Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 381

August 31, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg & Kate Millett, Boulder Colorado, July 1978 (photo: probably snapped by Cynthia MacAdams with Allen’s camera, courtesy Stanford University Libraries/Allen Ginsberg Estate)]

The Beats and Women – that continually thorny topic (we noted last week Blair Hurley’s Paris Review article – You might also recall Lynnette Lounsbury’s piece in The Guardian, a few years back – and, indeed, Amy Newman’s “Howl” (sic)) – David S Wills’ piece in the current Beatdom, in this context, comprehensive and scholarly, is well worth a read – “Beats and Women – “The Personal is Political” –  tentative notes on … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 374

July 13, 2018Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg in the War Resisters League office, May 1978 – photo: David McReynolds (c) David McReynolds]

Allen Ginsberg celebrations last night in Salerno, Italy – a collaboration between Casa della Poesia and La Locanda del Mare, presented by Sergio Iagulli, Raffaella Marzano and Giancarlo Cavallo, and drawing from the extensive audio and video archive of Casa della Poesia. (The event also featured a screening of the classic Beat film, Pull My Daisy, with Marzano’s appreciative and sensitive Kerouac translation)

Allen in Cuba in 1965 – Manuel Diaz Martinez’s  suppressed newspaper interview – “Y…no les dije a mis escandalizados superiores … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 369

June 8, 2018Simon Pettet

 “The Lost Ferlinghetti Tapes” is a mini-documentary by Paul Iorio that presents audio excerpts from an exclusive interview he conducted with Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 2000 — inter-spliced with segments about Ferlinghetti, City Lights, the Beats, Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” and the “Howl” trial.

And the big news (announced in the New York Times this week) –  the upcoming publication of Little Boy, ninety-nine-year-old Ferlinghetti’s surprising new novel (due out from Doubleday next year, to coincide with the occasion of his one-hundreth birthday) – ““It’s not a memoir, it’s an imaginary me,”, Ferlinghetti is quoted as declaring – ““It’s an … Read More

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)

August 12, 2015admin
[Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) – photographed by Allen Ginsberg, December 20, 1987 – c. The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

Jean-Michel Basquait died on this day, twenty-seven years ago today (has it really been that long?)  [– thirty years ago now! – wow! – 2018!] Recently up (2015) at Brooklyn Museum a selection from Basquiat’s Notebooks  Don’t miss on Hyperallergic – Megan Liberty – “An Intimate Reading of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s poetry“. Here‘s the ever-perceptive Luc Sante on Basquiat’s Notebooks – in the New York Times 

Rene Ricard‘s groundbreaking December 1981 article (on Basquait and Keith Haring) … 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

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 178

June 6, 2014admin

 

Two weeks since the last “Round-Up”, so let’s get right down to it… Not-to-be-missed – Distant Neighbors, the Selected Letters between Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, just published by Counterpoint. Watch the video of the two together, in conversation, at the recent (2014)  Festival of  Faiths in Louisville, Kentucky (moderated by publisher, Jack Shoemaker).  There’ll be conversing again on June 27 in Santa Rosa. An interview with Gary Snyder on “Buddhism, Beat Poetry and Environmentalism” may be accessed here.  Jack Kerouac‘s notebooks –  Joshua Rothman at The New Yorker reminded us of … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 171

April 4, 2014admin
[Iggy Pop and Johnny Depp – Photographs by Allen Ginsberg c. The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]
 
Iggy Pop interviews Johnny Depp in the current Interview magazine (Vanity Fair’s Julie Miller also picked up on this, on their blog, summarizing it, a little moralistically, with a shock-horror headline (more demonizing?) –  “Johnny Depp Entertained Allen Ginsberg’s Shameless Flirtations During the Beat Poet’s Final Years”. “Shameless flirtation”?  – Depp: “It was sweet. I just think he wanted affection on whatever level.”
 
Iggy Pop: You mention Ginsberg flirting with you. He visited me once but he didn’t flirt, so I’m kind of … Read More

Rene Ricard (1946-2014)

February 2, 2014admin

 

[Rene Ricard (1946-2014) – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg c.Estate of Allen Ginsberg  – courtesy Raymond Foye]

We received news yesterday of the death, at 67, of the larger-than-life, irreplaceable, Rene Ricard, poet, painter, art critic, scene-maker, ex-Andy Warhol super-star, subject of one of Allen’s most penetrating portraits (see above). The cause of death has been reported as cancer. As his friend, painter, Brice Marden, declared, speaking to the New York Observer, “Ricard was experiencing difficulty walking and went into the hospital about a week ago for a hip replacement – “When he went in they … Read More

Allen Ginsberg Reads Terry Southern

November 20, 2013admin

Terry Southern reading from “Flash and Filagree” – “The Clinic” (included on the album, “Give Me Your Hump! The Unspeakable Terry Southern Record” released in 2001 by Michael Minzer on his pioneering Paris Records. See here and here and here for other Paris Records gems  Terry is joined on this track by the voices of Allen and the voice of the legendary Rene Ricard… Read More

Gordon Ball

March 3, 2010admin

[Gordon Ball – photo: Dave Hess]

Gordon Ball was a filmmaker friend of Jonas Mekas when Allen & Gordon first met in the mid 1960s, and it wasn’t long before Gordon and his girlfriend Candy O’Brien were completely ensconced in managing Allen’s Cherry Valley farm (no easy task considering the colorful cast attracted to the place!) By the early ’70s Ball edited & published the now out-of-print Allen Verbatim, the result of recordings and notes he made while touring with Allen. From then on he became editor of most of Allen’s published Journals, beginning with Journals Early Fifties Early … Read More