David Amram‘s 92nd birthday yesterday – the indefatigable David Amram, we wish him well.
Performing tonight in Tarrytown at Jazz Forum
Performing in New York City, December 17, as part of a 92nd birthday bash at the Zinc Bar
Anniversaries – It’s the anniversary of the birth of Don Cherry today – (and the anniversary of the death of Marcel Proust, Paul Éluard and Man Ray)
Big Kerouac news – the proposed Kerouac building –
Read the Kerouac Estate’s announcement and plans for a multi-faceted Kerouac Center – here (and more details – here)
Gregory Corso’s The Golden Dot – Yet more on this extraordinary book.
William Lessard in conversation with the editors, George Scrivani and Raymond Foye for Jacket 2 – (Don’t miss this!) – discussing the book, dispelling the myths – “Someone’s got to keep this generation honest”
Scrivani: “I felt like I was discovering a totally new poet. This was a new voice for Gregory, but it isn’t not Gregory. You can recognize Gregory in his last book just as much as in the first one, but there’s a clarity of address. He’s hell-bent on making the situation clear and dispensing with the verbal pyrotechnics and the rhetorical flourishes he once reveled in. He keeps some of them, but he’s using them very sparingly because he has a point he wants to make. Either he wants to clear up a misconception or make a confession. We all knew the public Gregory as an arrogant fucker, but he wants to tell you that that is not who he is.”
Raymond Foye is in agreement.
Foye: “…His honesty amazed me…There are no excuses in the late work. It’s a philosophical and karmic reckoning, and it’s total. Also, the level of skill amazed me, technically speaking, although I suspect many won’t see that..”
Ron Padgett – We’re concluding a week on the Tulsa /New York School. Ron’s new book, Dot, is out this month from Coffee House Press.
also check out this informative interview with Karen Roffman (regarding the Ron Padgett Papers, now in the archive at the Beinecke Library, Yale)
also upcoming from Coffee House – Anne Waldman – Bard Kinetic (due out January, next year)
& Raymond Foye again, catch Raymond Foye on Bob Dylan in The Brooklyn Rail