Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 340

November 3, 2017Simon Pettet

Our good friend John Suiter’s photo-essay on Jack Kerouac’s Lowell  is a must-read. He recently complimented it with this equally-inspiring photo-essay on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico.

Speaking of Kerouac, MA*GA  in Gallarate, Italy,  presents Kerouac Beat Painting, a show of over eighty original paintings and drawings, running December 3 April 22,   more details here.

[Jack Kerouac – untitled drawing (in colored crayon) of the Crucifixion]

See two more Kerouac images here.  And here for more on Kerouac as painter.

Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn home  (99 Ryerson Street), the place where he lived when he first published Leaves of Grass in 1855, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 339

October 27, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, photographed by  Kiyohide Hori]

Never did get around to mentioning Kiyohide Hori’s photo-show of Allen and of the Howl manuscript that took place (sadly now it’s down) in Japan this past summer

More Japanese news… “the Allen Ginsberg-inspired capsule”? – Some fervid debate in the “Comments” section here – “This is everything Allen Ginsberg stood against. These guys obviously know nothing about Allen Ginsberg or what he was all about. The poor guy must be turning in his grave” – (which elicits the response: “Please enlighten us. He was against materialism, which could be related … Read More

Buddhism and The Beats (Ginsberg 1993 – I – Introduction)

July 15, 2017Simon Pettet

A real treat this weekend – with gratitude to Robyn Brentano and students from the NYU Ethnographic Film Program – “Buddhism and the Beats.”. “In 1993, Allen Ginsberg spoke to a gathering of students of the Tibetan Buddhist monk, Lobsang Samten, about the impact of Buddhist thought and practice on himself, the Beat writers, and American culture at large”. The full hour-and-a-half tape is transcribed below (continuing tomorrow, and with the Q & A session to be featured here next weekend)

AG: Well, good evening, Rinpoche [Lobsang Samten Rinpoche] and I met very recently at the house … 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

Gary Snyder 1983 Naropa Reading – 1

December 12, 2015admin
 
Gary Snyder‘s reading at the Naropa Institute, on the occasion of the 1983 publication of his collection Axe Handles is this weekend’s feature. 
 
The transcription of the reading will appear in two sections. 
 
The reading begins with an introduction by Allen Ginsberg  
 
AG: (This will be) the first reading by Gary Snyder in Boulder since 1972, when there was a reading up at the University with the Japanese poet, Nanao Sakaki, myself, Robert Bly, Chogyam Trungpa and Gary. And this month [August 1983] there’s been a great series of poetry readings in the town, with Anne … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 242

October 30, 2015admin

 

 

 

Just out this month, from Blackberry Books, Franco Beltrametti’s posthumous collection, From Almost Everywhere  Gary Snyder on Franco Beltrametti: “Franco Beltrametti’s smooth-barked Muse leads him across the grids of latitude and longitude to the source of good medicine poems. A suavity masks these elemental songs – or rather, gives these elder faces a modern “human” mask. Civilized in the best sense”. and Joanne Kyger: “From “a crowded place called “future” Franco Beltrametti arrives, once again, with subtle eloquence to surprise us with his unexpected nuances and turns. These poems give us his presence….calling up … Read More

Kenneth Koch Q and A continued

October 18, 2015admin

 

                              [Kenneth Koch – Portrait of Kenneth Koch by Alex Katz] Kenneth Koch Q & A from 1979 continues KK:  Maybe we should have some more questions. What would you like me to tell you about? Student: What do you at Columbia? KK: I teach three courses there. I’m a regular Professor. I teach a writing course with twelve students. It’s, I mean, in this writing course, it’s not just a poetry-writing course,  I have people writing poems and stories and plays. I even usually have them write, sometime in the year, one long lonely piece of criticism, because … Read More

Trungpa Visits Allen’s Class – 1

July 15, 2015admin

                                                  

[Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche 1939-1987)]

AG: Welcome..to the poetry class.. [to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche] – does it make sense (you sitting), here?  [Allen points to location] – and there’s room for David (Rome) [Trungpa’s personal assistant], there. Welcome to my poetry class. This is Bobby Myers, my teaching assistant – and this [Allen continues with formal introductions] is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Tibetan poet and meditation teacher – and David Rome here.

 
So.. We had been reading haiku today, both Japanese (and American), talking about space in haiku – “A wild sea/ and stretching across to the isle of Sado/the Milky … Read More

Meditation and Poetics – 99 – Haiku 12 (Allen Ginsberg Haiku Class)

May 28, 2015admin

遠山が目玉にうつるとんぼ哉tôyama ga medama ni utsuru tombo kanaReflected In the eye of the dragonflyThe distant hills(Issa)

Student: Allen?AG: YesStudent: ((The compound) eye of a dragonfly, (comprises) a thousand [thirty-thousand] facets,  you can’t (actually) get a reflection from it (as a singularity))AG: All dragonfly’s eyes are thousand-faceted?  Well, I don’t know what we’re going to do with that.  I think (here) it does come from some observation of some (natural)…Student: (But it’s not biologically accurate..)AG: We’d have to question, then, the translation, maybe. But, actually, he might have had a little ant-heap, (for) which a thousand-faceted reflection would be the distant hills.

… Read More

Meditation and Poetics – 98 – Haiku – 11 (Haiku and The Gap of Space)

May 27, 2015admin

AG: (Haiku) …and the gap of spaceBillowing clouds –An antclimbs on to the ink stone(The ink stone where he’s mixing his ink to make the painting of the billowing clouds) – “Billowing clouds -/An ant/climbs onto the ink stone”.A cow is lowingin the cowshedunder the hazy moon(That’s very similar to that (one earlier)… (tape ends and then restarts here)  …the lowing of the cow and the hazy moon).Then, again, like the one of the firefly’s neck really is red in the daylight (“The firefly’s neck/in the daylight/is red” (Basho) [Hiru mireba kubisuji akaki  hotaru kana]). So other examples of minutely-perceived … Read More