Friday, January 12, 2007

Fast Talking Woman



Having never been to Naropa, I don't have much of an opinion about the goings-on there, but I did want to take a second to say I think Anne Waldman's energy is amazing. I was rereading some of the Angel Hair anthology the other day and considering the course of her poetic career in awe. We need an attempt to address the world's problems more directly and Waldman's work provides a blueprint for that. Rachel Blau DuPlessis says it best.

"Anne Waldman’s work in poetry exists at the intersection of activist passion, gender critique and wariness, and long poem ambitions. She is at root inspired by an Olsonic ambition to speak the whole social fabric as an incantatory, analytic cantor in shamanic voice. She is someone who can inhabit her own culture and play among a multiple of global sites with Blakean transformative lust."