allenginsberg.org

The Barry Farber Interview – 1

 

[Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)]

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 never enjoyed a television show more in … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up -360

[Protest in front of Brazilian Varig Airlines with the Psychedelic Venus Church, San Francisco 1971, demanding the release of The Living Theater then jailed in Brazil.  Photo courtesy Harold Adler]

National Poetry Month in America this month. “April is the cruellest..” and all that. We’re very much of the opinion of noted poet Charles Bernstein.

`Beats and Buddhism. We mentioned David S Wills’ essay, “The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation”, a few weeks back, here’s another one, Michael Amudsen’s essay in Empty Mirror – “Jack Kerouac – Avatar of American Buddhism”

The Other Minds’ Sound Poetry Read More

Allen Ginsberg Parinirvana

 [Allen holding an abbreviated version of his poem “Gone, Gone, Gone” January 1997. Photo: c. Richard Nagler, used with permission]

Irwin Allen Ginsberg died on this day, April 5 1997. We direct your attention to two haunting accounts of his last hours, one by Rosebud Feliu-Pettet, the other by Gelek Rinpoche.

Allen’s parinirvana

Previous notices on this occasion from The Allen Ginsberg Project  may be contemplated  here. here and hereRead More

Chögyam Trungpa Parinirvana

[Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987)]

April 4 – Thirty-one years on since the death of Allen’s great spiritual teacher and the founder of Naropa Institute (now Naropa University), Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Naropa just recently announced the establishment of the Chögyam Trungpa Institute, a new academic research center, to encourage ““critical assessment by scholars and practitioners of Chögyam Trungpa’s body of teachings and his place in the development of Buddhism in the West,”  It will seek to “support new directions that honor the spirit of his work, through expositions, classes, research, debate, and other means”,  (including, most significantly, … Read More

Jack Kerouac Writes A Letter To Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando‘s birthday today. We figured we’d feature the classic letter (belatedly discovered)  written, circa 1957, to him by Jack Kerouac – “Dear Marlon, I’m praying you’ll buy On The Road and make a movie of it…”

Nothing sadly came of it. (“Brando is a shit, doesn’t answer letter from (the) greatest writer in America and he’s only a piddling king’s clown of the stage” (JK to AG, November 30. 1957))

[Jack Kerouac photo for Michael Grieg’s  “The Lively Arts in San Francisco”  article in the February 1957 issue of Mademoiselle magazine.]

[Marlon Brando (1924-2004)] – Photograph … Read More

Anne Waldman’s Birthday

[Anne Waldman Poet Orator, Co-director Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Naropa Institute Boulder Colorado, first accredited Buddhist contemplative college in the western world, experiencing “Make-up on Empty Space” for premiere of “Uh-Oh! Plutonium” video, Public Theater N.Y. September 14, 1984.” (photo by Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries/Allen Ginsberg Estate) ]

Monday April 2nd and it’s Anne Waldman‘s birthday. Each year we try to keep up (somewhat) with her astonishing energy (“making the world safe for poetry”) and productivity  (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here and here – and don’t miss … Read More

Gregory Corso (K – Libre) – 2

[Gregory Corso, 1957 – Photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries]

continued from yesterday.  Gregory Corso begins by reading/explaining his poem, “The Whole Mess…Almost”

“I went to my room/, sat down,/ opened my pen-knife to open a letter./ Halfway I stopped, /put letter and penknife down, went to the window and opened it up -Six floors up – enough to kill a human shot. So, who goes first? – Faith – (you) can’t trust it. You take it, Faith is not Knowledge. It’s something you believe in because you don’t understand it. Out the window with it! Took Truth, and … Read More

Gregory Corso (K – Libre) -1

[Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, New York City, 1985. Photo: Hank O’Neal]

This weekend we feature just one of the innumerable treasures in the Archives at Stanford University (there’ll be many more to come)

Today (in two parts, the second tomorrow) Allen Ginsberg’s tape from 1977 of a reading by Gregory Corso. (“K-Libre”? Kerouac Library? a benefit of some sort? We’re not exactly sure)

With significant detour and deviation (sic) and against a boisterous audience he (Gregory) organizes the reading along mathematical lines.

The poems he reads are “Verse”, “Alchemical Poem”, “As long as we live…”, “The Whole Mess…Almost”, “The … Read More

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up – 359

[Carl Solomon at home in the Bronx, 1991 – Photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries]

Today, Friday March 30th. is Howl dedicatee, Carl Solomon‘s birthday. For last year’s Carl Solomon posting (“Remembering Carl Solomon”) – see here)

It’s also the anniversary of Rimbaud‘s lover, the poet, Paul Verlaine‘s birthday.  (For a posting on Verlaine’s “Chanson d’Automne” – see here)

And, while we’re on the subject of anniversaries – Our dear friend Bob Creeley died on this date thirteen years ago. Much missed, thinking of you, Bob.

David S Will’s Beatdom continues to deliver challenging A.G. … Read More

More Vintage Ginsberg Footage/Ferlinghetti – Assassination Raga

More vintage footage of Allen here (and also, more prominently, of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and of the San Francisco Mime Troup Gorilla Band, courtesy the Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operario e Democratico (AAMOD)

1968 Vietnam War protest – The San Francisco Mime Troup Gorilla Band begin with “When The Saints Go Marching In and follow it with a protest-laden rendition of the U.S. National Anthem – Ferlinghetti then reads from the podium his recently-composed “Assassination Raga (in memory of Robert Kennedy)


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