We noted earlier this week Pennsound, and more specifically the Eric Mottram archive, added to their already voluminous (and on-going) resources. Hours and hours of priceless audio. The representation of Allen there is illuminating and impressive. See the resources available on his “author’s page” – here (see here for an index of all the many many “author’s pages”). Earlier this year they (the curators there) established a new series, Pennsound Rewind, an introduction to and exploration within the archives (John Ashbery was the first one). This was followed up the next month with a focus on Allen (or, rather, Allen and his father) – “Two of a kind – A lesson in grieving and acceptance from Allen and Louis Ginsberg”
His poem addressed to his mother (“Kaddish”), the curators point out, is of a very different nature to the one he would write for Louis, or rather the two he wrote for Louis, “Don’t Grow Old” – “The first “Don’t Grow Old,” written around the time of Louis’ death, appeared in the collection Mind Breaths in 1978; the latter can be found in 1982’s Plutonian Ode. However the two works were envisioned by Ginsberg as one complete poem.”
Listen to Allen reading the poem(s) and read related observations – here