I’ve never really got to know Anne Waldman. Even tho I went to Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School, have taken classes with her, have conversed with her a couple of times, and have seen her perform many times. Even tho I’ve stuck around the Boulder scene for 20 years now, covering it on this website for half that time.

Just too intimidating. 

Of course, she has her stature and legacy as famous Beat poet, co-founder of the Kerouac school and major figure behind its Summer Writing Program, and this may be part of it, but a lot of it might just be due to my own fearful nature. 

I came to the Jack Kerouac School back in ’03, mainly pulling on the threads of both my admiration for Kerouac as a writer and also an uncanny connection with the fictional baseball leagues he created as a kid. But otherwise there was hardly anything ‘Beat’ about me. I grew up with a very normie lifestyle in the suburbs of Akron, Ohio, watching tons of television, blindly participating in capitalism and patriarchy, and never even hearing the term ‘Beat Generation’ until late in high school. 

The Beat lifestyle seemed incredibly fascinating and exotic to me tho, and, honestly, as someone with low self-esteem, it seemed like that kind of nothing-to-lose, anything-goes culture would not only accept me but see the potential greatness in me, otherwise destined to be a ‘loser’ by mainstream cultural standards. 

But when I got to Naropa, I quickly got the feeling that they could tell I wasn’t really one of them. Maybe they could just smell the normie on me. They also had a complicated relationship with Kerouac and my other Beat heroes, seen by many there as passé or a ‘boys club.’ In fact, the only feedback I ever received directly from Waldman was that my work was ‘too Beat’ and I needed to ‘read more.’ Which I didn’t take well at the time, but now realize was pretty spot on. 

If I could go back now, I would focus on trying to reach out and connect more to people, but back then I assumed they’d disregard me no matter what, and that led to a quiet bitterness. Instead of fully embracing things, I saw myself as an outsider, allying with others at the school who also felt like that, and this probably only reinforced the perception in certain members of the Naropa community that I was not really one of them. 

It’s a funny thing tho, that out of all the others attending the school at the time, I’m really one of the last ones standing in Boulder, still investing in my writing and the local scene. In the end I guess I did follow thru with spirit of JKS, even tho I feel like I’ve only became, at best, some kind of counter-cultural/normie hybrid. 

As I got more deeply involved with Boulder poetry in the years after college, I wanted to do more to connect with Naropa and Anne in particular, but there was still just too much fear – they didn’t really accept me then and they won’t accept me now, no matter what I do. 

As I’ve been recently trying to repair unhealthy mindsets and habits in my writing life, I’m going to use this review of Anne Waldman’s new book Bard Kinetic (Coffee House Press 2023) to further reflect on my relationship to her and Naropa. And tho I haven’t gotten to know her in a conventional way, perhaps I can further thru this work. So here are my observations after reading it:

Observation 1: Unique Poet Habitats

When you get into birding like I am, you understand how there are certain species which have evolved to fit a very precise habitat – for instance the Red-Faced Warbler is really only found in high elevation (6600-9800 ft) wooded canyons in Arizona and Mexico. Unlike, say, a Yellow Warbler which is common over pretty much the entire North American continent in the summer. 

Similarly, there are certain habitats in time and space in which a human culture will emerge completely unique from the mainstream culture that surrounds it. One such example is mid-20th century Greenwich Village, where Anne Waldman was born and raised. Whereas, many of us came to the bohemian philosophy and lifestyle later in life as a sanctuary from our more bland mainstream upbringings, for Waldman, the daughter of a professor father and poet mother, this would’ve just been considered normal life. 

In the book’s first essay she shares such details as her father attempting to bring a television into her childhood home, before her mothered threatened to leave him for it, and the TV ending up going back to the store. This one detail alone would be enough to set us on such diverging life paths I’m not sure how they ever crossed. In many ways Waldman seems to have been completely uninfluenced by things most Americans take for granted, like fast-food and blockbuster movies and even the world wide web. That is not to say she is oblivious to the dominant culture, but it allows her an incredibly fresh perspective on it which often takes the form of scathing critique, for which she sees the poetry lifestyle as the cure, or at least a vastly more sustainable alternative. 

Observation 2: Language and Style

Anne Waldman speaks a different language than most of us. It is a form of English, but one that is infused with a rich glossary of avant-garde intellectual/art speech, traditional buddhist terminology, and even some of her own invented nomenclature. While many of us poets may turn on the poetic side of themselves when appropriate for the page and stage, I get the sense that Waldman thinks and speaks in this language habitually. 

She consistently taps into an unconventional yet juicy lexicon of words like “rhizome,” “praetexta,” “cri de couer,” “Kali Yuga” or “capitalocene.” And thankfully, as an experienced teacher, she has the awareness to define the more unfamiliar terms for her audience. (Praetexta, she explains, means ceremonial priestly robe.)

Even in her prosier pieces she often takes stylistic and grammatical liberties that aim to better match our/her natural internal language (“We do not think in complete sentences”). And often she’ll go on dazzling stream-of-c flourishes, whether listing ‘Hungry Ghost Realm’ injustices to humanity/the planet or providing incantations for poetic lineage holders. 

Observation 3: Multi-dimensional Autobiography

I believe the aim of this book is mainly autobiographical, giving us a greater understanding of who Anne Waldman is. Typically this would be done through straight prose memoire on a chronological timeline, but we only get this briefly in the first essay “Sketch.” The rest of the book is a collage of varying avenues to explore what it really means getting to know a poet. Waldman’s strategy is to include a fair amount of poetry, but also interviews, essays on other poets and their works, and letter correspondences. It allows you to understand the author in a very multi-dimensional way. 

The poetry (much of which seems autobiographically inspired) show us more abstractly a certain feeling and energy that characterizes Waldman. The interviews (for example, a lengthy one discussing the Iovis Trilogy and even one alongside her son Ambrose Bye) give great insight into Waldman’s perceptions of her own work and the creative process behind them. The essays (on topics varying from widely known figures like William S. Burroughs and Gertrude Stein to more obscure personal acquaintances such as NY School fringe poet Edwin Denby) both help clarify her poetics and also show a relatable side of her as admirer. The correspondences (such as with poet Joanne Kyger and even her own mother) shed light on Waldman’s personal relationships. The letters from her mother concerned about the young poet’s love life are both amusing and tremendously humanizing, especially when seeing how her mother refers to her father as ‘Daddy.’

Observation 4: Naming Poets

Waldman has this amazing habit of bestowing titles (such as ‘the poet’ or ‘the filmmaker’ or ‘the activist’) upon all her friends and acquaintances no matter their level of relevance in the wider scheme of things. “That’s what we should be doing,” Waldman says. “Reading, recalling the poets, calling them out, calling them through their poetry, letting them exist in future memory and reckoning.” Of course household names like Allen Ginsberg are referred to as ‘the poet,’ but so are many who I take to be much more minor figures. It shows that there is a basic respect for all, beyond just those who had or would go on to achieve ‘a name.’ And it feels in line with the Boulder Poetry Scene’s philosophy that we are allowed to celebrate ourselves as ‘legitimate’ poets no matter what the outside world thinks. 

I was particularly moved by her treatment of Edwin Denby, an older, barely published NY School era poet, for whom she wrote an entire essay honoring. Although he would never be thought of in the same breath as Frank O’Hara or John Ashbery (who are also subjects of essays in this book), Waldman, who knew Denby personally, places him as equally valuable in her reflections on his writing and personal details such as his love for and keen observations on ballet.  She describes him as a “self-sufficient culture of one,” which seems like a type that can get easily lost, especially in the modern world’s competitive hustle for the spotlight.

Observation 5: Self-certainty

I admire Anne Waldman’s self-certainty. She has an unwavering sense of the importance of the poet and their mission in the world. “No one asks you to do this,” she acknowledges. “You are deliberately making this work for yourself.” Waldman does trace some of her own early uncertainty as a young poet trying to determine her style and values, but I can’t help but feel as tho her generation and older had a certain advantage in self-esteem over my generation and younger. Perhaps due to only having to understand and navigate the world at hand instead of today’s mass media phantasm, grinding you down with constant fear-mongering, comparison with others, and troll exposure. Even the fact that older generations would’ve grown up writing with typewriter or by hand lended itself to more of a first-thought-best-thought Beat flow rather than the delete/spell check/autocorrections of modern writing apps, which are daring us to indulge in second-guessing at every turn. 

Observation 6: Feminism

Feminism is one of Anne Waldman’s core principals. In addition to the destructive patriarchal industrial war machine (Vietnam, Rocky Flats, Union Carbide, Abu Ghraib) she’s spent her lifetime opposing, Waldman notes the challenges of navigating thru the male dominated literary scene. From leering college professors, to the way Ginsberg ignores Joanne Kyger in his India journals, to William Burrough’s accidental murder of wife Joan Vollmer and bizarre takes like “I think they [women] were a basic mistake” and “I think love is a con put down by the female sex,” it is no wonder that Waldman, tho still managing to thrive to an extent in this world, would make it her mission to strive for a poetics and community which emphasizes female voices. 

It makes me wonder if my general obliviousness toward these concerns – The Beats’ misogyny was never much of a concern for me as I plunged headfirst into my hero-worship of them – was a significant factor keeping me from really being accepted into the Naropa community, at least Waldman’s side of it. I did connect with my male instructors like Junior Burke, Reed Bye, and Jack Collom, but looking back I regret not being more curious about and approaching gender and literature in a more well-rounded way. 

I applaud the nuance with which Waldman deals with the topic. She demonstrates negative capability in condemning Burrough’s viewpoints while at the same time appreciating him as a writer, mentor, colleague, and godfather to her child. Her view seems to not be so much anti-male, as opposing dangerous modern distortions of masculinity. She states in an interview responding to feminist themes in the Iovis Trilogy, “there was a need to… help the male ‘get’ there, exploring the ‘both, both’ of sexuality and eros and how eros moves, ascends beyond gender construct… so he too can free of the habitual patterns of the warring god realm, the need to always hallucinate an enemy and thereby justify his bellicose existence and lust for blood.” I take this to mean that each of us should be aiming for an integration of the masculine and feminine, which is aligned with my own views of self growth and the growth of the planet to become a more peaceful place. 

Observation 7: The Future

The further we advance into the future (screen addiction, social media, political polarization, gun violence, climate, AI) it’s hard not to feel troubled by it all and seek salvation in the old ways. And I look to someone like Waldman to put into words the insanity of these times as a kind of medicine for me. “Contemporary life’s pulse is wild,” she writes. “There is a lot of noise everywhere and speed and never missing a moment with our cyborgian cell phones and other tech accouterments.” 

She believes hard times are ahead for humanity and the planet, but I would not characterize her view as completely pessimistic, as she believes in the power of poetry to help get us through, and urges us to, “sustain poetry as an alternative reality, a sanctuary.” And even if we can’t stop where things are heading, we can at least “leave traces of that wonder and joy and mourning, and let anyone coming after that know that we were not just all killing one another.” 

Observation 8: Death and Lineage

Anne Waldman is now 78 years old. It is interesting to track her journey from child, to student, to young poet and organizer, to junior figure in the Beat scene, to teacher, to now being one of the last elders of the Outrider Lineage herself. At the end of the essay “Had a Hand In, Occupy” she shifts from her account of her involvement in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstrations to a reflection on the deaths of so many of her former contemporaries. She goes year by year since 2010 listing 122 names of note in the poetry world who have passed on. As she grapples with her mortality in this way, it drives home the stark point for us in the younger generations that it’s now time for us to step up and somehow replace these seemingly irreplaceable legends. Of course this is tough to swallow, but it is the way it has always been. All we can do is appreciate the elders who are still around and listen and learn as much as possible from them so we may carry on the lineage. 

Observation 9: Inspiration

After finishing the book I just feel inspired as hell. It allowed me to tap into some of those initial sparks that led me to come to Naropa and Boulder in the first place, which I may have lost clarity on over the years, and I’m ready to revisit in a more mature way now. There is something very comforting and motivating about seeing yourself as part of a lineage that you have an obligation to continue. 

There are numerous psych-you-up quotes throughout the book (both from Waldman and others) which compelled me to bookmark and copy. 

“You can always match their power in words, just stay candid” (Burroughs).

“As for the activist work, it just goes on, and it seems to be more and more about how to preserve an archive, how to preserve artistic culture, how to hide the treasures so that they can be found at a later date and re-activated.” 

“Keep the world safe for poetry.”

“I keep telling students to ‘be the media’.”

“Don’t lose your mind.”

And while I would like to get over my fear and find a way to connect to Anne personally, it may not be the point. From this book and her other writing I understand the spirit and the ideas and the blueprint, and that’s what really matters, and I can always continue to follow that in my own unique way. 

This year’s Naropa Summer Writing Program starts today (June 11, 2023) and will go for the next 3 weeks. And tho the workshops do cost some money, the program is offering a ton of free events (many involving Anne Waldman and a host of other terrific SWP faculty), including panels, lectures, and faculty and student readings. (They’re all up on our calendar!). So whether you’re a student, an alumni, or just a curious member of the local community you can connect with Anne and Naropa to inspire and invigorate your own poetry. 

And of course, here’s the link if you’d like to get your own copy of Bard Kinetic.

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Jonathan Bluebird Montgomery is the creator and Editor-in-Chief of Boulder Poetry Scene. The author of Pizzas and Mermaid, The Reality Traveler, and the recently released Nine Books (at Once!), he’s been on the Boulder poetry scene since he first went to get his MFA at Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School in 2003. You can find more of his work at jonathanbluebirdmontgomery.com