Feb 8 is the actual birthday, but wanted to alert everybody to this evening and the annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash. Once again, in Denver, at the Mercury Cafe, poetry and music and reminiscences. David Amram, alongside Neal’s son, John Allen Cassady, will be among those celebrating. Celebrations begin promptly at 8 o’clock.
In addition, a scale model maquette of a life-size sculpture by Sutton Betti of Neal and Jack Kerouac will be on display. Plans for a full public sculpture. For more information on that particular project – see here
and across town, at its Central Branch (10 W. 14th Ave. Pky) the Denver Public Library will continue to be hosting its exhibit,. “Neal Cassady’s Denver.” The exhibit features first editions and other memorabilia relating to Cassady’s Denver years will be up until the end of next month
Ed Sanders provides us with a glyph (thank you, Ed) and draws our attention to this wonderful line (from Allen’s South American Journals)
The Village Voice (no longer a newspaper, but still on line), has been teasing us, delving into its voluminous archives. You may remember this one and this one and this one – and this one. They recently posted this, Sean Wilentz’s essay from February 1985, “Beat Streets – The War Between the Prophets and the Profs” (a nominal review of Fred W. McDarrah’s Kerouac & Friends – A Beat Generation Album) – and this (Vivian Gornick‘s 1969 piece, “Jack Kerouac – “The Night and What It Does to You”” (on Jack’s October Lowell funeral – for more on that occasion see here )
and, speaking of the dear departed, mourning the loss this week of the great Barbados poet-scholar-historian, Edward Kamau Brathwaite. For more on this Caribbean icon, see here and (Lyn Innes in the Guardian) here