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 – 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