Iron Tiger

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:12:00 +0000

Year of the Iron Tiger

Be prepared for uncharted fields
in the wild. Brace yourself to stalk
the prey of wandering thoughts
before you pounce
that old enemy—distraction,
all those frivolous wisps of hope and fear
hidden among weeds of mind.

Crouch low
Keep your nose to the ground

Smell wind
Hear the rustle of ignorance
when hungry to ambush
that wildebeest of one’s own rage.

Growl at adversity in the night
By day drink from the spring of Refuge
Flash your tiger’s teeth at enemies
Guard your pride with ease among outcrops.

Then, let your steely gaze ignite the fire
of impenetrable essence –
Awake in the blaze.

Jacqueline Gens
Conway, MA
Losar 2010

[unformatted version}

Moment to Moment

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:18:00 +0000

How did you like Jurassic Park, I ask the old lama?
It's like the Bardo only the Bardo is worse

For J & AM ...........May We R.I.P.

This morning H. Smith, my diabetes counselor
captures my poetic sensibility when he tells me that Byetta,
the miracle drug for lowering blood glucose
comes from the saliva of the Gila monster
a sort of reptilian bodhisattva though
repugnant creature-- sluggish, ugly, and foul,
Like all losers I fantasize that my April first
Powerball is a winner
I see my seaside cottage overgrown with Rose of Sharon
rose hip clusters at the weathered picket fence, air scented
with salt, kelp and sweet grasses
distant laughter carried over the swoosh of ocean sounds

I’m happiest here, in my primal memory from growing up on

   the Pacific coast.

I’ve already gifted poet friends, given millions
   to a Cambodian girls

recovery fund from sexual bondage in brothels.

   I know my charities
I want to walk barefoot
   on pristine hardwood floors accented by plush
oriental carpets
   a high bed looking out to sea through gossamer curtains.

my own movie almost as good as the real thing,.

It’s all I have

   I’m already exhausted imagining it all.

   I’m not surprised you consider me “crazy” or “power hungry,”

a “malicious liar”—I’ve been called worse.

   Remember “dear ones” every projection is a T-Rex
   Chasing you down in the bardo corridor

when you’re lost in Juarez without a name.
oooxxxx Won’t MATTER HERE
on the back streets of Old Weird America.

   I cleaned my fridge down on haunches emptying out fetid fruits,

veggies, and brown labia sprouting barnacles

   My disregard for the world’s hungry shameless

MY MIND A Garbage

Bag

I remember her once before things got complicated
she wore his fedora hat when we were in Mexico
still humble in awe of the company and her lover

the poet, ugly as a toad, who sang of my scrambled eggs
I hand picked from the market
   each night sipping tequila from thumbnails
   before the fireplace

swapping tales of poet scandals.

But it’s the old man leaning on a wall
I conjure
basking in the first rays of the sun *
misery dissolved
as he lifts his brown face upward

free from the moment.

*The old man basking in the sun is a traditional metaphor for rigpa or primordial wisdom

Jacqueline Gens

Brattleboro, VT

7/4/09

Ali Akbar Khan 1922-2009

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Photo Credit: By Lawson Knight

ALI AKBAR KHAN, SUPREME SIDDHA, brother of legendary hermit musician Annupurna, son of the great wizard Ustad Alauddin Khan, who broughtt the solo instrumental music of the West to the USA, in his performances w. Chatur Lal at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950's- who taught thousands of students at his school in San Raphel, California,which I was privileged to attend, who taught me the melodies for the Mira Bai Bhajans which you have heard on many occasions -who gave me a scholarship to study at the Conservatory of Music in Basel - Heaven is blessed to receive him.

from an email by Louise Landes Levi, June 20, 2009

for a video of Ali Akbar Khan, click here

Obituary from the Washington Post

More links to come

Allen Ginsberg--83rd Birthday, June 3

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:11:00 +0000

Garrison Keeler on the Writer's Almanac this morning gave a fine and intelligent homage to Allen on his birthday today, June 3.
The Bard lives on. You can listen to it below.

Remembering Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989-Twenty Years Ago

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:48:00 +0000

To read the compelling story of Shi Tao's poem, June, click here. Shi Tao is one of many Chinese writers currently imprisoned. His poem, June, was selected by the Pen Poem Relay to be rranslated in every language and circle the globe.

June

by Shi Tao

My whole life

Will never get past “June”
June, when my heart died
When my poetry died
When my lover
Died in romance’s pool of blood

June, the scorching sun burns open my skin
Revealing the true nature of my wound
June, the fish swims out of the blood-red sea
Toward another place to hibernate
June, the earth shifts, the rivers fall silent
Piled up letters unable to be delivered to the dead

Translated to English from Chinese by Chip Rolley.

Irina Mashinski on Boris Pasternak & Marina Tsvetaeva

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Sun, 31 May 2009 10:57:00 +0000

May 29th

Tomorrow Pasternak dies
in Peredelkino, where on his grave
we spent our youth
reciting "August,"
surrounded by quiet men in dark suits ––
they almost liked the lines.

Tomorrow is the day, the 30th. And three months from tomorrow
Tsvetaeva will hang herself
in a Tatar town on the black Kahma river
Kahma - a tribute to the fuller, solemn
Volga, which rolls her waters south farther from the yoke.
the town with a hook-like name: Elahbuga

A tributary to the yet unknown,
if only I could give her all my blood
to fill those cobalt rubble veins of a laborer!
If only - all the pine tree air to fill his tormented lungs -
I, illegitimate offspring,
looking for the two of you

on every bank
of each big frozen river
where boats are stuck in hardened hummocks.

Born in Moscow, Irina Mashinski (Mashinskaia) immigrated to the U.S. in 1991. A bilingual poet and translator, Mashinski is the author of six books of poetry and a winner of several prestigious Russian national literary awards. Her poetry has been translated into Serbian, Italian, English, and French and is regularly featured in most of the leading literary periodicals and anthologies in Russia and abroad. Her new Russian books of poems, Volk (Wolf) and Peschanik, (Sandstone, Selected Poems ) are scheduled to come out in the summer and fall of 2008 in New York and Moscow. Ms. Mashinski is a co-editor-in-chief of the Storony Sveta (Cardinal Points) major literary magazine published in the US. She graduated from Moscow University magna cum laude and is a current graduate of the MFA in Poetics at New England College. In the US, she has taught Mathematics, Science, Meteorology, and Russian History in high schools and colleges of New York and New Jersey.

The Lilac Thief

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:49:00 +0000

OK, it's that time of year and I'm a sucker for lilacs. I steal them by the armfuls past midnight or in the hours just before dawn when there's no one else around. The heirloom bushes at Memorial Park appear diseased this year. Here's a poem I wrote about them a few years ago at the height of my prowling for lilacs on other peoples' property or in abandoned places.

The Lilac Thief

This year I looked for lilacs
off the beaten track
in places no longer tended –

A different kind of boundary,
long rows where once houses stood,
lots now empty.

I love the deeper purple of old bushes,
their crushed bloomets falling into my hand
taken from gnarled bark bearing heavy plumage.

I am the local lilac thief,
that one who stops to follow
the scent of unseen blossoms.

Jacqueline Gens

2003

Apparently, I'm not the only Lilac thief. I found this poem in my classmate, Carie Salerno's book, Shelter and online at Fish Drum where you can hear her read the poem.

In Memorium: Allen Ginsberg RIP April 5, 1997

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:25:00 +0000

VISITATION
For Allen

A few days later I saw you
seated at a dusty crossroad
looking toward a vista of waterways
reminiscent of a cranberry bog or saltwater marsh,
maybe the river Styx.
A geography of immensity without habitation
where you sat on an old wooden stool,
with books and papers, focused intently.
One familiarity—your Calvin Klein
Goodwill navy blazer, my favorite;
your pens poking out from the pocket.
I stood quietly to your side waiting to assist you
yet not disturb your concentration.
Finished, you handed me a sheaf of papers,
Here, these are for you—for translation.

Then, you got up and walked slowly down the left-hand road.
I followed but you turned to me and said,
This is as far as you are allowed to go, I don’t have the water rights
for your passage—
a hitch of sadness in your voice,
your face mostly impassive, Bell’s Palsy,
one eye bigger, your face a bit cock- eyed,
but looking straight on
as we finished our business together once again
in clarity and respect, our natural elegance
hanging there a second
as we stared at one another.
I watched you walk off and knew you were finally gone.

Text from Primo Pensiero by Jacqueline Gens
Photo by Myles Aronowitz, 1984

Haruki Murakami Beyond Duality

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:28:00 +0000

Feb. 20, 2009

I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies -- which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true -- the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.

So let me tell you the truth. In Japan a fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came. The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The U.N. reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens -- children and old people.　

Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.

Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me -- and especially if they are warning me -- "Don't go there," "Don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.

Please do allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is "the System." The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others -- coldly, efficiently, systematically.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories -- stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the battlefield. He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.

My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called the System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong -- and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made the System. That is all I have to say to you.

-- By Haruki Murakami

sent to me in an email in January 2009 upon his acceptance speech to the Jerusalem Prize. Possible source here.

TIBETAN LOSAR CANCELED IN HONOR OF TIBETAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqueline Gens) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:24:00 +0000

0514" />

The NY times reported yesterday that China has stepped up security forces in several Tibetan cities. Most Tibetans world-wide are boycotting Losar, the traditional Tibetan New Year, to mark the occasion.

On this Sunday's radio show for Write Action at Wvew.org [107.7 FM] radio I will be featuring Tibetan poetry and song reading from such contemporary poets as Woeser, Tsering Wangmo Dhompo, Tenzin Tsundue and others. Some attention & homage will be paid to traditional poets from the past.