Gossamurmur
Gossamurmur
BOOKS, CHAPBOOKS, AND COLLABORATIONS BY ANNE WALDMAN
On the Wing
O My Life!
Giant Night
Baby Breakdown
Memorial Day
(with Ted Berrigan)
No Hassles
The West Indies Poems
Life Notes: Selected Poems
Self Portrait
(with Joe Brainard)
Sun the Blonde Out
Fast Speaking Woman
Journals & Dreams
Shaman/Shamane
Sphinxeries
(with Denyse Du Roi)
Polar Ode
(with Eileen Myles)
Countries
(with Reed Bye)
Cabin
First Baby Poems
Makeup on Empty Space
Invention
(with Susan Hall)
Den Mond in Farbe Sehen
Skin Meat Bones
The Romance Thing
Blue Mosque
Tell Me About It: Poems for Painters
Helping the Dreamer: New & Selected Poems, 1966–1988
Her Story
(with Elizabeth Murray)
Not a Male Pseudonym
Lokapala
Fait Accompli
Troubairitz
Iovis: All Is Full of Jove
Kill or Cure
Iovis II
Kin
(with Susan Rothenberg)
Polemics
(with Anselm Hollo & Jack Collom)
Homage to Allen G.
(with George Schneeman)
Donna Che Parla Veloce
Young Manhattan
(with Bill Berkson)
One Voice in Four Parts
(with Richard Tuttle)
Marriage: A Sentence
Au Lit/Holy
(with Eleni Sikelianos & Laird Hunt)
Zombie Dawn
(with Tom Clark)
Dark Arcana/Afterimage or Glow
In the Room of Never Grieve: New & Selected
Poems, 1985–2003
Fleuve Flâneur
(with Mary Kite & Dave Kite)
Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble
Outrider
Femme Qui Parle Vite
Red Noir
Nine Nights Meditation (with Donna Dennis)
Martyrdom
Manatee/Humanity
Matriot Acts
The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment
Soldatesque/Soldiering (with Noah Saterstrom)
Cry Stall Gaze (with Pat Steir)
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in Penguin Books 2013
Copyright © Anne Waldman, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Purchase only authorized editions.
Excerpt from “Book 1” from
Gunslinger
by Edward Dorn. Copyright 1989 Edward Dorn. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Duke University Press and Jennifer Dunbar Dorn.
Excerpt from
Tao Te Ching
by Lao-Tzu, translated by David Hinton
(Counterpoint Press, 2000). Used by permission.
Page xi
and
141
constitute an extension of this copyright page.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Waldman, Anne, 1945-
Gossamurmur / Anne Waldman.
pages cm
ISBN: 978-1-101-59277-9
I. Title.
PS3573.A4215G67 2013
811’.54—dc23 2012040614
Designed by Ginger Legato
what are the limits of the body?
for
Akilah Oliver
poet, teacher, catalyst
(1961–2011)
Nevertheless,
It is dangerous to be named
and makes you mortal.
If you have a name
you can be sold
you can be told
by that name leave, or come
you become, in short
a reference, or if bad luck
is large in your future
you might become an institution
which you will then mistake
for defense. I could
now place you
in a column from which
There is No Escape
and down with The Machine
will always recognize you.
Or a bullet might be Inscribed
or I could build a maze
called a social investigation
and drop you in it
your name
into it—
Please! I implored him
you terrify me.
What then, I asked
is my case? looking into
the Odd toed ungulate’s eyes
who had his left leg resting on my shoulder.
The mortal can be described
the Gunslinger finished,
That’s all mortality is
in fact.
—
Gunslinger
, Edward Dorn