{"id":30039,"date":"2015-10-06T14:44:13","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T20:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=30039"},"modified":"2015-10-06T20:34:10","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T02:34:10","slug":"alex-caldiero-channels-allen-ginsbergs-howl-this-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/alex-caldiero-channels-allen-ginsbergs-howl-this-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Caldiero channels Allen Ginsberg’s Howl this Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw the best minds of my generation\u201d [<\/strong><\/em>Janis, Jimi, Jim, Kurt, Amy, the kid who lived around the corner]<\/strong> \u201cdestroyed by madness, <\/em>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 starving hysterical naked,<\/em>
\ndragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking <\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 for an angry fix,<\/em>
\nangelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,<\/em>
\nwho poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up <\/em>
\nsmoking <\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating <\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 across the tops of cities contemplating jazz . . .<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Written by Allen Ginsberg and published in his 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems<\/em>, \u201cHowl\u201d rings as relevant today as it did then. (BTW, it generated an obscenity trial against City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his partner.) For the past two decades, local poet Alex Caldiero has been performing the lengthy poem every five years.<\/p>\n

It all started with the 40th<\/sup> anniversary premiere of the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco, which coincided (no coincidence about it, Caldiero says) with his own reading at the West Bank Gallery in Salt Lake City. He had been listening to a recording of \u201cHowl\u201d and studying the liner notes in which Ginsberg states: \u201cIdeally each line of \u2018Howl\u2019 is a single breath unit.\u201d Caldiero made several unsuccessful attempts. \u201cSome of the lines were just impossible,\u201d he says. \u201cI knew I was not going to make it to the end . . . My breathing kept getting shallower and shallower and I was grasping for words and air . . . when, from some other part of my body, an unexpected breath came forth and I was breathing in a new way. I finished the poem and it turned out to be not a reading, but rather a \u2018channeling.\u2019 That is, not a supposed spiritual communication through a medium, but literally a directing of original energy from the body of the poet to the body of the text to the body of the performer\/audience: a seamless trajectory of breath-sound-language-act. Or what I have nicknamed \u2018Sonosophy.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

Caldiero recalls that he was a nervous wreck before his first performance of \u201cHowl\u201d so he called Ginsberg \u201cto ask for his blessing. He chuckled. That was the only time we were ever to meet: voice-to-voice, sound-to-sound. In retrospect, this seems appropriate for a sonosopher.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caldiero always sets up a makeshift altar at the foot of the stage, with a picture of Ginsberg and an offering of flowers. He explains that \u201cthis is an old Mediterranean custom to remember and pay homage to our beloved dead.\u201d The world lost Allen Ginsberg in 1997.<\/p>\n

Bookman Ken Sanders remembers: \u201cAlex and I collaborated on the 50th anniversary of \u201cHowl\u201d and it was a feature presentation of the old Great Salt Lake Book Festival and drew more than 1,000 folks to the library. Alex and I have teamed up with the Utah Humanities Council for the 55th and now the 60th performance of \u2018Howl.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Caldiero will read the poem with jazz musicians and with guest poets reciting their own work on Friday, Oct. 9 from 7 p.m. \u2013 9 p.m. at the Salt Lake City Public Library Auditorium, 210 E. 400 South. Admission is free. Poster artwork is by Trent Call and a signed limited edition screen print will be for sale at the event for $35. Free \u201cHowl @ 60\u201d buttons will be given away while they last.<\/p>\n

Says Sanders: \u201cGinsberg is the \u201c20th<\/sup> century Walt Whitman and \u2018Howl\u2019 is the modern \u2018Leaves of Grass.\u2019 Sonosopher Alex Caldiero is our spirit guide through the complexities of \u2018Howl.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

Rumor is that this is the final time Caldiero will perform (or channel) \u201cHowl,\u201d though we were unable to confirm this.<\/p>\n

Catch it if you can.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Howl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw the best minds of my generation\u201d [Janis, Jimi, Jim, Kurt, Amy, the kid who lived around the corner] \u201cdestroyed by madness, \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":30035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,35],"tags":[2412,909,1325],"class_list":["post-30039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-15-bytes","category-literary-arts","tag-alex-caldiero","tag-by-ann-poore","tag-ken-sanders-rare-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Howl-poster.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-30 18:24:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30039"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30049,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30039\/revisions\/30049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}