Remembering Huncke

Twenty years on. It's scarcely imaginable. Herbert Huncke, "Beat Godfather" died on this day.  In memoriam, our good friend Laki Vazakas has provided us with this new Huncke footage - Huncke reading three poems in the Chelsea Hotel, New York, February 7, 1994.

February 4th 1994 - "Long am I overdue It doesn't matter.."…"A perfection rare of exquisite beauty"
"Comments vague threats broken noses.."…."reading their brand of sentiment on and on"
"There are other things I could do.."…."something of the energy flow remains, to encourage"

Remembering Huncke

Here's an accompanying note from Laki:

Today, August 8th, marks the 20th anniversary of Herbert Huncke's passing.

He lived a hard, jagged, full life. 

He was honest about his dark side.

But those of us who were fortunate to know Herbert as a friend also experienced his gentle wisdom, his wry wit, and his eternal cool.

For someone who had lost almost a decade of his life to incarceration, Huncke was remarkably generous with his time, his stories, his candor.

I think of Herbert quite often, envisioning him sitting at his desk in room 828 of the Chelsea, looking out the window as the sky morphed from azure to taxi yellow and finally to his beloved crimson.

I think of the community of friends who looked after Herbert in his final years.  Jerome Poynton, Raymond Foye, Tim Moran and other folks in the Chelsea did all they could to care for Huncke as his health began to fail.

I think of Dimitri Mugianis, James Rasin, Wylie Nash, Jeremiah Newton, Edgar and Helen Oliver, Jack Walls, Paul Romero, Anna Lee Simpson and others who visited and spent substantial time with Herbert.

I think of Ben Schafer's stellar work to edit and compile much of Herbert's writing in The Herbert Huncke Reader.

I also recall visiting Herbert in Beth Israel the night before he died.  His breathing had become laborious, but over the lull of morphine, he raised his voice to share these words: "Tomorrow night, we're gonna have a pow-wow.  Talk among ourselves." 

I remember the way he enunciated and elongated the words pow-wow.

Anyone who was touched by Huncke's unpretentious, nonchalant charisma understands the significance of those two syllables.  Herbert valued the company of his friends, the fine art of conversation, the small details and chance connections that illuminated his midnight stories.

I thought I'd share this video of Herbert reading three of his poems at the Chelsea in 1994.   He was recovering from a broken shoulder, and pneumonia, after falling on the ice.  He reveals his battle scar at the end of the clip.

Huncke wasn't afraid to show his scars.

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 257

[Cadets read "Howl", February 19, 1991, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia. Photo Copyright © Gordon Ball, 2006.]

Gordon Ball's iconic photograph of cadets at Virginia Military Institute reading copies of Howl  has, of course, a back-story. Occasioned by Iain Sinclair's review-article, "Retro-Selfies" in a recent London Review of Books and Alan Baragona's letters-to-the-editor reply, John May in The Generalist tracks the tale. Quoting Baragona ('the guy who.. arranged for Ginsberg to visit the Academy"), he writes: 

"Iain Sinclair is within his rights to scorn the co-opting of Beat Generation rebelliousness as a way to defang it but he is mistaken in using Allen Ginsberg's visit to the Virginia Military Institute in 1991 and my friend Gordon Ball's well-known photograph of cadets reading Howl to make his point…It's true that some cadets, administrators, alumni, and faculty were unhappy about it, though not because of Ginsberg's homosexuality or drug use so much as for his pacifism during the first Gulf War. But there were also many people in all those categories who were excited by the visit, and the administration supported us, even requiring the entire corps to attend (his) poetry reading. Ginsberg was aware of this and at the intermission told the cadets that as far as he was concerned they had fulfilled their obligation and were free to leave. Roughly two-thirds of the corps stayed for the second half. Afterwards, cadets crowded around Ginsberg to speak with him and later lined up at the bookstore to get their copies of Howl autographed…. What you see in Gordon's photo is not frowning, but concentration, weariness, and some confusion as Ginsberg walked students through this challenging poem. This is a class of freshmen, few, if any, are English majors. How do you expect them to look?"


Baragoma notes that Allen stayed for a whole week, recited "Howl" publicly for the first time in ten years, and, aside from the public reading, conducted a workshop, for any  students who might be interested, in transcendental meditation. 
Far from staged, or a study in contempt, Ball's photo registers a very touching and very thoughtful and sincere moment in "meeting of the minds"

Hilary Holladay (Herbert Huncke's biographer) interviews maverick journalist and all-around Beat-o-phile Jan Herman this month in International Times.

HH: How would you sum up the significance of the Beats as writers rather than personalities?

JH: Kerouac has had a huge influence on readers worldwide. I'm sure more people have read On The Road than ever read "Howl". But Ginsberg may be more significant a writer than Kerouac in terms of literary impact because of what I believe is the long-lasting influence of "Howl" on poets and poetry itself. I don't think On The Road has had an equivalent influence on novelists, notwithstanding its popularity"
For more of the interview - see here

From the new collection, Wait Till I'm Dead - UnCollected Poems, the LA Times features the poem, "Spring night, at four a.m.", a poem from May 1976 ("Spring night four a.m./Garbage lurks by the glass windows/Two guys light a match…") 

- and Craig Morgan Teicher, reviewing the book - "One doesn't read this book because these poems in particular are important, but because it's Ginsberg, whose importance is unquestionable. Among his many roles in 20th century culture - '60's protest jokester [sic], Zen ambassador, literary lion - he was also, for many, the gateway poet." "These", Teicher goes on, "are not unlike other Ginsberg poems - fierce, funny, libidinous, subversive - but here they afford a fresh chronological tour of Ginsberg's life, which is also one version of the story of the second half of the 20th century."

And - "Ginsberg made his own meaning of the present tense: His poems are set insistently in the now; their power isn't in particular lines so much as the whole aesthetic, the continuous decision to return, again and again, to his own mind and perceptions, like a meditator to his breathing. He treats everything with an utterly absorbing present-tense vividness, which this book lets us view through grown-up eyes".

For a less "grown-up" review, a curmudgeon counterpoint, there's the predictably sour response from one Micah Mattix, "assistant professor of literature at Houston Baptist University", in the right-wing Washington Free Beacon -  Under the provocative headline, "Allen Ginsberg-Bore", he writes:

 "...one thing Ginsberg isn't is original, or to put it more accurately. he is original but almost always in the same way…his work as a whole is surprisingly predictable…(and) it's not just Ginsberg's syntax that is repetitive….Sometimes the metaphors make sense. Other times they are an end in themselves, and, freed of any obligation to be meaningful, they are the easiest things to create…The accumulated effect of all this…is not shock but a numbing boredom…Every writer has a limited bag of tricks….the problem with Ginsberg's tricks is that they don't work,, or not anymore, or, if they still do, only partially…There is a Ginsberg that is worth reading, but what he needs is a volume of poems about half the size of the current 480-page Selected Poems. In other words, a very selective selected poems and not more uncollected poetry…" 

Has not the reviewer heard of The Essential Ginsberg? (indeed, the now still-troubling reviewer-neglect for that particular book) - Here's some valuable notes if you're using that as a teaching tool. 

The upcoming planned Pompidou Center Beat exhibition in Paris continues to develop. Here's further word on it.

Billy Woodberry's Bob Kaufman movie, When I Die, I Won't Stay Dead, premiered in New York last week. Stephen Meisel in The Cornell Daily Sun addresses the marginalization of Kaufman.  Here's the cover of Kaufman's Pocket Poets City Lights volume (from 1967):

and Kaufman in French translation:

Huerga & Fierro next month in Spain, will publish the first ever (bilingual - English-Spanish) edition of Kaufman's poetry.

An account of last weekend's Wichita Vortex Sutra celebrations - here

Bert Stratton, looking back to college days too, recalls (fondly) "How Allen Ginsberg Messed Me Up" (in the Ann Arbor Observer)  

More book news (and great book news):

Just out (just reprinted by New York Review of Books), Bob Rosenthal (Allen's long-time secretary)'s "70's Cult Classic', Cleaning Up New York.  Richard Hell writes "I first read Cleaning Up New York when it was published in the 1970's and I've been recommending it to people  ever since. It's one of those great, rare works the style of which - immaculate, with unexpected descriptor glints, and funny,low-key frankness - perfectly embodies its subject, namely the revelation of soft shine in humble corners of New York. It's a miracle and you don't have to be clean to appreciate it. And Luc Sante writes, "Bob Rosenthal's Cleaning Up New York is a perfect little gem of a book. There is not one wasted or misplaced word in this chronicle, which manages to contain an awful lot of the world in its few pages. It's not only about the city and its range of denizens, but also about the art of living, the satisfaction of humble work, the way poetry arises from daily experience, and if that weren't enough, it also includes really useful advice about cleaning!"  

and, "keeping it in the family", Aliah Rosenthal (Bob's son and Allen's godson) has a book out - a book of poems - "Son of A…". For more information on that see here  

Herbert Huncke Centennial

["Old-timer & survivor, Herbert E Huncke, Beat Literary Pioneer, early decades thief, who introduced Burroughs, Kerouac & me to floating population hustling & drug scene Times Square 1945. From '48 on, he penned remarkable musings, Collected as autobiographical vignettes, anecdotes & storyteller's tales in the classic The Evening Sun Turned Crimson (Cherry Valley, 1970) and later Guilty of Everything. Here age 78 in basement back-yard, his apartment East 7th Street, near Avenue D, New York, May 18, 1993" - (Photograph and Inscription by Allen Ginsberg)]  

January 9 1915, the birthday of Herbert Huncke, original Beat - yes, today marks the day, the official day of the Herbert Huncke Centennial. There'll be a film-showing, as we mentioned last week, of Laki Vazakas' extraordinary documentary, Huncke and Louis,  (in Lowell, not so far from his birthplace, in Greenfield, Mass), tonight, to mark the occasion, and, next week, a big gathering in San Francisco at the Beat Museum featuring Laki Vazakas, Hilary Holladay, Ben Schafer, Dennis McNally, Brenda Knight, Regina Marler and Tate Swindell 

Meantime, Huncke on the Allen Ginsberg Project -

There's some invaluable resources. Don't miss our four previous birthday postings
  - here, here, here and here 

His memorable 1982 workshop at the Jack Kerouac Conference at Naropa is available (with transcription)  here

Our note on Hilary Holladay's 2013 biography, American Hipster - here

A shout-out to the sadly out-of-print Herbert Huncke Reader here



here's a selection of Laki Vazakas videos  (including, first off, this - a Q & A from a 1995 visit to the University of Connecticut and Ann Charters)



and this (1994, in New York  at Cafe Nico) 




Here's, From Dream to Dream,  Huncke recorded in 1994 in Brugge, Belgium

Here's another (this time Amsterdam) recording

Alongside the essential Huncke and Louis footage, there's also James Rasin's The Burning Ghat (1990) (Huncke (and Louis Cartwright's) only non-documentary acting roles)

and take a look at this - pages from (and notes on) Huncke's legendary journals

Huncke Tea Company, the official web-site of the Herbert Huncke Estate, is now an on-going essential resource. See here for (amongst other things) Allen's December 5 1965 letter to Herbert, dutifully transcribed by his literary executor and Huncke-0-phile, Jerome Poynton  (there's still a few places in deciphering where perhaps you can help)

More Herbert Huncke tomorrow

Friday's Weekly Round Up - 139

Sometime last Monday, the one millionth page-viewing of The Allen Ginsberg Project took place. Thank you anonymous page-viewer. We sort of like the idea of not knowing who you are. Thank you all our page-viewers, all our visitors, all our regulars (most especially, our "Google Friends" - here's another request/invite to become a "Google Friend", if you're not already one - also, another previously-offered request, don't be shy in getting back to us on individual posts, using the "Comments" button).

Now, on with our regular "Friday Round Up". 

Well, a relatively quiet one this week. Patti Smith (and collaborator/accompanist, Philip Glass), apparently, rocked the house with "The Poet Speaks", their homage to Allen, at the Edinburgh Festival on Tuesday night. Here's David Pollock's rave review in The Independent (Patti evokes Whitman in her sweet encomium - "Allen, despite Allen, contained multitudes"). Here's another review.   

El Habib Louai (whose Arabic translation of "America" we featured a few weeks back) and Paul E Nelson (who has also been featured on this blog) got together last night at the North Cascades Institute as part of their Beats on the Peaks event. Paul previews his talk, and features audio of El Habib Louai, (from Sunday, reading at the Spring Street Center, in Seattle) here. 

Hilary Holladay, whose biography of Beat legend, Herbert Huncke we featured last week, is herself interviewed here.

Nanao Sakaki  - We're always pleased to spread the word about Nanao Sakaki. Here's Steve Heilig's recent appraisal/paean to him in the Huffington Post -  "Nanao Sakaki Breaks The Mirrors - An Appreciation of a One-of-a-Kind Poet".  

Memes - we've asked you to be wary of before (incidentally, does anyone know the exact source for the oft-quoted but rarely-cited "Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture" - purportedly by Allen?). Alexis C Madrigal in The Atlantic tracks down, this past week, the "fakelore" of a visual artifact, (a meme, it turns out) of a supposed Burroughs-Kerouac moment.

William Burroughs Centennial next year. What will you be doing to celebrate on February 5? 

Herbert Huncke - American Hipster

American Hipster - Hilary Holladay's long-awaited biography of the legendary Herbert Huncke - is now out.
Holladay, former director of the Kerouac Center for American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell (and, in that capacity, long-time co-ordinator of the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac celebrations) now teaches at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. 
Here she is, discussing the book on WAMU (American University radio) with Allison Quantz, (recorded earlier in the year).

She recently (just last month, in fact) gave a presentation of the book in San Francisco, at The Beat Museum. 
Here's their pre-view/over-view.

"Hilary Holladay does a magnificent job of documenting Huncke's high-and-low cultural accomplishments..An essential book", writes historian Douglas Brinkley - "The most comprehensive and accessible tome of Herbert Huncke created to date", declares Stephen Bergman - and, Amos Lassen - "an intelligent look at the man and the research is amazing"

Simultaneous with American Hipster is the release (on Tate Swindell's Unrequited Records) of the CD - Guilty of Everything

For an immediate dip into his extraordinary narrative prose, see here

The recently-conceived Huncke Tea Company promises to be an important Huncke source (check out their blog)  

The Allen Ginsberg Project features Huncke (frankly, essential viewing) - here, here and here


[Hilary Holladay in San Francisco (Alley Cat Bookstore), signing copies of American Hipster, July 2013, via Huncke Tea Company]

More Huncke tomorrow (stay tuned!) - transcription of his 1982 workshop given at the Jack Kerouac Conference at Naropa

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 136

[Allen Ginsberg's old shoes (a pair of sneakers made in then-communist Czechoslovakia) and a
letter from Lawrence Ferlinghetti - part of the Allen Ginsberg Archives at Stanford University]



An interesting review/profile/spotlight, coming off Bill Morgan's recent talk at Stanford, the home of Allen's Archive  - and an enthused response (to that curious thing - the poetry archive) lead off the Friday Round-Up this week. 

and we mentioned already Peter Orlovsky's archives, right?

Pat Nolan's "The Quantum of Kerouac" in the current Poetry Flash is definitely worth a read. 

David Barnett in The Guardian also has the Kerouac bug.

[Some of Jack Kerouac's Personal Effects - on display at The New York Public Library,  2011] 



San Francisco's Beat gathering last week, the Beat Reunion,  gets a tv profile from reporter Rebecca Bowring here. (Featured are interviews/sound bytes with Jerry Cimino,  Alan Kaufman - and the glorious octogenarian Beat, ruth weiss).

Hilary Holladay's  Herbert Huncke biography, American Hipster gets two San Francisco airings - tonight, a "multi-media presentation" at the Beat Museum - and tomorrow, (a) "reading (and) book-signing, (complete with) rare film clips", at Alley Cat Books over on 24th Street. 

Jan Herman takes the occasion to recall his fleeting encounters with the man (and includes his New York Times Book Review review of Huncke's "Guilty of Everything") - here.

We'll have more on American Hipster in the weeks to come.

Herbert Huncke (1915-1996)

Beat aficionados, today is the birthday of Herbert Huncke, "the original Beat". Comprehensive info' on him is available here, here and here.

American Hipster, Hilary Holiday's long-awaited biography is due out this Spring (a brief excerpt from the opening chapter can be read here).

and, for those of you who missed it, there's a quaint story Jonathan Lethem tells in a recent (October 2011) issue of the New Yorker. "Allen Ginsberg had taken a carton of his collection "Planet News" and autographed every copy "To Herbert from Allen with love". He then gave them to Huncke to sell.." Now read on..

Oh, and did we mention Huncke's spoken word CD, From Dream to Dream (1994), including the classic story, "The Evening Sun Turned Crimson"? - Yes, we do believe we did.