Tag Archives: Poetry
Ginsberg, 1968
Photo: Elsa Dorfman I haven’t got around to posting a lot about 1968, but we’re celebrating the anniversary of one of the craziest years ever, and it’s been helpful for me to look back on that yesteryear chaos to remind myself that these times are comparatively calm. Seriously. While everybody is uneasy about the Supreme [...]
Roi Lézard
On July 3rd we observed the 47th anniversary of the death of Jim Morrison. We still care about Morrison because he lead the greatest American rock band of all time, and because he was also a gifted poet and a lyrical filmmaker. Even folks who’d disagree with all of those points would have to concede [...]
40 Years Of An American Prayer And Jim Morrison’s Lost Paris Tapes
Across the days that marked the overlap from the 1960s to the 1970s Jim Morrison recorded the poetry readings that would eventually be featured on the 1978 release An American Prayer. This year we’re celebrating 40 years since the album’s 1978 debut, but the project has always been a difficult one for fans of the [...]
Crowley Outloud
I’ve got a bit of a difficult film writing assignment hanging over my head this week so rather than posting another horror film post, here’s a selection of recordings from the 1920′s and 1930′s featuring Aleister Crowley reciting occult poetry in both English as well as the Enochian language that Queen Elizabeth I’s court wizard [...]
Punks and Poets
I once read an essay by music critic Simon Reynolds where he pointed out that the fundamental difference between punk music and the new wave and no wave music that followed it is that new wave and no wave bands were formed by art school kids, but punk music was always rooted in literary inspirations [...]
Professor Ginsberg
You probably know Allen Ginsberg as a poet, but you might also dig his photography or maybe you know about his devotion to Buddhism. Like his hero Walt Whitman, Ginsberg contained multitudes and even managed to add teaching to his resume from the 1970s and into the 1990′s during which time he lectured at schools [...]
Allen Again
It’s Wednesday night and I just got back from a reading event at a friend’s house — a good group of writers and readers and listeners and drinkers and neighbors and old friends and new ones. Hanging out on a cool breezy back screen porch on what must be a perfect springtime evening in Nashville [...]
Nobel 2016 Revisited
Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. When the award was announced last October, people who care about such things were either elated or outraged: Fans of the man felt that Dylan’s work deserved such lofty accolades, but writerly snobs — the worst snobs — looked down on the troubadour, his popular music, and [...]
Silvia Spring
he poet at the beginning of her process. Here’s the word… The first poem revealed, “To a Refractory Santa Claus,” is about Spain and “consists of two 11-line verses and pleads for escape from the cruelties of an English winter to the fresh fruit and sunshine of warmer climes,” according to The Guardian. The next [...]
