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

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 – 313

April 28, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg reading and lecturing in Olomouc in the Czech Republic, 1993]

Allen’s new book, The Best Minds of My Generation, selections from Allen’s lectures (not to be confused with the lectures transcribed here on the Allen Ginsberg Project), “mercifully reduced to 455 pages, shorn of repetitions, student interventions and Ginsberg’s habit of beginning every sentence with “So” – (sic) – as the reviewer in the London Times would have it) continues to impress one and all.

Here’s an excerpt from Gaby Wood‘s review in London’s Daily Telegraph:

“Lovingly edited from recordings by Bill Morgan, who has … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 301 (il Saggiatore)

February 3, 2017Simon Pettet

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Ginsberg celebrations in Milan this weekend  (in celebration of the recent publication of the Italian translation of Wait Till I’m Dead  (Non finché vivo)

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il Saggiatore, Allen’s publishers, feature Allen in the fifth edition of their Writers series. Today, Friday, “Dal cuore dell’America all’India” (From the heart of America to India), a recital by Giuseppe Cederna

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Tomorrow – Allen and Pasolini by Vittorio Lingiardi (with readings by Luca Formenton) – directed by Vincenzo Zampa, “Allen Ginsberg in una lingua hostile” (Allen Ginsberg in a foreign language) with Leopold Carra and Luca Fontana, and Emanuele Bevilacqua in conversation … Read More

Ezra Pound’s Birthday

October 30, 2015admin

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

We featured a couple of days ago, the early English lyric, “Summer is Icumen in” (commonly known as “The Cuckoo Song”) Ezra Pound made a playful parody of it AG:    …And I forgot there’s this little paraphrase by Ezra Pound of “The Cuckoo Song”. Has anybody heard that or seen that?..How many know of Pound? (It’s) called “Ancient Music” – So let’s go back to that. where is that? ” The Cuckoo Song”? – ” Sumer is Icumen in,/Loudly sing, cuckoo!/Grows the seed and blows the mead,/And springs the wood anew.”  (and Pound):

“Winter is … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 230

August 7, 2015admin

 

Yesterday was Diane Di Prima‘s 81st birthday. Here’s the extraodinary class she gave last May (with Professor Steven Goodman) at the California Institute of Integral Studies – in two parts, here and here 

Earlier Diane Di Prima birthday shout-outs on the Allen Ginsberg Project here, here, and here

Here‘s a two-part story on another prominent Italian-American – Lawrence Ferlinghetti – here and here and  an excerpt from his forthcoming book – Writing Across The Landscape (a further excerpt may be found – here)

& keeping the Italian theme, Gregory Corso’s Gasoline appears in

… Read More

Gay Pride Weekend

June 27, 2015admin

Celebrating sexuality, coming out, and of course Marriage Equality on an extraordinarily euphoric Gay Pride Weekend! “Some situations are exuberant, like “Howl” or “Plutonian Ode”. Some situations are “Gee, I feel so good, I think I’ll write down what I see at this moment”. Some situations, I’m trying to locate what is my erotic imagination and write it down as a sample, like “Please Master”. You know, to locate my fantasy and put it down exactly, to see how far out I can go into my own mind, into the real fantasy inside, deep inside my mind

… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 160

January 10, 2014admin

“To Allen Ginsberg”, Living Music‘s, long out-of-print, free-form, “acid-folk” “avant-jazz”, 1971 album, recorded for Italy’s RCA’s experimental imprint, “Free Dimension” and featuring the voice of Gianfranca Montedoro, the keyboards of Umberto Santucci, and the saxophone and flute of Umberto’s brother, jazz legend, Cicci Santucci, was recently re-released by the intriguing, inquisitive, Australian label, Light In The Attic Records, and is now available again on vinyl.   Here’s Bob Baker Fish, reviewing it on Cyclic Defrost – “This is a total freak oddity, a concept album from 1972 Italy made by a musical social experiment with tunes that evolve … Read More

For Homer – (Gregory Corso)

January 17, 2013admin

Twelve years to the day since Gregory Corso passed away. We celebrate his autochthnic spirit!

This footage (above) of Corso, reciting his poem “For Homer”, with music by Nicholas Tremulis and featuring footage of Corso, Tremulis, and poet, Ira Cohen, dates from 1993.

and here’s a photo of  Gregory’s grave-site in Rome (buried close to his beloved Shelley)

 

On Ezra Pound(‘s 116th Birthday)

October 30, 2011admin

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[Ezra Pound, poet, Rutherford, New Jersey at the home of William Carlos Williams, June 30, 1958 – Photograph by Richard Avedon]

“What thou lov’st well remains,/ the rest is dross/ What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee.” Ezra Pound (born on this day) reads here from “Canto LXXI” [2013 update – regrettably the video that accompanied these lines is no longer available – but audio of the entire Canto (from Pound’s 1967 reading at Spoleto) may be listened to here – and here)]  For audio, the PennSound page cannot be recommended too highly, featuring, as … Read More