There hasn’t been a Friday Round-Up for a couple of weeks now, so a brief catching-up:
All this month on New York’s Times Square – Allen Ginsberg’s mug (from Allen Ginsberg’s Andy Warhol Screen Test), courtesy the Andy Warhol Museum (part of the on-going Times Square series, Midnight Moments)
Meanwhile, opening last week on the West Coast (at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles) – “The Singing Posters: Poetry Sound Collage Sculpture Book – Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” (by conceptual artist, Allen Ruppersberg) – “In order to reinterpret the piece for contemporary audiences, Ruppersberg (has) transcribed the poem into phonetic spellings and printed the “new” text on approximately 200 vibrantly colored commercial advertising posters installed floor to ceiling on gallery walls.”
Using graphic design styles of the period when Howl was published, the posters communicate the “high culture” of poetry via the common language of advertising. The layout of the type is visually chaotic, analogous to the barrage of images conjured up by the poem and to the social climate in which the text was produced.”
The installation also includes Ruppersberg’s personal scrapbooks, which contain an accumulation of images, newspaper and magazine clippings, and other miscellany that the artist has collected throughout his life, particularly in the ’60s and ’70s.”
The Whole Shot – Collected Interviews with Gregory Corso – (we’ve written about it here and here) is now, we’re happy to announce, out – an essential book)
and Joanne Kyger‘s On Time – Poems 2005-20014, from City Lights – another essential book
Footage of Joanne reading from the book, last month, at the San Francisco Public Library, may be seen here
Ed Sanders’ A Book of Glyphs was published by Steve Clay‘s extraordinary Granary Books last year. Don’t miss Tim Keane’s note in Hyperallergic on Ed Sanders’ “Glyphic Works”. “Seeking the Glyph: An Exhibition of the Glyphic Works of Edward Sanders” an exhibition, organized by poet Ammiel Alcalay and Kendra Sullivan of the redoubtable Lost and Found – CUNY Poetics Document Initative, opened last month at the Poets House in New York and continues until May 23rd
Last month’s Dutch Mondriaan Quartet Ginsberg event. Here‘s Hans Buhrs (and Jacq and Bert Palincks) performing “Howl!– (continuing here). Here’s “What The Sea Throws Up at Vlisingen “ (“Wat de zee uitbraakt in Vlissingen“) and here’s Eddie Woods and Joep Bremmers together performing “Birdbrain” (“Mafkees”)
French poet, international poet, Serge Pey, at the Festival de Poesía en Voz Alta in Mexico last month – remarking on his inspiring collaboration with Allen (his remarks are in Spanish):
Interviewer: Como interveno Allen Ginsberg en su quehacer poetico?
SP: Yo tenia una revista que se llamaba Tribu y era una aventura, publicama a amigos como Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Ernesto Cardenal, Rafael Alberti y otros mas; nacio como un deseo de compartir una fiesta entre varios poetas. Me gusto Ginsberg porque era un poeta comprometido, teníamos, cosas en comun y me incito a recita la poesia públicamente al deprime: “Tu debes hacerle como Bob Dylan, expresar la poesia con los dientes, mordiendo las palabras”. La modernidad de la poesia americana me libro, porque esteban ligados a la palabra física, a diferencia de la tradicion de la poesia francesa que es mas apegada a la escritura. Con Ginsberg hice recitales en Amsterdam, en Tunez y en Paris, por citar algunos. A el le gustaba que recitáramos “Howl” y “Kaddish, dos poemas largos de sue autoria. Tambien aprendi a integrar la relacion poética a la política, cosa importante de la generación, beat.”
How did Allen Ginsberg take part in your poetic work?
SP: I had a magazine called Tribe and that was a trip, I published Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Ernesto Cardenal, Rafael Alberti, and many more. The magazine was born from a desire to share a great party with great poets. I liked Ginsberg because he was a passionate poet, we shared things in common, and he inspired me to recite my poetry in public when he said, “You must do it like Bob Dylan, express the poetry with your teeth, biting the words.” The modern American poetry that I read was linked to the physical word, (unlike the French poetic tradition which is more attached to writing). With Ginsberg I did readings in Amsterdam, in Tunis, in Paris, to name a few. He loved when we did “Howl” and “Kaddish” together, two of his long poems. Also I learnt how to integrate my poetry into politics, something very important in the Beat Generation)
(For the complete interview see here)
Here‘s Allen’s sometime Brooklyn College-student, poet Sharon Mesmer on Allen – “Poets on Poets” (She is interviewed by current Brooklyn College professor, Robert Viscusi)
SM: Allen? Yeah. Def(initely). I would say, yeah – and, getting to study with him here (Brooklyn College) was pretty amazing. It was just, “how could that ever happen?”, you know, but..yeah, I imitated his work for a while. When I was in college, my female friends and I wanted to be a female Beat Generation, you know, and do all the things that they did, you know – except as women. Yeah, I would say he was my main influence – still, still.
I think also because (of)… he really took the idea of freeing oneself of shame as a practice, in his life, in his writing life, in his life as a Buddhist, and I was always very interested in the way that he lived his life..
We’ve been trawling, (as we occasionally do) Ebay. Here’s a little gem (a lost poem?) on the back of a postcard (regarding the 1981 Jack Kerouac Conference)
“Kerouac Conference/was Fine as Rhine/Whine on the line/thee & thine OK/Keep yr spines/Straight & kind!/Love/Allen”
Here’s a photograph by Allen DeLoach (taken some ten years or so before) on Allen’s Cherry Valley farm. He is flanked by, on the right, Peter Orlovsky‘s brother, Julius (Orlovsky), and, on the left, Peter’s then-girlfriend, Denise Mercedes.
Thank you Boing Boing (another of our favorite sites) for the recent plug for Snapshot Poetics
Michael Horovitz in London’s Daily Telegraph recalls/revisits one of the great counter-culture encounters
Jim Cohn‘s wonderful Museum of American Poetics saluted in the Boulder Daily Camera
Congratulations Alice Notley on winning the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Poetry prize. It couldn’t go to a more deserving figure.
Jon Aes-Nihil‘s documentary, William S. Burroughs In The Dreamachine has just been released on DVD. From Kurt Dahlke‘s enthused-but-less-than-enthusiastic review in DVD talk “Burroughs and (Allen) Ginsberg hold court at LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art], throngs beseech them for autographs. Leo DiCaprio asks for a photo-op. Aes-Nihil gently intersperses still shots of the luminaries. As they speak, and we can’t hear, we wonder what wisdom they impart. We wonder why we haven’t done anything that impacted the word and the world in the way that these gentlemen did. But mostly we just wonder at the quality and import of the footage. Were it not for the two men who sit front and center, either waving their wrinkled hands or smiling benignly, the footage would be strictly B-reel for your own home movies.”
And again, (regarding later, interview, sequences) – “Lack of camera focus and poor audio make the living room sequences difficult to absorb, not to mention the fact that said sequences don’t seem to have much more of a theme than, “we’re quite fortunate to have an audience with Burroughs, let’s tape it!”. Those who love Burroughs will find it fascinating, but, I dare say, lacking.”
and here, to conclude, is another gratuitous Ginsberg-Burroughs photo (for no particular reason, but, heck, why not?):
