Basil Bunting’s Birthday

March 1, 2018Simon Pettet

[“Basil Bunting and Allen Ginsberg in Tom and Connie Pickard’s flat, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, 22 May, 1965.]

Today is Basil Bunting‘s birthday.

We feature a guest posting today from poet and Bunting editor and scholar, Don Share

On Thursday, March 1, 1900, Basil Bunting was born in Scotswood-on-Tyne in the north of England. Bunting’s life extended through a large part of the twentieth century, beginning just as Queen Victoria’s long reign was nearing its end, and ending in 1985, the year the first mobile phone network in the UK was established and the internet Domain Name System was … Read More

Wednesday March 1 – Lucien Carr

March 1, 2017Simon Pettet

 

columbia

[Jack Kerouac & Lucien Carr, Columbia University Campus, 1944]

carr201

[Lucien Carr and Allen Ginsberg at Lucien’s wedding to Francesca “Cessa” von Hertz, January 4, 1952. Photographer unknown]

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[Dane De Haan as Lucien Carr from the 2013 film Kill Your Darlings]

March the first. Today is Lucien Carr’s birthday

Central but enigmatic figure at the birth of the Beat Generation,  for “that story” we’ll send you to this New York Times piece. (altho’  we have reservations about the author’s  Kerouac hatchet-job – here)

For  earlier postings on Lucien on The Allen Ginsberg Project – see here and also … Read More

Vintage Beat Generation Footage

December 6, 2014admin

More vintage Beat Generation footage this weekend. Both of these we’ve featured before – in fact, if you turn to our column on the right-hand side of the page, you will find a whole list of  “streaming videos”.[Editorial note – This reference is no longer pertinent, refering to an earlier and no longer continued configuration of this web site] These two early film clips stand out, however. The first comes with an additional mystery – who shot it?  Robert Frank was one informed and plausible guess, but he denies it. Whoever it is behind the camera is comfortable, relaxed, … Read More

T.S.Eliot

September 26, 2014admin
[T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot (1888-1965)]

 Today is T.S. Eliot’s birthday – In ’58 Allen made him an honorary “Ignu” (“Eliot probably an ignu one of the few who’s funny when he eats”) – and three years later, in “Journal Night Thoughts” – “Eliot’s voice clanging over the sky/ on upper Broadway, “Only thru Time is Time conquered”
 

– 27 years later, this, from a letter to Lucien Carr:

“Read biography of T.S.Eliot this week – he had same case (‘karma trap”), plus mad wife who rubbed both with ether, took morphine for nervous headaches and continually bled “purulent discharges

… Read More

Kill Your Darlings Outtakes

March 16, 2014admin

[2015 update – The “out-takes” featured in this posting are no longer available on You Tube. As noted in the text here, they are available on the DVD]

Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan, of course, but..

Allen (Ginsberg) visiting Lucien (Carr) in prison. ( “What’s it like out there?”), one of several deleted scenes now available on the upcoming DVD/Blu-ray release of John Krokidas‘  Kill Your Darlings.(For previous Ginsberg Project postings on Kill Your Darlings, see here, here, here and here (not forgetting, here).Here’s another clip –  homophobia, sexism and racism in Columbia in the (19)50’s (“slicing up … Read More

March 1 Birthdays – Lucien Carr & Basil Bunting

March 1, 2014admin

Basil Bunting

[Basil Bunting (1900-1985)]

[Lucien Carr (1925-2005)]

Two strangely contrasting birthdays, celebrated today (strangely contrasting? – or maybe not). We’ll draw your attention to fairly comprehensive initial postings on each of our two subjects of study – Basil Bunting – here  and Lucien Carr – here First, the latter. Due to the success of Kill Your Darlings, (out in America on DVD later this month), from a quiet unassuming back-seat, Lucien, (at least in the Dane DeHaan version), has been catapaulted to, clearly unwanted and unsought for, global notoriety, slandered (the movies can do this, even if it is just … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 150

November 1, 2013admin

[Lucien Carr and Allen Ginsberg at Lucien’s wedding, January 4, 1952]

Kill Your Darlings – We mentioned last week the dissenting position, eloquently voiced by Bob Rosenthal in his post from last February – here. – “The film takes its..title too seriously”, he wrote then. “The large fabrications in the film are not so worrisome as the small ones. In any case, when the truth is stepped on and the nuance of truth is denied, the message becomes moribund”. Both Marc Olmsted in Sensitive Skin  and Brian Hassett in Brianland have taken up the cudgels and gone, perhaps, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 149

October 25, 2013admin

[Allen Ginsberg, Eastside Highshool Paterson NJ 1942 or 43. Ginsberg family photo/c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

[Allen Ginsberg, Mexico, 1954. c Allen Ginsberg Estate]

Jordan Larson in The Atlantic last week on that Beats-on-the-silver-screen phenomenon – “What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Jack Kerouac and The Beat Generation”. Nice to see critical eyes returning to Walter Salles’ labor of love “On The Road” – and Michael Polish’s equally reverential “Big Sur” (not to mention Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “Howl”, with James Franco’s unforgettable performance). Larson’s primary thesis – “The current Beat revival arguably goes too far with … Read More

KYD Reviews Digest

October 19, 2013admin

John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings, opening this week in the US, has, presumably inevitably, given the casting  (Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg), garnered a welter of publicity, some of which we’ve already featured, but plenty of which we haven’t. So this weekend on the AGP (the Allen Ginsberg Project), a Kill Your Darlings Reviews Digest, starting with.. A.O.Scott in the New York Times – “Long before Allen Ginsberg became the benevolent bearded Buddha of the counterculture – and one of the most beloved American poets – he was a skinny anxious Columbia freshman who fell in with a … Read More

Kill Your Darlings Preview

October 14, 2013admin

John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings opens in the US this week (this coming Wednesday, in fact). Here’s the fourth (and final?) clip released  by Sony Pictures Classics – Allen (Daniel Radcliffe) reciting some of his early youthful verses to an entranced  Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan). (Catch a glimpse, a fleeting glimpse, too, of Jack Huston in the role of the young Jack Kerouac). Here’s three more early-bird reviews (we featured three reviews in our regular “round-up” last Friday).  Erica Abeel for Film Journal International – (Kill Your Darlings is) “Far and away the best … Read More