Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso’s 1989 discussion on Naropa (then) Institute continues (from here) – and concludes here
GC: So it’s not over with, that (Naropa)’s going to keep continuing?
AG: No, that (it’s)’s getting bigger and bigger
GC: I love it, that’s…
AG; You know it’s gone through the torments of change.
GC: Right.
AG: …and now they’re accredited. In 1986 we all got accredited, which is lifting ourselves by the bootstraps For a couple of years I got some foundation grants and we turned it over to the Poetics Department..
GC: Oh good.
AG: And Kenward Elmslie gave some money at one point or another for it. A lot of people did. Everybody works free. You were there a number of times working for bupkis – bupkis?
GC: Yeah but it was a time that we could meet – meet Burroughs, altogether, better, get together
AG: So it was kind of a rendezvous for all the poets we’ve been talking about.
GC: Right, beautiful For a couple of months sometimes, a month, two weeks – right, beautiful .
AG: Well usually a month now. Much of it was all summer during previously years..
GC: When do you think I’ll be invited again, Al?
AG: Well. next year probably, I guess, but I don’t know, it’s up to Anne.
GC: Well good, I’ll go when Bill (Burroughs) goes
AG: Well, Bill announced this year that it will be one of the last times he’ll be coming..
GC: Then I want to go.
AG: ..he’s getting old..
GC: Alright, well I want to be there (when it’s the last time)
AG: I don’t know who else will be there. We’ve got to see if we can get him. He says he wants to..(he’d fly out). He’s seventy-five now.
GC: Yeah
AG: I guess you met Anselm Hollo and the guy who did the Paul Bowles biography (Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno) and the lady who translated the Tibetan.. the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Normandi Ellis – Awakening Osiris – The Egyptian Book of the Dead) We had the guy who was editing (Semiotics) (Semiotext(e)), Jonathan Robbins (Jacob Rabinowitz’s) friend, Peter (Lamborn) Wilson teaching Sufi poetry and chaos metaphysics and the Arab poets . But Anne who used to run St Marks Poetry Project, which was one of the bright lights in the poetic firmament for many years…
GC: In New York, yeah.
AG: … is now the same executive she is at Naropa. So she looks good, she’s real stylish and she’s getting more and more involved with performance with music. And Steven Taylor, who’s the lead guitarist for the Fugs, and the False Prophets over at the Pyramid Club is… teaches lyric and song, from Cro-Magnon times to the Cro-Mags, which is to say Harley and The Cro Mags, or it was actually the Cro Mags – the chain of continuity. He leads all the ladies a merry chase. That’s a good scene there (at Naropa)
GC: Yeah, I always had a good time there, Al.
AG: How many times you been there?
GC: About four . It was always a great respite from New York City and San Francisco to go there and meet all kinds of people.
AG: I’ve been going there every year since 1974.
GC: You did a lot of work for that place, Allen.
AG: I’ve enjoyed it…
to be continued