Remembering Robert Creeley

May 21, 2018Simon Pettet

Robert Creeley‘s birthday today (born Arlington, Massachusetts, May 21, 1926, died Odessa, Texas, March 30, 2005).  We’re happy to share these images of Bob taken by Allen in 1963 at the legendary 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference  (regarding that conference see also here & here )

Further posts about Bob (and there are plenty) on The Allen Ginsberg Project –  here & here, here,  here and here and here

and – essential listening – the Creeley PennSound page – here 

..thinking of you, Bob

… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 359

March 30, 2018Simon Pettet

[Carl Solomon at home in the Bronx, 1991 – Photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries]

Today, Friday March 30th. is Howl dedicatee, Carl Solomon‘s birthday. For last year’s Carl Solomon posting (“Remembering Carl Solomon”) – see here)

It’s also the anniversary of Rimbaud‘s lover, the poet, Paul Verlaine‘s birthday.  (For a posting on Verlaine’s “Chanson d’Automne” – see here)

And, while we’re on the subject of anniversaries – Our dear friend Bob Creeley died on this date thirteen years ago. Much missed, thinking of you, Bob.

David S Will’s Beatdom continues to deliver challenging A.G. … Read More

Doctor Sax and the Great World Snake

March 10, 2018Simon Pettet

Doctor Sax and The Great World Snake – In honor of Jack Kerouac’s 96th birthday (coming up on Monday) – we present Jim Sampas‘ version of his uncle’s original screenplay, featuring the voices of Robert Creeley, Jim Carroll, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and a host of talented others.

The double-disc CD of a reading of this initially-lost text (with a newly-commissioned score by John Medeski, and an accompanying book with illustrations by Richard Sala) was released back in 2003

Here‘s the announcement in Rolling Stone

Here‘s a transcript of  NPR’s Bob Edwards, talking to Jim Sampas

A … Read More

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

WNET Levertov & Olson – Olson

January 21, 2018Simon Pettet

[Charles Olson (1910-1970)]

Continuing from yesterday  [at approximately sixteen minutes in], Charles Olson begins reading (from “Letter #41 [broken off]”) – “With a leap (she said it was an arabesque/ I made, off the porch the night of the/ St Valentine’s Day storm….”….”The war of Africa against Eurasia/has just begun again. Gondwana.”

“This is Charles Olson, born, December 27th, 1910. To say that his size, energy, and imagination are prodigious is almost an understatement. In 1950 Charles Olson wrote an essay which grew out of an exchange of letters with the poet, Robert Creeley. The essay was titled “Projective … Read More

Eric Mottram (1924-1995)

December 29, 2017Simon Pettet

 

Our focus today – Eric Mottram, (1924-1995), author of  (among many other titles)  the brief survey, Allen Ginsberg in the Sixties – a poet, critic and scholar, a central figure in the English/transatlantic connection, one of the earliest, most astute and most passionate, readers and observers and commentators on Allen’s work.

Mottram on Ginsberg, from a lecture, given  at Kings College London, circa 1970

“He [Allen]’s very conscious now of finding strategies for being very very private in public.”

He goes on:

“But if you are going to say, “okay, private life is primary, the body is primary, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 330

August 25, 2017Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg on tv, May 7 1968 on Firing Line With William Buckley

from the Letters column in last weekend’s New York Times Book Review

“Reading Ann Douglas’s review of Allen Ginsberg’s “The Best Minds of My Generation” (Aug. 6) reminded me of a chance meeting with Ginsberg in the early ’60s. After a performance of Genet’s “The Blacks” at a small theater in the East Village, I waited in front for my then-fiancée. Also standing there was Allen Ginsberg. I mentioned a poem by his father, Louis Ginsberg, that appeared in the textbook I used to teach … Read More

Allen Ginsberg Reading at St Marks Poetry Project 1977

August 5, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell, St Mark’s Church, February 23, 1977. Photo: Martin Wechselblatt]

We featured one, from the extraordinary trove of recordings of Allen readings, last week, from PennSound (from the Robert Creeley collection – 1971 at Intersection, San Francisco). Here‘s another, six years later- from the St Mark’s Poetry Project in New York. The occasion was a now-legendary coupling of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell (it was on this occasion that Lowell was memorably heckled by Gregory Corso). Allen reads a variety of works, referencing his recent visit to Australia, his Vajrayana Buddhist … Read More

Buddhism and The Beats (Ginsberg 1993 – 2 – Trungpa Rinpoche)

July 16, 2017Simon Pettet

Continuing from yesterday.

[Buddha doodle. Allen Ginsberg. April 5, 1991]

[Mantra: Benefit for Kama Dzong Meditation Center, May 6, 1972. Macky Auditorium, Boulder, CO]

[Allen Ginsberg and Chögyam  Trungpa,  Rinpoche. Benefit for Kama Dzong Meditation Center, May 6, 1972. Macky Auditorium, Boulder, CO. Photo:  Bob Morehouse]

AG : Then, 1972 Trungpa Rinpoche invited me to Boulder to give a poetry reading to raise money for Rocky Mountain Dharma Center along with Robert Bly and Gary Snyder. So I was really pleased to go out and see him in his home territory and went out there and he invited … Read More

Allen Ginsberg at Cheltenham 1993

May 27, 2017Simon Pettet

Allen Ginsberg, in 1993, reading at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in England. The feature today on The Allen Ginsberg Project. Allen reads a selection of poems, (mostly from White Shroud and the, subsequently-published Cosmpolitan Greetings

Introduction: Good evening everybody and some of you I’m sure came to the event where Allen Ginsberg was being interviewed by John Calder here today and will have suffered as Mr Ginsberg did the problems of the weather and British Rail. Years ago Allen Ginsberg wrote of Jack Kerouac that he was the sole full-moving thing, earlier today I’m afraid Allen Ginsberg was the sole … Read More