Marc Olmsted

Marc Olmsted has appeared in City Lights Journal, New Directions in Prose & Poetry, New York Quarterly, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and a variety of small presses. He is the author of five collections of poetry, including What Use Am I a Hungry Ghost?, which has an introduction by Allen Ginsberg. Olmsted's 25 year relationship with Ginsberg is chronicled in his Beatdom Books memoir Don't Hesitate: Knowing Allen Ginsberg 1972-1997 - Letters and Recollections, available on Amazon.

Review

IN THE REBEL CAFE: Interviews with Ed Sanders – Review

Marc Olmsted

IN THE REBEL CAFE Interviews with Ed Sanders edited by Jennie Skerl Clemson University Press $120.00 Jennie Skerl has put together a magnificent intro/crash course to Ed Sanders, "second generation" Beat. Sanders, to many of us, needs no introduction, but he is not the household name that many of the "first generation" are. Further complexity involving appreciation of Sanders is how many angles one can know him from. Many are more aware of his band The Fugs. Perhaps one read The Family in one of its revisions, Sanders' journalistic exploration of Charles Manson, (and among the absolute best of the true crime genre). Finally, one may know him poetically, and in particular, through his "investigative poetics" - journalistic, historical, data-collecting poetics, a refinement and extension of the political "list" poetry of Allen Ginsberg such as "CIA Dope Calypso," which arguably has its own musical influence from Th...
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Review

SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS January – July 1960 by Allen Ginsberg – review

Marc Olmsted

SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS January - July 1960 by Allen Ginsberg edited by Michael Schumacher University of Minnesota Press $29.95 First, I was immediately struck by how much unpublished poetry or early drafts (such as "Aether" and "Magic Psalm") are contained in this volume - far beyond any previous journal publications of Allen Ginsberg. In fact, he mostly wrote his journal as poetry during this period. Granted much is not A-list material, as Allen correctly understood in not publishing a lot of it. But for earnest scholars and fans, it is a gold mine. There are also amazing little notations of events, such as seeing Montgomery Clift's "Raintree County" ("he too looks sad" - in fact, Monty's face-rearranging car crash occurred in the middle of filming that picture). Likewise a long dream about Marlon Brando, who imitates Jack Kerouac's voice at one point(!) and includes a dream discussion of how great Orson Welles' Magn...
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Review

COLLECTED POEMS OF BOB KAUFMAN – review

Marc Olmsted

COLLECTED POEMS OF BOB KAUFMAN edited by Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye and Tate Swindell City Lights Books $19.95 The surrealism of Bob Kaufman is a true American surrealism, because Kaufman brings the blues, jazz and being a black man in the United States to his subconscious visions. He still remains, in my estimation, America's unequaled surrealist. Just as Beat's other most famous black poet, Amiri Baraka, spawned the Last Poets and the eventual rise of rap, Kaufman's influence is not only present today in Will Alexander and transmale Blackfoot poet Max Wolf Valerio, but in Bob Dylan. It was Amiri Baraka himself who coined the term Afrosurreal Expressionism in 1974 to discussing the work of Henry Dumas, and was later expanded in the Afrosurreal Manifesto by D. Scott Miller. Afrosurrealism is now considered a very active movement, with a wide pantheon that now considers Ted Joans and Samuel R. Delany among its members. ...
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