1997 - 1998 Season
I.1
Jack Kerouac
by Thomas R. Peters, Jr.
November 17, 1997 |
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Visions of Gerard, Doctor Sax, Maggie Cassidy, On the Road, Visions
of Cody, Desolation Angels, The Subterranean, Tristessa, The Dharma Bums, Big
Sur, Satori in Paris, Mexico City Blues, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity—the
big wild pure sad outpourings by Jack Kerouac are subject of the first part of
an ongoing analysis of the seminal figure of the Beat Generation. Poet,
bibliophile and poolshark Thomas R. Peters, Jr. lives in Boulder, Colorado where
for well over 650 consecutive Monday evenings he has produced the "So You're A
Poet" reading series. Author of Over the Roofs of the World and 100
Missed Train Stations, he is owner of the Beat Book Shop.
I.2
Philip Whalen
by Randy Roark
December 9, 1997 |
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On October 6, 1955, Philip Whalen read with Kerouac, Ginsberg, Snyder,
Philip Lamantia, and Michael McClure in the historical Six Gallery reading. He
is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Like I Say and Memoirs
of an Interglacial Age, On Bear's Head and Canoeing Up Cabarga Creek.
In 1973 he was ordained Unsui (Zen Buddhist monk). Currently he is the Abbot of
Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco. Poet and Dadaist Randy Roark
is the author of Awakening Osiris. Archivist and confidante to Allen Ginsberg,
Diane Di Prima, Anne Waldman, as well as publisher of the acclaimed Friction
magazine, Roark's talk focuses on Whalen's being "a true innovator of form, exaltation
of small beauties, and Buddhist wisdom."
I.3
Clark Coolidge, Jackson Mac Low, Harry Mathews & Stephen Rodefer
by
Michael Friedman
January 20, 1998 | | |  | |
Four of America's most eminent and distinctive experimental poets—Clark
Coolidge (Mine: The One That Enters The Stories), Jackson Mac Low (Twenties),
Harry Mathews (Selected Declarations of Independence) and Stephen Rodefer—are
the subject of a talk about models of postmodernism. Michael Friedman
lives in Denver, Colorado after having received his BA from Columbia and MA in
English Literature from Yale. He is the author of Arts & Letters, Cameo,
Special Capacity, Distinctive Belt and has been editor of SHINY since
1986.
I.4
Frank O'Hara
by Sue Rhynhart
February 17, 1998 |
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There is probably no body of work by a single poet best exemplifying the
exquisite occasionality of the New York School than that of the joyous surrealism
of poet-curator Frank O'Hara. Author of Lunch Poems, Poems Retrieved, Meditations
in an Emergency, O'Hara gives America a sensuous body of poetry unforgettable
for its elegant, conversational, and mysterious personism. Sue Rhynhart
lives in Lyons, Colorado where she rides a horse named Jazz Green scholar poet
of the oral tradition, her work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Friction, Napalm
Health Spa and Action, presented Frank O'Hara in relation to the great
artists he was so deeply affected by.
I.5
Emily Dickinson
by Joseph Richey
March 24, 1998 |
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Emily Dickinson is America's first modernist poet, explorer of the personal
small-form emblematic poem, and innovator of "electric supercharging of lines."
Her work is discussed in relation to its natural ambiguity, "word stacking" and
an acceptance of an essential unresolvability towards solitude. Poet,
translator, and musician Joseph Richey lives in Boulder, Colorado. Richey publisher
of the Boulder micropress Selva Editions, and the bilingual literary magazine
The Underground Forest, is the author of Riding the Big Earth.
I.6
Ani DiFranco
by Shira Segal
April 21, 1998 |
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The high-velocity lyric feminist, Ani DiFranco, author of a prodigious
twelve recordings in nine years, including Not A Pretty Girl, Dilate and
Little Plastic Castle, is redefining the personal, social and political
aesthetic discourse of the 90s. This presentation ponders the social construction
of gender, the limits of identity, and the importance of gaining control of the
means of one's art. Shira Segal, author of Meanwhile Woman: Spoken
Word in the LowerCase: 1994-1997, lives in Boulder where she attends the Univerity
of Colorado. She offered a critical examination and celebration of this important
American poet-songwriter/musician in the early flames of her inspiration.
I.
7
Paul Blackburn
by Jim Cohn
May 19, 1998 |
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Paul Blackburn took naturally to Olson's concept of the poem as an instrument
of notating oral performance, speech rhythms, and composition-by-field. Author
of 13 books of poetry, including Cities, In . On. Or About the Premises, Halfway
Down the Coast, Against the Silences and The Journals, Blackburn was
instrumental in the creation of the poetry Project at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery.
Jim Cohn is the author of The Dance Of Yellow Lightning Over The Ridge,
Grasslands and Prairie Falcon. He presents a survey of Blackburn poems
and tapes to illustrate the development of Blackburn's formal contributions at
the crossroads of Beat, New York, Deep Image and Black Mountain schools.
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