Tomorrow is Lawrence Ferlinghetti‘s 99th birthday. There’ll be more about that tomorrow. Meanwhile, for today…
Lawrence Ferlinghetti interviewed by John McMurtrie in the San Francisco Chronicle – don’t miss it!
Don’t miss too David S Wills of Beatdom and his fascinating research into Allen’s “great China poem” – “Reading Bai Juyi” – “The Mystery of Allen Ginsberg’s “Reading Bai Juyi”
“It is the final section of “Reading Bai Juyi,” titled “Transformation of Bai’s ‘A Night in Xingyang,’” that piqued my interest. While working on a book about Ginsberg’s extensive world travels, I began looking into his time in China. I knew little about Bai Juyi and began to research his work, as it seemed clear he was important to Allen. Yet I could not find any reference online to “A Night in Xingyang…”
David finally solves the mystery (or, at least some of it)
Allen can be heard reading the poem – here
Amanda Petrusich writes about “A Sightly Embarrassing Love For Jack Kerouac”, in The New Yorker (see also Louis Menand’s article, “Drive, He Wrote”, in the same magazine, from a decade or so back)
Hannah Tindle’s profile of “The Female Beat Poet Who Wrote About Sex and Love” , Lenore Kandel, “a rare feminist voice in the literary counterculture of the 1960’s”, appears this week in AnOther magazine – see here
The new Lost and Found series – series seven – was launched this past Tuesday. New titles include booklets from Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and selected correspondence between Paul Blackburn and Julio Cortázar . Several previous titles from Lost and Found have featured on the Allen Ginsberg Project – see, for example, here and here
Van Morrison (with Slim Galliard on bongos), back in 1989, reading from On The Road (yes, really!)
Bill Murray on the Wes Anderson “Isle of Dogs” promo-junket, reading Ferlinghetti’s “Dog” (to the accompaniment of J.S.Bach!)
(for footage of Lawrence himself reading it, back in 1965. – see here)