A heads-up and a thank you to our friends over at Our Allen for the discovery of this little archive gem – Allen, polite but frustrated, in 1959, in the letters column of the San Francisco Chronicle, responding to the inane “dumbing-down” and the scornful, patronizing tone, of a review of a benefit-reading for John Wieners’ Measure that had taken place in the city a few days earlier:
“I am a “Beat poet and am willing to take the abuse that goes with the phrase because I understand the original beatific intention of the word, its true charm. But there is no point in your pasting that label on a dignified fellow like (Robert) Duncan, it’s inaccurate and it’s vulgar. Is you reporter too dumb to understand that? And has the Chronicle, no better sense, no better reporters….What was perhaps the main news item.. was completely missed… I gave a very extraordinary reading of the first major poem I have written since “Howl” (“Kaddish”). This is an event of considerable importance in San Francisco. I’m sorry that you’ve left it up to me to report it for you. While I’m at it, I request that you do not henceforth refer to me as a “Beatnik”. It’s an insulting term and I am insulted by it…”
Take that!
Peter Hartlaub, cultural critic at the Chronicle , also came across this:
As Steve Silberman notes – “A great find – Allen’s application for employment at the SF Chronicle in the early 1950s, listing Neal Cassady as his primary contact. He didn’t get the gig, and instead ended up working briefly for a market-research firm”
More observations on Allen here – (from Laila Hussey in Cambridge University’s Varsity magazine – “With Your Death Full of Flowers – Remembering Allen Ginsberg“):
“What strikes me most about Allen Ginsberg when I survey his life and work, is the sense of becoming that is so potent… He was never just one thing, he never constructed his entire self around one identity or one cultural influence. He was constantly expanding, changing, challenging himself… he was a man who made mistakes. (but) that’s why he’s my favourite poet — he was cripplingly, wonderfully human.”
Tom Veitch – We lost another remarkable human being last week – poet, comic book artist (sometime Benedictine monk!), Tom Veitch.
Allen memorably wrote an afterword to Tom’s 1976 book of poems, Death College & Other Poems
Tom, ten years later, returned the favor with this poem (featured in Bill Morgan’s Best Minds)
Allen in Tibet
Allen wakes up
from the dream of manifest
identity
on all levels, in all spaces,
with all the constraints
of meditative attention
His architecture of reason,
the politics of heart-forms,
the poetics of brave speech,
the waters of love’s emotion,
the touch of love’s separation,
the sleep of
patterned self-awareness in
the dream of being
Allen
Who in Buddha’s name is he anyway?
A cock of light probing
the buttocks of God?
Tom was a guest at Naropa Institute in the early days in 1976 and 1978 and can be heard reading from his work and answering questions here, here and here –
and from that latter visit – you can also listen in on sessions on “Psyche and Multiplicity”, “The Unconscious and Its Relation to Wholeness”, and “Alchemy and Ancient Writings”…
All this, long before his extraordinary success with the Star Wars franchise, writing those early comics (at a time when people were pretty dismissive of engagement in such a project, Star Wars was “old hat”), soldiering on and creating much of the subsequent back-story.
Irvin Angeles’ 2019 documentary on Veitch, made for Nick Sturm‘s class at Georgia Institute of Technology (which received plaudits from the its eponymous subject) may be viewed – here
Jack Kerouac – We haven’t forgotten to point you to vintage Allen Ginsberg Project postings on Kerouac this week, How about these?
Revisiting Jack Kerouac’s Poems – here and here – Mexico City Blues – here and here – American Haiku – here
Allen reads from The Dharma Bums
Ron Whitehead premieres his “Searching For Jack Kerouac” on Simon Warner’s Substack
Jerry Cimino has plans at The Beat Museum
Part 3 of Marco Moretti’s series in La Stampa
Celebrations of Kerouac’s Breton roots
oh, and this just in, Jim Irsay is going to be hosting a monster bash in the Beverley Hills Hotel in Los Angeles
Playback – Video from last year’s virtual European Beat Studies Conference is gradually being uploaded. See here for a podcast hosted by Benjamin Heal featuring a panel, chaired by Peggy Pacini and moderated by Estíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedo on “Art and the Beat Generation”. Panelists/papers by Beatriz Cordero – (“Abstract Expressionists and the Beat Generation”), Daria Baryshnikova – (“Art Language Radically Revised”) and Tanguy Harma – (“Counterculture, Counterpower? Disengagement – The Art of the Beat Generation”). More forthcoming.