Poetry, Society, & Foolish Resentment

2 days ago May 23, 2018Simon Pettet

[Hokusai -The Fuji reflects in Lake Kawaguchi, seen from the Misaka pass in the Kai province]

Student: Can I go back and ask you a question? We were talking about entering the imagination and making it manifest..

AG: Yeah, well, the reason I read this (Christopher Smart’s “A Song to David”), incidentally, was, obviously , he had to sit down and work on it. And it must have been fun.

Student: For you, what’s left after this manifest  I mean, that’s not totally off-the-wall..

AG: What’s left?

Student: Yeah.  Inside.

AG: Inside? – Inside?  It’s only.. You plumb … Read More

Barry Farber – 7 (interview concludes)

April 23, 2018Simon Pettet

The Allen Ginsberg-Barry Farber radio transcription that we’ve been serializing continues and concludes today

BF: I want (you) to read from the Table of Contents, like the virtuous… AG: (It’s) [“Wales Visitation‘] a bit long, like eight minutes or so. Something.. And I had been used, generally, on television, to be told to please make it one minute – “Please make it two minutes” – (because they don’t realize the power of poetry, they think, you know, that everybody’s going to get bored!) So I’ll read it again and I’d like to dedicate the reading to the absent … 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

Chögyam Trungpa Parinirvana

April 4, 2018Simon Pettet

[Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987)]

April 4 – Thirty-one years on since the death of Allen’s great spiritual teacher and the founder of Naropa Institute (now Naropa University), Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Naropa just recently announced the establishment of the Chögyam Trungpa Institute, a new academic research center, to encourage ““critical assessment by scholars and practitioners of Chögyam Trungpa’s body of teachings and his place in the development of Buddhism in the West,”  It will seek to “support new directions that honor the spirit of his work, through expositions, classes, research, debate, and other means”,  (including, most significantly, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 357

March 16, 2018Simon Pettet

[Howl & Kaddish & a selection of Allen Ginsberg Interviews (translated into Bengali by Malay Roychoudhury and edited by Utpal Bhattacharjee and published by Kabitirtha)]

[Malay Roychoudhury]

Allen Ginsberg in India – Allen and the Hungryalists (we’ve pointed out this crucial connection before) – Rima Bhattacharya’s “The Common Thread Between The Beats and The Hungryalists“, (the abstract of a PhD thesis), can be read here (from the same site, another doctoral abstract – Marina Reza on The Hungryalists – here). Essential listening on this topic – Jeet Thayil’s  BBC radio documentary (now available on the … 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

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

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 355

March 2, 2018Simon Pettet

Publication date next week (March 8), we’re very happy to announce and very much looking forward to it  – Simon Warner‘s new book  Kerouac on Record – A Literary Soundtrack 

Olivier Julien, (Lecturer in the History and Musicology of Popular Music, at the Sorbonne in Paris) writes:

“Following Text and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Beats and Rock Culture  (2013), Simon Warner partners with Literary Executor of the Estate of Jack Kerouac, Jim Sampas, to go deeper into his exploration of the connections between the great figures of the Beat generation and the music of the so-called ‘rock … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 351

February 2, 2018Simon Pettet

Next week, Neal Cassady‘s birthday.,   On Friday and Saturday, next week, they’ll be the big celebration in Denver (with special guests, Jami Cassady and David Amram – for more information on those celebrations – see here).

Monday,, it’s another Beat birthday – William Burroughs. There’s a celebration of that tonight – Three Rooms Press (publishers of the upcoming Don’t Hide The Madness – William S Burroughs In Conversation with Allen Ginsberg) present, at New York’s Cornelia Street Cafe (starting at 6 o’clock), a William Burroughs Birthday Tribute, featuring Anne Waldman, Steven Taylor, and … Read More

Shunryu Suzuki (1904-1971)

December 4, 2017Simon Pettet

Remembering today one of the great Buddhist teachers, Suzuki Roshi,  Shunryu Suzuki, influential Soto Zen priest and founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center (the first Soto Zen training monastery in the United States and one of the very first Buddhist training monasteries to be established outside of Asia)

Suzuki was also the author of the hugely popular Zen Mind, Beginners Mind  (1970). a key book from a key figure in the spreading in the West of the dharma.

Here’s Allen – from an interview, circa.1996, with David Chadwick: 

DC: Can you remember the … Read More