Sasha Stiles, one of the co-founders of theVERSEverse collective writes:
“I met Allen Ginsberg when I was a student. I was with a friend, in Central Park, and he invited us both to his apartment downtown to continue our conversation about writing. He gave me feedback on a sheaf of schoolgirl verse (yes, I still have these precious pages with his handwritten notes on them), suggested I read Gregory Corso, made us a mushroom omelet, and played a cassette demo of a collaboration he’d just done with Paul McCartney. At the end of our time together, he told me “You have a way with words.” Meeting him was a profound and pivotal moment in my life.”
Sasha hasn’t forgotten – and announced this week the collaboration of theVERSEverse and Allen Ginsberg in a groundbreaking new AI project, taking place next week in Los Angeles at the Faye/Klein Gallery. We’ll have more about that tomorrow.
This Sunday, Diane di Prima celebrations in San Francisco:
“To honor the life and legacy of Diane di Prima, her family has planned a celebration on her 89th birthday, August 6, 2023, at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. This event will bring together artists, writers, poets, and musicians from around the world to celebrate Diane’s work and explore its ongoing relevance. The performances will feature readings, music, and other tributes to Diane and will be a powerful reminder of the importance of poetry, art, and activism in our current moment.”
“Peter Coyote, Amber Tamblyn, Kim Shuck, Culture Clash, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Cedar Sigo, and many more”
For further details on this event – see here
William Burroughs – this past week we’ve been remembering his passing (26 years ago). Today, we note an important addition to Burroughs studies – Burroughs Unbound – William S Burroughs and the Performance of Writing, a selection of essays by leading Burroughs scholars. edited by S.E.Gontarski
“In addition to contributing significantly to the growing field of Burroughs scholarship, Burroughs Unbound also directly engages with the growing fields of textual studies, archival research, and genetic criticism, asking crucial questions thereby about the nature of archives and their relationship to a writer’s work”
Among the contributors – Oliver Harris (“Making Dead Fingers Talk”), Jed Birmingham (“Whale Drek – The Lost Footnotes of the Olympia Press Naked Lunch”), Nick Sturm (“”There are no typographical errors in this edition” – Burroughs’s Textual Infection of the New York School”).
There are also some valuable appendices – “Evergreen on the Air” – Barney Rosset on Censorship and Publishing Naked Lunch (a transcript of the1962, WNYC radio broadcast),
“Lectures on the Virus,” (selections from Burroughs’s 1974 lectures at CCNY) and
“Burroughs Manifest” ( the “lost, found and lost again” Burroughs Archive at Florida State University, (purchased, 12 September 1980 ).
David Aaron Greenberg, Allen’s close friend and companion, throughout the ’80’s and ’90’s, resurfaced recently in New York’s East Village (his old stomping ground) at the Trops Gallery (431 East 6th Street) – a “pop-up gallery” – sorry, you missed it!) with a comprehensive show of his new paintings. Noah Becker profiles the artist – here
Here’s Timothy Greenfield-Sanders‘ 1995 image of Allen posing with “nouvelle Beats” – Geoff Manaugh, Eliot Katz and David:
Here’s David’s sensitive drawing of “Allen Ginsberg, Moments After Death”, 1997:
Not only an artist, David is also an accomplished musician and poet
Read a three-part interview with him – here, here and here
Marc Olmsted recently visited Allen’s grave in Colorado (at Drala Mountain Center) and wrote a poem about it. Read it in Beatdom – here
More Beat news:
Jerry Cimino shares with us the nail-biting tale of the belated arrival of the ultimate, Jack Kerouac On The Road collection (from Germany to the Beat Museum, via a little (temporary) lost-in-transit) – here
Thrilled to announce publication next week, (August 8th, Tuesday, it’s finally here!) of the thousand-plus page door-stopper (but insights and gems on every page!) – The Collected Poems of Anselm Hollo – More on that soon – very soon
& today marks the birthday of Satchmo and Shelley – see here
Re:The Ginsberg estate is using AI to revive A G’s legacy …
Ginsberg’s legacy is alive and well ,as evidenced by this website ,among many, many other works related to A G and those he promoted. His legacy doesn’t need to be “revived”
Would Ginsberg himself approve of AI ?…I’d like to think that he wouldn’t
but I’m probably wrong about that considering his penchant for self promotion (which in my view came to hurt his poetry even as it enhanced his reputation). AI Berg strikes me as a particularly anti-human Moloch -instead of killing babies -creating artificial babies as works of Art – Ginsberg was the most human Artist – he bared his soul & his mind in an exemplary, unprecedented way -he modeled his humanity for his many admirers and detractors- that made him the most influential Poet of the second half of the 20 th Century ; the people who are pushing AIBerg are selling out to the Monster TechnoMoloch –
reducing Ginsberg’s Poetry to machine simulations -cheapening, mechanizing his legacy. Well I guess a Hologram is next like Elvis and Sinatra -at Carnegie Hall reciting Howl-or has that already happened?