Anne Waldman Quotes

Your compassion travels beyond your own inner circle. And then you breathe out an alternative version where you mentally and emotionally and psychologically purify the poisons. So indeed, the generative idea is in the crux of this practice and of my propensity toward poetry, which is a practice of the imagination.

I think Visions of Cody is the most radical book in terms of poetic stretch and the way Jack Kerouac is able to incorporate documentation and incorporate the live tape recording of Neal and so on.

Idea that all the beats are wildly liberal and progressive is ridiculous. You have people thinking for themselves and having certain affinities because of their upbringing and who their family are, their own people who were close to them who fought in these wars and so on. It’s complicated. But they had that ability to continue the conversation.

I hope I’m not implying role of contemporary poet for myself, although there’s a kind of resonant paradigm. It’s traditionally a difficult role.

We pride ourselves at Natrona – I mean, pride {ironically] – on developing a noncompetitive community. That’s very important. The values that can come from that kind of meditative work combined with the creative work you do, combined with your activism, can come together.

Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing – and third: the act/act of vocalizing.

I think of the amazing things that were going on. So it’s so rich. The doors keep opening.

The color red is symbolic of passion and action, so this Vajrayogini, as she’s called, comes with a mantra and she comes with these various weapons and accouterments that are all symbolic of the kind of activity that this principle, as it were, this psychological principle, does or activates in the world. And there’s text and mantra as well.

We can think for ourselves and we can awaken the world to a greater consciousness.

I was raised with a sense of democratic vistas and egalitarianism.

My father shared the ethos of many of the beat writers and was a friend of Allen Ginsberg. Probably for 25 years of my father’s life, He had been an itinerant piano player and so traveled the road with bands and that sort of thing.

It was a little harder when I first went to Egypt when I was 18 years old and being a white woman with a knapsack and in blue jeans. But again I was part of the rucksack revolution there was some grace there. You could put it that way. And confidence as well because I thought of myself as a poet. That was part of it. I was going for that, to have experiences to make the work.