WCW on WNET continued

December 17, 2017Simon Pettet

USA Poetry – William Carlos Williams –  transcript continues  (see here)

[note –  on occasion some

from the Letters of William Carlos Williams

To Kay Boyle (1932)

“Dear Kay Boyle….. There is no workable poetic form extant among us today..Joyce and Stein have..gone out of their way to draw down the attention on words so that the line has become pulverous instead of metallic – or at least ductile…For myself I have written very little poetry recently. Form, the form has been lacking. Instead I have been watching speech in my own environment from which I continually expect … 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

Expansive Poetics – 126 (Sacco and Vanzetti)

October 16, 2014admin

 

AG: Bartelomeo Vanzetti – has anybody read..ever heard (of) him?  – Bartelomo Vanzetti?   Sacco and Vanzetti? Has anybody notheard of Sacco and Vanzetti? Did you hear of Sacco and Vanzetti? – ok, they were a bunch of anarchists (like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, except.. 

Student: Except they went deeper..
AG: ..they were Italian fish-peddlers (except they were sort of cultural heroes of their day).  – What’s the story do you remember? Student: They were accused of anarchist bombing in a… I don’t even know if the bombs went off, but they became symbols, and there’s a … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 150

November 1, 2013admin

[Lucien Carr and Allen Ginsberg at Lucien’s wedding, January 4, 1952]

Kill Your Darlings – We mentioned last week the dissenting position, eloquently voiced by Bob Rosenthal in his post from last February – here. – “The film takes its..title too seriously”, he wrote then. “The large fabrications in the film are not so worrisome as the small ones. In any case, when the truth is stepped on and the nuance of truth is denied, the message becomes moribund”. Both Marc Olmsted in Sensitive Skin  and Brian Hassett in Brianland have taken up the cudgels and gone, perhaps, … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics – 31 (Reading List – 2) (Melville)

January 29, 2013admin

[Herman Melville (1819-1891)]

Allen’s July 1976 reading list continues

 

AG: Herman Melville. I don’t know what anthologies carry his poetry. This is [Allen displays a copy of Melville’s Collected Poems] his poetry. He is a great poet. Very cranky weird language, like “there is a thick coal black angel..”, no, “There is a coal-black Angel/with a thick Afric lip..” He’s describing a cannon overlooking Vicksburg. “There is a coal black angel with a thick Afric lip.” – That’s where I get my”Afric” (or that’s where I get a certain sound). That’s where (Jack) Kerouac got … Read More