Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 364

May 4, 2018Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg

[Allen Ginsberg – Photograph by Allan Tannenbaum]

Continuing today in New York, the inaugural St Mark’s Poetry Project Allen Ginsberg Symposium – For more on that (proposed annual event) – see here

On public television this week, (presented by WGBH Boston and distributed by American Public Television) the beginning of a new tv series and multi-platform digital initiative, Poetry In America.  Allen’s poems (“Hymmnn” (from “Kaddish“)  and “Hum Bom!” are featured in the opening program

From the program credits:

“Although we think of a poem as something read from a book, poet Allen Ginsberg knew that poetry’s power … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 357

March 16, 2018Simon Pettet

[Howl & Kaddish & a selection of Allen Ginsberg Interviews (translated into Bengali by Malay Roychoudhury and edited by Utpal Bhattacharjee and published by Kabitirtha)]

[Malay Roychoudhury]

Allen Ginsberg in India – Allen and the Hungryalists (we’ve pointed out this crucial connection before) – Rima Bhattacharya’s “The Common Thread Between The Beats and The Hungryalists“, (the abstract of a PhD thesis), can be read here (from the same site, another doctoral abstract – Marina Reza on The Hungryalists – here). Essential listening on this topic – Jeet Thayil’s  BBC radio documentary (now available on the … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 353

February 16, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in his kitchen, 1988 – Photograph by Brian Graham]

The Toronto photo show, “Fleeting Moments, Floating Worlds..,“ that we mentioned last week continues. What we omitted to mention was the accompanying catalog (printed and designed by the legendary Coach House Press). As curator, John Shoesmith writes in the forward – “The accompanying catalog attempts to further the story behind the Ginsberg photographs. It contains the voices of several key individuals who were crucial to the poet’s “second coming” as a photographer, beginning in the mid-1980s; from the person who planted the seed within Ginsberg to … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 352

February 9, 2018Simon Pettet

Opening this past week, and on through April 27, at the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library  – Fleeting Moments, Floating Words, and the Beat Generation – The Photography of Allen Ginsberg.

[“Fleeting Moments , Floating Words and the Beat Generation – Photographs by Peter Hale]

 

from Thomas Marks’  interview with the Italian painter  Giorgio Griffa  (in Apollo) – (Griffa’s current one-man show at London’s Camden Arts Centre, currently up, is up until the 8th of April):

“The work of Allen Ginsberg has also provided a touchstone; Ginsberg’s elegy for his mother, ‘Kaddish’, is … Read More

Allen Ginsberg 1974 San Francisco tv Interview – “I Believe”

October 7, 2017Simon Pettet

Continuing our spotlight on some of the video treasures in Stanford University’s recently-digitalized archive – Allen on San Francisco television (KPIX) in 1974, interviewed by Father Mike S Riley on his inter-faith tv show, “I Believe”

[Allen begins reading from “Sad Dust Glories”]  – “When I sit/I see dust motes in my eye/Ponderosa needles trembling/shine green/in blue sky./Wind sound passes thru/ pine tops, distant/windy waves flutter back/oak leaves/and leave thenm still/like my mind/which forgets why the blue jay across the wood’s clearing/squwks, in mid-afternoon.”

MR: Welcome to “I Believe” and Allen Ginsberg. Allen, I suspect that a lot … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 329

August 18, 2017Simon Pettet

Last week we reported on a poor quality tape from Stanford that illegally came out (and was dutifully squashed). This week we report on a high quality recording that was properly disseminated (included, alongside a brief notice, in Le Magazine Litteraire’s announcement of the Ginsberg digitalization).  The tape “Tape 3 Ginsberg 1994” is a raw record of Allen presenting some poems, in a studio setting, for future musical adaptation.  (We’re thinking that this is from the preparation for The Lion For Real album/CD, though we could be wrong, the Stanford date here is 1994, The Lion For Real recordings … Read More

Allen Ginsberg at San Francisco Poetry Center, 1959

April 25, 2017Simon Pettet

Fifty-eight years ago today, Allen read in San Francisco for Ruth Witt-Diamant at  the Poetry Center.  A reason (as if we needed one) to draw your attention to the extraordinary resources of the still active and dynamic SFSU Poetry Center.

Ruth Witt-Diamant introductory remarks:

“Our guest today is a poet for young people, of any age, But what I mean to say is that Allen Ginsberg has seemed to young people to be their voice, in many ways – and I dare say he is. Ans I think that the reason that that has seemed so is that he … 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

Allen Ginsberg Reading At Warwick University, 1979

January 22, 2017Simon Pettet

allen_ginsberg_1979_-_cropped

[Allen Ginsberg at the Atheneum Bookshop, Amsterdam, November 1979. photo: Hans van Dijk / Dutch National Archives]

Allen Ginsberg Reading At Warwick University, 1979  (continuing from yesterday)

AG: I’ll begin since – oh we were discussing the subject . I’ll begin with a song dedicated to another fellow in prison, David Solomon who’s in Brighton…in Bristol jail, as he was sentenced to ten years as part of that big LSD conspiracy bust about a year or two ago – what was the name of that? Julie Operation Julie

[Allen sings a version of “Dope Fiend Blues”- “Dope Fiend Blues Shuffle”]… Read More

Terry Gross Interview, 1994

October 8, 2016admin

 

Terry Gross. 1987 in the studio on NPR’s “Fresh Air”

   

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix”

TG: Allen Ginsberg, reading his now classic poem “Howl”. Ginsberg was a cultural hero to several generations. He was one of the leading Beat poets in the (19)50’s, in the (19)60’s he was an icon of the counterculture, through the (19)70’s and (19)80’s, he continued to write and to explore Eastern religions. By the (19)90’s, he was an inspiration to up-and-coming … Read More