World War II synchronizes things for a lot of people. There's a kind of wakeup call. Anne Waldman More Quotes by Anne Waldman More Quotes From Anne Waldman I like the idea of the object, the relic. And I see it as a time machine too or a device you plug into a socket that activates a sound and light show. Anne Waldman lightsoundideas Spiritual models for me are the communities of Tibetans living in exile in India, or the banjars of Bali, which exist in times of difficulty, oppression. Alternative spaces-perhaps this kind of communication can take place over the Net? Probably only up to a point as the Net's controlled by the military. But the idea is to live outside multi-national, monocultural, commodification prison, outside the grey areas of power-mad, monied collusion. Anne Waldman communicationmilitaryspiritual I'm curious about other universes, and nonhuman elementals. For me it's still a very lively ethos. It's a kind of practice. It's an ethos that is very sustaining. Anne Waldman ethoskindpractice I don't think it is as a trope or as something in our psyches. There's very little wilderness out there but there is wild mind, and the Wild mind that actually, as Gary Snyder says, wants to take care of things. There's an elegant quality to the wild mind. Anne Waldman psychmindthinking You really felt a radical shift in the advance of a poetics that had really been engendered by [Walt] Whitman. This was very exciting. I wanted to work in this environment. Anne Waldman radicalenvironmentexciting I hope I'm not implying role of contemporary poet for myself, although there's a kind of resonant paradigm. It's traditionally a difficult role. Anne Waldman poetroleskind I think for me in terms of this kind of dichotomy you have to hold the sense of negative capability in your mind - which is Keats line about being able to hold two different ideas 'without any irritable reach after fact or reason.' Anne Waldman twoideasthinking It's so rich as a trope - the whole idea of the road and it being in terms of language, being an active experience. Anne Waldman richlanguageideas There is a pretty interesting document called 'action writing.' Which is not all about spontaneity and first thought, best thought,' but a certain kind of attention to the smallest increments of the phonemes of language, The kind of power of connection, what he is able to do with language. Anne Waldman connectionswritinginteresting One has to be cautious and respectful of the power of the "substance" guides. I don't advocate imbibing the "little saint children," as Maria Sabina calls the magic mushrooms, or anything else for everyone. I find that certain substances reconnect me to a primal context of purpose that goes beyond identity and ownership. The writing-when I've worked it this way-is the kind of information you take back from dreams. Or it's hypnotic writing rather than getting off on some sort of pleasure trip or intellectual trip. Anne Waldman dreamwritingchildren There are energies that reside in each phone and phoneme. And we can release them. And it can be grand and vast and you can create a realm where you can dwell for a while. Where things are perfect symbols of themselves, no manipulation. And that connects to me to the Buddhist view. From that perspective we can wake up on the spot, be conscious of our world, think of others. Anne Waldman buddhistphonesthinking The text for me is the musical score. I'm the instrument. My voice is the instrument. My voice is articulating the sounds which are coming through the imaginings and visitations in my head, and I'm making these sounds but I've selected them from an ocean of sound. Anne Waldman musicalvoiceocean I'd like to invoke the Native American Navajo because their word for road is used as a verb. Their whole relationship to road has to do with how you travel it, who you are traveling it with, what the environment might be, where you're headed, in what direction, the weather and so on. Anne Waldman verbsnative-americanweather Think of the road as a kind of zone and a site of incredible diversity. Anne Waldman diversitykindthinking I was raised with a sense of democratic vistas and egalitarianism. Anne Waldman egalitarianismvistasdemocratic For me there is a poesis, a poetics, around the trope of the road that is embedded within many life experiences of the people I've been close to. Anne Waldman embeddedlife-experiencepeople I invoke that sense of the particulars of that kind of literal travel and what that has meant historically in terms of diasporas, in terms of the migrations of immigrants coming to this [U.S.] country with a real vision of finding the promised land. Anne Waldman landrealcountry For me poems are acts re-done, and that can vibrate well into the future. Anne Waldman vibratewellsdone America's the great conundrum and the great dream and the great fascination: the new land, the new world, the new temple, the new city, and the great mess. The most handguns, bombs, weaponry, violence, the cop of the world etcetera. All the contradictions. Mediocrity versus something like indigenous jazz, one of the most evolved sophisticated musical forms on the planet. Anne Waldman landcitiesdream Myths, by their definition, involve transformations, struggles through various worlds or layers of reality and of obscuration. Anne Waldman strugglerealityworld
