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

Harry Smith

November 27, 2017Simon Pettet

[“Buddha’s Footprint” – Harry Smith’s logo for Allen Ginsberg]

Twenty-seven years since the passing of Harry Smith on this day, Monday the 27th, (Harry would, of course, have enjoyed the numerological alignment)

Harry has been profiled and featured often on The Allen Ginsberg Project. most recently and extensively – here (see that page for links to several of our other Harry Smith postings)

Next Friday (December 1st) at New York’s Howl Happening Gallery, Raymond Foye will host a celebration of Harry’s life and work – featuring the screening (a New York premier) of a 1984 film by Robert Frank… Read More

John Wieners Selected ( Supplication) and Journals (Stars Seen In Person)

August 13, 2015admin

Pub. date isn’t until October 6th, but we couldn’t resist putting out the word on the forthcoming Selected Poems of John Wieners – edited by a trio of editors, Robert Dewhurst, Joshua Beckman and the ubiquitous CA Conrad “About himself, the author writes; / he is a tireless worker, and has a very long memory./ Having forgotten what ensues, the anger of redundancy rises/a very lustful nature: he drinks like a fish/Crowded cupboards combine with scrap heaps disht!/ there is no man to be feared in judicial canon more than this male harlot” (!)

or – as Allen Ginsberg … Read More

John Wieners Birthday

January 6, 2015admin

[John Wieners (1934-2002)]

John Wieners birthday today . We celebrate (as always) America’s great poète maudit, pure poet, sacred soul, lyric singer, lover, gay hero, rare treasure, blessed icon. For previous (extensive) John Wieners posts on the Allen Ginsberg Project – see here, here  and here, here and here Here, courtesy of Derek Fenner, is footage of John’s last public reading, given a mere eight days before his death on March 1 2002.

 

Posthumously, John’s reputation (as it should) just keeps on growing and growing. Two important pieces of scholarship (on-going) – Robert Dewhurst is hard … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 203

January 2, 2015admin

 

A New Year – the first of this year’s Friday Round-Ups, our regular weekly miscellany. A few weeks back, we featured one of Jay Blakesberg‘s extraordinary pictures of Allen. Here’s another.  William S Burroughs’ Centennial is officially over but we thought we’d sneak in one final Centennial report. – William Burroughs, le dernier humanist? (William Burroughs, the last humanist?) – the Anglophone gathering last month in Paris at École Normale Supérieure –Joseph Nechvatal at Hyperallergic provides a useful survey/overview of the proceedings. Next week, (next Friday) it’s Herbert Huncke’s Centennial (check out this Centennial screening… Read More

Harry Smith – Early Abstractions

May 29, 2014admin
[Harry Smith (1923-1991), at The Chelsea Hotel,  aged 52]  

 

 

Harry Smith’s Early Abstractions (1946-1957), in honor of what would have been his 91st birthday. Even in their severely-reduced You Tube format, feast on his visionary genius.  Other Harry Smith postings on the Allen Ginsberg Project include here, here, here, here and here upcoming Harry news – Saturday June 14 in Woodstock (an “all-star line-up”, like they say).

Harry Smith Anthology To Benefit HUNGRY FOR MUSIC live and, forthcoming, in the Fall, Raymond Foye‘s edited and notated Harry Smith Naropa lectures (with an afterword by Charles Stein) as a CD booklet audio project (from the … Read More

On Bob Dylan’s Birthday

May 24, 2013Simon Pettet

[Bob Dylan and  Allen Ginsberg in Albert Grossman’s kitchen, photo: c. Douglas Gilbert]

Raymond Foye has generously provided us with this account (that first appeared in the 1990 Dylan anthology, Wanted Man (edited by John Bauldie). The Allen Ginsberg Project today celebrates Bob Dylan‘s 72nd birthday

The Night Bob Came Around 

Late one night I sat in Allen Ginsberg’s East 12th Street apartment with Allen and Harry Smith, the eminent ethnomusicologist and folklorist. We were looking at a new batch of photographic prints delivered that day by Brian Graham, a freelance printer who had been working for Robert … Read More