Weed: Adventures of a Dope Smuggler by Jerry Kamstra / Peer Amid Press / 2019 / 978-1-7335481-0-6 / 312 pages This is, to be sure, a tale of adventure – a non-fiction, first-person account of moving a massive amount of marijuana from Mexico into the United States. The suspense and excitement attendant upon that enterprise, the cunning manoeuvres and minute particulars of … [Read more...]
”Curious and Not Un-poetical Imaginings”: A Forgotten Specimen of Victorian Cannabis Writing
“Imagination is the dream of the Unconscious.” —Benjamin DeCasseres During the 19th century, even as explorers journeyed to the last dark recesses and remote wastes of the world, and as archaeologists excavated fabled kingdoms and uncovered lost epochs of human history, expeditions and excavations of another order entirely were being undertaken by individuals situated … [Read more...]
Before and After Desolation: Two Sojourns by Jack Kerouac at the Hotel Stevens
During the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac stayed on two occasions at the Hotel Stevens in downtown Seattle. His first stay at the venerable old “skid row” hotel was in the latter part of June of that year, his second stay there some eighty days later in early September. Between these two brief stopovers, pivotal psychological and spiritual events took place in Kerouac’s life, so … [Read more...]
Poetic Licence: The Crime and Hard Time of Gregory Corso, or A Portrait of the Poet as a Young Felon
“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state. And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries. And look upon myself and curse my fate …” --- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 “If you believe you’re a poet, then you’re saved.” --- Gregory Corso A plot to take over the city of New York, a cunning robbery with … [Read more...]
Passing Through: Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky in Copenhagen, January 1983
As part of their reading tour through a dozen European countries, poets Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, and their musical accompanist Steven Taylor, arrive by train in Copenhagen in the chill dark of an afternoon in early January of 1983. Birgit and I welcome them with red tulips and after shaking hands help them to carry their baggage from the platform upstairs and through … [Read more...]
A Few Far-Flung Fragments of Forgotten Kerouaciana
There are still a few odd jottings and stray scribbles from the pen of Jack Kerouac – elusive bits and bobs published during the author’s lifetime – that remain unrecorded in bibliographies and/or uncollected in compilations of his writings. Admittedly, these fugitive fragments of Kerouac’s writing are not necessarily all lost literary gems, but I would argue that they merit … [Read more...]
Calling on Paul Bowles: Tangier, Morocco, August 1979
Calling on Paul Bowles Tangier, Morocco, August 1979 ”There it is,” someone says, and in the darkness, in the distance, you can see Tangier sprawled across several hills, a white city illuminated by electric lights and veiled by a thin fog. After docking, disembarking and a wearisome wait to clear Moroccan customs, we take a taxi to our hotel, hurtling through the … [Read more...]
Earwitness Testimony: Sound and Sense, Word and Void in Jack Kerouac’s Old Angel Midnight
“the ineluctable modality of the audible” – James Joyce Ulysses So much of Jack Kerouac’s writing seems impelled by an impatience with all verbal restraints and by an urgent purpose that strains to push and pivot, dodge and drive – like the star running back Kerouac once was – past syntax and grammar and language itself in order to touch a truth beyond language. Nowhere in … [Read more...]
