Apollinaire’s Calligrammes & Metrical Conclusions

September 21, 2017Simon Pettet

[Guillaume Apollinaire ( 1880-1918) by Picasso]

Continuing from yesterday

AG: … Then. Willliam Apollinaire (Guillaume Apollinaire), the Frenchman also did Calligrammes (so that would be.. the French name for that form is a calligramme – design on the page). He has one called “il pleut” which is …   “From the eaves… ” –  From..  (F-r-o-m. t-h-e-e-a-v-e-s -t-h-e-g-l-i-s-t-e-n-i-n-g-d-r-o-p-s -o-f -w-a-t-e-r-f-a-l-l-o-v-e-r – t-h-e-w-h-o-l-e-c-i-t-y) –  I don’t know  [Allen offers a translation] – “From the eaves the glistening raindrops falls down and drains over the whole city”.  You know and it’s all..  the lines are let down in strings from the … Read More

Guillaume Apollinaire – (Ombre)

August 26, 2017Simon Pettet

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

A guest-posting today from our friend (and erstwhile long-time upstairs-neighbor of Allen’s in New York) poet, John Godfrey.

Today, August 26th, is the great Guillaume Apollinaire‘s birthday

“In 1965, the U.S. troop level in Vietnam exceeded 500,000. Allen Ginsberg became perhaps the most flamboyant of many literary opponents to the war. Bearded, beat and outspokenly homosexual, his appeal was great to the young and already converted. (Pull out your old copy of Planet News (City Lights, 1968) which contains “Wichita Vortex Sutra“). Allen’s attack was on the conscience of the government and the capitalist … Read More

Larry Fagin (1937-2017)

May 28, 2017Simon Pettet

Larry Fagin, poet, editor, teacher, long-time leading member of the so-called “New York School” of poetry, died yesterday. He was 79 years old. An important co-worker with Allen at Naropa (and, coincidentally, upstairs neighbour in his 12th Street tenement in Manhattan), he was, (though not himself a Buddhist), alongside fellow St Marks poet, Anne Waldman, one of the key figures in the initial years of that on-going experiment. Allen himself was quite unequivocal – “I don’t know of a better editor and teacher of poetry and prose than Fagin”, he once declared. Larry’s early teaching there can … Read More

New Years Greeting

December 31, 2016Simon Pettet

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[Allen Ginsberg]

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[Ron Padgett]

From the recently-published Wait Till I’m Dead – Uncollected Poems (edited by Bill Morgan), a “New Years poem” (written in New York, “2 a.m. January 4, 1992”, and published in The Northern Centinel volume 205, number 4. Fall 1993)

NEW YEARS GREETING

(for Ron Padgett)

 

It is a beauteous evening calm and free

Spanish voices on Our Lady Help of Xtians steps

a new year’s come, eternity & I can’t eat baloney

& avoiding any salt probably can’t drink Schweppes

 

You’ve got to hand it to the Doctor’s Hospital

Your heart your … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 297

December 23, 2016Simon Pettet

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[Daniel Radcliffe as the young Allen Ginsberg in “Kill Your Darlings (2013)”]

Film Friday -Remember Daniel Radcliffe‘s portrayal of Allen Ginsberg in John Krokidas‘ 2013 film, Kill Your Darlings – Krokidas’ revelations about Radcliffe’s Allen and playing a “sex scene” have been getting a bit of traction.

Krokidas:

“Growing up with queer films, there was always some sort of stigma attached to gay characters or gay sexuality, and I didn’t want the sex scene to feel like that in any way. I wanted the arc of the scene to go from nervousness to a place of pure enjoyment … Read More

New Years Eve (Looking Back on 2013 & Forward to 2014)

December 31, 2013admin

[“Buddhist (and one non-Buddhist) Action Figures” Photograph by Reverend Danny Fisher 2013]

Last posting of 2013, we thought we’d list a few of our “greatest hits” from the past year – January – Nanao Sakaki and Allen Ginsberg singing “Birdbrain” in Osaka, Japan, February – William Burroughs’ 99th (next year will be Burroughs centennial), March – (speaking of nonagenarians) Ferlinghetti was 94, April – the Beats and the rock muse – “Text and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll, May – our Bob Dylan birthday posting, (this year – “The Night Bob Came Around” (and the night… Read More

Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems

November 24, 2013admin

It’s a red-letter day!  (or, to be accurate, a red-and-black letters day, on a plain cream-white background!). Coffee House Press have just published, in one 800-plus single volume, The Collected Poems of Ron Padgett. “Ron Padgett‘s poems”, writes Anne Waldman, “are essential and Ron Padgett is a genius”. She goes on,”His poetry is masterful for its panoramic humanity and mind-stopping verbal wit, its breathtaking power and beauty. We want to stay with the person in these poems all day long, to be changed by the possibilities palpitating from the smallest increments of our existence to the most … Read More

Ted Berrigan’s Birthday

November 16, 2013admin

[Ted Berrigan (1934-1983)]

Ted Berrigan‘s birthday. Ted adored Allen. Alongside the late-lamented Frank O’Hara, he was the one. Ted had this embarrassingly patriotic poetic tribal conceit, and in that context Allen was “the President” of Poetry (analogous to Allen’s own gleeful imaginative “shadow cabinet” – “Vachel Lindsay Secretary of the Interior/Poe Secretary of Imagination/Pound Secty. of Economics..” (Death to Van Gogh’s Ear)

a particular poetic form (a quintessential “New York School” form) – the list poem

OUR FRIENDS Ron: the tight-ass Dick: the insignificant Pat: the dowdy old lady Anne: the superficial sentimentalist Bill: the spoiled … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 151

November 8, 2013admin

Allen Ginsberg – Bloodsong – (edited by James Grauerolz) – Italian paperback, published by il Saggiatore, 2013]

Continuing from last week, (we can’t seem to leave it alone!) Kill Your Darlings (see earlier digests here and here) continues to garner reviews (mostly positive ones) – Michael O’Sullivan in The Washington Post takes up the debate over the blurring of fiction and fact (in particular, the presentation of Lucien Carr – wait a minute, “the Lucian Carr character”) – “You’d better like it complicated”, he writes, “The film is awash in delicious and difficult ambiguities”.  These “delicious and … 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