July 19 (Mayakovsky’s Birthday)
July 19, 2017
Today, July 19, the great poet, Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, was born in Baghdati, Georgia. We’ve featured Mayakovsky numerous times here on the Allen Ginsberg Project. For example, here and here. The fourteen-part series, Allen’s 1981 focus (with in-class presentation by Ann Charters)  begins here, and continues  here, here and […]
Ginsberg-Taylor-Orlovsky-Pickard 1979 Warwick continued
January 21, 2017
Allen Ginsberg, Steven Taylor, Peter Orlovsky and Tom Pickard reading at Warwick University, November,  1979  continues from here AG: Steven Taylor, please favor us with a song (Steven Taylor being a poet as well as being a musician) ST: I’m going to sing a song that[…]
Expansive Poetics – 83 (Anna Akhmatova – 4 – A Poem Without A Hero)
July 14, 2014
  Allen continues his survey of the works of Anna Akhmatova AG: And the later, even more complicated poem. “A Poem Without A Hero”, including herself, in other words, a poem in which even she is not the hero because the devastation is so total, and so devastating. I don’t think that’s[…]
Expansive Poetics – 82 (Anna Akhmatova – 3)
July 10, 2014
Allen’s discussion of Anna Akhmatova’s “Requiem” continues,  AG: This (passage) is discussing her son, I think, this next one – “At dawn they came and took you away./ You were my dead – I walked behind./ In the dark room children cried,/ The holy candle gasped for air.Your lips[…]
Expansive Poetics – 81 (Anna Akhmatova – 2)
July 9, 2014
(Anna Akhmatova’s “Requiem”) was never actually published in Russia complete, (and) the manuscript was passed to Sir Isaiah Berlin, an English Russophile, scholar, specialist, (who) managed to visit her just after the war, when the war was won. There was a little period of confusion when people could go in and out[…]
Expansive Poetics – 80 (Anna Akhmatova – 1)
July 8, 2014
AG: (Now) I wanted to move on to Anna Akhmatova, who lived… (Sergei) Esenin died 1925, (Vladimir) Mayakovsky (allegedly) committed suicide 1930, (Nikolay) Gumilev was shot 1923, (Velimir) Khlebnikov starved to death in 1923, (Osip) Mandelstam died of cold and starvation in[…]
Expansive Poetics – 68 (Acmeism)
June 18, 2014
Allen’s July 30 1981 Expansive Poetics class (with particular emphasis on Russian literature) continues. AG: I thought what we should do is I’ll read you just a few paragraphs about Acmeism now, and then we’ll get right into the[…]
Expansive Poetics – 66 (The Arrest of Osip Mandelstam)
June 16, 2014
 Allen Ginsberg’s  August, 1981 Naropa class continues  AG: The confrontation between the extreme Dada group and the Futurists and the actual leaders of the Nazi movement, and the confrontation between the Russian poets and (Josef) Stalin and police bureaucracy in Russia are really totally dramatic situations, which[…]
Expansive Poetics – 61 (The Stray Dog Cafe)
May 6, 2014
AG: The Stray Dog Café – There’s a little tiny footnote on it in a Russian literary quarterly, which also has  translation of a poem by Anna Akhmatova of the (19)40’s,(19)50’s, and (19)60’s, which she compiled secretly, and was published outside of Russia, her major[…]