Anne Waldman
Encyclopedia
Anne Waldman is an American poet.
Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist.

Life and work

Born in Millville, New Jersey
Millville, New Jersey
Millville is a city in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2000 United States Census, the city population was 26,847. Millville, Bridgeton and Vineland are the three principal New Jersey cities of the Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area which...

, Waldman only lived in New Jersey very briefly. She was raised on MacDougal Street
MacDougal Street
MacDougal Street is a one way street in Greenwich Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The approximate six-block street is bound by Prince Street and West 8th Street. It has been the subject of many songs, poems, and other forms of artistic expression. MacDougal Street has been...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

's Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

, and received her B.A. from Bennington College
Bennington College
Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...

 in 1966. During the 1960s, Waldman became part of the East Coast poetry scene, in part through her engagement with the poets and artists loosely termed the Second Generation of the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...

. During this time, Waldman also made many
connections with earlier generations of poets, including figures such as Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

, who once called Waldman his "spiritual wife." From 1966-1968, she served as Assistant Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's; and, from 1968–1978, she served as the Project's Director.

In the early 1960s, Waldman became a student of Buddhism. In the 1970s, along with Allen Ginsberg, she began to study with the Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

an Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In 1974, with Trungpa, Ginsberg, and others, Waldman founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...

 (now Naropa University), where she remains a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and the Director of Naropa's famous Summer Writing Program.

In 1976, Waldman and Ginsberg were featured in Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

's film, Renaldo and Clara
Renaldo and Clara
Renaldo and Clara is a surrealist movie, directed by and starring Bob Dylan. Filmed in 1975, during Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour, it was released in 1978...

. They worked on the film while traveling through New England and Canada with the Rolling Thunder Revue
Rolling Thunder Revue
The Rolling Thunder Revue was a famed U.S. concert tour consisting of a traveling caravan of musicians, headed by Bob Dylan, that took place in late 1975 and early 1976; the prevailing theory was that the tour was named after the Native American shaman Rolling Thunder. Others maintained that tour...

, a concert tour that made impromptu stops, entertaining enthusiastic crowds with poetry and music. Waldman, Ginsberg, and Dylan were joined on these caravans by musicians such as Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Eric Anderson, and Joe Cocker. Waldman reveled in the experience, and she often thought of recreating the poetry caravan.

Waldman married Reed Bye in 1980, and their son, Edwin Ambrose Bye was born on October 21, 1980. The birth of her son proved to be an "inspiring turning point" for Waldman, and she became passionately interested in and deeply committed to the survival of the planet. Her child, she said, became her teacher. He inspired her poem, "Number Song" in which she writes, "I sing of my son." Waldman and Ambrose Bye occasionally perform poetry together, and the two have created a YouTube channel entitled Fast Speaking Music that features music and poetry videos.

Waldman has been a fervent activist for social change. In the 1970s, she was involved with the Rocky Flats Truth Force
Rocky Flats Truth Force
The Rocky Flats Truth Force was a grass-roots non-violent anti-nuclear group formed during protests at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Golden, Colorado during the late 1970s. In April 1978, the Rocky Flats Truth Force blocked railroad tracks to the Rocky Flats Plant, and were...

, an organization opposed to the Rocky Flats
Rocky Flats Plant
The Rocky Flats Plant was a United States nuclear weapons production facility near Denver, Colorado that operated from 1952 to 1992. It was under the control of the United States Atomic Energy Commission until 1977, when it was replaced by the Department of Energy .-1950s:Following World War II,...

 nuclear weapons facility ten miles to the south of Boulder, Colorado. With Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,...

 and Allen Ginsberg, she was arrested for protesting outside of the site. She has been a vocal proponent for feminist, environmental, and human rights causes, an active participant in Poets Against the War, and she has helped organize protests in New York and Washington, D.C.

Although her work is sometimes connected to the Beat Generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

, Waldman has never been, strictly speaking, a "Beat" poet. Her work, like the work of her contemporaries in the 1970s New York milieu of which she was a vital part—writers like Alice Notley
Alice Notley
Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...

 and Bernadette Mayer
Bernadette Mayer
Bernadette Mayer is a poet and prose writer. In 1967 she received a BA from New School for Social Research. She has since edited the journal 0 TO 9 with Vito Acconci and the United Artists Press with Lewis Warsh...

, to name only two—is more diverse in its influences and ambitions. Waldman is particularly interested in the performance of her poetry: she considers performance a "ritualized event in time," and she expresses the energy of her poetry through exuberant breathing, chanting, singing, and movement. Waldman credits her poem, Fast Speaking Woman, as the seminal work that galvanized her idea of poetry as performance. Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77...

, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...

 - all encouraged her to continue to perform her poetry.

Waldman has published more than forty books of poetry [see bibliography below]. Her work has been widely anthologized, featuring work in Breaking the Cool (University of Mississippi Press, 2004), All Poets Welcome (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2003),
Women of the Beat Generation (Conari Press, Berkeley, CA, 1996),
Postmodern American Poetry (W.W. Norton, New York, 1994) and Up Late (Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1988) among others. Her poems have been translated into French, Italian, German, Turkish, Spanish, and Chinese. Waldman is also the editor of several volumes relating to modern, postmodern, and contemporary poetry. Over the course of her career, Waldman has also been a tireless collaborator, producing works with artists Elizabeth Murray
Elizabeth Murray
Elizabeth Murray may refer to:*Lady Elizabeth Murray, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Mansfield*Elizabeth Murray , American artist*Elizabeth Murray, wife of Edward Robbins and great-great grandmother to Franklin D. Roosevelt...

, Richard Tuttle
Richard Tuttle
Richard Dean Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line.- Biography :...

, George Schneeman, Donna Dennis, Pat Steir
Pat Steir
Pat Steir is an American painter and printmaker.-Education:Steir was born in 1940 in Newark, New Jersey, and currently lives in New York City. She attended the Pratt Institute in New York from 1956 to 1958, and Boston University College of Fine Arts from 1958 to 1960. She then returned to Pratt,...

; musicians Don Cherry
Don Cherry (jazz)
Donald Eugene Cherry was an innovative African-American jazz cornetist whose career began with a long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. He went on to live in many parts of the world and work with a wide variety of musicians.-Biography:Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and...

 and Steve Lacy
Steve Lacy
Steve Lacy , born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone....

; dancer Douglas Dunn
Douglas Dunn (Choreographer)
Douglas Dunn is an American postmodern dancer and choreographer. He is considered a highly eclectic and minimalist postmodern choreographer, who uses humor, props, and text in his dances.-Training and education:...

; filmmaker and husband Ed Bowes; and her son, musician/composer Ambrose Bye.

Waldman has been a Fellow at the Emily Harvey Foundation (Winter 2007) and the Bellagio Center in Italy (Spring 2006). She has also held residencies at the Christian Woman’s University of Tokyo (Fall 2004); the Schule für Dichtung in Vienna (where she has also served as Curriculum Director in 1989); the Institute of American Indian Arts
Institute of American Indian Arts
The Institute of American Indian Arts is a college focused on Native American art. It is situated in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is congressionally chartered, and was created by an executive order of former American President John F. Kennedy in 1962...

 in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens Institute of Technology is a technological university located on a campus in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA – founded in 1870 with an 1868 bequest from Edwin A. Stevens. It is known for its engineering, science, and technological management curricula.The institute has produced leading...

 in Hoboken, New Jersey (1984). She has served as an advisor to the Prazska Skola Projekt in Prague, the Study Abroad on the Bowery (since 2004), and has been a faculty member in the New England College
New England College
New England College is a private four-year college in Henniker, New Hampshire, enrolling a total of approximately 1800 undergraduate and graduate students.-History:The school was created in 1946 for students attending college on the G.I...

 Low Residency MFA Program (since 2003). She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

 (NEA) and the Contemporary Artists Foundation, among others. With writer and scholar Ammiel Alcalay
Ammiel Alcalay
Ammiel Alcalay is an American poet, scholar, critic, translator, and prose stylist. Born and raised in Boston, he is a first-generation American, son of Sephardic Jews from São Tomé and Príncipe...

, she founded the Poetry is News Coalition in 2002.

Her archive of historical, literary, art, tape, and extensive correspondence materials (including many prominent literary correspondents, such as: William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

, Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...

, Diane Di Prima
Diane di Prima
Diane Di Prima is an American poet.-Early life:Di Prima was born in Brooklyn. She attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan...

, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...

, Allen Ginsberg, and Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey
Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...

) resides at the University of Michigan's Hatcher Graduate Library
University of Michigan Library
The University of Michigan University Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is one of the largest university library systems in the United States. The system, consisting of 19 separate libraries in 11 buildings, altogether holds over 9.55 million volumes, with the collection growing at the rate of...

 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A 55-minute film titled “Anne Waldman: Makeup on Empty Space,” a film by poet Jim Cohn
Jim Cohn
Jim Cohn is a poet, poetry activist, and spoken word artist in the United States. He was born in Highland Park, Illinois, in 1953. Early poetics and musical influences include Bob Dylan, the subject of a now lost audiotaped for a class project completed in his senior year at Shaker Heights High...

, documents the opening of the Anne Waldman Collection at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

.

Books & Pamphlets

  • The Iovis Trilogy, Coffee House Press, 2011
  • Manatee/Humanity, Penguin Poets, 2009
  • Red Noir (performance pieces) Farfalla, McMillen, Parrish, 2007
  • Outrider, La Alameda Press, 2006
  • Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, Penguin Poets, 2004.
  • In the Room of Never Grieve: New & Selected Poems 1985–2003, Coffee House Press, 2003.
  • Dark Arcana / Afterimage or Glow, Heaven Bone Press, 2003.
  • [Things] Seen Unseen, 2002.
  • War Crime, 2002.
  • Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews, & Manifestos, Coffee House Press, 2001.
  • Marriage: A Sentence, Penguin Poets, 2000.
  • Iovis II, Coffee House Press, 1997.
  • Fast Speaking Woman, 20th Anniversary Edition, City Lights Books, 1996.
  • Kill or Cure, Penguin Poets, 1996.
  • lovis: All Is Full of Jove, Coffee House Press, 1993.
  • Troubairitz, Fifth Planet Press, 1993.
  • Fait Accompli, Last Generation Press, 1992.
  • Lokapala, Rocky Ledge, 1991.
  • Not a Male Pseudonym, Tender Buttons Books, 1990.
  • Helping the Dreamer: New and Selected Poems: 1966-1988, Coffee House Press, 1989.
  • Tell Me About It, Bloody Twin Press, 1989.
  • The Romance Thing, Bamberger Books, 1987.
  • Blue Mosque, United Artists, 1987.
  • Skin Meat Bones, Coffee House Press, 1985.
  • Makeup on Empty Space, Toothpaste Press, 1984.
  • First Baby Poems, Rocky Ledge, 1982, augmented edition, Hyacinth Girls, 1983.
  • Cabin, Z Press, 1981.
  • Countries, Toothpaste Press, 1980.
  • To a Young Poet, White Raven, 1979.
  • Shaman / Shamane, White Raven, 1977.
  • Hotel Room, Songbird, 1976.
  • Journals and Dreams, Stonehill, 1976.
  • Fast Speaking Woman and Other Chants, City Lights, 1975 (revised edition, 1978).
  • Sun the Blonde Out, Arif, 1975.
  • Fast Speaking Woman, Red Hanrahan Press, 1974.
  • The Contemplative Life, Alternative Press, c. 1974.
  • Life Notes: Selected Poems, Bobbs-Merrill, 1973.
  • The West Indies Poems, Adventures in Poetry, 1972.
  • Spin Off, Big Sky, 1972.
  • Light and Shadow, Privately printed, 1972.
  • Holy City, privately printed, 1971.
  • No Hassles, Kulchur Foundation, 1971.
  • Icy Rose, Angel Hair, 1971.
  • Baby Breakdown, Bobbs-Merrill, 1970.
  • Giant Night: Selected Poems, Corinth Books, 1970.
  • Up Through the Years, Angel Hair, 1970.
  • O My Life!, Angel Hair, 1969.
  • On the Wing, Boke, 1968.

Poetry Collaborations

  • Fleuve Flâneur (with Mary Kite), Erudite Fangs, 2004.
  • Zombie Dawn (with Tom Clark), Skanky Possum Press, 2003.
  • Polemics (with Anselm Hollo & Jack Collom), Autonomedia.
  • Young Manhattan (with Bill Berkson).
  • Ai Lit / Holy (with Eleni Sikelianos & Laird Hunt), 2001.
  • Polar Ode (With Eileen Myles), Dead Duke, 1979.
  • Four Travels (With Reed Bye), Sayonara, 1979.
  • Sphinxeries (With Denyse duRoi), 1979.
  • Self Portrait (With Joe Brainard), Siamese Banana Press, 1973.
  • Memorial Day (With Ted Berrigan), Poetry Project, 1971.

Audio Recordings

  • Matching Half (music by Ambrose Bye) with Akilah Oliver, 2007
  • The Eye of The Falcon (music by Ambrose Bye) 2006.
  • In the Room of Never Grieve (music by Ambrose Bye)
  • By the Side of the Road (with Ishtar Kramer), 2003.
  • Battery: Live from Naropa, 2003.
  • Alchemical Elegy: Selected Songs and Writings, Fast Speaking Music, 2001.
  • Beat Poetry, ABM, London,1999.
  • Jazz Poetry, ABM, London,1999.
  • Women of The Beat Generation, Audio-Literature, 1996.
  • Live in Amsterdam, Soyo Productions, 1992.
  • Assorted Singles, Phoebus Productions,1990.
  • Made Up in Texas, Paris Records (Dallas), 1986.
  • Crack in the World, Sounds True
    Sounds True
    Sounds True is a multimedia publishing company based near Boulder, Colorado. It was created in 1985 by Tami Simon. The company has published approximately 1,000 titles, including spoken-word audio recordings, books, music, filmed events, multimedia packages and online educational programs from...

     (Boulder),1986.
  • Uh-Oh Plutonium!, Hyacinth Girls Music (NYC), 1982.
  • Fast Speaking Woman, "S" Press Tapes (Munich), n.d.
  • John Giorno and Anne Waldman, Giorno Poetry Systems Records, 1977.
  • Beauty and the Beast (With Allen Ginsberg), Naropa Institute, 1976.
  • Other recordings include The Dial-a-Poem Poets, Disconnected and The Nova Convention,

Big Ego, Giorno Poetry Systems, and The World Record.

Film and Video

  • Colors In the Mechanism of Concealment, with Ed Bowes, 2004.
  • The Menage (for Carl Rakosi), with Ed Bowes, 2003.
  • Live at Naropa, Phoebus Productions, 1990.
  • Battle of the Bards, (Lannan Foundation), Metropolitan Pictures, Los Angeles, 1990.
  • Eyes in All Heads, Phoebus Productions, 1989.
  • “Uh-Oh Plutonium!” (1982), first prize at the American Film Festival, Manhattan Video Project,

Out There Productions (NYC).
  • Cooked Diamonds, Fried Shoes, with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Meredith Monk
  • Poetry in Motion, directed by Ron Mann, Sphinx Productions (Toronto).
  • Also performed in Bob Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara (1978), with a recording of the poem Fast Speaking Woman included on the sound track.

As editor

  • Beats at Naropa (with Laura Wright), Coffee House Press, 2010.
  • Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (with Lisa Birman), Coffee House Press, 2004.
  • The Angel Hair Anthology: Angel Hair Sleeps With A Boy In My Head (with Lewis Warsh), Granary Books, 2001.
  • The Beat Book, Shambhala Publications, Boston, 1996.
  • Disembodied Poetics: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School, University of New Mexico Press, 1993.
  • Out of This World: An Anthology from The Poetry Project at the St. Mark's Church In-the-Bowery 1966-1991, Crown Publishing Group, 1991.
  • Nice to See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan, Coffee House Press, 1991.
  • Talking Poetics: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (with Marilyn Webb), Shambhala, vols. 1 and 2, 1978.
  • Another World, Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.
  • The World Anthology: Poems from the St. Mark's Poetry Project, Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.


Awards and Grants

  • Fellow, The Emily Harvey Foundation, Venice, winter 2007.
  • Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency, 2002.
  • Civitella Ranieri Center Fellow, 2001.
  • Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant Recipient, 2001.
  • Vermont Studio School Residency, 2001.
  • The Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, 1996.
  • National Endowment for the Arts Grant, 1979-80.
  • The National Literary Anthology Award, 1970.
  • The Poets Foundation Award, 1969.
  • The Dylan Thomas Memorial Award, 1967.
  • Two-time winner of the International Poetry Championship Bout in Taos, New Mexico
    Taos, New Mexico
    Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico, incorporated in 1934. As of the 2000 census, its population was 4,700. Other nearby communities include Ranchos de Taos, Cañon, Taos Canyon, Ranchitos, and El Prado. The town is close to Taos Pueblo, the Native American...


Further reading

  • Contemporary Authors : Biography - Waldman, Anne (Lesley) (1945-) Thomson Gale; ISBN B0007SFYJW
  • Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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