| A NIGHT IN LHASA: |
| Lois Landes-Levi and Michael Rothenberg |
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For all the Eastern influence, however, the duo were well-prepared to offer images and insight with a solid American tone to them. Not surprising, as both are Americans, and for all their world traveling, may reflect readily on the American experience, as in this sample, from the poem Meditation: I somehow
improving the "THIS
YEAR I'M GONNA HIT he
said on A Louise Landes Levi was born in New York City in 1944, grew up in Russell Gardens, near Great Neck (a place she refers to as a "Golden Ghetto"), graduated with honors from the University of California at Berkeley, and has lived in the Netherlands, Italy, India and the USA. Her other books include The Water Mirror, Departure, Concerto, and The Tower. She is also the translator of Rasa by Rene Daumal, Vers La Completude by Henri Michaux, and Dedicato allo Scuro, Love Poetry by Mira Bhai. Her Poems by Mira Bhai and Guru Punk are both forthcoming from Cool Grove Press. Another book -- The House Lamps Have Been Lit -- is forthcoming from Supernova. Over the years, she lived in Amsterdam, "became a wanderer (and) spent many hours on street corners & ‘piazzas’ playing my sarangi (a kind of bowed harp), traveled to India and back to Paris, and took on a ‘Guru’ named Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche. "My Guru intervened on many occasions," she notes. "He resurrected me when, at a certain point, I cld. literally do no more, than writhe on the streets of Paris When asked if I cld. print a book called Guru Punk. He asked me what Punk was. I said, “O you know, those songs I used to sing.” He said, “that's fine”. I said “that's fine because you are the Guru in question.” What is Guru Punk? For all her Eastern mysticism, Levi-Landes' work is laced with a quirky humor mingled with a touch of triste and her signature self-deprecations - distinctly New York traits, one might argue. In a characteristically shorthand-laced biographical sketch, she says she encountered this dichotomy early on. Here's a sample: Encountered 1st. ‘Guru’ in the leaves, in the attraction of the dark. Encountered lst. Punk reaction when entire anthology of poems was lost at age 8. Injunctions against eating bananas in the street left me indifferent. I ate my bananas in the local neighborhood ‘Russell Gardens’ Great Neck, NY/ Golden Ghetto, USA. I learned meditation at an early age. My parent's house was unbearable to me. I sought ‘refuge’ in a near-by forest. I found a bush that served as alternative housing. In effect, Guru Punk is a welding of voice, notes a reviewer in The Mirror, which is a neat sort of oxymoron with Guru as "the principle of devotion and Punk, total defiance. Together they form a powerful link to primordial mind recording in ageless pursuit of Truth," writes The Mirror. "At the center of each poem is devotion to Guru principle with characteristic centrifugal impact... lost love memories, snippets of overheard conversation, amusing commentary... observations on the subway, at an ATM machine, from 'on the road'-- a myriad luminous details revealing themselves in the force of her energetic field." And now she has returned to America, somewhat of a foreign country to her. "I landed on the shore of my birth, in the city of my birth. Somewhat more transparent than when I had left I (re)experienced the dynamic of close encounter & the capitalist culture of the late 20th century. America was as challenging to me as to the first immigrant. Although born here, my national status was never established through personal, economic or professional liaisons." Landes Levi was joined in the reading by Michael Rothenberg was born in Miami Beach, Florida. He grew up there and attended the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where he received a BA in Literature. He studied for his Masters in Poetics at the New College of California. Owner of a bromiliad hothouse on the foggy cliffsides overlooking Pacifica Ca., he divides his time between Northern California, Florida and New York and has edited numerous online and other publications focusing on neo-beat and other authors such as Ira Cohen, Philip Whalen and Joan Kyger. Rothenberg has had several books published; Bromeliads (Big Bridge Press, Jan. 1990), Bromeliaceae Andreanae (Big Bridge Press, Jan. 1983), Dahlia (Big Bridge Press, Jan 1989), Favorite Songs (Big Bridge Press, Jan. 1990), Nightmare of the Violins (Berkeley Two Windows Press, 1986), and What The Fish Saw (Big Bridge Press, 1984). Another book, Man-Woman (Big Bridge Press, Jan 1988) was written in collaboration with Joanne Kyger. He was also the editor for Collected Poems of Ann Fields (Big Bridge Press, Jan. 1994). His poetry books and broadsides are archived at the University of San Francisco, and are held in the Special Collection libraries of Brown University, Claremont Colleges, University of Kansas, the New York Public Library, UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, and UC-Santa Cruz. His songs have appeared in Hollywood Pictures' Shadowhunter and Black Day, Blue Night, and most recently, TriStar Pictures' Outer Ozona. Rothenberg's poetry, similarly centrifugal in construction to Landes-Levi's, betrays the same dyad of infiniteness and singularity of experience, revealing that for all the multifaceted myriad quality of the voice and aesthetic, there is room for the individual voice to come out - such as in this passage from the long poem Cold All Day and We Don't Know Why The
silk hydrangea I remember what I saw before I heard it fall
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