Not So Random Entries, Commonplace Moleskine/4
99. There is a notion of “passing it on,” that simple. One to one. Elder to younger perhaps. That “poetry is news,” that the inspiration for any work you do and the work you do…
Category: Beats
Not a River-Like Novel; But a Novel Like Poetry, or Rather, a Narrative Poem, an Epos in Mosaic, a Kind of Arabesque Preoccupation
Over the weekend Lindsey asked me some questions about my writing process (such as, How long did it take you to write Book of Mev? Did you always know what the structure would be? How did…
A Sangha with Tu Fu, Milarepa, Lady Murasaki, Li Ching-chao, Basho, and Jack Kerouac
Anne Waldman and Andrew Schelling, editors, Disembodied Poetics: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School Rereading this collection after many years, I’m struck by the following perspectives from various writers I noted then and that still…
Occasional Moments of Peace, Gratitude, and Delight
I first learned of Gary Snyder through Kerouac’s novel, The Dharma Bums, where he was fictionalized as “Japhy Ryder,” who, according to Alvah Goldbook [aka Allen Ginsberg], was “a great new hero of American…
Like Staying up All Night with Your Best Friend
Allen Ginsberg, Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness, edited by Gordon Ball There are many influences that went into my creating Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, and Allen Ginsberg was a major one. Here…
Interview with Ginsberg
The Yiddish Book Center offers this interesting 1969 interview with Allen Ginsberg in Montreal several days after the death of Jack Kerouac.
To Contend, To Enliven, To Distance, To Advocate, To Investigate, To Rally, To Prioritize, To Surprise
I’ve read Anne Waldman since 2001 (Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays got me started). Her epics, poems, interviews, and edited anthologies (from the Kerouac School at Naropa) stimulate and open up possibilities. One of…
“The Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha”*
Notes on Eliot Katz, The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg Example of George Steiner’s championing learning by heart: Ginsberg knew hundreds of poems from memory [20] In Dear Layla and Book of Mev: The…
On the New York Literary Establishment in the Fifties
“There’s no room for youth and vitality in New York. It is a city full of guilty academicians.” –Gregory Corso “Too big, too multiple, too jaded.” –Jack Kerouac “We want everyone to know that we…
What I Can Use: Notes on Waldman and Birman’s Civil Disobediences
“Emerson was not a systematic reader, but he had a genius for skimming and a comprehensive system for taking notes…. He read rapidly, looking for what he could use.” p. 67 “He read widely in…