Many thanks to Amy Eisenberg of the Winged Lion School of Tai Chi in Erie, Pennsylvania, for the link to this poem reading and performance by Allen Ginsberg: Poetry Spot
There is a nice commentary about Ginsberg and the poem on the blog, The Allen Ginsberg Project.
And the text of the poem appears on .Acumedico.com.
I spent a little (read too little) time searching the internet for other poets that wrote about Tai Chi but to tell the truth, I was unimpressed by most of what I found. I think the Tai Chi Classics are themselves wonderful poetry that not only serves to define Tai Chi practice but also raise the spirit of the reader. Ginsberg's poem has a bit of tongue in cheek but does (for me) explore the difficulty of performing Tai Chi in a state of meditation. It's like the old joke about the alchemist who said the secret of turning lead into gold was to stir molten lead WITHOUT thinking of the word, "Hippopotamus."
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Very entertaining.
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