Barry Farber Interview – 6 (continues)

April 22, 2018Simon Pettet

[ Carl Solomon, Allen Ginsberg and John Tytell are shown here at Allen’s Cherry Valley Farm. Photo: Mellon Tytell]

“You’re making some sort of Cold War problem when what I’m saying is that the problem is ecological”  (Allen Ginsberg to Barry Farber, 1976) –

The Allen Ginsberg-Barry Farber conversation continues.

BF: Allen, when you got out of that plane, being kicked out of Prague, you wrote (“Kral Majales”)… Did you know you were going to write a poem before you got to London? AG: No.. I always carry a notebook with me. Like, I’ve got one now, just … Read More

Barry Farber Interview – 4

April 15, 2018Simon Pettet

[Barry Farber]

We continue with the transcription of Allen’s appearance on Barry Farber’s 1976 radio broadcast.

In this episode, a punk Jonathan Robbins appears to the consternation of Barry Farber, and Allen discusses, among other things, ecology (eco-consciousness) and the apparent difficulty (alleged impossibility) of translation. 

BF:  (The Beat Generation) ….was every feature-writer’s security blanket tranquillizer and pacifier. (I want to know, technically, how you attracted that much attention?)

AG:  I think, mainly, it was we said what we really thought, rather than what we were supposed to think or what we thought would be, you know, palatable for the … 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

Vojo Sindolic’s 1986 Belgrade Interview – part two

February 25, 2018Simon Pettet

[Dubrovnik, in the old city – Photograph -Beth Leonard]

Allen Ginsberg interview – continuing from yesterday

VS: When you first visited me in my home in my birthplace, the old city of Dubrovnik, in October of 1980, you were so delighted by its beauty that you decided to stop and stay for a long four weeks!  During that time we spent any happy hours together, talking just about everything, making plans for the first book of my translations of your poems. It was there in Dubrovnik that you wrote two of your best later poems – “Birdbrain”. and “Eroica” … Read More

Vojo Sindolic’s 1986 Belgrade Interview – part one

February 24, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in Belgrade, 1986]

Vojo Sindolic‘s 1986 interview with Allen in Belgrade (in two parts – the second part will follow tomorrow) is our focus on The Allen Ginsberg Project this weekend.

Vojo’s translation of Cosmopolitan Greetings  (Kozmopolitski pozdravi ) has just appeared from Hrvatskoga društva pisaca  (h,d,p) (the Croatian Writers Society) 

Here, he introduces the interview:

“Allen Ginsberg and I were very close friends for twenty years from 1977 until his death in 1997. I felt and still feel deep love for his poetic insight, or as one may call it – it was literary … Read More

Andrew Marvell – The Garden – 3

January 31, 2018Simon Pettet

[Michelangelo – The Creation of Adam – detail of  fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, painted c.1508-1512]

Allen Ginsberg on Andrew Marvell’s “The Garden” continues

Student:  I don’t understand.  (In the last part [of Marvell’s poem, “The Garden”], I think I don’t follow the argument)

AG: Okay… which are we speaking of? –  the next-to-last, or the last stanza?

Student: (In the last two stanzas…)

Such was that happy garden-state,/ While man there walk’d without a mate;/ After a place so pure and sweet,/ What other help could yet be meet!/ But ’twas beyond … Read More

Buddhism and The Beats (Ginsberg 1993 – Q & A)

July 22, 2017Simon Pettet

Following on from last week’s “Buddhists and The Beats” video -the Q & A, the final segment.

Do we have time for questions.?

AG: Yes, sure

Q: You said that your poetry is a practice as well, so..is it..do you meditate every day? do you use poetry as a practice?

AG: It’s a form of practice. I sit now about forty minutes to an hour every day. There have been long periods where I’ve sat for an hour, two hours, every day, and there have been long periods where I have been on retreats where I would sit all day, … Read More

Jack Collom (1931-2017)

July 2, 2017Simon Pettet

Following the death of Larry Fagin, news reaches us this morning of the death of another of the great Naropa poet-teachers, Jack Collom. When Allen and Anne Waldman set up the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in 1974 in Boulder, Colorado, Colorado already had one distinctive inventive joyful maverick poet at hand, Jack Collom. He was swiftly engaged in the experiment and soon (not soon enough, as we recall) became an integral part of the faculty. This page (from the Naropa University Archive) provides links to countless instances of Jack’s participation. We might, arbitrarily, single out … Read More

Earth Day

April 22, 2017Simon Pettet

[Edmund Muskie listens to Allen Ginsberg at the first Earth Day Celebration, Philadelphia, April 22nd, 1970]

Today, April 22nd, is Earth Day, Mother Earth Day. The original manifestation on April 22, 1970, has mushroomed into a global awareness, global activity. It is no coincidence that today also marks the one-year anniversary of the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change (an agreement entered into by representatives of no less than one-hundred-and-ninety-five countries, and – shockingly – criticized, derided and shunned by a corrupt and ignorant American leadership). The postponement of Tuesday’s scheduled talks on a potential US withdrawal … Read More

Joanne Kyger, Novato, 1976 – 2

April 16, 2017Simon Pettet

 

[Joanne Kyger, Kyoto-Japan Sea visit with Gary Snyder, 1963 Summer. Photo by Allen Ginsberg]

continuing from yesterday..

JK: ..almost five years ago tonight … someone that Bobbie Louise Hawkins introduced me to, who is a monkey-studier from Harvard,  they (he – Peter Warshall) came to Bolinas, and soon afterwards got word that this little island, desert island, off Puerto Rico, where they had during… let me see…before the war, they had put a bunch of rhesus monkeys from India on this little desert island, and then, during the war…, for breeding purposes, experimental purposes (like for … Read More