Spring 2025 and Beat Spotlight, the second edition of the Beat Studies Association newsletter “featuring original interviews, short essays, and member news” is now available.
Sign in with the Beat Studies Association for full access.
As with the initial issue, there are a plethora of materials (Beat-related items) of obvious interest to readers here, not the least of which, the announcement of “a special event in the works – the BSA Allen Ginsberg Centennial conference to be held in 2026” – (and, in addition, the news that the the Journal of Beat Studies will be dedicating its next issue to the Ginsberg Centennial).
Beat Spotlight also gives us the announcement that Stevan M. Weine’s Best Minds – How Allen Ginsberg Made Revolutionary Poetry from Madness received its first annual BSA Award for Best Book. (Beat Spotlight also features a poem inspired by and an appreciation of that volume).
More Allen-in-academia, (which, forgetful, we had neglected to note) – The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture this past February hosted a session on “Howl” on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of its publication by City Lights – “Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ at 70″, featuring three papers that “traced the poem’s development and legacy” – “What You Might Not Know About ‘Howl’” by Harper College’s Kurt Hemmer, “‘Who Scribbled All Night’ – The Aesthetics of Cool in Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’” by Daniel Wartham (University of South Carolina), and “Homage and Subversion – ‘Howl’ in Parodies and Performance Poetry,” by Deborah R. Geis (from DePauw University), who also chaired the panel.
Further panels are announced (for the 2026 MLA Convention, which, next year, will take place, January 8-11, in Toronto) – Coinciding with the Centenary, papers will be presented (the call is now out) under the overall rubric – “Allen Ginsberg at 100”
Notice is also given of the publication that year by Cambridge University Press of Erik Mortenson‘s scholarly anthology, Allen Ginsberg in Context, a book we’re very much looking forward to.
Yes, 2026 promises to be an especially big year regarding Allen Ginsberg. Stay tuned!
Two sections of Beat Spotlight endeavor to catch up /preview news and events in the field – “The Beat Scene” – A look at what’s happening in the world of the Beats – Part I: Beat Studies Association Members” – and “Part II – Organizations, Events, Publications, Happenings”
A few gleanings:
Tanguy Harma has an important article coming out – ““The Synchrony of the Visionary: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Towards a Transcendental Ontology,” to be published in a special issue of the European Journal of American Studies titled “Beat Times – Queer Temporalities in Beat Writing”
Thomas Antonic is creating a “critical hybrid edition” of the complete works of ruth weiss (and an edition of her remaining uncollected work as a follow-up project)
Steven Belletto is set to publish Black Surrealist – The Legend of Ted Joans in the coming months, (“Drawing on interviews and deep archival research, including discussions of Joans’ vast body of unpublished-and previously-unseen-work.”
Raymond Foye contributes info’ on projects related to John Wieners. (The Song Cave has a 50th anniversary edition of Behind the State Capitol – Or Cincinnati Pike due out in November, containing new afterwords by James Dunn, and the poet’s biographer Robert Dewhurst.
“Two small presses are also preparing Wieners collections. Bootstrap Press and Lithic Press In addition, Bertrand Grimault is translating and publishing a French edition of Wieners’s “A Superficial Estimate”
and on Gregory Corso:
“Several projects devoted to Gregory Corso are on the horizon. Fadil Bajraj, of Kosovo, has recently published Gregory Corso: nata e errët e shpirtit (“The Dark Night of the Soul”). Through his publishing house, SabaiumBB. Other international Corso collections are in the works. Marcio Simões is working on a Corso book for Brazillian publisher Sol Negro Edições, which issues small-run handmade books. (Simões translated Corso’s Last Poems (Ultimos Poemas) for Sol Negro in 2024). Finally, Foye himself and Kevin Ring, editor of Beat Scene magazine, are also working on a book of Corso’s prose. However, no publication date has at present been established.
and – invaluable – the articles:
“New Visions of Kerouac” – (“With the publication of Rethinking Kerouac – Afterlives, Continuities, Reappraisals, the anthology’s co-editors discuss the past, the present, and future of the author’s unsettled legacy”)
“In Search of Huncke’s America” – (Huncke executor Jerome Poynton‘s exciting new venture – (“Poynton has collaborated with Raymond Foye and Joe Provenzano on “Herbert Huncke’s America”, a collection of newspaper articles and ephemera combined with Huncke’s writings that, according to Poynton, brings the proto-Beat’s stories to life as both a visual and textual narrative”)
“Discovering Kerouac through His First Biographer” – (Beat Spotlight editor, Brett Sigurdson‘s fascinating discovery and deep dive into the life and work the earliest known Kerouac scholar Bernice Lemire)
“Wrestling with Shadows” – (Cathy Cassady Sylvia on her father Neal Cassady and her mother Carolyn Cassady) and “Another Side of Neal and Carolyn Cassady” – (“two examples of the work produced from Cathy Cassady Sylvia’s efforts to provide readers with a broader understanding of her parents”)
and, “Checking in with Simon Warner” – (We’re thrilled to discover that “the first of a potential series of books in print, The Best of Rock and the Beat Generation, based on materials on offer at the site, will be appearing through the LA publishing house Mystic Boxing Commission later in 2025″)
The Allen Ginsberg Estate (one of the contributors) is also featured:
“Looking forward to the first half of 2025, the Ginsberg Estate has several projects lined up. Among them is the double album Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Steven Taylor – Live in Austria 1980 (Moloko), produced by Thomas Antonic. Ginsberg’s First Blues is also set for re-issue on two LPs and cassette through London’s Death is Not the End Records. Ginsberg’s “Please Master” will be featured in My Gay Eye/Mein schwules Auge#21. The forthcoming book, edited by Rinaldo Hopf and Johnny Abbate, is themed “Love, Not War”. Finally, a bilingual edition of the Illustrated Howl, Kaddish & Other Poems is forthcoming from Komplekt/Podpisnie, St Petersburg, Russia. The book, featuring illustrations by Nikita Zatvornik and translations by Dmitry Manin, is scheduled for release in Spring 2025.”
( – yes, that one’s soon!)