Guard the Mysteries Read online

  Hilbert, Vi. “When Chief Seattle (Si’Al) Spoke.” In A Time of Gathering: Native Heritage in Washington State. Edited by Robin K. Wright. Seattle: Burke Museum and University of Washington Press, 1991.

  Holiday, Billie, and William Dufty. Lady Sings the Blues. New York: Doubleday, 1956.

  Igliori, Paola. Stickman: John Trudell. New York: Inanout Press, 1994.

  Jones, Hettie. Big Star Fallin’ Mama: Five Women in Black Music. London: Puffin Books, 1997.

  Keats, John, and Hyder Edward Rollins. The Letters of John Keats, 1814–1821. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.

  Kupferberg, Tuli, ed. YEAH. Brooklyn, NY: Primary Information, 2017.

  Kyger, Joanne. About Now: Collected Poems. Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation, 2007.

  ———. “Anne Waldman: The Early Years…1965–70.” Jacket 27 (April 2005).

  ———. As Ever: Selected Poems. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

  ———. “Everyone Counts: Some Questions for Joanne Kyger.” Interview with Hailey Higdon. In Queen Mob’s Teahouse (February 2017).

  ———. The Japan and India Journals, 1960–1964. Bolinas, CA: Tombouctou Books, 1981; Nightboat Books, 2015.

  ———. Joanne. Bolinas, CA and New York, NY: Angel Hair, 1970.

  ———. Joanne Kyger: Letters To & From. Edited by Ammiel Alcalay and Joanne Kyger. Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, 2012.

  ———. On Time: Poems 2005–2014. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2015.

  ———. The Tapestry and the Web. San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation, 1965.

  ———. There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera. Edited by Cedar Sigo. Seattle and New York: Wave Books, 2017.

  Lorde, Audre. Between Our Selves. Point Reyes, CA: Eidolon Editions, 1976.

  ———. The Black Unicorn. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978.

  ———. A Burst of Light and Other Essays. Long Island: Ixia Press, 2017.

  ———. The First Cities. New York: Poets Press, 1968.

  ———. I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities. Latham, NY: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1985.

  ———. I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde. Edited by Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

  ———. In Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation. Edited by Mari Evans. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984.

  ———. In Woman Poet, Volume Two: The East. Edited by Elaine Dallman. Berkeley: Regional Editions, 1981.

  ———. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984.

  ———. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1982.

  Lorde, Audre, and Merle Woo. Apartheid U.S.A./Freedom Organizing in the Eighties. Latham, NY: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1986.

  Martin, Agnes. Writings (Schriften). Edited by Dieter Schwarz. Winterthur: Kunstmuseum Winterthur, 1992.

  Miles, Barry. Ginsberg: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.

  Myles, Eileen. The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009.

  ———. Inferno (a poet’s novel). New York: OR Books, 2010.

  ———. Not Me. New York: Semiotext(e), 1991.

  Notley, Alice. “The Fortune-Teller.” Kenyon Review 40, no. 4 (July/August 2018).

  O’Hara, Frank. Lunch Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1964.

  Olson, Charles. The Maximus Poems. New York: Jargon/Corinth, 1960.

  Rexroth, Kenneth. Classics Revisited. Quadrangle Press, 1968.

  Rimbaud, Arthur. Complete Works. Translated by Paul Schmidt. New York: HarperCollins, 1976.

  ———. I Promise to Be Good: The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud. Edited and translated by Wyatt Mason. New York: Modern Library, 2002.

  Seale, Bobby. Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton. New York: Random House, 1970.

  Snyder, Gary. Passage Through India. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1983.

  Spicer, Jack. Admonitions. New York: Adventures in Poetry, 1974.

  Stein, Gertrude. Useful Knowledge. New York: Payson & Clarke, Ltd., 1928.

  Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Edited by Trudy Dixon. New York: Walker/Weatherhill, 1970.

  Thomas, Lorenzo. “How to See through Poetry: Myth, Perception, and History.” In Civil Disobediences. Edited by Anne Waldman and Lisa Birman. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2004.

  Waldman, Anne. “Mind is Shapely, Art is Shapely.” Tricycle Magazine (Fall 1993).

  Waldman, Anne, and Lewis Warsh, eds. The World 5, New York: The Poetry Project, 1967.

  Welch, Lew. Ring of Bone: Collected Poems, 1950–1971. Edited by Donald Allen. San Francisco: Grey Fox, 1973.

  Wieners, John. The Lanterns Along the Wall. Buffalo, NY: No Place, 1972.

  ———. Selected Poems, 1958–1984. Edited by Raymond Foye. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1998.

  ———. Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners. Edited by Joshua Beckman, CAConrad, and Robert Dewhurst. Seattle and New York: Wave Books, 2015.

  AUDIO AND VIDEO WORKS

  Alexander, M. Jacqui. Keynote address, The Edges of Each Other’s Battles: The Vision of Audre Lorde, conference held in Boston in 1990.

  Burns, Ric. Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film. September 1, 2006; New York: PBS Home Video. DVD.

  Christian, Diane, and Bruce Jackson. Creeley (1988). Video, 59:26, September 3, 2018.

  Di Prima, Diane. “Lunch Poems: Diane di Prima.” University of California Television. Video, 29:26, April 24, 2008.

  Guest, Barbara. “An Emphasis Falls on Reality.” On Line Break with Charles Bernstein, 1995. PennSound.

  ———. Reading & lecture discussion at SUNY Buffalo, April 1 & 2, 1992. PennSound.

  Harjo, Joy. On The Laura Flanders Show, GRITtv. Video, 2:18, May 21, 2010.

  Harjo, Joy, John Dorr, and Lewis MacAdams. Joy Harjo. 1989. Los Angeles, CA: Lannan Foundation; Metropolitan Pictures. DVD & VHS.

  Holiday, Billie. Interview with Mike Wallace. On Night Beat (DuMont Television). Video, 15:05, November 8, 1956.

  ———. I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone. London: Giants of Jazz Records, 1948.

  Kyger, Joanne, with Loren Sears and Richard Felciano. Descartes, single-channel rvideo, black-and-white, sound, 1968.

  Lorde, Audre. “Audre Lorde, Reading from 13th Moon Series 1982 (Tape 1).” LHA Herstories: Audio/Visual Collections of the LHA, http://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/document/733.

  Lorde, Audre, with Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson. A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde. Third World Newsreel, 1995.

  DVD. Shakur, Assata. “I See Myself Struggling,” The Vinyl Project: From the Freedom Archives, 2008.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry supports contemporary poets as they explore in depth their own thinking on poetry and poetics and give a series of lectures resulting from these investigations.

  This work evolved from lectures given at the following institutions: “Becoming Visible,” the Sorrento Hotel in partnership with the APRIL Festival, Seattle, WA, March 16, 2016; “A Necessary Darkness: Barbara Guest and the Open Chamber,” University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, April 24, 2019; “Reality Is No Obstacle: A Poetics of Participation,” Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL, May 16, 2019; “Reality Is No Obstacle: A Poetics of Participation,” Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative and the Center for Humanities, New York, NY, September 26, 2019; “Shadows Crossing: Tones of Voice Continued,” REDCAT Theater, in partnership with CalArts, Los Angeles, CA, October 11, 2019; “Shadows Crossing: Tones of Voice Continued,” the Anchorage Museum, in partnership with 49 Writers, Anchorage, AK, October 24, 2019; “Shadows Crossing: Tones of Voice Continued,” the Burke Museum, Seattle, WA, November 20, 2019.r />
  Thank you to Tara Atkinson of the [former] APRIL Festival; Micah Ballard, Dave Madden, D. A. Powell, and Bruce Snider, at University of San Francisco; Stephen Young at the Poetry Foundation; Ammiel Alcalay, Alisa Besher, Kendra Simpson, and Sampson Starkweather at CUNY; Tisa Bryant and Anthony McCann at CalArts; Jeremy Pataky at 49 Writers; Roldy Aguero Ablao, Kate Fernandez, and Courtney Good at the Burke Museum, and all of their respective teams, for welcoming the Bagley Wright Lecture Series into their programming, and for collaborating on scheduling, promoting, introducing, and recording these events. The Series would be impossible without such partnerships.

  “Not Free from the Memory of Others—A Lecture on Joanne Elizabeth Kyger” was given at Poets House, November 8, 2017. Thank you, Stephen Motika and Poets House.

  “Revolutionary Letter #62,” “Revolutionary Letter #100,” “Revolutionary Letter #36,” “Revolutionary Letter #72,” “Revolutionary Letter #115,” “Revolutionary Letter #105,” “Revolutionary Letter #75” © Diane di Prima. Reprinted with permission of Diane di Prima and City Lights Books. Image of the cover of Revolutionary Letters, courtesy of City Lights Books. Photograph of Diane di Prima © 1959 by James Oliver Mitchell and courtesy of the author. Image of the cover of Spirit Reach, © the Estate of Amiri Baraka, permission by Chris Calhoun Agency. “A Litany for Survival,” copyright © 1978 by Audre Lorde, from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. “Complicity” by Jayne Cortez © 1984. Joanne Kyger, “Post Extinction” and “Belongs to Everyone” from On Time: Poems 2005–2014, © 2015 by Joanne Kyger. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of City Lights Books. “Things To Do in Suquamish” from Language Arts © 2014, and “Smoke Flowers” from Royals © 2017, both by Cedar Sigo. Used with permission of the author and Wave Books. Portrait of Chief Seattle, 1864 and photograph of Coast Salish village on Lummi Island by E. M. Sammis, courtesy of the Suquamish Museum. Photograph of Joanne Kyger taken in 1967 by Jerome Mallman, and provided to the author as a gift from Joanne Kyger. Illustrations by Jack Boyce from The Tapestry and the Web (Four Seasons Foundation, 1965). Used with permission of the Estate of Jack Boyce. The illustration on p. 75, an outtake from the book, appears courtesy of Donald Guravich. “Additions, March 1968—2” by Charles Olson from The Maximus Poems, edited by George F. Butterick © 1983; republished by permission of University of California Press via Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. “Fuck for Peace” and “Kill for Peace” by Tuli Kupferberg, courtesy the Tuli Kupferberg Estate. “Memorial Day” by Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman, “Whitman in Black,” and the excerpt of “Many Happy Returns,” by Ted Berrigan from The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan, edited by Alice Notley, with Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan, © 2005; republished by permission of the Estate of Ted Berrigan and University of California Press via Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Excerpt from “Memorial Day” also used by permission of Anne Waldman. “My Speech About Allen,” from The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art © 2009, and “How I Wrote Certain of My Poems” and “Vista” from Not Me, © 1991 by Eileen Myles. Reprinted with permission of the author and Semiotext(e). Excerpt from “Transcription of Organ Music” in Collected Poems 1947–1997 by Allen Ginsberg, © 2006 by the Allen Ginsberg Trust. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. “Try,” “[It is lonely],” and the excerpt of “Joanne” © 2007 from Collected Poems, and “Belongs to Everyone,” © 2015 from On Time; reprinted courtesy of the Estate of Joanne Kyger. “The Fortune Teller” by Alice Notley, originally printed in The Kenyon Review, © Alice Notley and reprinted courtesy of the author. “Second Letter” from My Vocabulary Did This to Me: Collected Poems of Jack Spicer © 2008 by the Estate of Jack Spicer. Published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted with permission. Photograph of Barbara Guest by Francesco Scavullo © International Center of Photography and Francesco Scavullo Trust; permission to reproduce Guest’s likeness granted by the estate of Barbara Guest. “Defensive Rapture,” “An Emphasis Falls on Reality,” and “Imagined Room” from The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest © 2008 by The Estate of Barbara Guest. Published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted with permission. “A Reason for Poetics” and “Poetry the True Fiction” by Barbara Guest, excerpted from Forces of Imagination. Copyright © 2003 by Barbara Guest, used with permission of Kelsey Street Press. Photograph of Billie Holiday, 1949 by Carl Van Vechten, from the Van Vechten Collection at Library of Congress. “The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, edited by Donald Allen, © 1971. “Rose Solitude (for Duke Ellington)” by Jayne Cortez, reprinted from Jazz Fan Looks Back © 2002 by Jayne Cortez, by permission of Hanging Loose Press. “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets” from Black Music © 1967 by Amiri Baraka. Reprinted with permission of Akashic Books and the Estate of Amiri Baraka. “Robert Creeley talking to his son Tom” © 1972 by Elsa Dorfman. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. “Variations” from The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–1975 © 2006, published by University of California Press with permission via Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. Photograph of Joy Harjo by Rain Parrish courtesy of Joy Harjo. “In Mystic,” from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  There were so many generous people who made the lecture tour and this book possible.

  I would like to thank Charlie and Barb Wright, Joshua Beckman, Ellen Welcker, Heidi Broadhead, Blyss Ervin, Catherine Bresner, Isabel Boutiette, Brian Marr, Lynne Ferguson, Dave Outhouse, Darin Klein, Colter Jacobsen, Matthew Zapruder, Diane di Prima, Donald Guravich, Anne Waldman, Ammiel Alcalay, Joy Harjo, Eileen Myles, Jackie Kemplay, Josefa Perez, Anselm Berrigan, David Larsen, Frank Haines, Michael Slosek, Claudia La Rocco, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Santee Frazier, Sheppard Powell, Sara Larsen, Garrett Caples, Alice Notley, James Hoff, and Charles Sigo.