Why in the name of God women want to wear a beautiful satin evening gown and appear splendid at the price of going home to pretend to caress a man who is putrid, when the world is full of men who know how to clothe a woman in the satin of rhythm is a fancy question.

— Frances Boldereff

(After Completion)

” You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.”                    – Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

Voice: Right. Well, in a sense it’s not even relevant to discuss as poetry. Are you–in other words, the question I have is, are you and Creeley and Duncan– I mean is this a new movement? Are you creating, are you at all together?

Olson: No, I think that whole “Black Mountain poet” thing is a lot of bullshit. I mean, actually, it was created by the editor of that anthology for Grove Press, Mr. Allen, where he divided– he did a very–but it was a terrible mistake made. He created those sections–Black Mountain, San Francisco, Beat, New York, New, Young, huh? Oh, I mean, imagine, just for the hear of it, “Young.” Hear the insult, if you’re young. You’re suddenly classified into a thing–by one of the great editors, the founder of Evergreen Review. And the first issues of Evergreen, the first four issues of Evergreen were, really, first rate. But he made a big mistake; he made a topological error. I mean he had the wrong topology. And he created something which is very unhappy. For example, poets, who can’t get us straight because they think we form a sort of a club or a claque or gang or something. And that there was a poetics? Ha ha. Boy, there was no poetic. It was Charlie Parker. Literally, it was Charlie Parker. He was the Bob Dylan of the Fifties.

from On Black Mountain

Reading in Bed

by evening light, at the window, where wind blows
it's not enough to wake with morning 
as a child, the insistent urge of habit

sounds, to write a poem, to pore over one's past 
recall ultimate orders one has since doubted
in despair. Inner reality returns 

of moonlight over water at Gloucester, as
fine a harbor as the Adriatic, Charles said, before the big storm 
blew up to land moorings, shards against sand 

of memory at midnight; ah yes the dream begins
of lips pressed against yours over waves, tides,
hour-long auto rides into dawn, when time

pounds a mystery on the beach, to no death out of reach .

January 9, 1970
                                      John Wieners     

MORNING OF DRUNKENNESS

O my Good! O my Beautiful! Atrocious fanfare where I never falter. Rack of enchantments! Hurrah for the unbelievable work and for the marvelous body, for the first time! It began in the midst of children’s laughter, with their laughter it will end. This poison will stay in all our veins even when, the fanfares shifting, we shall return to the old inharmony. O now let us, who are so worthy of these tortures! redeem that superhuman promise made to our body and our soul created : that promise that madness! Elegance, science, violence! They have promised us to bury in darkness the tree of good and evil, to deport tyranic respectabilities so that we may bring hither our pure love. It began with a certain disgust—and it ends—unable instantly to grasp this eternity,—it ends with a riot of perfumes.

Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins, loathing of faces and objects here, holy be all of you in memory of this vigil. It began with every sort of boorishness, behold, it ends with angels of flame and of ice!

Little drunken vigil, holy! if only because of the mask you have bestowed on us. We pronounce you, method! We shall not forget that yesterday you glorified each one of our ages. We have faith in the poison. We know how to give our whole life every day.

The time of the Assassins is here.

Translation by Louise Varese

“That’s Rimbaud, one of the great men, the greatest fucking men.”

— Charles Olson