It’s Michael McClure’s birthday. The legendary Beat poet turns, astonishingly, 85 today. Happy Birthday, Michael!
Some of our previous McClure postings here, here and here. Michael on Bob Dylan here. Reading with Allen in 1976 at Naropa, and with Diane di Prima in Golden Gate Park here.
Lowell resident, and erudite maverick Jack Kerouac scholar, Paul Maher Jr, has a new book on Kerouac that we want to spread the word about, I Am The Revolutionary: Young Jack Kerouac, & don’t miss, if you haven’t yet read it, his 2007 Kerouac biography.
Speaking of biographies, Anthony DeCurtis’ Lou Reed: A Life is on the shelves.
Philip Whalen‘s birthday too (today, on what would have been his 94th). If you’re not familiar, we highly recommend David Schneider’s biography Crowded by Beauty.
Noted American poet, Richard Wilbur passed away earlier this week (he was 96). From William Heyen & Gregory Fitz Gerald’s interview with Wilbur at SUNY, Brockport, back in 1969:
WH: I can’t resist asking you a question,since you mention it, what do you think of “Howl”? I ask because to a good many of us, in certain senses, Richard Wilbur and Allen Ginsberg represent the antithetical poles in contemporary American poetry.
RW: Yes, Ginsberg is supposed to say “no” to me, and I’m supposed to say “no” to him. Actually, I consider him a person of great talent. I do think he throws it around loosely sometimes. From my own position, given my habits, I have to feel that if I possessed his material, I’d handle it a little differently. I wouldn’t be quite so exhibitionistic, or so loosely Whitmanian. Still, I am glad Ginsberg is on the scene.