More big news, archival news, the Paul Blackburn audio collection, long in the safe-keeping of the Archive for New Poetry at the University of California, San Diego, the great trove of New York City poetry recordings (“the most comprehensive oral history of the New York poetry scene between the late 1950s and 1970.”, in the words of Blackburn editor and scholar Edith Jarolim), has finally been digitalized and is now available on line.
The first release of this collection includes over one hundred recordings featuring over one hundred poets (among them Jerome Rothenberg, Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, John Wieners, Kenneth Koch, Anselm Hollo, Ted Berrigan Ray Bremser, Anne Waldman… The list goes on – and on. Subsequent releases will bring the total number to over two hundred. The entire collection, it is anticipated, will be completed by February, 2018.
Allen is represented (so far) by ten recordings (the bulk of which are from the legendary 1963 Vancouver Conference, but there are recordings of him being interviewed, recordings of him reading with his father, Louis, and a truncated reading of “Kaddish”
Who was Paul Blackburn? – We would point you to our September 2012 posting celebrating him – here
“In addition to writing his own poetry and translating , Blackburn played an important role in the New York poetry community, helping fledgling poets develop and providing emotional support and opportunities to read for both unknown and established writers at the various reading series with which he was involved. He was central in organizing readings that offered work from the Beats, the New York School, the Deep Image Poets, and the Black Mountain Poets. He organized and attended poetry readings at St. Marks, Café Le Metro, Les Deux Mégots, Max’s Kansas City and other bars and clubs, and hosted his own poetry radio show, “Contemporary Poetry” on WBAI in New York. He recorded readings, lectures, conversations about poetry with friends, as well as radio and news broadcasts.”
Jonas Mekas‘ scrapbook, A Dance with Fred Astaire, is now out – CNN profile it here.
More Mekas on The Allen Ginsberg Project – here and here
and (following a reading from Rainer Maria Rilke), Jonas, in 2009, at the St Mark’s Poetry Project’s Annual New Years reading, proposing an act of radical reconstitution – cloning Allen back to life! from the fetishized, preserved, archival, shavings of his beard!
William Nesbitt‘s review of the Beat exhibition currently up at Emory – The Dream Machine -The Beat Generation and the Counter-Culture 1945-1975 – (it’s where the Joan Anderson letter is currently residing) – may be viewed – here
R.J.Smith in the New York Times on his new Robert Frank biography – here
NYU (more New York news!) are planning this weekend a free concert honoring Philip Glass
Bob Dylan’s guitar just sold for close to $400,000
Rumors continue to swirl about a Martin Scorcese-directed documentary on Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue