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Quote by Anne Waldman

“What I'm after is that wakeful state through language that stays alive.”

Quote by Anne Waldman

Author

Anne Waldman, born on April 2, 1945, is an American poet known for her strong personal style and her focus on social and political issues. She is a prominent figure in the Beat Generation and the post-Beat Generation, and her poetry blends the form of free verse with radical political stances. more

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“To conjure a particular knowledge you visualize an architectural structure and then you walk around and see the details that then bring back the words or the poetry or the lines of thought. Memory's going extinct because we rely on machines and copies and so on. The idea of working with structures that conjure dreams, personages, history, time, that can be contained in this way as you walk through your mind, is a challenge.”

Way Mind Ideas Dream Challenges Lines Memories Walks Particular Machines Structure Details Rely Copies

Author:Anne Waldman

“The formal stuff feels old and windy. Not to say you shouldn't know prosody. But it's a wonderful time for exploratory poetics. Contemporary poets are inventing all kinds of wild, complex shapes for poetry, as we see. It's a wonderful time, less ego-centered.”

Knows Feels Kind Stuff Wonderful Poet Shapes Ego Complexes Contemporary All Kinds Formal Inventing Windy Wonderful Times Prosody

Author:Anne Waldman

“When students are first at the Kerouac School we harp on Gertrude Stein's very basic poetic insistence that words are things . Not to invalidate your experience or all the great feelings you have, I tell them. Although poetry may be good for you, it's not therapy. You're making something with words which are visceral, muscular, active, not just markers of how you feel. And we have classes studying William Blake, Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Stein.”

Feels Firsts May Feelings School Class Study Students Active Be Good Therapy Pounds Poetic How You Feel Insistence Harps Visceral Blake Markers Great Feelings Duncan Gertrude

Author:Anne Waldman

“There's that older poem of John Ashbery's-"America"-with the pun "I'm a wrecker," so wreckage and building out of the ashes of that. We're haunted by the genocide that is America, the decimation of so many native cultures. As a mix-blood European ancestry American, you're a nexus of all those violences, and yet there's a relative personal identity as well.”

Wells America Culture Violence Blood Identity Building Native Genocide Relative Ashes Ancestry Pun Wreckage Personal Identity Nexus

Author:Anne Waldman

“Various random experiments, cut-ups, fold-ins, juxtapositions, timed writings of other kinds, the "objects assignment" which involves dream, adventure, ancestry. Writing outside, writing on moving vehicles. Looking at paintings in the grand museums of the world in a proscribed way.Little strategies to keep the lalita - play or dance - going. Sometimes it's lonely you know, just you and your own imagination.”

“Spiritual models for me are the communities of Tibetans living in exile in India, or the banjars of Bali, which exist in times of difficulty, oppression. Alternative spaces-perhaps this kind of communication can take place over the Net? Probably only up to a point as the Net's controlled by the military. But the idea is to live outside multi-national, monocultural, commodification prison, outside the grey areas of power-mad, monied collusion.”

“The sense of the preciousness of the body - vehicle for poetry.”

Author:Anne Waldman

“I hope I'm not implying role of contemporary poet for myself, although there's a kind of resonant paradigm. It's traditionally a difficult role.”

Kind Difficult Roles Poet Contemporary Paradigm Implying

Author:Anne Waldman

“One has to be cautious and respectful of the power of the "substance" guides. I don't advocate imbibing the "little saint children," as Maria Sabina calls the magic mushrooms, or anything else for everyone. I find that certain substances reconnect me to a primal context of purpose that goes beyond identity and ownership. The writing-when I've worked it this way-is the kind of information you take back from dreams. Or it's hypnotic writing rather than getting off on some sort of pleasure trip or intellectual trip.”

“America's the great conundrum and the great dream and the great fascination: the new land, the new world, the new temple, the new city, and the great mess. The most handguns, bombs, weaponry, violence, the cop of the world etcetera. All the contradictions. Mediocrity versus something like indigenous jazz, one of the most evolved sophisticated musical forms on the planet.”