Allen Ginsberg 1974 San Francisco tv Interview – “I Believe” – part 2

October 8, 2017Simon Pettet

continuing from yesterday – (transcript of Allen Ginsberg and Father Mike S Riley’s 1974 conversation picks up approximately sixteen-and-a-half minutes in)

MR: What’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing with all of the Christian metaphors and analogies?. It’s just “Christ,” “Jesus, “”the Church”, “Crucifixtion”…

AG: Well, what I’ve been talking (except to the reference to St John of the Cross) has mostly been formal Buddhist dharma, which is a perception of the Universe as transient, in the sense of..    The basic.. first basic thing is – all the constituents of being are transitory. So that’s why I’ve … Read More

Allen Ginsberg Reading in Baltimore -1969

December 3, 2016Simon Pettet

foa

Allen Ginsberg at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, November 1969

A few weeks back, we featured Allen, in 1973, reading at the Maryland Institute. Here’s another recording, from 1969, four years previously, where he presents a little mantra, a little William Blake and a substantial selection (some still in early draft) of his epic “poem of these states”, later incorporated in  “The Fall of America”

The reading begins with a very brief introduction, welcoming Allen back (sic)  ( “It seems to me most appropriate because this reading comes between All Saints Day and … Read More