Bard, Kinetic

by Anne Waldman

The expansive, countercultural, and wildly prolific life of celebrated poet Anne Waldman, in her own words.



In Bard, Kinetic, Anne Waldman assembles a multifaceted portrait of her life and praxis as a groundbreaking poet. Waldman charts her journey through a maelstrom of radical artistic growing up in Greenwich Village, creative partnership with Allen Ginsberg, touring with Bob Dylan, and founding the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and later, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. She discusses the philosophies that guide her as a writer, activist, performer, instigator, and Buddhist practitioner, and pays homage to friends and collaborators including Amiri Baraka, Lou Reed, John Ashbery, Kathy Acker, and Diane di Prima. Waldman’s experiences serve as a guide for others committed to making the world a conscious and conscientious place that soars with the discourse and activism of poetry and poethics.

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Nonfiction

393 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 17, 2023

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

[Bob Koshin Hanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry, spirit of the universe

Ann Waldman book “Bard, Kinetic is a gem. Of course all her word written, spoken, danced and lived are a basket of spiritual and revolutionary diamond’s. OK, I was and am a student of Ann’s. Some twelve summers ago at Jack’s School and the five ti,es in the seventies I went there. I have never been able to look at any word or phrase since then without hearing many meanings or ways to use it or believe it because of her. I am now well into my eight decade and I am ready to write, be poetry thanks to Ann. Don’t miss this book folks, it’s more than a gem, it’s TRUTH!

[Claire Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Waldman’s Bard, Kinetic is intimate like a conversation and intricately arranged and textured like a quilt. The reflections and poems are full of questions and attempts towards answers. “Is part of the poet’s vow to perpetually catch, distill, refine, reimagine where one walks, what one notices?” I say attempts because Waldman provides the sense of continually metabolizing the current state of the world; while her ideals may be fixed, she lives in a beautiful state of evolution. This is one of those books that I feel genuinely lucky to have encountered. I plan on holding it close as a textbook of hope—for poetry’s possibilities, artistic community, and a life of positive momentum.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love anne - the section about burroughs was good

[Matthew Stolte · Rating 4 out of 5]

mammoth tome "grasping at fragments" , fizzing (dizzying) , not as much poetry as I'd hoped but it launches you towards specific works by Waldman & others