Alice Notley on Allen Ginsberg – 4

September 13, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg observing a plaster model of the young Alice Notley, (part of an installation), modelled for the artist, George Segal]

Alice Notley talk on Allen Ginsberg and his exemplary internationalism continues and concludes today

Poem 6 is a song, “Industrial Waves,” that is to be sung (and I don’t know the tune) – “And I know Allen will follow me tound the world with his terrible singing voice” Ted (Berrigan) wrote, but it wasn’t that terrible at all.  “Freedom for Indonesia to murder half a million/ Freedom for South Africa to stabilize the Bullion/ Freedom … Read More

Alice Notley on Allen Ginsberg – 3

September 12, 2018Simon Pettet

Alice Notley on Allen Ginsberg’s internationalism continuing from here

AN: I will now totally speed up with my list. But first I will go to sleep and dream I lose my purse (I learned to record my dreams from Allen and Jack Kerouac) but then I realize I am dreaming so I haven’t really lost it with all my bank cards and such – do I still have my identity, and my credit? (I in fact don’t have a credit rating.) Thus having awkened, in the dream, I am now sitting talking to a woman whose vocation is to … Read More

Alice Notley on Allen Ginsberg – 2

September 11, 2018Simon Pettet

[Alice Notley at The Poetry Center at the University of Tucson, Arizona, 2016]

Alice Notley on the internationalism of Allen Ginsberg continued from yesterday

AN: The second poem selected by chance (I am opening the book randomly, plonk, trying to be vaguely chronological is “Going to Chicago” – dated August 24, 1968, so this is on the way to the famous Republican convention in Chicago nominating (Richard) Nixon [editorial note – the 1968 Republican Convention was at Miami Beach; the Democratic Convention in Chicago took place a few weeks later] and characterized by violence on all sides, street … Read More

Alice Notley on Allen Ginsberg – 1

September 10, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg – ink drawing by Alice Notley]

[Alice Notley in Allen Ginsberg’s New York City kitchen, September 1986 -Photo: Allen Ginsberg]

The feature this week – Alice Notley‘s keynote speech at the Allen Ginsberg Symposium, this past May 5th, at the St Marks Poetry Project in New York – on Allen Ginsberg’s internationalism

Allen Ginsberg – An International Poetry, Its Genius and Its Particles 

to Bobbie-Louise Hawkins, tonight in the air above us

That Allen Ginsberg is thus far the one truly international poet that has ever lived. I mean making of his person or speaker or … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 375

July 20, 2018Simon Pettet

The Beat Scene – Photographs by Burt Glenn – edited by Tony Nourmand and Michael Shulman (with an essay by Jack Kerouac), a dazzling portfolio of images shot between 1957 and 1960,  both in New York and San Francisco – close up, contemporaneous, and at the heart of the Beat phenomenon – has just recently (just this month) been published by Reel Art Press.

From the publishers’ notice:

“This magnificent volume features a remarkable collection of largely unseen photographs of the Beat Generation by renowned Magnum photographer Burt Glinn. This amazing, untouched treasure trove of images was … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 363

April 27, 2018Simon Pettet

An Allen Ginsberg Symposium coming up next week at the Poetry Project. Three days of events next Thursday through Saturday. Full details of the programming can be found here. Highlights include, “Allen Ginsberg: An International Poetry, Its Genius & Particles”, a keynote talk by Alice Notley, workshops with Anne Waldman and Ed Sanders, an opening-night (Thursday-night) reading with Anselm Berrigan, Rin Johnson, Patricia Spears Jones, Sharon Mesmer, Lara Mimosa Montes, Trace Peterson, and sam sax, and much more.

 

Allen Ginsberg’s Iron Curtain Journals (announced here a couple of weeks back), … Read More

Philip Whalen – Crowded By Beauty

July 18, 2015admin

First off, some of the stellar “book blurbs”: His dear friend Joanne Kyger writes: “Fellowship and remarkable clarity bring enlightened and generous understanding to this rendering of the life and times of singular poet and teacher Philip Whalen.  And furthermore: “His longtime friend in the dharma, teacher and writer David Schneider transmits the delight and wisdom of this poet’s bountiful spirit”.  Michael McClure describes the book as: “More than a biography or a memoir…a CELEBRATION of Zen Being.”  (John Suiter, noting that it’s “highly original, personable, and authoritative”, declares it destined to “take its place among the … Read More

Happy Birthday Alice Notley

November 8, 2014admin

[Alice Notley – Photograph by Alan Bernheimer]

Happy Birthday, Alice Notley, dear Alice, 69 years old today! [2014]

[“When I was in my early twenties, I modeled for George Segal, and he made a life-sized statue of me (there’s a photo on-line of Allen Ginsberg discovering it. He covered my warm, nude body (with head of course) with plaster. When the plaster dried, he had a beautiful accurate frozen likeness. He then, as he always did, created a natural setting for the plaster body as if it were alive” – Alice Notley to Claudia Keelan, January 2014 in The … Read More

Poetry In Motion

May 3, 2014admin

Ron Mann’s groundbreaking 1982 film, Poetry In Motion, (we have featured, in the past, snippets, including Allen’s enthusiastic “Capitol Air” performance) is now available, in its entirety, on the incomparable UbuWeb.  From their informative notes:  “It was re-released in 1994 in an innovative format on CD-Rom..and, in 2002, as a DVD. Poetry In Motion 25 was also made available (“a one-hour television special featuring outtakes from Poetry In Motion with many of the artists featured in the original film”, (different poems, different settings), “plus a bunch of new faces (including Peter Orlovsky, Alice Notley, Jerome … Read More

Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems

November 24, 2013admin

It’s a red-letter day!  (or, to be accurate, a red-and-black letters day, on a plain cream-white background!). Coffee House Press have just published, in one 800-plus single volume, The Collected Poems of Ron Padgett. “Ron Padgett‘s poems”, writes Anne Waldman, “are essential and Ron Padgett is a genius”. She goes on,”His poetry is masterful for its panoramic humanity and mind-stopping verbal wit, its breathtaking power and beauty. We want to stay with the person in these poems all day long, to be changed by the possibilities palpitating from the smallest increments of our existence to the most … Read More