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

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 381

August 31, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg & Kate Millett, Boulder Colorado, July 1978 (photo: probably snapped by Cynthia MacAdams with Allen’s camera, courtesy Stanford University Libraries/Allen Ginsberg Estate)]

The Beats and Women – that continually thorny topic (we noted last week Blair Hurley’s Paris Review article – You might also recall Lynnette Lounsbury’s piece in The Guardian, a few years back – and, indeed, Amy Newman’s “Howl” (sic)) – David S Wills’ piece in the current Beatdom, in this context, comprehensive and scholarly, is well worth a read – “Beats and Women – “The Personal is Political” –  tentative notes on … 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

Sid Kaplan Interview – part 2

August 14, 2018Simon Pettet

[Sid Kaplan – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg]

John Shoesmith interview with Sid Kaplan on his work as printer of Allen Ginsberg’s photography continues 

 

JS: I’m sure that famous Kerouac photo on the fire escape was one you probably could have done in your sleep, seeing as you probably printed it dozens of times.

SK: That was very tricky print to do. It was very underdeveloped, and at the time, I didn’t have the magic fluid handy. What happened with the Kerouac thing, we had it printed on a very hard grade of paper. The difference between the face and … Read More

Raymond Foye on Allen Ginsberg’s Photography

July 30, 2018Simon Pettet

[Raymond Foye – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg]

John Shoesmith interviews Raymond Foye on Allen Ginsberg’s photography

JS: You knew Allen before you started working with the photographs. How did your role with the photos begin?

RF: I met Allen in 1973 when I was sixteen, and a junior at Lowell High School. I went with the senior English honors class to a Kerouac symposium held at Salem State College, in Massachusetts. My English teacher, a lovely woman named Rita Sullivan, allowed me to go with the senior class, even though I was a junior, because she knew I was reading … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 376

July 27, 2018Simon Pettet

Here’s something not-to-be-missed, Jill Hershorin, Archivist of the Jewish Historical Society of New Jersey on Processing the Ginsberg Family Collection.

We reported on the donation by local politician, Pat Sebold back in 2016

Hershorin:  “Although the official repository of the Allen Ginsberg papers is Stanford University, the Ginsberg Family Collection resides in our small archives in Whippany, New Jersey, which holds materials representing Jewish life in the nearby counties of Essex, Morris, Sussex, and Union. Because the Ginsberg family has its roots in Newark, we thought it fitting that the collection should be with us….When the materials arrived at … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 375

July 20, 2018Simon Pettet

The Beat Scene – Photographs by Burt Glenn – edited by Tony Nourmand and Michael Shulman (with an essay by Jack Kerouac), a dazzling portfolio of images shot between 1957 and 1960,  both in New York and San Francisco – close up, contemporaneous, and at the heart of the Beat phenomenon – has just recently (just this month) been published by Reel Art Press.

From the publishers’ notice:

“This magnificent volume features a remarkable collection of largely unseen photographs of the Beat Generation by renowned Magnum photographer Burt Glinn. This amazing, untouched treasure trove of images was … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 372

June 29, 2018Simon Pettet

 

“In a climate of fear and hysteria..” – It’s always revealing and instructive to “get to see the files”. We featured a lengthy post on Allen’s FBI files some years back (courtesy the pioneering work of Shawn Musgrave and Muck Rock). Another tenacious investigator. S.P. Sullivan is to be commended for just recently uncovering William Carlos Williams’ files – “He was one of Jersey’s most famous poets. The FBI worried he was a Communist”.  Sullivan’s full report (just published, by Inside Jersey magazine, and on-line at NJ.Com) may be accessed  – here

[Allen Ginsberg in Uncle Sam … Read More