Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 341

November 10, 2017Simon Pettet

Several more images from the upcoming show of Jack Kerouac’s art at the Maga Museum in Gallarante, Italy, have been made available – here – on the Ansa web-site.

Jack Kerouac. Beat Painting’,  curated by Sandrina Bandera, Alessandro Castiglioni and Emma Zanella, is set to open December 3rd, and also includes photographs by Robert Frank and Ettore Sottsass, a project by Peter Greenaway and the video of the classic 1966 tv interview with translator Fernanda Pivano.

Did we mention? (yes, we did, it was his birthday yesterday) a new book, a biography, on the legendary Robert Frank… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 333

September 15, 2017Simon Pettet

Next week in Paris (September 20-22) sees the sixth Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network –  “The Transcultural Beat Generation”  is this year’s focus “(Collaboration. Publication, Translation)”.  The three days are broken down as follows: Wednesday, the 20th – “French Edition(s) and Beat Intellectual Life in Paris” – Thursday, the 21st – “Beat Translation and Collaboration” – Friday the 22nd – “Marginalized Beat Artists”.

Of the specifically Ginsbergian – Thursday-evening (6-7.30) has been given over to a panel on Allen, chaired by Anna Aublet) – (rather unfortunately, it clashes with a panel on William Burroughs (chaired by … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 308

March 31, 2017Simon Pettet

Heads-up for next Friday! (Friday April 7) – Ginsberg Green – “A spoken word & musical gathering honoring the life and Green activism of Allen Ginsberg” – a unique celebratory event, organized by our good friend Patrick Warner, scheduled to take place at The Sprinkler Factory in Worcester, Mass, starting approximately 6 o’clock.

The event will include Ann Charters (reading from Lospecchio Press’ Best Minds – A Tribute to Allen Ginsberg),  Gordon Ball (reading from his Cherry Valley memoir, East Hill Farm), and  Warner himself reading  “selected Ginsberg texts & interviews that exemplify & manifest Ginsberg’s Green … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 305

March 3, 2017Simon Pettet

ag-kaddish

Hot news from Real Gone Music – reissues of two essential Beat albums (limited editions in vinyl) – Allen’s classic 1966 recording of Kaddish and the Jack Kerouac-Steve Allen‘s recording Poetry For The Beat Generation, (Jack’s debut as a recording artist).

Both are officially due out April 7, but pre-ordering will be available and details will be announced soon.

For further information on both these records – see this comprehensive article –  here 

jack-k-album

& Just out from the Cambridge University Press, and available in paperback – The Cambridge Companion to The Beats – edited by Steve Belletto… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 281

August 19, 2016admin

                                                [Allen Ginsberg Close-Up, 1960s – Photograph by Perry Riddle]

Jonah Raskin reviews The Ginsberg 3 CD set  for the Huffington Post – here:

“The Last Word on First Blues is as essential to an understanding of Ginsberg as his Collected Poems, and just as much fun. The set also shows that those who only know Ginsberg as a poet of the printed word ans not also as a performer of the spoken … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 153

November 22, 2013admin

 

[Doris Lessing (1919-2013), in Philip Glass’ kitchen, New York City,  March 10, 1990 – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg c. The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

Nobel-prizewinning author Doris Lessing, who died last week, aged 94, recalling, in her typically acerbic, typically no-nonsense way, “an amused get-together with Allen Ginsberg and some fellow Beats” –  “They turned up in London, a whole lot of them, and I went to meet them” [this would be 1965, perhaps?]. “I thought they were extremely likeable, but that isn’t how they wanted to be seen. I thought then, and think I was right, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 134

July 12, 2013Simon Pettet
[Allen Ginsberg – Photograph by Alain Dister  – via “Beat Generation/Allen Ginsberg” at ZKM]  

Big Allen-celebration in San Francisco this evening, Beat Reunion For more details here.   The current July/August issue of Poetry magazine includes this memoir by Marjorie Perloff –“Allen Ginsberg – Remembering A Rose Rabbi” – “I have been listening to (his) lectures and marveling at Allen’s interest in the minutiae of prosody“, she writes. She recalls his participation at the 1993 NPF (National Poetry Foundation) Conference (on American poetry of the (19)30’s) –  (“(he) had been invited to pay homage to the ninety-year-old 

… Read More

Text and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll

April 27, 2013admin

The recent publication of Simon Warner‘s quaintly-titled, monumental (500+ pages) tome, Text and Drugs and Rock ‘N’ Roll, had us thinking again about lineage and connections and those issues – “Was rock culture the natural heir to the activities of the Beats? Were the hippies the Beats of the 1960s? What attitude did the Beat writers have towards musical forms and particularly rock music? How did literary works shape the consciousness of leading rock music-makers and their followers? Why did Beat literature retain its cultural potency with later rock musicians who rejected hippie values? How did rock musicians … Read More