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

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 356

March 9, 2018Simon Pettet

Beyond Beat, the five-day Los Angeles Beat  convention continues. Among the highlights tonight, a group reading of “Howl” (also a performance of Gregory Corso’s “Bomb”, and a poetry reading by Neeli Cherkovski and Paul Vangelisti). Tomorrow (Saturday) will include a “Punk and Beat” panel  (with V. Vale, Jerry Casale, and S.A.Griffin), a panel on Bob Kaufman, and a showing of Billy Woodberry‘s documentary on Kaufman, And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead.  Sunday includes Steve Silberman (on the Legacy of “Howl”), a “Howl” panel (with Steve Silberman, Marc Olmsted, and … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 247

December 4, 2015admin

From the audio-visual archives of RTBF, Belgium’s public-broadcasting organization for the French-speaking community, this delightful footage of Allen (and Peter Orlovsky and Steven Taylor) in Belgium in 1983. Following a short introduction, Allen and company are glimpsed (briefly) walking the streets (of Liege) and then Allen is interviewed (speaking en francais!). Allen and Steven get down at the piano (sic – yes, really) to perform “Father Death Blues”  and Allen-in-Austria footage (at the Schule Fur Dichtung/Vienna Poetry Academy – who is that woman sitting across from him at the table at the beginning?) – “I’ll begin with music. Inspiration … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 208

February 13, 2015admin

 

[Lawrence Ferlighetti Interviews Allen Ginsberg in London in 1965 – William Shakespeare listens in – Photograph by John “Hoppy” Hopkins]

Notice (last week) of the passing  of London’s ubiquitous counter-cultural hero, John “Hoppy” Hopkins brings us to this little snippet of footage (from the BBC’s current affairs program, Panorama) – footage of a “Legalize Pot” rally (including archival footage of Allen) in 1967, in London’s Hyde Park. Despite the pompous commentary…

Speaking of marijuana, here’s Allen, in New York, on the picket line, pushing for legalization, two years before:  

[Allen Ginsberg – Photograph by Benedict J … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 173

April 18, 2014admin
kathy-acker2 [Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) & Kathy Acker (1947-1997)]

April 18 – Bob Kaufman‘s and Kathy Acker‘s birthday today. For our postings on Kaufman – see here and here. For our posting on Kathy Acker see here

Women of the Beat Generation, a perennially significant topic, gets another airing next week in Randolph, New Jersey. Joyce Johnson and Hettie Jones will be speaking on the subject. Hopefully, there’s been some significant progress since this:

Sociologically and cinematographically of interest, the full movie – “Beat Girl” (sic – “Wild For Kicks” in its 1960 US manifestation), … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round Up – 165

February 21, 2014admin

[Allen Ginsberg, 1954 – oil on canvas – painting by Robert LaVigne]

Two weeks since the last round-up, so let’s get right to it. lavigne.jpg (39580 bytes)

[Robert LaVigne – Photograph by Myles Aronowitz]

Robert LaVigne – The troubling case of Robert LaVigne and the allegedly stolen paintings.

Newspaper reports last year noted a court case involving LaVigne and his former assistant George Chebanyuk – (“Chebanyuk is alleged to have tried to sell off six works created by LaVigne, including a nude presumably depicting Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg”).  A jury deliberated for four hours, on February 4, and returned a … Read More

Remembering Kathy Acker

April 18, 2013admin

[Kathy Acker (1947-1997) – photograph by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright – Allen Ginsberg Estate – caption – “Kathy Acker in Green Room, Detroit Institute of the Arts, one night February 1985 we read together with Diane Di Prima – she writes violent sexual feminist narratives, parody of imaginative love-torture novels, lives in London, first published chapters of books as pamphlets I found in the mail from Lower East Side New York”]

Kathy Acker’s has been … Read More

West Coast Beat and Beyond

February 18, 2012admin

West Coast Beat & Beyond.   [Regrettably, this film is no longer available on line, our February 2012 post is, nonetheless retained]

Of all the films coming out of the 1982 Naropa “On The Road” 25th Anniversary Celebrations (notably Costanzo Allione’s Fried Shoes and Cooked Diamonds, and Robert Frank’s freewheeling documentary footage, This Song For Jack (1983)), Chris Felver’s West Coast Beat and Beyond (1984), (filmed also in the Bay Area too, as its title might suggest), may be the most passed-over, most unfairly neglected. Rare footage, not just of Ginsberg-Corso-Ferlinghetti et al, but also, Philip Lamantia, Howard Hart

… Read More

Philip Lamantia (1927-2005)

October 23, 2011admin
[Philip Lamantia – photo c. Christopher Felver, from his book Angels, Anarchists and Gods (1996)]
Philip Lamantia was born on this day. He died in 2005. He would have been 84. Obits from the San Francisco Chronicle, from the New York Times, and from the London Independent give the general picture. We’ve spotlighted already Andre Breton, but, for the Beats, for Allen, Lamantia was/is the essential figure, the key link between Beat culture and Surrealism. Garrett Caples writes on the Breton-Lamantia connection here.

Remembering Bob Kaufman

April 18, 2011admin

[Bob Kaufman 1925-1986]

April 18 is the birthday of the late great Bob Kaufman  Cranial Guitar, his Selected Poems from Coffee House Press, is certainly a good place to start – and check out in there the very useful (28-page) introduction by poet David Henderson (in fact, check out, if you can find it, Henderson’s 1991 NPR documentary (co-produced with Vic Bedoian), “Bob Kaufman, Poet”, it’s a remarkable work in and of itself). Another useful secondary source is A.D. Winans memoir, posted here. Jack Hirschman, at the “Does The Secret Mind Whisper?” celebrations, a

… Read More