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William Burroughs - 1981 Naropa Reading
The photo above (taken by Allen) is from some five years later, ("William S Burroughs ready to leave "Obie Benz's loft", 33 Greene Street, Manhattan, December 16, 1986"), but the Burroughs visage,...
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Expansive Poetics - 77 (Sergei Esenin - 2)
[Sergei Esenin (1895-1925)].. So, Esenin broke loose from (Nikolay) Klyuev, who was very demanding (sexually, I imagine, as well as morally). He didn't want Esenin to be running around Russia as a big...
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Expansive Poetics 87 - (Cezanne's Methodology)
[Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) - Self Portrait (1879-80) - oil on canvas, 33.7 x 24.7 cms via Oskar Reinhart Art Collection, Winterthur, Switzerland]AG: (So) (Guillaume) Apollonaire's "Zone"- We have...
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Expansive Poetics - 88 - Jules Laforgue
[Jules Laforgue (1860-1887) - (Photo - Portrait -aged 25)]AG: So enough of this bullshit, now to "Zone", and it's his (Apollinaire's) greatest poem, and it's spoken of as the first modern poem of the...
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Expansive Poetics - 89 - Guillaume Apollinaire's Zone
[translated in 1950, this is the cover to the 1972 Dolmen Press, Dublin edition of Guillaume Apollinaire's Zone translated by Samuel Beckett, the first seperate appearance of the text to appear in...
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Alex Katz
[Alex Katz - Allen Ginsberg 1[study], 1985. Oil on board. 20 x 16 inches.]The American artist,Alex Katz turns 87 today - 87 years young - Happy Birthday, Alex.From an interview with Alex Katz by...
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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 183
"Jahweh and Allah Battle". We thank our good friend Steve Silberman for his reminder about Allen's "eternally prescient" 1974 poemJaweh with Atom BombAllah cuts throat of InfidelsJaweh’s armies beat...
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Allen Ginsberg's Proust Questionnaire
The Proust Questionnaire is a questionnaire named after the one famously responded to byMarcel Proust (he actually took the questionnaire twice (once in 1885-86, when he was only a teenager, and again...
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Expansive Poetics 90 - (Apollinaire and TS Eliot)
[Allen Ginsberg's Annotated Copy of The Waste Land]AG: The comparison to "The Waste Land"of this (Apollinaire's "Zone"), particularly, "You are alone the morning is almost here/The milkmen rattle their...
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Happy Birthday John Ashbery
\[John Ashbery, iconoclast, with a baseball-bat, fromRudy Burckhardt's Mounting Tension (1950); painted by Larry Rivers ("Pyrography: Poem and Portrait of John Ashbery II" (1977); photographed by Lynn...
View ArticleExpansive Poetics - 91 Apollinaire - Le Pont Mirabeau)
[The voice of Guillaume Apollinaire, recorded at the laboratory of Abbé M. Rousselot, December 24th, 1913, reading his poetry - "Le Pont Mirabeau" and "Marie"] AG: Incidentally, there's a recording of...
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Expansive Poetics 92 - (Verlaine - Chanson D'Automne)
[Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)][Marlene Dietrich reading Paul Verlaine's "Chanson d'automne c.1945]That's a very delicate little thing (Apollinaire's "Le Pont Mirabeau") That's in a great French tradition...
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ESBN Conference 2014
November is, admittedly, some ways away, but no harm in announcing the European Beat Studies Network's Third Annual Conference ( this year to be held in Tangier, Morocco, November 17 to 19, at the...
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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 184
[Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky on Cape Breton, 1992 - Photo - Phyllis Segura] "...Peter was a taciturn and rugged man with a gruff exterior and a submerged explosive intensity. To (Allen), he may...
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Thoughts In Fort Lee
[Leona Helmsley (1920-2007), and Harry Helmsley (1909-1997) - Manhattan real-estate developers - "Diane and Roger Napoleon"?]A previously-unpublished Allen Ginsberg poem?Marc Olmsted, in his...
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Hum Bom
We featured one yesterday, so here's another poem from the collection, Cosmopolitan Greetings - Poems 1986-1992 Inserted here without comment (and for all the obvious reasons)...
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Expansive Poetics 93 - (Apollinaire & Frank O'Hara)
[Andre Salmon (1881-1969)][Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)][Guillaume Apollinaire (1889-1918)]AG: So the last thing we had in the anthologywas a poem read (by Guillaume Apollinaire) at the marriage of Andre...
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Expansive Poetics - 94 (Blaise Cendrars)
[Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961)][cover of 1913 edition of “La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France” by Blaise Cendrars, with illustration by Sonia Delaunay]Andrew Mayer [a student in...
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Diane Di Prima's 80th Birthday
[Diane Di Prima with poet Ted Joans, at The Poetry Project, St Mark's Church, New York City, 1994 - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg c. Allen Ginsberg Estate][Diane di Prima and Allen Ginsberg]The great...
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Expansive Poetics -- 95 ( Q & A - Classroom Scraps)
[Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)]Classroom Scraps - Here's some Q & A at the end of Allen's August 11 1981 Naropa Class -AG: Well, I've been talking...
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