Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 507 (Gregory Corso’s birthday)

Raymond Foye, Gregory Corso, and Jack Kerouac’s pastor,  Father Armand (Spike) Morissette, Massachusetts, March 17, 1986 at the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac celebrations – photo Allen Ginsberg  (c) The Estate of Allen Ginsberg

It’s the birthday today of Gregory Corso (it would have been his 91st). We are grateful to his friend and editor, Raymond Foye for providing this delightful and candid footage – vintage Super 8 Home Movies. San Francisco, 1978. It begins with Gregory feeding Remy Martin cognac to buffalos in the zoo! – twenty-five seconds in – driving to Cliff House – forty-five seconds in (from left to right) – Gregory, Lisa Brinker, their son, Max Orfeo Corso, Peggy Biderman (the legendary Peggy Biderman), and poet Neeli Cherkovski. At the three minute-fifty mark, Washington Square, San Francisco, at four twenty-five, Raymond, filmed by Peggy Biderman. More sightings – at eight-minutes-and-five seconds in, poet Jack Hirschman, and at eight thirty-seven, an unknown (unidentified) punk band.

Raymond is currently editing with George Scrivani (we await with great anticipation), an edition of the extraordinary final unpublished poems of Gregory,  The Golden Dot – Last Poems 1980-2000, for New Directions.

 

“A Father, A Son, Two Trees, and a Truck” by Chris Buck, a extensive memoir of San Francisco and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and one man’s quest to honor his memory, is well worth reading. You can find it on the site of the Beat Museum – here

Sea Urchin Press (we mentioned them last week in the context of a Lew Welch volume) have several more interesting (limited edition) items available, notably Peter Orlovsky’s Rough Mixes (a cassette collection of recordings, eleven solo tracks from a 1981 recording session at ZBS Foundation, New York City), and, also on cassette, Amici Nella PoesiaFranco Beltrametti and Jim Koller (likewise, available as a Counter Culture Chronicle). Their Ed Sanders volume, (in collaboration with Moloko-Plus), The Ex-Terr Poems, is, regrettably, out-of-print but you can find more information about it – here. Sea Urchin is run by artist-publisher-maverick Ben Schot and you can find more himhere, and here

Marianne Faithfull (with Warren Ellis) – Marianne Faithfull reads Lord Byron (from an upcoming album of her reading from the great Romantic poets (against Warren Ellis’ ambient background)  – more of this in the coming months – stay tuned

4 comments

  1. These are the films made entirely by our mom, Peggy Biderman with her own Super 8 camera when she visited San Fran and her close friend Gregory Corso in 1978. This is why the mistake about Golden Gate Park was made, they are entirely the work of Peggy Biderman. They are copyrighted in her name but were stolen and released here wrongly/ We the family plan to release them professionally in the future. Cease and desist please. Ann and Beth Biderman

  2. Dear Beth,

    Raymond Foye assures me these are his Super 8 films and he still owns the original films. There is a small amount of additional footage in this film of Mr. Foye shot by Peggy Biderman using his camera, but this does not make that material copyright by Peggy Biderman. Mr. Foye assures me that these films (and others from this time) were entirely his own creations and are his property and he still owns the originals. If you have any further questions you need to speak with him directly. Email me at info@allenginsberg.org and I’ll reply with his direct email.
    Sincerely,
    Peter Hale

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *