Wieners/Duncan – 2 – Wieners

January 7, 2018Simon Pettet

[John Wieners (1934-2002)]

Richard O Moore’s WNET’s USA Poetry transcript continues. Today – John Wieners

For a period during the 1950’s, Robert Duncan, along with the poets Charles Olson and Robert Creeley taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina (In) 1954 John Wieners, the founder and editor of the magazine Measure was a student of Robert Duncan’s at Black Mountain. Weiners work deeply reflects that exploration which is so common to the work of Duncan, Creeley and others, the very personal inward exploration of the mind and body of love.

John Wieners reads from his ”Address of … Read More

Wieners/Duncan -1 – Duncan

January 6, 2018Simon Pettet

This weekend marks the birth dates of two important figures in American poetry – John Wieners (born January 6) and Robert Duncan (born January 7). The two were featured together in 1968 in Robert O Moore’s groundbreaking WNET Poetry USA series.

Here is the video and a transcript of this particular episode (arguably, in the”wrong” order – Robert Duncan today, John Wieners will follow tomorrow)

“This program is dedicate to the work of Robert Duncan and John Wieners

This is the poet Robert Duncan born 1919, Oakland, California. Of his work, Duncan has written, “I make poetry as other men … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 337

October 13, 2017Simon Pettet

[Herbert Huncke and Louis Cartwright, at Indian restaurant banquet for Hanuman Press, November, 1989 Photograph by Allen Ginsberg, (c) The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

This coming Wednesday, next Wednesday, October 18th, at The Beat Museum,  “Huncke and Louis” – A Film Screening with Laki Vazakas, a rare chance to see Vazakas’ tender and intimate documentary on the legendary Herbert Huncke  and his longtime friend and companion Louis Cartwright.  Tate Swindell will be on hand, joining Laki in a discussion of the film, after the event, and meditating on Huncke’s remarkable life and work.

Kerouac Celebrations last weekend in Lowell… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 298

January 6, 2017Simon Pettet

pompidou

The 2016 Pompidou Center Beat Generation show (currently up, in a revised version at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany) made it as number three in the art-site Hyperallergic‘s years-end list of the  “top 15 exhibitions around the world” . The artist-critic Joseph Nechvatal writes:  “The entire airy layout of the Centre Pompidou’s retrospective of the Beat Generation was flawless, delicately and luxuriously balancing the dim lighting requirements needed to show the mix of texts,paintings, photography, collages, ephemera, historical documents, magazines, book publications, jazz music, spoken-word recordings, and fantastic underground films. Its content was a hard rejection of American right-wing … Read More

Jim Carroll workshop continues – 3 – (Bob Dylan)

August 20, 2016admin

This weekend, following on from last weekend, transcription of the 1980 Jim Carroll music and poetics workshop at Naropa continues. For the two previous segments – see here and here

JC: And also I mean, like, people, eventually, knew where his [Bob Dylan‘s] influences were coming from, whereas they didn’t know where Lou (Reed)’s influences were coming from. Not as many people had read Delmore Schwartz as Allen Ginsberg and Rimbaud. And so, I don’t know, there were certain songs of Dylan’s which just got…I lost faith in, for a while, you know. And then I … 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 – 246

November 27, 2015admin
 [Guillaume Apollinaire by Picasso]

Guillaume Apollinaire – Zone – Selected Poems – “The fruit of poet-translator Ron Padgett‘s fifty-year engagement with the work of France’s greatest modern poet” –   (a bilingual edition) – has just been published by the New York Review Books.  Don’t miss it.   For Allen Ginsberg on Apollinaire –  see (for example) his 1975 Naropa class here  (which includes, among other things, a complete reading and commentary on the title poem, “Zone”)   and here, here – (and, again, here)

 [Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)]

“Guillaume, Guillaume how I envy your fame, your accomplishment for … Read More

Queer Beat – 2 – (Straight Hearts’ Delight)

November 17, 2015admin

One of the great (sadly out-of-print)  Ginsberg titles (but something well worth hunting down) is the selection published in 1980 by Winston Leyland‘s pioneering Gay Sunshine Press – Straight Hearts’ Delight – Love Poems and Selected Letters 1947-1980 by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky.

           

 [Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky, 1963 – Photograph by Richard Avedon – c. The Richard Avedon Foundation]

Leyland in his introduction notes:  ” Three years ago [1977] I conceived the idea of publishing a “lovers handbook” by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. My intention was to include poems and letters by the two … 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

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 241

October 23, 2015admin

 

The European Beat Studies Network’s Annual Conference next week. This year – in Brussels. Among the explicitly Ginsberg-centric presentations: the whole first (Wednesday morning) opening panel – “Cross-Fertilizations From East & West – 1 – Searching For Which Ginsberg Legacy?” (chaired by Jaap Van Der Bent) – Robert Holton on “Ginsberg’s Performative “Howl”, Trevor Carolan – “Asian Wisdom Traditions, Ecological Poetics and Allen Ginsberg”, Paul McDonald – “Cosmopolitan Comedy – Allen Ginsberg’s Humour and the Challenge to Superiority Theory”, and Franca Bellarsi – “Ginsberg as Mediator Between Anglophone and Francophone Poetry” – and, that afternoon, (on the “Cross-Fertilization between … Read More