DOI: 10.25549/lipton-c108-511
title: 395. Unidentified prose poetry readings, poetry readings by Perkoff, et al., Lipton & Foster book discussion, suicide & immortality discussion, [ca. 1956-1962]

description: Tape 395, part A) Unidentified male reading his prose poetry "[inaudible] two or three times that night…." (0:02), "Obstacles to beauty" (1:43), "I will go on writing it till I die" (28:54), "I'm writing in the little room at the end of Emma's garden" (29:46). ❧ Tape 395, part B) Unidentified male reading his poetry (music on radio and show on television in background): "This is past" (0:03), "Charlie Mingus, the clown" (1:09), "I smell a sea" (2:57), "I suffer a nervous breakdown every morn" (4:32), "It is to play" (5:12), "Memory availeth not" (5:40), "Picture the ball" (7:10), "Puggle a muse" (8:07), "You're competing with me" (9:35), "Cable of Sandau" (10:11), "Ugh, ugh" (11:23), "And right here Spings gone to chance" (12:04), "It was too bad" (12:42), "Tis no goodness to alude" (14:49), "Oh damnit you are wise" (16:59), "The parson age Saint Mogre danced" (17:15), "This is past" (19:02). ❧ Lawrence Lipton speaking with Charles [Foster] [playback speed is too fast] (19:58) giving advice on a book Foster is writing, first person perspective, physical description of people, publishability, readability, the conventional novel is dead, writing about visible things vs invisible things, the blind writer, observation of physical nature, writing like method acting, improvisational technique, cutting to a close-up, William S. Burroughs (writer) Naked Lunch, places and climate in detail, electronics analogy: the carrier wave and the audio wave, the subject reveals itself as one progresses, accepting imperfection, rejection of information, Zen Buddhism, stimulation vs definition, John Cage (composer), the monastary as an authoritarian environment, harmony in spontaneous creativity, poetry, Oscar Williams (poet and anthologist) out of date, Alfred Tennyson (writer), stripping away distraction, magic is evil, science is evil, ulterior motives, being used, martyrdom, the impact of the environment on one's writing, T.S. Eliot's (poet) concept that between idea and reality falls shadow, the anonymous audience. ❧ Unidentified male reading his poetry: "Black" (46:02). ❧ Tape 395, part C) Stuart Perkoff reading his poetry: "A warning to Clifford and Fay Irving" (1:16), "The moon-washed sea is a storehouse of stink" (3:14), "Turned loose in the streets" (5:51), "Some aspects of being a junkie" (8:50), Tony Sabella's "Rock sound" (15:11). Unidentified male reading his: "Some other aspects" (16:36). ❧ Discussion (Stuart Perkoff, Nettie Lipton, Faith, Lawrence Lipton, Jimmy) (18:17) on paintings and painting, depression, writing poetry, Mike Magdalini ("Mad Mike"), life balance, self-destruction, Mexico, Camarillo State Mental Hospital, dedication to one's art, suicide, Arnold, Bill Margolis, garage on 9th Street, Venice West, desperation, holiness, getting high, one's inner animal, instinct, homosexuality, Russian castration sect (Copts), Africa, celibacy, orgasm via the soul, Dante Alighieri's (writer) autobiography, Saint Anthony, Saint Augustine, James Frazer's (anthropoligist and folklorist) fertility rituals, promiscuity, etymology of "fuck", damming one's energy, Jews, male vs female gods, Jesus, Paul, women shaving her head, sex, mana, power, sleeping traditions, taboos, fear of blood, the fix, prehistoric man, junk, narcotics, opiates, pot, drugs are dependable, hypodermic needles, John Dixon Carr (author), connection with the earth, return to basic primitive conditions, Antaeus (earth god) vs Hercules (sun god), Henry Miller (author), finding one's connection to the earth, the ocean and the moon, Lipton quotes his "Mama Qucha" [Peruvian "Mother of the Sea"], Genesis, D.H. Lawrence's (author) story "Sun", to lie in the sun is to rape, Egyptian sun god Ra, feeling one with the earth and water and mountain is to feel like a god, immortality. ❧ Unidentified male reading his "The return" (58:24), "Pas de deux" (01:00:20), "The wonder" (01:02:30), "Ocean Park" (01:05:10), "Coffee house" (01:08:12). ❧ Unidentified male reading "...found the sun could be white..." (43:25) (fragment).