Search Results for: marc olmsted
Review
The Poetry & Politics of Allen Ginsberg – Review by Marc Olmsted
Marc Olmsted
THE POETRY & POLITICS OF ALLEN GINSBERG
By Eliot Katz
Beatdom Books
(paperback)
$28.00
In the last 25 years of his life, Allen Ginsberg championed a half-dozen young poets with some regularity. One of these poets was...
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Essay
Zoning, by Spencer Kansa – review by Marc Olmsted
Marc Olmsted
Zoning, by Spencer Kansa, Beatdom Books, 2011 - $12.00 - paper
Spencer Kansa’s debut novella Zoning is terrifying, page-turning fun. If this seems contradictory, consider that he was an acolyte of William Burroughs, so...
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Readings
Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading #12 – Suzi Kaplan Olmsted, Carl Watson, Arthur Nersesian
Suzi Kaplan Olmsted
Quarantine is effectively over (for now...) so this is the final Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading! We go out with a bang! This week features:
- Suzie Kaplan Olmsted (5:40)
- Carl Watson (23:40)
- Arthur Nersesian (38:5...
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Art
Poetry Month, 2015
The Editors
What a Poetry Month it's been! Special thanks to Winston Smith for the back cover. Here's links to all 30 posts:
April 1 - John S. Hall and Rick Prol
April 2 - Bonny Finberg and Charles Gatewood
April 3 - JD King
April...
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PR
Sensitive Skin #12 – Poetry Month Special
The Editors
Presenting Sensitive Skin 12, published April 2015, a special issue dedicated to poetry and art, in celebration of Poetry Month.
Sensitive Skin 12 features 30 poems (one for every day in April) by John S. Hall, Bonny ...
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Sensitive Skin 12
B. Kold
Presenting Sensitive Skin 12, published April 2015, a special issue dedicated to poetry and art, in celebration of Poetry Month.
Sensitive Skin 12 features 30 poems (one for every day in April) by John S. Hall, Bonny Finb...
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Sensitive Skin 11
B. Kold
Sensitive Skin 11, published October 2014, an anthology of post-beat, pre-apocalyptic art, writing, music and whatnot, features work by both world-famous and new-and-emerging artists, writers, and musicians from around the g...
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Review
Between Good Men & No Man at All – poetry by Pam Ward – Review
Marc Olmsted
Between Good Men & No Man at All
By Pam Ward
World Stage Press
$20.00
Poet Richard Modiano first brought Pam Ward to my attention by telling me she was writing the introduction to his poetic collection, The Forbidden Lunchbox. I didn’t know her work, so he read her to me over the phone. I was instantly hooked by her images, candor and the gallows humor known only to those the System does not favor.
Still, as an old white man and apparently retro Post-Beat poet, I would not have had the temerity to review her new work Between Good Men & No Man at All, but I was asked, so here we are.
I already knew we weren’t going to get homogenized Hamilton rap or highbrow slam’s rhyming editorial language (i.e. non-imagistic). Instead I was surprised to be reminded of stumbling into an L.A. skid row grind house for the last half of Sweet Sweetback’s Bad Ass Song. Plus, like all grind house double- and triple-bills, t...
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Review
HIGH WHITE NOTES—The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism—Review
Marc Olmsted
HIGH WHITE NOTES
The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism
By David S. Wills
Beatdom Books
$17.99
High White Notes takes a phrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald that was of prime importance to Hunter S. Thompson (or any serious writer) - being in the zone while creating. It is of course important to all artists to be in that zone, and thus David Wills uses Thompson’s writing exclusively (rather than a more conventional biography) to get to the man and his self-created myth, one far more invented than I previously realized.
Most of us enthusiastic about Thompson agree that Hell’s Angels, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 are his “high white notes” - and anyone attempting to follow and understand him can see that there is a deterioration in his work from that point - relatively slow enough to entice us back momentarily (I used to regularly pick up the San Francisco Examiner ju...
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Essay
ALLEN GINSBERG, BUDDHA’S FOOTPRINT, AND THREE FISH WITH ONE HEAD
Marc Olmsted
If you've read Allen Ginsberg, you probably know the image - three fish, one head as a sort of triangular Illuminati eye. Allen saw it in Bodhgaya in 1962, carved into a representation of Buddha's footprint, itself huge and...
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Story
Darth Trip
Marc Olmsted
“New York is a head without a body. California is a body without a head.” - Vincent Zangrillo
“You sound like a cowboy, only intelligent.” - Vinny’s friend to me
Return of the Jedi wasn’t really any go...
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Review
TAXI NIGHT — Poetry by Cliff Fyman — Review
Marc Olmsted
TAXI NIGHT
Poetry by Cliff Fyman
Long News Books
$15.00
I connected with Cliff Fyman some years after his association with Naropa University (then Institute) and its 1977 Summer Writing Program - a heyday-hosting of teachers like William Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I met him through then-fellow student writers Peter Marti and Vincent Zangrillo.
Although late in the book, there is this poetic statement from Fyman, and it sums up his view:
I see every object alive
and luminous
and at the same time I
see the decay and death
inherent in it’s very shining.
Cliff Fyman is essentially influenced by William Carlos Williams and his school of Objectvism, something Allen Ginsberg returned full circle to in his teaching at Naropa. Cliff learned to sit in the Buddhist style of “calm abiding,” shamatha. Add to that - he is also a vegetarian as we...
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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
RAY BY RAY: A Daughter’s Take on the Legend of Nicholas Ray – Review
Marc Olmsted
RAY BY RAY: A Daughter's Take on the Legend of Nicholas Ray
by Nicca Ray
Three Rooms Press
$20.00
If you really want to know about Nick Ray's films, track down Nicholas Ray: An American Journey by Bernard Eisenschitz, ...
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