International Beat Generation – Worldwide Beat Generation, we’ve always tried to stress the global, trans-national qualities of the Beat Generation here. Big shout-out today (and plug for those who don’t know about it) to the European Beat Studies Network, whose annual conference is coming up (this time in Cyprus), coming soon, 9th of October. Here‘s their review of 2012’s The Transnational Beat Generation, and here of 2016’s World Beats, and their review of 2018’s The Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literature – here
Check out the latter – here (and here (where you can download a couple of chapters)
Anne Waldman and her son Ambrose Bye have been in Mexico, spreading the word – to the Music School, CECAM, (Center for Musical Training and Development of the Mixe Culture) in Tlahuitotepec, Ayuuk village, in Oaxaca. This is from the documentary “La Poesia en la Niebla” (Poetry in the Mist) expertly assembled by Natalia Gaia
Meanwhile in America (Calais, Vermont, to be precise) “New York School” poet, Ron Padgett. Warmly recommending his new book, from Coffee House Press, Big Cabin. Here’s a short (and not untypical) poem from it:
Haiku
First, calm down.
Next, stay that way
for the rest of your life.
Speaking of the “New York School” – James Schuyler. Poets House in New York have just released as the fifth of their digitalized “Chapbooks of the Mimeo Revolution“ series,
Schuyler’s rare 1976 volume – The Fireproof Floors of Witley Court.
and, still remembering the “Mimeo Revolution”, our good friend Greg Masters writes to inform us that he’s just made available in digital form a complete run of his (co-edited) NYC-based literary magazine, Mag City – (all 14 issues – Allen appears in issues 5 and 12, alongside numerous other singular treasures). Go here to check it all out.
We mourn (as do many) the death of the great African-American novelist, Toni Morrison
(Here‘s one well-meant effort at equating her work and Allen’s)
& documentary filmmaker, Don Pennebaker died this past August 1st – Who can/will ever forget this pivotal, ground-breaking footage?