John Wieners and Jack Spicer, two poets close to our heart, were featured this week in
Ralf Webb‘s piece in The Guardian – “We exist upon the fringes of the world” – the queer American poets who battled madness and obscurity” – a spotlight on Richard Porter‘‘s pioneering Pilot Press
Solitary Pleasure, the Wieners title, we noted a couple of days ago. A Book Of Music, Jack Spicer’s title, (a reprint of the 1958 collection (published posthumously in 1969), it has to be said, has a slightly more oblique relation to Allen. Webb notes Spicer’s estimation of “Howl”, (which he derided as “the best publicized poem in the world”) – “crap” ! Spicer was a legendary curmudgeon – Frank O’Hara, he dismissed as “a third-hand Rimbaud”!
Beat scholar, Gregory Stephenson -perhaps known as the author of Exiled Angel (1989), the first full-length study of Gregory Corso‘s work, has a new, in fact, two new books out. The first, more notes on Gregory, Riding Pegasus Bareback (out this past February), the second, And The Rivers Thereof – Reflections on Riverine Images in the Writing of Jack Kerouac (out just this past month), both from Felix Culpa Press
David S Wills has been on something of a roll of late – a number of lucid and useful articles. See, for example, his review of Ray Bremser – Disciple of Kerouac and Coltrane in the ever-informative Beatdom.
More on Ray Bremser – here
It was The Dalai Lama’s birthday yesterday – Here’s The Dalai Lama’s Birthday Message:
Mihoko Okamura, D.T. Suzuki“s secretary passed away in Kyoto, Japan, last month. A formidable presence. She was 88.