Afterword and Poem for "Gang of Souls"

I was thinking about that “look” I mentioned, that Lydia Lunch would sometimes throw at the camera in the documentary, after she ended her reading or recitation or performance or whatever; the same look that came out of Gregory Corso sometimes.

There’s something about Corso that has always annoyed me, beyond the fact that in other documentaries he’s complained about how people always think of the other Beats first—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs—not him—when they think of “Beat Writers.”

So I was thinking “What was that look?—The look I saw in the documentary?

Now I realize it’s related to something I see in videos of William S. Burroughs—an exceedingly odd individual, responsible for the fable novel Naked Lunch, which I am now about 40% of the way through reading.  “The Look” has something to do with delivering unwanted opinion, unappreciated points of view, perhaps; delivering the Bitter Truth to people who, we believe, certainly don’t want to hear it; delivering that truth, perhaps, with secret enjoyment.  Maybe not actually enjoying it, per se—but determined to Spit Out The Bad News anyway!

So here’s a poem I wrote about that.

“Tentative Interpretation of Gregory Corso and Lydia Lunch”

The performance poet Lydia Lunch has been called “confrontational.”

Gregory Corso, the Beat poet, and Lydia Lunch—what bothers me about them?

“Confrontational?”

As in the following, which is what I feel like they’re saying:

“Here’s the deal:

We don’t care what you think.

We don’t care if we offend you.

Maybe we intend to offend you,

To confront you,

To be ‘in your face.’”

(And maybe they don’t care whether you understand them or not.

Maybe they aren’t trying to explain—or communicate!

Maybe they’re just expressing themselves—

And you happen to be the person just now

In front of them. 

Maybe it isn’t personal.

But there it is anyway.

So there

<grin?>).

Review: “Gang of Souls: A Generation of Beat Poets” (1989)

An interesting film—though maybe not particularly for the right reasons.  Possibly first shown on television (non-commercial?), this DVD runs almost exactly one hour—a bit short to show in a theater.  Perhaps it was made for some sort of film festival?

The point of the film is to show how the original Beat writers influenced following generations.  Made twenty years after the death of Jack Kerouac, he obviously isn’t interviewed.  We do, however, hear from Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, the other two Beat Writers extraordinaire, as well as from Gregory Corse and Diane Di Prima.  We do not hear from Lawrence Ferlinghetti (who didn’t consider himself a “beat” anyway, but who was friends with the others and famously published Ginsberg’s seminal (!?) poem “Howl.”).  Nor do we hear from John Clellon Holmes, whose novel Go is widely considered the first Beat novel.  Either he died before he could be interviewed (the film appeared the year after his death) or he was consciously excluded.

But we hear from many poets who followed in these writers’ footsteps.  I’d heard of some of them; others were completely new to me.  I recognized Ed Sanders (who appeared on the William F. Buckley show Firing Line along with Jack Kerouac)—I’d thought of him as an activist, not a poet.  I’d heard of Anne Waldman, though wasn’t familiar with her poems.  I knew Marianne Faithfull as a singer but not her connection with the Naropa Institute (and Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics) in Colorado.  John Giorno looked familiar, though I suspect he reminds me of someone with a similar face.  The others were a complete surprise:  Richard Hell, Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, and Jim Carroll.

  I’ve watched this DVD three times now.  That surprises me, because the first time through I found I didn’t know quite what to make of it.  In fact, after the first viewing, I said to my daughter, “I feel a lot more normal and well-adjusted now, after watching these people.”  That was true.  But less true after three viewings.  I do read less extravagantly than the people in this video—but still more extravagantly than most people I know.

And—quotes from this video stick with me now.  “You want to be a writer, shut up and write” (Rollins).  “The opposite of poetry is hypocrisy” (Corso).  “I’m a filling man; I fill in empty space” (Rolliins).  “Everything I have to say, I say in my books” (Burroughs).

Most of all, this DVD is experiential.  I remember the way Corso talks, the way Lunch talks, Giorno’s musical delivery.  I remember Waldman’s spirited delivery.  And I remember the presence; the way Corso speaks and then looks right at you; the way Lydia Lunch smiles and smirks and spits out her truth and then stops and just looks right at you.  

Sanders says that performers have to believe in every word they speak, everything they do.  I’ll remember that now, at open mics (though I think I’ve always known that).  So Corso and Lunch hurl their visions at you then give you this “look” that seems to say:  “Yep, I said that; that’s how I see it.  Don’t like it?  Then take it or leave it.  Yeah.”