Helping the Dreamer

by Anne Waldman

"A syncopated web that includes the personal within the metaphysical and the environmental, tying the individual's story to the story of the survival of the planet . . . she can also be funny, brave, and care very deeply about all our futures."-- Village Voice Literary Supplement

Genres: Poetry

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

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

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Clinton Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some excellent poems in this collection, including "Makeup in Empty Space" (which can be seen online with the author reading it), the title poem. There was a sense, though, that (to me) much of her best work would come a little later; and also that some of these poems do not translate very well to the page. Reading them, I often found myself wondering what seeing a performance/reading of them would be like, and I think in the right hands (ie, Waldman's) that probably would have provided me with a more involving experience.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

KSKS

[Sheri-D Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love poetry - please read everything by Anne Waldman.