Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 298

January 6, 2017Simon Pettet

pompidou

The 2016 Pompidou Center Beat Generation show (currently up, in a revised version at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany) made it as number three in the art-site Hyperallergic‘s years-end list of the  “top 15 exhibitions around the world” . The artist-critic Joseph Nechvatal writes:  “The entire airy layout of the Centre Pompidou’s retrospective of the Beat Generation was flawless, delicately and luxuriously balancing the dim lighting requirements needed to show the mix of texts,paintings, photography, collages, ephemera, historical documents, magazines, book publications, jazz music, spoken-word recordings, and fantastic underground films. Its content was a hard rejection of American right-wing … 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

John Wieners Birthday

January 6, 2014admin

[John Wieners in Gloucester, MA – Photograph c. Jim Dunn]

It would have been John Wieners’ 80th birthday today. For previous Wieners birthday shout-outs, see here and here. See also this posting, and here and here.

A guest posting today from poet, Jim Dunn, our friend and John’s long-time friend and companion:
It is fitting today, on the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the Epiphany, the Visitation of the Three Kings, we commemorate John Wieners’ 80th birthday. It is fitting considering his Irish Catholic Jesuit upbringing and his belief in the spiritual quality of poetry. Although he
… Read More