I was also connected with poetry, both in America
and, certainly, in Europe, and that came before.
And in the '70s, there was a book called That Dada Strain.
Although the title is taken from a jazz blues standard,
but I think some sense of Dada in that.
So a series of poems that That Dada
Strain addressed to the Dada poets
of the earlier 20th century.
And so I'll read a little suite of Dada poems,
the opening poem of That Dada Strain,
a sound poem by a German poet, Hugo Ball,
all of this taking place in Zurich, Switzerland,
during the First World War, and then a poem
spoken to Hugo Ball.
There's a lot of politics and war and disgust
with war and human cruelty among the Dadas.
"That Dada Strain.
[WHIRLY TUBE PLAYING]
The zigzag mothers of the gods of science, the lunatic fixed
stars and pharmacies, fathers who
left the tents of anarchism unguarded, the arctic bones
strung out on saint germain like tom toms.
Living light bulbs, aphrodisia, 'art is junk,' the urinal says.
'Dig a hole and swim in it.'
A message from the grim computer, 'ye are hamburgers'"