First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg edited by Michael Schumacher / University of Minnesota Press / March 17, 2017 / 978-0816699179 Michael Schumacher is one of the major scholars of Allen Ginsberg, and has thus far written the best … [Read more...]
The Jack Kerouac School(girl) of Disembodied Poetics (Part I): an excerpt from Alison Winfield-Burns’ memoir
“I wrote my memoir at the request of my sweetheart Sam, who said he wanted to ‘know all.’ My original intent was to laud my/our Beat poet friends and teachers from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics circa 1980ish, yet as my betrothal to Sam … [Read more...]
Allen Ginsberg’s Typewriter and 2 More Poems by Jim Bennett
Allen Ginsberg's typewriter I bought Allen Ginsberg's portable Olivetti typewriter from a pawnshop in Liverpool where he had left it on an Autumn day in 1965 (I had to pay a bit extra for it because it had his initials, along with … [Read more...]
Five poems on the Beat Generation
Jan Kerouac Baby Driver "Looking for adventure in whatever comes my way I was a true nature's child Born to be wild-----" Steppenwolf Dreams of Hawaiian island paradise home ends up in a hopped up car chase, shotgun seat riding with a mad … [Read more...]
Book Review — Wait Til I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg
Wait Till I'm Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg (Bill Morgan, ed.) / Grove Press / hardcover When I first heard about this book of uncollected poems by Allen Ginsberg, I imagined a slim volume of "b-sides" that would be "for the completist" as … [Read more...]
The Howl Hat
My friend Sylvain went to San Francisco recently and brought us back some souvenirs as gifts. One of the places he'd visited on his trip had been City Lights Books. He brought me a t-shirt from there. And he also brought me one of the most complicated … [Read more...]
Aural Dialectics: On Allen Ginsberg’s Musical Rendition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789) is a collection of illuminated poems separated into two groupings, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, that engage with their respective, eponymous forces and ostensibly present them as a … [Read more...]
Movie Review – Kill Your Darlings
Long before Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs would be celebrated as the poetical and political figureheads of a 'beat generation,' there was a murder. In the new film, Kill Your Darlings, the crime scene sets itself at Columbia … [Read more...]
Ginsberg and Lowell
the alignment of planets parents and the cost of going ensured that I missed the Albert Hall in 1965 it was just an early disappointment and not outstanding because over years it joined many other disappointments too disappointing to … [Read more...]
Six Poems by Patrick Mackay
Jack Spicer and the Loyalty Oath “The testing of a University faculty by oath is a stupid and insulting procedure. If this oath is to have the effect of eliminating Communists from the faculty, we might as logically eliminate murderers from the faculty … [Read more...]
Two Songs for Samson: An Invective Poem for Carl Solomon
Two Songs for Samson (an invective poem) for Carl Solomon Where goes your nose, Old Sam? How mighty a germ that nestled there Could cause so mighty a blow? Does a note so dissonant exist To chip your granite ear? Are there sights such … [Read more...]
Beat Generation film – “Kill Your Darlings” trailer released!
Kill Your Darlings dramatizes an actual event that took place in 1944, as the writers who would later be identified with the Beat Generation became embroiled in a murder that made headlines. While attending Columbia University, Allen Ginsberg became … [Read more...]
Two Poems by Alessandra Bava
APRES NOUS, LE CHAOS (to Lawrence Ferlinghetti) In the bookstore the voice slowly uncurls some pages of life, revealing Allen's loss: "There is a HUGE HOLE in the sky" - That … [Read more...]
Review – The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt
The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt / Oxford University Press / 978-0-19-979677-9 / 126 pages David Sterritt's work might be familiar to Beat or film aficionados through his previous books, which include Mad to be Saved: The Beats, … [Read more...]
Charged Vision: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg
The photographs of Allen Ginsberg recently were on display at the Jewish Contemporary Museum in San Francisco. Walking through the museum is like going on a jaunt through Beat History. A spritely Jack Kerouac followed by the drunk. A youthful William … [Read more...]