25 – Fourteen Poets, Far and Near, Reading Their Poems

Explicit content warning

06/13/20 • 57 min

What to do during the COVID era when it's problematic interviewing someone in person? Get a bunch of your poet friends to read their poems to your listeners! I realized that I have at least ten friends who are poets, some of them highly celebrated poets, and I had already recorded some of them reading their poetry. Several other poet friends wrote new poetry for this show and sent their recordings to me. Most of the poets you’ll be hearing are from California, and I live in Arizona now where I know only two poets (so far) so I’ve also included several poets from this year’s Tucson Poetry Festival, which occurred a few weeks ago on-line because of the COVID crisis.

List of poets/poems:

Neil Harvey – Zoom Word

Jon Hammerbeck – Accidental Droppings

David Hammerbeck – 4-3-20

Susan Thackrey – Selections from Andalusia: The Farewell / How do you...; Mourning in Al Andaluse / Alba; Walnut / Eyelid; The Moon / Look How...

Ralph Jack (Ralph Gutlohn) – Acceptable Limits; Be Like Concrete; At The Bottom Of A Glance

Ken Paul Rosenthal – Where Icarus Flew

Kara Daddario Bown – Graceland; Safety in Numbers

Waz Thomas – Falling Water; I Walk, I Stumble, I Fall; Susanville; No!

William Pitt Root – Ways Water Has; Ode To A Frog

Pam Uschuk – Green Flame; Cracking 100

Bojan Louis - Huzzle 8

Diana Marie Delgado: The Kind Of Light I Give Off Isn’t Going To Last; Some Guy I Liked Who Dated Strippers; & Who Makes Love to Us After We Die?

Sylvia Chan - Personal Concept

Sean Avery – Genius; How To Make Mumble Rap

Special thanks to Melanie Madden, Executive Director of the Tucson Poetry Festival.

Neil Harvey is an award-winning artist, photographer and media producer. His artwork and writing attend to the space between thoughts. His work has been shown in galleries in California, New York and New Hampshire. With five short films to his credit, he has been a featured artist at Chicago’s Mess Hall Experimental Music Festival. He has been a radio producer, writer, editor and host for The Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature, New Dimensions Radio, The California Indian Radio Project, The Love of Wisdom With Alan Watts and Music From the Hearts of Space. He has produced over 300 internationally distributed radio programs for which he has won numerous awards. He earned a B.A. in Visual Arts/Communications at the University of California, San Diego. About his 40 year Correspondence Piece and the 2019 Brooklyn installation Sound In Stalls One, Two, Three collaborations with sound artist Jon Hammerbeck, he has written "It is like dropping a rusty cadillac into your birdbath."

Jon Hammerbeck is a big tall lawyer, of Viking descent, who lives on the edges of Los Angeles. For many years he DJ’d under the name Lew Cadia, on KSDT-FM radio in the southern empire. His sound work has been featured at The Mess Hall Experimental Music Festival in Chicago, in films, and in various vehicular forms during rush hour traffic for over 40 years. His in-depth study of the works of Martin Heidegger, Alfred North Whitehead, Fritjof Capra and Edgah have informed his interests in Dada, musique concrète, and multilayered muscilageounous musical forms. His multimedia titles include Mental Shelf Life, Chronospondence I 1982/2013, Suburbaphobia Melted Combo 8/82 and Correspliceness I: Is Growth Lions(1982). About his part in the 2019 sound installation Sound In Stalls One, Two, Three he wrote: “The honor to present carefully crafted and randomly mussed-up sound in the intimate acoustics of three Brooklyn brew pub toilets has opened new possibilities for creative release.”

David Hammerbeck has been a teacher, a writer, an actor and director, a trekking company owner, and has even toiled in the restaurant business, most notably at the venerable Keens Chophouse near Herald Square in Manhattan. He has taught at UC Santa Cruz, Loyola Marymount, DePaul University, and other institutions, as well as teaching abroad in Kazakhstan and Nepal. He has trod the boards in London, New York, LA, San Francisco, and other choice locations, and has appeared in films, including a Batman film as Michelle Pfeiffer’s father. David also has a bunch of degrees, including a PhD from the School of Theatre, Film and Television at UCLA, though...

List of poets/poems:

Neil Harvey – Zoom Word

Jon Hammerbeck – Accidental Droppings

David Hammerbeck – 4-3-20

Susan Thackrey – Selections from Andalusia: The Farewell / How do you...; Mourning in Al Andaluse / Alba; Walnut / Eyelid; The Moon / Look How...

Ralph Jack (Ralph Gutlohn) – Acceptable Limits; Be Like Concrete; At The Bottom Of A Glance

Ken Paul Rosenthal – Where Icarus Flew

Kara Daddario Bown – Graceland; Safety in Numbers

Waz Thomas – Falling Water; I Walk, I Stumble, I Fall; Susanville; No!

William Pitt Root – Ways Water Has; Ode To A Frog

Pam Uschuk – Green Flame; Cracking 100

Bojan Louis - Huzzle 8

Diana Marie Delgado: The Kind Of Light I Give Off Isn’t Going To Last; Some Guy I Liked Who Dated Strippers; & Who Makes Love to Us After We Die?

Sylvia Chan - Personal Concept

Sean Avery – Genius; How To Make Mumble Rap

Special thanks to Melanie Madden, Executive Director of the Tucson Poetry Festival.

Previous Episode

24 – Psychedelic Drugs as Medicine, with Andrew Weil, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and “Don”

In the last episode, number 23, we heard from visionary ethnobotanist, mystic and writer Terence McKenna, and from Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association For Psychedelic Science.

This episode, number 24, is a continuation on the same topic, the increasing use of consciousness-expanding substances, also called psychedelics or hallucinogens, for health and personal growth. People around the world are using LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and a whole range of other psychedelic substances to treat conditions ranging from allergies and anxiety to substance abuse and alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder, and many other problems. Some people use these substances in tiny doses to enhance their everyday life, work, and play. Some use them in higher doses for more profound experiences. This topic has been getting more attention these days due in part to Michael Pollan’s recent book entitled How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

Today we’ll hear from Ralph Metzner, Timothy Leary, Andrew Weil and an anonymous friend "Don" under the influence of a “micro-dose” of LSD.

Ralph Metzner, the German-born American psychologist and pioneering LSD researcher at Harvard University, and the author of The Well of Remembrance, The Unfolding Self, and Green Psychology, was speaking at the New Living Expo in San Francisco in 2012, and my friend Margie Lewis gave me a ticket to see him there in a panel discussing “the re-birth of psychedelic culture.” Right before the panel started, I asked Ralph for a brief chat as he was waiting to go onstage, to talk about psychedelic drugs as medicine to strengthen the body-mind connection.

Then we’ll hear a few minutes from Timothy Leary’s talk at the University of California, San Diego, in 1976, recorded using the little cassette recorder that I recorded lectures with at the time.

Then, Dr. Andrew Weil speaks at a MAPS conference in 2012 in San Jose, CA, about how he used LSD to help cure himself of allergies vis-a-vis the mind-body connection. After that comes my interview with Andy in 2012.

[caption id="attachment_2886" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Andy Moore and Andy Weil in San Francisco, 198? (Photo by Jack Walsh)[/caption]

Next, hear my interview with a friend who asked to remain anonymous when discussing taking LSD to enhance his life and work. An hour or so before this interview occurred, he had taken what is called a “micro-dose” of LSD.

[caption id="attachment_2902" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Let's call him "Don."[/caption]

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This episode is dedicated to Dr. Norman Zinberg and Dorothy Zinberg.

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Next Episode

26 – Brooks Collins And The Crash of Flying Tiger Flight 282

Come along with Andy and his friend Brooks Collins of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) as they search the hills near San Francisco International Airport for the wreckage of Flying Tiger Airlines flight 282, which crashed there in 1964, right near the spot where Gaspar de Portola's 1769 expedition became the first Europeans to behold San Francisco Bay. Brooks is a great conversationalist and he’s knowledgeable in an astonishing number of topics, so our conversation ranges from air wreck adventuring and archeology to particle physics, mirages, Nike missile bases, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, tunnel boring, raptors, and many other topics. Andy, as usual, asks a lot of questions and makes quirky attempts to be amusing.

Check-six.com page for this crash: http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/Flying_Tiger_282.htm

Lockheed Constellation:

Wreckage from flight 282:

Brooks Collins: