Berenice Abbott (1898-1991)

                         [Allen Ginsberg and Berenice Abbott - Photograph by Hank O'Neal]

From an interview, in 1991, with Thomas Gladysz

TG: In your book, Berenice Abbott is credited for her "off-hand direction"

AG: "Occasionally, I used to visit her up in Maine where she lives. A mutual friend, Hank O'Neal - who edited her last book -  took me to her, and I learned something. I told Robert Frank and he said with a wry smile, "maybe I could show you something too" . She was quite old but quite sharp and alert. She knew people I admired, like Hart Crane, the poet and Marsden Hartley, the painter-poet. And she knew William Carlos Williams in the (19)20's. From her I heard a lot of gossip about people I had read about. It was a pleasure to connect with that lineage and have that sense of old bohemia. It was good to see  someone who had survived as an individual with her particularity of gender. Berenice herself liked ladies and, since I am gay, it was nice to reinforce the fact that uyou could live a full life."

"Also what was quite interesting was her devotion to her elders - her lineage. She had rescued the glass plates of (Eugene) Atget and kept them for many years - all those delicate glass plates she brought from Paris. And of her admiration for younger generations she said, "I love that Robert Frank. I've never met him, but of all of the younger photographers, he's just marvelous". She had enthusiasm for a younger person and respect for an older person. That seems like the real missing link in American society.." 


"I was in New York at an art gallery where Berenice Abbott was showing some of her older photos. I approached her, pointed my camera at her, and she said, "Oh, don't be a shutterbug!" Then she said, "Forgive me. If you're going to take my picture, back a way a little. You don't want to get too close otherwise my forehead will bulge or the cheek will bulge and it will be all out of proportion. Give a little space around the subject, so you can see where it is and what the context is" 

In an article on Robert Frank, he cites further advice: "All these young photographers with little cameras click click click think they can get something….You need to take time and prepare a photograph, and use big frame to get that tiny detail in panoramic scope."

Allen to Berenice Abbott  circa January 18, 1984

"Dear Miss Abbott,
Our visit last August (with Hank O"Neal and Shelley Skier and young scholar Jonathan Robbins) catalyzed some memory of 1930s and my mother, and I had a dream, a  sort of epilogue twenty-five years later to a long poem I once wrote - "Kaddish". In dream I met my long-dead mother as an old shopping-bag lady in an alleyway in the Bronx, and your figure and your photographs were part of the background scene. There's a  composite description (with many details clear but dream-wrong) of some of your photos which had stuck in my mind and which I return to look at often in book-edit of your pictures. Particularly the frontispiece, "hundred thousand windows shining electric lit" [ "New York at Night, 1932"] , the "Fifth Avenue Coach" (which in dreams I confused with "Tramcar in September Sun"),

                         [Fifth Avene Bus, Washington Square, 1936 - Photograph by Berenice Abbott]

                              [Fifth Avenue Coach Company, 1932 - Photograph by Berenice Abbott]

      

 the "General View from Manhattan Bridge" and "Herald Square" with straw hats I recomposed in the dream, described in the new poem, "White Shroud"

                      ["White Shroud" - title poem of the collection, "White Shroud - Poems 1980-1985]

I tried to stick to the Breughel-like principle you stated - universal panorama and maximum fine detail (by means of large negative) in the poem. I hope you have time to read it or find someone to read it to you….
I would like to buy from you prints of several of the photographs I mentioned above. Do you have any for sale, or could they be printed and what would it cost ? Particularly the "thousands of windows electric lit at midnite midtown" and "Herald Square" because some versions of them entered my dream of my mother…
I learned a lot from the brief visit and want to thank you for your hospitality then. What I learned? Mainly old art-life attitude, and that one specific notion of large negative for maximum detail in a panoramic perspective. Thank you, I hope your energy and health stay spry till we can meet again
Respectfully yours
Allen Ginsberg  

[New York at Night, 1932 - Photograph by Berenice Abbott]

[Herald Square, 34th and Broadway, Manhattan, 1935 -  Berenice Abbott - via "Changing New York" - from the collection at the New York Public Library]

Allen Ginsberg Punk Rocker (part two)

[Allen Ginsberg and Joe Strummer, backstage at Bonds International Casino, Times Square, New York, June 10 1981 - photo c. Hank O'Neal.]

Note: These posts - "Allen Ginsberg Punk Rocker" (parts one and two) first appeared on The Allen Ginsberg Project on June 23, 2011, and, due to technical problems, are now being re-posted

As Allen recounts it: " (In 1981) I was listening to a lot of punk, and I'd heard about The Clash from Steven Taylor. I went backstage once at their 17-night gig at Bonds Club on Times Square and Joe Strummer said, "We've had somebody say a few words about Nicaragua and (El) Salvador and Central America [they were promoting their album Sandinista at the time], but the kids are throwing eggs and tomatoes at 'im. Would you like to try?". I said, "I don't know about making a speech, but I've got a punk song about that." Simple chords, we rehearsed it five minutes and got it together".. "They led me onstage at the beginning of their second set, and we launched right into the guitar clang. It's punk in ethos and rhythmic style for abrupt pogo-dancing, jumping up and down, but elegant in the sense of having specific political details. First stanza drags a little, but there's one point where we all get together for two verses, an anthem-like punk song. Only one tape exists [not entirely true, actually] taken off the board. They gave me a copy and it's been sitting around all these years like a little toy."

- and again: "So, we rehearsed it for about five minutes during the intermission break and then they took me out on stage. "Allen Ginsberg is going to sing". And so we improvised it. I gave them the chord changes.".."It gets kind of Clash-like, good anthem-like music about the middle. but (then) they trail off again. The guy, who was my friend (Charlie Martin?) on the soundboard, mixed my voice real loud so the kids could hear, and so there was a nice reaction, because they could hear common sense being said in the song. You can hear the cheers on the record..."Capitol Air" was written (in 1980) coming back from Yugoslavia, oddly enough, from a tour of Eastern Europe, realizing that police bureaucracies in America and in Eastern Europe were the same, mirror images of each other finally. The climactic stanza - "No Hope Communism, No Hope Capitalism, Yeah. Everybody is lying on both sides.." We didn't play the whole cut because we didn't have enough time, but they built up a kind of crescendo, which was nice, when the whole band came in".

Joe Strummer: "Yeah, we have something never before seen - and never likely to again either. May I welcome President Ginsberg, come on (out) Ginsberg!"

This recording appeared, a decade and more later, on the 1993 CD box-set, Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems and Songs 1949-1993, and can be listened to here.

The upshot of this Bonds gig was further involvement with The Clash. When the band came back through New York six months later, Allen visited them in the studio and was invited to tighten up the lyrics, and indeed to perform, on one of the tracks, Ghetto Defendant, (subsequently included on their fifth studio album, 1982's Combat Rock).

Yes, listen carefully, at the end, that is Allen - gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha - voicing the Heart Sutra.

Friday's Weekly Round Up -159

[Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs - Photograph by Hank O'Neal]

2014 is - in case you didn't know - the William Burroughs Centennial year (next month, February 5th, he would have turned 100), and, not only on the 5th, but on a variety of occasions, there will be events, arranged by a variety of groups, around the globe.

Here in New York City (the Allen Ginsberg Project's home-base), for instance, there will be city-wide celebrations throughout the month of April.

Long before that, however, we'll be witnessing happenings. Perhaps the biggest so far, organized by Charles Cannon, is in the unlikely location of Bloomington, Indiana, for five days, from the birthday of February 5 through to February 9 -  "The Burroughs Century", as Cannon has described it - "We are calling the event the Burroughs Century, but we are not looking backward, rather, we believe that the Burroughs Century is ongoing, that we are in the midst of it, and we intend to stage an event that indicates the full range of that continuing influence, including a film series, art and literature exhibits, speakers and panels, musical performances and more". The celebration will culminate in "a two-day symposium featuring scholars, artists, critics, and musicians who will discuss Burroughs, his work, and its influence on American culture and beyond". Beat scholar, Oliver Harris will be the keynote speaker.  From January 24th to February 6 at the Grunwald Gallery of Art at Indiana University, as something of a preamble to the festivites, there will be an exhibition of Burroughs' "Shotgun Paintings". The Burroughs Century blog, incidentally, is well worth checking out (it's being constantly updated) and can be accessed here 

Earlier than that, however, is Patricia Allmergh and John Sears' "Taking Shots - The Photography of William S Burroughs", which opens January 17 at London's Photographer's Gallery  (and is up through March 30). 
A fully illustrated catalog co-published by The Photograpers' Gallery and the German publishers, Prestel is (or rather, will soon be) available.
Harris will be lecturing there too (part of a Conference - "Beyond the Cut-Up - William Burroughs and the Image" - scheduled to take place in the Gallery, Saturday February 15 - poet/professor Allen Fisher (of Manchester's Metropolitan University) has also been confirmed as a participant)




Meanwhile, in Lawrence, Kansas, at the Lawrence Arts Center, "an exhibition of William Burroughs' art and collections titled "Creative Observer"" will be on show (opening January 17), January 17 through March 2nd - "This multimedia experience" - Ben Ahivers and Yuri Zapancic, its organizers, announce - "will provide insight into Burroughs prolific creative energy as well as revealing his ideas on observing art and people. Included in this exhibit will be collaborative works with such artists as Brion Gysin, Robert Rauschenberg, Kurt Cobain, Keith Haring, and George Condo, among others".  
As with the Bloomington, Indiana and London, England, celebrations, various ancillary events will take place around the main event. On January 28, "friends and acquaintances will share stories and memories of their time with William Burroughs". On February 1st, Beat biographer, Barry Miles joins Ira Silverberg and James Grauerholz in a talk and the launch of Miles' brand-new book (written in collaboration with Grauerholz) "Call Me Burroughs" (Miles, incidentally, appears for Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, a couple of days earlier, to sign copies and answer questions about the book)



























John Giorno, long-time, friend and accomplice of Burroughs, has a show, "Everyone Gets Lighter", currently up at the Max Wigram Gallery in London. For more information about that show, see here   

No further news to report about the current hospitalization of Amiri Baraka, although he remains in our thoughts and prayers and we'll keep you posted.

Some time since we featured Ginsberg parodies. (In recent years, "Yelp", maybe, was the most prominent one, but we've noted several others). Debora Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle tried her hand, at years end, with "an Ode to Obamacare" - "Ow! (the annotated version) - with apologies to Allen Ginsberg" - "What sphinx of Beantown and beltways threw away the individual market and left adults yearning for their substandard policies//Amazon! Connectivity! Drones! Enrollees! Sign-ups are unattainable goalposts!.."   

Speaking of San Francisco - The proposed "Rainbow Honor Walk", that we reported on a couple of years ago, an equivalent to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a strip along Market and Castro Street, honoring LGBT pioneers, is now not just an idea but a reality. Singer Sylvester James, was the first of twenty LGBT legends to be so honored (Allen will be among that company), recently, with a bronze plaque.

Here's Eileen Myles (from her book "The Importance of Being Iceland") on Allen as a gay icon - "A Speech About Allen"    

Meanwhile in New York City - the joyful return to the East Village of the Mee Noodle shop!

Allen Ginsberg Punk Rocker (part two)

[Allen Ginsberg and Joe Strummer, backstage at Bonds International Casino, Times Square, New York, June 10 1981 - photo c. Hank O'Neal.]

As Allen recounts it: " (In 1981) I was listening to a lot of punk, and I'd heard about The Clash from Steven Taylor. I went backstage once at their 17-night gig at Bonds Club on Times Square and Joe Strummer said, "We've had somebody say a few words about Nicaragua and (El) Salvador and Central America [they were promoting their album Sandinista at the time], but the kids are throwing eggs and tomatoes at 'im. Would you like to try?". I said, "I don't know about making a speech, but I've got a punk song about that." Simple chords, we rehearsed it five minutes and got it together".. "They led me onstage at the beginning of their second set, and we launched right into the guitar clang. It's punk in ethos and rhythmic style for abrupt pogo-dancing, jumping up and down, but elegant in the sense of having specific political details. First stanza drags a little, but there's one point where we all get together for two verses, an anthem-like punk song. Only one tape exists [not entirely true, actually] taken off the board. They gave me a copy and it's been sitting around all these years like a little toy."

- and again: "So, we rehearsed it for about five minutes during the intermission break and then they took me out on stage. "Allen Ginsberg is going to sing". And so we improvised it. I gave them the chord changes.".."It gets kind of Clash-like, good anthem-like music about the middle. but (then) they trail off again. The guy, who was my friend (Charlie Martin?) on the soundboard, mixed my voice real loud so the kids could hear, and so there was a nice reaction, because they could hear common sense being said in the song. You can hear the cheers on the record..."Capitol Air" was written (in 1980) coming back from Yugoslavia, oddly enough, from a tour of Eastern Europe, realizing that police bureaucracies in America and in Eastern Europe were the same, mirror images of each other finally. The climactic stanza - "No Hope Communism, No Hope Capitalism, Yeah. Everybody is lying on both sides.." We didn't play the whole cut because we didn't have enough time, but they built up a kind of crescendo, which was nice, when the whole band came in".

Joe Strummer: "Yeah, we have something never before seen - and never likely to again either. May I welcome President Ginsberg, come on (out) Ginsberg!"

This recording appeared, a decade and more later, on the 1993 CD box-set, Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems and Songs 1949-1993, and can be listened to here.

The upshot of this Bonds gig was further involvement with The Clash. When the band came back through New York six months later, Allen visited them in the studio and was invited to tighten up the lyrics, and indeed to perform, on one of the tracks, Ghetto Defendant, (subsequently included on their fifth studio album, 1982's Combat Rock).

Yes, listen carefully, at the end, that is Allen - gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha - voicing the Heart Sutra.

Hank O'Neal

[photo: Allen Ginsberg, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. December 1981. c. Hank O'Neal]

We've added some more photos to the "Photography" section of the Allen Ginsberg.org website, among them a handful by photographer Hank O'Neal, who took this classic photo of Ginsberg with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones of the Clash. Hank worked with Allen and John Hammond Sr on his "First Blues" album back in 1983. He'd worked with Berenice Abbott for almost a dozen years, and, soon after meeting Allen, introduced him to Abbot, just at the time when Allen was re-discovering his craft of photography. Visit O'Neal's site for more info.

Also definitely check out Reality Studio's 2006 interview with O'Neal, conducted just before the publication of Gay Day: The Golden Age of the Christopher Street Parade 1974-1983 a book documenting the early days of the NYC gay parade when he lived on Christopher Street. Allen meticulously notated these photos and they've reproduced this in the book. Unfortunately the book got very little push, and went out-of-print almost as soon as it hit the stores! - definitely worth tracking down a copy!