Howl Vinyl Release

February 22, 2018Simon Pettet

There will be a celebration at CIty Lights tonight (Thursday the 22nd) for the Concord Music box-set re-issue, Allen Ginsberg reading “Howl”, 

The Howl deluxe box set includes a reissue of the classic 1959 Fantasy Records red vinyl LP, a replica of the original poetry book, published by City Lights in 1956, a photograph of Allen, and a booklet with liner notes by Beat scholar Ann Charters and poet Anne Waldman.

Following opening statements by Garrett Caples (editor at City Lights), an appearance by Bill Belmont  (producer of the set), and remarks by Ann Charters, the evening will … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 347

January 5, 2018Simon Pettet

Looking forward and looking back, with the year’s first “Weekly Round-Up”, starting off with Allen Ginsberg – Fotografìa y Poetica Beat at the Photology Gallery in Garzon, Uruguay –  the first ever showing of Allen’s photographs in South America!  (this show is coming to a close, closing-date is next Tuesday, January 9).

And more photo news – Opening January 29, and up through 27 April, at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto – ‘Fleeting Moments, Floating Worlds, and the Beat Generation – The Photography of Allen Ginsberg” 

“This exhibition”, the Library states, in its preliminary … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 318

June 2, 2017Simon Pettet

Anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s birth tomorrow. Anne Waldman and guests will be celebrating it at the Fox Theatre in Boulder

Meanwhile in NYC (from 3-9) at the Howl Happening Gallery (also celebrating the upcoming re-release of the Ginsberg-Blake Songs of Innocence and Experience on CD)  – Ed Sanders, Steven Taylor, Ernie Brooks & Bear 54 and readings by Bob Rosenthal, Bob Holman, Hettie Jones, David Henderson, Basil King, & other surprise guests.

Speaking of Anne Waldman, how about this? – the Anne Waldman comic! – “the story of Anne Waldman in her … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 309

April 7, 2017Simon Pettet

The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of The Beats As Taught by Allen Ginsberg is just out (this past Tuesday) from Penguin Books in England. Next Friday, Grove Press will publish the American edition.  Interesting to compare the covers perhaps – the more sober UK edition, the more brash, more jazzy American? – Either way, it’s another essential Ginsberg book.   Reviews are already highly positive:

Publisher’s Weekly – “A gold mine for anyone interested in beat literature . . . Ginsberg reads and thinks like a poet; interested in language and style, he abandons narrative to … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 308

March 31, 2017Simon Pettet

Heads-up for next Friday! (Friday April 7) – Ginsberg Green – “A spoken word & musical gathering honoring the life and Green activism of Allen Ginsberg” – a unique celebratory event, organized by our good friend Patrick Warner, scheduled to take place at The Sprinkler Factory in Worcester, Mass, starting approximately 6 o’clock.

The event will include Ann Charters (reading from Lospecchio Press’ Best Minds – A Tribute to Allen Ginsberg),  Gordon Ball (reading from his Cherry Valley memoir, East Hill Farm), and  Warner himself reading  “selected Ginsberg texts & interviews that exemplify & manifest Ginsberg’s Green … Read More

Poems from Tea at The Kalapa Court

November 1, 2015admin

Randy Roark‘s been posting some pretty interesting Ginsberg miscellanea over on Our Allen.  This is one of the most interesting. – “Poems from Tea at the Kalapa Court“. 

As Randy, in a note about it, explains: “On July 26, 1982, Chogyam Trungpa, the founder of Naropa Institute and Vajracarya (Buddhist priest), invited the artists who were present for the On the Road Jack Kerouac festival—hosted by Naropa Institute—to tea at the Drawing Room at his Kalapa Court house in Boulder, for a spontaneous poetry party. (I’m not certain they knew this before they arrived.) Later the poems … Read More

Remembering Jack Kerouac – 3

April 4, 2015admin
 
[Jack Kerouac 1922-1969]

continuing from last weekend‘s two posts

Gregory Corso: Al Aronowitz.  Is Al Aronowitz here…Al Aronowitz is not here. okay, well then that’s it, so why don’t you guys rap back and forth. We’ll begin with the ones who, originally were on the stage to begin with, and end it.

Paul Jarvis (from the audience): Can I speak about… Gregory Corso: You can ask a question. Paul Jarvis: I want to share my experience with (Jack) Kerouac in Lowell Gregory Corso: Okay but it’s got to be toute de suite. Come on. AG: Okay, yes,

… Read More

Remembering Jack Kerouac – 2

March 29, 2015admin
 
The 1982 memories of (Jack) Kerouac session at Naropa continues
(For the first part of this panel see yesterday)
Audio of these recollections can be found here

The transcript picks up at approximately twenty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes in, with a curiously subdued Peter Orlovsky

[Peter Orlovsky and Jack Kerouac=Photographs by Allen Ginsberg]

AG: Next will be Peter Orlovsky.
Gregory Corso: (And) what year for Peter?
AG: So that would be  probably around nineteen fifty…
Gregory Corso: … four
AG:  …four, Christmas, or fifty-five, maybe mid fifty-five.
Peter Orlovsky – July was it?
AG: I guess. Sometime around then, yeah… Read More

Herbert Huncke Centennial

January 9, 2015admin

[(“Old-timer & survivor, Herbert E Huncke, Beat Literary Pioneer, early decades thief, who introduced Burroughs, Kerouac & me to floating population hustling & drug scene Times Square 1945. From ’48 on, he penned remarkable musings, Collected as autobiographical vignettes, anecdotes & storyteller’s tales in the classic The Evening Sun Turned Crimson (Cherry Valley, 1970) and later Guilty of Everything. Here age 78 in basement back-yard, his apartment East 7th Street, near Avenue D, New York, May 18, 1993)” – (Photograph and Inscription by Allen Ginsberg)]

January 9 1915, the birthday of Herbert Huncke, original Beat – yes, today marks the … Read More

Allen Ginsberg’s Birthday

June 3, 2014admin

[Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)]

Irwin Allen Ginsberg in Newark, New Jersey, June 3, 1926, Allen would have been 88 years old today. Happy Birthday, Allen!  Happy Allen Ginsberg’s Birthday, everyone. In celebration of an extraordinary life (and an exemplary death), we feature today Colin Still‘s masterly 1997 documentary No More To Say & Nothing To Weep For, originally commissioned by Channel 4 in England, and originally intended as a wider, more substantial profile (it was tragically cut short, or rather, re-envisioned, by Allen’s diagnosis of liver cancer, an event that took place just as the crew had arrived in … Read More