Daniel Kane - Do You Have a Band?: Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City

Do You Have a Band?

DO YOU HAVE A BAND?

Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City

DANIEL KANE

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2017 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-54460-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kane, Daniel, 1968 author.

Title: Do you have a band? : poetry and punk rock in New York City / Daniel Kane.

Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016056217 (print) | LCCN 2017021090 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231162968 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231162975 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: American poetryNew York (State)New YorkHistory and criticism. | American poetry20th centuryHistory and criticism. | Punk rock musicNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. | Punk cultureNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. | New York (N.Y.)Intellectual life20th century.

Classification: LCC PS255.N5 (ebook) | LCC PS255.N5 K363 2017 (print) | DDC 811/.540997471dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016056217

A Columbia University Press E-book.

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Cover design by Julia Kushnirsky

Cover photograph Roberta Bayley

For Jenny and Bramble

Contents

I am grateful for the many conversations about poetry and punk Ive had over the years with friends, family, musicians, poets, and scholars. Thanks are owed to Marina Araujo, James Birmingham, Lee Ann Brown, Lynne Cahill, Howard Cunnell, Anne Dewey, Maggie Dubris, Richard Elliott, Andrew Epstein, Thomas Evans, Peter Gizzi, Doug Haynes, Richard Hell, Lisa Jarnot, Michael Jonik, Gillian Kane, Daniel Katz, Sam Ladkin, Jenny Lund, Pejk Malinovski, Peter Middleton, Thurston Moore, Patricia Morrisroe, Eileen Myles, Elinor Nauen, Peter The King Nicholls, Cyrus Patell, Lee Ranaldo, Libbie Rifkin, Jody Rosen, Sasha Kane Rosen, Philip Shaw, Linda Steinman, Michael Szalay, Marvin Taylor, Anne Waldman, Luke Walker, Bryan Waterman, and Lewis Warsh. Diarmuid Hester introduced me to the poetry of Dennis Cooper and taught me about the centrality of Coopers role in mediating between punk and poetry, popular culture and the avant-gardemy section on Coopers work owes much to the conversations Diarmuid and I had. A chance to serve as visiting associate professor in the Department of English, New York University, proved a great opportunity to work with the graduate research students Kimberly Adams, Andrew Gorin, David Hobbs, Luke McMullan, and Brengre Riou. All five proved challenging and inspiring readers and thinkers whose insights helped me shape this book.

I would especially like to thank Lytle Shaw and Simon Warner, who were generous and critical readers of an earlier version of this manuscript. Similarly, the attention to detail and terrific suggestions for redrafting from my editor, Philip Leventhal, are deeply appreciated.

Many thanks to those of you who gave me permission to quote from or reproduce your poetry, your music, your images, and your correspondence: Bruce Andrews, Roberta Bayley, Bill Berkson, Brigid Berlin, Michael Brownstein, Rhys Chatham, Stephanie Chernikowski, Dennis Cooper, Maggie Dubris, Raymond Foye, John Giorno, Richard Hell, Nathan Kernan, Samara Kupferberg, Gerard Malanga, Bernadette Mayer, Eileen Myles, Elinor Nauen, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, Jon Savage, Robert Sharrard, John Sinclair, Stacy Szymaszek, Anne Waldman, and Lewis Warsh. I would also like to thank Professor Philip Davies and his team at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library for awarding me an Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship in North American Studies, 2012, which helped fund a vital period of research leave. Additional thanks to the School of English at the University of Sussex for its financial support and research-leave scheme and to my colleagues in the Sussex Centre for American Studies for helping create a rich interdisciplinary environment conducive to friendly talk about punk and poetry.

Draft versions of some parts of this book were delivered as talks, and I benefited from feedback received at the University of Kent, the Universit Libre de Bruxelles, the University of Nottingham, the University of East Anglia, the University of Greenwich, Cambridge University, Oxford University, and the University of California, Irvine. Thanks to Claire Hurley, Jack Davies, Oliver Harris, Franca Bellarsi, Matthew Pethers, Nick Selby, Jeremy Noel-Tod, Emily Critchley, Fiona Green, Ron Bush, Alexandra Manglis, and Virginia Jackson for making these events possible.

Thanks are owed to librarians who helped me access archival materials: Marvin Taylor and his team at Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University; Mary M. OBrien, reference archivist, and Sean Molinaro, Syracuse University Archives; Kathleen Dow, archives unit and curator, Special Collections Library, University of Michigan; the staff at the Berg Collection, New York Public Library; and Mary Ellen Budney, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Elements of the appeared previously as Nor Did I Socialise with Their People: Patti Smith, Rock Heroics, and the Poetics of Sociability, Popular Music 31, no. 1 (2012): 105123, copyright 2012 Cambridge University Press; and as I Just Got Different Theories: Patti Smith and the Poetry Project at St. Marks Church, in Among Friends: Engendering the Social Site of Poetry , ed. Anne Dewey and Libby Rifkin (Iowa City: Iowa University Press, 2013), 4364, copyright 2013 Iowa University Press.

Wilson 57 is used by permission from Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2013). Copyright 2013 by Ron Padgett.

Selections from Bean Spasms and People Who Died are used by permission from The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan , by Ted Berrigan, edited by Alice Notley. Copyright 2013 by the Regents of the University of California.

Selections from Ave Maria and The Day Lady Died reprinted by permission of City Lights Books. Copyright 1964 by Frank OHara.

Selections from Why I Am Not a Painter and At the Old Place from The Collected Poems of Frank OHara by Frank OHara , copyright 1971 by Maureen Granville-Smith, administratrix of the estate of Frank OHara, copyright renewed 1999 by Maureen OHara Granville-Smith and Donald Allen. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third-party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House LLC for permission.

Selections from The Destruction of America are from This Is Our Music (Detroit: Artists Workshop Press, 1965). Copyright 1965, 2017 by John Sinclair. All rights reserved.

Selections from Geography are from Strange Days Ahead (Calais, Vt.: Z Press, 1975). Copyright 1975, 2017 by Michael Brownstein. All rights reserved.

Selections from Im Tired of Being Scared, Pornographic Poem, and Grasping at Emptiness are copyright John Giorno. All rights reserved.

Selections from On the Death of Robert Lowell and Exploding the Spring Mystique are used by permission from Eileen Myles. Copyright Eileen Myles. All rights reserved.