Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 348

January 12, 2018Simon Pettet

Reposting and restating last week’s big news – “Howl’,  a newly-assembled red vinyl  box-set will be available soon – next month – from Craft Recordings.  February 23 is slated as the release-date. Hold your breath!

A couple of weeks back,  Chris Agg uploaded a scattering of short Beat-related video-clips onto You Tube. See here (a few selected examples). We start off with Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading his prose-poem “Look Homeward, Jack – Two Correspondences”  from the book Wild Dreams of A New Beginning. (Ferlinghetti can also be seen here, reading “Constantly Rising Absurdity”, from A Coney Island of the … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 334

September 22, 2017Simon Pettet

[Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg, c. 1977]

Patti Smith‘s new book Devotion has just come out (from Yale University Press) to mixed reviews. Here‘s Michael Lindgren’s review in The Washington Post .Here‘s Megan Volpert at Pop Matters. The book is an expanded version (though not so expanded) of her 2016 Winham-Campbell Lecture at Yale (for a section of that lecture – see here)

Grant Hart, drummer, vocalist and songwriter, who died a little over a week ago, on William Burroughs from an interview from back in 2000 for The Onion AV Club:

Interviewer:   … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 312

April 21, 2017Simon Pettet

Great news! – Omnivore Recordings, and Pat Thomas, (who gave us last year the extraordinary The Last Word on First Blues), are issuing, as a two-CD package, Allen Ginsberg’s The Complete Songs Of Innocence And Experience,  is both a reissue of Allen’s original Blake release from 1969 on MGM, with the unreleased 1971 recording sessions that were to be Blake Volume 2.  The release will include, along with the two CDs, a booklet featuring several unseen photos, alongside revealing new interviews, conducted by Thomas himself, with the original session musicians. Release-date is June 23.  

 … Read More

Studs Terkel Interviews Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass on WFMT, Chicago 1990 – part 2

September 25, 2016admin
 
Philip Glass – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg – Kiev Restaurant, NYC, 1993 – Photo  c. Allen Ginsberg Estate

continuing from yesterday

ST: Resuming with Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass, poet (and) composer working together. We heard just a piece of the very haunting “Satyagraha – the Evening Song“, earlier, that opened the Lyric Opera season. It was a pip of an opening. Critics and audience both (raved). That was three years ago… Liquid Days?  (Songs from) Liquid Days) is what?

PG: Well, it’s a collection of songs I did. In a way, it’s kind of … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 244

November 13, 2015admin

            [Howl & Other Poems – Allen Ginsberg – recent edition –  Mojo Publishing House, Taipei,Taiwan (2015)]

All this talk about Allen Ginsberg‘s ubiquity. “Did you know”, I said, “Did you know that there are Columbia students, Columbia undergraduate students, who don’t know who Allen Ginsberg is!”  (Betsy Ladyzhets, writing in Bwog, Columbia Student News)

 
[Steve Silberman, Allen Ginsberg and Marc Olmsted, San Jose, California, 1986
 – Photograph by Marc Geller]

Steve Silberman might also be considered ubiquitous these days. A wonderfully positive response to his new book on autism – “Neurotribes – The Legacy

… Read More

The Heart of The Hydrogen Jukebox – ASL

October 12, 2013admin

Here’s something we’ve been meaning to post for some time now.  The extraordinary development of Allen and ASL – American sign-language.  From Miriam Nathan and Don Feigel’s remarkable documentary, “The Heart of The Hydrogen Jukebox“.  The date is 1984. The location, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf  (NTID) in Rochester, New York, (a workshop entitled “Two Worlds, One Spirit” (with Allen in attendance), designed to address the topic of poetry and deafness). Patrick Graybill is the deaf poet-performer who shakes up the room and blows everybody’s minds.  Jim Cohn describes it (a significant, breakthrough moment) in … Read More