The Hungryalists – who here remembers The Hungryalists? Even we, in our extensive Beats In India post last year neglected to mention them. We have had a permanent link to Tridib and Alo Mitra’s important account – and an updating of it and restatement appeared in the Indian press last week (see the Calcutta Telegraph here.)
Meanwhile in China… at the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Museum (sic) in Beijing, the poet Bei Dao has a photography show, 14 singular works, “Nil Mirror”. “Bei Dao himself admits, his mentor for photography is fellow poet…Allen Ginsberg”. “He suggested to never use the flash in photography”, he declares, “because it threatens to compress the whole space into a flat surface that lacks any real atmosphere”.
Meanwhile at la Maison de la Poésie in Paris (all this month)… “66 Gallery – Howl”, a performance piece, featuring Douglas Rand (with music by Jean-Damien Ratel), directed by Bérangère Jannelle. Jannelle (alongside another important European theatrical director and Ginsberg-adaptor, Maya Boesch) is featured in this intriguing article from Movement magazine.
“Le lien entre la Beat Generation et l‘époque actuelle est le désespoir….où, en tant qu’artistes, on se sent écartelés entre artistique et economique, le “retour de ces mythologies n’a rien d’etonnant..”
[“The link between the Beat Generation and present times is despair…In a time like ours, where, as artists, we feel torn between the artistic and the economic, the “return” of these (Beat) mythologies [sic] is not (at all) surprising..”]
David S Wills’ Beatdom remains an invaluable Beat site ( take that as a recommendation). Up recently is a Thurston Moore interview, conducted by Katie Ingegnieri, that first appeared in Bombay Gin in the Fall of last year. Thurston on Allen: “I would run into (him) here and there and it was always cool. He came to hang out at the NYC stop of Lollapalooza 1995 and I have some pictures of him and myself with my baby daughter Coco. While I talked to him Coco would be grabbing at his beard and mouth, and while most people would flinch at such messiness, Allen allowed her to stick her fingers into his mouth and he sucked and bit at them. I was very impressed! We never did get around to collaborating beyond him sending me a package with a nice letter and a sheaf of poems to peruse”
Carl Solomon – it’s been a while since our Carl Solomon birthday post, Holy March 30, here on the Ginsberg Project. Chris George at Fans In A Flash Bulb just posted a timely piece on him (selections from the (out-of-print) City Lights book, More Mishaps, photographs by Mellon Tytel). See here.)
Speaking of City Lights, we’re happy now to report that video of the recent Lew Welch celebration is now up – Gary Snyder, Joanne Kyger, Peter Coyote, David Meltzer, Jerry Martien, Steve Sanfield, Tom Killion and Huey Lewis reading on the occasion of the release of the new edition of the classic Ring of Bone. The book continues to garner enthusiastic reviews. Most recently, here’s Maria Damon in the current Rain Taxi
Carolyn Cassady – oh dear! – “Carolyn Cassady will not be watching (Walter Salles’) “On The Road”. “Jack was a big athletic man”, she’s quoted as saying, “and Neal was very muscular. But the actors they’ve chosen to play them are such wimps!”. Perhaps more revealing is the following (from the same article) – “Fighting the legend that has swallowed up her life is beyond her now-dwindling powers. And anyway, she needs what energy she has left for her on-going battle with the UK Border Agency over its refusal to allow her 60 year old son, John Allen (“named after Jack and Allen Ginsberg”) to visit her. He was turned back at Heathrow (airport) earlier this year because he had (only) a one-way ticket, though he’d been here (the United Kingdom) many times before” – “I’m getting old and I need his help. I can’t even get to the shops for groceries”, she declares.
“On The Road” opens today in England. We’ll have more reports about and reviews of it in the coming days.