Barry Farber – 7 (interview concludes)

April 23, 2018Simon Pettet

The Allen Ginsberg-Barry Farber radio transcription that we’ve been serializing continues and concludes today

BF: I want (you) to read from the Table of Contents, like the virtuous… AG: (It’s) [“Wales Visitation‘] a bit long, like eight minutes or so. Something.. And I had been used, generally, on television, to be told to please make it one minute – “Please make it two minutes” – (because they don’t realize the power of poetry, they think, you know, that everybody’s going to get bored!) So I’ll read it again and I’d like to dedicate the reading to the absent … Read More

The Barry Farber Interview – 1

April 7, 2018Simon Pettet

 

[Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco, 1966. photo: Larry Keenan Jr. ]

Drawing this weekend from the remarkable Stanford archives. We begin with a tape from 1976, Allen and company in conversation with conservative talk-show host Barry Farber, a two-hour radio appearance (We’ll be featuring it in segments – In the first, today, the opening salvos, he has to defend himself against Farber’s avuncular but also barbed and somewhat patronizing knee-jerk anti-Communism)

BF: Broadcasters all like to do different things with Allen Ginsberg. I’m going to copy what Bill Buckley did with him one time on television I … Read More

Ginsberg in 1967 Rare Footage (Antonello Branca Footage)

March 17, 2018Simon Pettet

Recently up-loaded to You Tube by the Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico (AAMOD) in Rome, vintage footage of Allen by the legendary documentary filmmaker Antonello Branca (see his 1967 film featuring Allen, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and others, What’s Happening?, fearured in an earlier posting – here)

Today (time-stamped -out-takes from a longer reel), two pieces, beginning with a mantra (chant) om sri maitreya  (“anyone who knows it, chant”, proposes Allen) , followed by,  (at 01-48-18-00, approximately six-and-a-half minutes in), a spirited recitation of “Wales Visitation” – (“written first … Read More

Quit Speed – Allen Ginsberg’s 1967 Plea to Peter Orlovsky

August 10, 2017Simon Pettet

August 10 – Fifty years ago today. Allen in London, writing to his beloved, Peter (Orlovsky) in New York City, warning him, pleading with him, about amphetamines (“meth”) – “I’d rather be with you than without you. Stop meth, cool everything, come over here”

Dear Peter,

Irving (Rosenthal) wrote and Barbara (Rubin) wrote, said you were on meth, then, thinking house was afire, window moldings bugged or electrified, etc, and had begun taking them out . I don’t know how far you are into that thought process, but I am worried about the house, my manuscripts, etc. I can’t … Read More

Buddhism and The Beats (Ginsberg 1993 – I – Introduction)

July 15, 2017Simon Pettet

A real treat this weekend – with gratitude to Robyn Brentano and students from the NYU Ethnographic Film Program – “Buddhism and the Beats.”. “In 1993, Allen Ginsberg spoke to a gathering of students of the Tibetan Buddhist monk, Lobsang Samten, about the impact of Buddhist thought and practice on himself, the Beat writers, and American culture at large”. The full hour-and-a-half tape is transcribed below (continuing tomorrow, and with the Q & A session to be featured here next weekend)

AG: Well, good evening, Rinpoche [Lobsang Samten Rinpoche] and I met very recently at the house … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 316

May 19, 2017Simon Pettet

[Allen Ginsberg with Jon Sholle at the recording for Allen Ginsberg/William Blake – The Songs of Innocence and Experience]

Excited to have received early advance copies  of  Pat Thomas‘ remarkable follow-up to the The Last Word on First Blues  CD-set, (release-date isn’t until June 23) – the  two-CD re-packaging of the Blake songs – The Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience.

For a previous announcement on that important and highly-anticipated project – see here

Did we mention, May 8th, Gary Snyder‘s recent 87th birthday – this?  (an extensive and illuminating interview in Lion’s Roar ) –  … Read More

Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky in Warwick (England) 1979

January 7, 2017Simon Pettet

440px-allen_ginsberg_und_peter_orlowski_arm

[ Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, 1978]

Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky read and sang a selection of their poetry at Warwick Arts Center on November 6th, 1979. The performances were recorded (along with a further performance at the University of Warwick that night, featuring English poet, Tom Pickard). Steven Taylor was also on hand to provide guitar accompaniment.

The recording from the Arts Center is our feature this weekend and may be listened to – here

The reading begins with a performance by Allen (on harmonium) of two songs by William Blake – “My Pretty Rose Tree… Read More

Meditation and Poetics – 37 (Wales Visitation)

January 27, 2015admin

 

 [Allen Ginsberg – Autograph and Typescript Working Draft of a portion of the 1967 poem “Wales Visitation“]

AG: I want to follow that up [that reading and discussion of Wordsworth’s “..Tintern Abbey”] with a poem of my own related to that, taking off from Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”, approaching a similar problem, or taking a similar approach to the problem – in this case, how to deal with phantasms, thought-forms, furies, monsters, of an acid trip, in poetry.  First of all, how to deal with the problem of in that exalted, or high, state of acid … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 122

April 19, 2013admin
[cover for On Tibetan Buddhism, Mantras and Drugs – Interviews with Allen Ginsberg by Paul Lobo Portuges,  published by Word Palace Press, San Luis Obispo, California, 2013]

[Cover illustration for the recently-published Brazilian (Portuguese) edition of Spontaneous Mind (Mente Espontanea) Selected Interviews 1958-1966, published by Novo Século (New Century) in São Paulo, Brazil, 2013]

[Cover illustration for original US edition of Spontaneous Mind – Selected Interviews 1958-1996, published by HarperCollins, New York, 2001]

A follow-up on last week’s post about philistinism, and ignorance about Allen, in Arica, Chile. The controversy, it seems, has now effectively been resolved by … Read More

Friday Weekly Round-Up – 118

March 22, 2013admin

An early draft of a segment of Allen’s classic written-under-the-influence-of-LSD poem, Wales Visitation, goes up for auction next month in London at Bonhams auction house, part of the Roy Davids Collection, alongside countless other “poetical manuscripts and portraits of poets” (there’s also, for sale, a rare shot of the poet taken with veteran English poet, Basil Bunting – the sale price for that is between £350 and £400). The manuscript is expected to fetch something between £800 and £1,000 (between (approximately) $1200 and $1500).

Wales Visitation – American viewers will remember this classic rendition of it, … Read More