Beat Generation

I’m not sure if this is a new google feature, but this timeline is useful and interesting.

The documentary “Ferlinghetti,” by Christopher Felver, will be shown at the San Francisco Film Festival. Dates and times of the airing are at the Sundance Kabuki Cinema, 6 p.m. April 28 and 30, and at the Pacific Film Archive Theater at 6:30 p.m. May 6.

A trailer is here: http://ferlinghettifilm.com/trailer.html

I could listen to this song forever. It’s so beautiful. I’ve recently been listening to some of David Meltzer’s poetry readings, and he’s such a great person it would seem, though I have personally never met him.

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Born in Miami Beach, Florida in 1951, Michael Rothenberg has been an active environmentalist in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 25 years, where he cultivates orchids and bromeliads at his nursery, Shelldance. He is a poet, songwriter, editor and co-founder of Big Bridge Press and Big Bridge, a webzine of poetry and everything else. He is also co-editor and co-founder of JACK Magazine, a literary publication that relates to, but expands beyond, the beat generation. (more…)

Call For Papers
The Transnational/Global Beats: A Collection of Essays
Editors: Jennie Skerl and Nancy Grace
Deadline for abstracts:  June 1, 2009

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Tom Killian’s site lists the dates of his and Gary’s book signings for Tamalpais Walking.

Bay Nature has a nicely illustrated (by Tom Killion) article by Gary Snyder about their book Tamalpais Walking.

Jack Kerouac’s long-lost manuscript The Sea is My Brother, which he wrote as a Merchant Marine, will be published next year. There is a review and article here.

I’m currently helping Michael Rothenberg create the blog for ROCKPILE, which is a collaboration between David Meltzer — poet, musician, essayist, and more — and Michael Rothenberg of Big Bridge Press. David and Michael will journey through eight cities in the U.S. to perform poetry and prose, composed while on the road, with local musicians and artists in each city. (more…)

The picture at left is of artist Robert LaVigne, and is copyright by Larry Keenan–used with permissions. Says Larry, “Robert LaVigne is one of the few Beat artists that was aligned with the Beat poets. Besides his own work he did poster art and graphics for Allen Ginsberg and others. In this photograph he is talking about his huge nude painting of Peter Orlovsky hanging on the wall behind me. The next time I viewed his painting of Orlovsky, thirty years later, it was hanging in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.”

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Beat Films: Overviews of the Best

by Adrien Begrand

Okay, here are my picks for the definitive Beat video experience: (more…)

Back at the Whiskey

by Mary Sands
4/5/00

(Also published in the Keroauc Connection, issue #30)

Wow. A most synergetic performance just happened, and it oughtta go down in history, if for no other reason than it’s the first time the Doors (or 2/3′s of what’s left of them) have been back at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, on Sunset Boulevard, since the Doors got fired (over twenty years ago) by the manager of the club for Jim’s “improvisation” of “The End.” (more…)

Teaching Beat Literature

We were lucky to have both Ginsberg and Snyder read here in the past few years. Ginsberg’s reading drew over 1,000 people, and Snyder offered unasked to sit in on my honors course on the Beats, where stunned students found themselves face to face with one of the writers they were reading.
-Steve Wilson, Southwest Texas State University

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[On the old site, Matthew had sent me a picture of his mile marker near the Matterhorn, but I don't have that picture anymore.] This picture is of a mountain across the pass from the Matterhorn and is copyright by Matthew Frondorf, who climbed up the Matterhorn, retracing Snyder’s and Kerouac’s steps from The Dharma Bums (Kerouac). For more information, click here. (more…)

Soly Haim
Script: Michael Bockman
Doozy Film Factory
PO Box 25164 Los Angeles, CA 90025
DoozyFilms@yahoo.com

STARVING HYSTERICAL NAKED

Starving Hysterical Naked is the story of a close group of young friends who formed the core of the most influential “youth” generation of the last fifty years. The main characters of are based on the people who were the nucleus of Beat Generation — Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady. In the colorful world of New York and San Francisco in the late 1940′s and ’50′s, these bohemian friends embarked on a long odyssey to escape middle-class respectability and ultimately revolutionized modern literature. Using a “frame” of a 1957 Jazz and Poetry reading at the Hungry i nightclub, the story is told by the various characters in chronological vignettes that collectively paint a complete picture of their lives and times. (more…)