First Blues Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs, 1971-74

"That Fall in NY Peter Orlovsky and I gave poetry reading at NYU in Greenwich Village, and improvised for an hour on the theme "Why write poetry down on paper when you have to cut down trees to make poetry books?" following a thought Gregory Corso'd writ, "No good news can be written on bad news." Unbeknownst to us Bob Dylan was in the audience, in the rear with old musician fellow-actor companion Dave Amram. Dylan phoned that night and asked, "Can you make up words like that anytime?" and came over Lower East Side apartment, picked up a guitar, played various blues chords and latin rhythms & I sat on edge of bed and tongued syllables & sentences rhymed fast as I could to "I'm going down to Puerto Rico." So Dylan pleased by this proficiency said "Why don't we go into a studio and record?" The first songs in this book are products of those sessions. -- pg. ii-iii.