Collaboration with other artists and collaboration
that you did with Francesco Clemente.
Yeah.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
Did he do the paintings for-- how did--
He did the paintings for there.
I think in all of the ones in particular to him,
he begins with the--
I begin with his--
he begins-- he does the images and it's been--
it began with a--
he used to have a substantial show
of, what were they, like watches, a whole series he did.
Bishop Berger did a catalog of it, and it was called It,
is the name of the catalog.
In any case, I was then living in Finland that particular year
teaching at the University, and Raymond Floyd,
who is a very close mutual friend,
said that Francesco would be really happy--
if I could think of something.
He said take as many as you want.
There were 64 images, and he said take any, one or all,
whatever you'd like to do.
So this is our first working in any sense together.
So I chose 12 and did poems particular,
and we really hit it off, and he was very pleased,
not just flattered, but there was
a correspondence of feeling.
It was very interesting, even to the general sense
of the information.
So with that sort of securing pleasure,
we then did, not didactically or it was a format,
but we did shows--
Gargosian was showing him quite frequently at that point.
So again, with Raymonds, sort of, very useful participation,
the catalogs for at least three shows perhaps--
I did a factual series at poems with the images.
Purgatorio, for example, the Black Paintings and the last,
one of my [INAUDIBLE].
Again, a series of portraits, gouaches, that I
don't think--
I don't think I have the poems here.
And then the-- when it came time--
he had a large retrospective at the Guggenheim.
In that situation, what he wanted to do
was to have a particular cluster of friends
take on particular parts of the show.
I got "Conversion to Her," I remember that.
That was a complicated, but certainly really interesting.
So I did a series of--
each painting is characteristic of the museum,
or any such situation, has a little tag
that tells you the provenance of the painting, when
it was painted, material, blah blah blah,
and any history in particular.
So those-- I wrote brief poems.
E.g., "I'll tell you what you want--
to say a word, to know the letters of yourself.
A skin falls off.
A big-eared head appears.
An eye and mouth."
Or there's one which--
"Everybody's child walks the same winding road,
laughs and cries, dies.
That's everybody's child.
The one who's in-between.
The others who have come and gone."
Et cetera, et cetera.
So I loved doing this.
And I insisted on doing all the entries.
There were 25.
Then, of course, at the very last minute,
they began to shift the show around.
So they said, could we take off 23 and 21 maybe?
I said, no, man, you know, I really want them there.
So they didn't show up in the show.
In fact, that aspect of the show was muted entirely.
And the museum expectedly returned to its own authority.
But in the catalog.
There they are.
Yeah, that is true.
So that was fun.
I mean, he's a very engaging, bright man to work with.
And his rapport with poets is exceptional,
not just he liked poets to hang out with, but he was--
he gave me once--
he's published a substantial collection of poetry
through his mother's insistence, I believe.
And he was really a very bright, curious man.
So but always, in that case, his came first.
Jim Dine, it was the other way around.
I'd do the text first and then Jim would do something.
I don't think-- so that "Mabel," that whole sequence
with the curious heads, he does that in relation to the text.
With that sequence pictures, he does the images, etchings,
in relation to the text.
I don't think--
I can't recall anything which was is the other way around.
It's hard.
Only once or twice have I worked in what one
can call a true collaboration.
I did something [INAUDIBLE] was dancing.
Cletus Johnson was about the closest I got to that.
But by and large, it was you do this and I'll do this.
So it had a kind of--
but some people really get to me in the sense
of the ways in which they propose the world.
And the fact that it's not words makes it really terrific.
I mean, music can have that effect too.
It's in the non--
it's a language it's not verbal.
Again, today, [INAUDIBLE] happily with Peter Walter
and Peter Walsh talking about a language that was gestural--
where a turtle became--
anyhow, it became gestural.
And there was a very determinable vocabulary
that was developed.
Or we think of some of the chimpanzees who
speak one syllable, like "ooh!"
Or "uh!"
If you start thinking of words-- not to didactically
make them abstract in that way-- but think of what the little,
little, little.
Like Ginsberg's boxcars, boxcars, boxcars.
Whatever boxcars are.
Cars made of boxes, I guess.
Anyhow, any-- please.
I'd like to ask you about jazz.
Do you [INAUDIBLE] jazz?
Yeah, I've been doing a lot of activity out of the house.
There, the crucial trend initially-- there
are two, actually, that are very crucial.
Three.
As Peter would remember, when we were living in Bolinas,
we had this extraordinary neighbor, Steve Swallow, who's
a great bass genius player.
And he, in turn, was an old friend of David Beauregard's,
a fellow poet.
And so our daughter Hannah--
not Hannah-- Sarah, used to babysit Steve's daughter.
And so we got to know each other, rather shyly,
but we did connect.
And then when he was back in New York,
he had some money, grab money, to work with some materials
of his interest and choice.
So he asked me if I'd be agreeable to his working
with 10 of my poems.
So I was delighted.
It came out of the collection called "Home."
And the several crucial people to me
are the Steve Kuhn, the pianos.
It was really wonderful.
And then Sheila Jordan, very-- she sings the material.
It's just wonderful.
And then not very long after that, I was in Paris for work.
And another extraordinary musician,
just returned to this country, I guess, Steve Lacy, who's
now in Boston, at the New England Conservatory,
had been in the audience.
Earlier that day, we'd been talking
for a kind of set up situation on French radio
about how has jazz influenced-- and he
was the generous person who's talking from the side of jazz.
So he'd come to the reading there and like
one poem called "The rhythm."
So he subsequently is setting--
and he went on to do a whole musical evening called
"Futurities," which had a gala performance.
It leads with Ken Nolan painting backdrop.
Anyhow, lots of [INAUDIBLE].
And it came out as a two-CD set.
It's 20 poems, in that case.
And subsequently, he's worked with particular poems.
In all those cases, I was not participant more
than being the person who had written the initial text--
a movie made from a novel or something.
But nonetheless, fascinating to hear what was done with it
and how it was heard.
But then, thanks to--
I had a friend from Buffalo who I'd
known as a high school kid, Chris Massey, who
moved subsequently to--
he was a drummer, a classic drummer--
and he had moved to Switzerland and was working out
of Switzerland.
And he had had a group called Forever Sharp and Vivid which
was the initial trio he had.
Then he had another one called Trio Courage.
And so anyhow, he wanted to come home
to play in Buffalo if possible.
So I was happily able to get him a place to do it.
And [INAUDIBLE] they get into town about 5:00 that afternoon.
And the group that did manage to get
Steve Swallow to come with him.
And he also got this extraordinary guitar--
wonderful musician, David Torn, who does a lot
with layering and computer.
And the lovely leads person, as they say, David Cassidy.
So they all showed up about two hours before the performance.
And I said, well, let me just introduce you guys
and give you people a little sense of what
your authority is blah blah blah,
and then sort of fade out.
So to make a long story short, they
really did say, Bob, you know, it's your town,
you read, and we'll do it.
So that ended up as a CD called "Have We Told
You All You Thought to Know?"
And then we subsequently went on to greater heights, went to One
World Theater in Austin.
And then about a year ago, we were in the Knitting Factory.
And then at one point, we were even at Woodstock, where--
it was a series of concerts.
So ours was sandwiched in-between something
like x trio playing Mozart's early works,
or, later, Brahms' "Lullaby."
And there we were with this incredible--
we started, we were seamless.
We'd start, we didn't quit until it was done.
I remember one moment saying, you know, this very same thing.
That's it.
And to my fellows--
and I remember, it goes right down
to where all you can hear now is the fingering on the saxophone.
Then it begins to build up.
I see this manic look from David Torn.
It's-- this incredible thing begins to build out of that
rhythm, until suddenly the whole place is just dense with white
noise.
And our audience has been--
I mean, I'm 76, I think if I could do it, why can't they?
But basically, it's a very old time [INAUDIBLE] audience.
And one of the guys recording said,
you have this [INAUDIBLE].
One couple came out, and the husband's saying, oh my,
I thought that would never end.
There was no way to leave discreetly,
because it was continuous.
So I found it--
and I certainly didn't find a new life or a new identity,
you know.
But it was fascinating to sort of put your language
where your head is and see--
one of the dilemmas, of course, is when to come in
and when to leave.
And I've listened to jazz all my life in one way or another, all
my adult life.
And I was fascinated by that sort
of growing out of itself that's very characteristic of what
its like.
I work as a poet.
And that's [AUDIO OUT] somehow--
I'm not intuitive.
I sensed when it was appropriate to enter
and sensed when it was appropriate to get out.
And so I could, in that way, play--
I [INAUDIBLE] was at this, you know--
reading is just as you've heard.
And so it was no--
but it worked.
It felt very good.
So I didn't feel I was just been backed up
by musicians, or they--
or imposing myself.
It felt-- that did feel collaborative.
Okey-doke.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]