Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 383

5 days ago September 14, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg at Capel-y-Ffin (“Wales Visitation”), 1967 – Photo: Tom Maschler]

“…rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless, /breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside, Heaven breath and my own symmetric/ Airs wavering thru antlered green fern drawn in my navel,/ same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffin..”  (from “Wales Visitation”)

Eco-watch –  They’re thinking of putting a telecommunications mast in one of the most beautiful parts of the Llanthony Valley. Read more about the resistance here 

Allen Ginsberg and William Blake  (sic) – Luke Walker, at Hell’s Printing Press (the blog of the Blake Archive and … Read More

Alice Notley on Allen Ginsberg – 4

6 days ago 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

7 days ago 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

1 week ago 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

1 week ago 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 – 382

2 weeks ago September 7, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg]

[Gordon Ball]

Gordon Ball (whose iconic photograph of Virginia military academy students in a classroom reading Howl we featured, here on The Allen Ginsberg Project, a few weeks back), is a photographer, filmmaker, author, and the accomplished editor of several volumes of Allen’s journals, (notably Journals – Early ‘Fifties, Early ‘Sixties, and Journals – Mid Fifties 1954-1958, as well as the earlier (1975) Pulitzer-Prize-nominated Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness.)

He is also, more recently, (2012),  author of  East Hill Farm – Seasons with Allen Ginsberg, a unique and wonderful memoir of his time … Read More

Bob Rosenthal Interview (On Photography) – 2

August 28, 2018Simon Pettet

John Shoesmith’s interview with Bob Rosenthal continues

JS: Would the captions change much then, the more he was captioning? Especially some of the iconic ones which he must have captioned dozens of times.

BR: Sometimes the difference would be the change of an adjective, a tweaking, but sometimes something will come up and it gets longer and longer. They all build on each other. Writing about it is the memory of the sacred. This is what the prints represent. But those silver gelatin prints, they have an eternal etching to them, and the way the eyes look, the communication is … Read More

Bob Rosenthal Interview (On Photography) – 1

August 27, 2018Simon Pettet

[Bob Rosenthal and Allen Ginsberg – Photo: Brian Graham]

Continuing and concluding our series of interviews regarding Allen-the-photographer

John Shoesmith interviews Bob Rosenthal

Bob Rosenthal first met Allen Ginsberg in the mid-1970s, when he and his wife helped the poet secure an apartment in the New York City building where they were then living. He started doing some part-time work for Ginsberg in 1977, eventually becoming his fulltime secretary in 1979, a job in which he remained until Ginsberg’s death in 1997. Often referred to as Ginsberg’s “right-hand man,” his main role was to handle the increasing amount of administrative … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 380

August 24, 2018Simon Pettet

[Bob Donlon, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti – outside of City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, 1956 – photo: Peter Orlovsky]

The esteemed Poetry Foundation has been working (consistently) on its web presence. It’s just recently consolidated and organized this useful resource – An Introduction to the Beat Poets.

While we’re on such overviews, here is the page on the Beats from the Academy of American Poets 

International Beats – Marc Olmsted in Empty Mirror reviews Erik Mortenson’s  Translating the Counterculture – The Reception of the Beats in Turkey Southern Illinois University Press are also the publishers … Read More

David McReynolds (1929-2018)

August 22, 2018Simon Pettet

[David McReynolds, March 18. 1960 (sic) letter to Allen Ginsberg]

[David McReynolds (1929-2018) with his cat, Shaman – Photograph by Ed Hedemann]

The great pacifist activist David McReynolds died on Friday August 17 (this past Friday), aged 88, following a fall he sustained at his New York City home. We deeply mourn his passing.

His obituary in The Washington Post, by Harrison Smith (“David McReynolds, gay socialist pacifist, who twice ran for president, dies at 88”), can be accessed here.  The informative New York Times obituary (by Jacey Fortin) may be found – here  (and Ellen Moynihan’s notice in the … Read More