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

screenshot-2016-12-19-20-41-58

[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

Allen Ginsberg and David Henderson at Naropa 1981 (part two)

November 29, 2015admin

                                  [David Henderson – Photo by Michah Saperstein]

 

              [Allen Ginsberg]  

Allen’s 1981 Naropa Institute reading with poet David Henderson continues, (following the earlier disruption), with two poems – “Grim Skeleton”  and “Meditations at Lake Louise” (“Reflections At Lake Louise”) (both from Plutonian Ode & Other Poems 1977-1980) –   and a third, “Thundering Undies” (sic), an imitation after the Roman poet, Catullus, (his poem 11), made in collaboration with Ron Padgett 
David Henderson, beginning here in media res, presents a second set. And then Allen presents three more works (“Put Down Yr Cigarette Rag”, “Capitol Air”, and  “Broken Bones
… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 246

November 27, 2015admin
 [Guillaume Apollinaire by Picasso]

Guillaume Apollinaire – Zone – Selected Poems – “The fruit of poet-translator Ron Padgett‘s fifty-year engagement with the work of France’s greatest modern poet” –   (a bilingual edition) – has just been published by the New York Review Books.  Don’t miss it.   For Allen Ginsberg on Apollinaire –  see (for example) his 1975 Naropa class here  (which includes, among other things, a complete reading and commentary on the title poem, “Zone”)   and here, here – (and, again, here)

 [Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)]

“Guillaume, Guillaume how I envy your fame, your accomplishment for … Read More

Kenneth Koch Q and A continued

October 18, 2015admin

 

                              [Kenneth Koch – Portrait of Kenneth Koch by Alex Katz] Kenneth Koch Q & A from 1979 continues KK:  Maybe we should have some more questions. What would you like me to tell you about? Student: What do you at Columbia? KK: I teach three courses there. I’m a regular Professor. I teach a writing course with twelve students. It’s, I mean, in this writing course, it’s not just a poetry-writing course,  I have people writing poems and stories and plays. I even usually have them write, sometime in the year, one long lonely piece of criticism, because … 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