Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 297

December 23, 2016Simon Pettet

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[Daniel Radcliffe as the young Allen Ginsberg in “Kill Your Darlings (2013)”]

Film Friday -Remember Daniel Radcliffe‘s portrayal of Allen Ginsberg in John Krokidas‘ 2013 film, Kill Your Darlings – Krokidas’ revelations about Radcliffe’s Allen and playing a “sex scene” have been getting a bit of traction.

Krokidas:

“Growing up with queer films, there was always some sort of stigma attached to gay characters or gay sexuality, and I didn’t want the sex scene to feel like that in any way. I wanted the arc of the scene to go from nervousness to a place of pure enjoyment … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 243

November 6, 2015admin

 

          [Allen Ginsberg’s 437 East 12th Street, New York City kitchen (looking out on the corridor/hallway), November 1987 – Photograph by Gordon Ball – (images of Rimbaud, Trungpa and Whitman visible on the wall)] 

 

We’re a little behind “Our Allen” with this stuff, but wanted to share with you a few more of Randy Roark‘s treasure-trove of old Allen pages

 

His observations on these two:  “By popular demand, this is the other poem I photocopied from Allen’s notebooks so he could take it on an airplane and decode the words I couldn’t decipher. It was … Read More

Expansive Poetics — 95 ( Q & A – Classroom Scraps)

August 7, 2014admin

[Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)]

Classroom Scraps – Here’s some Q & A at the end of Allen’s August 11 1981 Naropa Class –

AG: Well, I’ve been talking steadily [about Russian poetry, about Guillaume Apollinaire and Cubism and twentieth-century modernism] , so now I’ll shut up. Student: Did (Vladimir) Mayakovsky and his group.. were they familiar with “Zone”? AG: Well, now I think not. Maybe not. (They) might have. Some would have. There was a French influence on Osip Brik, Mayakovsky’s friend, and on (Nikolay) Gumilev and the Acmeists, but I don’t know. I know the … Read More

Poetry and Madness at Esalen 1968

November 30, 2013admin

“Losing Your Mind To Come To Your Senses” – today some vintage audio from the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, from the ‘Sixties (1968) – Poetry and Madness – a symposium – The panel (introduced by research psychologist Julian Silverman) consists of two psychiatrists, John W Perry and Claudio Naranjo and two counter-culture heroes, Allen and Alan Watts. 
   
Allen’s contribution begins approximately fifty-and-a-quarter minutes in.
 
Julian Silverman: It has been said that at least certain kinds of schizophrenics and poets are in touch with the same things – except the psychotic makes a bigger pest of himself. What do … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 38

August 26, 2011admin

[Philip Glass – with Gelek Rinpoche and Allen Ginsberg c.1990’s – photographer unknown]

Old news – we’ve been reporting on this before – but the final death-knoll, now, it would seem, for New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel (sold, earlier this month, to real-estate mogul Joseph Chetrit, in a reportedly $77 million dollar deal). Mick Brown’s obituary note (first published in London’s Daily Telegraph) may be read here.. Here’s the obligatory New York Times article.

One of its many denizens Patti Smith (permit us our segue!) has just announced her movie options. After the National Book Award for
… Read More

Ginsberg and Snyder and Leary and Alan Watts (The Houseboat Sessions)

April 10, 2011admin

[Alan Watts]

More vintage audio (this time, courtesy of the Timothy Leary Archive). Here’s the audio for the famous Houseboat Sessions of February 1967,  ninety minutes of conversation on the houseboat of Alan Watts in Sausalito, convened under the auspicies of Allan Cohen and The San Franciscan Oracle and featuring Allen and Gary Snyder, alongside Leary and Alan Watts. The full transcript, that first appeared in the Oracle under the heading “Changes”, can be read and accessed here, and is also reprinted in its entirety in Peter Conners’ White Hand Society.… Read More

Cool Beat

March 31, 2011admin

[Allen Ginsberg – photo by Art Perry]

Ten years on from the publication of Lewis MacAdams’ The Birth of Cool (a cultural history of the term), and over fifty years since the first publication of such seminal Beat texts as Alan Watts’ “ Beat Zen, Square Zen, Zen ” and Norman Mailer’s “The White Negro ”, film-maker, Zen priest, and all-around agent provocateur Noah Buschel sets the cat among the pigeons with his little essay for Hammer to Nail on-line magazine, Obliterate the New Hipster . “True mavericks like Gary Snyder and Phil Whalen and Don Cherry”, he writes, “have … Read More

Timothy Leary’s 90th Birthday

October 22, 2010admin

[Timothy Leary, Los Angeles March 1992. If you look closely you can see Allen in the mirror taking the photo. c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

In celebration, here‘s some vintage Leary audio from 1967 recorded at Alan Watts’ Houseboat Summit, that includes Leary, Watts, Allen and Gary Snyder.

Keep a look-out for Peter Conners’ White Hand Society The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg due out any day now from City Lights. It includes the entire transcript for the above “Houseboat Summit” as it was printed in the San Francisco Oracle. … Read More