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

Creeley and Coolidge on Kerouac Q & A

August 9, 2015admin

 

                        

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

from Coolidge–Creeley-Warren Tallman panel at the Kerouac Conference at Naropa, 1981 Clark Coolidge: Questions anyone? ……

Questioner: I just have one that relates personally. I’m from Montreal and Jack (Kerouac) did a lot of traveling around, and also, obviously, his family and the French-Canadian connection was very important, but I’m not sure..if he ever traveled in Quebec…I just wonder.. I wonder if you know of any (time) in his travels he ever made it to Quebec and why his… Does anybody know anything about that? –  and why he never made it … Read More

Clark Coolidge on Jack Kerouac

July 11, 2015admin

 

 [Clark Coolidge]

 

 [Jack Kerouac] 

NAROPA’s Summer Session concluded this week and one highlight was the series of lectures delivered by the poet Clark Coolidge on Allen – “Allen Ginsberg – Poet”. We hope to include transcripts of some of that material here, in the months ahead, on The Allen Ginsberg Project.  Meanwhile, looking back to 1982, here’s a transcript of Coolidge’s talk at the legendary Twenty-Five Year Anniversary of On The Road – Jack Kerouac Conference (We’ve already included selections from those festivities here, here amd here – not forgetting here and here)  One session (see here… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 225

July 3, 2015admin

 

Sometime since we noted great Ginsberg parodies – Remember Yelp? and Tweet? – even “Peter LaBarbera” (!) – Filip Noterdaeme has taken it one stage further, not just revisiting ‘Howl” (the opening poem) but that entire book! – Growl and Other Poems will be published by Lit Fest Press in the Spring of 2016. Meanwhile, here’s the opening salvo – “Growl” (and Noterdaeme on the thinking behind it) Gary Snyder in the current Newsweek Robert Frank in this weekend’s The New York Times Jonah Raskin‘s curt and-to-the-point interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti published  … Read More

Naropa Summer Writing Program, 2015

June 15, 2015admin

It’s that time of the year again. This week sees the beginning of the 2015 Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Summer Writing Program

“The Summer Writing Program is a four-week-long convocation of students, poets, fiction writers, scholars, translators, performance artists, activists, Buddhist teachers, musicians, printers, editors and others working in small press publishing. Programming includes workshops, lectures, panels, readings, special events and more.”This years’s theme – “The Braided River – Activist Rhizome” – the four weeks being broken down as, week one – “Disparities, Exigencies, Identity, Language”, week two, “Who am I when I dream: Philo-poetics”, week … 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