Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 325

July 21, 2017Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg in the Archives at Stanford University

Today big news to report, Stanford University have finally completed a monumental task – the audio/video elements that were reformatted from the Ginsberg papers are now available as streaming media through their catalog. We’ll be focusing more on this in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile to access the Ginsberg catalog immediately – see here

(and read Stanford’s announcement of this, indeed,  major “cause for celebration” – here)

Today, please be aware,  is Hart Crane‘s birthday (born 1899. died off the Gulf of Mexico).

Allen to his Naropa students (in 1978):  “Does … Read More

Buddhism and The Beats (Ginsberg 1993 – 2 – Trungpa Rinpoche)

July 16, 2017Simon Pettet

Continuing from yesterday.

[Buddha doodle. Allen Ginsberg. April 5, 1991]

[Mantra: Benefit for Kama Dzong Meditation Center, May 6, 1972. Macky Auditorium, Boulder, CO]

[Allen Ginsberg and Chögyam  Trungpa,  Rinpoche. Benefit for Kama Dzong Meditation Center, May 6, 1972. Macky Auditorium, Boulder, CO. Photo:  Bob Morehouse]

AG : Then, 1972 Trungpa Rinpoche invited me to Boulder to give a poetry reading to raise money for Rocky Mountain Dharma Center along with Robert Bly and Gary Snyder. So I was really pleased to go out and see him in his home territory and went out there and he invited … Read More

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

July 12, 1995 – Part Two (Sikelianos, Waldman, Carroll)

July 13, 2017Simon Pettet

Continuing from yesterday

This second part of the reading begins with Eleni Sikelianos

[Eleni Sikelianos, photo:  Maria Garcia-Teutsch]

Max Regan: “Eleni Sikelianos is the author of To Speak While Dreaming, published in 1993 by Salva Editions . She’s also the recipient of a California Arts Council Residency grant in San Francisco where she teaches writing to children and the homeless and at the San Francosco Art Institute. She has work appearing in Japan, has been translated into French, and will be published in France this Fall. She recently recieved the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative American Writing… Read More

July 12 1995 – Part One (Ginsberg, Blaser, Brown)

July 12, 2017Simon Pettet

Anniversaries. We love anniversaries.  July 12, 1995.  The above group-reading at Naropa, twenty-two years on. The above six were joined by Steven Taylor (on several pieces, as accompanist) and Andrew Schelling and Max Regan giving introductions).  The tape begins in media res with Allen reading  from his “visionary dream”  of the past January (January 14. 1995) , followed by “Newt Gingrich Declares War On “McGovernik Counterculture” , “The Ballad of the Skeletons”  (“Skeleton Keys”),  and “New Stanzas For Amazing Grace”

Allen Ginsberg: “(Poetry America was born before us & will live after us — and would’ve been visible … Read More

Jack Collom (1931-2017)

July 2, 2017Simon Pettet

Following the death of Larry Fagin, news reaches us this morning of the death of another of the great Naropa poet-teachers, Jack Collom. When Allen and Anne Waldman set up the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in 1974 in Boulder, Colorado, Colorado already had one distinctive inventive joyful maverick poet at hand, Jack Collom. He was swiftly engaged in the experiment and soon (not soon enough, as we recall) became an integral part of the faculty. This page (from the Naropa University Archive) provides links to countless instances of Jack’s participation. We might, arbitrarily, single out … Read More

Catching Up – Ben Jonson, John Donne)

June 20, 2017Simon Pettet

[Ben Jonson (1572-1637) & John Donne ( 1572-1631)

1980 -Allen was absent and unable to teach one week, so poet Dick Gallup took over his Naropa “Basic Poetics’ class. Allen, on his return, was eager to find out what happened.

AG: What happened with Dick (Gallup)? How was the class?

Student: It was funny

AG: What did you take up?

Student: Everything.. (John Donne),  (Ben) Jonson….

AG: Did he do the Ben Jonson poem on Shakespeare?

Student: No, no, he gave us some background about their lives.

AG: Good, because I don’t know anything about that.

Student He gave … Read More

Composed on The Tongue

June 19, 2017Simon Pettet

AG: (It’s a collection of) ..spontaneous writings, at different times. And some of the stuff is (from quite (recent), here,) at Naropa (The last piece from (19)74-(19)75, and some interviews done here around (19)75. And then a long conversation with Michael Aldrich, Edward Kissam & Nancy Blecker, (in Cherry Valley) ,”Improvised Poetics” { editorial note – subsequently reprinted in Spontaneous Mind] …..done in 1968.  And then, 1967, about twenty-five pages– twenty pages – of conversations, laconic conversations, with Ezra Pound about the Cantos and about what he thought about life – All this has been published in Loka or … Read More

Naropa Summer Writing Program 2017

June 10, 2017Simon Pettet

Starting tomorrow – the 2017 session of the Naropa Summer Writing Program.

Here are all the details. From June 11 to July 1st – “The New Weathers” – Anne Waldman explains: “By The New Weathers, we intend to name the ramifications of climate change wrought in the Anthropocene. The luminous details evidencing these changes abound, and daily the case of inevitably grows. These are urgent days, and a new world is possible––and this world is yet worth struggling for. To face facts with creative and spirited resolve; to see through webs of ignorance and power; to witness and study, … Read More

Allen Ginsberg’s Rhyming Assignment

June 5, 2017Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg’s 1980 Naropa class transcript continues

Student; Did you ever do.. have a go [at Echo Poems]?

AG: No, never did one myself but it’d be interesting to do. Should I assign it to class?

Student: You could..

AG: You’re the T.A. (teaching assistant). The assignments.. the class assignments, we have, by the way, I said I’d get to.. was.. are,/ so far,/ .not very profuse, or exact, or neat/, or complete/. You haven’t hammered your stammer/ to make it exact or compact. So, what I would suggest/ would be you be the guest/ of the muse/ and … Read More