No Friday-Round-Up last week, so.. catching up
July 12 – It’s the anniversary of both Pablo Neruda and Tuli Kupferberg’!
Two heroes! – (For Allen on Neruda – see his elegy ( “To A Dead Poet”) – here)
(and see here – Jack Hirschman and Lawrence Ferlinghetti discussing the great master):
(For Tuli, we can’t wait for the forthcoming, Tuli, Tuli, Tuli – 1001 Ways To Be Joyfully Revolted” . For more on that and on Tuli – see our last year’s Tuli Centennial posting – here)
“A Restless Quest For Spiritual Freedom – Jack Kerouac, Hoboism, Zen Buddhism and the Fellaheen Ethos” – Beatdom magazine (on line) continues to provide challenging content.(We noted editor, David S Wills’ informative musings on Howl and its composition a few weeks back). Moroccan Beat scholar El Habib Louai, author of this particular piece is certainly no stranger to us. See his translation of Allen’s “America‘ into Arabic – here
Charley Plymell drops a note to Simon Warner’s Rock and The Beat Generation and is interviewed by Jonah Raskin – here:
from the interview:
CP: Allen Ginsberg moved into my place on Gough Street, so it’s hard to avoid the Beat label. I was on the road already at 16, driving the 1951 Chevy my dad bought me, before there was a Beat Generation. Gas was 15 cents a gallon. There was nothing to hold me back.
JR: What else might you remember about Ginsberg?
CP: On my motorcycle, I took him to visit Kenneth Patchen, the poet and novelist who incorporated jazz in his work. I also took Ginsberg to the Monterey Jazz Festival where he introduced me to Thelonious Monk. Monk didn’t recognize Allen when Allen mentioned Howl. But he remembered him when Allen said, ‘I gave you LSD in New York.’ ‘Oh, yeah,’ Monk said. ‘Got anything stronger?’
Montecristo magazine in its Summer 2024 issue shines a spotlight on the legendary (1963) Vancouver Poetry Festival
& tomorrow (but it’s a two-day celebration) – the 231st anniversary of “mad poet” John Clare