"Fast Speaking Woman" by Anne Waldman

From: valerie8654 RemoveThis @my-dejanews.com
Subject: Re: "Fast-Speaking Woman"

In article <sscobie-ya02408000R2501991055530001 RemoveThis @news.coastnet.com>,
sscobie RemoveThis @uvic.ca (Maureen & Stephen Scobie) wrote:
 > In article <78gbs3$6m6$1@readme.online.no>, "Snow" <aksla RemoveThis @online.no>
wrote:
 >
  > > Hello. Would it be possible for someone to give me the full
  > > text to the Anne Waldman poem "Fast-Speaking Woman" ("I'm
  > > the Buddha woman, I'm the fast speaking woman, I'm the
  > > trumpet woman, I'm the vagabond
  > > woman," etc.) - part of which is read in the Bob Dylan film
  > > "Renaldo & Clara"?
  > >
  > > I have looked for it everywhere on various web-sites, but I
  > > can't see it anywhere.
 >
 > It's quite a long poem, actually -- longer than I'm prepared to type in!
 > It takes up 23 pages in:
 >
 > Helping the Dreamer: New & Selected Poems 1966-1988
 > Anne Waldman
 > Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1989
 >
 > Stephen
 >

Well I guess I know where to come to see where old friends hang out when not
elsewhere.

Anne Waldman,
Fast Speaking Woman
(Pocket Poets Series No. 33,
City Lights, 1996)

As director and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
at the Naropa Institute, Anne Waldman continues to make herself known as one
of the leading figured in the poetics and performance poetry field. Fast
Speaking Woman is a 20th-anniversary expanded edition of the original text
and includes several essays culled from her teaching materials on chant and
performance poetry.

The title poem is a thirty-page "list chant" indebted to Maria Sabina, the
Mazatec Indian shamaness in Mexico. Making use of free association and
internal rhymes, the list is a representation of both the individual artist
herself and "everywoman" -- "I'm an abalone woman / I'm the abandoned woman
/ I'm the woman abashed, the gibberish woman / the aborigine woman, the
woman absconding." Waldman's use of the list chant gives her the ability to
improvise with sounds and words during performance, to further explore the
relationships among mental, verbal, physical, and emotional forms. She
explains these forms further in the essay titled "'Fast Speaking Woman' &
The Dakini Principle."

Laced with Tibetan buddhism and archaic beliefs in magic, the poems in this
collection continue to push the envelope in contemporary performance poetry.
Like the title poem, many of these poems are list chants, best spoken aloud.
The repetition of the first words of each line in "Notorious" -- "known
for" -- create a rhythm and mindset that allows for a further glimpse into
the energy of the poem. According to Waldman, the poem itself speaks through
the performer as an energy source, becoming a full experience in itself.

Waldman continues playing with free association in "Lady Tactics," a poem
best read with that idea in mind. At first some of the word choices seem
absurd; read the poem aloud, however, and the assonance and dissonance
created will open up a new layer in the poetry. Waldman functions on the
principle that poetry is meant to be heard, not read. "Lullaby" is a short,
eight-line chant; reading it over and over suggests different ways to
emphasize and inflect lines with subtle nuances. Fast Speaking Woman also
contains several excerpts from Waldman's writing journals that explain the
principles that drive her poetry.

Fast Speaking Woman celebrates the renewed force of feminine energy in
writing while paying tribute to such traditional lyricists as Sappho and
Yeats. Waldman's collection is a must for anyone who enjoys performance
poetry or playing around with language structures.

[ by Audrey M. Clark ]<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->