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 - 151

[Allen Ginsberg - Bloodsong - (edited by James Grauerolz) - Italian paperback, published by il Saggiatore, 2013]

Continuing from last week, (we can't seem to leave it alone!) Kill Your Darlings (see earlier digests here and here) continues to garner reviews (mostly positive ones) - Michael O'Sullivan in The Washington Post takes up the debate over the blurring of fiction and fact (in particular, the presentation of Lucien Carr - wait a minute, "the Lucian Carr character") - "You'd better like it complicated", he writes, "The film is awash in delicious and difficult ambiguities". 
These "delicious and difficult ambiguities" are perhaps part of the reason for a curiously contrasting critical response to the film, nowhere better on display than in "the city by the bay". Here's Anita Katz in the San Francisco Examiner - ("The Beats Come To Life In "Kill Your Darlings"") - "The film is an absorbing personal drama, an informative look at a literary movement's genesis, a lesson in gay history and a moving celebration of the creative spirit". Compare this with Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle ("Muddled Look At Beats") - "Despite it's general intelligence and worthy performances, "Kill Your Darlings" makes it difficult to see how the Beats ever caught on." 

More "Kill Your Darlings" reviews (all of them finding it hard not to acknowledge, at the very least, the energy in this project) -  see (for  example)  here and here, here and here




The other "Beat" movie playing, Michael Polish's adaptation of Kerouac's Big Sur, , similarly, has had critics both contrastingly enthusiastic and despairing. Stephen Holden in The New York Times - ""Big Sur" cracks the code of how to adapt Jack Kerouac for the screen. The secret is deceptively simple. Go to the source and stay there. The hot-wired energy and spontaneity of the Beat mystique are embedded in writing that distills its feverish essence better than any hyped-up action. The hard part is melding readings with live action but "Big Sur" makes it look so easy that you hardly notice the transitions". Holden gives high praise to Polish's screenplay - "a seamless blend of astutely chosen swatches from the novel" narrated by Kerouac (Jean-Luc Barr) alongside "scenes of his interactions with Neal Cassady, Neal's wife, Carolyn, and Neal's mistress (here re-named "Billie)". This emphasis on the text (as well as some undeniably "gorgeous" cinematography) is, for Holden, the film's particular strength. 
Not so for Shelia O'Malley, (writing in the space of the late Roger Ebert) - "Michael Polish's  "Big Sur"..is a strangely tepid experience", she declares, "for such searing psychological material". "The fault lies", she believes, "in the heavy reliance on voice-over (all (of which is) taken from the book) which distances us from what is happening onscreen. Scenes are not allowed to unfold, to explode, to develop, to sit there, because the voice-over is too insistent, interjecting itself every other moment. What would have happened if (it) had been used more sparingly? What if the beautiful collage effect of Kerouac's time in the woods (the film is stunningly beautiful) had been allowed to develop on its own, leaving more room for interpretation, chaos, life? There are moments that are allowed to breathe but they are few and far between"
John DeFore in his review in  the Washington Post  recognizes this too, calling it a "beautiful and sometimes affecting film", but "its powerful literary voice..threatens to overwhelm the director", and, as a result, it "sometimes feels like a beautiful illustration, rather than an adaptation, of Kerouac's prose". It's "an understandable impulse" ("with Kerouac so eloquent on the subject of Cassady's masculine appeal or the incomparable ache of awakening after four days of drinking"), but, regrettably, "an uncinematic one".
It's important to point out that "Big Sur" is not a fun-fest, so its distance and restraint is plausibly in keeping with its subject-matter (a point that DeFore comes to at the end of his review) - and Robert Abele in the LA Times - "the muted emptiness of the ill-fated sojourn wills its way towards something like existential meaningfulness".."there's a strange heft to its hollowness".

Before leaving the matter of Beat movies, we couldn't resist quoting again from our old
bête noire, Rex Reed (see here for his pompous dismissal of "Kill  Your Darlings"). Here's Reed on "Big Sur" - "Fans of all that Beatnik self-indulgence find a literary significance in Kerouac's writing that has always eluded me. Apparently, they eventually wore out the author too. The deadly screenplay (in the form of voice-over narration) is culled by writer-director Michael Polish from the verbose novel without regard for an audience's patience. Don't worry if you don't connect. There's nothing to connect to. The characters are never developed and nothing ever happens. The film has a restless, nomadic quality similar to Kerouac's lifestyle, but [Reed quoting Gertrude Stein] there's no there there. Such a surfeit of ranting despair and self-pity led to a nervous breakdown that signaled the end of the Beat Generation." - Did it? -  Moving on..  

Steven Fama's extraordinary celebration on the occasion of the publication of The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia is not to be missed. It can be accessed here.

Ron Padgett will be reading from his Collected Poems this coming Wednesday at the St Marks Poetry Project in New York City.

Jon Day reviews Iain Sinclair's American Smoke in FT (the Financial Times), and Gerard DeGroot ("A wild, obsessive homage to the writers of the Beat Generation") reviews it for the Daily Telegraph - here 
James Campbell interviews him in The Guardian about the book (and about the Beats and other writers) here  (Sukhdev Sandhu's review in The Observer is here)

Lou Reed remembered by Patti Smith (in The New Yorker) "..I didn't understand his erratic behavior or the intensity of his moods, which shifted, like his speech patterns, from speedy to laconic. But I understood his devotion to poetry and the transporting quality of his performances. He had black eyes, black t-shirt, pale skin. He was curious, sometimes suspicious, a voracious reader and a sonic explorer. An obscure guitar pedal was for him another kind of poem..He was our generation's New York poet, championing its misfits as Whitman had championed its workingman and Lorca its persecuted.."

Laurie Anderson, his widow,'s obituary note is here 

oh, and Happy Birthday Alice Notley!

Friday’s Weekly Round-Up 13

[Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1957, after winning the Howl trial - photo by Bob Campbell]

Howl Movie Opening in England

In advance of next week’s UK opening at London’s Curzon cinema on Shaftesbury Avenue, James Campbell has a review in The Guardian – “Howl At The Movies - Is the new film about Allen Ginsberg and the Howl obscenity trial a little too sane?” (Well, we, of course, would say no!).

“I once filmed the middle-aged Ginsberg reading "Howl" to an audience of professors at a literary conference in New York. It was about as wild as a Women's Institute evening.”, writes The Independent’s Kevin Jackson, (we think, he’s being tongue-in-cheek here)

His “elegy for the tragic history of poetry on film”, usefully places the Howl movie in a much wider filmic context.

Matthew Sweet will be discussing the film on BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves this upcoming Tuesday night. Tune in if you can.

Meanwhile the reviews continue to roll in (and of the DVD too….

Photographs and Description

...reviews of the photographs also. This, from England’s Creative Review (with – “the beat goes on” - a not-so-creative sub-header! – “the beat goes on”! - When will editors finally put that tiresome cliché to rest!)

not that we’re suggesting the Boulder Weekly’s “Babes, booze and Buddhism” is much of an improvement! Adam Perry reviews Johanna Demetrakas’ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche documentary (noted here last week) under that lead.

There is also a Variety review of the film here

Music

Producer Hal Willner will be joining Philip Glass (“Hal Willner reads poetry by Allen Ginsberg accompanied by the solo piano of Philip Glass”) in a performance at John Zorn’s East Village (New York City) music venue, The Stone on Feb 22 (this Tuesday),

Michael Brown’s 2009 composition for cello and piano. Five A.M. “after Allen Ginsberg” (after Allen’s poem of the same title), recorded at the Rose Studio at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center can be seen in performance and accessed here

“Drunk Chicken / America”, Allen’s collaboration with U2 (previously only available on the 2007 Remastered Deluxe Version of their album, The Joshua Tree, is now being included in a brand-new U2 Collection, Duals – regrettably, a fan-club-only CD

“A Western Ballad”, another interpretation, of, this time, a very early poem of Allen’s, (by singer-songwriter Shannon McNally, announced as the title-track of her newest recording from Sacred Sumac Records), has been temporarily delayed, but will be available and in the stores March 22nd (Allen collaborated with arranger Mark Bingham on a new arrangement of this piece in the late 1980’s. Bingham waited till he had the right singer, Shannon McNally, to record it)

Small World

Finally, spare a thought for Mark Heck (yes, that’s his name!) and his shot for eternity through Allen! (story courtesy the Syracuse Post-Standard)