influenced by shaman writers such as Maria
Sabina and Eliade. She is the co-founder of "the
Jack Kerouac school for disembodied poetics"
alongside Allen Ginsberg with whom she shared a
"mutual connection to dharma and
politics"(Hemmer, 2007). She also developed
friendships with Lew Welch, McClure and Robert
Duncan to name but a few. A second wave
feminist, she brings a woman's sensibility to the
beat and New York school movements. Her chant-
list verse accentuates the artistic and political
legacies of the beat movement. Waldman is the
real-life embodiment of a shamaness and this
resounds throughout her work. She demonstrates
an animistic connection to all things when she
states in “Maelstrom: One drop of ocean makes
the whole world kin”… “All the world is one, like
an angry deity’s essence dropped in the ocean”.
Once Again, she elicits the shaman (like Ginsberg
in Howl) when she beseeches the “guardian
spirits” chanting “O Help us know, Shalom Ah
Hum, Shanti”.
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