Allen Ginsberg – Richland College reading – part 2

October 1, 2017Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg’s 1980 Richland College reading – continuing from yesterday

AG: So I would say now move on to.. 1956- moving on from 1956 to 1976. I have a series of poems which will require some music also – “Father Death Blues” – if we can get together on the stage –

My father died in 1976 in midsummer and I wrote a series of poems while he was alive because I spent a lot of time with him during the previous..during the winter that he was wasting, He was quite old and not in pain because it was a … Read More

Studs Terkel interviews Allen Ginsberg, 1976 – part two

May 14, 2017Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg and Studs Terkel continuing from here

[At approximately half-way through their conversation, approximately thirty-two minutes in, Allen sings “Gospel Noble Truths” (“Born in this world, you’ve got to suffer..”) making several improvised additions –  (“no permanent soul!”,  “the dharma chakra”,  “Look what you’ve done – 1968” – “Let go, Studs!”)

AG: You looked like you didn’t want to “let go” of  “earth heaven and hell” there!.

ST: And as Ned Kelly, the bandit, said, before they hanged him, and they sprang the trap –  “That’s life! “. You said,  “Die when you die”. I was about to … Read More

Allen Ginsberg Reading At Warwick University, 1979

January 22, 2017Simon Pettet

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[Allen Ginsberg at the Atheneum Bookshop, Amsterdam, November 1979. photo: Hans van Dijk / Dutch National Archives]

Allen Ginsberg Reading At Warwick University, 1979  (continuing from yesterday)

AG: I’ll begin since – oh we were discussing the subject . I’ll begin with a song dedicated to another fellow in prison, David Solomon who’s in Brighton…in Bristol jail, as he was sentenced to ten years as part of that big LSD conspiracy bust about a year or two ago – what was the name of that? Julie Operation Julie

[Allen sings a version of “Dope Fiend Blues”- “Dope Fiend Blues Shuffle”]… Read More

Allen Ginsberg Reading in Baltimore 1978 – 2

December 11, 2016Simon Pettet

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[Mind Breaths: Poems 1972-1977, the volume of poems by Allen Ginsberg published in 1978 by City Lights]

continuing from yesterday

AG: So, actually, I was in the hospital and I actually went out of my skull, I was full of antibiotics and fever and it seemed like it was about time to take a meat axe to that dirty Jew’s skull or something, (that was what I was telling my poor Jewish brother about Kissinger). So, finally, I wound up in a sort of state of punk ecstasy. So two poems about sickness, one a description and one a … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 247

December 4, 2015admin

From the audio-visual archives of RTBF, Belgium’s public-broadcasting organization for the French-speaking community, this delightful footage of Allen (and Peter Orlovsky and Steven Taylor) in Belgium in 1983. Following a short introduction, Allen and company are glimpsed (briefly) walking the streets (of Liege) and then Allen is interviewed (speaking en francais!). Allen and Steven get down at the piano (sic – yes, really) to perform “Father Death Blues”  and Allen-in-Austria footage (at the Schule Fur Dichtung/Vienna Poetry Academy – who is that woman sitting across from him at the table at the beginning?) – “I’ll begin with music. Inspiration … 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

Allen and Louis Ginsberg – Alan Ziegler’s 1976 Visit

June 6, 2015admin

 

 

 We were intending to run (re-run) this – Alan Ziegler‘s extraordinary account of visiting with Allen, and  Louis, shortly before his father’s death, (first published in The Village Voice in July of 1976), but were “pipped at the post” (not that there’s any competition involved) by our good friends at the estimable Best American Poetry blog. We trust there’s no harm in the duplication/dissemination.  

Ziegler begins his account with a brief (2015) introduction, followed by (unchanged, save for the correcting of “a few typos”) the full “4,500 word article”.  My Visit with Allen Ginsberg and

… Read More

Allen Ginsberg & Steven Taylor – 1996 at Texas State

October 4, 2014admin

We feature today a reading by Allen, recorded, just a year before his death, on April 11, 1996, at the Evans Auditorium, Southwest Texas State University. A noticeably weakened Allen – “I have bronchitis, so if my voice fails and I start coughing…” (and cough he does, finding it necessary to bum cough drops from the audience).  He is accompanied by Steven Taylor (“We haven’t played together in half a year or so, so.. but we played together for twenty or thirty years.. twenty years..” The tape begins with an introduction  by Steven M Wilson, Associate Professor … Read More

Manhattan Poetry Video Project 1984

November 27, 2013admin

Rose Lesniak’s Manhattan Poetry Video Project, from 1984 (three poetry-videos, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and Bob Holman) was, unquestionably, pioneering in its time. This was a good decade-and-more before the United States of Poetry, and the subsequent rise and development of now-ubiquitous video technology (a good two-decades-and-more before, even, the baby-steps of You Tube!) Allen’s contribution, reading “Father Death Blues”, is particularly poignant, because the film shoot was on Ellis Island (the old Ellis Island, before it had been refurbished and given its $156 million make-over/restoration) “Father Death, Don’t cry any more/Mama’s there, underneath the floor/ … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics – 47 (Shelley and Hart Crane 1)

March 6, 2013admin

[Joseph Severn (1793- 1879) Posthumous Portrait of Shelley Writing Prometheus UnBound (1845), oil on canvas, Keats-Shelley Memorial House, Rome, Italy]

AG: We were onto the subject of time and breath and (now) I want to skip a couple of centuries and shift to (Percy Bysshe) Shelley, to hear another kind of breath. (Also, I should say, as far as I know, I will be staying here until the end of the session. I won’t be here in the second session, (or I certainly won’t be teaching in the second session, because I’ll be called home. My father isn’t … Read More