 |  |  |  |  |
Talk About Nicaragua, Zen & Punks
published in University City Press, Philadelphia, March 1982
Early one Friday morning a couple of weeks ago as I was attempting to get the material
together for this piece WKDU-FM played "BirdBrain", the 45 Ginsberg had just cut with
The Glue-Ons, a New Wave band. Besides providing a well timed morale boost, hearing his
poem set to this rock music widened my appreciation of what Ginsberg was doing with
verse; music and politics. I had realized the central importance of Woobly early 20th century
labor union rallying song in the poet's own Blakean poem-song, which he performed during
his April 28-30th stint in Philadelphia to benefit the Dharmadhatu Buddhist Center on Sansom
Street, where this interview took place. Hearing "Bird Brain" widened my appreciation
because I feel that prior to meeting America's most famous poet - a guy who, along with other
Beats, broke the moral, sexual, de-opiated ice of the Eisenhower hower era, underpinning the
revolutionary tenants of the 60's - I held the same reactionary prejudices exemplified by City
Paper's graphic manipulation of Ginsberg's press release in its January issue. Allen Ginsberg
had sold out to the system, had debauched himself through a dubious "lifestyle", was a media
monger, and was poetically impure because of his political motives.
I figured I could at least extract some valuable insight from him into Modernism and variable
line length. Of course my preconceptions dissolved as soon as he and Peter Orlovsky, Allen's
companion and artistic comrade since the early 50's, appeared in the room, frazzled from their
trip to Nicaragua (where they had attended the Ruben Dario Centenary) and their intense
schedule in Philadelphia, which included an interview with Marilyn Lois Polak, just then
ending and a spot on Terri Gross' radio'show, Fresh Air, to happen in an hour's time. I found
Allen very approachable, receptive to what was going on, and, most importantly, in
possession of an instantaneous and vital imagination that I hoped I, or any poet, might have
when we are 56. Recalling Saul Alinksy's writings on how to use the system against itself, it
dawned on me what Ginsberg really represented, and why he's considered by admirers to be
one of the "Daddies of the Age."
AG: Of the Nicaraguan thing, Cardenal, Evtuchenko, and I sat down and wrote a little text
together, collaborated on the text, which I have here. I don't think it's been circulated yet, so
here's my English translation of it. First American edition. [see below]
FW: I really like Cardenal a lot. What amazed me when I first started reading his work, in
translation, as well as a lot of the contemporary Spanish American poets, they seem to have
absorbed the Modernists' style, more so than we have. When I say we, I realize that you
knew Williams, you knew Pound, stayed with Pound in Venice, and I think that your
transcriptions of what transpired are beautiful during that period in Venice. Why is this the
case? Why do American poets, poets my age let's say, and the academics, have this aversion
to the Modernists? They're trying to either whitewash Williams at Pound's expense, or just
annihilate Pound because of certain peripheral things, peripheral values.
AG: Cardenal was really influenced a lot by my poetry he says, but most of all by Pound, for
the collage method and for the method of assembling data on the page... yeah, like Wichita
Vortex Sutras... or my own work. What everyone in Nicaragua is interested in having me read
is from "The Fall of Amerika", which is that Pound style which Ed Sanders does in turn. He
calls it Investigative Poetics which Williams did in Patterson, and Pound did in the Cantos.
And so, what they're interested in is blocks of their own perception in documentation.
FW: With the human not abstracted though. I mean isn't that Objectivist practice?
AG: Basic Objectivist-Imagist practice. Now the strange thing is that Ernesto Cardenal is the
Minister of Education. He and a friend of his - what was it (to Peter Orlovsky), you
remember the guy... translated Pound originally - these two old guys, he and this old, old, old,
friend Jose Ortecheo, who were the people that introduced into Nicaragua and Central
America what was called Vanguardismo - Vanguard poetry... translated by Pound and
Williams. This guy, Ortecheo, was from the Generals and lived near the border of Costa Rica
and Nicaragua near Cardenal's utopian island Solentiname. They corresponded with Pound so
there's an enormous Williams-Pound influence including my influence as a follow up. Having
won the revolution Cardenal is the Minister of Education - Minister of Culture - so he and the
Minister of Education have been instituting this literacy policy, because 11% of the people
there know how to read. And part of it is that everybody, the Generals, the Militia, the
civilians, are encouraged to write poetry. So, there's a giant poetry workshop scene going on.
FW: The whole nation is a giant poetry workshop!
AG: Yeah, they have poetry workshops everywhere and the soldiers go to them. And then the
style of poetry that they're taught is the Pound-Williams imagistic objectivist style all over the
Nicaraguan country. This is completely amazing, just because the Minister of Culture is a
Poundian, Pound influenced. So that's what determines what's going on in Nicaragua among
the peasants. That is to say blocks of objective statement. Or haiku. All of a sudden they're
writing haiku - it's similar to what's going on in some of the Buddhist schools here where by
studying especially in the Tibetan scene among the Dharmadhatu order. There's a great
emphasis on straight back, head and shoulders erect, certain Samurai attitudes and cultivation
of tea ceremony, flower arrangement, archery, haiku, a clear mind.
FW: Bringing out the whole person rather than fragmenting it?
AG: Yes. But not aggressive person, but upright, externalized person, a person extended
outward into space, historic acting perspn. So, a warrior is the word they use around here in
the Chambala teaching that they have -Chambala Warrior.
FW: So you're making a connection between what the Sandinistas are doing in Nicaragua and
what's happening on the other side of the planet?
AG: Yes, it's just a funny historic synchronicity or pun, or joke that I found many elements
in the Sandinista asthetics similar to Tibetan Buddhist approach to aesthetics. Not that they're
identical or not that Buddhists up here do any revolutionary fighting, it's just that they both
want - a straight back - and a clear relation to the external world.
FW: Yeah. It seems like a lot of instances like, there's tons of pushing going on, say in
England or here, some kind of oppression and all of a sudden that pressure releases itself in a
positive outward movement somewhere else, like in Nicaragua or somewhere totally different.
AG: Somebody blows their nose in the North and steam comes out under the waist, at the
equator. (Laugh)
FW: Your influence on SpanishAmerican poetry is interesting because I was reading over
some of the few things I have of Dario in anthologies and stuff, was mentioning to Peter
earlier...
AG: Very formalistic, flowery.
FW: Yes. Gongorisms and so forth. In one poem to Roosevelt he says - the first line - you
need the voice of the Bible or the voice of Walt Whitman to get through the ear of Roosevelt
- and then it has a little couplet and it seems projectivist in its symmetry. The interest in the
United States, the future invader -invasor - and he seems like he's prophesying your poetry.
AG: That stanza you're mentioning is in giant-sized posters all over Nicaragua now. You go
into the airport and that's the first thing you see is these lines from Ruben Dario - huge posters
with Dario's face and that Roosevelt poem. It's amazing that you saw it, where did you find
it? New Directions? H. R. Hayes?
FW: No. I really don't remember, sorry. *(The Yellow Canary Whose Eye Is So Black Ed.
and trans. by Cheli Duran MacMillan, 1877, New York.)
AG: You really hit the nail on the head, because that's the one poem everybody is reading
down there.
FW: I try to rely on it. I think a lot of people now, especially poets, have to because of the
work that you did in the middle of the century and what Pound, what the Modernists were
doing in the beginning, that we can either, you know, sit back and think well, the pressure of
tradition is too much, we won't do anything. Or else, assume certain techniques and certain
breakthroughs in experimentation and then move on from there and that's why I do appreciate
your work.
AG: What you could assume you can write in your idiom. Write in your own voice.
FW: So the possibilities are infinite, as I think you said in an interview in 1972. **(and in
1968; "Profile of Allen Jane Kormer, New Yorker August 24, 1968, page 88.)
AG: You see, Williams introduced something that wasn't a closed system because his whole
point was everybody should give their own persona and their personal communal diction and
their own personal speech rhythm. Anybody who becomes mindfull of the way they talk
themselves, can extract certain rhythmic cadences that are specific to their own nature. So
that means you'd have an infinitely varied series of styles. But that might get to be a drag
since somebody might want to carry it further and say, well let's have totally disconnected
Cagean (John Cage) and random indeterminate patterns. Or, somebody might say, well we
should have some kind of standard rhythmic rhyme throughout Rock and Roll or New Wave.
That's what we all try our hand at.
FW: You can have all of it at the same time in the same poem perhaps, as you did with
Kaddish, and "The Fall of Amerika". You use the shorter lines, the shorter lyric lines and then
use the long breath passages.
AG: I asked Williams about that. What would be the appropriate measure a reader could use
for a long poem, and he said variably, different meters, all different kinds. Instead of having
one single meter, like in Homer, or Milton, or Blake, one could have all different meters.
FW: At some point he accused you of using anapest too much or something, didn't he? He
said that your work, your longer work, was falling into an anapest meter.
AG: Maybe. He was probably talking about "Howl."
FW: Again with the Spanish-American poets you're known for your long breath line, that
mindful, sustained long breath line, and it just seems to get more and more polished and more
developed from "Howl" onward.
AG: I think "Howl" is where the influence came in Nicaragua. Someone explained that it was
a big influence in the 60's. One poet went mad. They're a bunch of Beat poets there. Two of
them were up in the bughbuse, one ended up working with the CIA.
FW: They thought that you had done it, and they were... beaten to it.
AG: No, no, no. It was just a funny thing. I said well what happened to this group of poets
that were influenced? He said well, O.K. One of them ended up working for the CIA in El
Salvador, and one of them was in the bughouse, a couple of them wandering around the
streets lost. Well I don't know I said, is it my fault? They said no, you didn't do it all by
yourself. (Laughter).
FW: That variable meter was being used by Dario and the Modernismo - 12 or 15 syllables
and then the influence of Whitman.
AG: Yeah, and Neruda and Lorca. I think what it was, that for post-war American Rock 'n
Roll consciousness "Howl" came through as a sort of climatic apostrophe or ecstatic dance
poem after half a century ot advanced modern long line work by Lorca and others. So this is
just, `Well, the Americans are doing it, and that's the last sort of evidence that the wide open
line is alright.'
FW: I think the difference between your wide open line and say, Lorca's and even at times
Whitman's you do use the device of repetition, but there's an interconnectedness in the
semantics throughout. At the same time, I don't think "Howl" is the best example but by the
time of, "The Fall of Amerika", and a lot of the longer poems in Mind-Breaths, you know that
it's there. You're getting a rushing towards the end of the line and that sustains it. And that
seems to be quite an accomplishment taking enormous energy.
AG: Try to get rid of the anaphoric and return to the beginning, who, who, who?
FW: It's not like in the lexicon or whatever, but the echoes, you know, it's becoming a pure
echo of sound reverberating through the poems.
AG: Well, "Plutonium Ode"...
FW: Yeah. I read that when it was in the Voice and I thought that yes, it was sustained. My
only complaint about it was it didn't seem to offer any kind of alternative. Like, what can we
do?
AG: Oh, except to destroy this method of plutonium with ordinary mind and body speech.
Yes, I think it's a hysterical mind that creates the plutonium. Ordinary mind that was a result
of the anxiety that projects plutonium as a necessary defense against chaos.
FW: I was reading somewhere in another interview when you were talking about Kerouac
being...
AG: Ker-ouac (said with an accent), Ker-ouac! It's a sort of French-Canadian tonguing. Go
on, I'm sorry.
FW: Well, you know, they don't teach us languages any more in high school... He was talking
about, and you backed him up, where the latter part of the 60's seemed to promise the
angelic, what did you say? 'The wisest snakes, and um, angelic and...'
AG: Wise as serpents, what was it? Silent as doves, I forget, that's what Christ said to his
disciples. Be ye smarter than snakes...
FW: The younger poets, the younger people who are growing up now, and those like myself
growing up at the end of the 60's, that's what we saw. We saw the violence, we saw the
reaction; our choice, either to withdraw or get on the bandwagon and have violent dreams and
think about plutonium even though we were against it.
AG: How do you solve that problem?
FW: I think that there's hints...
AG: What, by becoming very neurotic... (laughs).
FW: Or else writing your way out.
AG: Yeah, now how did you solve that?
FW: Well, I think it's being solved in the process of what's happening now with the New
Wave and I think that you probably see something like that.
AG: In Nicaragua they never heard of New Wave to begin with so that's hard to explain.
FW: They'll probably use it pretty soon, I guess.
AG: They never heard of The Clash.
FW: You mentioned that on the phone and that's what I'm leading up to, you know, just that
influence...
AG: Wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
FW: Why is it that way?
AG: Wise as serpents and harmless as doves is the old phrase.
FW: And it's true, I mean you can talk to your average punk at one of these punk rock things
and they're very indifferent. They're very laid back, but at the same time they're very smart
and wise in that way. Whereas, you mentioned at one place putting a flower into the barrel of
a gun at the Pentagon isn't going to solve anything, it never did, or throwing rocks at the
National Guard or whatever, you know, getting violent won't...
AG: The flower in the barrel of the gun, I think, did a lot of good though. Just the
juxtaposition was a great image. There's a great photo about that. Have you seen it?
FW: Ah, it's very famous.
AG: That will stay, that will be interesting years from now.
FW: I've a packet for you. Maybe because we're so insulated, but us hicks in Philadelphia feel
that there's a lot going on here. I didn't really have the time to get everything in there that I
wanted but at some point I'll send some more stuff to you. There's really some fine poets
here and this one poet in particular, Harold Watson.
AG: Pussycat Hair Loose Poetry?
FW: Yeah, he's a black poet, but he sounds a lot like Wallace Stevens, alright? And it's as if
Modernism, Beatism, is sunk in, you know, at almost an unconscious level, and is aworking
in a very positive progressive way. A way that's centered around sound and a lot of your
conversations dealt with that. Vowel modulation, re-reading Rimbaud, with that in mind,
talking about Pound's mot juste...
AG: I think Pound's was, "follow the tone leading to the vowel." Do you know what that
means? Or means to me?
FW: Almost hearing it before you... hear it?
AG: No, no, no. I just said no, no, that's the tone of the vowel. When there's extra emphasis,
the volume goes up or the volume goes down.
FW: I would associate tone with, like, a piece of metal and it reverberates with a pitch,
changing it while it is reverberating like say, putting torque on metal. You hear a change in
the pitch or something.
AG: I interpret it as... be conscious of the pitch in your vowels so you can write musically in
ordinary speech.
FW: I found that in your longer poems that one of the ways you vary the sound and so forth
just simply by making a statement where the pitch is running very
rapidly to a close and then juxtaposing that with the pitch of a question, where it's reversed
and you get this really interesting tone that results after you read both lines.
AG: That would sound like, oh, I don't know if you're going to go home and see whether I'm
dying in my bed: do you think you'd-wake up and give me refuge when I'm in my coffin?
FW: Yes. (Laughs).
AG: That's sort of unconscious, I didn't think of that.
=======================================
=======================================
Declaration of Three
We are three poets of very different countries. One of us is a catholic poet, son of an
underdeveloped country. The other two are sons of Countries ca1led superpowers: one-from
a capitalist state, and the other- socialist. But we are :all sure, that the one superpower which
must exist is the human spirit, that there is no state bigger than the hunian soul. The human
soul iinust be the Church of all, -religious, or non-theistic in all parts of the world.
We don't want to see Nicaragua became' a puppet in anyone's hands. At this moment we are
witnesses that here in Nicaragua, which suffered so much under tyranny; misery and
ignorance, there is an intent on the part of the people to defend their economic and intellectual
independence. Nicaragua is a big experimental workshop for new forms of get-together
wherein art plays a primordial role. Many Nicaraguans-not only intellectuals- but also
workers, farmers, the militia, write verse today, with hands tired of weapons. Let's give them
the possibility to write poetry with ink and not blood.
We call the world's writers to come to Nicaragua to see with their own eyes the reality of
Nicaragua and lift their voices in defense of this country, small
but inspired. They'll be welcome and can acquaint themselves directly with the true character
of this revolution, of the efforts of the people to create a just society exempt from violence, a
revolution whose image is being consciously distorted by those who have an interest in
destroying the alternative which it proposes.
The Damocles' sword of aggression how hangs in the air above these people.
We trust that if the writers of the world get together, their pens will be mightier than any
sword of Damocles.
Eugenio Evtuchenko
Allen Ginsberg
Ernesto Cardenal
Anniversary of Ruben Dario
Proclamation of Cultural Independence
Managua, January 28, 1982
Nicaragua