Subduing Demons in America: Selected Poems, 1962-2007

by John Giorno, Marcus Boon (Editor)

Giorno first rose to fame in New York in the early 1960s as the star of Warhol's Sleep. Associated with key 1960s avant garde figures such as Ginsberg, Burroughs, Rauschenberg, and Johns, Giorno was an early pioneer of multimedia poetry through Giorno Poetry Systems, which also distributed a who's who of the American underground from Patti Smith to Sonic Youth. Giorno's use of transgressive material and in-your-face amplified delivery was also a key influence on punk/new wave pioneers such as Suicide, Throbbing Gristle, and Black Flag. Not just a poet but a sexual, spiritual, and political radical, Giorno helped pioneer the open celebration of queer sexuality in poetry in the 1960s. His AIDS Treatment Project, begun in 1984, set the bar for action in the AIDS crisis.

Subduing Demons in America offers the best of Giorno's revolutionary poetry, from his striking Pop Art-influenced poems of the 1960s to the psychedelic, echo-laden, multitracked cut-ups of the 1970s with their explosive configurations of queer sex, spiritual practice, and the bohemian Good Life. Also here are Giorno's pared-down punk/hip-hop performance poems from the 1980s, as well as new but still unrepentant commentaries on the unfolding 21st century. Whether written, performed, recorded, filmed, or exhibited, Giorno's work is a shining jewel in the ongoing revolution of poetry and language in contemporary life.

Genres: Poetry, Queer

387 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2008

About the author

John Giorno was an American poet and performance artist.

Reviews

[jimmy]

second time around: started in the plane on the way to august's second line, finished at powderhorn park after an intense therapy session just shy of a year later. giorno's work hits different notes over time, mingling death and desire and the mundane and the commercial in a way that just feels right, and i just want to dip back in forever. something in these poems is a home for me.

[Sébastien Bernard]

John Giorno kicks ass. A lot of the poems in this book were written using the now famous cut-up technique, which produces Giorno wisdom at its best and rawest. Primordial image, ad lines, porn, mantras, newspaper fragments and even the Constitution swirl in a Tibetan ass-fuck of pure Giorno brew. This is one of those rare poets who breaks the scene and needs no excuses. He belongs to no category I know of, except that of the wise Fire tribe; the poets who burn to shine. Listen to Giorno perform: he will change for you forever what you expect of spoken poetry. And you'll know you need to amp up your game.

[Tyler Ookami]

Really great from beginning to end. Gotta say I'm a big fan of Giornio and he really does not get his laurels often, really he is mostly discussed for his relationships with Burroughs and Warhol. He very much shares the former's infatuation with drugs and occultism and the latter's with advertisements (Giorno calls them "American cancer cells") but the contemporaries of his who I would most compare him to are the music of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich (especially the last as many of these were written as tape delay pieces and as such are a little odd to read written down), given his conceptual hook of having at least three repetitions of each line. Anhedonia follows Giorno through his sexual misadventures, whatever it is he seeks (love? connection?) is seldom give, so much that even deep taboos such as coprophagia become a vector for the wandering mind rather than the libido. The white boy Buddhism that's in all of the Beats, yeah it's grating to me, but I think that Giorno's dual fascinations of reincarnation and suicide do provide a very cool sense of existential horror that underpins all his work. Truly now way out, I suppose.

[Ann]

a wonderful mind playing lightly with words and ideas in a simple, yet artful way.

[Tráese]

Honored to have Giorno dedicate my copy :: Everyone Gets Lighter --✫

[Jon]

I read "I Resigned Myself to Being Here" in the anthology UP LATE years ago and it made a tremendous impression on me. After reading this Giorno collection it's still my favorite, the poem that sums up his world view the way "Heroin" does for Jim Carroll. Don't get me wrong, Carroll wrote more than one good poem and so has Giorno, I especially like the early bulletin-style poems here from the 60s inspired by news events. Some prefer to hear Giorno read his work (he's been a promoter of the idea of oral poetry over the years, and not just because he said "You're my toilet, eat it out, I'm gonna feed you") but I'd rather eat it up on the printed page....I don't like his voice, it's sort of high and whiny. He remains an interesting writer, one of the last veterans of the Beat and Warhol eras still out there and writing....