Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 723

Consternation and concern this week over at Rock and The Beat Generation regarding Barry Miles remarks in his interview with Leon Horton regarding the legendary 1965 Royal Albert Hall International Poetry Incarnation. The full text of Miles’ follow-up and response can be read – here  (see also Roger Bygott‘s comment – here)

Horton had asked Miles about rumors that “Ginsberg was griping about the suitability of some of the other poets” and Miles had replied that, yes, “Allen was very disappointed in the reading and wrote a long, unpublished letter to the Times Literary Supplement about it,
which they declined to publish.”

It was included, however, in his book, In The Sixties

He reproduces it here.

“A participant in the poetry reading”,  (Allen writes), “I woke up early next morning depressed, disgusted by almost all the other poets and disgusted most by myself. The audience had been summoned by Blakean clarions for some great spiritual event, there was a hint of Jerusalemic joy in the air, there were great poets near London, there was the spontaneity of youths working together for a public incarnation of a new consciousness everyone’s aware of this last half decade in Albion (thanks to the many minstrels from Mersey’s shores & Manhattan’s), there was a hopeful audience of sensitive elders and longhaired truly soulful lads and maids. The joy, the greatness of the poets, & the living spirit coming to consciousness in England, have never been adequately defined in public, and here was an opportunity to embody this soulfulness in high language”. . .

“There were too many bad poets at Albert Hall, too many goofs who didn’t trust their own poetry, too many superficial bards who read tinkley jazzy beatnick style poems, too many men of letters who read weak pompous or silly poems written in archaic meters, written years ago. The concentration & intensity of prophesy were absent except in few instances’…

“By the time I got up to read I was so confounded by (what seemed to me then) the whole scene turned to rubbish, so drunk with wine, and so short of time to present what I’d imagined possible, that I read quite poorly and hysterically”. . .”

 

That “drunken, poor, hysterical reading”, (along with much else), was captured by Peter Whitehead in his now-classic filmed evocation of the evening, “Wholly Communion”

see here:

Sixty years ago.  The legend continues.
The event remains a pivotal and significant event, in both literary and cultural (counter-cultural) history.

 

 

The Bob Kaufman Centennial continues next Tuesday in New York at the Bowery Poetry Club with a celebratory film showing and reading.  Readers include Bob Holman, Tate Swindell, Gabe Barboza,  Uche Nduka, Patricia Spears Jones, Brenda Coultas, Maria Damon & a host of others (too many to list them all here!)

 

Steven Belletto on Ted Joans:

“In terms of big Beat names, Joans always said that it was Allen Ginsberg who had encouraged him to first read his poetry aloud at the Seven Arts Coffee Gallery, and that Ginsberg also encouraged him to publish his poetry, which led in turn to his first ‘booklet’ of poems. They remained friendly until Ginsberg’s death”.

Following last week’s critique, his biographer defends him and answers Simon Warner‘s probing questions in an in-depth interview on Rock and The Beat Generation  – here

 

Another forgotten Beat – Alex Trocchi  Alex, the junkie, Alex of Cain’s Book, Alex, most significantly perhaps, post-Cains Book as a sometime Situationist. Recollections of the aforementioned  International Poetry Incarnation (for which he served, admirably apparently, as m-c) may perhaps have returned him, briefly, into public consciousness – but people should know more about him, much more.

We featured him back in 2011  when we featured Allen Campbell and Tim Niel’s rivetting film, A Life In Pieces: Reflections on Alex Trocchi   (essential viewing)

This past week Mike Small in Bella Caledonia posted a provocative and informative over-view, “Cosmonauts and Stale Porridge Alexander Trocchi’s Influence on Radical Scottish Media”, seeking to reinstate Trocchi’s place, not just in Scottish literature, but, “as an essential and important part of a wider culture”  (recommended reading)

 

Speaking of books – two new books on “the Sixties”  (and, by definition, Allen’s participation in all of that)  – East Coast and West Coast  –  J. Hoberman‘s – Everything is Now – The  1960’s New York Avant-Garde – Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop and Dennis McNally‘s – The Last Great Dream – How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created The Sixties

 

 

Interesting notice from Stanford on the preservation of Robert Creeley‘s computer records (Stanford, you will recall, has the mother-load of Ginsberg material – The Allen Ginsberg Archive)

 

& Colin Still‘s remarkable film on Gary Snyder O Mother Gaia gets, following its premiere earlier this year at the International Buddhist Film Festival in San Rafael, another showing at the  25th annual Nevada City film festival this weekend. For more about the film and about the festival – see here