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 – 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

Allen Ginsberg 1982 Leicester Student Interview

May 26, 2018Simon Pettet

Last week, we featured transcription from a tape in the Stanford University Archives that featured an interview with Jack Kerouac’s childhood friend (and Allen’s friend) jazz aficiando, Seymour Wyse. This week, from the same tape, the conversation is followed by an interview with an earnest young English student (presumably an undergraduate at Leicester University, prior to the reading Allen gave there with Steven Taylor and Peter Orlovsky in the Fall of 1982 – at one point in the transcript, Allen breathlessly itemizes his itinerary)

Interviewer (Student):  Do you make recordings of all your work?

AG:  Not all, but I have … Read More

Bob Dylan’s Birthday

May 24, 2018Simon Pettet

Bob Dylan’s birthday today – Bob Dylan is (believe it or not!) 77 – As always, world-wide, plenty of Bob Dylan celebrations. Tonight in New York it’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”, a special show at the Town Hall, produced by Hal Willner, paying tribute to his legendary 1963 breakout concert there, a headlining solo-performance in front of a thousand people.

“Tomorrow is a Long Time”, as the Town Hall announces, “reimagines Dylan’s masterful concert, with colorful interpretations by a diverse cast of musicians and artists” (backed by the eponymous Town Hall Ensemble. under the musical direction of … Read More

Barry Farber Interview – 3

April 14, 2018Simon Pettet

[ Allen Ginsberg and Andrei Voznesensky]

The Barry Farber 1976 interview that we featured last week continues. Audio for the interview can be heard here and here 

BF: I’m Barry Farber, Peter Orlovsky is with us –  I think that means “the son of the eagle”

AG: Right…  Russian too.

BF: Allen Ginsberg, Jonathan Robbins, that’s the poetic part of the panel. The journalistic side, who can’t care if it rhymes or has soul just as long as it asks the desired questions, Robert Goodman, a new broadcast journalist and a good one, Bullets Durgin, just said goodbye, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up -360

April 6, 2018Simon Pettet

[Protest in front of Brazilian Varig Airlines with the Psychedelic Venus Church, San Francisco 1971, demanding the release of The Living Theater then jailed in Brazil.  Photo courtesy Harold Adler]

National Poetry Month in America this month. “April is the cruellest..” and all that. We’re very much of the opinion of noted poet Charles Bernstein.

`Beats and Buddhism. We mentioned David S Wills’ essay, “The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation”, a few weeks back, here’s another one, Michael Amudsen’s essay in Empty Mirror – “Jack Kerouac – Avatar of American Buddhism”

The Other Minds’ Sound Poetry … Read More

Elazar Larry Freifeld Tel Aviv 1988 Interview

March 3, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in Jerusalem, 1988, praying by the Western Wall.  Photograph by Steven Taylor]

Allen Ginsberg in Israel.

This interview with Elazar Larry Freifeld was conducted at Tel Aviv University in 1988, and published in Moznaim (in Hebrew). It appeared a year later (In English) in The Tel Aviv Review, and most recently in the Jerusalism Review.

LF: Welcome to Israel, Allen. You come at a very troublesome time [civil war in Lebanon].

AG: Ah, it’s the same all over the world. Everyone has their own tsurus [“trouble”, in Yiddish]. In Nicaragua, the CIA is fomenting trouble, in Columbia … Read More

Allen Ginsberg and “The Shrouded Stranger”

February 12, 2018Simon Pettet

[Lamont Cranston – The Shadow –  “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”]

AG: This isn’t in the the same meter (as Tom O’ Bedlam) but it’s a similar theme – [Allen next proceeds to read, in its entirety, his poem “The Shrouded Stranger“] – So that was somewhat the same theme. And then (Jack) Kerouac, at the same time, was saying, or conceiving.. We were discussing the notion of the shrouded stranger, a ghostly figure, or, you know, a shroud of New York, a shroud of the East River.  So he wrote up… … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 349

January 19, 2018Simon Pettet

Opening tonight in New York, at the New York Public Library, You Say You Want A Revolution – Remembering the Sixties – a comprehensive exhibition, drawn from the library’s holdings, “exploring the breadth and significance of this pivotal era—from communal living and forays into expanded consciousness to tensions around race, politics, sexuality, and the environment”.  Items on display, include manuscripts from Allen, (and from Burroughs and Kerouac), “Changing of the Guards”, (an original typescript by Bob Dylan),  and notations from Timothy Leary on his LSD research, (alongside much else).

It’s Edgar Allan Poe‘s birthday today! – … Read More

The Night Before Christmas

December 24, 2017Simon Pettet

Suitably seasonal – Bob Dylan reads “A Visit From St. Nicholas”  (“The Night Before Christmas”), a poem first published, anonymously, in 1823, and later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed authorship in 1837. (Some commentators now believe that the poem was actually  written by one Henry Livingston Jr.).

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…”

[from Mad magazine’s (Jan 1960 parody – New Mad “Hip” Version -“‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the pad/Not a hipster was stirring not even old Dad..”… Read More