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