Spontaneous Poetics - 91

[The List Poem by Larry Fagin (2000, from Teachers & Writers Collaborative) - cover design by Trevor Winkfield] 

Student:  I feel I have to defend myself against (you and) the rest of the class

Allen Ginsberg: Do you have a “self” to defend? – okay, if you insist on having a “self”

Student: Well you said (my comparison with set theory wasn’t so helpful) but why I said that was, that if the members don’t interact, then that means that, just like in a sentence, that means there’s no articulation, (group consciousness) is not being put into form

Ted Berrigan: If you take a group.. you have to..

Student: It’s not articulation until the words interact, right?

Ted Berrigan: The articulation [in Anne Waldman’s “Fast Speaking Woman”] is in the dance of vowels and syllables, much more there than in “Pressure”, where everything there snaps. In this poem, everything sings (and when you see it performed, for example, you understand that very clearly because it comes off her so smoothly). The interaction is in the music so much more in “Fast Speaking Woman” than in “Pressure”, which has a great breathless quality

Allen Ginsberg: Well, then, her next move was “Musical Garden”, where she complicated the line, interestingly – “Can’t give you up, speech, can’t stop/ clamoring” – So then (she) began to augment the line, because she couoldn’t repeat the poem, or the same attack on the poem, one poem after another, with the same simple lines, so then she began expanding the musical possibilities and the ideation and image possibilities within the sweetheart, my tender/ chocolate big-lipped love/ Can’t give up all dear ones, your bright/ ears and delicate smiles” – So you see how she began developing that. Actually, it’s sort of like a primary course in the list poem,  going from one poem to another to another of hers and seeing how she’s developed it, and finally, in the last [1976 -most recent] poem, “Shaman” ["Shaman Hisses"], there’s very complicated lines, involving description, with different actions, long, very long sometimes. Sometimes a short single-word line, but, most of the time, it’s a line describing a whole action – “Shaman, your mother’s calling you on the telephone”

The reason I brought this up was (is), if you have a litany, or a list poem, or if you want to try one like that, if you’re developing one, or if you’re revising one, or working on one, just to bear in mind that (a) single-word list poem has been done, a double-word list poem has been done. You’ve got to have something interesting in each line. Anne has developed it in this way. (Christopher) Smart started with a much more pedestrian line, you might say, (a) more everyday line. A major element in it all, however, is the ear for the line, keeping the line of such an elastic spoken quality that the whole thing hangs together as one tripping breath, or one vowel-ic breath (but there you’d have to pay attention to sound, you’d have to pay attention to having the imagery colorful enough enough to fill out a line).

And I’ll end there, because it’s eight twenty-five.

Student:  I made the list into a narrative.

AG: Pardon me?

Student: I made the list into a narrative.

AG: Yes. You can (do) do that.

Tape and class ends here – to be continued   

Spontaneous Poetics - 90 (Ted Berrigan Defends Anne Waldman)

[Anne Waldman & Ted Berrigan - Photograph by  Gerard Malanga - Copyright The Photographer]

Ted Berrigan:  Are you making a criticism (of Anne Waldman) on those grounds (set theory, mathematics)?

Allen Ginsberg: Pardon me?

TB: Is he (one of the students) making a criticism (of Anne) on that grounds?

AG: I don’t know.  I think so, yeah

TB: I want you to tell me. I’d like to know who he is.

AG: I’m making a criticism. I’m criticizing Anne’s later poems.

TB: But you’re making it on different grounds, Allen (and your grounds are not valid either), but his grounds.. 

AG: I’m just saying what I think..

TB: Okay, you think what you’re thinking, that’s only valid, it’s what you’re thinking, whereas she’s speaking (in "Fast Speaking Woman") as a woman there..

AG:  ..that this was a..

TB: She’s being an (archetypal) woman, and then she’s being “Anne Waldman”, at the same time, whereas, in the other one ("Pressure"), it’s just like that she’s a pronoun. She’s herself, you know..

AG: Uh-huh

TB: But in that  one, I mean that’s.. (that might appear) coming on to you, but that’s.. she is..she does.. she’s attempting the shamanistic concept, Allen

AG:  Yes

TB: She’s attempting to speak for all women..

AG: Uh-huh

TB:..and it seems, consequently that  that bulwarks the structure very much

AG: Yeah

TB: And when the juxtapositions may possibly seem facile, it’s true that the faces are different, but there are..there are many more interesting things that she says a woman can be, for example, in that poem, than there are..

AG: Yeah, the virtues of the poem are apparent . The virtues of the poem are already apparent, I think . I’m demurring now on it’s total virtue, in a sense that I think that it’s less interesting on the page and probably depends a good deal on recitation for it to become really live, because, line-by-line, reading it through, it finally becomes a little boring on the page..

Student: Really?

AG:  ..and the only way to mend that was (she does it at a few points)..is..complicate it a little bit, instead of just having “elastic woman, necklace woman, silk scarf woman” – “I’m the woman who works the machine./ I know how to work the machines”..

TB: “I know how to work the machines”, okay.

AG: .. which is, I think, the great line (or one of the great lines) in that . But, at this point, when I first heard her read it, I began thinking it would be interesting if she started making the lines a little denser, because she had already done that in “Pressure”, and I thought that in “Pressure”, that the situation, the original situation, was so penetrant – the idea of “no way out” the entire universe – that all you did have to do was list places in the universe in a weird juxtaposed order and that that juxtaposition of the order would make the excitement. Here the juxtaposition of the order – “I’m a moon woman/ I’m a day woman/ I’m a doll woman/ I’m a dew woman/ I’m a lone star woman / (I’m a) loose ends woman”..” – There isn’t enough tension. It’s just like repeating the line and making changes, but it isn’t mad enough, verbally – and for the eye-ball it isn’t mad enough (because I’ve shown it to, say, kids in France, French translators who say, “The conception is interesting, but, line by line, it doesn’t seem to have the same tension between the lines”.

Student: Alright, alright, but…

TB:  I think that it sings in a different way and that the singing accomplishes there [in “Fast Speaking Woman] as much as the tension accomplishes in “Pressure” . And the fact that, it’s true, it doesn’t always rise off the page, it’s equally true of “Pressure”, where some things of “Pressure” are going by so fast..

AG: Yeah

TB: ..because of the pace of the poem, that you don’t believe that this person really feels and knows  anything about what she just said there was “no way out” of, except that she’s heard about it.

AG: Hmm

TB: For example, “Joan Sutherland’s astounding voice” – that little molecule of a second that it takes to say that, is not enough to (convince me that..)... and there are a few other examples..

AG:  Well, anyway, does everybody get something of the point I’m trying to make.

Student(s): Yes

Spontaneous Poetics - 89 (Allen Ginsberg on Anne Waldman)

[Anne Waldman - Photograph by Greg Fuchs via AnneWaldman.org]

Student: A lot of Anne (Waldman)’s poems are that way (oracular, rhapsodic) like “Musical Garden”, a breath of fresh air. They can pick you up and just…

AG: Yeah

Student : ..stanza after stanza, ( with a hook line) - “Can’t give you up” 

AG: Yeah

Student:  The “Pressure” poem

Student:  That’s not all one line, is it?

AG: No, these are separate lines. Same principle, though -  a repeated refrain.. The thing is “Pressure” is.. as distinct from other poems of Anne’s.. “Pressure”.. was the first of her magnificent “list poems”.

Student: That’s the “Can’t give you up” poem?

AG: Yeah

Student: “No pressure”..”No way out”

AG: “No way out”. “No exit”. “No way out”

Student: Did she read that the other night?

AG: Yeah – That was the first of her series – [Allen begins to recite Anne Waldman’s poem – “When I/ see you/ climb the walls/ I climb them too/ No way out  of the cosmic mudhole!”… “no way out of the telephone booth/ the classroom/ the VW bus, the igloo,,”...”no way out of the 60-story office building./the church, the temple, the mosque/ the Long Island Railroad Station/ the A train the D train, the BMT/ the 9^th Street crosstown bus/ the rain, the 10-inch snow piling up/ outside my window...] – Now what’s going on in my head, what’s going on there is – she had this really interesting idea – “No way out”. And then pretty soon, she’s throwing in the whole universe! – So no way out of death, no way out of life, no way out of Naropa Institute, no way out of New York City , no way out of the D train.

Ted Berrigan: Also, in that kind of poem you can get little sequences going, like you get, “no way out of your own house, no way out of the street you live on”, and then you can.. like.. “no way out of the next street, the next street over, the 60-story office building, the helicopter, the moon, the sun, the planets”, and it sounds like you’re doing something, and then you drop that and you just keep going with, “no way out”. Sometimes you’ve got something going here, sometimes you’re just making a further list of things that there’s “no way out” (of). There’s a lot of varieties of things you can do.

Student:  But there’s more of a connection, it seems, between what there’s  “no way out” of. You can throw in the whole universe and say there’s “no way out” of that, because it’s almost welded to one another, but what about saying, I mean..

AG: I actually want to talk about this. I want everybody to shut up, because I had something to say (and now I have forgot!). This was Anne’s first long list poem, I think, and there is a quality in here which is different from her later list poems. And I think this is among the best of them. I think, in some respects, they get weaker later on, or more mechanical. The thing that’s going on here is that she has a grand conception, a really grand conception – a realization of the claustrophobia of the Universe, and sort of a Buddhist notion of “no way out” in meditation. There’s no way out of what is.  So then, what you have is a series of lines, ringing the changes on what is, or what’s in her Universe that she can’t get out of it. And the lines are simple. In other words, they’re not images, in a sense, they’re not Surrealist images., they’re not dense, in a sense, the VW bus, the igloo – that’s pretty funny. In one line, “the VW bus, the igloo..” You’ve got the funny jump. But, then, “the classroom”? – that’s not a poem (or a single) line of a poem – “the classroom” – nothing – except the jumps between one line and the other are so strange, and you can see her mind, moving from place to place in her universe, and you can see what she’s going through, what the sequence of her preoccupations are, and her experiences, so that even if, line by line, there is no Surrealist image or haiku within the line, the jumps between lines make a funny kind of haiku – “No way out of the cosmic mudhole/ no way out of the telephone booth/ the classroom” – from the telephone booth to the classroom to the VW bus, the igloo - “No way out of the quonset hut/…tea for two” – So the jumps are so weird you actually have a graph of her mind moving (which is Philip Whalen’s phrase), you actually have a graph of  her mind moving instant to instant into all these weird particulars of her life . So that, eve though the individual short lines don’t each one present a haiku within it, or some kind of persimmon-jump, or space-gap, or contrast, or image, the action of the poem in moving from thought to thought, preoccupation to preoccupation, takes care of the poetics, in the sense of the surprise, takes care of the poetic surprise, so, even though the lines are dull, taken by themselves, the changes are not dull, and they get funnier and funnier, and, finally, more and more serious, to the point where she actually has – “no way out of Africa/ off Europe, out of Asia/ no way off the jeep,/ the circus, the rodeo/ the Donizetti opera/ (La Fille du Regiment)/ no escape from Joan Sutherland’s astounding voice/ or the barking dogs chasing the weakened deer/ a long winter..” – There’s such vast jumps from one subject to another, and they’re as vast as the mind itself, or as vast as our own experience. So finally it gets to, “the history of Russia, no escape,/ China, Japan/ the history of music, no escape/ the voices of the Pygmies singing in the Ituri rainforest..” (which is, like, a fantastic contrast from “the history of Russia..China, Japan” to “the Pygmies singing in the Ituri rainforest”, and, actually makes a great deal of sense – covering global culture). Then, finally, “no escape from.. ” -  “The Great Chain of Being, (no escape), /The Magnetic Field, no escape/  The Continental Shelf, no escape/ The Great Barrier Reef/ no escape, no escape/ The piper cub, no return/ (the next acceptance speech, no return,/ the last hurrah, the middle age)/ no way out of TV, no way off Mars”  - All one line - no way out of TV, no way off Mars”  - “the moon, the sun’s radiant energy,/ no way, no way/ no way out of structural anthropology..” – The changes are just so brilliant and definite, that, even though from the outside, for a second, it seems jumbled, there’s an inner logic, and when there’s not an inner logic, the jump is so big that in itself it covers the world.

Student: What’s interesting is she said there’s no way out of the poem.

AG:  I think she has it somewhere here.  There’s no way out of the poem. It’s somewhere here. There’s no way out of the poem, no escape. So that was her, I think, first spontaneous list poem. Now the later poems, I think, are a little more mechanical – like “Fast Speaking Woman” (and I think the changes there.. it’s the same principle) – “I’m the accomplished woman. I’m the woman who drives/ I’m the alabaster woman/ I’m the egregious woman/ I’m the embryo woman…” – Here, she’s beginning to make combinations, which, within themselves, are a little (too) strange to sustain it . It wouldn’t be.. well – “I’m the girl under an old fashioned duress/ I’m a thought woman/ I’m a creator woman/ I’m a waiting woman/ I’m a ready woman/ I’m an atmosphere woman/ I’m the morning star woman/ I’m the heaven woman…” – I find that a little weaker. Because there still is a really strong basic perception, there’s still really a great idea to ring all the changes on what kind of woman (which means, what kind of soul, what kind of person, as well…) - Yes?

Student: I find that…

AG: Well, let me finish my sentence..

Student: I was going to turn it over, so..

AG: ..as well as taking off on the feminist changes. But, at that point, I began feeling that what she needed was to actually begin to get more juxtaposition within the line, to keep the thing moving, that the lines would have to be more dazzling than in the first simple lists of “No Escape” (Pressure) , because the “no escape” had such a central psychological given in it. The I’m-a-blank-woman, I’m-a-blank-woman, is less central, in a sense, psychologically.

Student: Well, it still has that sort of peripheral vision thing of taking it from every view possible that..

AG: Yeah..

Student: .. you could take it from.

AG: But just single words, or little phrases. (And) at that point, I began thinking she needed more. Yes?

Student: One thing I noticed that disturbed me a little bit is that this form is obviously very similar to yours in many ways, and one thing that you do always, when you use this form, it’s always a group…

AG: Yeah, I got it from (Whitman)

Student:  …works as a group, whereas this becomes a simple set. It’s the difference between set theory and group theory, and this breaks down into.. you know, set theory.

AG: (I’m not familiar with) set theory

Student: Set theory, yeah in math

AG: Yeah

Student: In Modern Math, they talk about it

AG: I’ve never studied it

Student: Oh. The set theory has the members don’t interact, whereas (in) the group theory the members do interact. I guess that’s the basis.

AG: Okay. If one understood that terminology that would be a helpful way of explaining it, but [Allen turns to the class] how many don’t understand (t)his terminology?

Student: I find mathematics pretty formidable

AG: Yeah

Allen Ginsberg and Philip Whalen 1975 Naropa Reading

[Philip Whalen, Anne Waldman, and Allen Ginsberg, Naropa Institute, 1975 - Photograph by Rachel Homer]

Continuing with our vintage audio recordings. Here's Allen and Philip Whalen at Naropa, June 18, 1975. The introduction is by Anne Waldman  (Anne's intro on the Internet Archives version, embedded above, is preceded by a couple of minutes of typically assiduous Ginsberg sound-checking, which the archivists at the Naropa School have, mercifully, spared us. For the full, uninterrupted version of the audio, go here)

AW: Welcome to the Wednesday night poetry readings at the (Jack) Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. (It’s) a great pleasure to introduce Philip Whalen - and Allen Ginsberg too – Allen most of you know, he’s the head of the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics - the flesh of the disembodied school!  Philip Whalen and Allen Ginsberg met on a corner of First Street and Mission Street in September of 1955 at the Key Terminal and Allen was with Jack Kerouac and Philip was with Gary Snyder – a pretty heavy meeting! Philip Whalen has been a poet, is a poet . He’s been a poet to me, especially, and a teacher, and a friend. He’s also a Zen novice priest and you can catch him in his full regalia, his monk’s regalia, walking to Karma Dzong before nine in the morning, most mornings. He’s in residence at Naropa this week, and is lecturing tomorrow at the Visiting Poets class at 1.30. Philip has been a constant source of energy and inspiration for a whole generation of younger poets and we were checking out his poems in dark basements in New York in 1965 and ’66 [in New York] at The Poetry Project. He’s the author of On Bears Head, Scenes of Life At The Capitol, Severence Pay..and two novels, Imaginary Speeches For A Brazen Head and You Didn’t Even Try

Allen (Ginsberg) is the author of The Fall of America which won the National Book Award in 1974.He’s also a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and, I’m just gong to… this is a quote from Allen - from somewhere [it is, in fact, from Allen’s essay, “When the Mode of the Music Changes, the Walls of the City Shake”  – “Skill of freedom of composition” which will lead Poetry to the expression of the highest moment of the mind-body - mystical illumination..” ..(I think) that has something to do with the inspiration behind the Kerouac School. Philip will read first and then Allen. Glad you’re all here.

PW – glub. glub. – I want.. is this operating?, I guess? – glub. glub..  [tests mike]  - [begins his reading] -  "This is a lovely poem that dragged a friend of mine to the extent where he wouldn’t talk to me for about seven years in a row" – Whalen reads “20.VII.58, On which I Renounce The Notion of Social Responsibility”. (“The minute I get out of town/My friends get sick, go back on the sauce..”…”Mind a revolving door/My head a falling star”)

AG: [interrupts, typically concerned about the acoustics] - Can he..be heard syllable by syllable? Is the sound alright in the back? Raise your hand if you can not hear.

PW: I think everybody hears more or less, anyway. I think that..I think they’re they’re wondering why it is, as usual. (It’s a) terribly discouraging, terribly discouraging business. Quite often people are so busy trying to figure out why I’m saying it, that they don’t pay attention to what it is (that) I’m saying. We all miss the boat in both directions, but it’s alright.  [Whalen continues]

“Denuncuiation, or, Unfroked Again” (The trouble with you is..”,,”you don’t think/You simply worry./  I sat down in my house and ate a carrot.”

“Hymnus Ad Patrem Sinensis” (“I praise those ancient Chinamen..”…Happy to have saved us all.”

“Something Nice About Myself”” (“Lots of people who no longer love each other/ Keep on loving me/ & I/ I make myself rarely available”)

[Just under 8 minutes in, Whalen reads the important piece, “Since You Asked Me “]

“This was a manifesto from 1959. Every once in a while people ask me for manifestos and I have to write one. I couldn’t bring myself to write this one buy a friend of mine typed it for me while I dictated it, a press release for October 1959” – (“This poetry is a picture or graph of a mind moving..”..”, “I do not put down the academy but have assumed its function in my own person, and in the strictest sense of the word – academy; a walking grove of trees” … “..a lens focusing on a sheet of paper, Or the inside/ of your head. How do you like your world?”) -   "and, finally [also from 1959]" - “Awake a moment/Mind dreams again/Red roses black-edged petals” - "Quite a few years later [1964]"  - “Late Afternoon” (“I’m coming down from a walk to the top of Twin Peaks/ A sparrowhawk balanced in a headwind suddenly dives off it:/An answer to my question of this morning.” (I forget what the question was, it was something insoluble until that moment anyway. It was quite wonderful because it was sitting there in the middle of the air and he got tired of being there and he dove off into some other air, very easily and very simply (went away") 

The Great Beyond Denver” (“The pattern for the trip/ I put crux ansata in my mouth..”…”At first daybreak the River Platte appears” - (That was about an airplane ride, actually) - “Theophany” (“Pig-face gods nudge each other, snickering…”)

“Retake 20.X.63 From 7/III.63” - (“Imagine the first part all written out in French..”)

"This..this (next) poem is an overheard one. I mean, it’s actually.. I simply wrote down what I was hearing out in the hallway of this house that I was living in at the time. And the.. and it’s actually verbatim reporting" – Whistler’s Mother (“Mother and Ed are out in the car/Wait til I put on some clothes”..)

[PW: ..Strange, trying to figure out the prosody of that, would take you a little while.

AG (makes a valiant attempt) : da-da-da- da-da-da  da-da-da da-da-da da-da-da da-da-da - clothes]

PW (continues): “A Recall” (“Color of the Sun/Color of the Moon/Color of the Dog…”)

“Homage to WBY” (“after you read all them books..”..”Thin sheets of gold with bright enameling”)

“Saint Francis Lobbies Allen G” – (“unsuspected hairpins & inside Gaffney receptions..”..”Where’s the Russian Philology?/ scrolls and fur”)

“Song” (“That little man/Is a bad little man”)

“Three Mornings”  (“Fog dark morning..”)

“Epigram” (“That boy he star-/ted to be/a poet but/he stuttered”)

“Tennis Shoes” (“So quiet..”..”stay away from the city/ walk in the mountains”..”Button your fly, the policeman says, walking away, picking his nose”)

“For Brother Antoninus” (who has now gone backing to being Bill Everson again, I can’t change the poem, tho’) (“Did these leaves know as much as I? They must”..”..Who will/ Pray for us who are less than stone or wood?”

“The Coordinates” (“I was tired yesterday. It was your mother’s birthday..”..”These are the kind I have now.”)

"The Prophecy"(“The present assailable at any moment”…”IT SHALL NOT STAND”

[(PW to AG – Did you keep track of when it was that I started? AG (You’ve got) another five minutes) - PW resumes]

 ”The Idol” -  ("A gold woman with a condor’s beak”..”.Dots and squiggles justify/ The air and space I occupy”)

“Tara” (“This bronze Tara this bronze lady”..”We seldom treat ourselves right”

“Success Is Failure” (“They said, “Po Chu-I, go home.”…”Po Chu-I was never here, he never came to Kyoto”)

“Dewey Swanson”  (“..ran lunatic in the midst of our/ canoeing trip”… “from the time he first/started acting funny”)

“In The Center of Autumn” (“Too hot, the sun’s/Too hot..”.. “Orpheum theater/ Wallace, Shirley and Tosh Berman”)

“The Madness of Saul “ {“Everybody takes me too seriously/Nobody believes anything I say”)

“Larry Kearny at Stinson Beach” (“Ice Woman says, “You’re in the way!/ You’re in the way!”…”Why don’t you look/ Where you’re going?” 

[Allen breaks in again - AG (to PW): May I read a couple?, I have the book -. PW: Which one? - AG: Regalia..  -  "1967 Philip Whalen" – Allen reads (sic) “Regalia In Immediate Demand!” by Philip Whalen  ("Necklace of human bones/ Cup a silver-mounted cranium/Thigh-bone trumpets/ A skull drum/ Dear President Nixon, you are welcome to Lhasa!/ And where is dear Mr Edgar Hoover?”)]

At approximately twenty-four-and-a-half minutes in, Allen continues with his own reading, reading, principally journal (journalist) derived pieces -  “Cynadide Water in Pittsburgh” – (“Cock Rockerfeller”!), “Reading The Newspapers Can Drive You Mad” (“..The Chilean Ambassador Denies Ignorance!...”) “Freedom of Speech/ I’m an Average Citizen/ Scared Of The Cops” (cf "Hum Bom"!)  - "So what I’m reading were mostly poems written in sickness in the last two or three months." - he continues - "These are fragments from a weekly news magazine" – “Calvin C Cook. Retired Secretary RSN, says “Why let yourself be happy when you’re no damned good” - “Last night Allen Ginsberg, Signal Corps,Poet, Trainee.." - "Chicago Futures, or Written On a Hotel Napkin" (“Wind mills churning windy city’s rooftops antennae..”..)

At approximately thirty-and-a-half minutes in, Allen picks up his harmonium - “Two songs, written recently, one..  The first in the style of..Pete Seeger, from April 21, (19)75, I guess, that's over a year" - sings [with some slight changes to later published versions] (accompanied by harmonium) - “(Come along, Come along), End Vietnam War,  and “Guru Blues” (“I can’t find anyone to show me what to do..”.."and the revolutionaries are angry for government grants..".."The world of joy is empty, the dukkah is so dense".."I can't find anyone/ only you Guru.") 

Thirty-eight minutes in - "One last... “Blood Bath”  - "This is at..in the hospital, at the height of an attack of herpes simplex, the nerves of the head” (“It was a lazy fairy, a-bumpin down the line..”... "O what a blood bath!".."It was a Secretary/of State... "It was a mighty nation, blessed in eyes of God"..."Blood bath, blood bath, United States of Wrath..")

Allen concludes with "two final (unaccompanied)  poems" - “Swallowing Poison” ("Telephones, addresses, dim ringing bells through apartment wall..”   “Swallow that headline, swallow more poison” ….”Putting down the habit of commanding was his subject”...”Those drums marching up the backbone of East 12^th Street New York”...."),
and, a long dream-notation - “Went - Midnight Dream” ("New York Hospital”, Saturday midnight") – ("Went with LeRoi Jones, Imamu Amiri Baraka on a Newark street… “After a decade not conversing with each other I asked him how his aesthetic interests were satisfied these days. “Well, honey, you just have to guess from here on out, but they are aesthetic, my interests. He pulled over a collection of “Ray Bella Brown" dresses, art nouveau from the mid 20’s” ..”You ain’t heard of dresses till you’ve heard of Ray Bella Brown dresses” – “How do you feel about the whole gay scene now? – Well, it has its own design, he says with a dry smile” – “We’re all against capitalism, I said”.. conversation interrupted by New York hospital midnight doctor..”)

(“The Ray Bella Brown of the dream", Allen points out,  "doesn’t exist, it’s an invention of the dream, it’s not an historical entity").