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

Larry Fagin (1937-2017)

May 28, 2017Simon Pettet

Larry Fagin, poet, editor, teacher, long-time leading member of the so-called “New York School” of poetry, died yesterday. He was 79 years old. An important co-worker with Allen at Naropa (and, coincidentally, upstairs neighbour in his 12th Street tenement in Manhattan), he was, (though not himself a Buddhist), alongside fellow St Marks poet, Anne Waldman, one of the key figures in the initial years of that on-going experiment. Allen himself was quite unequivocal – “I don’t know of a better editor and teacher of poetry and prose than Fagin”, he once declared. Larry’s early teaching there can … Read More

April 1st – April Fool – Holy Goof

April 1, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, 1976. Photo: Robert Turney]

“Then there’s something I like to call Crazy Seriousness. Kerouac used the word “goof” a lot in a very positive way, as when he was describing the Three Stooges in Visions of Cody. He was talking about Neal Cassady, actually, saying how the free imagination he felt in himself was justified in the world outside and he had nothing therefore to reproach himself for…”

[Clark Coolidge on Jack Kerouac]  – in Disembodied Poetics – Annals of the Jack Kerouac School – edited by Anne Waldman and Andrew Schelling … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 143

September 13, 2013admin

Summertime over now and a few (belated) notes on two summer-time conferences – ESBN (the European Beat Studies Network) 2, which took place in Aalborg (the University of Aalborg), Denmark, August 28th-30th, and Out of The Shadows (focusing on Beat Women Writers), which took place at the University of Agder, Norway, September 2nd-4th.  At the former, you would have been treated to Professor Jason Lee – “Buddha With A Melody: Evolution, Sex and Ginsberg’s Influences”, Luke Walker – “Exchanges Between Ginsberg, Dylan and Blake” and Rebecca Evans – “Kaddish – Tribute To My Father” (and a whole … Read More