Spirit of rebellion, the anniversary of Pablo Neruda‘s birthday today, and anniversary of the death of the late great anarcho, Tuli Kupferberg
Plenty more Tuli – here
Poetry passings – Marie Ponsot (aged 98, published early on in Lawrence Ferlinghetti‘s Pocket Poets City Lights series (Pocket Poets Number 5), but soon eclipsed by the previous title, Pocket Poets Number 4, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”) – and, this past Sunday, Steve Cannon, beloved poetry icon of New York’s Lower East Side (see here, here – and here)
Corina Copp‘s gathering of memories of Kevin Killian may be found here
Jacob Rabinowitz (whose Blame It On Blake – A Memoir of Dead Languages, Gender Vagrancy, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso & Carr we focused on here) has provided on his Scholar Adrift blog two valuable reviews well-worth reading – notes on David S Wills‘ World Citizen – Allen Ginsberg as Traveller – see here – and on Andy Clausen‘s Beat – A First-Hand Account of the Latter Days of the Beat Generation – here
“By a curious coincidence”, he writes, “Bob Rosenthal, Andy Clausen, and I all published our memoirs of the Beats at pretty much the same time. We all lived to some extent in Allen’s shadow, Bob as his manager and major domo, Andy as his poet protégé, and me as his evil spirit and perennial problem child. It was inevitable that when the day came to set a recording pen to paper we were all at some pains to do so with individual style, to assert at last that we were more than Allen’s echoes, that we had something to add, and in a unique voice..”
“Moving Towards The Light – The Triumph of Spirituality in The Poetry of Allen Ginsberg” by Jessica Clark is on Beatdom
Heads up, Jack Kerouac next week on the Allen Ginsberg Project. Here’s, meanwhile, some thoughts from California (from Jim Miller in San Diego)
“.. I just partied. [laughter] And it was good partying. This was in the late ’50s, after Allen Ginsberg gave the first reading of Howl at the Six Gallery. I was at that reading, but I didn’t go there to hear Allen, although we’d known each other since the mental hospital when we were patients [sic] I went to hear Philip Lamantia, who was reading John Hoffman’s poems, who had recently died in Mexico.. ”
(Raymond Foye interviews Gerd Stern (see also here, here and here) for the Brooklyn Rail)
Leonard Cohen (whose love letters recently summoned a record price) is the subject of Nick Broomfield‘s new documentary Marianne & Leonard Words of Love – see a trailer for the film – here
read an interview with Nick Broomfield – here
& for those in the New York City area, Harold Budd (“ambient icon”) will be giving two rare New York shows, tonight and tomorrow, at St George’s Episcopal Church in NYC – Harold’s Beat poet credentials? – among other things, – Walk Into My Voice (from back in 1998) – If you’re not familiar with it, check out the album, in its entirety, – here
