City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco unfurled these banners (see above) this past Tuesday with choice quotes from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Pity The Nation”
Elaine Katzenberger, City Lights’ Executive Director is quoted:
“The urgency of our current situation, nationally, internationally, and as a race of humans on the imperiled planet we share, needs everyone’s attention, and this is our attempt to help support and focus general attention.”
For the full story – see here
We stand solidly with and alongside Elaine’s clarion call
back to “Beat news”:
Looking forward (just a couple of weeks away) to the Shimmy Disc re-release of Gregory Corso’ s Die On Me. Here’s another sample:
John Giorno – Remember the remarkable Dial-A-Poem? – “First launched in 1969, Dial-A-Poem has recently been re-launched and now includes 282 recordings by 132 poets, artists, musicians and activists. It is accessible to all anytime. International editions include recordings by contemporary spoken word artists, reading their work in the language native to their country, accessible by local phone numbers.”
More on Dial-A-Poem – see here
NPR’s report on the Dial-A-Poem relaunch here
Elizabeth Dee, director of the John Giorno Foundation (Giorno Poetry Systems) speaks of the history and the London launch – here
from MOMA – 2023 – “The Revolutionary Phone Line That Expanded Poetry’s Reach “
Charles Upton – anyone remember Charles Upton? – “Beat Generation Protégé” – “Spiritual Seeker” (student of Lew Welch). As an 18-year-old, back in 1968, City Lights published his Panic Grass in their prestigious Pocket Poets Series
57 years later, Angelico Press has published Giving Myself Away, his poetical-spiritual autobiography
Jonah Raskin has some choice words about it in Rock and The Beat Generation. It’s a big book (over 600 pages!) “many of them without paragraphs and with long sentences densely packed with information, opinions and subjective thoughts”. He (Upton) “doesn’t get the concept of ‘less is more’, nor does he practice it”. “It’s perhaps best meant for “grazing and reflection” – “One can begin this book at the beginning and continue to the end which makes sense. But it might be more rewarding to reject a linear approach and to wander through the book, stopping here and there to ponder Upton’s remarks and ideas, try to make sense of them and then continue to wander”.
See also David S Wills‘ observations on the book – here
Another spiritual seeker (but very much in contrast – his focus is minimal where Upton’s is sprawling) is David Chadwick, Zen scholar and author of the biography of Shunryu Suzuki His new book (just out) – Tassajara Stories – A Sort of Memoir/Oral History of the First Zen Buddhist Monastery in the West. For further details on that book – see here
