:34:01
There was a wonderful creative climate there
although I didn't...
:34:04
I wasn't fully aware of it,
but it was the center of the art world...
:34:08
happenings, the first art movements
were going on.
:34:11
It was all there.
:34:12
You were suddenly able
to take your clothes off.
:34:16
You were suddenly free
of all the shackles of family...
:34:20
the baggage...
:34:23
of tradition, of bad tradition.
:34:27
I was looking for freedom,
but freedom didn't exist all over America.
:34:31
Freedom only existed, really,
here in the Village, in Greenwich Village.
:34:35
"America, I've given you all,
and now I'm nothing
:34:38
"America, two dollars
and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956
:34:44
"I can't stand my own mind
:34:46
"America, when will we end the human war?
:34:49
"Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
:34:51
"I don't feel good; don't bother me
:34:53
"I won't write my poem
until I'm in my right mind"
:34:56
The big breakthrough...
:34:58
was in an ex-gay bar on MacDougal Street...
:35:02
formerly the MacDougal Street Bar,
I think this was '58 or '59...
:35:07
then called The Gaslight.
:35:10
And it was the first poetry reading
in one of these sort of coffee shop/bars...
:35:14
sort of a folk club/coffee shop/bar.
:35:18
And it was so astonishing
that there was a story on Page 3...
:35:22
a whole page in the Daily News:
"Poets Reading in the Coffee Shop".
:35:26
"America, when will you be angelic?
:35:28
"When will you take off your clothes?
:35:30
"When will you look at yourself
through the grave?
:35:32
"When will you be worthy
of your million Trotskyites?
:35:35
"America, why are your libraries
full of tears?
:35:38
"America, when will you send
your eggs to India?
:35:40
"I'm sick of your insane demands.
:35:42
"When can I go into the supermarket
and buy what I need with my good looks?"
:35:46
Down the block here was the San Remo.
:35:48
And every Saturday night
you'd have the riots...
:35:50
between the Stalinists and the Trotskyites.
:35:52
Glasses flying, that sort of thing.
:35:57
There's an old bitch upstairs
who keeps pounding the floor...