Alice Notley on Allen Ginsberg – 4

6 days ago September 13, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg observing a plaster model of the young Alice Notley, (part of an installation), modelled for the artist, George Segal]

Alice Notley talk on Allen Ginsberg and his exemplary internationalism continues and concludes today

Poem 6 is a song, “Industrial Waves,” that is to be sung (and I don’t know the tune) – “And I know Allen will follow me tound the world with his terrible singing voice” Ted (Berrigan) wrote, but it wasn’t that terrible at all.  “Freedom for Indonesia to murder half a million/ Freedom for South Africa to stabilize the Bullion/ Freedom … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 379

August 17, 2018Simon Pettet

[Ed & Miriam Sanders – Woodstock, NY, April 1993 – photo: Allen Ginsberg]

Today Friday August 17,  Ed Sanders‘ 79th birthday.  Is there anyone more maverick, indefatigable? – ““Noli in spiritu combueri” –  Salute! –  Refuse to be burnt out!”

Ed’s been featured many times here on The Allen Ginsberg Project – see, for example,  the two birthday postings here and here, our note on his voluminous archive – here, his notes on Allen here and here, a 1986 Naropa reading – here, a class on “Investigative Poetry” here and here, WNET footage of the ‘Sixties … Read More

Jack Kerouac (No Turning Back/Spontaneity)

July 25, 2018Simon Pettet

[Charlie Parker’s saxophone]

Student: What I really love about that book (Mexico City Blues) is the way he (Kerouac) looked upon himself like a Charlie Parker or a Lester Young …

AG: Hm-hmm.

Student: … writing, instead of playing a trumpet, a sax..

AG: Yeah.  Well, the notion there is that once you have fixed in your mind your theme, or once you have your theme and observe a basic form fixed in your mind, then you just blow.  And anything you blow is what you blew — anything you play on the trumpet or saxophone is what … Read More

Blake continues – (Poetical Sketches)

July 11, 2018Simon Pettet

AG: I have this chronology here, so I’d like to run over a few things in it.  The beginning of this (is on page) four hundred.  Little miscellaneous poems.  In the miscellaneous poems of the Poetical Sketches,  which are 1769 or so, there’s one “To Spring”, “To Summer”, “To Autumn”, “To Winter”, and they’re all really very Shakesperean-sounding, and very vivid They were written when he was fourteen, maybe – really early – and in autumn there’s a funny one – “Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,/Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak/Hills fled … Read More

“I don’t like the government where I live..”

July 2, 2018Simon Pettet

[“Capitol Air” – “I don’t like the government where I live..” – Allen Ginsberg, pictured here with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones of The Clash]

[Allen Ginsberg, 1985 Self Portrait – Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto (c) The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

More strange tapes from the archives. Solitary splendors. Throw-away musings. We’ll be featuring plenty more substantial things in the months to come but thought to follow up last week’s mournful ditty with this – another fugitive thing, another fleeting but poignant “audio-selfie” – Allen, alone with the tape-recorder, practicing, sounding out and composing a … Read More

“Senior Citizen Old Boy Joy”

June 27, 2018Simon Pettet

[Peter Orlovsky – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg, New York City, 1995]

Here’s another sliver from the Archives – Allen (on an airplane maybe?) composing directly onto the tape-recorder, a poignant little ditty, (audio – 78 at Stanford – from, as Allen duly informs us, 1992) – “For Peter Orlovsky in Rain” (but surely that’s a mistranscription? – shouldn’t it be “For Peter Orlovsky in Pain“?)

AG: “It’s recording I guess. I don’t know but I suppose it’s recording.  What time is it now? It’s about nine o’clock and it’s the 11th of March, 1992, and I’m preparing this … Read More

Kerouac-Cassady (Jack Kerouac Scat Singing)

June 25, 2018Simon Pettet

[Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac – Photograph by Carolyn Cassady]

We continue this week mining the treasure which is the extraordinary trove of audio at the Allen Ginsberg archives, now housed at Stanford University.

Today, a remarkable discovery – Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. The tape (there are two copies, actually, 131 and 132) is simply (and with no further information ) titled “Kerouac and Cassady, San Jose, 1952, William Burroughs“. (Burroughs, in fact, doesn’t appear on the tape (in those days ayahuasca-hunting in South America), but there’s some wonderful speculation on him)  … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 371 (Gay Pride)

June 22, 2018Simon Pettet

[The original rainbow flag designed, in 1978, by Gilbert Baker]

Gay Pride in San Francisco and New York this weekend

 

Allen Ginsberg interviewed on Stonewall Nation, (WBFO-FM, SUNY, Buffalo), October 6, 1978, by Alex Van Oss and Al Hershberger (recording courtesy the incomparable PennSound)

AVO: You’ve been out as gay for so many years. Were you ever in the closet?

AG: I was, very much so, in Columbia, when I was going to school, at first, the first year. I was afraid somebody would find out, actually, and I never.. didn’t want to tip my mitt … Read More

Seymour Wyse

May 19, 2018Simon Pettet

[Seymour Wyse, Horace Mann School, 1940 (courtesy of Dave Moore)]  

Returning to the extraordinary trove of tapes of Allen now in the archives at Stanford University, here’s a recently-discovered gem – Allen, in 1981, at Leicester University, in England, in conversation with the figure who turned on the young  Jack Kerouac to a rich and life-long appreciation of jazz,  his old Horace Mann schoolmate – Seymour Wyse. 

Edie Parker Kerouac (remembering Seymour Wyse, in Boulder, the following year) : “Yeah and he used to scat, and he and Jack used to do this together. And the first time, … Read More

Musical Archetypes and Natural Rhythmic Measures

May 9, 2018Simon Pettet

[Ravi Shankar (ninety-one years old!) plays Raag’s Bhiairvi (Bhiairvi Raga)]

Allen Ginsberg’s 1980 class in  Basic Poetics continues from here 

AG: ..And I’m not sure, actually. I’m just posing the question, whether the continuous repetition of a fixed structure and memorization of it will then begin to collect emotions around it, and whether you’ll begin casting your own personal emotions into that slightly different emotional cadence, as in a Sapphic – or, is it possible that a stanza such as the Sapphic is so archetypal as far as breathing and emotional spurt, that anybody might breathe, or thin , … Read More