Poetry, Society, & Foolish Resentment

9 hours ago May 23, 2018Simon Pettet

[Hokusai -The Fuji reflects in Lake Kawaguchi, seen from the Misaka pass in the Kai province]

Student: Can I go back and ask you a question? We were talking about entering the imagination and making it manifest..

AG: Yeah, well, the reason I read this (Christopher Smart’s “A Song to David”), incidentally, was, obviously , he had to sit down and work on it. And it must have been fun.

Student: For you, what’s left after this manifest  I mean, that’s not totally off-the-wall..

AG: What’s left?

Student: Yeah.  Inside.

AG: Inside? – Inside?  It’s only.. You plumb … Read More

Compositional Practice – (Sustained Attention – 1)

1 week ago May 14, 2018Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg, at Naropa, from 1980, continuing with his lecture on Basic Poetics

AG: So, working last night reminded me of something that I hadn’t tried formulating, or vocalizing, which is that to write a work of genius, of any density and thickness and length (except for the little ditties and brilliant pieces that you can write right off, spontaneously, little short poignant things like that “On Neal’s Ashes”, which are, little poignant poems, which everybody has written of their own), the situation arising where you actually get involved in a work and sit continuously at it for twelve, … Read More

Gregory Corso (K – Libre) – 2

April 1, 2018Simon Pettet

[Gregory Corso, 1957 – Photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries]

continued from yesterday.  Gregory Corso begins by reading/explaining his poem, “The Whole Mess…Almost”

“I went to my room/, sat down,/ opened my pen-knife to open a letter./ Halfway I stopped, /put letter and penknife down, went to the window and opened it up -Six floors up – enough to kill a human shot. So, who goes first? – Faith – (you) can’t trust it. You take it, Faith is not Knowledge. It’s something you believe in because you don’t understand it. Out the window with it! Took Truth, and … Read More

Gregory Corso (K – Libre) -1

March 31, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, New York City, 1985. Photo: Hank O’Neal]

This weekend we feature just one of the innumerable treasures in the Archives at Stanford University (there’ll be many more to come)

Today (in two parts, the second tomorrow) Allen Ginsberg’s tape from 1977 of a reading by Gregory Corso. (“K-Libre”? Kerouac Library? a benefit of some sort? We’re not exactly sure)

With significant detour and deviation (sic) and against a boisterous audience he (Gregory) organizes the reading along mathematical lines.

The poems he reads are “Verse”, “Alchemical Poem”, “As long as we live…”, “The Whole Mess…Almost”, “The … Read More

Gregory Corso’s Birthday

March 26, 2018Simon Pettet

Gregory Corso‘s birthday today (he would have been 88). A little bit of Gregory from beyond-the-grave.

Gregory’s been a pretty permanent feature on The Allen Ginsberg Project – see earlier birthday postings – here, here, here – and here

A Gregory Corso weekend –  here and here

Vintage Gregory Corso readings here, here and here

See also here and here.

& more Gregory Corso upcoming.

[Gregory Corso, Boulder, Colorado, 1985 – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg, c. Allen Ginsberg Estate] … Read More

Miltonic Psalm Notations

March 19, 2018Simon Pettet

[ Portrait of John Milton –  (circa 1803) – by William Blake]

Allen Ginsberg’s 1980 Basic Poetics class (at Naropa) – continuing from here

AG: So, the next experiment I did (was) with Miltonics – Milton. This is my Miltonics. It was pretty sick Miltonics.  Because what it is,  is a total – 1949 -it’s a.. I think I was either coming or..  going to-and-fro from.. Bedlam – New York State Psychiatric Institute, and I was convinced that there was a supernatural consciousness that I had to achieve and I was not achieving it, and that I wouldn’t achieve … 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

Elazar Larry Freifeld Tel Aviv 1988 Interview

March 3, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in Jerusalem, 1988, praying by the Western Wall.  Photograph by Steven Taylor]

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

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 354

February 23, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, Venice, Italy, 1995, Enzo Eric Toccaceli,  “Beat Generation, Travels in Italy” exhibition, Rome]

“Beat Generation, Ginsberg Corso, Ferlinghetti Viaggio in Italia”, (Beat Generation, Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti Travels in Italy), a show of over 200 black-and-white photos (accompanied by an apparatus of over 600 documents (books, first editions, printed ephemera, etc)  curated and presented by photographer Enzo Eric Toccaceli, opened at La Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Roma (The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome) last week, and will be up until April 2nd.. For more images from the show see … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 349

January 19, 2018Simon Pettet

Opening tonight in New York, at the New York Public Library, You Say You Want A Revolution – Remembering the Sixties – a comprehensive exhibition, drawn from the library’s holdings, “exploring the breadth and significance of this pivotal era—from communal living and forays into expanded consciousness to tensions around race, politics, sexuality, and the environment”.  Items on display, include manuscripts from Allen, (and from Burroughs and Kerouac), “Changing of the Guards”, (an original typescript by Bob Dylan),  and notations from Timothy Leary on his LSD research, (alongside much else).

It’s Edgar Allan Poe‘s birthday today! – … Read More