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Zen Poetry |
Norman Fischer, Michael McClure, & Leslie Scalapino
Practioners of Reality:
(Cosponsored by the
Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies,
Thursday, May 15, 2003, 10 am-3:30 pm
|
Norman Fischer |
Michael McClure |
Leslie Scalapino |
Preface:
This Workshop on Contemporary Poetry and Poetics is an interdisciplinary forum for current work in
contemporary poetry and poetics, sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and funded by the Mellon
Foundation. It was organized by Douglas Kerr and Tim Yu, two graduate students in Stanford's English Department.
I was informed of this symposium by the Stanford Buddhist Studies Center. I attended a poetry workshop with
Gary Snyder & Norman Fischer in 1990 at the San Jose Poetry Center, and looked forward to see Norman again as well
as the other poets on the program. Doug confirmed my registration Monday and told me to pick up a reading packet
for the symposium in the English Dept's office. The reading packet had around 130 pages of poetry & prose from
the three poets which I didn't have time to read. My mind was still swirling around Leonardo's
"Lady with an Ermine" which I saw on Tuesday in San Francisco at the Legion of Honor, which inspired a
web page. It wasn't until 2 am-4 am Thursday morning that I started to
read the three poets' work in preparation for the symposium. While reading Norman Fischer's 28-lines poems
from Success, I was surprised to see my name mentioned in his poem of Saturday, 24 March [1990].
I found my poem written on that date and am showing both of them here.
Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall, Room 426, Stanford University, May 15, 2003, 10 am:
Michael: Leslie's poem ended with "rose", so I'll read a poem with "rose" in the first line.
ADDITIONAL NOTES & WEB LINKS (PYC):
Norman Fischer on Meditation & Poetry
Michael McClure on Poetry
Leslie Scalapino on Poetry
Web Links to Norman Fischer
Web Links to Michael McClure
Web Links to Leslie Scalapino
Philip Whalen Web Links
Poetry Books by Norman Fischer: (at Amazon.com)
Poetry Books by Michael McClure: (at Amazon.com)
Poetry Books by Leslie Scalapino: (at Amazon.com)
About 40 people attended this symposium which got underway at 10:20 am after Norman's late arrival.
Doug Kerr introduced the speakers— three prolific poets who are familiar with the Buddhist tradition
and contemporary poetry. The term "practioners of reality" was first used by Allen Ginsberg in his 1987
lecture at the Library of Congress. The morning session covered the topics What is Buddhist Poetry?
and What is a Buddhist Poem? After the lunch break, the Poetics of Composition and the Poetics of
Meditation were discussed with an extended Q & A session that was both invigorating and illuminating.
This is Poem #51 from
Ghost Tantras (1967):
IN THE DARKNESS COOLED BY THE NIGHT.
We are served by machines making satins
of sounds.
Each blot of sound is a bud or a star.
Body eats bouquets of the ear's vista.
Gahhhrrr boody eers noze eyes deem thou.
NOH. NAH-OHH
hrooor. VOOOR-NAH! GAHROOOOO ME.
Nah droooooh seerch. NAH THEE!
The machines are too dull when we
are lion-poems that move & breathe.
WHAN WE GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOR
hann dree myketoth sharoo sreee thah noh deeeeeemed ez.
Whan eecethoooze hrohh.
Meditation is when you sit down, let's say that, and don't do anything.
Poetry is when you get up and do something.
Somewhere we've developed the misconception that poetry is self-experession,
and that meditation is going inward. Actually, poetry has nothing to do with
self-expression, it is the way to be free, finally, of self-expression, to go
much deeper than that. And meditation is not a form of thought or reflection,
it is a looking at or an awareness of what is there, equally inside and outside,
and then it doesn't make sense anymore to mention inside or outside.
— from Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry,
Edited by Kent Johnson & Craig Paulenich, (1991), p. 66
Poetry is a muscular principle— an athletic song or whisper of
flashy thought. We can be as serious as blue-black gloom or bright as
a buttercup in the dawn. The spirit of poetry is loops we send out
from the expanding helix of our lives. With poetry we can meet an
old perception on a mountain top or in a subway, or view a new
perception loping in the distance like a wolf— or glimmering
like an opal in the twilight.
— Foreword to Jaguar Skies (1975)
the serial poem which is itself internal debate is not a representation
or imagination of what the monks are debating. The text's internal debate
is the author's 'comparison' of her mind phenomena to exterior phenomena,
laying these alongside each other 'actually'— such as 'the mind's
comparison' to dawn, to magnolias, to color of night, 'as if' these are
manifestations of mind phenomena, which they are here.
— from "Wall Hanging" in The Tango (2001)
•
The Everyday Zen Foundation
(Zoketsu Norman Fischer's Teachings Online)
•
Zoketsu Norman Fischer: Biography
(The Everyday Zen Foundation)
•
Zen Talk: "Bewilderment"
(Everday Zen All Day Sit, January 4, 2003)
•
Do You Want to Make Something Out of It?: Zen meditation and the artistic impulse
(from Success, Singing Horse Press, 2000)
•
One Line Poems
(By Zoketsu Norman Fischer)
•
Success, Singing Horse Press (2000)
(Sampling of 8 poems by Zoketsu Norman Fischer)
•
Turn Left in Order to Go Right (1989)
(By Norman Fischer, Excerpts, Book Review)
•
Wandering Around in the Diamond Sutra
(Zazenkai, Karuna Meditation Society retreat, Vancouver, B.C., May 6, 2000)
•
Norman Fischer
(Co-Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center)
•
Michael McClure Home Page
(Poems, Essays, Considerations, 1975 Margins Symposium, Into a New Millenium)
•
Michael McClure Biography
(About Michael McClure by Ray Manzarek)
•
The Poetry of Michael McClure: A Scientist's View
(By Francis Crick, First published in the 1975 Margins Symposium)
•
The Beat Page: Michael McClure
(RookNet Project: McClure's biography & poems)
•
Michael McClure: Bio & Links
(Texts from Levi Asher, Bibliography of McClure's Works)
•
An Anthology of Poems by Michael McClure— Selected by the Author
(Hymn to St. Geryon, Dark Brown, The New Book/A Book of Torture,
Little Odes, The Beard, Rare Angel, Star, On Organism, September Blackberries,
Jaguar Skies, Antechamber, Fragments of Perseus, Rebel Lions, Simple Eyes)
•
Michael McClure GHOST TANTRAS
(21 poems selected by Michael McClure)
•
Leslie Scalapino: Onine Works
(Poems, Writings, About the Author)
•
Leslie Scalapino: Electronic Poetry Review
(EPR#2: The Wedge— Chapter 5 of Secret Autobiography)
•
Leslie Scalapino: New York State Writers Institute
(SUNY-Albany, March 11, 1999)
•
Other Books by Leslie Scalapino
(New Time, Return of Painting, Green and Black, How Phenomena Appear To Unfold)
•
Leslie Scalapino: poetics@
(God, Zen, spiritual authorities)
•
Reading Philip Whalen
(Dale Smith, Jacket #5, 1998)
•
Philip Whalen passed away the morning of June 26, 2002
(Beat Generation News, July 2002)
•
The Beat Page: Philip Whalen
(The Memory Of, Dilemma of the Occasion Is, Expensive Life, Imperfect Sonnet)
•
IN MEMORIAM PHILIP WHALEN
[20th.October 1923 (Portland, Oregon) ‹ 26th.June 2002 (San Francisco, CA)]
•
Obituary: Philip Whalen, 78; Zen Priest, Mentor Among Beat Poets
(By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2002)
•
Obituary: Philip Whalen, an Original Beat Poet, 78, Dies
(NY Times, July 2, 2002)
•
Obituary: Philip Whalen— co-founder of Beat poetry
(By Heidi Benson, San Francisco Chronicle, June 27, 2002)
Taking Our Places : The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up
Harper SanFrancisco, (2003)
Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms
Penguin USA, NY, (2003)
Benedict's Dharma: Buddhists Reflect on the Rule of Saint Benedict
Riverhead Books, Penguin-Putnam, NY (2001)
Success
Singing Horse Press, Philadelphia (2000)
The Narrow Roads Of Japan
Small Press Distribution (1998)
Jerusalem Moonlight
Clear Glass Pubications (1995)
Precisely the Point Being Made: A Book of Poems
O Books, Oakland & Chax Press, Minneapolis (1993)
Turn Left in Order to Go Right
O Books, Oakland (1989)
On Whether or Not to Believe in Your Mind
Figures (1987)
The Devices
Potes & Poets Press, Elmwood, Connecticut (1987)
Why People Lack Confidence in Chairs: A Poem
Coffee House Press, West Branch, Iowa (1984)
Touching the Edge: Dharma Devotions from the Hummingbird Sangha
Shambhala Publications (1999)
Rain Mirror: New Poems
New Directions, NY (1999)
Huge Dreams: San Francisco and Beat Poems
Penguin USA (1999)
The Beat Generation: Galleries and Beyond
John Natsoulas Gallery (1996)
Scratching the Beat Surface: Essays on New Vision from Blake to Kerouac
Penguin USA (1994)
Simple Eyes and Other Poems
New Directions, NY (1994)
Lighting the Corners: On Art, Nature, and the Visionary: Essays and Interviews
University of New Mexico Press (1993)
It's Go In/Quiet Illumined Grass/Land
The Post-Apollo Press, Sausalito, CA (2002)
Defoe (long fiction or prose poem)
Green Integer Books (2002)
The Tango (serial poem with paintings like Buddhist tankas)
Granary Books (2001)
New Time (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
Wesleyan Univ Press, Hanover, NH (1999)
The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence
Wesleyan Univ Press, Hanover, NH (1999)
The Return of Painting, the Pearl, and Orion: A Trilogy
Talisman House Publishing (1997)
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email: peter@wisdomportal.com (5-15-2003)
