Henry Ferrini - Kerouac and Olson

Henry Ferrini's impressionistic evocative Lowell Blues (2000) is a honeyed melancholic visual poem (somewhat imposed upon in this version by Journeyman Pictures intrusive logo!), with home-town boy Jack Kerouac's words always at the center, featuring Lee Konitz's mournful alto sax, and distinctive readings of Kerouac's distinctive prose, by such distinctive voices as (those clearly belonging to) Robert Creeley, Gregory Corso, Carolyn Cassady, Johnny Depp, David Amram.. We even catch isolated fragments of Kerouac himself.

Henry's most recent (2007) movie about the great poet-historian Charles Olson and his home town, the fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, can be viewed, in its entirety, here (Tom Cheetham has a useful collection of Olson resources, should, after this, you want to look a little deeper into Olson - And to look deeper into Kerouac? - well, the folks at Kerouac.com seem to know a fair deal).

Friday's Weekly Round-Up 23

[Allen Ginsberg, stopped along the road on his trip from Montana, to meet Nanao Sakaki, Chogyam Trungpa, Ram Dass and Bhagavan Das, in New Mexico, early June 1972, a week or so after the story mentioned below. photo likely snapped by Tsultrim Alione, with Allen's camera]

Kim Seong-Kon, a professor at Seoul National University, bemoans the weakness of his country's intellectuals, and holds up Allen as a model for independent thought (and action!), in an article for the (English-language) Korea Herald - Where is Korea's Allen Ginsberg?. "No hope Communism, no hope Capitalism.." - "Thirty years have passed, and yet Ginsberg's husky voice and the defiant atmosphere of his poem still lingers in my ears", Seong-Kon writes. "I often wonder why we don't have such a great poet in Korea. Why do our famous poets, caught in a territorial dispute, have to rush to Dokdo and chant anti-Japanese poems there, claiming "Dokdo is our territory", whenever our politicians and media instigate patriotism (and pernicious ultra-nationalism)?" - "What would Allen (Ginsberg) have done?" - "If Ginsberg were still alive", Seong-Kon suggests, "he would have definitely added (to his poem, the lines): "I don't like the human rights violations in North Korea - (but) I don't like the nukes in the Korean peninsula either".

More Allen memories. Here's Ken McCullough, "Poet Laureate for Winona, Minnesota", in the midst of a review of his visit last year to the 20th Medellin International Poetry Festival (in Colombia, Latin America):

"Back in 1973 I was driving poet Allen Ginsberg around Montana and we had stopped in Butte, a classic mining town fallen on hard times. We were getting a beer in a place called, fittingly, The Terminal Bar, and Allen was talking with some of the men at the corner of the bar, all guys who had worked in the mines, and one of whom had actually known Neal Cassady, protagonist of Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road, and Allen’s good friend. Allen was taking some notes, as he was wont to do wherever he went. Just then a guy swooped over and said “Who is this guy, and what’s he snoopin’ around about?” Butte had been a hotbed of Wobbly activity earlier in the century, and, in the early '70s the FBI was doing a lot of snooping around in general all over the country. Residents of Butte were suspicious by nature. Someone said “Sit down and shut up — he’s a poet.” “Well…okay then” was the response. No reason to be suspicious".

The complete text of McCullough's piece may be found here.

Some time since we featured a parody, but we're always amused by a good one - like this - from the current New Yorker. Dave Hanson imagines a poets' "app" - "global positioning" - "You, who take Route 80 past the saxophone-screaming fever-dream factories, belching steam like hoochsmoke out of a Negro tenement/Who take Exit 62 and shine on the one-eyed no-legged veteran at the bottom of the ramp who wants to get back on his crackling hydrogen lightship", etc, etc. Hanson gives T.S.Eliot, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, and William Carlos Williams the same treatment.

Did you know that the OED has, for some time now, erroneously it seems, cited Allen as the original source (1961) of the term "shit-faced" (!) ? We didn't. "A satisfying usage but 1961 seems a bit late to me", writes amateur lexicographer Paul Collins, who then continues to delve into the word' s origins (in an amusing and informative piece for Slate magazine). Turns out his intimations were right, that Allen was not the originator. Collins traces it all the way back to a "1825 edition of John Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language" - and even prior to that, perhaps?

More "Indy rock" news - Philadelphia-based group, The Wonder Years, have a new album (release date - June 14) coming soon from Hopeless Records. "Inspired, in part, by Allen Ginsberg's 1956 poem "America"', it's called "Surburbia - I've Given You All And Now I'm Nothing".

And Marianne Faithfull has a new Hal Willner-produced album, Horse and High Heels out soon (release date - June 28).

Ulysses McQueen recently visited Allen's grave-site (at Gomel Chesed Cemetery, Newark) and took some pictures.

Carolyn Cassady's Birthday

[Carolyn Cassady]

Carolyn Elizabeth Robinson from Lansing, Michigan, Carolyn Cassady, is 88 years old today. [April 2013, she makes 90]

"The only reason anyone's interested in me is because I was married to Neal Cassady and the lover of Jack Kerouac", she declares, forthrightly, at the outset, in the trailer for the new documentary movie Love Always, Caroline, a movie made by two Swedish women, Maria Ramstrom and Malin Korkeasalo, on her blessed and cursed life (a blessed one, mostly!). "This is a film about a woman's search for personal recognition", the directors declare, "and the price of a life in the public eye".

A revealing 2007 interview with Carolyn (by Barnaby Smith) can still be read here.

And a collection of other Carolyn Cassady interviews may be found cited in this post here.

We at the Allen Ginsberg Project wish her a very happy birthday!

Rimbaud via Ashbery

May 16 is the official publication date, but we couldn't hold off posting a note about this much-anticipated book from Norton - John Ashbery's translations of Arthur Rimbaud's Les Illuminations.

Read Fertile Destabilization - On Translating Rimbaud's Illuminations, Ashbery's note in the current Poetry magazine, and also The Illuminated Text, his phone-interview with Claude Peck for the on-line Rain Taxi. Check out too the video of him reading (at the New School, a few months back) one of the translations in the book, "Promontory".

"This is the book that made poetry modern", writes poet J.D.McClatchy, "and John Ashbery's sizzling new translation lets Rimbaud's eerie grandeur burst into English. Finally we have the key to open the door onto these magical Illuminations, and all their "elegance, knowledge, violence!". This is an essential volume, a true classic."

Allen's Rimbaud-in-translation was, of course, the still-respected Louise Varese (1957, New Directions), tho' he'd studied it earlier, and was also able to read it in the original French.

Tonight at the St Marks Poetry Project in New York, there'll be a big group reading from the book featuring a host of readers (and musicians!), among them Richard Hell, David Shapiro, Sharon Mesmer, Franklin Bruno, Edwin Torres. "This is a major event", the Poetry Project declares, with assertiveness and pride, "and we are going to celebrate it".

Hart Crane's Jump

                               [Hart Crane (July 21, 1899 - April 27, 1932, photograph by Walker Evans]

Today marks the anniversary of the tragic death of the great American poet, Hart Crane (soon to be portrayed in the movie, The Broken Tower, by “our very own” James Franco!). Poete maudit, legendary suicide (“goodbye everybody!”) - Janet Hamill has most of the basic details.

Here’s William Logan in Poetry magazine, around the time of the publication of the Library of America’s edition of Crane’s Complete Poems, writing in defense of his less-than-committed response (“I’ve always loved Hart Crane, but I love him in fractions”):

“The biographers disagree”, Logan notes, “about the condition of the Atlantic when Crane jumped (in). (Paul) Mariani fails in The Broken Tower to describe the roughness of the ocean (he mentions the "impenetrable waters off which the noon sun gleamed," which doesn't sound choppy or rugged); Philip Horton in Hart Crane claims the "sea was mild"; and Clive Fisher, quoting (Peggy) Guggenheim in Hart Crane: A Life, says the sea was "like a mirror that could be walked on."

I changed my "glassy sea" to a "violent wake" (the wake, some think, dragged Crane under). On balance, however, the "glassy sea" seems likely."

(One further biography that Logan fails to cite here is John Unterecker's Voyager (1969), the standard biography for years, now, like Horton, pretty much superseded by Fisher and Mariani).

Logan’s essay and opinions have sparked more than a little controversy, Neal Hampton, in a published letter takes the reviewer to task for the “bitter and parochial tone of his attacks” and his “manifest prejudice". Likewise, Marjorie Perloff.

For a more nuanced and understanding appreciation of Hart Crane, one could do worse than to go to Robert Creeley’s informed observations here and here. Not to mention, returning to the poems themselves - "How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest/The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him.."

Ira Cohen (1935-2011)

[Ira Cohen 1935-2011 - photo by Jeffrey Silverthorne]

"Working at the Buddha factory, I dreamt one day I would be free". Poet, publisher, photographer, film-maker, legendary "Beat" presence, Ira Cohen died last night in Manhattan. He was 76. For more on his considerable life-time achievement see here. For videos of him reading his poetry see here, here, and here. Nina Zivancevic's 2001 interview with him for Jacket magazine may be read here. R.I.P. Ira.

Allen Ginsberg and Paul McCartney

Every so often we go trolling through ABE books, looking at all the high-end Ginsberg items, Did you know a signed first-edition (first printing) of Howl in the proper (pristine) condition (Howl’s first printing was actually a small mimeo edition, circulated privately among friends) can set you back over 5000 dollars? One interesting item we noticed was this, Allen’s inscribed copy of his (UK) 1967 Cape Goliard volume, TV Baby Poems, inscribed to Beatle Paul McCartney and then re-inscribed “To R von Kauffungen, who bought this copy in N.Y. at a book fair 1978". “It is understood”, the bookseller points out, tracing the provenance, that “the volume was donated (by McCartney) to an Apple charity auction”. "For Paul McCartney”, Allen writes, That, all fantasies, harmonise sweetly & also Hari Krishna!”, (the date, significantly, pre-publication, Aug, 16, 1967; the location, “Albion" (England)).

The bookseller adds further details: “Paul McCartney is immortalized in the poem "Middle of a Long Poem on These States: Kansas City to St. Louis" (a section of “Wichita Vortex Sutra”) contained in this edition”. (and) “Perhaps more significantly McCartney later uses a line from the same poem "electric arguments" as the title for the third album of his musical collaboration with “Youth” (Martin Glover) (recorded under the name, The Firemen)”. Ginsberg “first met the Beatles in 1965, when John Lennon and George Harrison attended his 39th birthday party, and went on to form lasting relationships with (all of them), (but) particularly Paul McCartney, collaborating with him on several projects”. “In 1968..McCartney asked Ginsberg to record something for The Beatles new record label Apple, and (he) later accompanied Ginsberg on the anti-war song “Ballad of the Skeletons”. Indeed, when McCartney was aspiring to be a poet (and subsequently became one, bringing out his first book, Blackbird Singing), it was Ginsberg he sought out to (advise him and to) critique his first efforts..”.

Here’s Ginsberg and McCartney singing the afore-mentioned “Ballad of the Skeletons”

Cardenal

[Ernesto Cardenal - photo by Margaret Randall]

Ernesto Cardenal is currently on a "12-campus tour through the US and Canada". He will be giving "an Easter Sunday blessing", followed by a poetry reading, followed by a book-signing, today (Sunday), "in the garden in front of the Allen Ginsberg Library" in Boulder.

Father Cardenal's most recent book is The Origin of Species and Other Poems (translated and introduced by John Lyons with a forward by Anne Waldman). Generally acknowledged as one of Latin America's greatest poets, he is author of over 35 books, including the 2oo9 Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems from New Directions. One-time Nicaraguan Minister for Culture (under the Sandinistas), he is currently vice-president of Casa de los Tres Mondos, a literary and cultural organization he helped form. 86 years old, but showing no signs of slowing down, he remains deeply devoted to his country, and to his people, and to the fight for social justice. This is a rare visit.

For documentation of Allen in Nicaragua in 1986, check out this excellent portfolio by photographer Ilka Hartman. (Allen and Ernesto's paths had, of course, crossed much earlier, first in the pages of the legendary El Corno Emplumado).

"Ernesto Cardenal is a major epic -historical poet", Allen has written, "in the grand lineage of Central American prophet, Ruben Dario".

Ginsberg and Shakespeare

Today is William Shakespeare's birthday.

"When icicles hang by the wall/And Dick the shepherd blows his nail"

Allen particularly liked that line, and the whole "Song" (from Love's Labors Lost (1598)),

he taught it on several occasions. A recording of his January 1980 class in "Basic Poetics", at NAROPA has him reading the poem and remarking on it (the reading and commentary take place about four minutes in).

In July 1984, he came back to it in his class, situating it, as he had before, in the context of his Mind Writing Slogans, accuracy, precision (the reading of the poem, on this occasion, occurs about fourteen minutes in).

(There's also an earlier attempt in a 1975 class (on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson), which unfortunately gets hi-jacked by the antics of a rambunctious Gregory Corso),

tho' Ginsberg makes unequivocal comparisons between Corso and Shakespeare here, (focusing on the qualities of the clown - and, "Certain aspects of Corso have a Shakespearean accuracy and propriety..")

Allen also admired the companion-piece, in Love's Labor Lost, "Spring".

Two other Ginsberg-Shakespeare fusions. His March 1980 "Basic Poetics" class addresses in detail Shakespeare's Sonnets, giving them a singularly queer reading (Sonnet 20, Allen points out to be the lynch-pin of the whole book - "A woman's face with Nature's own hand-painted/Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion")

And his reverence for Shakespeare's great last play, The Tempest. In August, 1980, he conducted a class on that, paging through the text, not intending to be comprehensive but focusing rather, on, as he put it "little high-spots, little delicacies of language".

He also admired the soliloquies and dramatic verse. In March 1980 he had his student's think more about Prospero's last lines, immortal last lines (about the transience of mortality):

"These our actors,/As I foretold you, were all spirits and/Are melted into air, into thin air:/And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,/The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,/The solemn temples, the great globe itself,/Ye,all which it inherit, shall dissolve/And like this insubstantial pageant faded,/ Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff/As dreams are made on and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep".

Fridays Weekly Round-Up 22

[Patrick Fischler - the next Irwin Garden/Allen Ginsberg?]

Those Beat movies just keep on coming. Last week, we mentioned the film adaptation of The Beat Hotel. This week the hot news is that Kerouac’s Big Sur is being adapted as a movie. Not that it hasn’t already been. Curt Worden’s 2008 documentary, One Fast Move or I’m Gone covers pretty much the same territory. Joseph Jon Lanthier’s review of that movie, for Slant magazine, can be found here.

But this is adaptation, not documentation, so we’re talking On The Road 2 here! Jean-Marc Barr has been cast as Kerouac (Jack Duluoz); Josh Lucas, Cody Pomeray/Neil Cassady - the obvious question, who’s gonna play Irwin Garden (a.k.a. Allen)? Right now, the actor Anthony Edwards (who’s certainly in the cast) is whispered to be taking that part - but, no, he'll be playing Lorenzo Monsanto (Lawrence Ferlinghetti), it turns out - and Balthazar Getty plays Michael McClure. Actor, Patrick Fischler is the latest to now be rumored to have the part (but) no confirmation at the time of writing,

Allen encounters? We’ll continue to be featuring them. This one by Sam Hamod, a lively account for Contemporary World Poetry, of an Iowa pig roast (yes, you heard that right!) makes for occasionally excruciating reading. As does, in a different way, Ed Ward’s account of William Burroughs Jr (specifically about him and only tangentially about Allen, but well-written, and worthy, we think, to be included here).

Two other interesting (well-researched) accounts of so-called "marginal Beat figures" - Al Filreis in the new Jacket2 writes about Elise Cowan - and Keith Seward tracks down/uncoversthe curious story of Jacques Stern (Stewart Mayer's memoir, in the same forum, is also well worth consulting, alongside poems by Stern, an introduction by William Burroughs and thecomplete text of Stern's novel, The Fluke).

Over at David S Wills' Beatdom two old friends, Dmitri Mugianis, and James Rasin (who's just- recently-completed Candy Darling doc is beginning to get wider circulation) remember Gregory Corso.

More Kerouac news - Jack Kerouac and Lowell. We remember, several years back, the fight that several local residents had in convincing the city fathers to honor its native son. That was then, this is now. Lowell Celebrates Kerouac!, the 24th (sic!) annual Kerouac Festival is scheduled for October 2011. Meantime, there's this, the "Kerouac audio project":"The idea is to use Kerouac - and his worldwide fame - as an entry point into the cultural and social history of Lowell at mid-century. The voices in the interviews (in this broad proposed oral history) will tell the stories, making concrete abstract topics like class, labor, race, gender, sexuality, immigration, cultural hybridity, and "the American dream". The Kerouac audio project is part of a larger plan to further develop Lowell's creative economy, in part around Kerouac. We want to continue to develop the city's rich Kerouac materials and connections, using Jack as a portal into all sorts of other parts of the twentieth-century history of Lowell - one of the most interesting cities in all the United States of America".

Last week, we asked what you might be up to for June 3rd, (Allen's 85th birthday); well, plenty of New Yorkers know exactly what they'll be up to. The East Village's annual Howl! Festival is scheduled to coincide this year with that date. Preparations are already being made. Poet,C.A.Conrad, has launched a special Allen Ginsberg edition of his video-blog, Jupiter 88 - "Poets are invited to share the importance of Ginsberg's poetics and activism that continues to CHANGE THE WORLD!'. Many more voices to come, but, first up, Maryland-based poet, and director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House, Mark Novak : "..Allen really taught me that poetry is a great device for political protest..and I think in this age and this era of what we see happening in Wisconsin, what we see happening to working people in Ohio, with labor educators in Michigan, and public sector workers all around the country, that the message of Ginsberg and the message of poets to be political and speak out, is probably more important than ever".

More Beat Treasures (SFSU)

[Allen Ginsberg reading at SFSU, November 1955. Photo c. Walter Lehrman.]

Following our news of the UND tapes, more archival gems, we are happy to report, are emerging. The poetry archive, The American Poetry Archives at The Poetry Center at the State University of San Francisco has been hard at work digitalizing its unparalleled collection ("over 4,000 hours of unique original audio and video master recordings, 1954-present"). The Poetry Center Digital Archive, as it's so named, is now up and running and an absolute must-visit spot. You can access their growing collection here (the full Poetry Center catalog may be accessed here). Digitalized already are recordings of readings by Allen, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Phil Whalen, Lew Welch, John Wieners, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams (!), Robert Duncan, the list just goes on and on.

The 1956 recreation of the famous 1955 Six Gallery reading, introduced by Kenneth Rexroth and featuring Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Michael McClure is now available, for example, to marvel at and listen in on - over half-a-century later!

As is Allen's April 27 1959 reading at The Poetry Center (introduced by its legendary director, Ruth Witt-Diamant). Allen reads, in its entirety, his recently-composed "Kaddish", along with other works - "Poem Rocket", "Message From Paris", "Squeal", "Wrote This Last Night", "The Lion For Real", "To Aunt Rose", "Ignu" and "To Lindsay". A singularly extraordinary moment. A truly remarkable recording.

Silberman on Conners on Ginsberg & Leary

[Allen Ginsberg, Peggy Hitchcock, Timothy Leary and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco, 1963. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Allen Ginsberg Collection/Stanford University]

The Plot to Turn on the World: The Leary/Ginsberg Acid Conspiracy

Our good friend, Steve Silberman, has just posted an extensive interview on his Neurotribes blog with Peter Conners, author of Ginsberg/Leary biography White Hand Society. Steve is master of the interview and this one is no exception. Though for certain Steve will fill you in, you can check out the table of contents and the first two chapters from Conners' book here. Recent reviews (as we've previously noted) can be found here, here, and here. And, here, from last year, is our own posting, on the occasion of, what-would-have-been, Timothy Leary's 90th birthday.

Beat Musings 1995

More video. [2012 update, unfortunately the segment that was the subject of this post has been pulled]This surprisingly-sympathetic mainstream-media “CBS News, Sunday Morning” segment (timed to coincide with the 1995 Lisa Phillips-curated “Beat Culture and the New America” show) has Richard Threllkald, CBS correspondent, interviewing Allen alongside Michael McClure. “Beat” is, retrospectively, defined as, “an overflowing of exuberance and good will”. Beat culture “wasn’t so much a rebellion as a proposition how to live”. Of contemporaneous times (1995): “They say the new generation is alienated, slacker, apathetic, deadened of feeling when actually there is an enormous amount of feeling underneath, which needs to be invoked, empowered and appreciated”.

McClure is shown making a pilgrimage to the site of the Six Gallery (“it’s still a gallery, (but) now it’s a gallery for tribal arts”) and to City Lights, and to the spot in San Francisco where he lived in the ‘60’s and where Jay DeFeo painted/constructed her remarkable work, The Rose.

Only the hawk-eyed will be able to pick out Gregory Corso in this footage (not to mention Ted Joans and Michael Rumaker), only momentary glimpses of them, confessedly, but, we assure you, they’re there.

Beat Treasure - UND Writers Conference 1974

[The City Lights in North Dakota Conference, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, sponsored by the UND English Department, was the first of many Beat related conferences recognizing the cultural importance of the Beats. Clockwise from top left: Michael McClure,Gregory Corso, Miriam Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, Janie McClure, Shig Murao, Curator (name unknown - female), Joanne McClure Curator (name unknown - male),  March 18, 1974. - Photo by D.Sorensen ]

A veritable trove of archival material has just been put on line by the University of North Dakota's Chester Fritz Library - six (now digitalized) tapes pertaining to the March 1974 5th Annual UND Writer's Conference, featuring Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Kenneth Rexroth (and Miriam Patchen reading the poetry of her late husband, Kenneth Patchen). The technology back then was, it has to be said, pretty crude (now giving it, maybe, a kind of kitschy charm?). Minimal production values notwithstanding, the rebelliousness of the occasion (the Beats in North Dakota!) and the sheer verve and intelligence of the participants, comes barralling through.

The first tape is of Ginsberg-Orlovsky's reading/performance and a remarkable one it is, consisting, to a large degree of him chanting "the Tibetan mantra for purification of speech and for appreciation of limitless spacelessness" - AH! - a moving meditation in three chords - He does read poems, "Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit", "Mind Breaths", "Flying Elegy" (a significantly longer version here on this tape), "Truth Wheel Bone Rap" (an improvised piece, one of several improvisations). Following an initial mantra chant, Allen sings Blake's "Spring" ("merrily, merrily, we welcome in the year") and improvises. "We welcome the apocalypse/We welcome the end of the earth/We welcome (a) new birth.."

The other tapes are no less revelationary - four consecutive evenings of "Open Microphone" sessions. On the Tuesday, the entire company, sans Rexroth and Patchen, "discuss various topics", "including censorship, the military-industrial complex, Limits to Growth by Donella H Meadows, environmental issues, farming, the history of City Lights Bookstore, Robert Bly, Robert Graves, among many other (thing)s" (to quote from the description in the archives).

Wednesday, Miriam Patchen reads her husband's work. "In addition Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth and Michael McClure discuss energy conservation". Thursday's is a particularly good one, kick-started by an ever-irascible Gregory Corso,"Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti discuss various topics including drug use for mind expansion, women poets, jazz and writing habits..". Friday, they discuss "various topics", "including subsistence farming, agri-business, environmental issues, the drug trade and its political impact, as well as strip-mining, particularly in reference to western North Dakota.

In addition, Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads Pablo (Neruda?) in Spanish".

(See City Lights own later notice of this remarkable historic gathering - here )