watch video on these instances of Kerouac's "spontaneous prose"

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Del curso dictado por University of Pennsylvania

Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)

165 calificaciones

University of Pennsylvania

Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)

165 calificaciones

ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly "difficult." We encounter and discuss the poems one at a time. It's much easier than it seems! Join us and try it! Yes, the next live, interactive 10-week session of ModPo will begin on September 8, 2018, and will conclude on November 19, 2018. Al Filreis will be in touch with you by email before the September 8 start of the course with all the information you'll need to participate. If you have questions, you can email the ModPo team at modpo@writing.upenn.edu. During the 10 weeks of the course, you will be guided through poems, video discussions of each poem, and community discussions of each poem. And (unique among open online courses) we offer weekly, interactive live webcasts. Our famed TAs also offer office hours throughout the week. We help arrange meet-ups and in-site study groups. If you are curious about the ModPo team, type "ModPo YouTube introduction" into Google or your favorite search engine, and watch the 20-minute introductory video. You will get an overview of the course and will meet the brilliant TAs, who will be encountering the poems with you all the way to the end. If you use Facebook, join the always-thriving ModPo group: from inside Facebook, search for "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry" and then request to be added as a member. If you have any questions about ModPo, you can post a question to the FB group and you'll receive an almost instant reply. We tweet all year long at @ModPoPenn and you can also find ModPo colleagues using the hashtag #ModPoLive. ModPo is hosted by—and is housed at—the Kelly Writers House at 3805 Locust Walk on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia USA. All ModPo'ers are welcome to visit the Writers House when they are in our area. Our discussions are filmed there. Our live webcasts take place in the famed "Arts Cafe" of the House. To find out what's going on at the Writers House any time, just dial 215-746-POEM.

De la lección

chapter 7 (week 6)—breaking conformity: the beats

<p><b>Week 6 starts at 9 AM (Philadelphia time) on Sunday, October 14, 2018, and ends at 9 AM on Sunday, October 21, 2018.</b>For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 6 materials are open and available all year.</p><p>The so-called “New American Poetry” that emerged in the late 1940s and 1950s went in many directions; some trends, styles, and approaches overlapped, while some were (or seemed to be) more distinct and separable than others. The “Beat” poets were a fairly distinct community of writers, making it easier than it would be otherwise to study as a coherent movement their ecstatic, antic, apparently anti-poetic break with official verse culture. Our approach, in just one week, looks at two “classic” Beats (Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac) and then quickly moves off to adjacent figures. Robert Creeley was not a Beat poet, but his most famous poem engages poetic, psychological, and social matters with which Ginsberg, Kerouac, and the others were obsessed. Anne Waldman is an “outrider” poet and is more closely associated with the second generation of “New York School” poets (see chapter 8), but she was a dear friend of Ginsberg and learned a great deal from his political pedagogy. Amiri Baraka, as Leroi Jones, was a Beat poet for a few years and then broke away. The poem by Baraka that we study here gives us a chance to look back on Countee Cullen's traditionally formal poetic response to racist hatred. The prose-poem/manifesto by Baraka on how poets (should) sound extends a theme already important to this chapter: the primacy of sound (or music) as a form of freedom from linguistic convention. Jayne Cortez gives us a perfect example of this and permits us to suggest connections among the Beat aesthetic, Black Arts, the influences of jazz, and the emergence of “spoken word” performance. Our focus on Jack Kerouac in chapter 7 is a little unusual — he, of course, is known more as a novelist than a poet. But his “babble flow” has been a significant influence on contemporary poets, more than his narrative fictional stance as psycho-social itinerant. We will have occasion, then, to examine and question Kerouac’s — and implicitly, Ginsberg’s — claim to be writing naturally spontaneous language. Our chapter 9 poets for the most part doubt such a claim. </p><p><b>ASSIGNMENTS:</b> During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). There are no writing assignments due, nor peer reviews. There is a live webcast on Wednesday, October 17, at noon (Philadelphia time).</p5

watch video on the first section of Ginsberg's "Howl" (part 1)18:38

watch video on the first section of Ginsberg's "Howl" (part 2)13:41

watch video on Kerouac's ideas about prose19:08

watch video on these instances of Kerouac's "spontaneous prose"24:37

watch ModPo TAs debate spontaneity & first thought/best thought11:30

watch video: can we do a close reading of babble flow?6:52

watch video on Bob Kaufman's "Jail Poems"30:03

watch video on Creeley's "I Know a Man"14:18

watch video on Waldman’s “Rogue State”12:19

watch video on Baraka's "Incident"15:46

watch video on Baraka's "How You Sound??"25:52

watch video on Jayne Cortez's "She Got He Got"30:04

Conoce a los instructores

Al Filreis
Kelly Professor, Dir. Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Faculty Dir. Kelly Writers House

So Jack Kerouac is of course deservedly known best for

his fiction, for his novels, in particular, On the Road.

But the Jack Kerouac who's particularly influential in the world of

contemporary poetry and poetics.

For instance, many of our Chapter 9 poets are very interesting,

Kerouac is the sound poet.

The guy who write Proe's poetry.

The guy who writes what has been called babble flow.

And particularly there is a poet Clark Coolidge who's written brilliantly on

babble flow.

So what we're going to do now,

is look at three instances of the sound poetry pros of Jack Kerouac.

And the first one is a little easier, the second one's a little harder, and

the third one is kind of impossible.

So let's see how we can do it.

The first is a favorite piece of mine.

It's really an essay story more in the tradition of the novels.

It's called October in the railroad earth, and we've read the first section of it.

So, Dave, what should we notice first about the writing here in this section?

>> The paragraph is all one single sentence.

>> It's one single sentence, which is kind of hard to do.

And the way Jack reads it.

And what kind of reader is Jack?

What's it like when you listen?

Allie? >> It's very soothing.

>> Soothing, anybody else?

>> Smooth.

>> It's jazzy almost.

>> It's jazzy.

>> And he's very charismatic.

>> He's a terrific reader.

Clark Coolidge, whom I just referred to, the poet, says something like,

once you listen to Jack you can never get voice because it's subvocal.

I think he sort of means he knew it's under your skin, it's unconscious.

Okay, so we have this piece, October In The Real World Earth.

What's the setting?

Where are we?

Max, what's the setting?

>> We're round the southern Pacific station in San Francisco.

>> Yeah, the Southern Pacific was a railroad.

Yeah.

>> 3rd and Townsend station.

And this seems to be a convergence, first of all what time of day is it?

>> It's late afternoon.

He says the commuter frenzy is impending.

>> Mm-hm, good.

What's the commuter frenzy?

>> Rush hour.

>> Rush hour.

>> So it's like about to be rush hour.

>> So do you have some phrases that indicate who's coming home?

From work.

>> Neat neck tie producers.

>> Neat neck tie producers and commenters of America, and

steal civilization rushing by with San Francisco chronicles.

What does that mean?

>> The newspaper.

>> They're holding newspapers like commuters do, yeah.

Does Jack have a, does he hate them?

Seems to just be observing them.

Sort of detachment, a little interest, maybe some amusement.

>> They don't even have enough time to be disdainful.

They, and I'll ask you in a minute who they're disdainful of,

don't have enough time to be disdainful of.

But he doesn't even have enough time to be disdainful of him.

They're not him What is he doing by the way?

What does Jack do?

What's his job?

>> He writes >> He's a writer.

He's working on a book we can see in this passage.

He's a writer.

But what does he do to gather his material?

Does he commute to work?

>> Seems like he's just hanging out at the station observing

>> He hangs out at the station.

Ron Silleman Of the chapter nine poet who's also San Francisco based, or was.

Really does a lot of work with the convergence of classes

that you get around a railroad.

In Ron's case, it's BART, the rapid transit.

But in this case, it's the It's the railroad station.

Said who's there?

There are two kinds of people there.

Who are they?

Amyris?

>> Well we have I guess the men in flannel suits who are employed.

And too busy to take notice of their surroundings

which is very much in contrast with Jack.

Who allies himself with the bums and Negros.

And truck drives, he says, who sort of stand in the shadows.

>> There's a lot of them there.

Against the wall and Jack doesn't have work.

He does use the word work.

Working if not working on boat.

But he swims out of it in afternoons.

He's lazy.

Drowsy lazy.

So, what is it about this kind of writing that somehow reinforces

the content which is hanging around the station at the time of commuting?

Who wants to try this?

This is a hard question [INAUDIBLE] If you're in the frenzy of commuting,

how are you supposed to write?

He's got this drowsy, lazy afternoon.

He can just sit back, he can observe, he can watch, and he can just kind of be and

let that being turn into writing.

Since he's got the presence of mind of just being in the moment instead

of racing to capture next train.

So an alternative American way of life, an alternative American way of working right?

We saw this in too, right?

No layoffs from this condenser.

It seems to necessitate a different way of writing, and of hearing American voices.

So what are some of the details of that different way of writing.

Molly?

>> Well, I think the lack of sentence separation,

a lack of punctuation, kind of mimics that constant movement,

where it's not necessarily chaotic, but it's incessant.

>> Nice. >> It's like a stream of consciousness.

>> Yeah. >> Yes,

it's a phrase everybody should be fined $5 when they use it,

because it's so misleading.

It's not wrong, I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just very misleading.

But there is a flow here.

And I want to quote Clark Coolidge on this topic.

Clark Coolidge says that his favorite statement by the French theorist,

Maurice Blancheau is the following.

And I'll say the quote and then you can try to translate it.

Good luck. Here it is.

One can only write, this is Coolidge's essay about one can

only write if one arrives at the instant towards which one can only

move through space opened up by the movement of writing.

And in the context of Kerouac's Babble Flow,

Coolidge says that that statement is not a paradox.

And so Clark says Coolage says so here's whizzing along and picking up.

And there's something special too about what you pick up when you're moving fast

about the kind of attention that you can develop.

So does anybody want to take a stab at this?

Max you can do it man [LAUGH] You've got the beret.

>> I have the beret.

>> You can do it man.

>> That's a tough one.

>> One can only write if one arrives at the instant tort which

one can only move through space opened up by the movement of writing.

That's not a paradox, he says.

>> It's >> it's does seem like a paradox.

>> Alright if it's a paradox go ahead.

Explain a paradox.

>> Places you can only begin to write once you've

sort of opened up the space with your writing.

It does seem sort of paradoxically.

But there is definitely a sense to it, and

Molly was talking about movement, that's what made me think of this.

>> Sure. >> Molly, want to say that again.

>> Well I was talking about sort of the form of this piece lacking punctuation.

And being constant and mirroring, or

mimicking the movement of the commuter station.

If American life is characterized by going from A to B, or

in this case going from A to B and back to A, A B A B, but

really career is you progress.

That's why narrativity is something Stein said about beginnings, middles and ends.

Hands and the American addiction to that.

So, the narrative is, you start here and you move to there and it is a progress.

Jack is doing something else, he's doing something non-narrative,

but he's also lowering our expectation of the semantic sense,

so that we begin to listen to these American voices.

And these American voices in the spirit of Whitman,

these American voices include hobos and

African Americans who were unemployed who are hanging around the station.

It includes also not trashing the commuters.

They are all part of the mix here.

It was the fantastic drowse of drum hum of lum mum afternoon nothing to do.

Ole Frisco with end of land sadness, the people, the alley full of trucks.

Nobody knew, or far from cared, who I was all my life.

Allie, when we were listening to Jack a few minutes ago,

I almost heard the shivers.

You liked it.

What does it mean to you when he says these things?

He goes from a very specific observation to this end of land sadness.

>> Yeah, that was a specific line and I, >> You loved it, why?

>> I definitely [SOUND] at.

[LAUGH] Well, I don't know, to maybe demonstrate why.

It's just so evocative, and even though End of Land Sadness doesn't,

it's one of those things that you'd be like, what does that mean?

You totally get it.

There's maybe a kind of loneliness End of Land, but

also just the way that he can, if you just look a little above the way that

in seven lines he can go from talking about the very specific,

the commuters with their Chronicles, and then the specific trains.

And then all of a sudden, there's mention of high in the sky,

the magic stars ride above the following.

Just this kind of cosmic image, and

then all of a sudden it's all of this is in California.

It's all a sea, I swim out of it in the afternoons.

>> So, I agree with you, I feel the same way.

And I'm just going to use as a transition to our next passage,

I'm going to use the phrase aural, A-U-R-A-L, aural continentalism.

It makes me think of Whitman.

There's a way in which he got his ear to the American ground.

So, the next passage we're reading is from a book called, Old Angel Midnight.

This was a book length poem, prose poem.

A book length poem that Kerouac modeled on James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.

So, there you have a direct connection to modernism and

it's what Kerouac called an endless,

automatic writing piece which raves on and on with no direction or no story.

And I'll read the little passage, and then good luck,

we'll see if we can talk about it.

I'll just introduce a word that Michael McClure, a San Fransisco-based poet and

a very close friend of the Beats, used to describe this book,

Old Angel Midnight, and that's inconsequenciality, okay?

So, I'll read the passage and then you can talk about it as best you can.

And I know Jack, so, Allie, I don't know if you're going to feel the goosebumps.

>> [LAUGH] >> Boy, says old angel, this amazing

nonsensical rave of yours wherein I spose you'd think you'd in some lighter time

find hand be almin you for the likes of what you devote yourself to, pah.

Bum with a tail only means one thing.

They know that in sauerkraut bars, God the chew chew and wall lips and not only that,

but all of them indescribable paradises, aye, angel my boy.

Jack, the born with a tail bit is a deal that you never dream to redeem,

verify, try to see as straight.

You won't believe even in God, but the devil worries you.

You and Mrs. Tourian.

Great Gazas and leaf be scoured with the leaf rust as.

Here it is, poetizing horse shit everywhere.

I want to hear the sounds through the window you promised me

when the midnight bell on Seventh Street did toll bing bong.

And Burrows and Ginsberg were asleep and you lay on the couch.

And in that timeless moment in the little, red,

bulb-like bus and saw drapes of eternity parting for your hand and begin.

And so as you could affect and effect the total turning about and

deep revival of world rogue flowing literature til it should be something

a man'd put his eyes on and continually read for the sake of reading.

And for the sake of tongue, of the tongue.

And not just these insipid stories writ in insipid

aridities and paranoias bloomin and why yet the image.

Let's hear the sound of the universe, sun, and no more part twaddle.

And don't expect nothing from me,

my middle name is Opprobrium, Old Angel Midnight Opprobrium.

Boy O, M, A, O, A, M, O.

Perily, perily.

Sweet, slide, sway, tack tick birds and fire wood

the dream is already ended and we're already awake in the golden eternity.

Okay, who wants it?

Amaurice, what do you have to say about this?

Anything. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but

what does it do for us?

>> This is clearly a lot more babble than- >> More babble flow than October in

the Rail Road Earth, yeah.

>> Right, but I loved it, I loved the musicality of it.

And I think as Molly was saying before, the lack of punctuation just frees us

from this sort of machinic stop and start that the railroad represents.

And here instead in your reading of it, which I really enjoyed.

>> Thank you.

>> We followed your breath, those natural rhythms that are created in the language,

particularly the consonance, I was drawn by describable paradises.

And the bing bong and burrows, and even the believed Eve, in God.

Just those, you just focus in on those sounds.

>> Apparently Jack rented a lower east side Manhattan flat and

wrote, I think he wrote only after midnight and only with pencil.

And most of what he wrote,

he heard sounds of people, the sounds swimming through his open window.

So, in a way this is a kind of collage of people overheard.

Do you have any sense of that in the reading of it, or no?

Max, how does that help?

>> Well this seems to be compared to the piece that we just discussed-

>> October in the Railroad Earth.

>> Yes, October in the Railroad Earth.

This seems to be a lot more voices, a lot more fragments, more non-sequiturs.

And October in the Railroad Earth is a scene in daylight,

so there is that clarity of California that he talks about.

So, even though it is very associative and

it has its flow, it's still sort of defining a scene whereas this is

if it's supposed to be like Finnigan's Wake, it's more of a book of the night.

And so, these are voices in the darkness and this is what happens when

you're in a dream state where images and people are coming at you.

>> Molly?

>> There's something very holy about it.

Max said dream state.

I almost heard it as being sort of not quite prayerful, but

not quite speaking in tongues.

Like something very trance like.

You have God and the devil, and the midnight bell is tolling, and

the drapes of eternity.

And there's something very sort of- >> Very late night, midnight after dark,

and, of course, you said tongue, speaking in tongues.

He's hoping that we will read for the sake of reading and read for

the sake of tongue, capital T.

>> Yeah.

>> It's as if speaking in tongues was speaking with the tongue.

Speaking With the importance of sound.

What about Michael McClure's word, inconsequentiality?

Anna, can we do anything with that?

>> Well, inconsequentiality, I mean, something that's inconsequential

is something that just kind of occurs and appears.

>> Something inconsequential is not consequential.

It has no consequence, it's not important.

>> Yep.

>> But what else does that word mean?

>> Inconsequential?

>> Mm-hm. [CROSSTALK] It has the word sequence

in it.

>> It's non sequential, so it's non-chronological.

>> So this is non-narrative writing.

It's also unimportant.

Writing look at the beginning, we have this meta statement.

Boy, this is amazing nonsensical rave reviewers wherein I suppose you'd think,

he's basically telling us, amazing, nonsensical.

>> What I love about that, I mean we talked about sort of

more in the opening chapters of the course about how all of these writers

are in some way going to challenge how we think about reading and how we read.

And when he says reading for

the sake of reading, that's kind of exactly what this is.

And he talked about this a little bit at the beginning,

that once you kind of let go of wanting to make sense of it, and

once you make narrative of it, you get to just kind of revel in what it says.

>> Sound of the universe, right?

Don't expect nothing from me.

Just when you don't expect anything from writing, you're in

the sense that Blanche means, you're ready to have writing, essentially, be written.

So that's a good transition to our last piece, which is real babble flow.

I mean, this is pretty extreme babble flow.

This is a piece, a paragraph that's quoted by Clark Coolidge in that terrific

essay that he wrote about Kerouac's babble flow.

And I'll read it, and this is really hard.

But if what we just heard was the sound of the universe, I have a feeling that this

is sort of the sound of America in a Walt Whitman sense, so here it is.

Rust, rust, rust.

Rust, die, die, die.

Pipe, pipe, ash, ash.

Die, die, ding, dong.

Ding, ding, ding, rust, cog, die, pipe, ash, rust, die, words.

I just rather be permaganted in Rusty's moonlight roar is beak permeated in

this bio art of pantalair where act before she rush crunches my tired idiot hand.

Lord, I is coming to you soon as you'se ready as can ready's buying maslaca and

heroes point out Mexico and all your rhythmic bay fisherman.

Don't hang fish eye socket in my rom a dom gives digarette sock of

Arab squat the berber types that hang fartels on their women.

Back wood as Leaf Erickson's son with blady matter.

I guess is woop a mule in sing song pathetic mule jump field buy

quite fluff smoke North Carolina near Weldon Railroad Bridge.

Roanoke millionaire, high ridge, high party, high fi,

million dollar finned writer, skin, fish, rod, tong, apple, finder,

john, son, ford, goodbye, paw, mule, America, song.

Emily, what are you going to do with that?

That's just sound, isn't it?

Nonsense.

>> Yeah, but.

>> Can you do anything?

Is close reading possible of such a thing?

>> Perhaps, I mean there are enough words that we could try [CROSSTALK] [LAUGH].

But.

>> What are you going to do with it?

>> I guess you read these things to close read, and

the first thing that I latched on is America's Song.

And it's hard not to read that as a sort of both an ellipsis of how this could

continue as some sort of America's Song and

is a description of what has gone before.

>> I said oral continentalism.

How does that work if that a good phrase?

Do you see some geography here?

Do you have a feeling that we're rushing across America?

We have North Carolina.

>> You do. >> Bay fishermen could be San Francisco.

>> We seem to have a pun on Lief Erikson back wood as Lief,

I as Leif which is a way of saying I'd as rather, I'd as Lief rather some son.

There's Erik.

Lief Erikson, what does that mean?

>> You get the idea of an explorer, of this frontiersman, that's very American.

>> But not Columbus.

You get a sense of original, quote unquote discovery, certain focus on origins.

>> Well, and also with Mazatlan heroes point out Mexico's.

I mean I think of Cortez and conquering, and Central America.

>> [CROSSTALK] You get Cortez and you get John Ford, the great American.

A director of films, Americana, westerns.

And then you get Pa, as in Pa, as in father.

And then you get mule, and then you get American song.

So what does that add up to?

Is this the sound of America the way, the midnight writing

was about the lower east side sounds coming, swimming through the window?

Is this Is this that much broader Dave, what do you think?

>> I think it is, I think heard from the beginning it's so disorienting it puts you

in the mindset you can't really read this and parse it specifically.

You just have to step back and listen to the cacophony and

I think it does try to describe all that parts of America.

>> In some ways, this paragraph that we have here is almost more encompassing.

And dare I say a little more successful than

Whitman's whole song of myself which takes pages and pages and pages and catalogs and

catalogs and words and words to try and get it exactly what Kerouac's doing here.

>> Is it possible to say that this is the sound

of what Whitman was wrapping his arms around?

I mean, Kelly?

>> I don't think Kerouac, and I shouldn't even say that, but

I don't think it's the sound that Whitman was trying to wrap his arms around.

I think it's just one of I think it's just kind of a collection of many of the,

it's one kind of frame of the sound.

I think it does what Whitman does, just kind of more condensed.

>> If this is a cure or a therapy or a hedge against something,

we've been talking about Ginsburg as someone who did his little medicine stint

and then needed to go somewhere who felt the ground in Kansas.

How does that work here?

Dave?

>> Well I think he's rejecting convention in a whole lot of ways.

Like I said before it's disorienting and you're really in tune with the fact that

he's not using formal constructions of words, of sentences.

He's rejecting all of it.

And I think it puts you in this really receptive mindset.

Like one of the things he said be receptive to everything.

>> And he's not being unallegiant, if I can put it that way.

I believe he's embracing America.

He's not ridiculing the commuters.

He's just making sure that there is a socioeconomic and

racial context that's much broader and that has more interesting sounds.

This what I've called oral continentialism is meant as I do believe,

I feel powerfully that it is meant as a cure or a tonic or a hedge against

the fear of the day that language would finally and totally become

semantic content, which is that Madison Avenue fear that Ginsburg feels.

That narrative became getting some where for everybody.

That American language became a commuting from home to work, home to work,

home to work.

A to B, A to B, A to B.

And that this kind of writing is a stay against the day that the music died.

The American music, this is the American Song.

This is what Kerouac thinks is the American Song.

And I do feel that The Beets had felt that the music had died.

Or that it was in danger of dying, so they went out there to discover the sounds.

With possibly a fantastical and

flawed theory of language that could just come, that language can be transparent,

but a motive that is much admired by the poets that come after them.

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