Allen Ginsberg 1982 Leicester Student Interview

May 26, 2018Simon Pettet

Last week, we featured transcription from a tape in the Stanford University Archives that featured an interview with Jack Kerouac’s childhood friend (and Allen’s friend) jazz aficiando, Seymour Wyse. This week, from the same tape, the conversation is followed by an interview with an earnest young English student (presumably an undergraduate at Leicester University, prior to the reading Allen gave there with Steven Taylor and Peter Orlovsky in the Fall of 1982 – at one point in the transcript, Allen breathlessly itemizes his itinerary)

Interviewer (Student):  Do you make recordings of all your work?

AG:  Not all, but I have … 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 – 359

March 30, 2018Simon Pettet

[Carl Solomon at home in the Bronx, 1991 – Photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries]

Today, Friday March 30th. is Howl dedicatee, Carl Solomon‘s birthday. For last year’s Carl Solomon posting (“Remembering Carl Solomon”) – see here)

It’s also the anniversary of Rimbaud‘s lover, the poet, Paul Verlaine‘s birthday.  (For a posting on Verlaine’s “Chanson d’Automne” – see here)

And, while we’re on the subject of anniversaries – Our dear friend Bob Creeley died on this date thirteen years ago. Much missed, thinking of you, Bob.

David S Will’s Beatdom continues to deliver challenging A.G. … 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

Ginsberg and China

September 9, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, Yangtze River Gorge, China, 1984]

 [Allen Ginsberg: Selected Poems –1947-1997, (Chinese translation by Wen Chu-An)  (2000)]

Allen Ginsberg in China is our focus this weekend.

Allen and China – great news! -.a new (first-time!) edition of his Collected Poems is due out very soon in that country  (hopefully in November)  – translated and edited by the young Ming Hui and published by  Shanghai ’99.…..

There’s, a little Chinese background.

From our friend Jim Cohn‘s estimable web-site, The Museum of American Poetics: “In 1982, Allen Ginsberg was a member of a U.S. Writers’ Delegation that hosted … Read More

Friday’ s Weekly Round-Up – 284

September 9, 2016admin

[Allen Ruppersberg – from The Singing Posters – Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (Part 1 & 2) (2003) (detail) — from the work included in the exhibition Beat Generation – New York, San Francisco, Paris at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, June 22-October 3, 2016]

Jeremy Harding in the London Review of Books:

“In the Beat constellation, Allen Ginsberg’s star now shines more brightly than the rest…There would have been no Beat phenomenon without Ginsberg, logorrhoeic poet and protester, illustrious, predatory queer, inventor and supporter of colleagues and hangers-on, impresario and self-appointed hero of a tradition that he put together from all kinds … Read More

The Tradition of Reznikoff & Williams

October 26, 2015admin

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)  – Photograph via University of Pennsylvania Archives

[Allen continues with his 1981 Naropa class, drawing distinctions between the poetry of  David Cope and that of  William Carlos Williams, placing him closer to Charles Reznikoff’s work]

AG:…..in that Williams was still preoccupied by some kind of modernism, some kind of Cubist abstraction, whereas Cope was really direct, (writing) just simply directly, writing out of his… ( – Allen is distracted – is that gone around all the way, this paper?)….whereas Cope was directly writing out of his eyesight and his… I think he’s more close too … Read More

David Cope – 5

October 22, 2015admin

 

 

 

David Cope – Three Early Volumes (with cover drawings by the author) – Poems (1974), Neon Eyes (1975) & Waking (1978) – all three published by Nada Press

 

Allen reading  the (early)  poetry of David Cope continues  (and concludes) today “The Beating” – “The dreamers wake to screams;/ down the corridor a man is beating his wife/she runs into the night air/ …. …. the police are summoned and she is carried away covered with blood/ people huddle under the stars speaking softly” – [Again, a good little description, a sort of short-story description] “The hat, the … Read More

David Cope – 4

October 21, 2015admin

 

 

                                                                 [David Cope]

Allen Ginsberg reading David Cope continues  “Walking, driving,/ everything is business, nothing is still./ across the river the city gleams,/  voices roar in the metal traffic” – [that’s pretty good, “voices roar in the metal traffic” ] “This is an AMERICAN POEM,/ accept no substitutes,/no surrealism or symbolism, this is the asphalt under your feet”  – [Well, I think he can say that very accurately – great! – “The asphalt under your feet” – Isn’t that like a declaration,  an Americanist declaration, such as the ‘Twenties poets used to make?  “Baseball“…  no,  “Two old friends…” – “Two … Read More

Basic Poetics 6 – (Actual Perception v Pure Bullshit)

October 15, 2015admin

Student: (I think) his style (David Cope‘s style) puts forth the position of being an observer rather than it being (creative). Instead of things coming out of the mind, the poet simply reflects what he sees..)AG: I think it’s a semantic question, actually. I mean, you know, he doesn’t simply reflect what he sees because, you see, you have to pick out something to see, or something is picked out to see. You don’t write about everything you see, otherwise you’d have thousands and thousands of pages all the time. It’s only those selected moments of perception that are … Read More