Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 378

August 10, 2018Simon Pettet

Michael Robbins on Book Post – on Gordon Ball’s iconic photograph

“What better image of.. institutionalized complacency could be imagined than the assigning of Ginsberg’s verse to the nation’s future military elite, who – far from being scandalized by lines like “Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb” (from “America,” perhaps Ginsberg’s finest poem)- approach the reading with the dutiful ennui of students everywhere. Howl, like Ulysses and Lolita, has become homework.

But the poem, Robbins notes, “still razzle-dazzles today, this run-on prophetic mode of drug culture and madness, Whitmanian catalogue tuned to Blake-inflected beatific visionary blab with … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 361

April 13, 2018Simon Pettet

Changes to our site you may have noticed.  Bear with us as we iron out a few more wrinkles..

Among the information freshly disseminated above, forthcoming autumn publications including Iron Curtain Journals: January-May 1965 edited by Michael Schumacher, tracking Allen’s most turbulent six months, his expulsion from Cuba, travels to Russia, Poland, Warsaw Ghetto, to Prague where he’s expelled by Czech police immediately after his May King crowning, only to land in London to meet the Beatles, film with Bob Dylan and host the The International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall.  We can’t wait for this one.

 &… Read More

Steven Taylor – 2

February 18, 2018Simon Pettet

[Steven Taylor, Allen Ginsberg & Lawrence Ferlinghetti,  New York City, 1985. Photo: Hank O’Neal]

Continuing from yesterday – a Steven Taylor weekend. What a range of music to hear!

False Prophet – Field Notes From The Punk Underground  (a must-read) is still very much in print

“From 1988 through 1993, guitarist/vocalist Steven Taylor toured the U.S. and Europe with the alternative rock group False Prophets, keeping a detailed journal with the intent of documenting the role of musicians in the international anarchist youth movement. His field notes form the core of the book, accounting with honesty and aplomb the sometimes … Read More

Steven Taylor

February 17, 2018Simon Pettet

[Steven Taylor,  Tibet House Benefit rehearsal, February 28, 1995. Photo: Allen Ginsberg]

[Allen Ginsberg photographed by Steven Taylor/ Steven Taylor photographed by Allen Ginsberg, NYC 1995 – courtesy The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]

The dedication to Allen’s Cosmopolitan Geetings volume (1994) reads -“To Steven Taylor”  followed by that echoing line of William Shakespeare – “If music be the food of love, play on” – Steven, most definitely, did and has. It is a major omission that we haven’t focused on him before, here on the Allen Ginsberg Project – (altho’ we have – see for example here, here, here… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 351

February 2, 2018Simon Pettet

Next week, Neal Cassady‘s birthday.,   On Friday and Saturday, next week, they’ll be the big celebration in Denver (with special guests, Jami Cassady and David Amram – for more information on those celebrations – see here).

Monday,, it’s another Beat birthday – William Burroughs. There’s a celebration of that tonight – Three Rooms Press (publishers of the upcoming Don’t Hide The Madness – William S Burroughs In Conversation with Allen Ginsberg) present, at New York’s Cornelia Street Cafe (starting at 6 o’clock), a William Burroughs Birthday Tribute, featuring Anne Waldman, Steven Taylor, and … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 350

January 26, 2018Simon Pettet

Jerry Aronson‘s definitive documentary DVD,  The Life And Times of Allen Ginsberg, has been noted on this site several times before, but it’s a must-see, must-view, and, on the occasion of a refurbishing of Jerry’s web-site, bears repeating/revisiting.

Archivist, poet, Randy Roark, remembers Allen’s response – “He saw a working copy at one point and, after it was over, said, “So that’s who I am?”

Aronson himself recalls,  “I showed Allen the finished film in 1992 when it was really done, and he had not watched much of it, and I was anxious, waiting for his response. When … Read More

William Blake’s Birthday

November 28, 2017Simon Pettet

William Blake was born today, two hundred and sixty years ago, in London, England

We salute the great, inspired, poet, painter, visionary.

Here’s poet, scholar, literary maverick, Iain Sinclair, for the British Library, on an essential quality of the man – William Blake’s radicalism

[Blake’s image of Albion, accompanying the words Albion rose from where he labourd at the Mill with Slaves/Giving himself for the Nations hedanc’d thedance of Eternal Death]

and here’s Sinclair speaking of Blake’s spiritual visions

[The Ghost of A Flea – William Blake (c.1820)]

Allen Ginsberg and William Blake – we have covered the relationship … Read More

Allen Ginsberg at County College, Morris, New Jersey, 1979

November 25, 2017Simon Pettet

Continuing with our spotlight on the videotapes in the Stanford University Archives (we’re coming to the end of it). Today’s feature (like last week’s) is nuggets extracted from a broader swath. In 1987, Sander Zulauf made a selection (on two tapes) of readings that took place between 1976 and 1985 at CCM, the County College of Morris in Randolph, New Jersey – The First American Poetry Disc – An Introduction to Poetry, which featured over a dozen American poets, (most, if not all, of a decidedly academic bent – The undeniably stand-out reader/anomaly here was Allen (who, accompanied by … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 335

September 29, 2017Simon Pettet

William Blake and the Age of Aquarius, a stunning new show opened this past week at the Block Museum at Northwestern (Evanston, Illinois). Above is a reproduction of the catalog cover. The exhibition, curated by Northwestern University art professor, Stephen F Eisenman, is a breakthrough exhibit, exploring, for the first time,  “the impact of British visionary poet and artist William Blake on a broad range of American artists in the post-World War II period”  (notably, (but by no means confined to), Allen Ginsberg and fellow members of the Beat Generation – Allen as promoter and propagandist, conduit and curator, … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 333

September 15, 2017Simon Pettet

Next week in Paris (September 20-22) sees the sixth Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network –  “The Transcultural Beat Generation”  is this year’s focus “(Collaboration. Publication, Translation)”.  The three days are broken down as follows: Wednesday, the 20th – “French Edition(s) and Beat Intellectual Life in Paris” – Thursday, the 21st – “Beat Translation and Collaboration” – Friday the 22nd – “Marginalized Beat Artists”.

Of the specifically Ginsbergian – Thursday-evening (6-7.30) has been given over to a panel on Allen, chaired by Anna Aublet) – (rather unfortunately, it clashes with a panel on William Burroughs (chaired by … Read More