Anne Waldman

These are some earlier notes on Anne Waldman’s Outrider and a few of my reasons for reading it. Continuing, I will excerpt from the second and third pieces in the book, and bold the phrases which most strike me. This reading is turning me slightly Buddhist. The term “OUTRIDER,” says Waldman, was adopted in part … More Anne Waldman

Milan Kundera III

We lived, I and Lucie, in a devastated world; and because we did not know how to commiserate with the devastated things, we turned away from them and so injured them, and ourselves as well. (313) “If the mountains were paper and the oceans ink, / If the stars were scribes, and all the world … More Milan Kundera III

Outrider

Here are some fragments from the first section of Anne Waldman‘s Outrider (Albuquerque: La Alameda Press, 2006). I love poetic manifestos, and I have just discovered an entire web archive of them. And someone at Western Michigan has excerpted portions of Olson’s 1950 manifesto Projective Verse for the sake of contemplation. I am engaged in … More Outrider

Buddy Bolden

In the fifth part of Early Years of Jazz, we learn about the legendary Buddy Bolden, who never recorded. At least one band has worked to reconstruct of the Buddy Bolden sound, which included swinging ‘hot’ music with wicked lyrics. Bolden’s career was cut short because he developed a form of dementia and was confined … More Buddy Bolden

Ragtime to Blues

This is the third part of Early Years of Jazz. Neither ragtime nor the blues were born in New Orleans, but they met here. One rag was called Dance of the Lunatics (An Idiotic Rave). And Branford Marsalis says the blues are about freedom. Axé.

Early Years of Jazz

“Jazz music objectifies America. It is an art form that can give us a painless way of understanding ourselves,” says Wynton Marsalis at the beginning of Early Years of Jazz – Part 1. This film is a Florentine Films production about which I am trying to discover more. Part 6, which we have already seen, … More Early Years of Jazz