Tonight, Allen Ginsberg in the Netherlands/1983 Revisited – Hans Buhrs, Joep Bremmers, Eddie Woods, Jacq Palinckx, The Mondriaan Quartet….
this Sunday at La Commune Cafe in Oakland, California – Michael McClure and Diane di Prima, and Ouroboros (Sheldon Brown, Clark Coolidge, Andrew Joron, Joseph Noble)…
Gary Snyder recently appeared in Berkeley to celebrate Norman Waddell‘s translations of Zen master Hakuin Zenji (Hakuin Ekaku) ‘s Poison Blossoms From A Thicket of Thorn – He (Hakuin) is best known for the famous Zen koan, “What is the sound of a single hand clapping”, (which, Snyder points out, is actually poor/inaccurate translation, since the koan, in the original Japanese, “never included a(ny) reference to “clapping””)
From New York – The Q & A following the recent showing of Howard Brookner’s Burroughs – The Movie at the New York Film Festival (featuring Aaron Brookner, Jim Jarmusch, Tom DiCillo, and James Grauerholz) just went up on You Tube and may be accessed here.
Blandine Longre’s translations of selected poems of Gregory Corso – The Happy Birthday of Death (with an introduction by Paul Stubbs and an afterword by Kirby Olson) has just been published in a fine bilingual edition by the Black Herald Press in Paris
More American-poetry-in-France. Don’t miss the increasingly formidable [sic] “Collection américaine” of the Nantes-based joca seri publishing house, edited by Olivier Brossard. This imprint, specializing in translations of the classic “New York School” poets has published groundbreaking French translations of John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara and Ron Padgett, amongst others. Its most recent title –Il est douze heures plus tard – Stéphane Bouquet‘s translations of James Schuyler (with a cover illustration by Joe Brainard)
The (third) European Beat Studies Conference just concluded this week in Tangier, Morocco. We’ll be reporting more about that in the weeks to come.
Patti Smith performing at the Vatican – worthy of note
Van Morrison’s City Lights book (poetry/song lyrics) has just been published by Faber in England
Bob Dylan remains…. Bob Dylan
See You Later Allen Ginsberg!