Vintage Paul McCartney mask, vintage Allen Ginsberg stoned, Halloween face-painting, followed by a serious (and still timely) song by Messeurs Ginsberg and McCartney – with lyrics sub-titled in Spanish!
Happy Halloween! Here are a few previous Allen Ginsberg Project Halloween posts – 2014, 2013, and 2012 (once, just that once – too easy! – we went there!) … Read More
Colin Still and Optic Nerve‘s poetic documentation and extraordinary achievement needs to be sung. So we’re singing it today here.
Another Burroughs weekend. We’re doing a lot of William Burroughs posts here on the Ginsberg blog – unapologetic – it being the Burroughs Centennial. Today, Wiliam Burroughs Sings! (We’ve already posted a Jack Kerouac Sings! – Allen Ginsberg Singing is, of course, pretty ubiquitous!)
As he explains at the outset of another musical encounter…“just something I picked up, a knack of going along with somebody’s song, putting myself into it..”..”Marlene Dietrich, not one of my favorite people, but..” – William Burroughs’ spirited rendition of Dietrich’s classic torch-song, “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss Auf Liebe eingestellt”… Read More
Allen’s (87th) birthday tomorrow, but we figured to get a little into the spirit of things today.
Here’s a gem, recently uploaded to You Tube – Allen, interviewed by Patricia Caswell, in 1996, in Sarasota, Florida (on local television – “Sarasota Arts Today”). The occasion is the publication of his “Selected Poems” (“Actually”, Allen quietly confesses, ” I just received the very first copy in the mail today”)
Allen (who may, perhaps, be forgiven for just a tiny bit of name-dropping!) patiently explains himself to, and for, a presumed ignorant but sympathetic audience (and makes a righteous castigation of … Read More
Allen Ginsberg, interviewed on Canadian television by another A.G., pundit Allan Gregg.
To repeat the relevant paragraphs in our recently re-published Harvey Kubernik interview.
Another fugitive interview and a good one we think. From October 1996. Interviewer, Harvey R Kubernik writes:
Every so often we go trolling through ABE books, looking at all the high-end Ginsberg items, Did you know a signed first-edition (first printing) of Howl in the proper (pristine) condition (Howl’s first printing was actually a small mimeo edition, circulated privately among friends) can set you back over 5000 dollars? One interesting item we noticed was this, Allen’s inscribed copy of his (UK) 1967 Cape Goliard volume, TV Baby Poems, inscribed to Beatle Paul McCartney and then re-inscribed “To R von Kauffungen, who bought this copy in N.Y. at a book fair 1978″. “It is … Read More