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

Eliot Katz – The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg

December 17, 2015admin

Eliot Katz‘s new book, The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg is now out from David Wills’ Beatdom books.  For more details, see here  Read his earlier response – (an unpublished letter to the New York Times)  “Ginsberg Apolitical?  I don’t think so” – hereMore of Eliot-on-Allen here and hereKurt Hemmer writes:

“The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg is the most engaging and rigorous analysis of Ginsberg’s political poetry yet attempted. We find in these psges the astuteness of a literary critic, the contextualization of a social historian, the knowledge of a veteran political activist, … Read More

On Michael McClure’s Birthday

October 20, 2011admin

[Michael McClure at the Hartford Street Zen Center, where Philip Whalen was Sensei, August 28, 1991. photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

From Ghost Tantras in 1967 to Of Indigo and Saffron – New and Selected Poems (2011) (and, indeed, from way before that, and stretching on), Michael McClure‘s muse has been distinctive and remarkable. Michael-McClure.com is the portal but we’d also recommend the Karl Young and John Jacob site, Light and Dust, which features a fine selection of poems and essays by Michael and “considerations” (“the first tier of this gathering appeared in “A Symposium on Michael … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 21

April 15, 2011admin

[Richard Prince – Untitled (hippie drawing, Allen Ginsberg), 2000-05 crayon and marker on paper]

Richard Prince’s show, American Prayer, which recently opened at, what shouldn’t appear so unlikely a location, the National Library (Bibliotheque Nationale) in Paris, includes, among other works, this work – and a self-professed Beat bibliophile fetish theme. Go here for videos of the show and of the artist. (Richard, incidentally, was, at one time, during the ’80’s, a downstairs neighbor (in Allen’s building on East 12th Street), (which, just conceivably, might be memorialized here, and is certainly – “My landlord informed me that

… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up 14

February 25, 2011admin

Howl in England

Following up from our notices last week, here’s more English press coverage related to this Friday (today’s) UK opening of Howl. Mick Brown, in the Telegraph, gives the basic background in  “How I Scribbled Magic Lines From My Real Mind”. Andrew Lowry, in the blog for the same paper, (regrettably no longer available) provocatively heads his report “The Beats Were Self-Indulgent Poseurs But The New Ginsberg Film Is Definitely Worth Seeing”

John Patterson in The Guardian points out that The Beats Have Had A Bad Rap But Howl Lets Their Words Speak For Themselves” “Howl, … Read More