These reference notes may be of use to younger readers & translators not familiar with ephemeral news situations or translated & esoteric texts.
Section 2, “Discussion on Making All Things Equal,” Chuang Tzu Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 42.
Discourse at Chinese Writers Association conference with American Academy of Arts and Letters on “Sources of Inspiration,” Beijing, October 1984. Improvised from notes, transcribed from tape, lightly edited.
See “At the Grave of My Father,” Louis Ginsberg, Collected Poems, ed. Michael Fournier, Introduction Eugene Brooks, Afterword Allen Ginsberg (Orono, Maine: Northern Lights, 1992).
Roque Dalton: Salvadorian poet-hero-martyr (1935–1975) was liquidated by fellow FMLN revolutionists for tactical differences of opinion.
Velemir Khlebnikov (1885–1922), Snake Train (Ann Arbor: Ardis House, 1976). The classic Futurist poet perished after returning by train from Pyatigorsk to Moscow, “weakened by malnutrition and repeated bouts of typhus and malaria.” See The King of Time, Selected Writings of the Russian Futurian, trans. Paul Schmidt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).
“Drive All Blames into One”—i.e., oneself. Jamgon Kongtrul, The Great Path of Awakening. A Commentary on the Mahayana Teaching of the Seven Points of Mind Training, trans. Ken McLeod (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1987). Original text by Atisa.
“God sent him to sea for pearls”: “For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God, God hath sent me to sea for pearls.” Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno, ed. W. H. Bond (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969).
Response to Macedonian request for message to Struga Evenings of Poetry festival, on receiving 1986 Golden Laurel Wreath prize.
“Molecule/clinking against molecule.”: See “Winter Night,” Attila Józef’s Selected Poems and Texts, trans. John Bátki (Iowa City: International Writing Program, University of Iowa, 1976).
First Thought, Best Thought, Chögyam Trungpa (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1984).
“If the mind is shapely, the art will be shapely”: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, conversation 1958, Cherry Plains, N.Y.
See the “Internationale,” former Soviet national anthem:
“Arise ye prisoners of starvation,
Arise ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world’s in birth,” etc.
Crazy Wisdom: i.e., wild wisdom “whispered lineage,” characteristic of Kagyu school, Tibetan Buddhism. See Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, Crazy Wisdom (Boston: Shambhala Press, 1992).
Russian Chernobyl translates literally as “wormwood.”
Collaboration with Brooklyn College M.F.A. Writing Workshop, Fall 1986, and Bob Rosenthal.
Jack Micheline, Skinny Dynamite (San Francisco: Second Coming Press, 1980). Story by the poet-painter.
Cremation ceremony took place at Karme-Chöling Retreat Center, Barnet, Vermont.
Written for back jacket copy, Break the Mirror: The Poems of
Nanao Sakaki (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987).
See “Salutation to Walt Whitman,” The Poems of Fernando Pessoa, trans. Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown (New York: Ecco Press, 1987).
“Arabs should throw words not stones,” Elie Wiesel, quoted in New York Post sometime 1988.
See “Kral Majales,” p. 353 and notes, Collected Poems 1947–1980 (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).
Sen. Jesse Helms & Heritage Foundation’s October 1988 law directed Federal Communications Commission to enforce 24-hour ban on “indecent” language over all airwaves, declared unconstitutional by subsequent court decisions. At poem’s writing, ban extended 6:00 A.M. to midnight. Court decisions 1993 froze ban as of 6:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M., leaving as “safe harbor” late evening to 6:00 A.M. Daytime broadcast for students (& adults) reading the author’s “questionable” poems in schools is now forbidden by law.
All gone all gone …: version of Prajnaparamita, Highest Perfect Wisdom, 17-syllable Sanskrit mantra: “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.”
“As late as 1988, 333 House members and 61 Senators hosted significant donations from Savings & Loan lobbyists.” “S & L Scandal: The Gang’s all Here,” by Mary Fricher and Steve Pizzo, New York Times Op-Ed, July 27, 1990.
Ojus: hard coral limestone formations, North Miami area, Florida.
See New York Times, March 12, 1989:
HULL BAILED OUT IN COSTA RI CA
San Jose, Costa Rica, March 10 (AP)—American-born John Hull, who has been linked to Nicaraguan rebel supply network, was released from prison Friday after he posted $37,000 bail, his attorney said. The 69-year-old Mr. Hull, who was jailed on Jan. 13 on charges of drug trafficking and violating Costa Rican security, was freed soon after friends collected bail money. Mr. Hull has lived in Costa Rica for 20 years. He is accused of allowing his ranch to be used by the Nicaraguan contras and of narcotics trafficking between 1982–1985.
Part I originally published in First Blues (New York: Full Court Press, 1979). Here two additional sections update events. For scholarly history of government intelligence involvement with drug trafficking to aid or fund “off-the-shelf” secret & illegal operations, including most references in “CIA Dope Calypso,” see Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin (Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991), to which poet contributed research.
After aiding CIA overthrow of Iran’s legal Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, General N. Schwarzkopf’s father, Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr., trained the Shah’s dreaded secret police, the Savak. See “Capitol Air,” Collected Poems 1947–1980; Lies of Our Times, vol. 2, no. 2 (February 19, 1991) (New York: Sheridan Square Press); and James Breslin, “A Son Follows Suit in the Matter of Oil,” New York Newsday, September 9, 1990.
Part I and shorter version of Part II were published in Collected Poems 1947–1980. Additional verses added 1991.
Mahamudra poetics exercise suggested by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso, Rinpoche, Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, Summer 1991. The first of five verses, 21 syllables each, begins in “neurotic confusion” (Samsara), the last concludes grounded in “ordinary mind” (Dharmakaya).
Lalon Shah (1774–1890), Bengali Baul singer, devotional forerunner of Rabindranath Tagore. See Songs of Lalon Shah, trans. Abu Rushd (Dhaka: Bangla Academy Press, 1991).
Verse 1: Ref Rodney King videotape beating and police trials, Los Angeles 1992–93.
Verse 3: Ref. Police frame-up of political poet Amiri Baraka, 1966, later thrown out of court.
Verse 4: Ref. J. Edgar Hoover’s amative relationship with assistant Clyde Tolson and his withholding of Kennedy assassination information from Warren Commission. See Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets (New York: Penguin, 1991); and Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: Putnam, 1993).
Verse 5: Ref Oswald’s role as government intelligence informant within Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Verse 6: Ref. Jack Ruby, courier to Cuba for Mafioso boss Santos Trafficante, Jr., former drug lord of Havana.
Verse 7: See “N.S.A. Dope Calypso” pp. 58–59, stanzas 3–6, and note.
Verse 8: Ref. Oliver North, Richard Secord, etc.
Verse 9: Ref. Elliott Abrams, former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, pardoned by outgoing President Bush 1992 after guilty plea to withholding Iran-contra scam information from Congress.
Verse 13: Charles H. Keating, Jr., 69, founder, Cincinnati Citizens for Decent Literature, later Citizens for Decency Through Law, was convicted 1993 on state and federal charges of swindling investors, fraud, and racketeering in collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. “The collapse of Lincoln, which was based in Irvine, California, in early 1989 is estimated to have cost taxpayers $2.5 billion” (New York Times, September 4, 1992). Along with pedophile Father Joseph Ritter, former director of wayward youths’ Covenant House, Keating was outstanding homophobe on President Reagan’s Meese Commission on Pornography.
Verse 6: Rev. W. A. Criswell, mentor of TV Bible evangelist fundraising theopoliticians Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, decrees the Bible 100 percent “Inerrant.”
Verse 11: John Rousas Rushdoony, fundamentalist author, leader of Chalcedon Foundation’s Christian Reconstructionist exertions, disapproves homosexual emotions.
Originally published in First Blues (New York: Full Court Press, 1975). Here updated statistics, additional stanzas.
Epigraph remembered from 1940s college days, heard by classmate from his mother, perhaps 1920s flappers’ ditty.
Epigraph and final quotation, “The whole point seems to be the idea of giving away the giver,” taken from lectures on The Sadhana of Mahamudra, by Ven. Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, Karma Dzong, December 1973, privately printed.
Gary Snyder, No Nature: New and Selected Poems (New York: Pantheon, 1992).
On Hearing the Muezzin Cry Allah Akbar While Visiting the Pythian Oracle at Didyma Toward the End of the Second Millennium
Didyma, Asia Minor’s shore site where Magna Mater and Pythian oracle were displaced by Judeo-Christian-Islamic Father God. In response to imperial Roman request for prophecy circa 4th century A.D., the oracle’s last utterance declared the gods had departed, Apollo no longer inhabited the temple’s pillars.
Rainy night on Union Square … Answering office mail late night, response to request from little magazine.
Bus over steep mountains from Kangnung to Seoul one rainy night was delayed along precipice by a mile of ambulance lights marking crash of bus I’d missed, scheduled an hour earlier.
Monoprix, familiar department store, onetime right bank of Seine across from Place St. Michel.