Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 348

January 12, 2018Simon Pettet

Reposting and restating last week’s big news – “Howl’,  a newly-assembled red vinyl  box-set will be available soon – next month – from Craft Recordings.  February 23 is slated as the release-date. Hold your breath!

A couple of weeks back,  Chris Agg uploaded a scattering of short Beat-related video-clips onto You Tube. See here (a few selected examples). We start off with Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading his prose-poem “Look Homeward, Jack – Two Correspondences”  from the book Wild Dreams of A New Beginning. (Ferlinghetti can also be seen here, reading “Constantly Rising Absurdity”, from A Coney Island of the … Read More

Allen Ginsberg – Richland College reading – part 2

October 1, 2017Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg’s 1980 Richland College reading – continuing from yesterday

AG: So I would say now move on to.. 1956- moving on from 1956 to 1976. I have a series of poems which will require some music also – “Father Death Blues” – if we can get together on the stage –

My father died in 1976 in midsummer and I wrote a series of poems while he was alive because I spent a lot of time with him during the previous..during the winter that he was wasting, He was quite old and not in pain because it was a … Read More

Allen Ginsberg Reading at St Marks Poetry Project 1977

August 5, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell, St Mark’s Church, February 23, 1977. Photo: Martin Wechselblatt]

We featured one, from the extraordinary trove of recordings of Allen readings, last week, from PennSound (from the Robert Creeley collection – 1971 at Intersection, San Francisco). Here‘s another, six years later- from the St Mark’s Poetry Project in New York. The occasion was a now-legendary coupling of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell (it was on this occasion that Lowell was memorably heckled by Gregory Corso). Allen reads a variety of works, referencing his recent visit to Australia, his Vajrayana Buddhist … Read More

Studs Terkel Interviews Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass on WFMT, Chicago 1990 – part 2

September 25, 2016admin
 
Philip Glass – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg – Kiev Restaurant, NYC, 1993 – Photo  c. Allen Ginsberg Estate

continuing from yesterday

ST: Resuming with Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass, poet (and) composer working together. We heard just a piece of the very haunting “Satyagraha – the Evening Song“, earlier, that opened the Lyric Opera season. It was a pip of an opening. Critics and audience both (raved). That was three years ago… Liquid Days?  (Songs from) Liquid Days) is what?

PG: Well, it’s a collection of songs I did. In a way, it’s kind of … Read More

Basil Bunting’s Lectures on Poetic Origins – 2 (The One-Eyed Ford)

August 16, 2016admin

[Rusty 1941 One-Eyed Ford Coupe – Photograph by Jeffery Wells via flickr]

Student: Is the “one-eyed Ford” something you just made up now?

AG: No , the “one-eyed Ford” is a famous American-Indian twentieth-century.. It’s a great line! – It’s one of the great lines in America .. of the, as-yet, unacademicized poetry. The many many versions of the “one-eyed Ford” song (South-West – Oklahoma, actually – I heard it last year… last heard it (with Harry Smith) in Anadarko, Oklahoma) – “My one-eyed Ford”! – It’s a great line!

So… I don’t know. He [Basil Bunting… Read More

Gary Snyder 1983 Naropa Reading – 2

December 13, 2015admin

 

 
Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg – Photograph by Christopher Felver

 

Gary Snyder in the Sierras, 1994 – Photograph by Christopher Felver

Gary Snyder reading at Naropa, 1983 – continues from yesterday 

 

GS: We live at the three-thousand-foot elevation on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada in the Yuba River Watershed, which is north of Sacramento and eastward into the mountains. It’s all Mediterranean climate, which is to say, summer-dry, five-month to six-month drought, and very hot (although, you know, not as hot as here [Colorado] –  I’m surprised, I expected coming over here that … Read More

Expansive Poetics – 3 (Aboriginal Introduction)

December 4, 2013admin

AG: So for this [Naropa class on Expansive Poetics]. I thought I’d bring in a little bit of material that is extraneous, but is considered precursor. This is from Geza Roheim‘s “Children of the Desert“ (concerning) the Western tribes of Central Australia. So this is the only ancient poem that I’ll introduce. [Allen begins reading from anthropologist Roheim’s text] –  “The crowd of women that he had seen in the distance arrived and he had intercourse with every one of them. The man who arose from the ceremonial pole went right into the earth and became a … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics – 101 (Australia – 2)

July 11, 2013Simon Pettet

[Tutuma Tjapangati (19o9-1987) – One Old Man’s Dreaming (1971)]

Student: Did the Aborigine’s have, (as) a Creation Myth, that they originally came from New Guinea, or is New Guinea just a h(e)aven [sic] for hearts and souls ?

AG: Well, this is Northern Australia. There were about, I think I read somewhere, three-thousand different Aboriginal languages spoken. So each tribe had its own dialect, some of them completely different so that one tribe couldn’t understand another. Originally (before Englishmen came to Australia), they lived in the lusher parts of (the country). It wasn’t total desert. But Australia is … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics 100 – (Australia – 1)

July 11, 2013Simon Pettet

[Wandjuk Marika (1927-1987)]

AG: Phil Whalen began with some basic poetics, as far as I understand. I looked over his notes.  [Allen had been called away and had handed his class over to Philip Whalen & others – He returns here, to continue with the class, July 23, 1976]

[A brief excerpt from the following transcription has already appeared on The Allen Ginsberg Project – see here]

[Original transcriber’s note – “This lecture is recorded at a great distance from the speaker, resulting in some difficulty obtaining a correct transcription”]

AG: Can you hear me? Raise your hand if … Read More

Andrei Voznesensky

June 7, 2010admin

[Andrei Voznesensky and Allen Ginsberg, Adelaide, Australia, March 1972. Photo probably snapped by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, with Allen’s camera. c Allen Ginsberg Estate]

[Allen Ginsberg & Andrei Voznesensky, Mexico City, 1981. photographer unknown]

With Peter Orlovsky’s passing last week, we didn’t get a chance to mention that Andrei Voznesensky passed away just a couple days later,  June 1st. Allen considered him the one living genius in Russian poetry. Allen met Voznesensky in Moscow, in April 1965 and the two fast became friends and would do readings together throughout the world as well as collaborate on poems. Their collaborative poem, “Angelic Black … Read More