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Steven Taylor - Continuation of a Long Poem of these States

from Allen Ginsberg​’​s The Fall of America: A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute by Various Artists

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Complete 20 tracks and liner notes booklet with poems.

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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    The track listing for the vinyl is as follows:

    Side A
    1) Scanner - Elegy for Neal Cassady
    2) Shintaro Sakamoto - Manhattan Thirties Flash
    3) Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo - Hum Bom
    4) Ed Sanders (The Fugs) - Memory Gardens
    5) Mickey Hart - First Party at Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels (Drones Du Jour)
    6) Howie B with Gavin Friday - Death On All Fronts (America is Falling)
    7) Disco Pusher - A Prophecy

    Side B
    1) Angélique Kidjo - Uluru Song
    2) Bill Frisell - Over Laramie
    3) Andrew Bird - Easter Sunday
    4) Devendra Banhart - Milarepa Taste
    5) Yo La Tengo - Bayonne Entering N.Y.C.
    6) Lang Lee - Pain on All Fronts

    Includes unlimited streaming of Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America: A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more
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about

I chose this poem because it's a good instance of Allen's compositional method of observing his mind. Fellow Buddhist poet Philip Whalen's dictum "This poetry is a picture or graph of a mind moving" is realized here with particular energy because the mind under observation is in a moving vehicle. Buddhist also is the sudden panoramic shot in two places pulling back from worldly detail to the vast starry heavens, which makes us think of Mayakovsky's suicide note and cry. The track is based on a recording I did with thelemonade [sic] in Santa Cruz, 1991. Thanks to Stephen Cope, Karl Daegling, and Chris Funkhouser.

lyrics

Continuation of a Long Poem of These States

S.F. Southward

Stage-lit streets
Downtown Frisco whizzing past, buildings
ranked by Freeway balconies
Bright Johnnie Walker neon
sign Christmastrees
And Christmas and its eves
in the midst of the same deep wood
as every sad Christmas before, surrounded
by forests of stars—
Metal columns, smoke pouring cloudward,
yellow-lamp horizon
warplants move, tiny
planes lie in Avionic fields—
Meanwhile Working Girls sort mail into the red slot
Rivers of newsprint to soldiers’ Vietnam
Infantry Journal, Kanackee
Social Register, Wichita Star
And Postoffice Christmas the same brown place
mailhandlers’ black fingers
dusty mailbags filled
1948 N.Y. Eighth Avenue was
when Peter drove the mailtruck 1955
from Rincon Annex—
Bright lights’ windshield flash,
adrenalin shiver in shoulders
Around the curve
crawling a long truck
3 bright green signals on forehead
Jeweled Bayshore passing the Coast Range
one architect’s house light on hill crest
……………… negro voices rejoice over radio
Moonlit sticks of tea
Moss Landing Power Plant
shooting its cannon smoke
across the highway, Red taillight
speeding the white line and a mile away
Orion’s muzzle
raised up
to the center of Heaven.

December 18, 1965



Courtesy HarperCollins Publishers / City Lights Publishers

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Allen Ginsberg New York, New York

Renowned poet, world traveler, spiritual seeker, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human and civil rights, photographer and songwriter, political gadfly, teacher and co-founder of a poetics school. Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) defied simple classification.

Ginsberg parlayed his fame and network of connections into a modestly successful career in music.
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