Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 330

August 25, 2017Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg on tv, May 7 1968 on Firing Line With William Buckley

from the Letters column in last weekend’s New York Times Book Review

“Reading Ann Douglas’s review of Allen Ginsberg’s “The Best Minds of My Generation” (Aug. 6) reminded me of a chance meeting with Ginsberg in the early ’60s. After a performance of Genet’s “The Blacks” at a small theater in the East Village, I waited in front for my then-fiancée. Also standing there was Allen Ginsberg. I mentioned a poem by his father, Louis Ginsberg, that appeared in the textbook I used to teach … Read More

Meditation and Poetics – 24

December 18, 2014admin

AG: So there was the first Imagist school which said, “Sight is where the eye strikes”, “Direct treatment of the object” (that’s from (Ezra) Pound‘s little easy, “How To Read” – “Direct treatment of the object, with as few fuzzy words as possible. As we concentrate on the breath, or as we’re one with the breath, so one is absorbed in clearly seeing a situation, a person, a look, a broken flower in a vase – or “so much depends/ upon/ a red wheel/ barrow/ glazed with rain/ water /beside the white/chickens” – you know that? (William … Read More

Cross Worlds

September 18, 2014admin

 

“Transcultural Poetics”, global action, cross-cultural activity, is something we’re very much in support of here. Transcultural Poetics, the new anthology from Coffee House Press, drawing from the wealth of material available in the archives of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa is thus a timely, welcome and inspiring collection. It celebrates, as the publishers declare, “the leap, the engaged jolt of creation and recognition that cultural hybrids and transcultural alliances and associations spark”. “In essays, conversations, and Socratic raps, it celebrates, interrogates, and annotates the vital work poets perform when they write across borders”. … Read More

Poetry In Motion

May 3, 2014admin

Ron Mann’s groundbreaking 1982 film, Poetry In Motion, (we have featured, in the past, snippets, including Allen’s enthusiastic “Capitol Air” performance) is now available, in its entirety, on the incomparable UbuWeb.  From their informative notes:  “It was re-released in 1994 in an innovative format on CD-Rom..and, in 2002, as a DVD. Poetry In Motion 25 was also made available (“a one-hour television special featuring outtakes from Poetry In Motion with many of the artists featured in the original film”, (different poems, different settings), “plus a bunch of new faces (including Peter Orlovsky, Alice Notley, Jerome … Read More

Jerry Rothenberg’s 80th Birthday

December 10, 2011admin

[Jerome Rothenberg, back lawn at Naropa Institute, August 5, 1985. photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

In celebration of Jerome Rothenberg’s 80th birthday. Here’s a reading that took place in August of 1981 at Naropa. Allen introduces him.

“(He (Jerry Rothenberg)..) is now teaching a course in poetry and performance (here at NAROPA), which involves his specialty vocalization – “ethnopoetics” – Native American and other indigenous forms of poetry presentation and utterance and, with dance, music, song, chant, going into the seed (seat?) of language – he’s a fantastic scholar anthropologist anthologist whose specialization has been international-style of the … Read More

Allen Ginsberg Reading at D.G.Wills, 1994 (ASV#20)

November 5, 2011admin

One of the gems on You Tube is a 6-part reading of Allen in 1994 at La Jolla, California, at Dennis Wills’ extraordinary bookstore, happily spotlighted.
In response to a query, Wills recently recalled:
“It was Gary Snyder who helped to make that happen. When Gary read here in 1992, he had such a good time that he gave me Allen’s telephone number in New York, told me to call him and tell him that he (Gary) recommended the venue here. When I did call, Allen himself answered and I said something like “Hi Allen, Gary Snyder gave me your … Read More