Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 380

August 24, 2018Simon Pettet

[Bob Donlon, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti – outside of City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, 1956 – photo: Peter Orlovsky]

The esteemed Poetry Foundation has been working (consistently) on its web presence. It’s just recently consolidated and organized this useful resource – An Introduction to the Beat Poets.

While we’re on such overviews, here is the page on the Beats from the Academy of American Poets 

International Beats – Marc Olmsted in Empty Mirror reviews Erik Mortenson’s  Translating the Counterculture – The Reception of the Beats in Turkey Southern Illinois University Press are also the publishers … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 377

August 3, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg Beacon Theater, New York, 1995 – photo: Michael Stipe]

Focusing this week on Allen Ginsberg-as-photographer, with a series of interviews. Our two-part interview with Raymond Foye here and here (which should on no account be missed) will be followed, next week, (Monday), with an interview with Allen’s sometime printer, Brian Graham.

And , yes, that’s right, that’s the Michael Stipe responsible for the image above.

Here’s another Ginsberg-with-camera photo we dig (from 1992).  The photographer is Bruce Weber

Here’s yet another Ginsberg-with-camera photo  (photographer, this time, Lynn Goldsmith)

 

Kerouac painting – Following on from the successful … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 376

July 27, 2018Simon Pettet

Here’s something not-to-be-missed, Jill Hershorin, Archivist of the Jewish Historical Society of New Jersey on Processing the Ginsberg Family Collection.

We reported on the donation by local politician, Pat Sebold back in 2016

Hershorin:  “Although the official repository of the Allen Ginsberg papers is Stanford University, the Ginsberg Family Collection resides in our small archives in Whippany, New Jersey, which holds materials representing Jewish life in the nearby counties of Essex, Morris, Sussex, and Union. Because the Ginsberg family has its roots in Newark, we thought it fitting that the collection should be with us….When the materials arrived at … Read More

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