Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 362

April 20, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, March 1964,  Protest at the Women’s House of Detention, New York City  – Photograph by Benedict J Fernandez]

4/20 Cannabis Culture. Time to revisit Allen’s extraordinarily clear-headed (sic) and prescient 1966 Atlantic Monthly essay, “The Great Marijuana Hoax – First Manifesto to End The Bringdown” .

And here’s some fun he had with his 1985 Naropa students – “Marijuana Makes…” – Marijuana makes.. what?

NORML, the pioneering organization, for a long time now, working to reform the marijuana laws can be accessed here 

[Allen Ginsberg and Barbara Rubin together at the Albert Monument, outside … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 343

November 24, 2017Simon Pettet

Cartoon Comix Allen. We’ve  featured this manifestation several times before, notably in the thoughtful and lively work of Nathan Gelgud.

and, back in the 70’s, not forgetting Pat Ryan and Allen’s Chicago Trial Testimony in comic form 

Keeping that tradition going, a shout-out to talented Sasha Velour‘s on-going graphic novel on Stonewall.

Allen makes an appearance, of course.

Who is that who’s sitting there in the back of the cab?

Beatdom – Here’s the current print issue of Beatdom

and  Beatdom on-line is always a good place to head to – recently posted:  editor, David S … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 332

September 8, 2017Simon Pettet

[Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, and John Ashbery – (Photographer Unknown)]

“….exquisite mind cartoons that could be heard with eyes closed, the voice perfectly ordinary with the slight edge of extravagant conversational camp, a mind artifice not unnatural to hypnagogic revery, deceptive, till you hear the chasm landscapes and awkward universes created and contradicted in vast gas-deposit shocking trivial universal mind.”

Allen Ginsberg – from an introduction to a reading by John Ashbery, at Naropa Institute, 1975.

Hear Ashbery’s reading (along with W.S.Merwin) on that occasion here

John Ashbery’s passing last weekend continues to send shockwaves.

A selection of … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 319

June 9, 2017Simon Pettet

“Hates dull teachers and Republicans,” , “May all of your 50 children be Democrats” – Yesterday an inscribed copy of Allen’s 1943 Paterson High School yearbook went up for auction (see here for a detailed earlier report)

The estimated value was $3,000-$5,000.  It apparently didn’t  meet that reserve price – too high?

More on the recent digitalization of “Howl”  (recently reported on here and here – and here)

“I don’t think he would be out of touch with the role of history in the last few months,…He’d be pushing for the ouster of Trump. He’d be in the … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 286

September 23, 2016admin

 

     
Allen Ginsberg and his life-long partner, Peter Orlovsky, New York City, 1977 – Photograph by Gordon Ball

 

The Beat Generation exhibit at the Pompidou Center draws to a close with a number of specially-scheduled events – a colloquium and a series of films. Last chance to catch this extraordinary exhibit in its Parisian manifestation.

Here‘s Joseph Nechvatal‘s review in Hyperallergic

.

Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg

et aussi à Paris Next week sees the publication of Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, edited by … Read More