Great Demon Kings: A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment by John Giorno

Abstract

Reviewed by: Great Demon Kings: A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment by John Giorno Ilka Scobie (bio) great demon kings: a memoir of poetry, sex, art, death, and enlightenment Ilka Scobie Farrar, Straus and Giroux https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374166304/greatdemonkings 368 pages; Print, $18.00 John Giorno's brilliant and bodacious memoir was twenty-three years in the creation. In that time, the iconic poet expanded his career as a visual artist with several solo shows and a comprehensive retrospective exhibition that opened in Tokyo de Palais in Paris. He married Swiss Italian artist Ugo Rondinone and embarked upon years of creative expansion and domestic bliss, all the while performing his groundbreaking poetry throughout the United States and Europe. For fifty years he lived in his legendary Bowery loft, built in 1880 as New York City's first YMCA, and continued his practice of the Nyingmapa school of Tibetan Buddhism. "I was young and beautiful and that got me what I wanted and all I wanted was sex." Early on, in 1958, young John met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac at a cocktail party. John writes about the encounter with Andy Warhol at Warhol's 1962 opening: "We looked in each other's eyes. Something happened, a spark." Checking out Jasper Johns, a future lover, John notes: "And I couldn't help but notice he had a big basket hung in his khaki pants. Every time I saw him at openings or parties, my heart beat a little faster." Warhol and Giorno soon became lovers, embarking upon an exploration of downtown and Pop culture, from the Living Theater to the Ronettes. They spoke daily on the telephone. Directly in the center of the New York art world, Giorno recollects lost weekends with luminaries like Marisol, Robert Indiana (another soon-to-be lover), and Wynn Chamberlain. At one Hamptons weekend, the poet woke up to find Warhol staring at him, and [End Page 114] thus the movie Sleep was born. For over five hours, Warhol shot the sleeping and nude Giorno from different perspectives, and the movie brought both filmmaker and star attention and infamy. At a time when the New York cultural underground was homophobic, John lived freely and openly as a gay man. His groundbreaking readings, inspired by the Pop art world, refocused the energy of both the Beat and New York school of poetry. In 1963, at a John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara poetry reading, neither Giorno nor Warhol can clearly hear the poets. "Why is it so boring?" Andy asked. The answer compelled John, "So I took something commercial and industrial and gave it a wry metaphoric spin: Giorno Poetry Systems," and "Thus began the rest of my life." Inspired by the contemporary art surrounding him, Giorno decided, "I wanted to do more then write poems. I wanted to broaden the ways that poets could connect with audiences." And in a burst of amazing prescience, the then young poet urged, "The poet should use modern technology and invent new methods for making and communicating their work." With that mind-set, in 1969, he created Dial_A_poem, recording poets ranging from Diane di Prima, Gregory Corso, Anne Waldman, John Ashbery, Patti Smith, and William Burroughs, and political messages from the Black Panthers and Abby Hoffman. Imagine how John would have conquered our current Zoom readings. My initial encounter with John was in the later 1960s, when as a high school kid I attended a reading, perhaps at St. Marks Poetry Project, but I can't testify to the venue. John's mesmerizing, electric performance was like nothing I had seen before, and the fact that he was gorgeous and sexy, dressed in tight black jeans and with a winning smile, certainly added to his allure. He was as electrifying and potent as any rock star. At the annual New Year's reading at St. Marks, John was always the pinnacle. He was the first performance poet I ever saw, and doubtlessly the best. John didn't read poetry as most of his contemporaries did. His words flowed in a rapid-fire torrent, an alchemy of simple strong statements memorized and delivered with shotgun...