Elazar Larry Freifeld Tel Aviv 1988 Interview

March 3, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in Jerusalem, 1988, praying by the Western Wall.  Photograph by Steven Taylor]

Allen Ginsberg in Israel.

This interview with Elazar Larry Freifeld was conducted at Tel Aviv University in 1988, and published in Moznaim (in Hebrew). It appeared a year later (In English) in The Tel Aviv Review, and most recently in the Jerusalism Review.

LF: Welcome to Israel, Allen. You come at a very troublesome time [civil war in Lebanon].

AG: Ah, it’s the same all over the world. Everyone has their own tsurus [“trouble”, in Yiddish]. In Nicaragua, the CIA is fomenting trouble, in Columbia … Read More

Remembering Ray Bremser

February 22, 2017Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg on the above image:

“Ray Bremser master poet returned to New York after eight years’ absence wrinkle-faced as before, to attend my “Rainbow Body Reading Series” at Brooklyn College & same night read at St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project. Next evening we did two poetry readings shows together for jazz-club Village Vanguard anniversary week celebrations. He left early next morning by bus, for safety from drink, to his upstate New York Utica apartment. Saw him this way the night before all these poetry scenes, at my house, February 21, 1995″

This poem (“Blood”) was recorded in … Read More

Sunflower Sutra – Mekas Vintage Footage (1959 at the Living Theater)

November 6, 2013admin

Yesterday, posted on You Tube was remarkable footage (by Jonas Mekas) of Allen, Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) Ray Bremser, and Frank O’Hara, famously reading together, in 1959, in New York City, at the Living Theatre, at a benefit for Yugen magazine  (you’re perhaps familiar with  Fred McDarrah’s iconic photo taken on that same occasion (see below)  The footage is silent, but Jonas added a soundtrack, a recording he made of Allen the following year, 1960, reading from his classic “Sunflower Sutra” – “..my sunflower, O my soul, I loved you then!..” [2014 update – Regrettably, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 114

February 22, 2013admin
[Neal Cassady & Natalie Jackson, San Francisco, 1955. Photo c Allen Ginsberg Estate]

Another notice (see the flood of notices last week) of Allen’s photographic Beat Memories show – Tim Keane (on Hyperallergic) – “”I Noticed My Friends” – Allen Ginsberg’s Photography” – “At best these pictures are a celebration within a rite of mourning”, Keane astutely notes. “And if photography prolongs a lived moment that vanishes as soon as it arrives,  [and surely it does] Ginsberg sensed how better suited [perhaps?] photography than writing can be to that impulse..” [Tho’ he was hardly a slouch, we might … Read More