Seymour Wyse

1 week ago 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

Barry Farber – 7 (interview concludes)

April 23, 2018Simon Pettet

The Allen Ginsberg-Barry Farber radio transcription that we’ve been serializing continues and concludes today

BF: I want (you) to read from the Table of Contents, like the virtuous… AG: (It’s) [“Wales Visitation‘] a bit long, like eight minutes or so. Something.. And I had been used, generally, on television, to be told to please make it one minute – “Please make it two minutes” – (because they don’t realize the power of poetry, they think, you know, that everybody’s going to get bored!) So I’ll read it again and I’d like to dedicate the reading to the absent … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 361

April 13, 2018Simon Pettet

Changes to our site you may have noticed.  Bear with us as we iron out a few more wrinkles..

Among the information freshly disseminated above, forthcoming autumn publications including Iron Curtain Journals: January-May 1965 edited by Michael Schumacher, tracking Allen’s most turbulent six months, his expulsion from Cuba, travels to Russia, Poland, Warsaw Ghetto, to Prague where he’s expelled by Czech police immediately after his May King crowning, only to land in London to meet the Beatles, film with Bob Dylan and host the The International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall.  We can’t wait for this one.

 &… Read More

Isaac Watts and William Blake

April 11, 2018Simon Pettet

[Isaac Watts ( 1674-1748)]  

[William Blake ( 1757-18270]

AG: Then, the next thing I wanted to pick up is the relation of…   passing on.. to  Isaac Watts  (or back to Isaac Watts, you realize the last week , we’ve taken a long loop from Isaac Watts and are back to Isaac Watts now – second poem of Isaac Watts (in that anthology) is…. what page is that? ..

Student: Four forty-five

AG: Four forty-nine?

Student:  Five

AG; Okay. Did anybody get to read that “Cradle Hymn“?  – third poem. Who likes to read..?

Student: What page?

AG: Four … Read More

Basic Poetics Continuing – (Sappho)

April 9, 2018Simon Pettet

We’ve been transcribing and  serializing Allen’s 1980 Basic Poetics classes at Naropa and we’re almost at the end. In May 15, May 18, and May 22, he discusses Sappho and the Sapphic meter and gives various examples of poets working with this ancient form  (see our previous transcription of these classes, for example, here, here, here, and here)

Picking up on his penultimate class. conducted May 26 1980

Sappho  – translated by Richmond Lattimore  (from Greek Lyrics (Chicago, 1960).

Throned in splendor, deathless, O Aphrodite, child of Zeus, charm-fashioner, I entreat you not with griefs and bitternesses to … Read More

Barry Farber Interview – 2

April 8, 2018Simon Pettet

[Barry Farber]

Barry Farber’s 1975 radio interview continues. In this second segment, Allen engages with two studio guests (unlikely cohorts), the open-minded and wonderfully out-of-fashion “Bullets” Durgin, and Robert Goodman, “a young reporter, no longer just a collegiate reporter”

[George “Bullets”  Durgom ( 1915-1992)]

BF:  Poets, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Jonathan Robbins (are here) with us, (and)  “Bullets” Durgin, the hero-manager, who began driving a truck for a big-name band and wound up driving big names with truck-driver power to success that, sometimes they gave him credit for, and sometimes they didn’t (his cases where they … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up -360

April 6, 2018Simon Pettet

[Protest in front of Brazilian Varig Airlines with the Psychedelic Venus Church, San Francisco 1971, demanding the release of The Living Theater then jailed in Brazil.  Photo courtesy Harold Adler]

National Poetry Month in America this month. “April is the cruellest..” and all that. We’re very much of the opinion of noted poet Charles Bernstein.

`Beats and Buddhism. We mentioned David S Wills’ essay, “The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation”, a few weeks back, here’s another one, Michael Amudsen’s essay in Empty Mirror – “Jack Kerouac – Avatar of American Buddhism”

The Other Minds’ Sound Poetry … Read More

More Vintage Ginsberg Footage/Ferlinghetti – Assassination Raga

March 28, 2018Simon Pettet

More vintage footage of Allen here (and also, more prominently, of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and of the San Francisco Mime Troup Gorilla Band, courtesy the Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operario e Democratico (AAMOD)

1968 Vietnam War protest – The San Francisco Mime Troup Gorilla Band begin with “When The Saints Go Marching In“ and follow it with a protest-laden rendition of the U.S. National Anthem – Ferlinghetti then reads from the podium his recently-composed “Assassination Raga“ (in memory of Robert Kennedy)

(“…..United States of America/takes off/& wings away with that Body/Tune out the tv … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 356

March 9, 2018Simon Pettet

Beyond Beat, the five-day Los Angeles Beat  convention continues. Among the highlights tonight, a group reading of “Howl” (also a performance of Gregory Corso’s “Bomb”, and a poetry reading by Neeli Cherkovski and Paul Vangelisti). Tomorrow (Saturday) will include a “Punk and Beat” panel  (with V. Vale, Jerry Casale, and S.A.Griffin), a panel on Bob Kaufman, and a showing of Billy Woodberry‘s documentary on Kaufman, And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead.  Sunday includes Steve Silberman (on the Legacy of “Howl”), a “Howl” panel (with Steve Silberman, Marc Olmsted, and … Read More