Synopsis: Starring James Franco in a career-defining performance as Allen Ginsberg, HOWL is the story of how the young poet’s seminal work broke down societal barriers in the face of an infamous public obscenity trial. In his famously confessional style, Ginsberg – poet, counter-culture icon, and chronicler of the Beat Generation – recounts the road trips, love affairs, and search for personal liberation that led to HOWL, the most timeless work of his career.  HOWL interweaves three stories: the unfolding of the landmark 1957 obscenity trial; an imaginative animated ride through the prophetic masterpiece; and a unique portrait of a man who found new ways to express himself, and in doing so, changed his own life and galvanized a generation.

Produced By Ram Devineni. Co-presented by the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church.

We are all PRE-ORDERING our copies from O/R Books. Two exciting covers to choose from!

Click here to view the embedded video.

PS: Our Fall 2010 calendar (readings and workshops) will be posted in late August.

Thank you to Georgia Kral and the crew at WNYC’s “Talk To Me” for covering this reading, as well as the Baraka reading. You can read the short piece she wrote here and listen to the entire reading (intros included) with the embedded MP3 player above.

Thanks to Julia Furlan for featuring Baraka’s reading on WNYC’s “Talk To Me”!

“After 76 years of activism, award-winning poet and playwright Amiri Baraka isn’t afraid to ruffle some feathers.  If he was looking to get people up in arms last week at the Poetry Project, though, not a chance – the audience was on board with even his most incendiary political comments”.

You can read the short piece she wrote here and listen to the entire reading using the embedded MP3 player above.

To order a copy: 1) send a check for $10 (includes postage) to The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church / The Recluse / 131 E. 10th St. / NY, NY 10003.

OR

2) purchase from our online store.

Previous issues of The Recluse are available as PDFs here. And submission guidelines for issue 7 here.

There will be a memorial for Leslie Scalapino here at the Poetry Project on Monday, June 21 at 8pm.

Anne Waldman, who was with Peter Orlovsky today in Vermont, has asked us to share the following:

“The Shellean farmer astride his Pegasusian tractor” as Gregory Corso once knighted him passed on today, May 30 2010 to the elysian fields, a bardo of becoming. First glance hour earlier Peter was resting with “trach” in throat in orange sheets at the kind Vt Respite Center in Williston, Vermont (but no extra tubes/ heroic measures for this advanced cancer on his lung!), a copy of the Songs of Saraha by his pillow, photo of beloved Allen Ginsberg companion of many years on the wall, other Buddhist images, iPod of music he loved including chants by Buddhist nuns, cards from friends and out the window a bird feeder with finch and red-winged blackbirds landing/taking off. Chuck and Judith Lief, faithful guardians and friends at his side. He had been moved less than 48 hours earlier from intensive care at a hospital in Boston, finally to hospice. His body we were touching we noticed suddenly turned cold like death was in the room. We got the nurse. Judy and I stepped out when suddenly Chuck called us back. Peter had opened his eyes. Chuck said “It might be the last time”. By his side now, looking into his eyes told out love, I thanked him for his presence in our lives, his poetry his care and love for Allen,  his work at Naropa. Ah,  I thought a flash of recognition shivering through! slight movement of mouth,  light coming in on his handsome face through the window now, and  Judy singing om a hum vajra guua padma siddhi hum in crystal voice said “don’t be afraid”. Joined in. Last breathes, one coming late, staggered: his heart/breath stopt.  Poet Christina Lovin  in  room with nurse gave gentle witness who checked the clock 11:39 I think or so a.m. Earlier we played recording of Peter singing his Raspberry Song with great heart-soaring yodel and  “how sweet you are”. “Make my grave shape of heart so like a flower be free aired and handsome felt” ( “The Snail”). Tibetan Book of the Dead readings, in full final repose arranged with blue shirt, hands folded, consciousness a joyful gardener sprite? no fear, no fear working its way out…

Anne Waldman  5.30.2010
Vt Studio Center

(Photo by John Sarsgard, Vermont, October 2006)

With love to all,

Corrine

The Project has a very close relationship with Ugly Duckling Press and the Wednesday Night Reading Series has hosted many UDP authors, so tonight I’m really happy to have Matvei read.  He describes his book Boris By the Sea in a BOMBlog interview as “a bunch of theatrical gestures—or writing gestures” and “little writing events”. It’s written in a stripped down language, with the tone of fable where the moral seems to be “I just don’t know what the moral is”. The creation runs away, doesn’t keep us company, or we loose our mode of accessing our creation. It’s absurd, with all these Borises, to be lonesome. Consciousness (inner world) meets the resistance of objects (outer world), problems of one’s body moving through the outer one manifest – Boris tries to see what his shoulder blade looks like by trying to pull it around to the front – language just registers these encounters. One of the most compelling aspects in the book, for me, is that Yankelevich moves from poem to prose to theater to an idea, a novel without words, assuming different genres, which resonates with a line on pg. 21, “that without a role a person is as good as dead”. Language has something to do with creating a role, but again the moral here is uncertainty, the question “what?” and the mystery is retained in the translation between “who am I?” and “who is that?” Please Welcome Matvei to the Poetry Project.

Rob Fitterman is the author of 12 books, including war, the musical, Notes On Conceptualisms (with Vanessa Place) and rob the plagiarist. His latest book, Sprawl:Metropolis 30A is the fourth book, and likely the last, of his Metropolis series. He teaches writing and poetry at New York University and in the Bard College, Milton Avery School of Graduate Studies. Tomorrow, I believe, is the last day of business for Rob’s Word Shop where individual letters and words can be purchased. The conversations are being recorded and will be collected in a book form at the end of the month.

Rob Fitterman really captured my attention when I read an interview with him online at Coldfront Magazine – Ken Walker asked him what his top five favorite films are and Rob replied with a Cineplex list of show times with Avatar at #1 and with Ninja Assassin at #5. His answer becomes just as viable as any “sincere” list. It taps into the public ethos at a specific moment much like a list of anyone’s favorite films would simply offer a transitory glimpse of one’s taste, but the glimpse would be taken as “the truth” about a person, something to form opinions around. This is all to say that the poet Rob Fitterman has many strategies, “many Rob’s” – “to create poems that look in on the subject from without rather than gazing out on the world from within”. (Those are the words of Morgan Myers). In a piece like “A Hemingway Reader”, Fitterman uses erasure of the novel The Sun Also Rises leaving only “I” statements, which, in a mirroring section, provides him access to a version of memoir otherwise impossible. An optimist, Fitterman’s work proposes a different spin on universality where contingency and multiplicity are its true nature. Please welcome Rob to the Poetry Project.