"I am the man," wrote Artaud, "who has best charted his inmost self." Antonin Artaud was a great poet who, like Poe, Holderlin, and Nerval, wanted to live in the infinite and asked that the human spirit burn in absolute freedom. To society, he was a madman. Artaud, however, was not insane but in luciferian pursuit of what society keeps hidden. The man who wrote Van Gogh the Man Suicided by Society raged against the insanity of social institutions with insight that proves more prescient with every passing year. Today, as Artaud's vatic thunder still crashes above the "larval confusion" he despised, what is most striking in his writings is an extravagant lucidity. This collection gives us quintessential Artaud on the occult, magic, the theater, mind and body, the cosmos, rebellion, and revolution in its deepest sense. "[I]n France his position extends beyond the theater, and indeed beyond any literary genre. Although he seems to have written incessantly in a sort of violent poetic prose which he scattered in all directions, his actual compositions have always been less well known than his personality. His prestige in literary circles depends in the first place on the fact that he was an abnormal individual, totally committed to the expression or exploration of his abnormality and quite oblivious of any of the requirements of ordinary living." —John Weightman, New York Review of Books Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) was a French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor, and theater director. He is known as a significant figure in the history of theater, avant-garde art, literature, and other disciplines. Jack Hirschman is a San Francisco poet, translator, and editor. His powerfully eloquent voice set the tone for political poetry in this country many years ago. Since leaving a teaching career in the ’60s, Hirschman has taken the free exchange of poetry and politics into the streets where he is, in the words of poet Luke Breit, "America’s most important living poet." He is the author of numerous books of poetry, plus some 45 translations from a half a dozen languages, as well as the editor of anthologies and journals. Among his many volumes of poetry are Endless Threshold, The Xibalba Arcane, and Lyripol (City Lights, 1976).

Artaud Anthology

Literature & Fiction

Artaud, Antonin

Dramas & Plays

City Lights Publishers

These are four tales of contemporary life in a land where cannabis, rather than alcohol, customarily provides a way out of the phenomenological world. Thus, of the men in these stories, Salam uses suggestions supplied by smoking kif to rid himself of a possible enemy. He of the Assembly catches himself up in the mesh of his own kif-dream and begins to act it out in reality; Idir's victory over Lahcen is the classical story of the kif-smoker's ability to outwit the drinker. Driss the soldier, with aid of kif, proves the existence of magic to his enlightened superior officer. For all of them the kif-pipe is the means to attaining a state of communication not only with others but above all with themselves.
"His work is art. At his best Paul Bowles has no peer."—Time
"[W]riters and artists such as Williams, Jack Kerouac, Francis Bacon, Christopher Isherwood, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg to Tangier . . . sought Bowles as an oracle, a writer whose work demonstrated its author as an original who saw farther, deeper, and clearer, and who refused to flinch."—The Australian
Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was an expatriate composer, author and translator. His other famous literary works include The Sheltering Sky, Travels: Collected Writings 1950-1993 and Without Stopping

A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard

BOWLES, Paul.

Literary

The Yage Letters: an early epistolary novel by William S. Burroughs, whose 1952 account of himself as Junkie, published under the pseudonym William Lee, ended "Yage may be the final fix." In letters to Allen Ginsberg, an unknown young poet in New York, his journey to the Amazon jungle is recorded, detailing picaresque incidents of search for telepathic-hallucinogenic-mind-expanding drug Yage (Ayahuasca, or Banisteriopsis Caapé) used by Amazon Indian doctors for finding lost objects, mostly bodies and souls. Author and recipient of these letters met again in New York, Xmas 1953, pruned and edited the writings to form a single book. Correspondence contains first seeds of later Burroughsian fantasy in Naked Lunch. Seven years later Ginsberg in Peru writes his old guru an account of his own visions and terrors with the same drug, appealing for further counsel. Burroughs' mysterious reply is sent. The volume concludes with two epilogues: a short note from Ginsberg on his return from the Orient years later reassuring Self that he is still here on earth, and a final poetic cut-up by Burroughs, "I Am Dying Meester?"

The Yage Letters

BURROUGHS, WILLIAM S.

Essays & Correspondence

This is an account of the Madhyamika (Middle Way) school of Buddhism, a method of mediation and enlightenment that was developed by the great Indian teacher Nagarjuna. In a collaboration between the Frenchwoman Alexandra David-Neel and her friend, the Tibetan lama Aphur Yongden, these teaching are presented clearly and elegantly, intended for the layman who seeks a way to practice and experience the realization of oneness with all existence.
" . . . this is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism that has been written. Specifically, it is a wonderfully lucid account of the Middle Way method of enlightenment worked out by the great Indian sage Nagarjuna."—Alan Watts, The Book
"The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects by Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden, is always on my night stand. I return to it again and again in different stages of my life."—Marina Ambramovic
"David-Neél herself is often relegated to the ranks of 'women adventurers' this despite the production of some forty-odd books, several of which have wielded an extraordinary influence."—Harry Oldmeadow, La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia
Alexandra David-Neel was born in 1868 in Paris. In her youth she wrote an incendiary anarchist treatise and was an acclaimed opera singer; then she decided to devote her life to exploration and the study of world religions, including Buddhist philosophy. She traveled extensively to in Central Asia and the Far East, where she learned a number of Asian languages, including Tibetan. In 1914, she met Lama Yongden, who became her adopted son, teacher and companion. In 1923, at the age of fifty-five, she disguised herself as a pilgrim and journeyed to Tibet, where she was the first European woman to enter Lhasa, which was closed to foreigners at the time. In her late seventies, she settled in the south of France, where she lived until her death at 101 in 1969.

The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Alexandra David-Néel

Lama Yongden

Psychology & Counseling

This important and much-disputed essay edited by Ezra Pound from the manuscript of Ernest Fenollosa (and published in Instigations, London, 1920) has since gone through several editions, despite the ridicule of such sinologists as Professor George Kennedy of Yale, who called it "a small mass of confusion."
 The old theory as to the nature of the Chinese written character (which Pound and Fenollosa followed) is that the written character is ideogrammic—a stylized picture of the thing or concept it represents. The opposing theory (which prevails today among scholars) is that the character may have had pictorial origins in prehistoric times but that these origins have been obscured in all but a few very simple cases, and that in any case native writers don’t have the original pictorial meaning in mind as they write.
 Whether Pound proceeded on false premises remains an academic question. Let the pedants rave. An important extension of imagist technique in poetry was gained by Pound’s perception of the essentially poetic nature of the Chinese character as it is still written.
 "Scholarly edition that combines the first full publication of Fenollosa's essay as he wrote it, along with the 1919 version of the essay as altered by Ezra Pound."—The Chronicle of Higher Education
 "How can we come to a new understanding of Chinese classical literature when our inherited view of it is so powerfully shaped and conditioned by a 'strong misreading,' which is a vital part of our own poetic language? This question afflicts Haun Saussy in his extraordinary introduction to a new critical edition of The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, which presents both the edited and original versions of Fenollosa's essay."—The Threepenny Review
 "Fenollosa's critical assessment of what could evolve from a blending of the East and West is perhaps more relevant today than when it was written."—Oyster Boy Review
 "This book—indispensable to anyone following modern poetics—reminds us that one of the four most influential modern essays on poetry (the others are T.S. Eliot's) was the product of a scholar-translator, writing in 1903, well before there was any modern poetry in English. Fenollosa's belief that the Chinese language is profoundly suited to poetry is well known, but because of Pound's editing, we had no way of knowing what Fenollosa made of the music of poetry. Least of all could we have imagined that he thought the music of this poetry was better preserved by Japanese phonics than by living Chinese speakers. Fenollosa was an idealistic advocate of Anglo-American empire fused with pan-Asian 'humanity,' by which he meant roughly what is covered by the term 'humanities.' He saw the approach of a peaceful east/west fusion, economic, military, and cultural, and sought to guide its arrival by elucidating the art of classical Chinese poetry, without any expectation that his essay would alter the ways that Anglo-American poets shape sentences. This handsome edition is a major contribution to the history of modern poetics. Until now we have known little of the intellectual, political, and religious context of this great essay on diction and syntax. Haun Saussy, Jonathan Stalling, and Lucas Klein reveal the range and growth of Fenollosa's still appealing conviction that modern poetry has to go far beyond national borders."—Robert von Hallberg, University of Chicago

The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry

Ernest Fenollosa

History & Criticism

"Ginsberg reigned as the raucous poet of American hippiedom and as a literary pioneer whose freewheeling masterwork, Howl, prevailed against government censorship in a landmark obscenity trial 50 years ago."–New York Times Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems was originally published by City Lights Books in the Fall of 1956. Subsequently seized by U.S. customs and the San Francisco police, it was the subject of a long court trail at which a series of poets and professors persuaded the court that the book was not obscene. Howl &amp; Other Poems is the single most influential poetic work of the post-World War II era, with over 1,000,000 copies now in print.
"Howl was Allen's metamorphosis from quiet, brilliant, burning bohemian scholar trapped by his flames and repressions to epic vocal bard."Michael McClure
"It is the poet, Allen Ginsberg, who has gone, in his own body, through the horrifying experiences described from life in these pages." William Carlos Williams
"At the height of his bardic powers, Allen Ginsberg could terrify the authorities with the mere utterance of the syllable om” as he led street throngs of citizens protesting the Vietnam War. Ginsberg reigned as the raucous poet of American hippiedom and as a literary pioneer whose freewheeling masterwork Howl” prevailed against government censorship in a landmark obscenity trial 50 years ago." New York Times
"Fifty years ago, on October 3, Judge Clayton Horn ruled that Allen Ginsberg's great epic Beat-era poem HOWL was not obscene but instead, a work of literary and social merit. This ruling allowed for the publication of HOWL and exonerated the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who faced jail time and a fine 50 years ago for publishing HOWL." Pacifica.org 
Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian émigré, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and schoolteacher, in Paterson, New Jersey. To these facts Ginsberg adds: "High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote Kaddish 1959, made tape to leave behind &amp; fade in Orient awhile. Carl Solomon to whom Howl is addressed, is a intuitive Bronx dadaist and prose-poet."

Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets, No. 4)

GINSBERG, ALlen

Reference

Great strange visionary poems by the author of Howl, “in the midst of the broken consciousness of mid-twentieth century . . .”
 In the midst of the broken consciousness of mid-twentieth century suffering anguish of separation from my own body and its natural infinity of feeling its own self one with all self, I instinctively seeking to reconstitute that blissful union which I experience so rarely. I took it to be supernatural an gave it holy Name thus made hymn laments of longing and litanies of triumphancy of Self over mind-illusion mechano-universe of un-feeling Time in which I saw my self my own mother and my very nation trapped desolate our worlds of consciousness homeless and at war except for the original trembling of bliss in breast and belly of every body that nakedness rejected in suits of fear that familiar defenseless living hurt self which is myself same as all others abandoned scared to own unchanging desire for each other. These poems almost unconscious to confess the beatific human fact, the language intuitively chosen as in trance &amp; dream, the rhythms rising on breath from belly thru breast, the hymn completed in tears, the movement of the physical poetry demanding and receiving decades of life while chanting Kaddish the names of Death in many worlds the self seeking the Key to life found at last in our self.

Kaddish and Other Poems: 1958-1960

Allen GINSBERG

Poetry

Planet News collecting seven years’ Poesy scribed to 1967 begins with electronic politics disassociation &amp; messianic rhapsody TV Baby in New York, continues picaresque around the globe, elan perceptions notated at Mediterranean, Galilee &amp; Ganges till next breakthrough, comedown Poem at heart &amp; soul last days in Asia The Change 1963; tenement doldrums &amp; police-state paranoia in Manhattan then half year behind Socialist Curtain climaxed as Kral Majales May King Prague 1965, same years’ erotic gregariousness writ as Who Be Kind To for International Poetry Incarnation Albert Hall London; next trip West Coast thru center America Midwest Wichita Vortex Sutra . . . at last across Atlantic Wales Visitation promethian text recollected in emotion revised in tranquility continuing tradition of ancient Nature Language mediates between psychedelic inspiration and humane ecology &amp; integrated acid classic Unitive Vision with democratic eyeball particulars-book closes on politics to exorcise Pentagon phantoms who cover Earth with dung-colored gas.
"Planet News is a great book of poems. It encourages the reader to release their pre-conceived notions of poetry, and allow themselves to dance disturbingly through a picture that Ginsberg paints. . . . Planet News is a beautiful read. If it’s not something you’re immediately interested in, the read is worth it for the mere significance Allen Ginsberg has had on the art of poetry."—Ned Tobin, Chronicles of Time
"In this collection, the shorter poems, with their impressive grip on exact description, are the best, and remind us of how Ginsberg sees everything-railroads, cloverleafs, Dino Sinclair signs, 'tiny human trees' in the plains, newspaper stories and their reduction of the real to the ("continued from page one") verbal, football fields, J. Edgar Hoover, and above all himself. For his contemporaries, he is the biographer of his time-its high schools, its streets, its telephones, its monsters ('television was a baby crawling toward that deathchamber"), its bland head counts, its drugs, its cops, its cities, its freeways, and most of all its short-cut language."—Helen Vendler, New York Times

Planet News: 1961-1967 (City Lights Pocket Poets Series)

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages for yr own joy.” Many of Ginsberg’s most famous poems.
Wake-up nightmares in Lower East Side, musings in public library, across the U.S. in dream auto, drunk in old Havana, brooding in Mayan ruins, sex daydreams on the West Coast, airplane vision of Kansas, lonely in a leafy cottage, lunch hour on Berkeley, beer notations on Skid Row, slinking to Mexico, wrote this last night in Paris, back on Times square dreaming of Times Square, bombed in NY again, loony tunes in the dentist chair, screaming at old poets in South America, aethereal zigzag Poesy in blue hotel room in Perua wind-up book of dreams, psalms, journal enigmas &amp; nude minutes from 1953 to 1960 poems scattered in fugitive magazines here collected now book.
". . .make no mistake, Reality Sandwiches, 1953-60 . . . is genuine poetry, and Ginsberg's commitment marks his superiority over more graceful and refined but tepid craftsmen." Robert D. Spector, Poetry Quarterly
Famous Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian émigré, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and school teacher, in Paterson, N.J. To these facts Ginsberg adds: "High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote "Kaddish" 1959, made tape to leave behind &amp; fade in Orient awhile." His other famous poetry collections including The Fall of America, Howl, Mind Breaths, Plutonian Ode, Kaddish, and Reality Sandwiches are also published by City Lights Publishers.

Reality Sandwiches: 1953-1960 (City Lights Pocket Poets Series)

"In the Book of Dreams I just continue the same story but in the dreams I had of the real-life characters I always write about."
Excerpt:
WALKING THROUGH SLUM SUBURBS of Mexico City I'm stopped by smiling threesome of cats who've disengaged themselves from the general fairly crowded evening street of brown lights, coke stands, tortillas—Unmistakably going to steal my bag—I struggled a little, gave up—Begin communicating with them my distress and in fact do so well they end up just stealing parts of my stuff…. We walk off leaving the bag with someone—arm in arm like a gang to the downtown lights of Letran, across a field—
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) was a principal actor in the Beat Generation, a companion of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in that great adventure. His books include On the Roa, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, Lonesome Traveler, Scattered Poems, Visions of Cody, Pomes All Sizes, and Scripture of the Golden Eternity.

Book of Dreams

Biographies & Memoirs

KEROUAC,JACK

Arts & Literature

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