Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 362

April 20, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, March 1964,  Protest at the Women’s House of Detention, New York City  – Photograph by Benedict J Fernandez]

4/20 Cannabis Culture. Time to revisit Allen’s extraordinarily clear-headed (sic) and prescient 1966 Atlantic Monthly essay, “The Great Marijuana Hoax – First Manifesto to End The Bringdown” .

And here’s some fun he had with his 1985 Naropa students – “Marijuana Makes…” – Marijuana makes.. what?

NORML, the pioneering organization, for a long time now, working to reform the marijuana laws can be accessed here 

[Allen Ginsberg and Barbara Rubin together at the Albert Monument, outside … Read More

Allan and Allen’s Complaint

September 23, 2017Simon Pettet

Another video from the Stanford Archives this weekend – Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kuboto’s 1982 experimental video  “Allan ‘n’ Allen’s Complaint” (the twin subjects are Allan Kaprow and Allen Ginsberg), both sons of patriarchal fathers. The film explores that complex relationship.

“People are always talking about Jewish mother and nobody talks about Jewish father.”

AG: (So perhaps the father) is more withdrawn,  more vulnerable, less pushy in his emotions and relationship

AK: And there’s another side to it, (and) that is, the father tends to be the one who openly suffers, or is consecrated to some kind of suffering … Read More

Quit Speed – Allen Ginsberg’s 1967 Plea to Peter Orlovsky

August 10, 2017Simon Pettet

August 10 – Fifty years ago today. Allen in London, writing to his beloved, Peter (Orlovsky) in New York City, warning him, pleading with him, about amphetamines (“meth”) – “I’d rather be with you than without you. Stop meth, cool everything, come over here”

Dear Peter,

Irving (Rosenthal) wrote and Barbara (Rubin) wrote, said you were on meth, then, thinking house was afire, window moldings bugged or electrified, etc, and had begun taking them out . I don’t know how far you are into that thought process, but I am worried about the house, my manuscripts, etc. I can’t … Read More

Barbara Rubin (1945-1980)

March 31, 2014admin

Taken in England 1964

[top image – Allen Ginsberg and Barbara Rubin together at the Albert Monument, outside the Royal Albert Hall, London, May 1965, on the occasion of the First International Poetry Incarnation – bottom image – Barbara Rubin filming in the streets of London – May 1965 – photo by Allen Ginsberg  c. The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

 

Last year’s celebrations at the Anthology Film Archives and at Johan Kugelberg’s New York City Boo-Hooray Gallery (specialists in the occluded and forgotten), suceeeded in shining a little light, perhaps, on the perennial “underground legend”, Barbara Rubin, but not so very much. She … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 108

January 11, 2013admin

Next Wednesday, January 16 in New York – Join Allen Ginsberg’s friends, collaborators, relatives and co-conspirators – Lou Reed, Steven Taylor, Anne Waldman, Ambrose Bye, CA Conrad, Andy Clausen, David Amram, the Arthur Russell tribute band, Arthur’s Landing, & others for “a night of poetry and song” in one of the quintessential downtown New York Spaces, the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, to breathe new life into “First Blues”, Ginsberg Recordings new special edition/limited vinyl reissue.

A tad overly tongue-in-cheek, but ultimately “won over” – (“sharp insight and analysis of one … Read More