Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 339

October 27, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, photographed by  Kiyohide Hori]

Never did get around to mentioning Kiyohide Hori’s photo-show of Allen and of the Howl manuscript that took place (sadly now it’s down) in Japan this past summer

More Japanese news… “the Allen Ginsberg-inspired capsule”? – Some fervid debate in the “Comments” section here – “This is everything Allen Ginsberg stood against. These guys obviously know nothing about Allen Ginsberg or what he was all about. The poor guy must be turning in his grave” – (which elicits the response: “Please enlighten us. He was against materialism, which could be related … Read More

New Years Eve (Looking Back on 2013 & Forward to 2014)

December 31, 2013admin

[“Buddhist (and one non-Buddhist) Action Figures” Photograph by Reverend Danny Fisher 2013]

Last posting of 2013, we thought we’d list a few of our “greatest hits” from the past year – January – Nanao Sakaki and Allen Ginsberg singing “Birdbrain” in Osaka, Japan, February – William Burroughs’ 99th (next year will be Burroughs centennial), March – (speaking of nonagenarians) Ferlinghetti was 94, April – the Beats and the rock muse – “Text and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll, May – our Bob Dylan birthday posting, (this year – “The Night Bob Came Around” (and the night… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round Up – 139

August 16, 2013Peter Hale

Sometime last Monday, the one millionth page-viewing of The Allen Ginsberg Project took place. Thank you anonymous page-viewer. We sort of like the idea of not knowing who you are. Thank you all our page-viewers, all our visitors, all our regulars (most especially, our “Google Friends” – here’s another request/invite to become a “Google Friend”, if you’re not already one – also, another previously-offered request, don’t be shy in getting back to us on individual posts, using the “Comments” button).

Now, on with our regular “Friday Round Up”.

Well, a relatively quiet one this week. Patti Smith (and collaborator/accompanist, Philip … Read More

Friday Weekly Round-Up – 126

May 17, 2013admin

The DVD documentary – Jerry Aronson’s  The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg (2008) was re-released this week by Docudrama. What can we say? – If you still don’t have it, an essential item. Michael Kammen’s essay on Jack Kerouac in the L.A. Review of Books, “Jack Kerouac’s Restless Odyssey and His New Life ‘On The Road'”, (reviewing, among other things, Joyce Johnson’s recent biography), has had some tongues wagging.  Speaking of L.A, here‘s Elaine Woo’s obituary of Taylor Mead in the L.A.Times (more memories and obituary notices on Taylor can be found here, here and … Read More

What The East Means To Me – Allen Ginsberg at Kyota Seika

May 12, 2013admin

Yesterday’s transcription of Allen’s Q & A at the Kyoto Seika University, Japan, on November 2 1988, is followed today by footage (and transcription) of the full lecture – “What the East Means To Me” – Katagiri Yuzuru is once again the accomplished interpreter/translator. Our thanks, once again, to videographer, Ken Rodgers.

AG: So.. the subject is “What the East Means To Me”. So I will give a chronological account. One of my first memories was of the Pop figure, Pop art figure, kitsch figure, or comic-strip figure of a sinister Oriental, a Chinaman, Fu Manchu. He had a long … Read More

Friday Weekly Round-Up – 125

May 10, 2013admin

[Allen Ginsberg and Naomi Ginsberg, both at the age of 30 – drawings by R.B.Kitaj, included in Kaddish, White Shroud, and Black Shroud by Allen Ginsberg, with an Introduction by Helen Vendler, and lithograph portraits of the poet and his mother by R.B.Kitaj, Arion Press, San Francisco, 1992]

All the attention on Beat Memories (Allen’s photo-show, concluding recently in New York City but about to open, May 23, in San Francisco) but, as Susan Anderson of the Special Collections at UCLA library has observed, there’s a “third, lesser-known hub” of Beat culture” – Los Angeles (two … Read More

Nanao Sakaki and Allen Ginsberg – Birdbrain in Japan

January 24, 2013admin

Two of our more popular postings – on the great Japanese poet, Nanao Sakaki – and on Allen’s poem, “Birdbrain” – coalesce here with this lively recording of the two of them reading it (that poem) together, (Allen, the English, Nanao, the Japanese), tweaking it with contemporaneous Japanese references. The occasion is, October 30, 1988, a major anti-nuclear protest march on Kansai Electric‘s head office in Osaka. Allen was visiting Japan. The reading took place at Nakanoshima Koen, behind Osaka City Hall, and was filmed, edited, and (we thank him for it!) uploaded by Ken Rodgers.

How … Read More