Stumbled across this nifty ‘Beat Generator’ image in Washington City Paper’s Weekend Arts Round-Up coverage of last weekends goings-on in DC. They also had an interview with Anne Waldman as she walked through the National Gallery’s “Beat Memories” exhibition [this interview with Jesse Rausch is now no longer available on-line but photos from the occasion, by Chris Svetlik, may be seen here]. She (Anne) was in the capital to read “Howl”, backed by a string-quartet performing Lee Hyla’s score for the poem. There’s a three-minute clip of that performance posted on You Tube by Busboys & Poets (who’ve also got clips of Kyp Malone & Matthew Hemerlein up from the very same evening).
On the subject of Ginsberg riffs, we came across this entertaining and amusing parody of “Howl” – “Tweet” by Oyl Miller on McSweeney’s last week.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity, over-connectedness, emotionally starving for attention, dragging themselves through virtual communities at 3 am, surrounded by stale pizza and neglected dreams, looking for angry meaning, any meaning, same hat wearing hipsters burning for shared and skeptical approval from the holographic projected dynamo in the technology of the era, who weak connections and recession wounded and directionless, sat up, micro-conversing in the supernatural darkness of Wi-Fi-enabled cafes, floating across the tops of cities, contemplating techno, who bared their brains to the black void of new media…..
Check out the whole piece – here
oh, wow. gorgeous writing, and so true.