Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 368

June 1, 2018Simon Pettet

June 3 – this Sunday – is Allen’s birthday. To celebrate the Howl Happening Gallery in New York City has organized once again it’s now-annual event.  This year it features David Amram, Ed Sanders, Hettie Jones, Eileen Myles, Simon Pettet, and Peter Hale (manager of the Ginsberg Estate), amongst others. The event will be hosted and m-c’d   by Ginsberg’s “right hand man“, his long-time secretary, the poet Bob Rosenthal (whose long-awaited memoir, Straight Around Allen, is due out this Fall). There’ll be a film presentation, and an energetic group-reading of “Howl” (“I saw … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 365

May 11, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco, September 1991. Snapped by Rick Dickenson with Allen’s camera, courtesy Stanford University Libraries/Allen Ginsberg Estate.]

Bill Morgan, archivist, editor, and Allen’s biographer, is interviewed by host Charlie Rossiter on the latest episode of the podcast Poetry Spoken Here. He gets to speak of his most recent book, The Best Minds of My Generation – A Literary History of the Beats (based on transcriptions of Allen’s lectures both at Naropa and at Brooklyn College). In addition, Rossiter reviews Wait Till I’m Dead, Bill’s edition of Allen’s posthumous poems, now fresh out in paperback.

Speaking … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 353

February 16, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in his kitchen, 1988 – Photograph by Brian Graham]

The Toronto photo show, “Fleeting Moments, Floating Worlds..,“ that we mentioned last week continues. What we omitted to mention was the accompanying catalog (printed and designed by the legendary Coach House Press). As curator, John Shoesmith writes in the forward – “The accompanying catalog attempts to further the story behind the Ginsberg photographs. It contains the voices of several key individuals who were crucial to the poet’s “second coming” as a photographer, beginning in the mid-1980s; from the person who planted the seed within Ginsberg to … Read More

Composed on The Tongue

June 19, 2017Simon Pettet

AG: (It’s a collection of) ..spontaneous writings, at different times. And some of the stuff is (from quite (recent), here,) at Naropa (The last piece from (19)74-(19)75, and some interviews done here around (19)75. And then a long conversation with Michael Aldrich, Edward Kissam & Nancy Blecker, (in Cherry Valley) ,”Improvised Poetics” { editorial note – subsequently reprinted in Spontaneous Mind] …..done in 1968.  And then, 1967, about twenty-five pages– twenty pages – of conversations, laconic conversations, with Ezra Pound about the Cantos and about what he thought about life – All this has been published in Loka or … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 318

June 2, 2017Simon Pettet

Anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s birth tomorrow. Anne Waldman and guests will be celebrating it at the Fox Theatre in Boulder

Meanwhile in NYC (from 3-9) at the Howl Happening Gallery (also celebrating the upcoming re-release of the Ginsberg-Blake Songs of Innocence and Experience on CD)  – Ed Sanders, Steven Taylor, Ernie Brooks & Bear 54 and readings by Bob Rosenthal, Bob Holman, Hettie Jones, David Henderson, Basil King, & other surprise guests.

Speaking of Anne Waldman, how about this? – the Anne Waldman comic! – “the story of Anne Waldman in her … Read More

Eileen Myles

December 29, 2015admin

Eileen Myles, 1978 – Photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, 2015 – Photograph by Catherine Opie

Eileen Myles has had quite a year – publication these few months back of, not one but, two new books – I Must Be Living Twice – New and Selected Poems 1975-2014 and the re-publication of her 1994 novel (now so-called, as against “short stories”), Chelsea Girls (both from Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins). The meme was (perhaps) set with this – Rachel Monroe‘s September 21 article in New York magazine – “After 19 Books and A Presidential Bid Eileen Myles Gets Her Due”… Read More

Wednesday June 3 – Allen Ginsberg’s Birthday

June 3, 2015admin

Every year it blossoms. The tree planted in memory of Allen in the back yard at St Mark’s Church – the flowering dogwood, the good old Kousa dogwood. It did it again this year (See previous flowering dogwood here, here and here) HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLEN!  Birthday celebrations tonight and a stellar reading in New York City at Poets House to launch the eagerly-anticipated publication of The Essential Allen Ginsberg. Readings and performances of the poet’s work included in the collection by Bob Rosenthal, Eliot Katz, Steven Taylor, Eileen Myles, Sharon Mesmer, Lee Ann … Read More

Friday Weekly Round-Up – 209

February 20, 2015admin

 

 

Linda Cronin and Linda Hillringhouse – first-prize winners at the annual  Paterson, New Jersey. Passaic County Community College Allen Ginsberg awards – Congratulations you two! Tonight, in NYC (at the Cornelia Street Cafe) – Eliot Katz, Bob Rosenthal, and others – an hommage to Allen Ginsberg (the first of a series of readings, organized by Gordon Gilbert, that will be focusing on a variety of Beat writers) Manuel Agnelli (of Afterhours), a few weeks back at Sala Verdi Conservaorio di Milano, reciting Allen Ginsberg ( “Moloch! Solitudine! Sudicio! Bruttura! Pattumiere e inottenibili dollari!..”) … Read More

Allen Ginsberg’s Birthday

June 3, 2014admin

[Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)]

Irwin Allen Ginsberg in Newark, New Jersey, June 3, 1926, Allen would have been 88 years old today. Happy Birthday, Allen!  Happy Allen Ginsberg’s Birthday, everyone. In celebration of an extraordinary life (and an exemplary death), we feature today Colin Still‘s masterly 1997 documentary No More To Say & Nothing To Weep For, originally commissioned by Channel 4 in England, and originally intended as a wider, more substantial profile (it was tragically cut short, or rather, re-envisioned, by Allen’s diagnosis of liver cancer, an event that took place just as the crew had arrived in … Read More

Allen Ginsberg’s Parinirvana

April 5, 2014admin

[Allen Ginsberg, Bob Rosenthal, James Grauerholz, Michael McClure, Peter Orlovsky – from Colin Still’s No More To Say And Nothing To Weep For – An Elegy For Allen Ginsberg 1926-1997 (1997)]

Saturday April 5th – Allen Ginsberg’s Parinirvana. Two Perspectives on Allen’s Last Hours  First, Gelek Rinpoche We lost Allen [Ginsberg], but believe me, he died very well – extremely well. We would be very lucky to go like he did. He was absolutely ready. It is interesting. It looked like he was always thinking that he had another ten years to live. Last year, after the summer retreat, … Read More