Looking forward and looking back, with the year’s first “Weekly Round-Up”, starting off with Allen Ginsberg – Fotografìa y Poetica Beat at the Photology Gallery in Garzon, Uruguay – the first ever showing of Allen’s photographs in South America! (this show is coming to a close, closing-date is next Tuesday, January 9).
And more photo news – Opening January 29, and up through 27 April, at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto – ‘Fleeting Moments, Floating Worlds, and the Beat Generation – The Photography of Allen Ginsberg”
“This exhibition”, the Library states, in its preliminary announcement, “will feature photographs – some well known, others more obscure – from the Fisher’s Ginsberg Photography Collection, the largest collection of Ginsberg prints in the world. It will trace Ginsberg’s friendships with the Beats, along with a more in-depth look at “Howl.” Complementing the photographs will be a number of rare print materials from members of the Beats, including (Jack) Kerouac, (William) Burroughs and Gregory Corso, along with Ginsberg books and broadsides and materials that inspired him over his lifetime.”
And look out (release-date is February 22nd) for the forthcoming Craft Recordings reissue of the legendary 1959 Fantasy Records Howl And Other Poems release, a deluxe vinyl box-set, (courtesy producer Bill Belmont), consisting of a transparent red vinyl replica of the original LP, along with a replica of the classic City Lights Howl and Other Poems, Pocket Poets book.
Also included in the box-set is a photo of Allen from the period, a reproduction of the original City Lights reading invite from 1956, and a booklet with new liner notes by Beat scholar, Ann Charters ,(“Courtesy shown to his listeners, and patience sharing his poetry with large audiences, were as much are part of Ginsberg as his breath. They were all essential parts of his being”) – as well as notes by Allen’s Naropa cohort, fellow poet, Anne Waldman.
Beat Studies – We might mention the recent on-line arrival of CLC Web (Comparative Literature and Culture), out of Purdue University, issue 18.5, their special issue “Global Beat Studies” edited by Oliver Harris and Polina Mackay of the European Beat Studies Network. Of particular relevance to Allen – Erik Mortenson‘s ” The Cultural Translation of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in Turkey” (“Mortenson examines three Turkish translations of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” in order to explore the ways in which Ginsberg’s poem becomes redeployed in new cultural contexts”), and, Véronique Lane‘s “Ginsberg’s Translations of Apollinaire and Genet in the Development of his Poetics of ‘Open Secrecy’ ((“Lane analyzes the extent in which the journals, letters and poems of Allen Ginsberg are marked by constant reference to literary models that give just as much weight to French as to American writers”)
The ESBN’s 2018 annual conference incidentally, their annual gathering, takes place this year in Vienna. Austria. A call for papers for that conference can be found here
We reported last year on Brad Vogel‘s noble attempts to save the Walt Whitman house on Ryerson Street in Brooklyn from encroaching urban renewal. through landmark designation. Regretfully we inform you that, shortly before year’s end, the application was turned down. The fight’s not over yet, however. The Walt Whitman Initiative has been launched. To quote their press-release:
“2019 marks the bicentennial of Walt Whitman’s birth,…We hope to celebrate Whitman’s groundbreaking contributions to literature by landmarking the site most associated with his seminal work by the time that key milestone arrives. (We) hope the Commission understands this is not about the architectural merit of 99 Ryerson Street but rather its incredibly significant cultural value.
Vogel: “The site’s significance in American – and world – cultural history makes it too important not to landmark. Architecturally pristine buildings are not the only landmarks that mean a great deal to New Yorkers.”
