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The Ginsberg-Ferlinghetti Letters
The phrase is, of course, Emerson's, writing to congratulate Walt Whitman" I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start. I rubbed...
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Meditation Advice
[Kobun Chino Roshi, sitting Sesshin at Naropa, July 1989. photo.c. Allen Ginsberg Estate]August 14 1978, Allen Ginsberg’s class on Meditation and Poetics continues. [Editorial...
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The Kalevala
AG: Does anybody know the Finnish epic, “The Kalevala”. Has anybody ever read any of that? – I’d like to read a few pages of that. It’s an epic poem which was originally in oral form, and (was)...
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Jack Kerouac and Hart Crane's Proclamations
[Hart Crane (1899-1932) standing in fromt of The Brooklyn Bridge]AG: So it's one assertion, or one, say, magisterial mind - The (very) last chorus [Chorus 242] of Mexico City Blues. Now,...
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AG: Another proclamation - from (William) Burroughs - this is somewhat a mindfulness proclamation - from Exterminator! , page 57. (It features) his favorite character, Colonel Sutton Smith (he wrote...
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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 229
[Spiderman and Allen Ginsberg cartoon - Tom Gauld]From the current issue of Poetry magazine – more Howl parodies – (we've featured several such before - - Amy Newman - “I saw the best minds of my...
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Gregory Corso Interviews
Another of the summer's essential books (we're only just now getting round to profiling it) - Rick Schober's stellar collection of theCollected Interviews with Gregory Corso - over a dozen pieces, plus...
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Q & A - 1 ( On Haiku Sequence)
Student: (You said that all haiku were flash, recognition, and comment, yes?)AG: (Well, we were looking at the) texts and (the) theoretical ground in the background. I'm guessing that, though.. but,...
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Q & A - 2 - (Poetry and Revision)
[Cover for "First Thought Best Thought " Chögyam Trungpa's book of poems, published in 1983 by Shambhala]AG: Yeah?Student: ( I had some difficulty with your statement about poetry when you said (you...
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Q & A - 3 ("Love the breath of the moment")
[Listening to the Wind in Pines - Ma Lin 靜聽松風 (1246)]AG: …. But to capture the spirit, the breath of the moment, you have to love it. You're going to have to love the breath of the...
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Pitfalls in Poetry
AG: The pitfalls are circular thinking and self-consciousness - in other words, writing about writing, or writing about "I'm-sitting-here-writing". In other words, say, not going out with the breath,...
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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 230
Yesterday was Diane Di Prima's 81st birthday.Here's the extraodinary class she gave last May (with ProfessorSteven Goodman) at the California Institute of Integral Studies - in two parts, here and here...
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Creeley on Kerouac (Doctor Sax)
[Robert Creeley (1926-2005)]Last month we featured transcription of Clark Coolidge on Jack Kerouac from a 1982 Naropapanel that also...
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Creeley and Coolidge on Kerouac Q & A
[Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)]from Coolidge-Creeley-Warren Tallman panel at the Kerouac Conference at Naropa, 1981Clark Coolidge:...
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Shakespeare's The Tempest
["Scene FromShakespeare's The Tempest" - by William Hogarth (1697-1764) c.1728 - oil on canvas - 80 cm x 101.5 cm - courtesy The National Trust]Allen Ginsberg's Summer 1978 lectures on Poetics and...
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Basho Revisited
[Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) - "Old pond/a frog jumps in/kerplunk"]AG: Okay. There might be some…I finished that haiku, or the Bashohaiku, which wound up to be -...
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Poetry and Meditation - Winding Down
AG: Anything anybody got to say? There was one thing I wrote - that haiku about "all the answers are wrong"? I wrote Mike (sic) a haiku, if I can find it, that he thought was unfair.Student: (it was)...
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Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)
[Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) - photographed by Allen Ginsberg, December 20, 1987 - c. The Estate of Allen Ginsberg]Jean-Michel Basquait died on this day, twenty-seven years ago today (has it...
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John Wieners Selected ( Supplication) and Journals (Stars Seen In Person)
Pub. date isn't until October 6th, but we couldn't resist putting out the word on the forthcoming Selected Poems of John Wieners - edited by a trio of editors, Robert Dewhurst, Joshua Beckman and the...
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Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 231
""Rainy night on Union Square, full moon. Want more poems? Wait till I'm dead". "So proclaimed Allen Ginsberg at 3.30 in the morning on August 8, 1990", writes Barbara Hoffert, in Library Journal, "And...
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