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Poem by Anne Waldman

Eyewear is very proud to showcase a poem by the great Anne Waldman (pictured) this first day of December, 2006.

Ms. Waldman - poet, editor, performer, professor, curator, cultural activist- carries in her genetics the lineages of the New American Poetry, and is a considered an inheritor of the Beat (Allen Ginsberg called her his "spiritual wife") and New York School (Frank O'Hara told her to "work for inspiration, not money") mantles.

Directing the Poetry Project at St Mark's Poetry Project over a decade, she co-founded the Jack Keroauc School of Disembodied Poetics with Allen Ginsberg at the Buddhist-inspired Naropa University in 1974. She is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of Naropa's celebrated Summer Writing Program and is working with the Study Abroad on the Bowery project in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Author and editor of over 40 books and small press editons of poetry, some of her latest books inlcude In The Room Of Never Grieve: New & Selected Poems with CD collaboration with Ambrose Bye, Dark Arcana: Afterimage or Glow, with photographs by Patti Smith, and Structure of the World Compared To A Bubble, a long Buddhist poem. She also co-edited the anthology Civil Disobediences: Poetics & Politics in Action. She is co-founder of the Poetry Is News collective which curates forums of political and poetical discussion.



“Thy” of No Dire Greenhouse Effect

Yea tho I am walking
yea tho I walk forever in thy direction which is thy “thyness”
yea tho thy “thyness” be friendly
that it be no shadow, that it be no death
yea that thy “thy” be willing, be aura, be oracular
yea that “thyness” be without gender without godhead
godhead is no way to be walking towards “thy”
thy is no kingdom come
thy is no purple privileged glory
thy is no flag, no rod, no scepter, no staff of brutality
thy is no random particle
thy is a kind site of no dire greenhouse effect
thy is a place with conscientious war tribunals
they is of mercy and follows all the days of tracking war criminals
thy is the hours of constant tracking
thy will keep you awake in any time zone tracking
because thy is observation, is a current affair, is tracking “thy”
thy goes back to any older time you mention
a time the increments of language were simpler, were strange
thy was a module, thy was a repository
thy was a canticle for future discipleship
thy is architecture, thy is the entire book for the things of “thy”
thy is a book of thy “thyness” which is not owned
can you guess the “thy” in all the days of my defiance
yea tho I fear thy terror of “thy” amnesia, thy negligence
yea tho it stalks me in the valley
yea that it beseeches me to lighten up
yea tho it behooves me to abdicate “thy”
I will keep the sleep of ancient times
of Arcady of the holy cities where thy hides
thy could be done, thy could be stationary in any language
and then thy could be moving as I do in pursuit of sanity
that they track the war profiteers
that they track the war criminals
that they track the murderers
who slaughter innocents
that they are exposed in the market place
that they are brought to justice.

poem by Anne Waldman

Comments

Janet Vickers said…
Thanks for introducing us (up here and over there) to Anne Waldman.

Such emerging liturgy would comfort me.
SarahJane said…
yes, very cool poem. thanks
Mishkin said…
i saw her read this, i think in new york or chicago??? it was fantastic. she has some other poems online, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171775 and you can hear her recorded here http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Waldman.html

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