Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 373

July 6, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg – photo: Ira Cohen –  1978, from Ira Cohen & Carolina Gosselin’s “Bandaged Poets” Series]

Jeff Tamarkin reviews the Craft Recordings Howl box-set for Relix – here (For his review of The Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience – see here)

Eddie Woods, Amsterdam legend, remembers Allen in an extended interview on Dutch television (Kieurnet Television) – vid from back in 1997 – (nice to hear shout-outs to Simon Vinkenoog, Ira Cohen – and Benn Posset!)

This coming Sunday (July 8) in Los Angeles at Beyond Baroque – “Kerouac on Record”, “part conversation, part reading, … Read More

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 word know him merely by half”

Sam Clark looks at Allen’s classic Kaddish (from a psychoanalytical vantage-point – “Psychoanalytical Perspective on Ginsberg’s … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 239

October 9, 2015admin

Kerouac Festival in Lowell this weekend. Here are all the details. Among the highlights…..David Amram, Pamela Twining, Andy Clausen  and here‘s Andy Clausen reading “My Name’s Neal Cassady What’s Yours?” (Andy narrates the story of his meeting with Neal Cassady, an excerpt from his “The Last Days of the Beat Generation.”) Watch Jonah Raskin on C-Span on his book American Scream – Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and The Making of the Beat Generation

Regarding the Howl Celebrations featured here last week – The Six Gallery reading at the Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane (which … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 232

August 21, 2015admin

A great spirited reading of the Moloch section of “Howl” (from circa 1989) on the CBS News Nightwatch program  – “Well, it’s the climax and actually the definition of the poem” declares Allen.  “What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?/Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars..” – Reaction shot(s) from fellow-guest Christopher Buckley (William Buckley‘s son) and a seemingly unfazed host

Here’s an intriguing little memoir (from back in 2012 – don’t know how we missed it) of Allen-at-Columbia and the early days –

… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 230

August 7, 2015admin

 

Yesterday was Diane Di Prima‘s 81st birthday. Here’s the extraodinary class she gave last May (with Professor Steven Goodman) at the California Institute of Integral Studies – in two parts, here and here 

Earlier Diane Di Prima birthday shout-outs on the Allen Ginsberg Project here, here, and here

Here‘s a two-part story on another prominent Italian-American – Lawrence Ferlinghetti – here and here and  an excerpt from his forthcoming book – Writing Across The Landscape (a further excerpt may be found – here)

& keeping the Italian theme, Gregory Corso’s Gasoline appears in

… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 229

July 31, 2015admin

[Spiderman and Allen Ginsberg cartoon – Tom Gauld]

 

From the current issue of Poetry magazine  – more Howl parodies – (we’ve featured several such before –  –  Amy Newman – “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by wedding 
planners, dieting, in shapewear,/ dragging themselves in cute outfits through the freezer section for the semifreddo bender/blessed innovative cloister girl pin-ups burning to know the rabbi of electricity in poverty, obedience, in the dream stick of opium and the green Wi-Fi fuse..” From the Paris Review – “Supplication to the Muses on A Trying Day” – quite … Read More