Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 84

The Esther Creative Group and the Allen Ginsberg Estate recently celebrated the launch of the newly-established label, Ginsberg Recordings, with a stellar evening at New York’s Gagosian Gallery, featuring speeches/contributions/recollections from Bob Rosenthal, David Amram, Hettie Jones and Hal Willner. Jameson Fitzpatrick gives it a detailed write-up (including a fine portfolio of photographs) on the Lambda Literary blog, here.

The recent Lew Welch night in San Francisco (at the San Francisco Public Library, for the new City Lights edition of, his “Collected Poems”, Ring of Bone), was, by all accounts, a grand success. Gary Snyder, Joanne Kyger, David Meltzer, Peter Coyote, and step-son Huey Lewis (sic) were among those who participated. There’s an account (again, with photos) on the City Lights blog (and also another report, by Steve Helig, on the Huffington Post, here.

City Lights promises a podcast (audio) of that soon (we look forward to that). Meanwhile, check out their list of podcasts, including this vintage Lew Welch reading

– and this, two leading Ginsberg scholars, Bill Morgan and Gordon Ball, in conversation, recorded there, in San Francisco at the bookstore, just this past March

Depressing news via our good friends at E.V.Grieve, the East Village local blog – 170 East 2nd Street – the apartment building where Allen wrote “Kaddish”! (there was even a plaque on the wall to that effect! – he lived in Apartment 16 from August 1958 to March 1961) is up for sale – at the ridiculously stratospheric price of $16.5 million!

Allen memories – We’re always pleased to hear Allen memories. Here’s Charles Peters in Washington Monthly – (2018 update -unfortunately, that link is no more) “I met Allen in October of 1946…”

The Catalan “Ode to Allen Ginsberg” (Oda a Allen Ginsberg) that appeared in El Pais last week (Javier Perez Andujar‘s excoriating Howl hommage) is pretty-much a must-read for those of you who speak Spanish – “He visto a las viejas de la generacion de mi madre robadas por los bamcos y las cajas de ahorros, enganadas, saqueadas, desplumadas, timidas..”