Symposium tribute to Jack Kerouac 1973

In 1973, a Symposium Tribute to Jack Kerouac took place at Salem State College where beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, and more discussed Kerouac’s writing and different aspects of his life. The three videos here show over 4 hours of the proceedings. The discussion is lively. The opening address is byCharles Jarvis. Jarvis, a professor at UMASS Lowell, reads an excerpt from "On the Road" to begin the Jack Kerouac Symposium. Jarvis had known Kerouac during the time when Kerouac moved back to Lowell from 1966-1968. He wrote a book about Kerouac called "Visions of Kerouac." Jay McHale, English professor at Salem State, was the organizer of the Jack Kerouac Symposium.

 

Discussion includes the sex life of Kerouac from the perspectives of the panelists, several of whom knew Kerouac intimately. Gregory Corso is a strong presence in the room, constantly interjecting and recasting the discussion according to his own particular perspective. However, Coros is also a giften poet and a sharp mind and many of this statements are profound and authentic. Corso never lost his 'beat' identity throughout is life.

 

"A Tribute to Jack Kerouac" was held as part of the Arts Festival at Salem State College in 1973. It is generally thought to be the first academic symposium on the life and work of Jack Kerouac. April 4th featured readings by Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso and a showing of the film "Pull My Daisy." On April 5th a panel discussion featuring Ginsberg, Corso, John Clellon Holmes, and Peter Orlovsky was held. The Symposium was free-wheeling, as befit the times, and became legendary over the years as the Beat Writers gained in popularity. There are many photos from the symposium archived by Salem State University and can be seen here. I have selected some to add to this post.

Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.

Corso takes a photo of the audience on April 4th,1973.

Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.

Corso during the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.

Corso during the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.

Corso during the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.

Corso during the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.

Corso during at the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.

Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.

Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.

Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.

Allen Ginsberg speaking at the panel discussion during the Jack Kerouac Symposium on April 5, 1973.

Ginsberg with an audience member at the Jack Kerouac Symposium

Writer Aaron Latham (October 3, 1943 – July 23, 2022), a member of the panel discussion, was working on a biography of Kerouac at the time of the Symposium. he never completed the book.

Peter Orlovsky at the Jack Kerouac Symposium. Orlovsky was born on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1933. He was a Korean War Veteran and American poet, as well as Allen Ginsberg's partner.

Peter Orlovsky at the Jack Kerouac Symposium.

Peter Orlovsky at the Jack Kerouac Symposium.

Peter Orlovsky at the Jack Kerouac Symposium.

Stanley Twardowicz, a painter and photographer who participated in the Symposium's panel discussion on 4/5/1973.

Stanley Twardowicz (July 8, 1917 - June 12, 2008) was an American abstract painter and photographer. Twardowicz was born in Detroit, and studied at the Meinzinger Art School during World War II. During the 1950s and 1960s he developed his painting style, related to color field paintings and abstract expressionism. In 1971 he married artist Lillian Dodson. Twardowicz also befriended Jack Kerouac, and published some of the only images of the writer in his final years.

Larry Eigner, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky

Eigner, Ginsberg, and Orlovsky speaking during the poetry reading on April 4th, 1973

John Holmes, Shirley Holmes, Brian Joyce, Michael Antonakes, Marvin LaHood, and Allen Ginsberg

Having a meal before the Tribute to Jack Kerouac on April 5th,1973.

Allen Ginsberg speaking at the panel discussion during the Jack Kerouac Symposium on April 5, 1973.

Allen had broken his leg, after falling on icey ground at his Cherry Valley farm in Upstate New York during the winter

Lillian Dodson, John Holmes, Allen Ginsberg and Shirley Holmes

Having brunch before the Kerouac Symposium on April 5th,1973.

Scotty Beaulieu

Beaulieu, a friend of Kerouac's from Lowell, asks a question during the Symposium while in the audience on April 5th, 1973.

Beat poet Gregory Corso speaking with two neighborhood children. Corso was in Salem participating in Salem State College's "Tribute to Jack Kerouac."

Quoi? Eternité: Arthur Rimbaud Doco

 

Etienne Faure’s 1985 biographical documentary provides almost everything you ever wanted to know about the life and writings of French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891).

Rimbaud, for those who are unfamiliar with his work, was the 19th century French literary equivalent of a rock legend: a blazing youthful talent who burst on the scene with a fireball of creative energy, only to burn out too fast and die too young. His meteoric poetic output began with his first professionally published poem at 16, but by 20 he stopped writing poetry and would later declare of his work: “All of that was just pig swill.” His adulthood was spent in a seemingly endless global journeys, with strange trips and odd jobs across Europe and Asia, before concluding with work as a coffee merchant and gun runner in Ethiopia before his untimely death from cancer.

The film spends a great deal of time detailing Rimbaud’s scandalous affair with poet Paul Verlaine, which ended rather badly (Verlaine, in a jealous rage, shot Rimbaud in the wrist and was later jailed even though Rimbaud sought to drop the criminal charges). But Faure fails to mention Rimbaud’s post-poetry love life, where he kept company with local women in Asia and Africa.

Rimbaud’s writing is well represented through a diverse global line-up of admirers reading his verse aloud. Some choices are inspired, such as Parisian Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, Dolores Chaplin (granddaughter of Charlie), and playwright Christopher Hampton, a schoolboy in Warsaw, a male stripper in Montreal, a hotel manager in Ibiza.

Lucifer Rising

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Kenneth Anger began working on the idea for Lucifer Rising in 1966. He filmed it in 1972 but it was not released until 1980 after the sountrack was completed. Anger is 96 years old today. He represents a bridge between the older occult of rich wierdos and the new world of mainstream people following occult teachings. Lucifer Rising is the point of turning, when the counter culture and the older culture of mystercism met. Manson Family member and murderer Bobby Beausoleil, with his prison band The Freedom Orchestra, completed the soundtrack for Lucifer Rising in 1979. The film premiered in New York in 1980.

Lucifer Rising is a short film by director Kenneth Anger about the ceremonial rising of Lucifer, a sort-of birthday party of the Aquarian Age, the Love Generation. It is also a symbolic analogy of the coming Aeon of Horus as prophesied in the Thelemic sacred text, The Book of the Law. Anger himself said in The Guardian: “Lucifer Rising was about Egyptian gods summoning the angel Lucifer – in order to usher in a new occult age, in accordance with the principles of Ordo Templi Orientis – an occult order founded by British genius Aleister Crowley.”

Lucifer is not the devil. He’s the god of light and color. Luciferous – I bring the light. To me Satan and Lucifer are totally different entities. — Kenneth Anger

The film’s central theme as impersonation of gods, known to Crowley as the Dramatic Ritual, with Isis and Osiris appearing in Egypt invoking the natural elements that conjure the rising of Lucifer, not as devil but as the rebellious Angel of Light in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), the Venus morning star, bringer of Light and “patron saint of the visual arts,” said Anger.

Bill Hicks, "Sane Man" (1989)

Sane Man was Bill’s first full-length comedy special, taped in 1989. This is the early years and the foundation of what would become his signature material and point of view. Funny and thought provoking, he attacks corporate America with venom, and almost screams at people to start thinking for themselves.

The Koumiko Mystery - 1965

 

While filming the Olympics, a filmmaker encounters a Japanese girl. Manchurian born and French educated, she's an intriguing anomaly. He films her around Tokyo, as she speaks of Japan, being Japanese and her unique perspective on life.

French documentarian Chris Marker and his rare, early 46-minute The Koumiko Mystery, screening here in a new restoration. It’s 1964, and Marker has just made his iconic La Jetée (1962) and Le Joli Mai (1963).

He’s filming in Japan for the first time, where the Summer Olympics are in full swing. There in the stands he unexpectedly discovers a subject more entrancing than any of the relay runners below: Koumiko Muraoka, a charming, elusive and inquisitive young poet, raised in colonial Manchuria and educated at a French-Japanese school. Their mutually fascinated dialogue about nationality, identity, aesthetics and, of course, cats is at the heart of this rapturously shot early jewel by the great director.

In a film that, with its Japanese setting and female co-narrator, often plays as a trial run for his masterpiece, Sans soleil (1983), we find Marker excitedly discovering many of the themes he would return to throughout his work. But nowhere else do we find a character as touching, elegant and compelling as Koumiko – or one who inspires Marker so much. His 16 mm Bolex seems to find an unforgettable image everywhere Koumiko goes, building an extraordinary portrait of a woman and her world. It’s also a remarkable document of Tokyo — a glimpse of a people, their architecture, customs and culture during a period of massive transition and through the eyes of a perceptive, questioning outsider.

Often credited with the invention of what is now called the “essay film”, Chris Marker’s influence is unmeasurable, as much for his formal innovations as for the boundless curiosity and warmth of his work. An enigma to many, this subtle and deeply private artist was called “the prototype of the twenty-first-century man” by his close friend and collaborator Alain Resnais. He described himself simply as a “bricoleur” – a collector of pre-existing material.