Anne Waldman: School of Disembodied Poetics

The linguistic hole

that only Anne could notice

(from her sidewalk on MacDougal Street

in New York City),

was near the intersection

where words meet for a smoke and to drink

deeply of philosophical phrases,

huge swallows of rebellious inspiration

which often led to something similar to enlightenment.

But no death has ever been reported as having been caused

by falling into her hole.

Anne had the wit to slam you down with ideas

which carried the weight of shamanistic visions,

often frightening

and which frequently became part of her daily attire.

She currently likes to wear silk scarves, for example,

the more outrageous the better.

Her comments can be outrageous, also.

The 3 Gorges Dam, she casually said,

displaced over 1 million Chinese,

none of whom visited Bennington College

or walked the streets of Berkeley, California

in anything resembling a mad poetic panic.

She did both!

Gregory Corso once told me that she gave him a hand job,

but he often lied from his faculty seat in the private office

he shared with his image.

Allen said she was his spiritual twin, but he sometimes stretched the truth, too.

And if she is incendiary, it is only because her love of jazz

twisted her tongue,

and now when she speaks a trumpeting flame can be seen

erupting between her fine front teeth,

scorching paper as she writes.

Only a few friends allow her to whisper in their ear.

And because of that, she has become a sensitive woman but with a war dance voice heard even

by reclusive Comanche Indians living many miles west of

the frontier settlements around Austin, Texas.

When the Indians dance, they chant the name of Neal Cassady,

in hopes of enhancing their stamina.

They dance in dust for many moons.

To be different, when she dances, Anne invokes the name of Jack Kerouac, and the School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.

She’s dancing there now in the faculty lounge, wearing a scarf,

a bright flame shooting from her mouth.