Mesopotopia

by Anne Waldman

From “one of the most important and irreducible living American poets” (Poetry Foundation) comes a powerful and prophetic collection of epic scope and vision

Mesopotopia explores the vast sweep of our accelerating, precipitous world. From the cradle to the grave, from the mysterious poetic origins of Mesopotamia to our own dystopias of the twenty-first century, Anne Waldman crafts a singular, radical investigation into the syncretic layers of quantum space and dreamtime. She invokes “studying” as the most compelling ritual and tool for evolution and travels to various fellahin worlds, treading metabolic pathways and ancient “antitheses realities,” and gleans sacred texts that speak urgently through the transports and telepathies of poetry. Troubadour dawn songs, pyramid texts, Buddhist mantra, canonical hours of Judeo-Christian tradition, Persian prayers, Druid sorcery, and the wild, gnarly syntax and modal structure of Waldman’s particular performative passion and wit are all conjured here.

What emerges is a meditation on the salient words of the French poet Antonin Artaud contemplating the destruction and rubble post–World War “We are not yet born, we are not yet in the world, there is not yet a world, things have not been made, the reason for being has not yet been found.” Mesopotopia—mythic maelstrom, rhythmic rite of passage, protolanguage trance dance—moves toward release and gnosis.

Genres: Poetry

226 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 12, 2025

About the author

Anne Waldman was part of the late Sixties poetry scene in the East Village. She ran the St. Mark's Church Poetry Project, and gave exuberant, highly physical readings of her own work.

She became a Buddhist, worshipping with the Tibetan Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who would also become Allen Ginsberg's guru. She and Ginsberg worked together to create a poetry school, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, at Trungpa's Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Anne Waldman is one of the most interesting, vibrant and unpredictable members of the post-Beat poetry community. Her confluence of Buddhist concerns and thought-paths with sources of physicality and anger is particularly impressive (did you get all that?).

She was featured in Bob Dylan's experimental film 'Renaldo and Clara.'

Reviews

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would almost appear to us as a medieval mystic text if not so concerned with the contemporary political (moral) landscape. Occasionally a touch didactic but mystifying enough to bemuse while alarming the reader — a real treat in its approach to form, as well

[E. Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

“and I could tell of Bodh Gata and prostrating on a cold floor / salt butter tea on tongue, how urgent and pungent it is / to inscribe to taste to torque new evolution everywhere / or our dungeon just below the cellar in Inverness, / knocking medieval spoons to make an earthen sound, this is true / while dervishes take off turbans, miles away, pale in face / with languishing eye, some sigh some sob / and the women turn lids down/ and I would try to copy their whirl / spin the loom like you churn a deep river”

p.94.

an experimental collection dealing with the creative intersections of world history and the author’s personal history, moving between poems inspired by or structured around Buddhist mantras and other ancient documents, and poems inspired by Waldman’s life as an activist fighting for social justice and ecological preservation

the kaleidoscope of techniques is so varied that they blur together into a cohesive, though sparkly, voice

the author situates herself as an active, present curator of the historical record, even including a section where every poem is in the epistolary form, concluding with “From Anne, who confesses her pride.” (151)

with all its confusing intensity, which Waldman makes an effort at times to acknowledge (“Surrealism I go crazy in all her wild tresses” (40)), Mesopotopia makes a portrait of the world that is if nothing else open-ended and diverse

the emotional threads of the collection are drawn together by Waldman’s reflection on her personal relationship with the Buddhist faith, one moment of which she recounts with “salt butter tea on tongue, how urgent and pungent it is / to inscribe to taste to torque new evolution everywhere” (94).

near the end of the book, Waldman addresses with growing urgency the social issues she has observed in her lifetime. She invokes a “white ghost / the slaver / hunter of indigenous ones / [who] knows no solitude, the karmic nightmare,” (166) but chooses to end the collection with a poem rooted in the easy metaphor of flowers for positive change. “A yard is waiting for you,” she says, “and maybe it will soon be a garden when / you come stand, bend, plant flowers.” (206)

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rich & complex