“So Don’t Flip”*
When it comes to righteous indignation She makes Arundhati Roy seem timid At a public reading of The Book of Mev I made sure she read last reading aloud the last chapter To mark the…
Search Results for: "Allen Ginsberg"
The Pithy, the Necessary, the Clear, and the Plain
Charles Reznikoff: Man and Poet, edited by Milton Hindus National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine at Orono, 1984 Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing…
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.
The Future Belongs to South America
Jessie Sandova, From the Monastery to the World: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal (Counterpoint Press, 2017) I had initial high hopes for reading the correspondence of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal. I started…
Writing to Wake Up: A Course in Creativity and Community
Think about it: Even with all our sophisticated technologies and modes of communication, who feels as though there is enough time? And yet, we need time, as community activist Grace Lee Boggs has said, to…
“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…