H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s
b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i
v e s E d i t i o n
RANDY ROARK
Howltalk
(A transcription of an improvised
presentation at an event honoring the 50th anniversary of
Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl,” hosted by Naropa University, July 2006)
I’m
an example of the apprenticeship program that Allen [Ginsberg] ran while he was
here. I
was
a course that you could sign up for, you got credit for it, and met alone with
Allen once a
week
for three hours. Some of the time was spent looking at your own work as a poet
and
giving
you one-on-one instruction. And some of it was secretarial work: you actually
were an
apprentice,
you did the work of a poet.
But
I want to talk about the apprenticeship program in a way that is not about
sentimentality or
nostalgia,
or as something that happened in a circumscribed period of time and is no
longer
active
in my life. As Allen said in that William Buckley clip, being a poet is
grounded in a
consciousness.
And in that one-on-one instruction I learned how to ground that
consciousness—for
myself and others. I learned from him the way a baby bird learns from its
parents
how to fly—through observation and practice. He showed me how to do things that
I
always
knew were possible but I’d never actually seen anyone live them out or practice
them—what
they actually looked like in action. In fact, most people told me that these
ways of
living
were unrealistic—like giving all of your extra money away, like dedicating your
life to the
service
of others. He showed me how these practices actually work.
When
I came to Boulder in ‘79, as a 25-year-old, the problems I had as a poet were
basically
three.
The first was that I was more or less ignorant of my poetic lineage and
tradition. I was
technically
unread. The second problem was that my poetry was awful and, in addition, it
was
false,
which made it even worse. And, three, I was socially inept. [Laughter] I was
socially
retarded
in the sense of someone who was not behaving at their chronological age,
emotionally,
and living in a way that wasn’t congruent with what they knew and believed.
So,
how did Allen deal with those three problems? The first was easy. He gave me
assignments.
He told me what I needed to read in order to be a poet. The second problem with
my
poetry was that I had fallen in love with the poetry of William Butler Yeats as
a teenager: I
thought
he was the greatest poet—and still do—of all time. The problem was, I was a 25 year
old
kid writing as if I was, you know, William Butler Yeats. But I didn’t have the
wealth of
experience
or depth of insight to pull it off, so it was a false persona—false to my
actual
experience.
So Allen gave me assignments to write from my own experience: What did I
remember?
What did I see? What did I feel? And when that wasn’t working, he would make
me
face a white wall and take a poem of mine and ask me: “What did you actually
see that
gave
you these thoughts? What was the color of the sky? Where were your hands when
you
thought
this? What color dress was she wearing?” Precise details. His idea was that I
needed to
learn
how to transcribe my own sense impressions, what actually occurred previous to
my
thoughts
about what happened. Third, he sensed that I had a reservoir of emotions that I
had
frozen;
I had squelched them in many ways; I was afraid of exposing them. And so I
tended to
be
a body that carried my brain from room to room—I dealt with everything intellectually.
So
he
began asking me questions that I could only answer from my heart. And by
answering out
of
my heart over and over again—the actual, literal experience of honestly
answering out of
my
heart—he gave me my self.
Allen
wasn’t interested in creating little Allen Ginsbergs.
That was frightening to him. There
was
nothing worse than being Allen Ginsberg surrounded by Allen Ginsberg clones. He
wanted
big
Randy Roarks, big Joe Richeys,
big Steven Taylors. He wanted to see how good we were,
how
deep. So he would create situations that were high profile, challenging, like
throwing you
in
to pitch in Yankee Stadium against the Red Sox. “Okay, kid, let’s see what you
got.” These
situations
were always spontaneous, so you had no way of preparing for them. He was
constantly
pushing, pressing you to be better, to be you, to find out what resources you
had
inside
of you that you weren’t yet aware of. “Let’s take this baby out and see what it
can do.”
The
other side of the apprenticeship was the work part. I was an expert at that.
That sort of
made
up for my social ineptness and ignorance. I could type really fast, work really
hard, I
never
missed an appointment or deadline. And I was totally attentive to Allen. He
would send
me
on errands that he would do if he had the time, so I was occupied with a poet’s
errands, I
did
a poet’s work. I went to the library, researched Milton, scanned
his poetry: what rhythms
did
Milton use? Are there any contemporary first-person accounts of Blake singing
his poems?
And
social and political investigations, rabblerousing, networking, phone calls,
letter writing,
building
a community of poets. I learned that that’s what a poet did, as much or equal
to the
writing
of their poems.
The
benefit of this is that I realized that I had my ideas about how to become a
poet all wrong.
I
thought that to become a poet what you did was create a significant body of
work and then
you
were acknowledged for that and people would consider you a poet. They would
sort of
give
you that title. And that’s how you made it. But it became clear to me that to
be a poet is
something
completely opposite of that, that I had it completely upside down. To become a
poet,
you have to be a poet in every moment of your life. Like this moment, right
this second,
how
it is for me now. That’s how the apprenticeship continues in my life, how it’s
always
present.
It’s not like you can “make it new,” like [Ezra] Pound said—because it’s always
new.
The
apprenticeship never ends. Every second is always just the latest installment,
and no one
can
anticipate what’s about to happen, so you look at it as if you don’t know, and
you pay
attention
to what you see and you take note of it and declare it. That’s the job of the
poet
whether
they’re reading a poem or writing a poem or having a conversation or just
observing
what’s
going on above or beyond and behind what appears to be happening—to experience
epiphanies,
which my friend Jonathan Gill explained to me comes from the Greek for epi or
the
highest—and phanos—sight.
That’s the job of the poet, to experience the highest vision, to
experience
all of the possible epiphanies in any moment. And then you try to capture some
of
that
excitement in words and gather it into a poem.
So
as a poet, every moment, whether driving your car or shopping at the
supermarket, sitting
next
to your friends at a reading like this—whatever you’re doing, you could be the
only poet
in
that moment! It could all be up to you! And if your being a poet is grounded in
a
consciousness,
there’s never an off switch. There’s no down time. You are a poet. And, if
you’re
a poet, you write poems out of those experiences that seem to capture something
you
were
looking for, to preserve it and present it to others who may find some
consolation in your
being
able to put into words what they’ve been experiencing themselves. Whatever it
is,
your
poem can never be more than your ability to experience whatever you experience.
It’s
obvious—it
can’t be anything more than that. And if you can stay in that state of
consciousness
and write a poem while still in it, then your poem will be a series of
revelations
and
insights, like footsteps in the sand, or a path through the woods. And as they
follow you,
you
and the reader will share that state of consciousness, at least for a moment,
and you can
make
others become poets for a moment, too.
What
I’ve thought about the last couple of days is that the reason Allen was so
unafraid of
public
relations and getting the word out about his work and being and manifesting as
a poet
was
because he thought his poetry was medicine. It was education. If you think of
your work
as
medicine—medicine that people need—as a living example of what it is that they
can be,
then
you want as many people as possible to experience that. And so any kind of self
consciousness
about promoting and advertising yourself and work disappears. Poetry in this
sense
has a higher purpose, and promoting and advertising yourself merely become
tools for
getting
the medicine to as many people as possible before you expire.
And
when I thought about the apprentices I’ve kept up with, in addition to all
being
accomplished
poets, one is working to preserve the ecological habitat of the Mississippi
River.
One
works for Disability Services at CU and runs a virtual Museum of American
Poetics on
the
web and is a blues guitarist. Joe [Richey] is an investigative reporter,
involved in local
politics,
and an international emissary for poetry and politics, going to Central and
South
America
when he’s not playing in a Buddhist rock band. One person writes children’s
books
for
gay and lesbian families. Another poet is teaching meditation in the prisons
and translating
Buddhist poetry from the Korean and writing a biography of Tilopa in verse. And then there’s
whatever
it is I do—my interest in improvisation and recording oral wisdom traditions.
So:
ecological
understanding and sensitivity, working with the disadvantaged and socially and
culturally
isolated, the blues, preserving the American poetical lineage, investigating
the
government,
working in local government, an interest in Buddhist rock-and-roll, teaching
meditation,
Buddhist poetry and oral wisdom traditions, an attempt to broaden acceptance
and
understanding
of the gay and lesbian community, and improvisation.… Sound like anybody we
know?
[Laughter] In many ways, I think of Allen as a firebrand, as a burning bush,
and when
he
died, little sparks of him flew out everywhere and set a lot of ground fires.
When
Allen died it was the last teaching he gave to people
who were actually paying attention,
because
he was not afraid, not grasping. It wasn’t like it was a good thing, but he was
kind of
relieved
and relaxed when he got the news that he was terminally ill, because of the way
he
lived
his life. There was no off switch. He lived his life fully. He checked every
box. So when
it
came time to die, it was like, “Okay, I did it.” It was his last important
teaching to his
students—how
to constantly be aware of your death so you can decide how to live the rest of
your
life. And my death will be the end of my apprenticeship, too.
So blessings to everyone for coming here tonight. Thanks for celebrating this poem and
this
poet
and, uh, I wish you luck.
[Originally
published in NHS 2007, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs07/Randy_Roark.htm.]