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"The Poem of Poems" Typescript, 1958
















Paris, France: Brion Gysin (typescript, hand-annotated), 1958-1961.
10.5" x 8.25", 15 pages, mostly recto-only, typed in red ink and inscribed in red ink.
RK19580000_TS1_1

The original typescript for Brion Gysin's The Poem of Poems, an early Cut-Up poem composed of The Song of Solomon, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Saint-John Perse's Anabasis (as translated by T.S. Eliot), and some of Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception [note: this may be from Heaven and Hell, instead... Burroughs and Gysin mentioned different sources, which I will point out in later quotations from them]. 

This is one of the earliest Cut-Ups (1958, preceding the conventional start date of 1959), arranged by Brion Gysin originally on a tape recorder to illustrate the method to William S. Burroughs. This tape was later transcribed, typed out.

This copy was typed on a typewriter that was shared between the residents of the Beat Hotel at 9 rue Gît-le-Cœur, Paris – this was in such common use, and the residents were so frugal, that the black ink had run out and this was typed in the remaining red ink. The typewriter was a 1946 Royal Portable, which later was gifted to Roger Knoebber, and, after Roger's death, was disposed of, unfortunately.  Philippe Aronson mentioned this typewriter and its poor state while in Roger's care in his essay "Roger, Brion, and Me" in Les Épisodes, issue 9, October 2000.

Brion Gysin signed this typescript to Roger Knoebber: "For Roger with the best always, Brion. 9 rue Gît-le-Cœur Paris 14.6.61". This very possibly was offered to Roger as an act of love in 1961 – Brion Gysin was infatuated with Roger while they both lived at the Beat Hotel together in the late-'50s until the early '60s. Roger was heterosexually-inclined, and, although he briefly shared physical affection with Brion, he was unable to give Brion the extent of what Brion desired. After a party in Venice in 1962 that they attended together, Brion's jealously and possessive interests sparked him into violence and Brion physically hurt Roger – this event is described in John Geiger's biography of Brion Gysin entitled Nothing Is True Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin. Roger left the Beat Hotel shortly thereafter, partly due to this act but also for military service. 

Brion and Roger managed to repair their friendship, and the common love between them is evident in Brion's letters to Roger that are included in the archive.  After raising a family in California, Roger relocated back to Paris in 1984, living near to Brion until Brion's death in 1986.

This poem was read by Roger for the BBC at one point.  There is also apparently a video of a reading of The Poem of Poems in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

It is suspected that this is the sole typewritten copy of The Poem of Poems, although there are some published variants (see below), so it is possible that there is another typewritten variant somewhere. Certainly this is the copy that Brion generally referred to; Brion had himself asked for a copy of of this typescript in one of his letters to Roger. I have been unable to find a comparable copy in any library collection.  

The first appearance of The Poem of Poems is in the International Literary Annual, number 3, 1961, published by John Calder, which also includes work by William S. Burroughs and Sinclair Beiles, among others. This poem appears to be a complete representation of the typescript. In the introduction to the poem, Brion Gysin notes: 

"The Poem of Poems is just that. I read the Song of Solomon to a Grundig tape-recorder. Then, I ran it back and 'cut' Shakespeare's Sonnets into it at random. My machine allows one to hear the last word recorded and then cut directly to 'Record.' I, then, ran the tape back to its beginning and 'cut' lines from Anabasis in the Eliot translation from the French of St. John Perse. Running the tape back a fourth time, I 'cut' pieces of Heaven and Hell [emphasis mine] by Aldous Huxley into it. No words are 'my own'... whatever that may mean." 

In the book The Third Mind by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, there is a reference to this poem in the section "First Recordings": 

"If fragments of newspaper be the 'poorest' material for cut-ups, these treasures of world literature as rendered into English are, presumably, the 'richest.' I read the Song of Solomon onto a tape and ran it back, cutting lines from some of Shakespeare's sonnets into it at random... A third run-back cut lines from Anabasis, by St. John Perse, in the Eliot translation, while a fourth added several phrases from Heaven and Hell [emphasis mine], by Aldous Huxley [...] A poem of 390 lines resulted." 

A brief excerpt from the poem is reproduced in The Third Mind.

Despite the mention in The Third Mind, the attribution of the poem should be with Brion Gysin. As noted in Here to Go: Planet R-101, the book of interviews with Brion Gysin by Terry Wilson (1982), Terry Wilson asks Brion: 

"Who produced the 'Poem of Poems' through the tape recorder? The text in The Third Mind is ambiguous." 

Brion responds: 

"I did. I made it to show Burroughs how, possibly, to use it. William did not yet have a tape recorder. First, I had 'accidentally' used 'pisspoor material,' fragments cut out of the press which I shored up to make new and original texts, unexpectedly. Then, William had used his own highly volatile material, his own inimitable texts which he submitted to cuts, unkind cuts, of the sort that Gregory Corso felt unacceptable to his own delicate 'poesy.' William was always the toughest of the lot. Nothing ever fazed him. So I suggested to William that we should only use the best, only the highly-charged material: King James' translation of the Song of Songs of Solomon, Eliot's translation of Anabasis by St. John Perse, Shakespeare's sugared Sonnets and a few lines from The Doors of Perception [emphasis mine] by Aldous Huxley, about his mescaline experiences."

In 1997, Alma Marghen (Italy) pressed 630 LP copies of a reading of The Poem of Poems by Gysin, apparently recorded in 1958.  This version differs slightly from the Knoebber copy, which may indicate either an earlier version somewhere, or that this recording was edited (or somewhat Cut-Up) from typescript.

In the book Back In No Time: A Brion Gysin Reader edited by Jason Weiss and published by Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, Connecticut) in 2001. Weiss suggests that this is the first complete appearance – as noted above the 1961 Calder printing in the International Literary Annual precedes it.  Although not explicitly stated, this text comes from Roger Knoebber's copy.

Note that on the verso of page 14 is a fragment of a symbolic permutation, "RUB OUT THE WORDS". This is a sketch of sorts of what can be found in some of the art done for The Third Mind.

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