Allen Ginsberg in Austin – Interview – 1978

March 18, 2017Simon Pettet

Interviewer: So we want to figure out what’s best, you know, what will be most comfortable for you. What I want to do is an oral history of the ‘Sixties and Austin’s an interesting area because there’s a major university with a lot of anti-war… There was a segregtion case, a very famous law case here in 1959. There’s been an awful lot of work with the valley farm workers and Chicanos, plus we”ve got the Rothschilds here [sic], we’ve got all of LBJ‘s legacy. Basically, Austin’s sort of conservative but with the university and the State Capitol here, … Read More

Expansive Poetics – 89 – Guillaume Apollinaire’s Zone

July 23, 2014admin

[translated in 1950, this is the cover to the 1972 Dolmen Press, Dublin edition of Guillaume Apollinaire‘s Zone translated by Samuel Beckett, the first seperate appearance of the text to appear in print]

[Illustrations pour

[Pierre de Gasztold – illustration from   “Les poètes voyagent de Baudelaire à Henri Michaux” –  Henri Parisot,  Delamain et Boutelleau, Paris, 1946]

AG: (So) then we have (finally) “Zone” – “You are tired at last of this old world/ O shepherd Eiffel Tower the flock of bridges bleats at the morning/ You have had enough of life in this Greek and Roman antiquity/ Even … Read More

Expansive Poetics 87 – (Cezanne’s Methodology)

July 21, 2014admin

[Paul Cezanne  (1839-1906) – Self Portrait (1879-80) –  oil on canvas, 33.7 x 24.7 cms via Oskar Reinhart Art Collection, Winterthur, Switzerland]

AG:  (So) (Guillaume) Apollonaire’s “Zone” – We have three different translations here and I have a couple others with me. The first one which is probably good as a working one is (by) Roger Shattuck. There’s one by Anne Hyde Greet. And I xeroxed one by Ron Padgett – and there’s also one by Samuel Beckett, so you can see how solid a poem it is – so many intelligent people have worked on … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics – 132

September 10, 2013admin

[Henri Rousseau – The Sleeping Gypsy – oil on canvas, 129.5 cm × 200.7 cm (51.0 in × 79.0 in) 1897 in the collection ofthe Museum of Modern Art]

Student: I’d like to ask you and Philip Whalen what languages that you read poetry in besides English and in what ways you find it useful? AG: I read Spanish – (Federico Garcia) Lorca and (Pablo) Neruda, and Saint John of the Cross, and various little odd things in Spanish – and I was influenced a good deal by Lorca’s “Ode to Walt Whitman” – the rhythm and sort … Read More

Spontaneous Poetics – 131 (Henri Michaux)

September 9, 2013admin

Henri Michaux Student: I wanted to ask you about Henri Michaux AG: Yes Student: And Ed Dorn, and James Tate AG: Henri Michaux, Ed Dorn and James Tate! – Well, once I was standing on a street corner in Paris, talking with Henri Michaux and Gregory Corso. And, let’s see, it was 1965 probably, and we’d known Michaux since (19)58). He’d come to visit. He lived around the block in Paris from Rue Git de Coeur, where we lived. He lived on Rue Segur near the Seine, on the Left Bank. He came in. I’d left a note saying … Read More