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 – 323

July 7, 2017Simon Pettet

“Driving The Beat Road” – Jeff Weiss‘ recent detailed (and profusely illustrated ) survey, in The Washington Post, “in search of surviving members of the Beat Generation“,  is another  (well, we keep using this term, but it’s true) – “must-read”.

Weiss recounts the circumstances and the details of his interviews (conducted earlier this year) with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Diane di Prima, the novelist Herb Gold (“Gold would be the first to tell you that’s he’s not a Beat, but his legacy and historical context remain inextricable from his more well-branded peers”), and, in conclusion, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 315

May 12, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg teaching at Naropa Institute – Photograph  Steve Silberman]

From Steve Silberman‘s review of the new Allen Ginsberg book, Bill Morgan‘s selection of Allen’s lectures, Best Minds of My Generation, which appeared last weekend in the San Francisco Chronicle:  

“Scholarly, wide-ranging and full of penetrating insight and fascinating literary gossip, the book is a major contribution to the core Beat canon, and provides an astonishingly intimate view of a homegrown American literary movement that would have a generative influence worldwide, inspiring generations of writers, visual artists, filmmakers, musicians and political activists across the globe..”… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 249

December 18, 2015admin

 

Allen Ginsberg – Photograph by Cynthia Macadams

Lawrence Ferlinghetti on Reddit – on what is his favorite Allen Ginsberg poem – “Aunt Rose” because it’s a very touching, deep and profound expression of love and empathy of his old Aunt Rose. It’s even more powerful than his long poem [“Kaddish‘] about his mother.”

 
Harry Smith, Second Avenue and Twelfth Street (NYC), 1987 – Photograph by Brian Graham

John Wieners  (1934-2002)
… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 245

November 20, 2015admin

 

 [Allen Ginsberg’s desk in his bedroom in New York, 437 East 12th Street , 1986 – Photograph by Dave Breithaupt]

Michael Schumacher’s  The Essential Ginsberg has not been getting the attention we had hoped for, so we were pleased to find this notice in Ralph magazine this week.  That word “essential” isn’t used lightly. Buy this book!

And here‘s a “sneak preview” (from Harpers)  from the next Ginsberg book – “1/29/84” , one of the poems in Wait Till I’m Dead, a volume of uncollected poems that will be published by Grove-Atlantic this coming February. … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 216

April 10, 2015admin

 

Hal Willner‘s 60th anniversary celebrations in L.A.  for “Howl” this past week turned out to be a grand success.  From Tim Grierson‘s account of the evening, for Rolling Stone: “Nearly 60 years after its first public reading in October 1955, a concert was held in downtown Los Angeles to honor “Howl”, Allen Ginsberg’s epic zeitgeist-chaneling poem that wrestled with sexuality, creativity, drugs, capitalism and the contradictory forces that were shaping mid-century America. Although not as consistently revelatory as the poem itself, “A Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”” could be as

… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round Up -159

January 3, 2014admin

[Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs – Photograph by Hank O’Neal]

2014 is – in case you didn’t know – the William Burroughs Centennial year (next month, February 5th, he would have turned 100), and, not only on the 5th, but on a variety of occasions, there will be events, arranged by a variety of groups, around the globe. Here in New York City (the Allen Ginsberg Project’s home-base), for instance, there will be city-wide celebrations throughout the month of April. Long before that, however, we’ll be witnessing happenings. Perhaps the biggest so far, organized by Charles Cannon, … Read More

John Giorno & William Burroughs At Naropa 1976

August 3, 2013Peter Hale

Continuing with our treasures from the Naropa Archives. Here’s another early (July 1976) reading – John Giorno and William Burroughs (the introductions are not by Allen this time, but by Michael Brownstein).

The reading is divided into two sections. After Brownstein’s introduction, Buddhist-practitioner, Giorno, reads first, reading two colorfully-titled pieces – “Drinking the Blood of Every Woman’s Period” and “Shit, Piss, Blood, Puss and Brains” –

Michael Brownstein on John’s Buddhist aesthetics: “(that) his poems are not Buddhist, as such, from the outside-in, like an anti-war poem would be, for example, or a love poem, using these things

… Read More

William Burroughs Birthday

February 5, 2013admin

[William Burroughs on his Cabin Porch, Lone Star Lake,Lawrence Kansas, May 28,
1991.photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

 

We’ve featured some of this footage before – William S Burroughs’ Home Movies – but no matter. Here on the occasion of what would have been William Burroughs’ 99th birthday is the full feature – Lars Movin and Steen Møller Rasmussen’s 2007 documentary Words of Advice – William S Burroughs On The Road, featuring priceless documentation of his 1983 reading tour in Denmark, combined with other later Burroughs-in-Lawrence-Kansas footage, and contributions from James Grauerholz, John Giorno, Hal Willner, Jennie Skirl,… Read More

Gang of Souls

February 25, 2012admin

[Gang Of Souls: A Generation of Beat Poets]
Maria Beatty’s 1989 documentary, Gang of Souls: A Generation of Beat Poets, is our film focus this weekend. It, as Clint Weiler explains on the IMDB site, “explores the insights and influences of the American Beat poets..(and)..conveys their consciousness and sensibility through (simple unadorned) interviews”. It also “weaves in additional commentary from contemporary musicians, poets and writers” (four of them – Marianne Faithfull, Henry Rollins, Richard Hell and Lydia Lunch), and “expands upon how the poets reached new levels of creativity and inspired social change”.… Read More