Quotessence
Home / Authors / Anne Waldman
Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllKindThinkingPeopleWorldWayIdeasPoetFatherMindWells

Famous Anne Waldman Quotes

“Refined, intense, wise, stiring, immediate, subtile, all the charmed qualities gather in Dropping the Bow. These translations are precious jewels. Like the erotic moods they investigate, these versions shimmer and startle with a palpable desire to be heard, and a mystical sense of impermanence. This is a transmission of a vital, extraordinary tradition.”

DesireQualityWiseHeardTraditionExtraordinaryMoodIntenseVersionsBowsMysticalJewelsEroticTranslationsDroppingRefinedImpermanenceTransmissionCharmedShimmerPrecious Jewels
Author:Anne Waldman
Create image

“My mother actually left American in 1929 to be part of an alternative community of bohemians around her then father-in-law who was a well-known Greek poet. This group of people were living in this semi-Luddite reality and weaving their own clothes - proto-hippies in a way- -but around an artistic vision.”

PeopleWayWellsRealityLawMotherFatherLeftCommunityKnownVisionGroupsPoetClothesArtisticAlternativesGreekWell KnownHippieIn-lawsWeavingArtistic VisionFather In Law
Author:Anne Waldman
Create image

“When [Allen] Ginsberg and I founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics - that was 1974 - we referred to it by a term used by Sufi thinker Hakim Bey, as "temporary autonomous zones." That for me sums up some of Whitman's sense of a community of likeminded people with a certain kind of adhesiveness and connection and sharing of this ethos.”

PeopleKindSchoolUsedCertainTermCommunityConnectionsZoneTemporaryThinkerSufiAutonomousEthosGinsberg
Author:Anne Waldman
Create image

“I think of my father growing up in South Jersey, the son of second-generation German immigrant glassblowers. The opportunities for him of feeling that aspiration, that yearning, get out of the small town, connect to a larger world, get yourself to New York, wanting to play the piano at every opportunity, bonding with people who were on a similar path, ending up in Provincetown, which was kind of nexus for nonconformity, and artistic dropout reality.”

PeopleThinkingWorldKindPlayFeelingsRealityFatherOpportunityGrowing UpPathGrowingGenerationsNew YorkSonTownsSouthArtisticPianoAspirationImmigrantsYearningSmall TownJerseyNonconformityBondingDropoutsNexusProvincetown
Author:Anne Waldman
Create image

“I had a student some years ago whose father had worked on the Manhattan Project. I had a student who had to escape this very intense, born-again fundamentalist Christian background that was very much like a cult and of course they struggle to get to Naropa. And they have cut themselves off. They don't look back.”

YearsLooksChristianCoursesFatherBornStruggleCuttingStudentsProjectsYears AgoBackgroundsIntenseCultManhattanBorn AgainFundamentalistManhattan Project
Author:Anne Waldman
Create image

“The dichotomies, the brokenness of the culture around things like the Vietnam war, and then a lot of it has to do with war and where we put our energy and money and attention. And the military industrial complex, which dominates our whole economy. Even with the vision of democracy in other places we know the dark side.”

KnowsWarWholeCultureEnergySidesDarkAttentionVisionEconomyDemocracyMilitaryComplexesVietnamVietnam WarDark SideBrokennessDichotomyMilitary Industrial Complex
Author:Anne Waldman
Create image

“I did go to Vietnam in 2000 as a kind of pilgrimage and to feel my generation was very much a part of this. I felt responsible but also connected and empathetic. It was a very complicated relationship we had, whichever side you were on. The shock of being there was very few people my own age - I was primarily in the North in the streets of Hanoi. A whole generation was essentially decimated.”

PeopleFeelsKindWholeAgeFeltSidesMy OwnGenerationsStreetsResponsibleComplicatedConnectedShockVietnamBeing ThereMy GenerationPilgrimageEmpatheticComplicated RelationshipHanoi
Author:Anne Waldman
Create image

“It was really hard coming to terms with the Nazi history. Then in my twenties I was traveling to Germany. There was a lot of poetry activity and some of my first readings abroad and trying to relate with people my own age there and what they were discovering and learning had to examine in terms of their backgrounds. Then so many of my friends had family who had either perished in the holocaust or survived in the holocaust. It was very palpable.”

PeopleTryingFirstsHardAgeReadingTermMy OwnActivityMy FriendsTwentiesBackgroundsRelateGermanyHolocaustDiscoveringSurvivedNazi
Author:Anne Waldman
Create image