Seymour Wyse

5 days ago May 19, 2018Simon Pettet

[Seymour Wyse, Horace Mann School, 1940 (courtesy of Dave Moore)]  

Returning to the extraordinary trove of tapes of Allen now in the archives at Stanford University, here’s a recently-discovered gem – Allen, in 1981, at Leicester University, in England, in conversation with the figure who turned on the young  Jack Kerouac to a rich and life-long appreciation of jazz,  his old Horace Mann schoolmate – Seymour Wyse. 

Edie Parker Kerouac (remembering Seymour Wyse, in Boulder, the following year) : “Yeah and he used to scat, and he and Jack used to do this together. And the first time, … Read More

Compositional Practice – (Sustained Attention – 1)

1 week ago May 14, 2018Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg, at Naropa, from 1980, continuing with his lecture on Basic Poetics

AG: So, working last night reminded me of something that I hadn’t tried formulating, or vocalizing, which is that to write a work of genius, of any density and thickness and length (except for the little ditties and brilliant pieces that you can write right off, spontaneously, little short poignant things like that “On Neal’s Ashes”, which are, little poignant poems, which everybody has written of their own), the situation arising where you actually get involved in a work and sit continuously at it for twelve, … Read More

Barry Farber Interview – 6 (continues)

April 22, 2018Simon Pettet

[ Carl Solomon, Allen Ginsberg and John Tytell are shown here at Allen’s Cherry Valley Farm. Photo: Mellon Tytell]

“You’re making some sort of Cold War problem when what I’m saying is that the problem is ecological”  (Allen Ginsberg to Barry Farber, 1976) –

The Allen Ginsberg-Barry Farber conversation continues.

BF: Allen, when you got out of that plane, being kicked out of Prague, you wrote (“Kral Majales”)… Did you know you were going to write a poem before you got to London? AG: No.. I always carry a notebook with me. Like, I’ve got one now, just … Read More

Barry Farber Interview – 3

April 14, 2018Simon Pettet

[ Allen Ginsberg and Andrei Voznesensky]

The Barry Farber 1976 interview that we featured last week continues. Audio for the interview can be heard here and here 

BF: I’m Barry Farber, Peter Orlovsky is with us –  I think that means “the son of the eagle”

AG: Right…  Russian too.

BF: Allen Ginsberg, Jonathan Robbins, that’s the poetic part of the panel. The journalistic side, who can’t care if it rhymes or has soul just as long as it asks the desired questions, Robert Goodman, a new broadcast journalist and a good one, Bullets Durgin, just said goodbye, … Read More

The Barry Farber Interview – 1

April 7, 2018Simon Pettet

 

[Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco, 1966. photo: Larry Keenan Jr. ]

Drawing this weekend from the remarkable Stanford archives. We begin with a tape from 1976, Allen and company in conversation with conservative talk-show host Barry Farber, a two-hour radio appearance (We’ll be featuring it in segments – In the first, today, the opening salvos, he has to defend himself against Farber’s avuncular but also barbed and somewhat patronizing knee-jerk anti-Communism)

BF: Broadcasters all like to do different things with Allen Ginsberg. I’m going to copy what Bill Buckley did with him one time on television I … Read More

Steven Taylor

February 17, 2018Simon Pettet

[Steven Taylor,  Tibet House Benefit rehearsal, February 28, 1995. Photo: Allen Ginsberg]

[Allen Ginsberg photographed by Steven Taylor/ Steven Taylor photographed by Allen Ginsberg, NYC 1995 – courtesy The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

The dedication to Allen’s Cosmopolitan Geetings volume (1994) reads -“To Steven Taylor”  followed by that echoing line of William Shakespeare – “If music be the food of love, play on” – Steven, most definitely, did and has. It is a major omission that we haven’t focused on him before, here on the Allen Ginsberg Project – (altho’ we have – see for example here, here, here… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 353

February 16, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in his kitchen, 1988 – Photograph by Brian Graham]

The Toronto photo show, “Fleeting Moments, Floating Worlds..,“ that we mentioned last week continues. What we omitted to mention was the accompanying catalog (printed and designed by the legendary Coach House Press). As curator, John Shoesmith writes in the forward – “The accompanying catalog attempts to further the story behind the Ginsberg photographs. It contains the voices of several key individuals who were crucial to the poet’s “second coming” as a photographer, beginning in the mid-1980s; from the person who planted the seed within Ginsberg to … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 352

February 9, 2018Simon Pettet

Opening this past week, and on through April 27, at the University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library  – Fleeting Moments, Floating Words, and the Beat Generation – The Photography of Allen Ginsberg.

[“Fleeting Moments , Floating Words and the Beat Generation – Photographs by Peter Hale]

 

from Thomas Marks’  interview with the Italian painter  Giorgio Griffa  (in Apollo) – (Griffa’s current one-man show at London’s Camden Arts Centre, currently up, is up until the 8th of April):

“The work of Allen Ginsberg has also provided a touchstone; Ginsberg’s elegy for his mother, ‘Kaddish’, is … Read More

USA Poetry – Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, 1965

December 9, 2017Simon Pettet

We’ve been featuring, these last few months, video from the Stanford University Archives (a number of intriguing videos of Allen reside there, though curiously, not this one – Allen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1965, from the ground-breaking WNET television series, USA Poetry, directed, as they all were, by the remarkable poet and filmmaker, Richard O Moore).

We’ll be featuring more from USA Poetry in the weeks ahead. But to start off with, Allen (filmed on two occasions, July 18 and December 14, 1965 – the broadcast went out the week of March 7 1966) .

The video begins with … Read More

Pound, Waller and The Wonder Breath

November 21, 2017Simon Pettet
[“Oh!” ( the mouth open-wide, a “wonder-breath” – “Ah! – “Go!” – (Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky re Ezra Pound & Edmund Waller) – 1979 – Photograph by Desdemone Bardin]
AG: Well, if you..   I ‘d like to read that whole thing [Ezra Pound’s “Envoi“] once in..  just through, to get the variance from one stanza to another, because it seems that it’s surging, a very delicate surge from stanza to stanza that really concludes in a nice way – and it’s great music. In fact, why don’t we do it together?   this one.. … why don’t … Read More