DIAL-A-POEM HYPE

     One day a New York mother saw her 12-year old son with two friends listening to the telephone and giggling. She grabbed the phone from them and what she heard freaked her out. This was when Dial-A-Poem was at the Architectural League of New York with worldwide media coverage, and Junior Scholastic Magazine had just done an article and listening to Dial-A-Poem was homework in New York City Public Schools. It was also at a time when I was putting on a lot of erotic poetry, like Jim Carroll’s pornographic “Basketball Diaries,” so it became hip for the teenies to call. The mother and other reactionary members of the community started hassling us, and The Board of Education put pressure on The Telephone Company and there were hassles and more hassles and they cut us off. Ken Dewey and the New York State Council on The Arts were our champions, and the heavy lawyers threatened The Telephone Company with a lawsuit and we were instantly on again. Soon after our funds were cut, and we couldn’t pay the telephone bill so it ended.

    Then we moved to The Museum of Modern Art, where one half the content of Dial-A-Poem was politically radical poetry. At the time, with the war and repression and everything, we thought this was a good way for the Movement to reach people. TIME magazine picked up on how you could call David and Nelson Rockefeller’s museum and learn how to build a bomb. This was when the Weathermen were bombing New York office buildings. TIME ran the piece on The Nation page, next to the photo of a dead cop shot talking on the telephone in Philadelphia (an unrelated story in the next column). However, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and The Black Panthers were well represented. This coupled with rag publicity really freaked the Trustees of the museum and members resigned and thousands complained and the FBI arrived one morning to investigate. The Museum Of Modern Art is a warehouse of the plunder and rip off for the Rockefeller family and they got upset at being in the situation of supporting a system that would self-destruct or self purify, so they ordered the system shut down. John Hightower, MOMA Director, was our champion with some heavy changes of conscience, and he wouldn’t let them silence us, for a short while. Then later John Hightower was fired from MOMA and Ken Dewey recently flying alone in a small plane crashed and died.

    In the middle of the Dial-A-Poem experience was the giant self-consuming media machine choosing you as some of its food, which also lets you get your hands on the controls because you’ve made a new system of communication poetry. The newspaper, magazine, TC and radio coverage had the effect of making everyone want to call Dial-A-Poem. We got up to the maximum limit of the equipment and stayed there. 60,000 calls a week and it was totally great. The busiest time was 9 AM to 5 PM, so one figured that all those people sitting at desks in New York office buildings spend a lot of time on the telephone, then the second busiest time 8:30 PM to 11:30 PM was the after-dinner crowd, then the California calls and those tripping on acid or couldn’t sleep 2 AM to 6 AM. So using an existing communications system we established a new poet-audience relationship.

    Dial-A-Poem began at The Architectural League of New York in January 1969 with 10 telephone lines and ran for 5 months, during which time 1,112,337 calls were received. It was at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago for 6 weeks in November 1969 and since then has cropped up everywhere. This was with equipment working at maximum capacity and somtimes jamming the entire exchange. At MOMA, the 12 lines were each connected to an automatics-answering set, which hold a pre-recorded message. Someone calling got randomly on of 12 different poems, which were changed daily. There were around 700 selections of 55 poets.

    On this LP of Dial-A-Poem Poets are 27 poets. The records are a selection of highlights of poetry that spontaneously grew over 20 years from 1953 to 1972, mostly in American , representing many aspects and different approaches to dealing with words and sound. The poets are from the New York School, Bolinas and West Coast Schools, Concrete Poetry, beat Poetry, Black Poetry and Movement Poetry.

    - John Giorno Aug 1972



1. Glenn Branca "Music For The Dance Bad Smells"
2. John Giorno "Streching it wider"
3. John Giorno "We got here yesterday"
4. Allen Ginsberg "I'm a victim of telephones"
5. Chogyam Trungpa "Cynical Letter, A Letter to Marpa, Sound Cycle (Aham)"
6. William S. Borroughs "What Washington, What Orders"
7. Charles Plymell, "100 Flies on an Airplane Flying Around the World"
8. Michael Brownstein "Monologue from the top"
9. John Cage "Excerpt from Silence"
10. Anne Waldman "Fast speaking woman"
11. Diane DiPrima "Excerpt from Loba"
12. Bernadette Mayer "Excerpt from Studying Hunger"
13. Robert Creeley "The Name"
14. Diane Wakoski "Exorcism"
15. Lorenzo Thomas "High Heel Jesus"
16. Gregory Corso "Marriage"
17. Ed Sanderss "Stand By My Side Oh Lord"
18.Charles Olson "The Ridge"
19. Allen Ginsberg "Jimmy Berman"
20. Joe Brainbard "excerpt from More I Remember More"
21. John Wieners "excerpt from Memories in a Small Apartment"
22. Gerard Malanga "A Last Poem (Tentative Title)"
23. John Perreault "Nude death"
24. Jack Spicer " excerpt from Billy The Kid"
25. Jim Carroll "from The Basketball Diaries, Age 13, Spring 1965"
26. Peter Orlosky "All Around The Garden"
27. Imamu Amiri Baraka "Our Nation Is Like Ourselves"
28. Michael McClure "Lion Poem"
29. Ed Dorn "Recollections of Grande Apacharia"
30. Frank Lima "The Hunter"
31. Frank O'Hara "Adieu Norman, Bonjour to Joan and Jean Paul from Lunch Poems"
32. Bill Berkson "Stanky"
33. Larry Fagin "A Play"
34. Tom Clark "Little Aria"
35. Paul Blackburn "The Once-Over from Brooklyn Manhattan Transit"
36. Philip Whelan "If You're So Smart Why Aren't You Rich"
37. John Padgett "June 17, 1942"
38. John Ashbery "The Tennis Court Oath"
39. Clark Coolidge "excerpt from Dews"
40. Charles Amirkhanian "RADII"
41. John Giorno "Suicide Sutra"
42. John Giorno "Eating Human Meat"
43. John Giorno "Subduing Demons in America"
44. William S. Borroughs "The Chief Smiles" from Wild Boys"
45. William S. Borroughs "The Green Nun"
46. William S. Borroughs "excerpt from Ah Pook Is Here"
46. William S. Borroughs "103rd Street Boys" from Junkie"
47. William S. Borroughs "exerpts from Naked Lunch"
48. William S. Borroughs "From Here To Eternity" from Exterminator"
49. Anne Waldman "For the Voice of Montserrat Caballe, Error, Sisters, Plutonioum Poem"
50. Anne Waldman "White Eyes"
51. Anne Waldman "Musical Garden"
52. John Giorno "Everyone Is A Complete Disappointment"
53. John Giorno "Drinking the blood of Every Woman's Period"
54. Allen Ginsberg "Varja Mantra"
55. Terry Southern "Vignette of Idealistic Life in South Texas"
56. William S. Borroughs "Keynote Commentary & Roosevelt After Inauguration"
57. John Giorno "Eating the sky"
58. Patti Smith "Poem for Jim Morrison & Bumblebee"
59. William S. Borroughs "Benway"
60. Philip Glass "Building (excerpt fromĘ Einstein on the Beach)"
61. Brion gysin "Kick That Habit, Junk Is No Good Baby, Somebody Special, & Blue Baboon"
62. Frank Zappa "The Talking Asshole"
63. William S. Borroughs "from The Gay Gun: This is Kim Carson & Just Like The Collapse of any Currency, & The Whole Tamale"
64. William S. Borroughs "What the Nova Convention is About"
65. Ed Sanderss "Hymn to Aphrodite form Sappho"
66. John Cage "Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake"
67. Anne Waldman "Plutonium Ode & Skin Meat Bones"
68. Laurie Anderson and Julia Heyward "Song from America On The Move (& Julia Heyward)"
69. Allen Ginsberg "Punk Rock & Old Pond"
70. William S. Borroughs "Conversations"
71. Peter Gordon "Extended Niceties. Excerpt"
72. John Giorno "I resigned myself to being here"
73. John Cage "5 Stories in the style of Indeterminacy"
74. Tom Carey "Good Night Irene"
75. Andrei Vosnesensky "I am Goya, Song of Moscow ancient church bells"
76. Miguel Pinero "New York City hard times blues"
77. Miguel Algarin "Setenta y cinco abriles"
78. William S. Borroughs "I was traveling with The Intolerable Kid on The Nova Lark"
79. William S. Borroughs "Translucent boy ; An excellent Time ; For Neal Cassidy"
80. Charlie Morrow "Oh yea-don't die"
81. Ted Berrigan "To Jack Kerouac"
82. Charlotte Carter "Six months in Brooklyn"
83. Patti Smith "Parade"
84. Cliff Fyman "Coffee"
85. Robin Messing "3 Subway poems from "Temporary Worker"
86. Paul Violi "Whalefeathers"
87. Bob Holman "Rap it up"
88. Allen Ginsberg "C.I.A. Dope Calypso"
89. Anne Waldman "Lady Tactics"
89 John Ashbery "Litany. Excerpt"
90. Rene Ricard "Rene Ricard famous at 20"
91. Barbara Barh "Chicks"
92. Ned Sublette "Nice Young Mormons"
93. Kathy Acker "I was walking down the street"
94. Eileen Myles "Lorna And Vicki"
95. Barbara Barg "So Fine"
96. Didi Susan Dubleyew " Who Needs Exercise"
97. Rochelle Kraut "New Born Sleep"
98. Gary Snyder "What you should know to be a poet"
99. Daiela Gioseffi "Eggs"
100. Regina Beck "Message From Confucius"
101. charles Bernstein "Wall As"
102. Ron Padgett "Zzzzz"
103. Diana De Prima "Revolutionary Letters Nos. 7, 13, 16, 49"
104. William S. Borroughs "excerpts from The Wild Boys"
105. John Giorno "Varja Kisses"
106. Emett Williams "Duet"
107. Ed Sanders "Cemetary Hill
108. Taylor Mead "Motocycles"
109. Allen Ginsberg "Green Automibile 1953"
110. Robert Creeley "The Messenger for Allen Ginsberg, I Know a Man"
111. Harris Shiff "Poems"
112. Leonore Kandel "Kali"
113. Aram Saroyam "Not A Cricket"
114. Philip Whalem "excerpts from Scenes of Life at the Capital"
115. Ted Berrigan "excerpt from The Sonnets"
116. Frank O'Hara "Ode Joy, The Hell With It"
117. Joe Brainard "excerpt from I Remember"
118. Clark Coolidge "Small Inventions: Suite V (plurals) secanate, Suite IV"
119. Jim Carroll "excerpt from The Basketball Diaries"
120. ohn Cage "Mushroom Haiku, excerpt from Silence"
121. Bernadette Mayer "These Stories About After the Revolution"
122. Michael Brownstein "Geography"
123. Brion Gysin "A Am That I Am"
124. John Sinclair "The Destruction Of America"
125. Anne Waldman "How the Sestina (Yawn) Works"
126. Heathcote Williams "I Will Not Pay Taxes Until"
127. David Henderson "The Louisiana Weekly No. 1, Ruckus Poem Part 1"
128. Bobby Seale "excerpt from Fillmore East speech"
129. Kathleen Cleaver "excerpt from Fillmore East speech"
130. Allen Ginsberg "Blake Song: Merrily We Welcome in the Year"



I don't owe the rights for these, just a fan upload





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