Poetry in America with Elisa New (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Hymmnn and Hum Bom! - full transcript

"Hymmnn" and "Hum Bom" by Allen Ginsberg, featuring Bono, Juan Felipe Herrera, and a chorus of religious chant practitioners

Hymmnn.

In the world which He has
created according to His will,

blessed, praised, magnified,
lauded, exalted,

the name of the holy one,
blessed is He.

In the house in Newark
blessed is He!

In the madhouse blessed is He!

In the house of Death
blessed is He!

In the house in Newark
blessed is He!

In the madhouse blessed is He!

In the house of Death
blessed is He!

Blessed be He in homosexuality!



Blessed be He in paranoia!

Blessed be He!

Blessed be He!

Blessed be you Naomi in tears!

Blessed be you Naomi in fears!

Blessed blessed blessed
in sickness!

Blessed be you Naomi
in hospitals!

Whom bomb?

We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb?

We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb?

We bomb you!

Whom bomb?



We bomb you!

Whom bomb?

You bomb you!

Whom bomb? You bomb you!

What do we do?

Who do we bomb?

What do we do?

Who do we bomb?

What do we do? Who do we bomb?

What do we do? Who do we bomb?

What do we do?

You bomb!

What is a poem?

We may think that poems
are primarily made of words

we read on a page.

A poem, we imagine,
is a statement of meaning

we decode with our intellects.

But Allen Ginsberg embraced
a different vision of the poem.

Inspired by the visionary
and mystic William Blake,

and by ancient religious
traditions,

Ginsberg chanted poems
that howled and hummed,

and sometimes bounced
off the walls.

- And beds of lead O density!

Actually, to get a feel
for Ginsberg,

for people who are just reading,

it's worth listening to him.

Here is this giant
of American poetry.

Oratory was considered
by Milton...

Who could be so professorial...

- ...vehicles of poetry
or major modes of poetry.

And so childish.

And whose grief

is as black as grief can be,

but then as yellow
and as Day-Glo,

and all the other colors.

I love the joy
of Allen Ginsberg.

And I am attracted
to his prayerfulness.

He talked to me as a person
who, who believes

in the metaphysical side
of performance

and words and writing.

He was, like, "Oh, you know,
the caesura.

You know, it's very important."

He said... you know,
he knew I was embarrassed

in my earlier life to have had
some religious experiences,

and I rarely would talk
about it.

He said,
"But all poets have this."

To better understand
the spiritual qualities

that so moved the young Bono,

I gathered some practitioners

from the faith traditions
Ginsberg drew on:

Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

And I also spoke to former poet
laureate of the United States

Juan Felipe Herrera,

who experienced Ginsberg's
charisma in the 1970s.

And then, when he began to read,

he was a colossus,
he was amazing, he was big,

his voice was...
just covered everyone

and went beyond everyone.

And the gray sunflower
poised against the sunset,

crackly bleak and dusty
with the smut and smog and smoke

of olden locomotives in its eye.

This poem titled not hymn,
H-Y-M-N.

It's H-Y-M-M-N-N.

Yes.

- Why?

It's like an om,
it's like a sacred om.

Kind of in touch
with all things.

The sound of the universe.

"Hymmnn" is very serious.

He makes it immediately playful,
musical.

Hymmnn....

He's opening with not a hymn,
this is not a noun to him.

He's trying to, if you will,
make it dynamic.

And the way to make it dynamic
is by... ♪ Hymmnn.

So you're already getting
into a musical kind of feeling.

Hymmnn.

It is also something
you're chewing on.

It's something you're...
You know,

you're not, it's just not
all the way out yet, also.

I mean M-M-N-N,
it's almost like an ellipsis.

It doesn't end.

- And it starts to break down

because we have the "M"
with two waves.

It goes up, it comes down,
it goes up, it comes down.

It's two waves.

And the "N" is one wave.

So we lost one wave.

So you're saying there's
a kind of graphic representation

of a loss.

There's a loss right there.

Ginsberg's "Hymmnn"
is a short section of "Kaddish,"

a lengthy autobiographical poem

chronicling the poet's
painful coming of age

in a Jewish immigrant family.

In "Kaddish," Ginsberg grapples
with the trauma

of his mother's descent
into madness,

and with his own struggles
to claim his sexual identity.

The actual prayer of the Kaddish

is all about God
and exalting God's presence,

and there's no mention of death.

Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash
sh'mei raba.

Everyone who is in mourning
will say the Kaddish.

I was with Kerouac
and Philip Whalen

and Peter Orlovsky
in San Francisco in '56.

And we went to the synagogue
to do a Kaddish,

which I didn't know how to do,

but we found that
we didn't have a minyan,

we didn't have enough...
What is a minyan, nine?

Ten. - Ten.

We didn't have a minyan,

and I didn't know
anything about it, anyway.

So we never did get to do it
properly at the right time,

and so this was a way
of making up for that.

Blessed be thee Naomi in Death.

Blessed be Death!

Blessed be Death!

Blessed be He who leads
all sorrow to Heaven!

In the Jewish
mystical tradition,

"blessed" has two meanings.

The word comes
from the word "knee."

So when you say,
"Blessed are you,"

it means, "I bow before you."

"I humble myself before
the vastness of the universe."

And a second underlying meaning
is the word b'reikhah,

which means "pool."

I immerse myself in this.

What you see in Allen's poem

that his emotion is so strong,

you are dipped in it,

fully immersed.

And when you're immersed in it,

then I use the word exuberance.

Where every part of your body
explores.

You say, "Yes, yes, yes,

do bless, do bless, do bless,
do bless, do bless."

Anaphoric,
is that what you call it?

Anaphora, yes.

It's anaphora
when there's patterning

at the beginning of the line.

Does it imply in the
Greek sense of the carrying up,

in the way that metaphoric
is the carrying across?

Yes, it is. - I think so.

And, and... and so
that's beautiful, that...

Again, this transcendental idea.

It's some kind of hypnosis,
but it's music to me.

The depth of the rhythm,

the depth of almost literally

some level of connection
with the heartbeat.

You know, it's much more
of a visceral experience.

The meter, or measure,
or cadence of the poem

comes from the Kaddish itself.

Yit'barakh v'yish'tabach

v'yit'pa'ar v'yit'romam
v'yit'nasei

v'yit'hadar v'yit'aleh
v'yit'halal sh'mei d'kud'sha

b'rikh hu.

That cadence...

Da-da-dum, da-da-dum,
da-da-dum, da-da-dum...

That was hypnotic and exquisite,
I found.

A lot of people
think that prayer

needs to be understood
word-by-word.

Probably you have
the same thing about poetry,

people think that they need
to understand word-by-word.

But it's not about
understanding word-by-word,

it's about sinking in
and experiencing deeply,

and it's the sound,
the repetition.

It is not question
of, like, are these words...

are a set of words
that he creates,

a set of words that occurs
to him at that particular time,

that particular expression.

He could do
a million other words.

You know, the beat.

Yes. - It's Beat poetry.

What does that mean to you,
Beat poetry?

I think it means rhythm,
you know, it's, it's rhythm.

You can hear a ride cymbal.

That sort of hailstorm,

hailstone language that he had,
where it's pelting you.

So all these phrases
are like the sacred vibrations,

and oracles, and givings,
and offerings...

It's a prayer ritual.

Worship.

That's a scary word.

But worship is at the heart
of a lot of music.

What I find fascinating
about this poem

is the fact that he's able
to encapsulate,

blessing exists in everything.

That's a very interesting
Jewish concept.

Blessed be He
who leads all sorrow to Heaven!

Blessed be He in the end!

Blessed be He who builds Heaven
in darkness!

"Blessed be He

who builds Heaven in darkness."

That phrase actually
is very Buddhist

because we actually believe
as Nechung Buddhists

that hell and heaven actually
exist within human life.

This Buddhist idea of,
all is valuable...

The heavenly,

the earthly, the sacred,
the profane, the expletives,

the gold, and indeed
the alchemy.

In the madhouse blessed is He!

In the house of death
blessed is He!

Blessed be He in homosexuality!

Blessed be He in paranoia!

There's nothing off-limits.

I can't think of many poets

where you really feel
they can write about a tear,

or a drip off the end
of their nose,

or the most savage sexual act...
There's nothing off-limits.

Blessed be you Naomi
in hospitals!

Blessed be you Naomi
in solitude!

Blest be your triumph!

Blest be your bars!

And the meaning is not
the meaning of the fact

that this is either good or bad.

But the meaning that everything
has within it the capacity

to do what it has to do at the
right time and the right place.

So even death.

The Irish,
there's a lot of melancholy

where we came from
as writers, I think.

Keening is actually
the Gaelic term for grieving.

Keening is the sound, the wail.

Blessed be He
who dwells in the shadow!

Blessed be He!

Blessed be He!

Blessed be you Naomi
in hospitals!

Blessed be you Naomi
in solitude!

This is so sad.

In a sense, what I'm
doing is regaining my emotions.

Regaining my emotions,
but also as artist,

regaining emotions for others.

So that other people,
recognizing in the mirror of art

their own hidden world
of emotion,

can have that available to them.

I saw my mother in this poem,
in Naomi.

How she suffered,
how I was born, and...

Through caesarean... and how she
had to be split open,

and how she had
these giant scars,

and how she had to leave
the hospital

because we're farmworkers.

And you know,
how she wasn't healed yet

but she had to get back
on the earth,

and she had to get back
to crouching down,

and pulling stuff,
and crouching down,

and pulling stuff.

And I always felt that pain.

So when I read this,
I felt the poem.

Through the poem, I go back
to my mother, to her small body,

and to her voice.

Not having a real relationship

with my own mother...

She died when I was 14...

I...

I think I've understood how
the absence of that relationship

has helped form me as a writer.

The painful separation
of the child from the mother

and the longing of the child
for the mother,

this is an epic subject,
it's a great subject,

and it's a great subject
for poets.

The art seemed to be
kind of the saving grace

in terms of trying to relieve
my own and others' suffering

by raising the dead.

The dead here being
not my mother,

but the emotions involved,
which are not dead,

but are only buried
under the defense

against being torn apart
by feeling.

You cannot say the Kaddish

if you don't have a minyan.

You have to be with others.

It's not
an individual experience.

This is a communal experience
where you stand,

only the mourners stand
and say this out loud,

and the others witness that.

Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash

sh'mei raba.

B'rikh hu, the crowd responds,
blessed be He.

B'al'ma di v'ra khir'utei

v'yam'likh mal'khutei.

When he was saying this,
he was saying this to us.

And he was saying,
"I've just experienced this."

Yit'barakh
v'yish'tabach v'yit'pa'ar...

It's horrible,
and yet it's blessed.

It's the way life is.

It's what the totality
of humanity is about.

Come comfort me.

And share your pain
and suffering, which you've had,

and perhaps by sharing it,

we can dissipate it a little bit
for all of us.

One Buddhist concept
that we talk about

is changing poison into medicine

when we approach a very
difficult or sad situation

as an opportunity to become
more courageous

or more compassionate.

He's finding the point
of the wounds,

the points that need
to be called on,

and in calling those points...
The thigh, the cheek, Naomi...

He's pulling out the thorns.
- Oh...

He's pulling out the thorns.

- And soothing.

And soothing.

Yes.

You're going to try a tiny bit?

- Give it a shot.
- Oh, good, please.

- It's just funny.

Because it'll be
like a tongue twister.

Whom bomb?

We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb?

Okay, here we go.

Whom bomb?

We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb?

We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb?

We bomb'd them!

We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb? We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb?

Ginsberg wrote "Hum Bom"
in 1971,

during America's war in Vietnam

and as a protest against
the looming danger

of nuclear annihilation.

I think America
has been addicted to power,

and I think the problem

has been wanting to be
number one.

And wanting to be number one
means they gotta push everybody

off the top of the mountain.

Wanting to be king of the hill

means you always gotta be
fighting, all the time.

He is the king of the...

The very first time I met
Allen Ginsberg was in 1968,

during the
Democratic convention.

And I was quite struck
by both his warmth

and his fearlessness
at the time,

because we were just about
to be under the gun

of the Chicago police force.

Shortly after that,
there was complete chaos.

Daniel Ellsberg and myself,

and the poet Peter Orlovsky
and the poetess Anne Waldman,

and a group called
the Rocky Flats Truth Force

had been for several years
doing sitting meditation

on the railroad tracks
of Rocky Flats

plutonium bomb trigger
nuclear facility.

Whom bomb?

We bomb'd them!

Whom bomb?

We bomb you!

Whom bomb?

We bomb you!

His performance of
"Hum Bom" is very rock-and-roll.

He's like a full band there.

He's bass, drums, and guitar.

What do we do?

Who do we bomb?

What do we do? Who do we bomb?

What do we do?

Who do we bomb?

"Hum Bom." - "Hum Bom."

Here we go again with the title,
it's like the one in "Kaddish."

It's just like "Hymmnn,"
"Hum Bom."

- "Hum Bom."

And the title is "Hum Bom,"
but the first word is "whom."

- "Whom bomb."

And there's "om" in there.
- Yes!

- "Om" sneaks in there.

Yeah.

There's om, whom, oom, hum,
bomb, om.

- Who wanted a bomb?

Somebody musta wanted a bomb!

Who wanted a bomb?

Somebody musta wanted a bomb!

Who wanted a bomb?

Somebody musta wanted a bomb!

All the first
musical stanzas of this

are buck-passing...
"I didn't do it.

"Who did it? He did it.

We didn't want to do it.
They did it."

- That's right,
that's right, uh-huh.

Who wants a bomb?

We don't wanna bomb!

Who wants a bomb?

We don't wanna bomb!

Who wants a bomb?

We don't wanna bomb!

It's pantomime in so many ways.

You know,
it's like carny barker.

Who wants a bomb?

We don't wanna We don't wanna

We don't wanna bomb!

And then it's Jeremiah.

Armageddon did the job.

Gog and Magog.

Gog and Magog.

Armageddon did the job.

Gog and Magog.

Gog and Magog.

Gog and Magog...

As in "Hymmnn,"
Ginsberg finds inspiration

by reaching back
to ancient texts.

He's Gog and Magog, bogeyman.

- It's the biblical bogeyman,
right?

- Yeah, biblical bogeyman.

Gog Magog Gog Magog

Gog Magog Gog Magog

Gog Magog Gog Magog

Gog Magog Gog Magog

Gog Magog Gog Magog

These are dangerous words,
Gog and Magog.

These are the armies
of Armageddon.

This is Revelation stalking us.

But the way you read it,
it detonated, right?

The Gs.

- Whew!

The stanzas,
they're little troops.

He's got them all lined up.
- They are!

They're not those
long lines of "Howl,"

or those long lines
of "Kaddish."

That is the greatest.

There's little troops,
little bomblets.

And magoglets.

The "Gs" and the "Ms"
and the "Os."

These monsters
in the shape of bombs.

These bomb-shaped monsters.

- That's right,
that's what Gog and Magog are.

And they're an army
of bomb-shaped monsters.

It's an amazing accomplishment,

that we can go this big,
this poem goes this big

and this far and this deep
into the Bible,

and forward into our time.

Ginsberg says Gog and Magog.

And then Ginsberg
comes into being and says...

Ginsberg says Gog and Magog.

Armageddon did the job.

He's kind of stating this:

this is what it is.

Armageddon did the job!

You know, this is it,
this is how bad this is.

Because you just don't say,
"Gog and Magog," and walk away.

- Lightly.

And because Ginsberg says it,
we are saying it.

And because he has called on
Gog and Magog,

we are calling on Gog and Magog.

And now what are we going to do?

Missile away!

In 1991, during the first
Gulf War against Iraq,

Ginsberg added new stanzas
to the poem.

Saddam said he hadda bomb!

Bush said he better bomb!

Saddam said he hadda bomb!

Bush said he better bomb!

Saddam said he hadda bomb!

Bush said he better bomb!

Saddam said he hadda bomb!

Bush said he better bomb!

This version of it
is different from the first one

that he wrote and performed
during the Vietnam War.

All that stuff,
it's just, it's amazing

that it seems still prescient,
does it not?

But it also raises the question
of the words of a poem.

We kind of often think
that a poem is a stable thing.

And this...

Oh, that's a wonderful idea.

That it's ever-changing.

Adaptable. - Yes.

- To circumstance and situation.

That's lovely.

To say, "I didn't write a poem,

I wrote a, a, a mechanism
for something."

- A little machine,
a little spiritual...

- A little working,
a little machine that works.

- A little widget, yes.

- Widget, good.

- Well, and that's what...
- That's great!

That's what a performance is.

- He'd love the word widget.

I think of Ginsberg's poems
as touching down in books,

finding a resting place,
a sojourning place,

but not necessarily belonging to
or confined by books.

That's right,
this is a midpoint.

Once you look at them,
it's already in motion.

Ginsberg was developing
this sort of

unified field theory of poetry,

where literally everything
in the cosmos

was going to be drawn
into the poem.

Nothing was to be laughed at
because it was already laughing.

Nothing was too serious
because it was already grieving.

The ache and the flirtation,
all this range,

this massive spectrum.

What a, what a thrill.