Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays

by Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman takes the opportunity with this twentieth-anniversary expanded edition to add twenty poems to this collection that brings into focus her lifelong engagement with "chant" as central to contemporary performative poetry.

Here are spells, invocations, laments, ritual rants. Archaic beliefs in magic and ecstasy meet current notions of the power of the spoken word. Waldman writes, "The poem is a textured energy field or modal structure...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872863166
• ISBN13: 9780872863163
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: City Lights Books
• Length: 159 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.9" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Present Day Icon, chant and philosophy has impact

Anne Waldman is a literary figure that feeds off of her own inborn energy. Energy is what you think of when you think of chants. Having been raised in a tradition of chants, i find her Fast Speaking Woman Chant extremely moving. She seeks to represent all but also exhault all individuality. The book is a nice compact perfect bound book. Easily transported in your medical coat, or business pocket.

Fast Speaking Woman

"Fast Speaking Woman" is one of the best poems I've ever read, and it captures everything that the Beats attempted (and attempt) to capture in their stream of conciousness writing. She's defining herself, but she is also defining every other woman, because we can all do what she did. She is uplifting, and fabulous! The rest of the chants are awe inspiring, especially when chanted aloud so that you can get the full expereince. If you like Allen Ginsberg, et. all, you will love Waldman. She is a true Beat woman, who does not need to define herself through the men that she associates with.