Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 120

Allen holding an abbreviated version of his poem “Gone, Gone, Gone” January 1997. Photo: c. Richard Nagler, used with permission

April 5 – Allen Ginsberg’s Parinirvana – April 5, 1997 – the date when Allen’s spirit left its bodily form.
Big poetry celebration event tomorrow-night in Los Angeles (at Beyond Baroque) – “Claiming Ginsberg – An Evening of Allen Ginsberg and Friends” (featuring Ronee Blakely, Rick Overton, S.A. Griffin, Marc Olmsted, and a whole lot more).

And speaking of the West Coast, a heads-up for the upcoming Hal Willner Kaddish performances (the performance at the San Francisco Jazz Festival is pretty much sold out, but you can still get tickets for the April 17 date at UCLA).

The last couple of days (today and tomorrow) for the New York City Grey Gallery’s “Beat Memories” show (Allen’s photos) before it heads off to San Francisco (May 23-September 9). In case you missed it, and the, mostly, enthusiastic response to it – there’ve been numerous reviews – see our earlier posts here, here and here.
Joseph Neighbor’s recent Salon piece, for example, (which originally appeared in Hypoallergic) can be found here.

Last week, we surveyed a bunch of On The Road (movie) reviews – Here’s a few more, starting with – what we have to declare to be hyperbole – Harry Kloman in the Pittsburgh City Paper – “Walter Salles’ moody, energetic film is more enjoyable than Jack Kerouac’s book” (sic!). Barry Paris  in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is a little more measured – “On the Road film takes slower trip than book”, is the headline, and he goes on to note – “This film version feels less exuberant than the book, slowed down and muted to emphasize the loneliness and melodramatic pain more than the wild excitements of the road. Still, it’s a worthy rendering of its be-bop bohemian – dissipated yet strangely innocent – heroes..”   Rob Boylan in the Orlando Weekly points out the dilemma – “The problem with this film is that it’s impossible to divorce it, even a little bit, from its source material. It seems unfair but those are the breaks..” – “Even a (very) good film would suffer in comparison with the novel” …”director Walter Salles and writer Jose Rivera have (at least) not corralled the text – no-one ever could, and that’s sort of the point”. Kelly Vance’s review for East Bay Express is here. Ryan Sartor for Patch.com here, Duane Dudek for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel here. For more (an extensive and on-going gathering of On The Road reviews) see here.

Helen Weaver, an old friend, writes to us that she recently unearthed a piece – Hare Krishna SRO: Allen Ginsberg at The New School (on a reading from 1969) – “Allen, the internationalist, the breaker of barriers, who will roll up his trouser legs and wade into any strange waters…”  [2019 update, sadly that piece is no longer available]

Allen in Poland! – There’s a whole web-site devoted to Allen-in-Poland/Allen seen from the perspective of Poland (mostly in Polish, natch, but this recent interview with poet Adam Lizarkowski

My Encounters With Allen Ginsberg – has been helpfully translated into English and is certainly well worth a read).

Allen in Bangladesh! – a national hero! – stay tuned, we’ll have more about that next week.

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