[Allen Ginsberg, 1994, San Francisco - Photo by Jay Blakesberg]
Jay Blakesberg's wonderful photograph of a pensive Allen. It was Robert Frank's advice to Allen, the photographer (advice that he always took to heart and would tell other people) - always, in portraits, if at all possible, include the hands.
[Allen Ginsberg and Robert Frank, 1986, New York City - Photograph by Peter Hale]
News from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa - the 2014-2015 Allen Ginsberg Visiting Fellow has just been announced, and it will be - Kevin Killian - Kevin's visit will begin, on Friday February 6, with a lecture titled "The Color in Darkness", the following Monday events will continue with a reading and a book-signing.
[Kevin Killian]
"Joan Anderson letter" news - No auction (as originally planned) last week. Now the letter sits in legal limbo. David S Wills' piece, in Beatdom, "Reconsidering the Importance of the Joan Anderson Letter" is timely musing and well worth reading - "Beat fans and scholars are often guilty of perpetuating myths", Wills writes, and, "in order to take the movement seriously one needs to be critical and ask questions that are often unpleasant".. "now it is time that we ask whether the letter was as important as (Jack) Kerouac claimed. We need to acknowledge that Kerouac's obsession with (Neal) Cassady often blinded him to his friend's flaws, and that Cassady was far from a saint. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the contents of the letter - once published - living up to the hype."…"None of this means we should ignore the letter by any means, but rather that we should be skeptical and not carried away by the excitement of its discovery".
[Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)]
Beat scholarship - last month's European Beat Studies Conference in Morocco is now just a memory. Here's an "unofficial video record" (warning - if you can bear the highly disorientating soundtrack!)
More on the great Jim Koller, who's passing we noted last week. A gathering of memories and notes by friends may be found here. Here's another video (this, with his son, Bertie accompanying him on banjo and guitar and with an interview with fellow Maine poet, Steve Luttrell)
Jim, poignantly, wrote (ahead of time) his own "Last Will and Testament" - "I want only blue sky over me/I want the clouds, so many/of them variations, passing/changing as they pass./ I want the blackest nights filled with turning stars/I want birds to find me,/want the hot breath of animals./ The wind too shall pass,/on its way to places/I have been."
[James Koller (1936-2014)]
The big "Beat" news - So The Joan Anderson Letter auction scheduled by the auction house, Profiles In History, for December 17 has been "cancelled indefinitely", following threatened litigation by the Kerouac Estate and a counter-claim by the Neal Cassady Estate. Both argue that the letter is their rightful possession. "The Kerouac and Cassady Estates are not working together and have not contacted each other regarding the dispute", the San Francisco Chronicle pointedly notes..
Here's the same story via AP in The Denver Post
and via Reuters - "The reserve price for piece, at which serious bidding would begin, was set between $300,000 and $500,000, according to the auction house". Big money -
"We want to be nice to Jeannie (Jean Spinosa, the woman who found the letter), declares Jami Cassady of the Cassady Estate, "We don't want to cut her out of anything".
[Jean Spinosa, discoverer of "the Joan Anderson Letter" in front of the letter, on display at The Beat Museum in San Francisco, December 1, 2014 - Photograph by Katy Steinmetz for Time magazine]
Meanwhile, the Beat Museum continue their campaign on Indiegogo
Two-part celebrations this weekend in Manchester, England, at the Anthony Burgess Foundation - Nothing Is True/Everything is Permitted - celebrating the William Burroughs Centennial.
Among the highlights - (from "Nothing Is True") - "C.P.Lee performs a live spoken word performance, starting with a banishing ritual written by William Burroughs that segues to an introduction to the life and work of Lord Buckley.."..."Ruaridh Law/TVO presents a performance piece utilizing turntables, laptop and electronic instruments using Burroughs' own voice and readings of his work"... (and, from "Everything Is Permitted, on the Sunday) - "a series of Burroughs-inspired talks, discussions and presentations", featuring - Oliver Harris, Michael Horovitz, Andrew Biswell, John Sears, Patricia Allmer, Ken Hollings and Dik Jarmen.
Patrick Clement has an interesting project, 7786 Burroughs, William, "discovered amongst a photo archive of more than 20,ooo negatives, (a) previously unseen series of William Burroughs portraits". For more on that (and assistance with the project) see here
Chamberlain's controversial examination of the artist and nudity. Nudity and nakedness. Here's Allen's spirited defense of him in a 1964 catalog entry:
"Why am I interested in seeing myself naked? Because for years I thought I was ugly. I still do, but I no longer look at myself through my own eyes, I look out - my eyes look outward at my Desire, and I reach out to touch the bodies I love without fear that I'll be rejected because I am ugly. Because I don't feel ugly now, I feel me - more than that, I feel desirous, longing, lost, mad with impatience like fantastic old bearded Whitman to clasp my body to the bodies I adore. So I'm interested in nakedness. I love my old loves' nakedness. I love anyone's nakedness that expresses their acceptance of being born in this body, this flesh, on this planet that will die. So Chamberlain has painted every body naked - modern Joves, Ganymedes, Aphrodites, etc, if you want a tradition - modern friends as they really are to themselves…happy,victorious, still alive, photographic, fleshy, truthful to their own birth without clothes."
Jim Koller's death this past Wednesday leaves us breathless
(Young man asked the old "aren't you afraid of death?" and the old replied, "wouldn't make much sense at this point would it?")
Jane Freilicher's too (aged 90) - the muse of "the New York School"
The anniversary today of the suicide of Vachel Lindsay
1931 -Eighty-three years ago..
His doctors at the time discretely reported his death as having been the result of heart failure,
but it was actually suicide - from drinking, in manic despair, an almost-full bottle of domestic cleaner, Lysol
His famous last words? - "I got them before they could get me"
Allen's 1958 poem To Lindsay
Vachel, the stars are out
dusk has fallen in the Colorado Road
a car crawls slowly across the plain
in the dim light the radio blares its jazz
the heartbroken saleasman lights another cigarette
In another city 27 years ago
I see your shadow on the wall
you're sitting in your suspenders on the bed
the shadow hand lifts up a Lysol bottle to your head
your shade falls over on the floor.
Burroughs Centennial - Tomorrow, in London, the opening of the exhibition at the October Gallery William S Burroughs - All Out of Time and Into Space
The Joan Anderson Letter - Jerry Cimino at The Beat Museum has started an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to buy the letter, "to preserve it so it can be displayed publicly and later published" - but the Kerouac Estate also wants "custody" of the letter.
Bob Dylan song lyrics auctioned last night at Christies
- (and, surprisingly, finding no takers!)
Professor (Wendy Katz at the University of Nebraska) finds a "new poem" by Walt Whitman!
- (for William Cullen Bryant - "Let Glory diadem the mighty dead/Let monuments of brass and marble rise…")
- and fellowships! - More education news - The Allen Ginsberg Graduate Fellowship, the Anne Waldman Graduate Fellowship and the Anselm Hollo Graduate Fellowship (three new fellowships at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School's innovative MFA program), are awarded annually to incoming Creative Writing & Poetics students. To be considered for these fellowships, applicants are required to submit all required application materials to Naropa by the priority deadline, which is, (we hate to tell you) no later than December 14 (i.e in nine days time!) - Recipients will receive full funding (tuition and fees) and an $8000 (yes, $8,000) stipend, as well as a Graduate Instructor position. This is a remarkable and an extraordinary opportunity. For more information and details, e-mail jks@naropa.edu - but you have to move fast.
Talking of moving fast, our numbers are moving fast - 1200 + "Google Friend Connect" Followers, and counting (this, outside of all our Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr followers), if you haven't yet, might you consider joining?
And two hundred "Friday Weekly Round-Up"s, eh? - that's got to count for something. How about some more (a little more) feed-back (use of our "Comments" section)?
Sad news this week (and very much in our thoughts and prayers) poet, outlaw, bioregionalist, and legendary founder of Coyote's Journal and Coyote Books, James Koller suffered a devastating stroke last week, last Friday in Joplin, Missouri. Jim - "I believe that everything that exists has a spirit, and that these spirits remain even as we change our shapes. I believe it's possible to know these spirits. I understand the planet to be a unified & integrated reality, a whole with a spirit of its own. I think it's the business of humans to understand the spirits, to communicate & commiserate with them, for the well-being of the planet"
And news reaches us (late) of the death of another of Allen's old friends (on November 27, in Delhi) the artist Wynn Chamberlain. More on Wynn Chamberlain here, here and here.
