Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 97

Today is Gelek Rinpoche‘s birthday (see our last year’s posting here). Happy Birthday Gelek!

What else for the Friday Round-Up? – Well, first up, our friend Geoffrey Manaugh has just put up “Allen Ginsberg Photos and Ephemera, 1994-1996″ (images from Europe – Prague, Milan, Paris – and from New York – plus, assorted scanned press-clippings – interviews from New York magazine, The Prague Post, a two-page interview with the Parisian magazine, Limelight..)   Here’s his shot of Allen, taken in Milan in ’96.

and here’s a poignant last snap of Allen in his new, barely-to-be-used, loft – “final photo I took of him and the last time I saw him in person”

For those of you in New York next Thursday evening, Bob Rosenthal, Allen’s long-time secretary,  will be reading (at the Sidewalk Cafe, in the East Village) from his much-anticipated prose-memoir Straight Around Allen. More on Bob’s memories (in case any of you had missed it) here.

Further Allen memories (vintage ones this time), John Wood has an article in the current (September-October) American Poetry Review – “With Allen in Arkansas – An Ozark Diary” – “I had not forgotten that these pages existed, but I’d not read them since I wrote them in 1969 recording a visit of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to give a poetry reading”, he writes
– and concludes, “Allen (Ginsberg),Peter (Orlovsky), (poet) Frank Stanford, Jim (Whitehead, head of the poetry program), John Little, John Holmes – all gone. But these jottings I made a lifetime ago bring back a good place, good times, and sweet memories – especially of those who are gone, and most especially of Allen and Frank, two gentle, good men I’m happy to have known”.

And, coincidentally, David W Smith on a later Fayetteville visit, “around 1983” – “It was really a joy to meet him and he was very gracious and generous with his time. He never seemed like I was bothering him. I think he liked people”

Sad news to report, the great Indian (Bengali) writer (and Allen’s good friend) Sunil Gangopadhyay died this past Tuesday, aged 78, “following a massive heart attack”. Fellow writer, Amitav Ghosh provides this loving tribute. There’s further notices here and here.