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

International Women’s Day 2018

March 8, 2018Simon Pettet

International Women’s Day today – The Allen Ginsberg Project stands in solidarity with International Women’s Day.

Recognizing Women and the Beats have a.. complicated relationship.

Tonight in LA – the opening of a five-day “Beyond Beat” festival at Beyond Baroque – a “Women of the Beat Generation” reading, with Eve Brandstein (reading Diane di Prima), Pegarty Long (reading her twin sister, Philomene Long), Phoebe MacAdams (reading Joanne Kyger), Skira Martinez (reading Janine Pommy Vega), Lorraine Perrotta (reading Carolyn Cassady) and Susan Heldfond Saunders (reading Aya Tarlow) 

There’ll also be … 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

Diane di Prima continues

August 7, 2017Simon Pettet

[The Seven Joys of Mary (1480), Hans Memling (c.1433-1495) ]

Diane di  Prima – continuing from yesterday

DD: Okay, part five of this poem [ “Loba‘]  was going to be –  [(it) makes me nervous when people take notes] – part five was going to be kind of.. was going to be a study of the Mary legend, you know. based on… partly started of from a Hans Memling painting – The Seven Joys of The Virgin – But before Mary showed up all these other ladies showed up first and I did a whole lot of other … Read More

Diane di Prima

August 6, 2017Simon Pettet

[Diane di Prima, Boulder, Colorado, 1987 -Photograph by Allen Ginsberg – (c) Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

It’s Diane di  Prima’s birthday. She’s 83. We send her greetings on her birthday and celebrate with this remarkable vintage tape (it’s another of the Bay Area Writers series at Novato, California – see here, here and here) , June 2, 1976, she reads from (and comments on) her epic masterpiece, Loba ( as well as reading, at the end, several sections from the earlier  Revolutionary Letters).

 DD: I’d like to start by reading parts of this long thing that’s five … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 323

July 7, 2017Simon Pettet

“Driving The Beat Road” – Jeff Weiss‘ recent detailed (and profusely illustrated ) survey, in The Washington Post, “in search of surviving members of the Beat Generation“,  is another  (well, we keep using this term, but it’s true) – “must-read”.

Weiss recounts the circumstances and the details of his interviews (conducted earlier this year) with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Diane di Prima, the novelist Herb Gold (“Gold would be the first to tell you that’s he’s not a Beat, but his legacy and historical context remain inextricable from his more well-branded peers”), and, in conclusion, … Read More

Michael McClure’s Mephistos

November 20, 2016Simon Pettet

screen-shot-2016-11-23-at-12-01-19-pm

[Michael McClure, Mephistos & Other Poems, City Lights Books, November 2016]

Michael McClure‘s new book of poems has just been released by City Lights:    “A landmark work of bio-romanticism, Mephistos and Other Poems is (McClure’s) first completely new collection in five years…. The title sequence, “Mephistos” stems from (his) ongoing “grafting” experiment, growing new poems from fragments of his older works. “Some Fringes: is a series of haiku-like nature poems, while the seventeen-part “Rose Breaths” derives from the poet’s practice of meditation. The freestanding poems grouped under the title “Being:” pay homage to many of McClure’s collaborators and fellow … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 286

September 23, 2016admin

 

     
Allen Ginsberg and his life-long partner, Peter Orlovsky, New York City, 1977 – Photograph by Gordon Ball

 

The Beat Generation exhibit at the Pompidou Center draws to a close with a number of specially-scheduled events – a colloquium and a series of films. Last chance to catch this extraordinary exhibit in its Parisian manifestation.

Here‘s Joseph Nechvatal‘s review in Hyperallergic

.

Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg

et aussi à Paris Next week sees the publication of Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, edited by … Read More

McClure & DiPrima

October 21, 2013admin

[Michael McClure and Diane Di Prima in 1997 in San Framcisco “Remembering The Summer of Love”]

Following up from yesterday’s post (on Michael McClure‘s birthday), here’s two great San Franciscans, Michael and the beloved Diane di Prima (for more on Diane’s current health crisis – see here), reading on the 30th Anniversary of 1967, the fabled “Summer of Love”. Michael begins with a brief haiku – “NOTH/ING/NESS/OF/Intelligence;/silver/sunlight/ through/ closed/ eyelids”. Diane reads a poem for Timothy Leary and then follows it with her elegy to Allen –  “Allen Ginsberg – A Moment of Grieving”  – “Allen’s face … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics – (W.B.Yeats – 7)

October 9, 2013admin

William Butler Yeats, by Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1935 - NPG Ax143873 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

[W.B.Yeats in 1935 – Photographed by Lady Ottoline Morrell – Copyright The National Portrait Gallery, London]

AG: There was one four-line piece in the middle of “Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen”, which I always liked. It typified the intellect at Columbia University when I was there. – “We, who seven years ago/Talked of honor and truth,/Shriek with pleasure if we show/The weasels’ twist, the weasel’s tooth”. (And) did we do “The Friends of His Youth” – “Laughter not time destroyed my voice..”

 
Philip Whalen: No, where is that?
 
AG: Want to try that? It’s (page) 221, it’s a little … Read More