13 Lectures from Allen Ginsberg’s “History of Poetry” Course (1975)

Allen Ginsberg - 1979

Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you want to under­stand poet­ry, ask a poet. “What is this?” you ask, “some kind of Zen say­ing?” Obvi­ous, but sub­tle? Maybe. What I mean to say is that I have found poet­ry one of those dis­tinc­tive prac­tices of which the prac­ti­tion­ers themselves—rather than schol­ars and critics—make the best expos­i­tors, even in such seem­ing­ly aca­d­e­m­ic sub­ject areas as the his­to­ry of poet­ry. Of course, poets, like crit­ics, get things wrong, and not every poet is a nat­ur­al teacher, but only poets under­stand poet­ry from the inside out, as a liv­ing, breath­ing exer­cise prac­ticed the world over by every cul­ture for all record­ed his­to­ry, linked by com­mon insights into the nature of lan­guage and exis­tence. Cer­tain­ly Allen Gins­berg under­stood, and taught, poet­ry this way, in his sum­mer lec­tures at the Jack Ker­ouac School of Dis­em­bod­ied poet­ics, which he co-found­ed with Anne Wald­man at Chogyam Trung­pa Rinpoche’s Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty in 1974.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured some of Ginsberg’s Naropa lec­tures here at Open Cul­ture, includ­ing his 1980 short course on Shakespeare’s The Tem­pest and his lec­ture on “Expan­sive Poet­ics” from 1981. Today, we bring you sev­er­al selec­tions from his lengthy series of lec­tures on the “His­to­ry of Poet­ry,” which he deliv­ered in 1975. Cur­rent­ly, thir­teen of Ginsberg’s lec­tures in the series are avail­able online through the Inter­net Archive, and they are each well worth an atten­tive lis­ten. Actu­al­ly, we should say there are twelve Gins­berg lec­tures avail­able, since Ginsberg’s fel­low Beat Gre­go­ry Cor­so led the first class in the series while Gins­berg was ill.

Cor­so taught the class in a “Socrat­ic” style, allow­ing stu­dents to ask him any ques­tions they liked and describ­ing his own process and his rela­tion­ships with oth­er Beat poets. You can hear his lec­tures here. When Gins­berg took over the “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” lec­tures, he began (above) with dis­cus­sion of anoth­er nat­ur­al poet-edu­ca­tor, the idio­syn­crat­ic schol­ar Ezra Pound, whose for­mal­ly pre­cise inter­pre­ta­tion of the Anglo-Sax­on poem “The Sea­far­er” intro­duced many mod­ern read­ers to ancient allit­er­a­tive Old Eng­lish poet­ics. (Poet W.S. Mer­win sits in on the lec­ture and offers occa­sion­al lacon­ic com­men­tary and cor­rec­tion.)

Gins­berg ref­er­ences Pound’s pithy text The ABC of Read­ing and dis­cuss­es his pen­chant for “ransack[ing] the world’s lit­er­a­ture, look­ing for usable verse forms.” Pound, says Ginsberg—“the most hero­ic poet of the century”—taught poet­ry in his own “cranky and per­son­al” way, and Gins­berg, less cranky, does some­thing sim­i­lar, teach­ing “just the poems that I like (or the poems I found in my own ear,” though he is “much less sys­tem­at­ic than Pound.” He goes on to dis­cuss 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry poet­ics and sound and rhythm in poet­ry. One of the per­son­al quirks of Ginsberg’s style is his insis­tence that his stu­dents take med­i­ta­tion class­es and his claim that “the Eng­lish verse that was taught in high school” is very close to the “pri­ma­ry Bud­dhist under­stand­ing of tran­sien­cy.” But one can leave aside Ginsberg’s Bud­dhist preoccupations—appropriate to his teach­ing at a Bud­dhist uni­ver­si­ty, of course—and still prof­it great­ly from his lec­tures. Below, find links to eleven more of Ginsberg’s “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” lec­tures, with descrip­tions from the Inter­net Archive. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it appears that sev­er­al of the lec­ture record­ings have not been pre­served, or at least haven’t made it to the archive, but there’s more than enough mate­r­i­al here for a thor­ough immer­sion in Gins­berg’s his­tor­i­cal poet­ics. Also, be sure to see AllenGinsberg.org for tran­scrip­tions of his “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” lec­tures. You can find these lec­tures list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, part of our larg­er list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Part 3: class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, in a series of class­es in the Sum­mer of 1975. Gre­go­ry Cor­so helps teach the class. Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley and Thomas Hood are dis­cussed exten­sive­ly. The class reads from Shel­ley, and Gins­berg recites Shel­ley’s “Ode to the west wind.”

Part 10: A class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, in a series of class­es from 1975. Gins­burg dis­cuss­es William Shake­speare and Ben John­son in detail. Putting poet­ry to music, and the poet James Shirley are also dis­cussed.

Part 11: A class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, in a series of class­es by Gins­berg in the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the meta­phys­i­cal poets dur­ing the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, specif­i­cal­ly John Donne and Andrew Mar­vell. Gins­berg reads and dis­cuss­es sev­er­al of Don­ne’s and Mar­vel­l’s poems. There is also a dis­cus­sion of the meta­phys­i­cal poets and Gnos­ti­cism.

Part 12: [Gins­berg con­tin­ues his dis­cus­sion of Gnos­ti­cism and talks about Mil­ton and Wordsworth]

Part 14: Sec­ond half of a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg talks about the songs of the poet William Blake. He sings to the class accom­pa­nied with his har­mo­ni­um, per­form­ing sev­er­al selec­tions from Blake’s “Songs of inno­cence” and “Songs of expe­ri­ence.”

Part 15: First half of a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg. from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can poet, Walt Whit­man, and a French poet of the same peri­od, Arthur Rim­baud. He also dis­cuss­es the poets’ biogra­phies and their inno­v­a­tive approach­es to style and poet­ics, fol­lowed by a read­ing by Gins­berg of a selec­tion of Whit­man’s and Rim­baud’s work.

Part 16: Sec­ond half of a class, and first half of the fol­low­ing class, on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a class series dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. The first twen­ty min­utes con­tin­ues a class from the pre­vi­ous record­ing, on the work and inno­va­tion of the Amer­i­can poet Walt Whit­man and the French poet Arthur Rim­baud. The remain­der of the record­ing begins an intro­duc­tion and analy­sis of the French poet Guil­laume Apol­li­naire.

Part 17: A class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the poets Guil­laume Apol­li­naire, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lor­ca. The New York School poet Frank O’Hara is also briefly dis­cussed. Gins­berg reads a selec­tion of poems from the their works, fol­lowed by a class dis­cus­sion.

Part 18: First half of a class about the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the Amer­i­can poet, and one of his men­tors, William Car­los Williams. Gins­berg reads selec­tions from Williams’ work, and dis­cuss­es his style and back­ground.

Part 19: Sec­ond half of a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a series of class­es dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es the poets William Car­los Williams, Gre­go­ry Cor­so and Jack Ker­ouac. He includes sev­er­al per­son­al anec­dotes about the poets and reads selec­tions from their works. A class dis­cus­sion fol­lows.

Part 20: A snip­pet of mate­r­i­al that may con­clude a class on the his­to­ry of poet­ry by Allen Gins­berg, from a class series dur­ing the sum­mer of 1975. The record­ing includes three min­utes and six sec­onds of Gins­berg talk­ing about the moral­i­ty of William Car­los Williams and the sub­ject of poet­ry and per­cep­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Allen Ginsberg’s Short Free Course on Shakespeare’s Play, The Tem­pest (1980)

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

“Expan­sive Poet­ics” by Allen Gins­berg: A Free Course from 1981

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.


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