Michalis Limnios at Blues & Gr(eece) has put-together a warm music-based Allen Ginsberg tribute. Interviews with Harvey Kubernik, Debra Devi, Steven Taylor, Francis Kuipers, Marc Olmsted, Jonah RaskinYannis LivadasElsa Dorfman and Harold Chapman (illustrated with photos by Elsa Dorfman and Harold Chapman – also included is Harvey Kubernik’s extensive essay and CD liner-notes for the 2006 Water Records re-release of the 1966 recording of Kaddish). Look for it here.
(Marc Olmsted’s memoirs, incidentally, continue to be serialized on Rusty Truck. This week -his contribution to Bill Morgan’s 1986 Best Minds – A Tribute to Allen Ginsberg).
Dangerous Minds (Best Minds are Dangerous Minds too!) just recently held its Allen Ginsberg caption contest. The results are in. To this iconic photo (of Allen with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones of The Clash), of 84 entries – “Count ’em boys, 112 lines and not a goddam one of them rhymes. Now that is punk rock!”, was deemed, (by popular consent), to be the winner.
Here’s another contest/promotion (June 15’s the deadline), sponsored by Daniel Maurer and the local, East Village, bureau of the New York Times – “tour Allen’s old digs with his longtime-assistant”, Bob Rosenthal, “hear tales of Ginsberg in the very rooms where they happened”. Bob’s extraordinary – and essential – memories were recently serialized on that blog, and if you haven’t read them yet, we urge you to do so – right now! – Bob “will share more during an intimate chat in the poet’s old living room” in the coming days. (“Naturally, borscht will be served!”).
F Simon Grant provides an interesting piece – “What A Fiction Writer Can Learn From Allen Ginsberg – “the main technique that has influenced me”, he writes, “is the viscerally resonant parataxis” – and – “Essentially, imagery (in Ginsberg) is treated in two ways – as a function of either versimilitude or symbolism – as either a depiction of what may realistically happen in a given situation or how it reflects a character or abstract concept beyond the image itself”.
Iain Sinclair’s article on Gary Snyder in the current London Review of Books is informative and a great read (not to be missed!)
Patti Smith has a new album out.