Poetry Foundation
Poetry Magazine
October 2008
Poems by Sarah Lindsay, Adrian Blevins, Craig Arnold, John Repp, Eric Ekstrand, Laura Kasischke, D.A. Powell, John Hennessy, Jill Osier, Maurice Manning, Derek Sheffield; and more More
Harriet

Linh Dinh
YouTube Pleasures

Angela Rawlings in Reykjavik, Iceland, 2007:



Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl on Icelandic television, doing his "Pol Pot Pantun," 2007:




K. Silem Mohammad in New York, 2006:




Amiri Baraka in Medellín, Colombia, 2003:



Allen Ginsberg sings to William F. Buckley, who responds, "That's the most unharried Krishna I've ever heard," 1968:



Pier Paolo Pasolini reads Ezra Pound's Canto LXXXI to Pound, during “Un’ora con Ezra Pound� ["An Hour with Ezra Pound"] on Italian television, 1967:


The relevant passage:

[...]

What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
    or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
   Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
   Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
   Paquin pull down!
The green casque has outdone your elegance.

"Master thyself, then others shall thee beare"
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowst'ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity
   How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
   Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity,
   I say pull down.

But to have done instead of not doing
  this is not vanity

To have, with decency, knocked
That a Blunt should open
   To have gathered from the air a live tradition
or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame
This is not vanity.
  Here error is all in the not done,
all in the diffidence that faltered ...


04.17.08 | Comments (4)



Comments


Thanks ever so much for these!

Posted by: Antoine Cassar on April 17, 2008 5:54 PM

Hi Antoine,

Click here for an electrifying recording of Amiri Baraka reading his "Somebody Blew Up America" in Naples on September 11, 2005, accompanied by the Gaspare Di Lieto Jazz Quartet. It's by far the best version of this poem I've heard.

Posted by: Linh Dinh on April 17, 2008 9:12 PM

Here are sone wonderful clips of Anne Sexton!

Posted by: Don Share on April 18, 2008 9:23 AM

Speaking of Ginsberg, check out the sock puppet version of his appearance on Firing Line!

Posted by: Don Share on April 18, 2008 12:37 PM

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Your name and a valid e-mail address are required. Thanks for waiting.)



CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Wanda Coleman
Olena Kalytiak Davis
Forrest Gander
Lavinia Greenlaw
Javier Huerta
Travis Nichols

STAFF WRITERS
Michael Marcinkowski
Fred Sasaki
Don Share
Elizabeth Stigler
Nick Twemlow
Emily Warn

PREVIOUS WRITERS
Christian Bök
Stephen Burt
Kwame Dawes
Linh Dinh
Daisy Fried
Alan Gilbert
Kenneth Goldsmith
Rigoberto González
Major Jackson
Ada Limón
Jeffrey McDaniel
Ange Mlinko
Mark Nowak
Lucia Perillo
D.A. Powell
Reginald Shepherd
Patricia Smith
A.E. Stallings
Rachel Zucker

RECENT COMMENTS
Political Poetry: An Epistolary Conversation (5)
Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) (3)
Empire in Funkville (5)
¡Maldición! (3)
Read the foreign and the dead (3)

RECENT POSTS
Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) (Emily Warn)
Read the foreign and the dead (Lavinia Greenlaw)
O LITERATI, GET UP! (Olena Kalytiak Davis)
POETRY + MUSIC = INSPIRATION? (Wanda Coleman)
Into the Mouths of Volcanoes (Forrest Gander)

CATEGORY ARCHIVE
Poetry magazine
AWP
Arts
Awards
Biography
Books
Criticism
Distribution
Education
Film
International
Language
Music
News
Obituaries
Outrageous
Photographs
Poems
Poetry Out Loud
Poetry and the Internet
Politics
Readings
TV
Translation
poetryfoundation.org

AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Christian Bök
Stephen Burt
Wanda Coleman
Olena Kalytiak Davis
Kwame Dawes
Linh Dinh
Daisy Fried
Forrest Gander
Alan Gilbert
Kenneth Goldsmith
Rigoberto González
Lavinia Greenlaw
Javier Huerta
Major Jackson
Ada Limón
Jeffrey McDaniel
Ange Mlinko
Travis Nichols
Mark Nowak
Ed Park
Lucia Perillo
D.A. Powell
Fred Sasaki
Don Share
Reginald Shepherd
Patricia Smith
A.E. Stallings
Elizabeth Stigler
Nick Twemlow
Emily Warn
Rachel Zucker

Subscribe to the RSS feed.
What is RSS?

Poetry Tool






OR SEARCH
Events
54th Annual Poetry Day: Louise Glück
Tuesday, OCTOBER 21, 6 PM

Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
Harold Washington Library Center
400 South State Street
Free admission
More

Subscribe to Poetry