http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-P2fILsLH8

On October 7, 1955, poet Alan Ginsberg reads his poem “Howl” at a poetry reading at Six Gallery in San Francisco. The poem was an immediate success that rocked the Beat literary world and set the tone for confessional poetry of the 1960s and later.  Hear this recording of the poet reading the poem at Reed College months later.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mRec3VbH3w

Dylan Thomas reads his famous poem, Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night.  Thomas who went into a coma on November 5th 1953 after claiming to have drank 18 whiskeys at The White Horse Tavern in New York City’s Greenwich Village the night before.  He was held in an oxygen tank at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York. His friends and the bulk of the New York literary scene showed up at the hospital to honor him and pay their respects. Thomas died on November 9th.

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“I realize that stories in the press regarding my drug use may make you think that this request comes from a desire to parallel our lives. Let me assure you that this is not the case. As a fan and student of your work, I would cherish the opportunity to work directly with you…”

Although Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain and famous author William S. Burroughs collaborated on the EP entitled “The ‘Priest’ They Called Him,” they never had the chance to meet while recording. Intent on meeting the literary icon whose voice he accompanies on the track, Cobain penned a letter to Burroughs asking him to appear in Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” music video–even in disguise. Although the offer was declined, the pair finally met several months before Cobain’s death. The letter:

August 2, 1993

Mr. William Burroughs
WILLIAM BURROUGHS COMUNICATIONS

Dear William:

It’s a bit odd writing someone whom I’ve never met but with whom I’ve already recorded a record. I really enjoyed the opportunity to do the record — it’s a great honor to be pictured alongside you on the back cover. I am writing you now regarding the possibility of your appearing alongside my band (Nirvana) in the first video from our new album, “In Utero.”

While I know that Michael Meisel from Gold Mountain Entertainment (my management company) has been speaking to James Grauerholz, I wanted the opportunity to personally let you know why I wanted you to appear in the video. 

Most importantly, I wanted you to know that this request is not based on a desire to exploit you in any way. I realize that stories in the press regarding my drug use may make you think that this request comes from a desire to parallel our lives. Let me assure you that this is not the case. As a fan and student of your work, I would cherish the opportunity to work directly with you. To the extent that you may want to avoid any direct use of your image (thus avoiding the aforementioned link for the press to devour). I would be happy to have my director look into make-up techniques that could conceal your identity. While I would be proud to have William Burroughs appear as himself in my video, I am more concerned with getting the opportunity to work with you than I am with letting the public know (should that be your wish).

Having said that, let me reiterate how much I would like to make this happen. While I am comfortable letting Michael and James discuss this further, I am available to discuss this with you at your convenience.

Thank you very much for your consideration.

Best regards,

(Signed, ‘Kurt’)

Kurt Cobain”

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[Text] Kurt Cobain’s Letter To William S. Burroughs appeared first on Witnify.

“You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow…”

When English teacher Ms. Lockwood assigned her students at Xavier High School to correspond with a well-known author on their work and request advice, Kurt Vonnegut was the only writer to respond. Vonnegut wrote the following response in 2006 to Xavier students about a year before he passed away on April 11, 2007:

 “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Conguista:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. 

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut”    

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[Text] Vonnegut’s Letter to Students: ‘Practice Any Art…Make Your Soul Grow’ appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLwivcpFe8

This video from WNET’s 1966 program called “USA Poetry: Frank O’Hara” contains footage of Frank O’Hara reading aloud his poem “Having a Coke With You”. O’Hara speaks about the various reasons that he loves the subject of the poem. He says “I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world,” and he also mentions how the object of his affection moves so beautifully. O’Hara intermingles his affections with this person with frequent mention of art. He worked as the curator of the Museum of Modern Art, and the poem hints at a heavy influence of art in his life. O’Hara mentions in the poem, Leonardo Di Vinci, Michelangelo, impressionists and portraits.

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Frank O’Hara Reads His Poem ‘Having a Coke With You’ appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Phoebe Goldenberg

Kenneth Goldsmith thinks his work is “mimetic and uncreative.” If you were to pick up his most recent book, you would probably agree–and question the judgement of his publisher. His book, published on March 12, 2013, called, “Seven American Deaths and Disasters,” lacks colorful embellishments. Goldsmith has merely collected and transcribed the original radio and television broadcasts of seven historical moments from the Columbine shootings to the death of Michael Jackson. He fails to leave nothing out–seriously nothing. It includes all awkward pauses, stuttered words and banal advertisements that frame the articulation of all these tragedies. Ultimately, the pages of Goldsmith’s book rearrange themselves into a blurry question: What’s the point?

Asking this question may be “the point” itself. Kenneth Goldsmith is not a historian. He’s a poet, specifically, a conceptual poet. This is the key to decoding the message encrypted in what initially looks like blatant plagiarism. Goldsmith is not actually interested in the material events themselves but rather in the way history itself is recorded, repeated and preserved.

Recent American history is a continuum of events. While some are more profound than others, they are each part of a causal chain that can only exist when all of its elements are in tact. And yet, with each generational attempt to re-record history, we collapse it into fewer and fewer moments. There is no special algorithm used to determine which events are most worthy of appearing in history books, documentaries and school curriculums. And yet, we tell ourselves that the events we continue to commemorate and retell are those which are most important.

This justification is flawed. If we have no evidence of undocumented or forgotten events, how can we be certain that they were not, at one time, just as significant? By memorializing only seven “deaths” and “disasters,” Goldsmith’s book excludes dozens of events that were equally impactful such as the assassination of  Martin Luther King, Jr. What happens when arbitrary omissions such as this one proliferate from one book to the next and, more importantly, from one generation to the next? If you imagine this process occurring over centuries and millenniums, the answer becomes clear–our selectivity begins to dictate not only the content of history books but our definitive history, its plot climaxes and excised pages.

Contrary to popular understanding, Goldsmith’s book reveals that history is not a form of knowledge, but rather a discrete incarnation of fiction. As we tell and retell history, we are constantly molding, filtering and editing it. Each chapter of “Seven American Deaths and Disasters” is not a transcription of an event itself but rather a transcription of one reporter’s perception of an event. The correspondent’s personal responses are communicated through opinions, side commentary, emphases and the details they have chosen to leave out. Even video footage fails to capture the contextual scope and nuances of any particular event. Although Goldsmith is simply duplicating these accounts, he also contributes to their subjectivity by selecting not only which reports to include in his book, but also which excerpts to cut from each selection.

We know history is full of errors and that it does not always truthfully represent what was and always has been, but we also pay little attention to how history is always changing, expanding, reimagining and forgetting itself.

For example, in a 1968 textbook edited by John M. Bloom, John F. Kennedy is portrayed as a tragic hero with a legacy that exemplified the American spirit. However, studies have shown that more recent textbooks have punctured his celebrity-esque glamour, recasting his accomplishments as errors and his idealism as a tactful facade. So what is the truth in history? Is it just a matter of opinion?

Perhaps Goldsmith is trying to tell us that we’re asking the wrong questions. He wants us to recognize that history has no objective truths–only the subjective narratives we pass on and inherit. But we should be careful to not allow ourselves to see history as an omniscient artifact, but rather as an ever-changing prism of human stories that we are actually responsible for creating, manufacturing, judging and improving.

“Seven American Deaths and Disasters” has a self-aware objective: News stories, which popularize the events that go into history books, are edited. Goldsmith, himself, has edited what content goes into his book. But by reading about these historical events through the sources that reported on it first, you realize that someone, a middleman, taught you this history. Further, you have been a compliant participant in its conception or entombment. Goldsmith’s book awakens the realization that history’s truths really begins by examining its reporters and what yard was spun from a select chunk of them. And it rouses us to take a more active part in the history-making and history-reporting.

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[Blog] ‘Seven American Deaths and Disasters’ Changes How You View History appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Emmy Lu Daly
Date: May 20, 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBG9xTfdGiw

“Now serving #156 at Station #3.”
One by one, on and on.
Dumbed and numbed
Veterans all.

WWII, Korea, Vietnam,
distant wars now.
WWII- the “good” war
Korea- the “forgotten” war
Vietnam- the “wasted” war.

#156 slowly raises his head,
pushed his wheel chair,
his one leg plaid panted,
belly hanging loosely.

One more trip to Station #3.
What’ll it be this time?
A pill for his cholesterol?
Maybe something for is COPD,
Or his “a-fib.”
How about a stronger pill for his arthritis?

Whatever. He’s supposed to be grateful,
Lucky to get all this care and drugs.
So he takes the rx slip, smiles a little.
The young dispenser smiles back and says
“Thank you for your service.”
They all say that.

#156 pivots his chair and mumbles
“Oh son, I hope you never know.”

The post [Blog] Poem of a WWII U.S. Veteran: ‘The VA Pharmacy’ appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Fve-eMqtM

Maya Angelou story recalled by Frederick Buechner talks about the time when he was at a religious occasion at Trinity Church on Wall Street in New York City when the author told him how the extravagant religious procession made her want to laugh into a barrel. Angelou passed away on May 28, 2014.

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Maya Angelou’s Humbling Sense of Humor appeared first on Witnify.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLvZQQozGFw

Author and poet Maya Angelou discusses her work with Martin Luther King, Jr. She recalls where she was when she found out King had been assassinated–on the same day as her birthday: “Life stopped for me…”

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Maya Angelou on Finding Out MLK Was Killed appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOkAcu7kw1E

Janell J. Lewis, a reporter who has met author Maya Angelou on a number of occasions, discusses Angelou’s “tough” personality and inspirational inner strength. Lewis describes Angelou as a “Renaissance woman” who lived through an incredible life story. Angelou passed away on May 28, 2014.

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‘She Was Stern but She Was Sweet’ appeared first on Witnify.