Philip Whalen with Allen, “my living room East 12 street NYC, he was staying a few weeks on poetry reading tour east coast US March 1984.(S)"
Philip had grown up on a farm in Oregon, and when Allen bought his in 1966, Philip wrote him with this practical advice:
“Cows love love & they also dig listening to music while you milk them - radio in the barn delights them. Horses are brilliant but unsound - they are smarter than cows, but giddy and undirected. You must be gentle but exceedingly self-assured & quite firm with them, otherwise they will take advantage of you & try trotting along quite near the fence in order to brush you off, or will go zooming along near trees with low, overhanging branches, with the same object. What they want is exercise & to be told what to do. They respond well to charming speeches & apples & carrots & tobacco { these last three are rare treats, maybe twice a week, if you’re messing around riding or working them daily.]
“Chickens are congenitally stupid, but respond to pretty words & slow, calm movement. {Don’t move fast or talk loud around any farm bird or animal; it scares them & they will bite, kick, stop giving milk &/or eggs if they are nervous.} Egg laying time {hormones or not} won’t really get going until the approach of spring. Didn’t you ever notice that the price of eggs is lower in spring and autumn, & late autumn and winter the price goes up? There just aren’t so many eggs then.
“Flowers & vegetables vastly enjoy companionship & chants & prayers. They really do better if you talk to them while you pull out the weeds & cultivate and water them…”
(excerpted from Crowded by Beauty: The Life and Zen of Poet Philip Whalen) #philipwhalen #poetry #zen #davidsnyder #farmlife #allenginsberg #beatgeneration (at East Village)
