Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 198

Tonight, Allen Ginsberg in the Netherlands/1983 Revisited - Hans Buhrs, Joep Bremmers, Eddie Woods, Jacq Palinckx, The Mondriaan Quartet…..



this Sunday at La Commune Cafe in Oakland, California - Michael McClure and Diane di Prima, and Ouroboros (Sheldon Brown, Clark Coolidge, Andrew Joron, Joseph Noble)…

Gary Snyder recently appeared in Berkeley to celebrate Norman Waddell's translations  of Zen master Hakuin Zenji (Hakuin Ekaku) 's Poison Blossoms From A Thicket of Thorn -
He (Hakuin) is best known for the famous Zen koan, "What is the sound of a single hand clapping", (which, Snyder points out, is actually poor/inaccurate translation, since the koan, in the original Japanese, "never included a(ny) reference to "clapping"")

               From New York - The Q & A following the recent showing of Howard Brookner's Burroughs - The Movie at the New York Film Festival (featuring Aaron Brookner, Jim Jarmusch, Tom DiCillo, and James Grauerholz) just went up on You Tube and may be accessed here. 

Blandine Longre's translations of selected poems of Gregory Corso -  The Happy Birthday of Death (with an introduction by Paul Stubbs and an afterword by Kirby Olson) has just been published in a fine bilingual edition by the Black Herald Press in Paris

  

More American-poetry-in-France. Don't miss the increasingly formidable [sic] "Collection américaine" of the Nantes-based  joca seri publishing house, edited by Olivier Brossard. This imprint, specializing in translations of the classic "New York School" poets has published groundbreaking French translations of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara and Ron Padgett, amongst others. Its most recent title - Il est douze heures plus tard - Stéphane Bouquet's translations of James Schuyler (with a cover illustration by Joe Brainard)



The (third) European Beat Studies Conference just concluded this week in Tangier, Morocco. We'll be reporting more about that in the weeks to come. 

Patti Smith performing at the Vatican - worthy of note

Van Morrison's City Lights book (poetry/song lyrics) has just been published by Faber in England

Bob Dylan remains…. Bob Dylan 

See You Later Allen Ginsberg!

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 87

[Wade Williams]

James Franco, Daniel Radcliffe... Wade Williams - here comes another Ginsberg-on-screen (admittedly, in this case, in a more minor part). Pinchas Perry's full-length feature, The Chicago 8, ("based on actual court transcripts of 8 anti-war protestors, on trial for conspiring to cause riots in the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago"), opens next month (not un-coincidentally) on the opening day of the 2012 Democratic Convention (September 4). Thomas Ian Nicholas is Abbie Hoffman, Philip Baker Hall is Judge Julius Hoffman , Orlando Jones plays Bobby Seale. Williams, the actor playing Allen, is an alumnae of Rutgers University, as it turns out. As our good friend Eliot Katz points out: "Nice to have an actor with New Jersey in his background playing Allen!"

Steve Finbow's critical biography, Allen Ginsberg (in the Reaktion Books "Critical Lives" series) is finally out (Steve was a sometime assistant here at Ginsberg Central). The book is available direct from Reaktion Books in the UK, (or, for those of you reading this in the US, from here, (it's US distributors - the University of Chicago)).

Marc Olmsted, whose memories of Allen we've featured before in this space, joins the illustrious company of in-depth interviewees on Michalis Limnios' exemplary Blues and Greece site - "Poet/Filmmaker/Musician Marc Olmsted talks about Burroughs, Ginsberg, Leary, Beat Poetry and (the) Dharma". The full interview with Marc may be read here. (also, in that space, don't miss the illuminating interview with Charles Plymell)

and Anne Waldman gives an informative interview to GALO (Global Art Laid Out) here

Joanne Kyger on Richard Brautigan? - We're avidly following Joanne's Harriet posts. Her most recent musings and observations can be accessed here.

Finally, word up on two essential readings (not to be missed) recently added to the treasures of the ever-essential PennSound - John Wieners in San Francisco, March 25, 1990 (followed by a suitably challenging Q & A session with poet Kevin Killian) - and, (rare indeed) video of the late great James Schuyler.

..And word just in of the passing (after a long illness) of legendary Beat photographer, Larry Keenan (three of his iconic images of Allen and Bob Dylan may be seen here - and more images here and here). Speaking of iconic images... how many faces can you recognize in this classic shot? A sweet man, he will be missed.

[Larry Keenan - City Lights Bookstore, last gathering of poets/artists of the Beat Generation, 1965 - 22 x 18cm - black-and-white print - courtesy Smithsonian Archives of American Art]

Friday's Weekly Round-Up 1

[Allen Ginsberg & Steven Taylor, Passaic Falls, Paterson, NJ, May 1978. photo: c. Terry Sanders]

NEW JERSEY ‘S BARD

Allen was always proud of – and rightly so – his New Jersey roots. This past weekend, several young poets from that State gathered together at The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College for the annual Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, “honoring Allen Ginsberg’s Contribution to American Literature.”

In a related story, Allen is - and, perhaps surprisingly, given the company - among those nominated for the 2011 New Jersey Hall of Fame in what appears to be a spirited local boostering enterprise. Curiously under the “General” not the “Arts and Entertainment” category (movie stars like John Travolta and Bruce Willis are among the latter, not to mention Queen Latifah and singer Tony Bennett!). Voters are encouraged to vote on-line and the top vote-getters will be officially inducted in the Spring. Seems tho’, you have to vote for someone in each of the categories, you can’t just vote for Allen – oh well, he’s already a de facto New Jersey hall-of-famer, as far as we’re concerned!

HOWL MINUTAE...

Seems the current omnipresence of Howl has summoned up all sorts of feelings and nostalgia and memories. One tiny annotation that you might well have missed (it appeared buried in another blog's Comments section) is from New Yorker Stefan Jones who writes:

""who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to...".My grandparents owned Fugazzis, and ran it at the time Howl was written. My father tended bar there for a short time, while in grad school.It was on 6th, a few doors down from the Waverly theater. The building was torn down and a fast food place installed. According to my parents, the clientele were old Italian guys who came for the polenta and bacala special, and beatniks.I have vague toddler memories of the place, and my grandparents' apartment up above".

Anybody else out there got any site-specific Howl memories?


[Bill Katz & James Schuyler, November 7, 1987. photo. c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]

JAMES SCHUYLER

Someone kindly pointed out in our comments that November 9 was Jimmy Schuyler's birthday as well as Anne Sexton's. We're particularly keen on Schuyler here, and it just so happens one of our frequent contributors, Simon Pettet, was editor on a number of his books, the most recent being Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems published earlier this year.



The photo find of the week is this one by Douglas Gilbert of Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg oustside Albert Grossman's house house in Woodstock, NY 1964. That's the same house the cover of Bringing it All Back Home was shot in a year later, where Dylan's pictured sitting with Sally Grossman. We found if off Jody's When you Awake page, but the full book Forever Young published by DaCapo Press is available and has plenty more interesting images.

أغنيــــــة (قصيدة مترجمة)

Last but not least, we came across this Arabic translation of "Song" posted by London based Libyan, Ghazi Gheblawi on his blog. Anyone with better Arabic skills than us have any take on the translation?

أغنيــــــة (قصيدة مترجمة)

للشاعر: آلن جينسبيرج

الحب هو

عبء العالم.

تحت وطأة

العزلة،

تحت وطأة

اللا اكتفاء

العبء،

العبء الذي نحمله

هو الحب.

من يستطيع أن ينكر؟

أنه في الاحلام

يلامس

الجسد،

في الفكر

يبني

معجزةً،

في الخيال

يتعذب

حتى يولد

في إنسان –

يطل من القلب

مشتعلاً بنقاء –

لأن الحب،

هو عبء الحياة،

لكننا نواصل بارهاق

حمل العبء،

لذا فإننا يجب أن نسترح

اخيراً،

في احضان الحب،

يجب أن نسترح في احضان

الحب.

لا راحة

بلا حب،

لا نوم

بلا احلام

عن الحب –

سواء أكنت طائشاً أو هادئاً

مهووساً بالملائكة

أو الآلات،

فإن الامنية الاخيرة

هي الحب

ــ لن تكون مرةً،

لا تستطيع انكارها،

لا تستطيع كبتها

إن انكرتها:

العبء ثقيلٌ جداً

ــ يجب أن تمنح

بلا مقابل

كما تُمنح الفكرة

في العزلة

بكل اسرافها الباذخ.

الاجساد الدافئة

تلمع في الظلمة

معاً،

تتحرك الكف

إلى مركز

الجسد،

ترتعش البشرة

بفرح

وتصل الروح

مبتهجة إلى العين –

نعم، نعم،

ذلك ما اردته،

اردت دائماً،

اردت دائماً،

أن اعود

إلى الجسد

حيث ولدت.