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

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 344

December 1, 2017Simon Pettet

We promised we’d have word for you, and now it’s finally out! A definitive Chinese edition of the Collected Poems 1947-1997, from Chinese publishing house Shanghai 99  has just hit stores in China – a stunning three-volume set, with translations by Hui Ming.   More details on the publisher’s Chinese language web-site- here.  (and more details from us in the weeks ahead)

More news (Beat Generation news) :

[Two (undated) images by Jack Kerouac – “Untitled” and “Raven” – from the upcoming MA*GA Museum, “Beat Painting” show – courtesy ANSA]

Jack Kerouac’s Beat Painting show opens on Sunday at The … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 334

September 22, 2017Simon Pettet

[Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg, c. 1977]

Patti Smith‘s new book Devotion has just come out (from Yale University Press) to mixed reviews. Here‘s Michael Lindgren’s review in The Washington Post .Here‘s Megan Volpert at Pop Matters. The book is an expanded version (though not so expanded) of her 2016 Winham-Campbell Lecture at Yale (for a section of that lecture – see here)

Grant Hart, drummer, vocalist and songwriter, who died a little over a week ago, on William Burroughs from an interview from back in 2000 for The Onion AV Club:

Interviewer:   … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 327

August 4, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and William S Burroughs, New York City 1953. (c)The Allen Ginsberg Estate]

Ann Douglas‘  rapturous New York Times review of The Best Minds of My Generation – “Professor Ginsberg’s Notes on the Beats”  leads off this Friday’s Round-Up  – “In a marvelous feat of editing and reorganization, Bill Morgan, Ginsberg’s longtime bibliographer, biographer and friend, has condensed the 100 or so lectures Ginsberg gave in the five courses he taught on the Beat Generation between 1977 and 1994, totaling almost 2,000 pages of transcripts, into a compact and often spellbinding text, preserving intact the … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 317

May 26, 2017Simon Pettet

[Funeral for Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, May 26. 1997, Karme Choling, Tail of the Tiger Buddhist Meditation Center, Barnet, Vermont. Photo: Ray Ellis]

Today is the anniversary of Trungpa’s Rinpoche’s Buddhist cremation ceremony. Thirty years ago today, ‘”more than two thousand students and friends” gathered, “in a meadow ringed with pine and maple trees”, near Barnet, Vermont. (Karme Choling, Tail of the Tiger). Allen’s evocative and richly-detailed poem, (“I noticed the grass, I noticed the hills, I noticed the highways, I noticed the dirt road…”) ,”On Cremation of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Vidyadhara”, written shortly … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 313

April 28, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg reading and lecturing in Olomouc in the Czech Republic, 1993]

Allen’s new book, The Best Minds of My Generation, selections from Allen’s lectures (not to be confused with the lectures transcribed here on the Allen Ginsberg Project), “mercifully reduced to 455 pages, shorn of repetitions, student interventions and Ginsberg’s habit of beginning every sentence with “So” – (sic) – as the reviewer in the London Times would have it) continues to impress one and all.

Here’s an excerpt from Gaby Wood‘s review in London’s Daily Telegraph:

“Lovingly edited from recordings by Bill Morgan, who has … Read More

Trungpa Parinirvana

April 4, 2017Simon Pettet

[Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987) ]

Today marks the day of the 30th anniversary of the death (the parinirvana) of Allen’s great teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

There will be various celebrations, among them the Sadhana of Mahamudra Feast offered by the sangha at Shambhala, Boulder. 

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote the Sadhana of Mahamudra in 1968 while staying in the cave of Taksang in Bhutan. The Sadhana of Mahamudra invokes the wrathful manifestation of Padmasambhava, called Dorje Trolö, to help us overcome obstacles and confusion in our time.

Here’s three images of Allen and Trungpa:

[Allen Ginsberg and Chogyam … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 308

March 31, 2017Simon Pettet

Heads-up for next Friday! (Friday April 7) – Ginsberg Green – “A spoken word & musical gathering honoring the life and Green activism of Allen Ginsberg” – a unique celebratory event, organized by our good friend Patrick Warner, scheduled to take place at The Sprinkler Factory in Worcester, Mass, starting approximately 6 o’clock.

The event will include Ann Charters (reading from Lospecchio Press’ Best Minds – A Tribute to Allen Ginsberg),  Gordon Ball (reading from his Cherry Valley memoir, East Hill Farm), and  Warner himself reading  “selected Ginsberg texts & interviews that exemplify & manifest Ginsberg’s Green … Read More

Friday December 30 – Patti Smith’s 70th birthday

December 30, 2016Simon Pettet

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[Patti Smith – Gloria (Live SNL 1976)]

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Patti Smith turns 70 today. She’ll be performing tonight, in Chicago, at the Riviera Theatre, with her band, part of an on-going tour celebrating the release of her groundbreaking 1975 debut album, Horses

What a year it’s been for Patti! (always quite a year for Patti! – poet as rock-star, poet as performer, poet as activist)

Poet as upholder of lineage and tradition – So, most recently, the extraordnary rendition of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” at the Nobel Prize ceremonies, honoring Nobel laureate, Bob Dylan

She writes … Read More