Will Alexander & Deep Time

Show description for Sunday 10/30/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Our guest this afternoon, in the 5 o'clock hour, poet Will Alexander. His most recent book, Compression & Purity, is new from City Lights. Also featured this week, new music from alto saxophonist and composer Darius Jones. His new disc, featuring Adam Lane on bass, and Jason Nazary on drums, is Big Gurl (Smell My Dream). We will also be listening in on the extraordinary 3 disc collection from William Parker Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake.

Few poets writing today can compare with L.A.-based surrealist Will Alexander in terms of the intensity of his imagination or his radically experimental approach to language as material object. Through the use of automatic writing, Alexander practices a surrealism of the word, creating densely textured layers of signification from its sounded and written forms. Compression & Purity, volume five of our Spotlight poetry series, is Alexander's seventh full-length collection. Known for his visionary epics influenced by poets like Césaire, Artaud and Lamantia, Alexander here returns to shorter forms to address his ecological, cosmological and historical concerns. Highlights include monologues from the perspective of "The Blood Penguin" and "The Pope at Avignon," a song by the "Water on New Mars," and an homage to Cesar Vallejo, "Combustion & Leakage." In true surrealist fashion, the book also includes both an autobiographical lyric essay, "My Interior Vita," describing the evolution of Alexander's artistic consciousness through jazz and surrealism, and his disavowal of the autobiographical process, "On Anti-Biography." An imaginative tour de force, Compression & Purity confirms Alexander's reputation among surrealism's foremost contemporary practitioners.

"This new & rich gathering of Will Alexander's works – always in progress – marks him again as the true successor among us to the likes of Surreal & deeply explorative figures like Breton & Césaire. No other poet writing in America today does it the way that Alexander does – a range of words & images that startle & create new pathways for language & the mind-in-freedom (“alchemical, mesmeric, totalic,” as he names them in these pages). Compression & Purity, so aptly titled, is the work of a true American & world master – & a joy to have & read." —Jerome Rothenberg

“Even at its most confounding, most silent level, this work will unavoidably enter and leave you by a genetic thread of conscious mind woven beyond your 'domestic horizon,; your ‘provincial description' to a vibrating ‘celebration of un-brokeneness.’ This song, in the genealogical terms of cognitive evolution, sings us backwards ‘or forwards’ into a state where we are undifferentiated from the cosmos and can speak, as Will Alexander does, in the full range at once of carbon from dust to diamond.” —Ed Roberson

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View Past Shows

	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	Darius Jones Trio	E-Gaz	Big Gurl (Smell My Dream)	AUM - Fidelity
	Darius Jones Trio	Michelle Loves Willie	Big Gurl (Smell My Dream)	AUM - Fidelity
	Darius Jones Trio	A Train	Big Gurl (Smell My Dream)	AUM - Fidelity
	William Parker	Green Mountains (for Bill Dixon)	Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake.	Centering Records
	William Parker	Philadelphia Clay	Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake.	Centering Records
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Henry Threadgill Zooid	Lying Eyes	This Brings Us To, Vol. 2	Pi Recordings
	Henry Grimes & Rashied Ali	Larger Astronomical Time	Spirits Aloft	Porter Records
	Odean Pope featuring Marshall Allen	The Track	Universal Sounds	Porter Records
	Roscoe Mitchell & Muhal Richard Abrams	Romu	Spectrum	Mutable
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Alice Coltrane	Leo	Translinear Light	Impulse
	John Coltrane	India	The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings	Impulse
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Wasimxzama Khan Naseri	Kavali	Music In The World Of Islam: Human Voice / Lutes	Topic
	Dunya Yunis	Abu Zeluf	Music In The World Of Islam: Human Voice / Lutes	Topic
	Gadabursi Somali of Ogaden	Leader/Chorus Song (excerpt)	Music In The World Of Islam: Human Voice / Lutes	Topic
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Interview With Will Alexander By Justin Desmangles	Interview With Will Alexander By Justin Desmangles	Interview With Will Alexander By Justin Desmangles	Interview With Will Alexander By Justin Desmangles
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	John Coltrane	Chasing The Trane	The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings

Making Moves with Dizzy Gillespie & His Orchestra

A Happy Birthday to Dizzy Gillespie!

Show description for Sunday 10/23/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

This afternoon we will focus on the contributions of the Dizzy Gillespie Afro-Cuban Orchestra. As part of these efforts, we will also explore the music recorded by Charlie Parker as featured soloist with Machito & His Orchestra, including Mango Mangue, as well as Okidoke. In bringing attention to this period, the great composer, arranger Tadd Dameron will also be featured, including his earliest efforts with Harlan Leonard, the small groups featuring Fats Navarro, and the neglected masterwork, The Magic Touch, recorded for Riverside. Along the way we will hear poetry from Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, Claude McKay, Margaret Walker, Sterling Brown, and Langston Hughes. (Pictured at right, Harriet Tubman)

Runagate Runagate

by Robert Hayden

I.

Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness

and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror

and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing

and the night cold and the night long and the river

to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning

and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere

morning and keep on going and never turn back and keep on going

Runagate

Runagate

Runagate

Many thousands rise and go

many thousands crossing over

O mythic North

O star-shaped yonder Bible city

Some go weeping and some rejoicing

some in coffins and some in carriages

some in silks and some in shackles

Rise and go or fare you well

No more auction block for me

no more driver’s lash for me

If you see my Pompey, 30 yrs of age,

new breeches, plain stockings, negro shoes;

if you see my Anna, likely young mulatto

branded E on the right cheek, R on the left,

catch them if you can and notify subscriber.

Catch them if you can, but it won’t be easy.

They’ll dart underground when you try to catch them,

plunge into quicksand, whirlpools, mazes,

turn into scorpions when you try to catch them.

And before I’ll be a slave

I’ll be buried in my grave

North star and bonanza gold

I’m bound for the freedom, freedom-bound

and oh Susyanna don’t you cry for me

Runagate

Runagate

II.

Rises from their anguish and their power,

Harriet Tubman,

woman of earth, whipscarred,

a summoning, a shining

Mean to be free

And this was the way of it, brethren brethren,

way we journeyed from Can’t to Can.

Moon so bright and no place to hide,

the cry up and the patterollers riding,

hound dogs belling in bladed air.

And fear starts a-murbling, Never make it,

we’ll never make it. Hush that now,

and she’s turned upon us, levelled pistol

glinting in the moonlight:

Dead folks can’t jaybird-talk, she says;

you keep on going now or die, she says.

Wanted Harriet Tubman alias The General

alias Moses Stealer of Slaves

In league with Garrison Alcott Emerson

Garrett Douglas Thoreau John Brown

Armed and known to be Dangerous

Wanted Reward Dead or Alive

Tell me, Ezekiel, oh tell me do you see

mailed Jehovah coming to deliver me?

Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air,

five times calling to the hants in the air.

Shadow of a face in the scary leaves,

shadow of a voice in the talking leaves:

Come ride-a my train

Oh that train, ghost-story train

through swamp and savanna movering movering,

over trestles of dew, through caves of the wish,

Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering,

first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah.

Come ride-a my train

Mean mean mean to be free.

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View Past Shows

	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	Countee Cullen	Heritage	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Chano Pozo	Minor Walk	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Chano Pozo	Cubana Be Cubana Bop	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	Machito & His Orchestra featuring Charlie Parker	Mango Mangue	Afro-Cuban Jazz	Verve
	Langston Hughes	the Negro Speaks of Rivers	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Langston Hughes	I, Too	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	James Moody	Cu-Ba	James Moody & His Modernists	Blue Note
	Tadd Dameron Septet	Jahbero	Tadd Dameron Septet	Blue Note
	Bud Powell Trio	Un Poco Loco	The Amazing Bud Powell	Blue Note
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Margaret Walker	For My People	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra	Things to Come	Bebop	New World Records
	Kenny Clarke & His 52nd St. Boys	Royal Roost	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Machito & His Orchestra featuring Charlie Parker	Okidoke	Afro-Cuban Jazz	Verve
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Chano Pozo	Algo Bueno (Woody'n You)	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	Modern Jazz Quartet	Woody'n You	Nica's Dream	New World Records
	Gwendolyn Brooks	The Preacher Ruminates	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Gwendolyn Brooks	The Children of the Poor	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Charles Mingus	Ysabels' Table Dance	Tijuana Moods	RCA
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Woody Herman & His Orchestra	Lemon Drop	Bebop	New World Records
	Elliott Lawrence	Elevation	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Kenny Hagood	Ool Ya Koo	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	James Moody	Tropicana	James Moody & His Modernists	Blue Note
	Tadd Dameron	On A Misty Night	The Magic Touch	Riverside
	Sarah Vaughn	A Ship Without A Sail	Great Songs From Hit Shows Volume 2	Mercury
	Sarah Vaughn	He's Only Wonderful	Great Songs From Hit Shows Volume 2	Mercury
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Dizzy Gillespie	Groovin' High	In The Beginning	Prestige
	Tadd Dameron featuring Barbara Winfield	If You Could See Me Now	The Magic Touch	Riverside
	Sterling Brown	Long Gone	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Dodo Marmarosa Trio	Mellow Mood	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Charlie Parker	Relaxin' at Camarillo	Bebop	New World Records
	Dexter Gordon - Wardell Gray Quintet	The Chase Part 1 & 2	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Claude McKay	St. Issac's Church	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Claude McKay	The Tropics in New York	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Claude McKay	Intro / If We Must Die	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Randy Weston	Con Alma	African Nite	Inner City
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Harlan Leonard & His Rockets	A-La-Bridges	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Chano Pozo	Good Bait	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker	Hot House	In the Beginning	Prestige
	Tadd Dameron	Dial B for Beauty	The Arranger's Touch	Prestige
	Tadd Dameron	You're A Joy	The Magic Touch	Riverside
	Tadd Dameron	Swift as the Wind	The Magic Touch	Riverside
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Joe Carroll	Jump-Did-Le-Ba	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Sarah Vaughn	Embraceable You	Sarah Vaughn	Emarcy

Does the Secret Mind Whisper? Nov. 11, 2011

• Friday NOV 11

"Does the Secret Mind Whisper?"
Will Alexander, Maria Damon and Justin Desmangles
a symposium on Bob Kaufman, Black surrealism, and cultural poetics
7:30 pm @ Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell Street,



Co-sponsored with Before Columbus Foundation

“…the ‘secret mind’ represents the convergence of multiple cultural trajectories. It is the political unconscious of the US, which registers all the ‘secret, terrible hurts’ (Kaufman, “Bagel Shop Jazz”) visited upon people who belong to an ‘America not on any map’ (Will Alexander), the disenfranchised who may ruminate silently on these social, spiritual and bodily injuries but who may speak of them openly only at their peril.”

—Maria Damon, Jacket2, “Poetry in 1960, A Symposium”

"Does the Secret Mind Whisper?" was the gnomic open question posed by poet Bob Kaufman in an early City Lights broadside by that title. In collaboration with the Before Columbus Foundation, the Poetry Center hosts an evening symposium under that rubric, in order to take up the nature of Kaufman's legacy and practice, and its extensions into the 21st Century. Featured guests include poet-scholars Will Alexander and Maria Damon, in conversation with Bay Area writer, radio host/dj and cultural worker Justin Desmangles.

BOB KAUFMAN (1925–1986) was a key participant in the 1950s San Francisco poetry renaissance and the Beat movement. Author of three renowned poetry broadsides, Abomunist Manfesto, Second April, and Does the Secret Mind Whisper?, published in the late 1950s by City Lights Books, his poetry in print remained elusive until two collections came out in the mid-1960s. The landmark Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness (1965), published by New Directions, has remained in print for better than four decades. Golden Sardine (1967) became a signature City Lights Pocket Poets volume alongside the works of renowned contemporaries Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. During Kaufman's last decade, editor Raymond Foye assembled the volume of fugitive works, Ancient Rain: Poems 1956–1978 (New Directions, 1981). The posthumous collection, Cranial Guitar: Selected Poems, appeared in 1996 (Coffee House Press). Following Kaufman's death in 1986, a two-hour feature program, Bob Kaufman, Poet, was produced by David Henderson for KPFA-FM and aired nationally through the Pacifica network. Regarded in France as "the American Rimbaud," Bob Kaufman has been celebrated internationally for his particular mode of Surrealism, permeated by a profound affinity for the outcasts of American society, the poor and punished. The late saxophonist and jazz song composer Steve Lacy called Kaufman "the greatest jazz poet, and the beatest of the Beats."

WILL ALEXANDER (see bio above) has previously published the essay "Bob Kaufman: The Footnotes Exploded" in Conjunctions 29: Tributes.

MARIA DAMON (see bio above) his written on Bob Kaufman, extensively in her early book The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry (University of Minnesota) and more recently online at Jacket2.

JUSTIN DESMANGLES hosts the radio program New Day Jazz, currently at KDVS-90.3 FM, and available online, a heady blend of music and cultural commentary, focused on the African-American cultural continuum. Frequent guests offer a largesse of inquiring and informed commentary, via conversations with, e.g., scholars William W. Cook and James Tatum on African American Writers and Classical Tradition; A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshlemen on their collaborative translation of Aimé Césaire's Solar Throat Slashed; Robin D.G. Kelley on his stellar biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; and jazz pianist Matthew Shipp on the legacy of Bud Powell. Chair of the Before Columbus Foundation, which hosts the annual American Book Award, Justin Desmangles has organized numerous public programs, at San Francisco Public Library and Yoshi's jazz club in San Francisco's Fillmore neighborhood, among other venues.

In a series of public programs on the life and legacy of Bob Kaufman under the title "Does the Secret Mind Whisper?" he recently brought together AACM co-founder Roscoe Mitchell with Kaufman's poetry in performances of original compositions. An upcoming November 14 Benefit for the Before Columbus Foundation at Yoshi's San Francisco will reunite Roscoe Mitchell and Amiri Baraka in duo performance, and feature the new Ishmael Reed Band.