Mente Mariposa (Butterfly Mind) – “Butterfly Mind”, the poem, provides the title for the recently-published collection of Spanish translations of Allen’s poems by Gonzalo Scorza (from publishing house, Caleta Olivia, in Argentina)
“Butterfly Mind” appears in Allen’s posthumous book, Death & Fame – Last Poems 1993-1997, and runs as follows:
Butterfly Mind
The mind is like a butterfly
That lights upon a rose,
or flutters to a stinky feces pile
swoops into smoky bus exhaust
or rests upon porch chair, a flower beathing
open & closed balancing a Tennessee breeze
Flies to Texas for a convention
spring weeds in fields of oil rigs
Some say these rainbow wings have soul
Some say empty brain
tiny automatic large-scale-eyed wings
that settle on the page
January 29, 1997, 2.15 A.M – NYC
Jack Micheline. (who can be heard reading here) has a posthumous book just out, On Valencia Street (Poems and Ephemera), a labor of love by editor Tate Swindell
Read David S Wills review of the book in Beatdom – here
Read Michael Limnios’ interview with Tate Swindell – here (and also an interview with Todd Swindell (archivist for Harold Norse), his equally talented brother)
Bob Kaufman’s Collected Poems is immanent. More on that in a couple of weeks
David S Wills writes on William Burroughs for Beatdom
Kaya Oakes writes on Lawrence Ferlinghetti for Commonweal Magazine
Kirby Olson writes on Jack Kerouac (Jack Kerouac and Shakespeare) for Beatdom
Did you catch the provocative interview/piece in the New York Times on Ram Dass this past weekend? (including – scroll down – a color portrait by Allen (from 1972)
Becoming Nobody, a new documentary on Ram Dass, debuts this weekend.
Those of you who follow this blog regularly will know we’re big big fans of William Blake and have featured, and will continue to feature, much Ginsberg-on-Blake (we’re currently serializing his 1979 lectures on “America – A Prophecy”). Opening in London next Wednesday, at the Tate Gallery, a major exhibition, the largest show of his work in almost twenty years, with over three-hundred original works including watercolors, paintings and prints. See here for more details.
Mark Brown writes about the impact of Catherine Blake (Blake’s wife) upon the show – here
Alan Moore writes of the visionary genius of Blake’s art – here
And Whitman bicentennial celebrations continue. On Thursday they”ll be introducing a new Walt Whitman postage stamp
