Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman Poems

Anne Waldman Biography

Anne Waldman (born April 2, 1945) is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist. She has also been connected to the Beat poets. Born in Millville, New Jersey, Waldman only lived in New Jersey very briefly. She was raised on MacDougal Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, and received her B.A. from Bennington College in 1966. During the 1960s, Waldman became part of the East Coast poetry scene, in part through her engagement with the poets and artists loosely termed the Second Generation of the New York School. During this time, Waldman also made many connections with earlier generations of poets, including figures such as Allen Ginsberg, who once called Waldman his "spiritual wife." From 1966-1968, she served as Assistant Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's; and, from 1968–1978, she served as the Project's Director. In the early 1960s, Waldman became a student of Buddhism. In the 1970s, along with Allen Ginsberg, she began to study with the Tibetan Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. While attending the Berkeley Poetry Conference in 1965, Waldman, with poet Lewis Warsh, was inspired to found Angel Hair, a small press that produced a magazine of the same name and a number of smaller books. It was while she was attending this conference that she first committed to poetry after hearing the Outrider poets. In 1974, with Trungpa, Ginsberg, and others, Waldman founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado (now Naropa University), where she remains a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and the Director of Naropa's famous Summer Writing Program. In 1976, Waldman and Ginsberg were featured in Bob Dylan's film, Renaldo and Clara. They worked on the film while traveling through New England and Canada with the Rolling Thunder Revue, a concert tour that made impromptu stops, entertaining enthusiastic crowds with poetry and music. Waldman, Ginsberg, and Dylan were joined on these caravans by musicians such as Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Eric Anderson, and Joe Cocker. Waldman reveled in the experience, and she often thought of recreating the poetry caravan. Waldman married Reed Bye in 1980, and their son, Edwin Ambrose Bye was born on October 21, 1980. The birth of her son proved to be an "inspiring turning point" for Waldman, and she became interested in and committed to the survival of the planet. Her child, she said, became her teacher. Waldman and Ambrose Bye perform frequently, and the two have created Fast Speaking Music and have produced multiple albums together. Waldman has been a fervent activist for social change. In the 1970s, she was involved with the Rocky Flats Truth Force, an organization opposed to the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility ten miles to the south of Boulder, Colorado. With Daniel Ellsberg and Allen Ginsberg, she was arrested for protesting outside of the site. She has been a vocal proponent for feminist, environmental, and human rights causes; an active participant in Poets Against the War; and she has helped organize protests in New York and Washington, D.C. Although her work is sometimes connected to the Beat Generation, Waldman has never been, strictly speaking, a "Beat" poet. Her work, like the work of her contemporaries in the 1970s New York milieu of which she was a vital part—writers like Alice Notley and Bernadette Mayer, to name only two—is more diverse in its influences and ambitions. Waldman is particularly interested in the performance of her poetry: she considers performance a "ritualized event in time," and she expresses the energy of her poetry through exuberant breathing, chanting, singing, and movement. Waldman credits her poem, Fast Speaking Woman, as the seminal work that galvanized her idea of poetry as performance. Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, Lawrence Ferlinghetti - all encouraged her to continue to perform her poetry. Waldman has published more than forty books of poetry. Her work has been widely anthologized, featuring work in Breaking the Cool (University of Mississippi Press, 2004), All Poets Welcome (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2003), Women of the Beat Generation (Conari Press, Berkeley, CA, 1996), Postmodern American Poetry (W.W. Norton, New York, 1994) and Up Late (Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1988) among others. Her poems have been translated into French, Italian, German, Turkish, Spanish, and Chinese. Waldman is also the editor of several volumes relating to modern, postmodern, and contemporary poetry. Over the course of her career, Waldman has also been a tireless collaborator, producing works with artists Elizabeth Murray, Richard Tuttle, George Schneeman, Donna Dennis, Pat Steir; musicians Don Cherry and Steve Lacy; dancer Douglas Dunn; filmmaker and husband Ed Bowes; and her son, musician/composer Ambrose Bye. Waldman has been a Fellow at the Emily Harvey Foundation (Winter 2008) and the Bellagio Center in Italy (Spring 2006). She has also held residencies at the Christian Woman’s University of Tokyo (Fall 2004); the Schule für Dichtung in Vienna (where she has also served as Curriculum Director in 1989); the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey (1984). She has served as an advisor to the Prazska Skola Projekt in Prague, the Study Abroad on the Bowery (since 2004), and has been a faculty member in the New England College Low Residency MFA Program (since 2003). She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Contemporary Artists Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. With writer and scholar Ammiel Alcalay, she founded the Poetry is News Coalition in 2002. Waldman also won the International Poetry Championship Bout in Taos, New Mexico twice. More recently, in 2002 she co-founded the Poetry Is News collective with writer/scholar Ammiel Alcalay. Her archive of historical, literary, art, tape, and extensive correspondence materials (including many prominent literary correspondents, such as: William S. Burroughs, Robert Creeley, Diane Di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, and Ken Kesey) resides at the University of Michigan's Special Collections Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A 55-minute film titled “Anne Waldman: Makeup on Empty Space,” a film by poet Jim Cohn, documents the opening of the Anne Waldman Collection at the University of Michigan.)

The Best Poem Of Anne Waldman

Baby's Pantoum

for Reed Bye

I lie in my crib midday this is
unusual I don't sleep really
Mamma's sweeping or else boiling water for tea
Other sounds are creak of chair & floor, water
dripping on heater from laundry, cat licking itself
Unusual I don't sleep really
unless it's dark night everyone in bed
Other sounds are creak of chair & floor, water
dripping on heater from laundry, cat licking itself
& occasional peck on typewriter, peck on my cheek
Unless it's dark night everyone in bed
I'm wide awake hungry wet lonely thinking
occasional peck on typewriter, peck on my cheek
My brain cells grow, I get bigger
I'm wide awake wet lonely hungry thinking
Then Mamma pulls out breast, says 'Milky?'
My brain cells grow, I get bigger
This is my first Christmas in the world
Mamma pulls out breast, says 'Milky?'
Daddy conducts a walking tour of house
This is my first Christmas in the world
I study knots in pine wood ceiling
Daddy conducts a walking tour of house
I study pictures of The Madonna del Parto, a
sweet-faced Buddha & Papago Indian girl
I study knots in pine wood ceiling
I like contrasts, stripes, eyes & hairlines
I study pictures of The Madonna del Parto, a
sweet-faced Buddha & Papago Indian girl
Life is colors, faces are moving
I like contrasts, stripes, eyes & hairlines
I don't know what I look like
Life is colors, faces are moving
They love me smiling
I don't know what I look like
I try to speak of baby joys & pains
They love me smiling
She takes me through a door, the wind howls
I try to speak of baby joys & pains
I'm squinting, light cuts through my skin
She takes me through a door, the wind howls
Furry shapes & large vehicles move close
I'm squinting, light cuts through my skin
World is vast I'm in it with closed eyes
I rest between her breasts, she places me on dry leaves
He carries me gently on his chest & shoulder
I'm locked in little dream, my fists are tight
They showed me moon in sky, was something
in my dream
He carries me gently on his chest & shoulder
He calls me sweet baby, good baby boy
They showed me moon in sky, was something
in my dream
She is moving quickly & dropping things
He calls me sweet baby, good baby boy
She sings hush go to sleep right now
She is moving quickly & dropping things
They rock my cradle, they hold me tightly in their arms
She sings hush go to sleep right now
She wears red nightgown, smells of spice & milk
They rock my cradle, they hold me tightly in their arms
I don't know any of these words or things yet
She wears a red nightgown, smells of spice & milk
He has something woolen and rough on
I don't know any of these words or things yet
I sit in my chair & watch what moves
He has something woolen & rough on
I can stretch & unfold as he holds me in the bath
I sit in my chair & watch what moves
I see when things are static or they dance
I can stretch & unfold as he holds me in the bath
Water is soft I came from water
I can see when things are static or they dance
like flames, the cat pouncing, shadows or light
streaming in
Water is soft I came from water
Not that long ago I was inside her
like flames, the cat pouncing, shadows or light
streaming in
I heard her voice then I remember now
Not that long ago I was inside her
I lie in my crib midday this is
always changing, I am expanding toward you
Mamma's sweeping or else boiling water for tea.

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