Buddhism and The Beats (Ginsberg 1993 – I – Introduction)

July 15, 2017Simon Pettet

A real treat this weekend – with gratitude to Robyn Brentano and students from the NYU Ethnographic Film Program – “Buddhism and the Beats.”. “In 1993, Allen Ginsberg spoke to a gathering of students of the Tibetan Buddhist monk, Lobsang Samten, about the impact of Buddhist thought and practice on himself, the Beat writers, and American culture at large”. The full hour-and-a-half tape is transcribed below (continuing tomorrow, and with the Q & A session to be featured here next weekend)

AG: Well, good evening, Rinpoche [Lobsang Samten Rinpoche] and I met very recently at the house … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics (Ballads) 22 – (AG & Students)

January 7, 2013admin

 
 
We pick up again on Allen’s Spontaneous Poetry (Ballad) lectures (see earlier examples  here, here and here) delivered at the Naropa Institute,Boulder, Colorado in July and August of 1976. This particular section dates from a June 16 class. Allen selects various fragments, ”mots justes”, ”cooked diamonds”, “active” lines, drawing on student examples)
AG: I have a stack of poems that people gave me, the ballads and other little poems, that I want to read from – what I got, just little fragments, just the stuff I liked. One method of criticism that I always found useful is just … Read More