Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 276

Today (July 15) is the official publication-date of the newly-revised Allen Ginsberg biography, Dharma Lion. Michael Schumacher's epic and well-received 1992 critical biography of Allen is being reprinted (with the addition of two new chapters) by the University of Minnesota Press. For full details - see here  

That cover shot, incidentally, by Michael Tighe (we've featured it before on the Allen Ginsberg Project) - It turns out the precise location of the photo was East 14th Street (215 Avenue A at 14th Street, NYC). For such pleasing geographical minutae we are grateful to the intrepid Bob Egan and his shamefully-addictive PopSpots  

And while we're on the subject of precise locations, Marie Fotini writes to us to inform us that the classic pic of Allen and amigos in Mexico - see here  - is actually not, as suggested, at the Plaza Luis Cabrera, or even in the Roma district, but rather (now definitively placed) in the Alameda Park in front of the Neptune (Poseiden) Fountain, as we'd suspected, but were never quite sure.

Gratuitously spotlighting photos - Here's an image (by Jon Chase) of Allen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti - and Stella Kerouac (sic) "who was signing one of her late husband's books", that appeared in the New York Times a few weeks back, accompanying the article on Lawrence and his long-time agent, Sterling Lord.  The caption to the photo dates it (no word on the location tho') to 1988  

[Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, and Stella Sampas, at dedication of the Kerouac Park and Commemorative in Lowell, MA June 25, 1988]

Here's another great photograph we like, Jack Kerouac beaming from the video-screens at the on-going Pompidou show. 

             [Jack Kerouac on video screen at the Beat Generation exhibit at the Pompidou Center in Paris, July 2016]

James Campbell's extensive review of that show (in last Saturday's Guardian)  is an informative, occasionally dyspeptic, but nonetheless essential, read (focusing, to a large part, on the legendary Beat Hotel (Paris locale) and on Pull My Daisy), and, regarding stock criticisms of misogyny and sexism, shrinking from them, not at all - ("the shadowy side of the Beat soul", is how Campbell puts it).

Curator Philippe Alain Michaud is laudably quoted "The idea is to show these freedoms, which were fought for then, and which are in danger of disappearing…" 

Campbell concludes the piece, sweetly, thus: 
"One of the more pleasant surprises in store for visitors is the interest in visual arts on the part of the writers. Ginsberg was a talented photographer. Always conscious of the epoch-making nature of the Beat enterprise  Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others, has accused him of inventing the entire thing - he kept a pictorial record until his death in 1997. 
Several of his carefully-preserved pictures, with hand-written captions, are exhibited."

["Neal Cassady and his love of that year, Natalie Jackson, conscious of their roles in eternity.." - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg, one of the numerous Ginsberg photographs currently on show at the Pomipidou Center]


"It is heartening to know that a mad dash for freedom which set off from Columbia University 75 years ago is being celebrated in the dim City of Light this summer." 

Always interesting (if often alarming) to scan the rambling "Comments" thus generated -  137 of them, in this instance, at last count -  (How come more people don't avail themselves of the opportunity of "Commenting" on this blog?)

"Houseoftheangels" writes: "I used to like the Beats when I was younger, but I find them utterly infantile, destructive and ignorant now I am older. There is no glory in abusing women and destroying one's life with alcohol and drugs.." (You'll have no disagreement with us there, Houseoftheangels!) 
  
One "Quaestor" (quaestor? - the one who asks questions?)  writes: "Wasted too much time on Ginsberg forty years ago. A waste of fresh air" - (Oh well, a summary dismissal - So I guess that's that then!) 

More Pompidou reviews  - more informed Pompidou reviews -  see  Judith Benhamou-Huet's lively page ("a rush of subversive pleasure") - here,  Le Bouquineur ("Une très belle exposition" (a very beautiful show) - here),  and the Podcast Journal (en francais, of course) has, here. a podcast.

           [Another Ginsberg photo image ( early self-portrait) included in the current Pompidou show]

Another Last Word on First Blues review - You've probably tired of these, but - we couldn't help passing it on - "(Q)uite a collection… (and) the packaging and research that went into this box set is fantastic", writes Troy Mitchell at Innocent Words - ("included in the 3-CD set is a 28-page [not 280 page, as erroneously stated!] full-color booklet with rare writings, photos and drawings from the Ginsberg archives")   

And here's another  - Jeff Burger in The Morton Report - "What to expect? - Basically, the same quirky and consistently fascinating Allen Ginsberg that emerges from (the) poetic works, only with likable folk- and blues-influenced instrumental accompaniment and - on certain tracks -  a beat. He (Ginsberg) is funny, idiosyncratic, rebellious. profane, political and profound, often all in the same song…The album, which sounds charmingly homespun throughout frequently delivers more musical pleasure than you might expect.."

So there. Now you've heard it. Go out and buy it.

Anniversaries - We mentioned last week that it was Percy Bysshe Shelley's  tragic anniversary but neglected to mention (except on Facebook) that it was also Peter Orlovsky's birthday. And one more egregious omission - It was Harold Norse's birthday too - More than, just a birthday, that day marked his Centennial! - Custodian-extraordinaire Todd Swindell organized two San Francisco events for Harold (here and here), a third event will take place in Los Angeles (at Beyond Baroque) on July 23rd 
(the previous night, Pat Thomas puts on a Ginsberg celebration at the same venue - special reading and performance by Detroit poet M.L Lieber and special guests Willie Arron, Dave Soyares and a benediction by Michael C Ford - Ford appears again the following night with Tom Livingston and S.A.Griffin, alongside a reading (on the Norse night) of Norse's poems by LA-based artist Jason Jenn)   

Laura Israel's Don't Blink Robert Frank documentary opens in New York this week. Here's the official trailer



A.O.Scott's New York Times review of the film may be read here

We like his description of Allen in his last paragraph there - "an irrepressible ghost in our cultural machinery" - Long may he haunt! 

                                               [Allen Ginsberg - Photograph by Lynn Goldsmith]

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 273

                                         [Bernard Plossu - Mexique, Le Voyage méxicain, 1966 © Bernard Plossu]




Opening this week in Paris at the Centre Pompidou, another big Beat exposition (see our announcement back in April). This ambitious multi-media exhibition (up until October 3rd) comprises over six hundred different items - photographs, texts, documents, films, videos, paintings, drawings - and objects and devices for reproducing text, image and sound. A high point is, of course, the presentation of the famous "On The Road" scroll, the thirty-six meter- (one-hundred-and-eighteen foot-) long roll of teletype paper on which 
Kerouac typed up his fabled text. Another highlight, fitting for the Parisian location, is a focus on the so-called "Beat Hotel"  (one of its rooms is lovingly reconstructed, and a prominent feature is Harold Chapman's extraordinary set of photos from that period).

                                                          [The Jack Kerouac  "On The Road" scroll]

                                       [Allen Ginsberg at The Beat Hotel - Photograph by Harold Chapman]

The curators have orchestrated the exhibition around a geographical as well as historical framework, so the show traces Beat cultural manifestation not only in Paris - (and, obviously, San Francisco and New York, its spawning ground) - but also, significantly, (amongst other central locations), Mexico 

  
1953 finds William Burroughs writing to Allen (on the trail of ayahuasca) 
1959 (but written earlier) is the publication-date of Kerouac's seminal  Mexico City Blues 

               [Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Lafcadio Orlovsky, Mexico City, 1956]

Light is shone on several neglected areas of Beat culture, the specifically West Coast muse (artists like Wallace Berman, Jay Defeo and Bruce Conner), the African-American Beat... Here's Bob Thompson's "LeRoi Jones and his Family" (1964), just one of the six hundred items on display    

 [Bob Thompson - LeRoi Jones and his Family (1964) © The Estate of Bob Thompson]

Previews and reviews are beginning to come in - Here's several - First, en francais - "la retrospective vibrant" (Laetitia Cenac in Le Figaro), the AFP announcement, Tiphaine Dubled in ParisBogue   - & here, a review/preview in Spanish - and here (and here) a notice of the event in German

and don't miss the catalog, now available from the Pompidou Center - "Les nombreux documents reproduits (photos, manuscripts, pochettes de disques, dessins et peintures) témoignent de l'euphorie creative des membres du groupe, ainsi que de la pluridisciplinarité du mouvement (arts visuels, littérature, jazz, poésie sonore..)…Une dizaine d'entretiens inédits avec des protagonistes du mouvement, ainsi que des extraits de textes et poèmes (Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, notamment) viennent enrichir le catalogue" - (The numerus documents reproduced (photos, manuscripts, album covers, drawings and pantings) testify to the creative euphoria of the members of the group - thus (also to) the multi-disciplinary nature of the movement - (visual art, literature jazz, sound poetry). Ten previously unreleased interviews with the  movement's protagonists, as well as excerpts of texts and poems ( (by) Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, in particular) (also) enrich the catalog)."  

Meantime, simultaneously, also in Paris, at the Galerie Semiose (up until July 23), there's an exhibition of the art of William Burroughs. Here's two reviews/previews on that - here and here.
That one also has a collectable catalog, "Pleased to Meet You"- (see here)


[William S Burroughs & Brion Gysin at Joujouka, Morocco (1992) -William S Burroughs - ink and collage on board - 50.8 cm X 76.2cm]

Et aussi  Jack Kerouac - and one to look out for -  An intriguing notice appeared in Macleans (Canada) - The Secret Canadian Life of Jack Kerouac by Richard Stursberg, (regarding Kerouac's recently-published French writings) - see here

The European Beat Studies Network's annual conference starts up again on Monday (this year in Manchester, England - the two central themes this year - music and science). Among the specifically Ginsberg-centric papers - Rona Cran, "Simultaneous Data - Collage in Allen Ginsberg", Peggy Pacini, "Writing and Reading Kaddish - An Exploration of the Soundscape(s) of the Poem", and Franca Bellarsi - "Ginsberg's Poetry through the prism of Buddhist Theories of Mind". Ginsberg biographer Steve Finbow will be chairing these Ginsberg sessions.

For a full list of the schedule - see here

Allen Ginsberg and Indran Amirthanayagam] 

Cafe Dissensus, Issue 26 - "The Beat and the Hungry Generation - when losing becomes hip" - (a special issue on the Beats and the (Indian) Hungryalist movement, edited by Goirick Brahmachari & Anhimanyu Kumar) appeared on-line at the end of last week and there's plenty there worth looking into. Among the specifically Ginsberg-centric pieces: Spring and Oblivion" - ("Indran Amirthanayagam revisits Allen Ginsberg's Howl & Other Poems through his personal memory of the poet (who was close friends with his father), their interactions, the copy of the book gifted to his father by Allen and Ginsberg's readings that Indran attended."),  "Mind Breaths - Learning Buddhism from Allen Ginsberg"  ("Poet and Beat researcher, Marc Olmsted's essay investigates Ginsberg's source and commitment towards Tibetan Buddhism and how he balanced it with his political views/socialism"),  "The Ginsberg-Dylan Express - Tangled Up in Vomit and Blues  ("Brinda Bose looks at two decades of collaborations between Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg, through poetry, music and films"),  "Talking  Poetry - Ginsberg and the Hungryalists - Samir Roychoudhury - a retrospective"  ("Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury writes a first-hand account of her visit to the Roychoudhury residence in Kolkata, where she meets and converses with Samir Roychoudhury about Allen Ginsberg and the Hungryalist Movement")  
& Malay Roychoudhury is interviewed about Ginsberg and the Hungryalist Movement in a previously-published interview - here

As with the EBSN conference, tho' we cite the Ginsberg pieces, there's plenty more  - see Pamela Twining's  "The Women of the Beat Generation", for example - or Marc Goldin's "A Sojourn in Tangier"

And, still on Beat scholarship, Josef Rauvolf's recent presentation on Allen in Czechoslovakia (note - the presentation is in Czech) may now be found here 

Hilary Holladay interviews Todd Swindell re Harold Norse  in advance of the upcoming (July 6) Harold Norse Centennial

For more on Harold Norse - see here 

Patti Smith is interviewed for Vice this week - here 

Here's a recently-posted performance of Patti reading "Footnote to Howl" (on June 23, 2000 at the Mural Amphitheatre in Seattle, as part of the Experience Music Project concert series) - "Holy, holy, holy..".

For more renditions of that epic chant of passion - see here 

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 269

We mentioned last week the upcoming Beat & Beyond gathering, scheduled for June 3 to June 8 in New York. Here are the details.

The six-day festival kicks off with a Happy Birthday Allen evening - "The celebration includes readings, music and remembrances of the times and its continuing influence by such important figures as Michael McClure, Ed Sanders, Bob Rosenthal and Peter Hale (from the Ginsberg Estate), Len Chandler, and Bob Holman". The evening will include a round-table discussion led by producer Pat Thomas on the recently-released  (official release-date's today!)  Ginsberg box-set, The Last Word on First Blues, with participation by some of the musicians who were on the original record (among them David Mansfield, Steven Taylor and David Amram) and a one-off jam/reunion
(followed by a full set by Amram).
"Beginning Friday and continuing through the course of the week, painter Mark Turgeon will create a time-line installation at the Howl! Happening Gallery highlighting "An Incomplete History of Beat". 
And a jukebox of Beat Poetry will be installed in Extra Place, the alley next to the Gallery.

Saturday June 4 is headlined "A Day of Remembrance" -  including Ed Sanders on Beat poetry in Cleveland (d.a.levy, and Jim Lowell's Asphodel Bookshop), shout-outs to City Lights and other "hubs of the movement", a recreation of the historic 1956 Six Gallery reading, orchestrated by Michael McClure ("joined by contemporary poets to present the work and atmosphere of that seminal event"), and a reading by John Giorno of "The Death of William Burroughs", plus "(a) gathering of the Beat poets and other to share poetry, stories, memories, and personal anecdotes of the times".
Pete Stampfel (ex-Holy Modal Rounders), Ed Sanders (with The Fugs) and The Last Poets (Umar bin Hassan, Obiodun Oyewole, and Don Babatunde) perform in concert that evening.

On Sunday (the 5th), Bob Holman hosts "Curriculum of the Soul", "readings, conversation and discussion with key figures in the movement" - starting off with a focus on Women and the Beats - ("Ann Charters, Joyce Johnson, Margaret Randall and Hettie Jones talk about experiences of women associated with the Beat Generation"). "Key figures" performing (and interrogated on the hour) include, (alongside several previously mentioned), Steve Cannon, David Henderson, and, (concluding the evening), Anne Waldman.  For the full listing - see here

Simultaneously on Sunday (starting at 12 o'clock), there's a publication and panel discussion regarding Wait Till I'm Dead featuring Bill Morgan, Bob Rosenthal, Peter Hale, Eliot Katz and Andy Clausen, a Jack Kerouac panel discussion  (featuring Joyce Johnson, John Tytell, and others), a publication party and reading by John Tytell, a performance by Len Chandler, discussion led by Chandler and David Henderson and a showing of Billy Woodberry's "And When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead" (his feature-film on the late great Bob Kaufman)  

Monday's activities feature a distinctively theatrical slant, including, (5 o'clock) a Judith Malina Birthday Celebration with the Living Theatre. Michael McClure and host Bob Holman follow this with "Appaloosa Deck" (an improvised performance). There's staged readings (JoAnne Akalaitis - A Staged Reading of Works by Jane Bowles, A Staged Reading of A New Play by Alvin Eng), and also a film program  ("In the afternoon, Howl showcases a selection of short films, created by, for, and about Allen and the Beats. Rarely, or never-before-seen videos and films from archives around the country transmit the electricity and impact of the poets in the unfolding moment") 
"& Beyond" -  Monday also features "Slam Bang!" at the Bowery Poetry Club, a day of readings - "A day-long event showcasing the Beats influence on modern spoken-word, slam poetry and other contemporary literary forms.  It includes "Open Mic featuring the festival's eight original Beat all-stars, as well as several young, up-and-coming performance poets." More about that event - here

Tuesday, it continues - more "screenings, panels, conversations and remembrances", and, at (7 o'clock) - "How To Make A Happening'  ("Using the 1956 recording of "Howl" as a jumping-off point, a band of merry pranksters engage the audience in an exploration of the spontaneous and experimental antics of performance'). There's also, in the evening,  "A Musical/Poetry Hybrid" ("Special guests throughout the night" - emphasis here is on the neglected African-American Beat connection - "with readings by Len Chandler, David Henderson, Steve Cannon, and a presentation by "Lost and Found" editor, Ammiel Alcalay")  

The whole shebang concludes Wednesday-night at the St Mark's Poetry Project ("with readings by Beat and other poets, music and more")

Not quite so ambitious, but coming sooner, New Directions will be celebrating their 80th at the Greenlight Bookstore on May 20th (that's tonight!). Among those reading, Anne Carson, László Krasznahorkai, Rivka Galchen, John Keene, Bernadette Mayer, and Eliot Weinberger - Introduction by Mieke Chew. A "champagne reception", we're promised, will follow.   

We reported  a few months back on the sale of Bob Dylan's archive -  Tonight in Tulsa,  (getting a jump-start on Dylan's 75th) - "On A Night Like This - (A) Celebration of All Things Bob Dylan".

More (much more) Dylan on The Allen Ginsberg Project in the coming days.

Michael Seth Stewart's piercingly illuminating lecture on John Wieners, "Love in The Archive" is now on-line. Kudos to the ever-resourceful "Lost and Found" Project   

Todd Swindell is crowd-sourcing for the upcoming (July 6) Harold Norse Centennial 

Allen in Canada - Daniel Collins has a delightful memoir of accompanying Allen in Canada - 
"We don't have any books by Allen Ginsberg", she (the book clerk) says, just as Ginsberg comes to the counter. I look at him. He looks at me, then looks away. I look back at the woman. "Well, that's too bad because Mr Ginsberg is right here and might have autographed some books - had there been any".." 

Jack Kerouac in Lowell - (this one almost passed us by) - Police Chief Ray McKeon (recently passed on) had a poignant story (reported here) about Jack's drinking.

and speaking of Kerouac - the San Francisco Chronicle reports, just this past couple of days, a crucial development  - the settling of the court case and the immanent (June 16) auction in New York of  the legendary (Neal Cassady-to-Jack Kerouac)  "Joan Anderson Letter" -  "The (Cassady) family holds claim to the words on the manuscript (and) plans to publish it in some fashion" - "In advance of the auction…the yellowing pages, with typing on both sides, pencil and pen edits and an illustration, will make a national tour". Tom Lecky, "specialist and department head of books and manuscripts at Christie's auction house", is quoted in the article, estimating the value of the letter as being "between $400,000 and $600,000", but expecting "an international bidding war to drive the price skyward" - Asked to describe its contents, Lecky declares, "It's like trying to describe the contents of a John Coltrane sax solo. You have to read it to appreciate its magnitude"." 
Christie's announcement of the sale (posted yesterday) may be found here

Harold Norse 1980 Naropa Reading

                                                         [Harold Norse (1916-2009)]

[continuing from yesterday]

AG: Okay -  Are we about ready for Chapter two of the evening ? – Shall we go on now? -  Harold Norse is a classic Bohemian figure on the (North) American and European poetry scene, We first met, myself and Harold, in.. on the New York subway, around 34^th Street, in 1944, around Christmas-time, when I came down from Columbia University to visit Greenwich Village all by myself for the first time with a copy of Rimbaud and a red handkerchief tied around my neck. I think I had just met William Burroughs, maybe a few nights before, and this was my first foray into the Village, and there was a young guy sitting across the subway from me and it turned out to be Harold Norse, who, seeing my copy of Rimbaud and my red neckerchief and me reciting poetry in a lonesome subway car with him as the only auditor, introduced himself. And then we walked in Greenwich Village and he showed me where Hart Crane had lived, and told me all sorts of gossip about (W.H.) Auden . In 1939 when Auden first came to America, he was met at the boat by Harold Norse and Chester Kallman (who became Auden’s lover, and with Auden was Christopher Isherwood, who struck up acquaintance with Harold, who then lived a sort of bohemian life and knew the Brooklyn Heights apartment where Gypsy Rose Lee, (where) Auden lived with a large literary company, the bohemia of pre-War Europe recorded in Auden’s poem “I sit in one of the dives/On Fifty-second Street/ Uncertain and afraid…”, “September 1^st, 1939”…Harold had sent him to that gay bar and that was the dive of that celebrated poem. Harold continued writing, was living in Greenwich Village all during the early (19)40’s and mid (19)40s, visited Europe and lived a long time (in) Italy (and) France, traveling around, Greece later on. He translated the Roman Sonnets of  G.G.Belli  (a brilliant book, published by Jonathan Williams and Jargon Press, which received a great deal of favorable comment by William Carlos Williams, who said of his translations of the vernacular Roman dialect of Belli into vernacular Americanese – “You have breached a new lead, shown a new power of language which makes theories of composition so much blah” No one can do this kind of translation without genius for native language which you have shown, our American speech”.  So that was Williams’ early praise for Harold Norse’s demotic English (he was a student of Williams and one of the followers of that great school  - also knew the American Surrealists when they were in New York, was friends with Charles Henri Ford). Over the years, published, here in Denver, his first book, 1953, Allan Swallow – The Undersea Mountain.  Then, 1960, was the translations from Belli, Jargon Press. Macmillan, big-time, New York,1962, a book called The Dancing Beasts - Poems, Karma Circuit, done by Nothing Doing Press, London, 1967, Hotel Nirvana (which was selected poems, put out, belatedly, by City Lights, 1974). And then a huge collection of all of his work, put out by Gay Sunshine Press, Carnivorous Saint – Poems 1941-1976.  He edited the magazine from San Francisco  Bastard Angel – and by (the) Gay, Advocate, one of the..  in a critical review, was termed a "Catullan American", one of the few Amerians who had some of the spark of Catullus’ hardness in dealing with erotic themes. Harold Norse. 

                                                 [Harold Norse - Photograph by Nina Glaser]

HN: Just like to make a few little corrections in this summation. I didn’t go to meet Auden at the boat, I..my friend Chester Kallman who was at Brooklyn College with me came over and said that Auden and Isherwood are coming and they’re going to read in New York. Let’s go and sit in the front row and wink at them! – and that’s how we met.

Where was this? -  The hall? – the name of it I can’t remember but in the current biography of Auden that’s described, the biography of W.H.Auden by a man called Osborne [Charles Osborne], which I haven’t read fully, but I looked my name up in the index and found out that I had been quoted without my knowledge or permission about that, and I was also described as a blonde (Chester was a blonde and I wasn’t, but..)

When I saw Allen in the subway, Allen was seventeen at that time and there was nobody else in the subway and  it was about four o’clock in the morning , I heard him reciting and as the train  stopped and the roar ceased,  I recognized that it was French and that it was Rimbaud, but I don’t remember seeing a copy of Rimbaud in your hand (Allen), and I said to him when the train stopped again- “Rimbaud!” – and he said, “You’re a poet”, and that's how we ended up in Green-wich Village in my apartment….

The latest book is called Carnivorous Saint, which is not a  collection of all my work but it is a  collection of all the  poems that center around the gay theme, and I thought I had something like twenty-four or five of them, I kept finding more and more, and, going back to 1941 to 1976, and it turned out to be several hundred,

I believe  however that I’ll start this reading from some poems from Hotel Nirvana

The first one is called “For the Jewish Saint Teresa of Avila” – A scholar and a friend of mine called Gerald Brenan, who was about ninety years old and is an Anglo-Irish scholar of Spanish history (and lives in Spain) ,discovered that Saint Teresa of Avila, the patron saint of Spain, was a full-blooded Jewess, that her parents or her grandparents had converted, having been persuaded by the Inquisition to do (so).  “Saint Teresa, I love your witty sanctity..”…”… report the second coming on Flight 666” –

[Is this…? [Norse addresses the microphone] - it’s popping, yeah… can you hear me now? …no? ..how’s that..? can you hear that? ..ok…more distant?  (AG – no, (as you were), maybe six inches..] - [oh, that’s about enough – eight - that’ll stop the popping] – ok thank you)] 
     

I believe it was the same scholar Gerald Brenan who discovered the real reason why Garcia Lorca was killed by the Fascists. Most of us assume or believe that he was shot because he was a Communist but Brenan unearthed the facts that have been published in a book, Death in Grenada, in 1973 [were they?] - [Editorial note - Brenan was undoubtedly a pioneer in the investigation of the death of Lorca and deserves much credit but mention should also be made then of Ian Gibson and his exhaustive research] - The fact of the matter was that he (Garcia Lorca) was in love with the son of the police chief of Grenada and was making it with him. Now that’s why he was shot, And I tell the story in the first person of one of the Fascists who shot him and the names involved in it are those who participated. The facts are all true in the poem – “We bumped off your friend, the poet with the big fat head this morning…””…was a disastrous event…” [poem ends in media res] – 

“This poem is called “These Fears Are Real Not Paranoid” (I’m walking in silent spring, I do not feel like a million…”..”O Zen masters, quick! do something!’ –

next – a two-part poem, “You must have been a sensational baby “ (I love your eyebrows, said one, the distribution of your body hair is sensational..” …”The whole place trembled with lust”)

and this is a poem called “In November” which was written, I believe in November of (19)72….when I’d just come to San Francisco, I’d been out of the country fifteen years and I hadn’t had a book published in America for ten years, and.. this is what happened –  Norse reads “In November” -  (“In November, I lost my food stamps, the computer said I did not exist..”….”…  “…fifty-nine cents, a hundred-and-forty-five pounds and two good balls”)

This is a poem called “Remembering Paul Goodman”, in five sections, and the last section actually has a stanza in it about meeting Allen in the subway, this is a poem about the (19)40’s experience with Paul Goodman -  (“As I cross a windy street corner waiting for a bus…” ….[“Ginsberg high in the subway red kerchief around his neck recited Rimbaud in eerie dawn of  1944 drowned by the IRT. the flood of words across the isle from me and then departed for mad  mindmusic after we greeted the future”]……..”I do not eulogize dead men, he said, I find that fitting.”

I’d like to read a poem that is not necessarily autobiographical. Every time I read this poem, people ask me if the details are true and I have to tell them now, in advance rather than afterwards, that the vital statistics in tis poem are not autobiographical, it is a composite.  Norse reads “I’m Not A Man” ( I’m not a man, I can’t earn a living, buy new things for my family..”..”I’m not a man, I don’t want to destroy you”)   

“I am fighting on the lone front” (“I am fighting on a lone front, fighting propaganda with poetry..”…” I am fighting on the pubic front for my ever-loving sexuality”

Do you want to hear something dirty?  [Yeah] – Peter (Orlovsky) wants to hear something dirty. I’ve got a lot of it but I can’t find it . I must have cut out the dirty ones today.. hmm, well, Peter, I’ll have to read one that isn’t (dirty) – oh – I thought the whole book was dirty, now I don’t seem to be able to find anything. It’s weird. It’s extraordinary… jesus! – well, I don’t want to disappoint Peter or the audience, but..oh…hmm.. this is weird, maybe it isn’t a dirty book after all, I always thought it was..

I can read you a couple of dirty translations from..Catullus..

I’ll probably find all the dirty ones when I go back tonight, but..  ah, yes

[Norse reads from his translations of Catullus] - (“I am entrusting to you, Aurelius, all I love most in the world, this boy..”…”..his poems are under no such strict necessity”).

[and one more] - The one..my favorite among those..this is a… this one.. - (“O slickest thieves at the public baths…”…”...your ass-boy is too hairy to sell”).

(keeps looking for "something dirty") - I don’t seem to be able to find these dirty poems of mine – huh?.. I know, it’s impossible to find anything I look for -  no, it’s not dirty enough…

This is a cut-up of a picture poem [displays text], some of it has very small print, which I hope I can see, but it has illustrations of bar-bell, boys who are using bar-bells and doing body-building, and… which is part of the poem. You don’t have to see the whole thing, but I hope I can see these words.   I’m afraid I really can’t, in this light – oh..oh jesus! – sorry, I can’t see it, it’s done in different-sized print, that’s too bad. I see if I can put some light on this subject.

well, actually, I  would like (then) to close with a poem written about twenty-five years ago, which was called, it is..a ballad and it’s called  “The Ballad of Beautiful Boys” (“Whatever became of Hans, the German, tall and pale and hard as an oar/And where is Bruce, the college freshman, who made a javelin look small/And the Irish boy in the merchant marine.....”… “Where are the beautiful boys I knew once whose greatest dread was the touch of cunts?’)

                                            [Thannis in Hydra, 1964 - Photograph by Harold Norse]

[AG: Thank you Harold Norse. Peter Orlovsky will be the next reader, but first lets take a ten minute break. It’s now ten five we’ll begin again at ten fifteen] - [Editorial note - Peter Orlovsky's reading on this occasion can be found - here]

[Audio for the above can be found here, beginning at approximately thirty-five minutes in and concluding at the end of the tape]