WNET Levertov & Olson – Olson

January 21, 2018Simon Pettet

[Charles Olson (1910-1970)]

Continuing from yesterday  [at approximately sixteen minutes in], Charles Olson begins reading (from “Letter #41 [broken off]”) – “With a leap (she said it was an arabesque/ I made, off the porch the night of the/ St Valentine’s Day storm….”….”The war of Africa against Eurasia/has just begun again. Gondwana.”

“This is Charles Olson, born, December 27th, 1910. To say that his size, energy, and imagination are prodigious is almost an understatement. In 1950 Charles Olson wrote an essay which grew out of an exchange of letters with the poet, Robert Creeley. The essay was titled “Projective … 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

More Robert Duncan – 4

January 16, 2018Simon Pettet

Robert Duncan at Novato, California,in 1976, continues.      

RD: I want to take you through a… oh, there’s one more poem I’ll read from Bending the Bow, that was requested, and that’s the poem, “My Mother Would Be A Falconress” – People keep asking me why don’t I write good poems like that all the time? Well, this one landed on top of me, so I…. I’d never be able to do it myself is the only answer to it! I’ll read you the little Preface [“A Lammas Tiding”]  that goes with it, which is sort of a description … Read More

“The Time of Composition”

November 22, 2017Simon Pettet
 
[Rainer Maria Gerhardt (1927-1954)]
[Ted Berrigan (1934-1983)]
 
[Charles Olson (1910-1970)]
Student: Can I ask you a little bit of an off-the-wall question?
AG: Yes.. Why don’t we leave this time open now for just general…
Student: In our (Ted) Berrigan class  tonight, he said this comment that,  “The time of the composition is the time of the composition”…. (I’ve been trying to understand that)  and I’ve been trying all night.  And he says “Well, you should know that with every poem that you read, (before you start out).
AG: The time of  the composition is the time of the … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 332

September 8, 2017Simon Pettet

[Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, and John Ashbery – (Photographer Unknown)]

“….exquisite mind cartoons that could be heard with eyes closed, the voice perfectly ordinary with the slight edge of extravagant conversational camp, a mind artifice not unnatural to hypnagogic revery, deceptive, till you hear the chasm landscapes and awkward universes created and contradicted in vast gas-deposit shocking trivial universal mind.”

Allen Ginsberg – from an introduction to a reading by John Ashbery, at Naropa Institute, 1975.

Hear Ashbery’s reading (along with W.S.Merwin) on that occasion here

John Ashbery’s passing last weekend continues to send shockwaves.

A selection of … Read More

Saturday May 20 (Robert Creeley)

May 20, 2017Simon Pettet

Robert Creeley would have been ninety-one tomorrow, May 21st (he died in 2005). In honor of the great man and his birthday, we present, this weekend, another transcription from the extraordinary Bay Area Writers series (from back in 1975-76) – (see also here and here) – Rudimentary recording equipment, so there are, understandably, a few technical problems (particularly at the beginning and the end of tape one (the main tape) but.. what a treasure! , what a remarkable record!

RC: I’m curious, like.. I gather some of you.. that this is a class for some of you and some … Read More

Jim Carroll Workshop – 1

August 13, 2016admin

                           [Jim Carroll – album cover – Catholic Boy (1980) – cover photo by Annie Liebovitz]

Beginning today, serialization of transcription of Jim Carroll’s June 30, 1986 Naropa Poetics and Music class.  [see here for Jim Carroll reading]

Larry Fagin: Ladies and gents, welcome to the second week of Naropa [July, 1986] poetry summer camp. I’m pleased tonight to have.. and honored and thrilled to have, Jim Carroll with us, who first came to light at aged fifteen, with a book called, (an) amazing book called, 

… Read More

Expansive Poetry – 59 (Heroic Loud-Mouthed Style)

May 1, 2014admin

Lilya Brik in Alexander Rodchenko’s poster for the Soviet publisher Gosizdat, 1924

[Lili Brik in poster designed by Alexander Rodchenko in 1924 for the Soviet publisher, Gosizdat]

AG: ..heroic style, loud-mouthed style, hot-air style, exaggeration style, post-Surrealist style, imaginative, hyperbole, rhetorical, ecstatic , inspired, open-mouthed, oratorical, oratory, dreamy, day-dreamy, fantastical, inspired  – (meaning inspiration, meaning breath). Inspiration-exhalation-expiration. By “inspired”, I mean breath – the quality of breath, which is unobstructed breath, or that breath known when the body is a hollow reed and the mind is unobstructed and improvisation and images flow through the body without check and with abundance. Expansive imagination. It’s a state of body and a

… Read More

Expansive Poetics 42 – (Edward Carpenter 4)

March 25, 2014admin

File:Day, Fred Holland (1864-1933) - Edward Carpenter.jpg

[Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) – Photograph by Fred Holland Day]

AG: The other poem of (Edward) Carpenter‘s we might as well do, while we’re on Carpenter, is “The Secret of Time and Satan”. The reason I brought him up is he’s one of the children of (Walt) Whitman and one of the people who applied Whitman’s method of realistic all-inclusiveness, notation in present time, empathy in space, empathy and sympathy going out in space to make notions in present time. (It’s) a more philosophical poem based on theosophical ideas. It has Whitman’s basic impetus and … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 160

January 10, 2014admin

“To Allen Ginsberg”, Living Music‘s, long out-of-print, free-form, “acid-folk” “avant-jazz”, 1971 album, recorded for Italy’s RCA’s experimental imprint, “Free Dimension” and featuring the voice of Gianfranca Montedoro, the keyboards of Umberto Santucci, and the saxophone and flute of Umberto’s brother, jazz legend, Cicci Santucci, was recently re-released by the intriguing, inquisitive, Australian label, Light In The Attic Records, and is now available again on vinyl.   Here’s Bob Baker Fish, reviewing it on Cyclic Defrost – “This is a total freak oddity, a concept album from 1972 Italy made by a musical social experiment with tunes that evolve … Read More