We wanted to spotlight this – T.J.Clarke (from last month (January 23, 2025)’s London Review of Books):
“Television Was a Baby Crawling towards That Deathchamber.’ These words are by Allen Ginsberg, writing in 1961, the title of a poem anathematising America. ‘It is here, the long Awaited bleap-blast light that Speaks one red tongue like Politician.’ The most chilling word in Ginsberg’s title strikes me as ‘That’. It knows we know what it refers to. But maybe, ultimately, even the ‘That’ offers a glimmer of hope – doesn’t it put us still outside the killing machine? And the worst horror of the present moment (worst for its observers, I mean, not for its victims) comes from the suspicion that any such outside has disappeared – ‘disappeared’ being the TV deathchamber’s word of choice.”
“Television Was a Baby Crawling towards That Deathchamber.” – We’ve spoken of William Burroughs’ prescience, but Allen too. There’s a recording of Allen reading that poem- here
Allen Ginsberg – World Citizen – World Poet – International Poet – We’re pleased to announce the long-awaited publication in China of the Ginsberg-Kerouac Letters (in Shanghai, in Simplified Chinese) The translator on this project is Hu Yigun
Ross Goodwin‘s triumph last week – the official unveiling of Howl.camera
AI and AG continue their dance.
Sasha Stiles of the VERSEverse collective – “Poems are generative in many ways. like generative code, they are compressed carriers of meaning, expanding uniquely with each reader’s engagement — an algorithm of experience that runs differently in every mind, based on individual perspectives, backgrounds, interests… for me and so many others, Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL is an especially potent example – an incantatory text that reshapes itself across time and readers, activating new resonances with every pass..”
So another sad passing to report (from just yesterday), Pierre Joris, esteemed poet, essayist, translator, anthologist
A friend and occasional translator of the Beats into French, (notably Contretemps à temps de Carl Solomon (1974), Mexico City Blues de Jack Kerouac (1977), Sentiments éligiaques américains de Gregory Corso (1977), and Jukebox hydrogène de Allen Ginsberg (avec Nicole Peyrafitte, 2008))… But this is only a tiny fraction of his prodigious achievement. Can we mention the translation of Picasso’s wonderful poems? can we mention Paul Celan? (we just did!)
& fugitive items – there’s the rare (and wonderful) “A Talk With Allen Ginsberg”, from back in 1970, (a 30-page interview in a one-off Bard College magazine) – (might the audio – and other materials – be what we’re listening to here? – and here?)
– “taped in a little house up the road from Bard, on the afternoon of December 3, 1969. Ginsberg was giving a reading at Bard that night”.)
Pierre, from Jane Ormerod’s 2023 interview:
” I came to America and became an American poet because I had discovered Allen Ginsberg, Bob Kaufman, Jack Kerouac already in Europe, and soon after arriving here in 1967 I came across the richness of the Don Allen anthology..
Gerd Stern – Last week we noted the passing of this “counterculture Zelig” and in particular, J Hoberman‘s lively New York Times obituary on him. The following day, the Times followed up with a further article linking him with Allen and Carl Solomon – “Three Poets – The Tale of Gerd, Carl and Allen” – don’t miss it.
Incidentally, “The first person to get Allen Ginsberg high was Gerd Stern” writes Madison Margolin in a 2024 profile – but wasn’t that Lester Young?
and here’s footage of the late great nonagenarian (reading in New York City, just this past October)
Today, February 28, is the anniversary of the birth of Chögyam Trungpa Rimpoche
Meanwhile next Monday in New York
