Spontaneous Poetics – 75 (“This Is Just To Say”)

May 15, 2013admin

[William Carlos Williams’ poem, “This Is Just To Say”, displayed as a tattoo]

July 2, 1976, Allen’s summer lecture at Naropa continues

AG: I’m going to continue with the different considerations of mindful arrangement of open verse forms, the original subject I was on before, which is how you arrange your mind on he page. We have covered the echo of syllabic count the impulse of accents, the tone-leading of the vowel, the breath-stop as a measurement of the line, measurement of units of phrasing from the mouth as a division of line, divisions of mental ideas (as parts of … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 114

February 22, 2013admin
[Neal Cassady & Natalie Jackson, San Francisco, 1955. Photo c Allen Ginsberg Estate]

Another notice (see the flood of notices last week) of Allen’s photographic Beat Memories show – Tim Keane (on Hyperallergic) – “”I Noticed My Friends” – Allen Ginsberg’s Photography” – “At best these pictures are a celebration within a rite of mourning”, Keane astutely notes. “And if photography prolongs a lived moment that vanishes as soon as it arrives,  [and surely it does] Ginsberg sensed how better suited [perhaps?] photography than writing can be to that impulse..” [Tho’ he was hardly a slouch, we might … Read More

Friday Weekly Round-Up – 60

February 10, 2012admin

 

 

We at The Allen Ginsberg Project, we love our “Ginsberg tattoos” – they’re among the most popular posts, curiously – or maybe not so curiously. So here‘s another – “I wake to see the world go wild” – the line is from “An Eastern Ballad”. “Lauralemon” explains: “My obsession with and love for Allen Ginsberg began when I was thirteen years old and picked up an anthology of modern American poetry from a garage sale. I read “America” and immediately became obsessed…and here I am six years later, finally bearing a small tribute to my favorite … Read More

Allen Ginsberg – 500th Posting

September 26, 2011admin
[*Ginsberg en la piel…” (Ginsberg tattoo), 2011 – photo by Erix Pearl via Flickr]
“The weight of the world/ is love/ Under the burden/ of solitude,/ under the burden of dissatisfaction/ the weight,/ the weight we carry/ is love”.
Since Ginsberg-tattoo postings seem (curiously?) among our most popular postings, what better way to celebrate the 500th posting here on The Allen Ginsberg Project than this – another posting of a picture of a “tat”.
Another “tat”, coming off of that same poem, may be viewed here.
Not to forget the “queer shoulder” (don’t miss “Jon”s follow-up comment too!)… Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 31

July 1, 2011admin

Bob Rosenthal, “poet and writer, long-time secretary for Allen, and Trustee of the Allen Ginsberg Trust”, leads off this Friday’s weekly Round-Up, reading Allen’s remarkable 1965 poem, “Who Be Kind To”. Allen’s own reading of the poem can be accessed here. Harry Fainlight, dedicatee of the poem, can be seen, in sweet confusion, here. The poem itself may be read here (just scroll down, it’s right below another lively Ginsberg text, “Come All Ye Brave Boys”). There was also a classic Wes Wilson poster of the poem published in that same year by San Francisco’s Cranium Press … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 19

April 1, 2011admin

So, more On The Road movie updates. It seems now almost certain that the movie will have a Fall 2011/early 2012 debut, not a Cannes May 2011 unveiling, as had first been thought. Similarly, director Walter Salles’ original vision of a film solely in black-and-white, something, according to Indiewire, he had “valiantly campaigned for”, seems to have been jettisoned for a full-color movie.

Jose Rivera, the screenwriter, let slip on Canadian television, shortly after the wrap-up in shooting, at the end of last year, that, “there’s a lot of the original book still in the screenplay, still in the

… Read More

Poetry Tattoo

February 28, 2011admin

america

[Photo via The Word Made Flesh]

The first time I met Allen Ginsberg was around 1991, when I was an undergrad at Carnegie Mellon. We had been studying Howl and he came to read. I was young and awestruck while standing in a small auditorium watching this crazy old guy with a big beard chanting “ohhhh, suck tit, suck tit, suck cock suck cock, suck clit, suck prick but don’t smoke nicotine.” He was dancing around like a loon and banging two sticks together. I remember giggling and thinking, “so THIS is higher education”. Afterwards he signed a book … Read More