WALDMAN, Anne

Born 2 April 1945, Milville, New Jersey

Married to Reed E. Bye, 1980; children: one son

Anne Waldman has spent over 30 years writing and chanting poetry. She has published over 40 books, of which she has either written or edited. She ran the St. Mark's Poetry Project as assistant director from 1966 to 1968 and director from 1968 to 1978 at St. Mark's church in New York. The two World anthologies were derived from her work with other poets from the St. Mark's Poetry Project.

Waldman then went on to become the cofounding director of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, with Allen Ginsberg in 1974. The school revived the idea of poetry as a vocalization and a public art. Together with Ginsberg, Waldman taught poetry as a theatrical event. Her experience beginning at age six as a performer at the Greenwich Village Children's Theatre to her upbringing with a jazz culture to her Buddhist religion influenced her "expansive chant-like structures," which in turn gave her the basis for her teachings at the school. Ginsberg said of Waldman's performances: "Anne Waldman is a poet orator, her body is an instrument for vocalization, her voice a trembling flame rising out of a strong body, her texts the accurate energetic fine notations of words with spoken music latent in mindful arrangement on the page."

Waldman has won numerous awards, including the Dylan Thomas Award in 1967, the Cultural Artists grant in 1976, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1980. Her poetic career in the 1960s was heavily influenced by the Beat Generation. She describes her post-Beat career as "a unique creative generation, a second generation Beat." It is from this Beat and post-Beat era that Waldman edited and contributed to Women of the Beat Generation (1996). The book is her attempt to give women the chance to express themselves artistically and poetically. This effort was due to her own struggles to become a writer in a male-dominated world. Women of the Beat Generation features prolific women writers in an attempt "to acknowledge…the suffering, difficulty, and dignity" of their lives. It includes an excerpt from several of Waldman's better known poems, including "Fast Speaking Woman," "Two Hearts," "A Phone Call From Frank O'Hara," and "I Am the Guard."

Fast Speaking Woman (1996), the 20th-anniversary expanded edition, is a collection of pieces published in the first two editions (1975 and 1978) and works from old files and notebooks never published before. The title poem, "Fast Speaking Woman," is almost 600 lines like the following:

"I'm the phenomena woman
the woman who studies
the woman who names
the woman who writes
I'm the cataloguing woman
water that cleans
waters that run
flowers that clean as I go"

The poem uses the word "woman" in nearly every line. The "water that cleans…as I go" break is a pause and shift in rhythm and cleanses the impulsiveness of the writing. This is a clear example of the rhythmic chant of Waldman's poetry.

"Fast Speaking Woman," is a tribute to Maria Sabina, the Mazatec Native American shamaness in Mexico who guided Waldman in a magic mushroom ceremony. Waldman began writing it during a trip to South America, intended for meditation. She continued writing it back in New York and then later in India. The poem is Waldman's intention to list-chant all the things women are to be, including her own personal intricacies (how she sees herself). Again, with this poem, Waldman concerns herself with women's roles and how Everywoman is both messenger and protector.

Iovis: All Is Full of Jove (1986) and Iovis: Book II (1993) are two of Waldman's masterpieces. The former book is a 336-page epic, where Waldman combs the masculine soul and the sources of its energy. She uses several distinct male voices including her grandfather, her son, and male deities from other cultures. She explores her own aggression and male energy in mostly English, but also in Greek, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Balinese, Indonesian, Mayan, Czech, Sanskrit, and Gaelic. It ends with "To blunt the knife," alluding to the continuation of the exploration of female energy, may it be compassion, overtaking male aggression.

Iovis: Book II is a continuation of Iovis: All Is Full of Jove. Its purpose of exploration, however, changes from male to female energy. It is in this second part that Waldman sets up themes about the confusion of women's roles in the 20th century. She explores the compassionate female energy and at the end exclaims the renewal of that feminine charge with "I rang him down."

Waldman is known for her chants, powerful performances, and quest for recognition for women writers. Her poems rhyme or don't; her books, such as Journals & Dreams (1976), include impulsive words from her travels, including poems and personal letters. She explores sexuality, cultures, and personality, and her words never lie flat on the pages—they chant to you as if she were performing them.

Other Works:

On the Wing (1967). Giant Night (1968). O My Life! (1969). The World Anthology: Poems from the St. Mark's Poetry Project, and Another World (1969, 1971). Baby Breakdown (1970). Giant Night: Selected Poems (1970). Goodies from Anne Waldman (1971). Holy City (1971). Icy Rose (1971). Memorial Day (with T. Berrigan, 1971). No Hassles (1971). Light and Shadow (1972). Spin Off (1972). The West Indies Poems (1972). Life Notes: Selected Poems (1973). Self Portrait (with J. Brainard, 1973). Fast Speaking Woman (1975). Shaman (1977). 4 Travels (with R. Bye, 1978). Talking Poetics from Naropa Institute (ed. with M. Webb, 2 vols., 1978-1979). To a Young Poet (1979). Countries (1980). Cabin (1982). First Baby Poems (1982). Make-Up on Empty Space (1984). Invention (1985). Skin Meat Bones (1985). The Romance Thing (1987). Blue Mosque (1988). Helping the Dreamer: New and Selected Poems (1989, 1992). Not a Male Pseudonym (1990). Lokapala (1991). Nice to See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan (edited, 1991). Out of This World (edited, 1991). Disembodied Poetics, Annals of the Jack Kerouac School (edited with A. Schelling, 1994). Kill or Cure (1994).

Bibliography:

Cloward, T. F., "The Shaman's Voice: Anne Waldman and Maria Sabina—Some Notes on Contemporary Performance Poetry" (thesis, 1992).

Reference works:

CP (1996).

Other references:

Anne Waldman (audiocassette, 1987). Anne Waldman (video, 1991). Battle of the Bards (video, 1990). Cassady, Vega, Waldman: Three Women of (and Beyond) the Beat Generation (video, 1998). Fried Shoes, Cooked Diamonds (video, 1978, 1989). Inquiring Mind (Spring, 1997).

—KIMBALLY A. MEDEIROS