Centennial celebration continues. Tomorrow in Denver, History Colorado, the organization which oversees the state’s museums and historic sites, will be hosting a panel discussion at their center (at 1200 Broadway), moderated by Mark Bliesener, long-time organizer of the annual Denver Neal Cassady Birthday Bash, on Cassady and his “crucial impact on the Beat Generation and the writing of On The Road.” The event is free. Panelists will be Cassady’s son, Robert Hyatt, alongside Heather Dalton, Brian Trembath and Patty Calhoun.
Meanwhile in Lowell, Mass, girding up to the upcoming annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac. There will be a marathon reading of Kerouac’s Satori in Paris, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the novel’s 1966 publication tomorrow at the Pollard Memorial Library (and, at the Ayer Lofts Art Gallery (172 Middle Street) – Elia Inderie‘s exhibition “Overpainted Beats – Explosions of Blood” – for further notes on that project – see here)
Thursday (the 8th) sees further events – at U.Mass O’Leary library, (61 Wilder Street), Steve Edington will present research materials from his book Kerouac’s Nashua Connection to the Center for Lowell History Kerouac Archive at 3.00, followed at 4.00, by a discussion by J.C. Cloutier of his forthcoming book Big American Writer: The Bilingual Jack Kerouac,
The festival will officially open with music and poetry at the Worthen House Cafe, later that evening
and more big breaking Kerouac news. The Jack Kerouac Center has just unveiled its architectural renderings – “New designs reveal the vision for transforming Lowell’s historic St. Jean Baptiste Church into the Jack Kerouac Center, while a new picture mosaic fundraiser gives supporters the opportunity to become part of the Center itself. Plans for the Center include museum and exhibition spaces, a 1,500-capacity performance venue, an intimate 125-capacity lower-level performance space, recording and media facilities, educational spaces, archival research, a bar and restaurant, and spaces for community gatherings and creative programming.”
For full details and a look at the renderings – see here and here
Another vintage Ginsberg letter (see our note on Kerouac-Ginsberg correspondence featured last week). This time, an early missive (1959) to the San Francisco Chronicle, excoriating reporter Donovan McClure for fatuously describing, in a front page article, “Beat Poets Appear En Masse – A Mess.”, a poetry reading at North Beach’s Garibaldi Hall – a “monstrous” gathering of 500 “longhairs (mostly uncombed)” (sic) who paid a dollar to hear poets Ginsberg, Robert Duncan and others”.
“What was perhaps the major news item of the reading was completely missed by your reporter. I gave a very extraordinary reading of the first major poem I have written since Howl. This is an event of considerable importance in San Francisco. I am sorry that you’ve left it up to me to report it to you. While I’m at it, I request that you do not henceforth refer to me as a “beatnik”.It’s an insulting term and I am insulted by it. I’ve taken the trouble to write this letter in the hope that you will treat poets with more courtesy after this.You have a poetry scene of great beauty going on now, it has bought international honor to this city,
it should not be sneered at by juvenile, delinquent reporters.”
David S Wills on Allen Ginsberg (from his recent interview in Rock and the Beat Generation), looking back:
“He was just a massive figure in literature and in the wider culture. Ginsberg’s one of those rare figures who inspired millions – something that is more common in rock stars than writers. The reasons are numerous. He was a rebel, he was relatable, he was brave, he was inspiring, he wrote in response to a rapidly changing world…These are all clichés now but they’re true.”
and looking forward. Eliot Katz‘s gathering of Ginsberg’s all-important Political Poetry is scheduled for next year (end of May) – “This book is a generous and essential compilation of the texts that moved the century some formidable inches.” (Anne Waldman), “Allen Ginsberg’s daily life centered on digesting news from the New York Times . . . Politics was his breath of every day.” (Bob Rosenthal),“He lived radically, loved openly, and wrote gorgeously, lyrically, and rambunctiously of an unseen America. This is both an urgent and timeless collection.” (Ira Silverberg) – We can’t wait to read this – More encomiums – here
Chuck Smith’s upcoming Fugs film (we’ll have more on it later this month) gets a preview this week in Psychedelic Baby mag (Ken Weaver remembers the Fugs’ early shows, Chuck Smith explains how he pieced together “Fugs Film”, and Ed Sanders “takes us back to the Lower East Side of 1962”)
Check out the trailer for it – here:
& anniversary time – it’s the anniversary today of the death of Marcel Duchamp – and the birth of Wallace Stevens!