April 26th – Today is Beat legend Charles Plymell‘s 89th birthday – Happy Birthday Charley!
Rolf Potts‘ 2018 podcast – “Charles Plymell on the Beat Generation – An outsider’s inside history of the Beat Generation, as told by Charles Plymell” – is essential listening.
Don’t miss it.
Gerard Malanga in 2010 on Charley Plymell in Rain Taxi – here
Benito Vila, ten years later, in Please Kill Me – here
A smattering of interviews, just to give you an even deeper sense of the man:
Catfish McDaniel’s 1996 interview, Jon Randall’s 1996 interview, Paul Hawkins’ 2008 (updated) interview, Sharon Anderson’s 2011 San Francisco Interview, Michael Limnios in 2012 and The Sunflower Collective in 2016
Hot news – a wide-ranging, 374-page, long-overdue, comprehensive collection, Over the Stage of Kansas: Selected Poems of Charles Plymell 1966-2020, edited by Gerard Malanga, will be out soon from Bottle of Smoke Press
The publishers note that “Charles Plymell’s poems in Over the Stage of Kansas are “at times as quiet & thoughtful as a farmer’s field & then suddenly as bustling as a raging river or a crowded city street. This collection brings together some of Plymell’s best material written over several decades & places it under one giant circus tent of literary thrills…”
A poetry reading and book-signing event (originally scheduled for today) will now be taking place at the Park Theater Hudson, New York, on Saturday May 18 , at 6pm – for more information – see here
William Burroughs news – we haven’t featured any for a while – this time, courtesy the indefatigable Kevin Ring at Beat Scene, a note on Cut Up or Shut Up – Jan Harmen, Jürgen Ploog , Carl Weissner – and William Burroughs’ legendary cut-up text, from back in 1972, recently re-released by the German publisher, Rolf Friel (Mokolo Print) in a facsimile edition, in English, with a new cover design by Robert Schalinski, and a brief and informative introduction by Herman.
Kevin Ring writes: “Jürgen Ploog died in 2020, Carl Weissner, a few years earlier. Along with Herman, they were and still are mainstays of the European alternative literary community that were inspired by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin and any number of other European experimental aspirants seeking to take language out of the hands of the conservative gate-keepers, the old guard, or the control agents”
Read the full piece in its entirety, as it appears in Beat Scene – here
& more Beat Scene and Burroughs – Ring has just released number 80 (!) in his remarkable Beat chapbook series – The Burroughs Flyer by Burroughs-scholar James Birmingham (see here for more of them) – “In the regular format. One hundred and twenty five numbered copies”. If you would like a copy email him directly – kevbeatscene@gmail.com. You know they’ll be disappearing fast.
and more Burroughs (re )publishing news . Tangerine Press in London are reprinting a rare text from 1963, The Frisco Kid He Never Returns, sent to Iain Sinclair for his literary magazine, Albatross, (published with “Shadow Routines” by Sinclair) – 250, the edition (including 50 signed copies). “This edition aims to recreate a more accurate version of three column/three row ‘experiment’ Mr Burroughs submitted.” – See more details – here
David Amram – another legend! – and another indefatigable soul – the ever-energetic Amram was recently interviewed by Simon Warner, giving news of future projects- here
Tomorrow he’ll be playing in Kerouac’s home-town, Lowell, along with Willie Alexander, as part of the annual Town The City Festival (taking its name, of course, from Kerouac’s first (first published) novel)
Upcoming next Wednesday – Kral Majales – Vit Horejs lectures in New York on “Elected and Ejected -Allen Ginsberg, King of May, ’65” at the Bohemian Benevolent & Literary Association. For more information – see here
Life and death – Living and dying – Jerome Rothenberg passed away this past weekend (see our Thursday posting – here)
and Helen Vendler this past Tuesday
The two great titans of American poetry criticism – Majorie Perloff and Helen Vendler (Perloff died last month)
Vendler on Ginsberg (see here her review in the New York Times of Fall of America)