Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action

by Anne Waldman (Editor), Lisa Birman (editors)

As cultural absurdities, apathy-inspiring ambient noise, and political and ecological disasters threaten the 21st-century world, art’s role in engaging society and coalescing dissent becomes more apparent and more urgent. Civil Disobediences offers a manual for understanding poetry’s history and enacting its ultimate power to dismantle and recreate political and cultural realities.

Composed of essays, lectures and teaching materials by leading contemporary poets and scholars, this anthology explores the craft of poetry, as well as the history of poetic/political action in the U.S. and abroad, the development of ancient and modern poetic forms, the legacy of world-renowned poets, and the intersections between poetry and spirituality. It also provides concrete advice about bringing poetry into your local community and ensuring that “poetry is news that stays news.”

Editor Anne Waldman is an internationally acclaimed poet, performer, cultural activist, and distinguished -professor of poetics at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She is the author of over 40 books, including Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews, & Manifestos and the recent collection In the Room of Never Grieve: New and Selected Poems 1985–2003.

Editor Lisa Birman is a poet and writer from Melbourne, Australia. Her books include Some Things—Poems and Translations, Deportation Poems, and the forthcoming possibly. Birman is the co-founder of Movie Star Press and co-director of Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program.

Contributors include: Helen Adam, Ammiel Alcalay, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Robin Blaser, Reed Bye, Jack Collum, Robert Creeley, Samuel R. Delany, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alan Gilbert, Allen Ginsberg, James Grauerholtz, Barbara Guest, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Anselm Hollo, Laird Hunt, Pierre Joris, Joanne Kyger, Ann Lauterbach, Harryette Mullen, Eileen Myles, Alice Notley, Michael Ondaatje, Sonia Sanchez, Edward Sanders, Eleni Sikelianos, Gary Snyder, Cole Swenson, Arthur Sze, Steven Taylor, Robert Tejada, Lorenzo Thomas and more.

Genres: Poetry, Politics, Nonfiction

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

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

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

We used this as a course text at Naropa this summer and I came to appreciate it as a resource once again. Nicely various, with tons of meaty writing--essays or talks by Ted Berrigan, Barbara Guest, Robin Blaser, Bev Dahlen, Reed Bye, Steve Dickson all come to mind as worthy, but there's much more as well.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the discussion between Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Robert Creeley, Michael Ondaatje, and Robin Blaser... I wish that part had been longer. I'm about to read Peter Lamborn Wilson's essay "Hieroglyphics and Money."

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

SKKS