Gary Snyder is 88 today.
Happy Birthday, Gary!
Here‘s a recent (2017) (local tv) interview
Here’s another recent (2017) radio interview
Previous Gary Snyder Birthday Celebrations on the Allen Ginsberg Project can be accessed here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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
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
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
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…)
Richard O Moore’s WNET Poetry continues (continuing from here, approximately fourteen-and-three-quarter minutes in) – 1965, the young Gary Snyder)
Introduction: Gary Snyder is another poet [along with Philip Whalen] identified with the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, and Reed College. Snyder now [1965] lives in Kyoto, Japan, where he’s a student of Zen, but for part of 1965, he was a lecturer in the English deparment at the University of California at Berkeley. When asked to ad-lib a biography, he gave his usual direct answer
GS: Well, I’d have to tell the truth. I … Read More
A vintage Naropa reading from July 21 1985 in two parts for this weekend.
Today, the first part, features Eric Mottram and Philip Whalen. Anne Waldman gives the introductions.
Allen Ginsberg tomorrow.
AW: We’re pleased to have Eric Mottram, Philip Whalen and Allen Ginsberg reading – and Eric and Philip will be reading first and then we’ll have a short break and Allen will complete the evening
I have a couple of announcements to make. Please no smoking in this room and no flash photographs and also I’d like to announce there’ll be copies of this … Read More
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
Another Ginsberg letter today – this one to Allen (dated November 30, 1957 – sixty years ago today) from Jack Kerouac in Orlando, Florida to Allen in Paris. Jack confesses he’s drunk, and broke, but writing up a storm (writing Dharma Bums) and looking toward the future.
Dear Allen. Your poem [“Kaddish’] very beautiful, especially “eyes of Ma Rainey dying in an ambulance” (why don’t you spell it “aumbulance” which would mean aum-vehicle…)…well, and Greg’s [Gregory Corso’s] “sweetly in … Read More
The treasure-trove that is the recently-digitalized Stanford archive is starting to unpack itself. Last week, Jay Barmann at the SFist, spotlighted a particularly choice gem (two gems, in fact) – Ginsberg and Bob Dylan, talking backstage, on December 11, 1965, in San Francisco, and then Dylan performing an entire concert with a band. “It comes”, he notes, “via Dylan fan and YouTuberist Keith Gubitz, who, simultaneously, has uploaded a second, similar recording, from December 12, 1965 in San Jose — the latter includes some chatter at the beginning between … Read More