THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
“Sometimes, the waves grow hushed, but the sea is always there, touching, caressing, eating the earth...”― Keri Hulme
Alta Magazine sent out an e-mail with an amazing remembrance of Laurence Ferlinghetti by the now patriarch of the Beat Poets Gary Snyder and so for a change, I will open the newsletter with his incredible salute:
By GARY SNYDER
My first night in North Beach, (at 18) roaming the night streets on a layover from Oregon, I heard of Larry Ferling. He had recently arrived in town, it was said, and was looking into buying the little bookstore at the corner of Broadway and Columbus.
I got my ride back to Portland.
I returned to the Bay Area a couple of years later, and Lawrence’s place had become “City Lights Books” and had an admirable booklist of current labor politics, socialist theory, Marxist vision, Rexroth travels, Kropotkin mutualism, plus much poetry and novels.
I got to know Lawrence and we talked about nature theory and wild ecosystems. I went my way on to work in the high coastal mountain trails and then linguistics and languages at Berkeley. My contacts there led to the dedicated Buddhist Imamura Family, to poetry research, and on to living in Japan.
I started writing my own poems and sent a sheaf to San Francisco. Lawrence wrote back to say that if we got the paper, printed and bound them, and then sent them to him, he’d sell them. Potter Will Petersen and I did the labor. We sent 500 and they sold.
Through later years, I got to know Lawrence better via my friend Allen Ginsberg. We even met and cooked for friends at Lawrence’s little house on the ocean coast. Lawrence came once to do a poetry reading in my home territory in a noble wooden church structure from the gold-mining era. In a driving rain.
Summers of drouth, bark beetles, and wildfire have come through. I managed to have a last lunch with Lawrence together with novelist Kim Stanley Robinson in a modest restaurant in North Beach in the fall of 2011.
From start to finish, he was the biggest, clearest, most consistent supporter of radical, adventurous, experimental writing on the whole West Coast.
***Josh Rosenthal and I will be talking records and books on Clubhouse today at 3pm PST. If you want to jump in, but are not a Clubhouse “member” ping me…I have a few invitations to burn***
The Top 30 Most Expensive Items Sold on Discogs in January 2021
I actually came close to having one of the top 30 this time….the incredible July debut record that sold was the ORIGINAL ORIGINAL pressing on Major Major. I only have merely the original pressing on Epic. Still awesome…not QUITE as awesome.
Library Of Congress shows off sensational new book collection: The Aramont Library
The Aramont Library collection is a stunning thing to behold if you are a book fan. The image above is a drawing of Dublin as done by James Joyce himself scrawled in the pages of a first edition Ulysses. But there is so much more to gander…
Andrew Bird & Jimbo Mathus :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
One forgets that Andrew and Jimbo were in a hit band so many years ago. And their musical paths have both been so robust since. Jimbo lived in the great city of Taylor Mississippi…and we used to see each other when I would visit…and also when he played with Luther Dickinson. Meanwhile, Andrew Bird’s star had risen, with a sound all of his own combining classical and folk and rock. Together again.
Huge lot of u matic tapes/ reel to reels / vhs from a former a&r Atlantic record
Publishing a craigslist post you say? Well…this looks pretty damn special. I am wondering who the A&R person in question is….but for the hefty sum of 8K there is a rock n roll history chest here….probably smelly…that you could take home (Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Bob Marley…..)
THE QUEST
by James Wright
