Anne Waldman (USA) 1945

Anne Waldman (USA)

1945

 

Born in Millville, New Jersey, Anne 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. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts award, the Shelley prize for poetry, and has had residences at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, The Atlantic Center for the Arts and at the Christian Woman's University in Tokyo. 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 currently 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 editions of poetry, she has been working for over 25 years on the epic IOVIS project (two volumes published by Coffee House Press, 1993, 1997) and has published most recently Marriage: A Sentence (Coffee House Press, 2000), In the Room of Never Grieve: New & Selected Poems with CD collaboration with Ambrose Bye (Coffee House Press, 2003), Dark Arcana: Afterimage or Glow, with photographs by Patti Smith (Heaven Bone Press. 2003) and Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, a long Buddhist poem, Penguin Poets 2004. She also co-edited the major anthology Civil Disobediences: Poetics & Politics in Action (Coffee House Press, 2004), with talks and essays by Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Michael Ondaatje, Barbara Guest, Robert Creeley, Sonia Sanchez and others.

    She has directed productions with the Gertrude Stein Players in Boulder, Colorado and has worked in collaboration with students, dancers, videographers, visual artists, musicians, composers for over 30 years. She has, in particular collaborated with artists Joe Brainard, George Schneeman, Susan Rothenberg, Elizabeth Murray and Richard Tuttle and her husband, movie director and writer Ed Bowes. She has also helped developed poetry projects in Vienna and Prague. She is co-founder of the Poetry Is News collective which curates forums of political and poetical discussion. She is a noted performer of her own work, developing original modal structures and sprechstimme strategies. She makes her home in New York City and Boulder, Colorado.

 

BOOKS OF POETRY

 

On the Wing (New York: Boke, 1968); O My Life! (New York: Angel Hair, 1969); Baby Breakdown (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970); Giant Night: Selected Poems (New York: Corinth Books, 1970); Up Through the Years (New York: Angel Hair, 1970); Goodies from Anne Waldman (Strange Faeces Press, 1971); Holy City (privately printed, 1971); Icy Rose (New York: Angel Hair, 1971); Memorial Day [with Ted Berrigan] (New York: Poetry Project, 1971); No Hassles (New York: Kulchur Foundation, 1971); Light and Shadow (privately printed, 1972); Spin Off (Bolinas, California: Big Sky, 1972); The West Indies Poems (New York: Adventures in Poetry, 1972) Life Notes; Selected Poems (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973); Self Portrait [with Joe Brainard] (Siamese Banana Press, 1973); The Contemplative Life (Alternative Press, n.d); Fast Speaking Woman (Red Hanrahan Press, 1974); Fast Speaking Woman and Other Chants (San Francisco: City Lights, 1975; revised edition, 1978); Sun the Blond Out (Berkeley, California: Arif, 1975); Hotel Room (Songbird, 1976); Journals and Dreams (New York: Stonehill, 1976); Shaman (Waban, Massachusetts: White Raven, 1977); bilingual edition in German and English (Apartment Editions, 1990); Four Travels [with Reed Bye] (Sayonara, 1979); Polar Ode [with Eileen Myles](Dead Duke, 1979); To a Young Poet (Waban, Massachusetts: White Raven, 1979); Sphinxeries [with Denyse duRoi] (1979); Countries (West Branch, Iowa: Toothpaste Press, 1980); Cabin (Calais, Vermont: Z Press, 1981); First Baby Poems (Boulder, Colorado: Rocky Ledge, 1982; augmented edition (Hyacinth Girls, 1983); Makeup on Empty Space (West Branch, Iowa: Toothpaste Press, 1984); Invention (with drawings by Susan Hall) (New York: Kulchur Foundation, 1985); Skin Meat Bones (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1985); Blue Mosque (New York: United Artists, 1987); The Romance Thing ( Bamberger Books, 1987); Helping the Dreamer: New and Selected Poems: 1966-1988 (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1989); Not a Male Pseudonym (New York: Tender Buttons Books, 1990); Lokapala (Boulder, Colorado: Rocky Ledge, 1991); Fait Accompli (Boulder, Colorado: Last Generation Press, 1992); Iovis: All Is Full of Jove (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1993); Troubairit (New York: Fifth Planet Press, 1993); Kill or Cure (New York: Penguin Poets, 1996); Fast Speaking Woman (20th Anniversary edition) (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996); Iovis: Book II (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1997); Marriage: A Sentence (New York: Penguin Poets, 2000); Vow to Poetry (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2001); War Crime (Elik Press, 2002); Dark Arcana / Afterimage or Glow (Chester, New York: Heaven Bone Press, 2003); In the Room of Never Grieve: New & Selected Poems 1985–2003 (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2003); Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble (New York: Penguin Poets, 2004); Outrider (La Alameda Press, 2006); Red Noir (Farfalla, McMillen, Parrish, 2007); Manatee/Humanity (New York: Penguin Poets, 2009); The Iovis Trilogy (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2011); Empty Set (Overpass Books, 2016); Dream Book of Fez (The Lune, 2016); Voice’s Daughter of a Heart Yet to Be Born (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2016); Extinction Aria (Pied Oxen, 2017); Trickster Feminism (New York : Penguin Books, 2018); The Basketball Article Comic Book [with Bernadette Mayer, illustrated by Jason Novak] (Franchise, 2021)

 

 

For three videos of Anne Waldman reading from her work, click below on Ron Silliman's blog:

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2011/07/blog-post_21.html

 

 

╬Winner of the PIP Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative Poetry in English

2005-2006

 

Staying

             for Jackson Mac Low

 

 

“tremendous light,” fellow traveler

& that the staying be prolonged of his staying

in the writing, the sounding & rasp & glee

the writing and the staying of the writing

the sounding & the glee of it, the sounding

& staying & glee of all the writing that went into

long permutations & longing in one writing

that he, that particular mind & senses of him

writing, that he be he the writing, then man

prolonged & all that is he, man, in writing

that he be prolonged & staying in the writing

the sounding of it the rasp the glee of it the

mind of it & senses prolonged by it, of him

sounding that sound, the sound that stays

 

___

Reprinted from The Brooklyn Rail (March 2005). Copyright ©2005 by Anne Waldman.