Chogyam Trungpa would have been 75 years old today
Previous Trungpa birthday postings on the Allen Ginsberg Project may be viewed here and here
For a rich wealth of Trungpa materials – see here (Shambhala), here (the Chronicles Project) and here (the Chogyam Trungpa Legacy Project)
not forgetting his pivotal role in establishing “the first fully-accredited Buddhist-inspired university in America” – Naropa
A selection from Johanna Demetrakas’ 2011 documentary – Crazy Wisdom – The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche may be viewed here
Here’s, on the occasion of his birthday, footage of Trungpa, from 1975 – Surrendering Your Aggression
Shambhala released The Collected Works of Chogyam Trunpa Rinpoche (edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian) in eight individual volumes.
Carolyn Rose Gimian also collaborated with Diana J Mukpo (Trungpa’s wife – they married when she was a mere sixteen) on her revealing, candid and intimate memoir, Dragon Thunder.
In other news Barry Miles’ Call Me Burroughs biography continues to get an enthusiastic reception. Ann Douglas declares it “authoritative” in last Sunday’s New York Times– “Appropriately, this biography, as Miles is at pains to tell us, (she writes) “is..collaboration, resting on the monumental research (James) Grauerholz did for a biography he abandoned in 2010, and the extensive taped interviews Ted Morgan conducted for Literary Outlaw, his pioneering 1988 biography. Miles himself knew Burroughs for many years, it was he who discovered the lost manuscripts of Queer (1985) and Interzone (1989), and he has written a number of books on the Beat Generation, including a fine biography of Ginsberg and an early study of Burroughs Although he occasionally simplifies Burroughs’ story with superficial moralizing..his access and wealth of detail will make this the go-to biography for many years to come.”
Davis Schneiderman interviews Miles here for the Huffington Post
James Attlee’s review appeared recently in the (London) Independent
Duncan White’s review appeared, a few weeks earlier, in The Daily Telegraph
Iain Sinclair‘ lecture on Burroughs, “Ghosts of a Ghost – William Burroughs, Time surgery and the death of the image” (delivered in conjunction with the show of photography currently up in London at the Photographer’s Gallery, and following an introduction by John Sears, the show’s co-curator), may be viewed, in its entirety, here.
Sears and curator Patricia Allmer are interviewed here
Did you all hear of these recently-discovered, previously-unknown, Sappho poems?