This is David Gibson

Following from my last post, I want to mention and possibly discuss a book I read on the Beats in the last year. BEATS AT NAROPA: AN ATHOLOGY, edited by Anne Waldman and Laura Wright (Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2009) brings us to an interesting aspect of what the Beats became after they had been around for 20 or so years. All of the collected wisdom of their wanderings, and writings, and communal sharing of ideas, became the material for an alternative mode of education similar to that of Black Mountain College but founded on Eastern principles. In 1974, with the aid of poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, it incorporated The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, which consists of the Summer Writing Program and the Department of Writing and Poetics, which administers the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Writing and Poetics, the MFA in Creative Writing (low residency program), and the BA in Writing and Literature. The Kerouac School has as its mission the education of stu...

I just read today that Peter Orlovsky died. Not that I ever knew him. He was a poet and the half-century partner to Allen Ginsberg, whose seminal poem "Howl" is dedicated to him. They met through the painter Robert LaVigne, one of the characters in Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's art film PULL MY DAISY . The story is that Orlovsky was modeling for LaVigne and Ginsberg had already fallen in love with his portrait before the real man walked in the door. They travelled together for many years, Peter following Allen on his travels to Algiers and India. In my teens, twenties, and onward I had a great fascination for the Beat Generation, and I wrote my Bachelor's thesis on Jack Kerouac . My college was located only two towns over from Lowell, Massachusetts. As a budding writer with similar dreams, I admired the writing and the life-model which Kerouac represented (though not his poor, early end). I read On The Road in high school and was hooked. My first semester in col...

James Thurber coined the words that create the title for this post, the first of many which will explicate the diversity that is my current life. My two main roles are as art writer and curator, but I also teach, lecture nationally, lead art tours, publish a week list of art events, and I have plans to produce a television show, write novels and plays, and just read deeply in literature and life.  Today was a day like any other. I woke around 9 o'clock in the morning after about 6 1/2 hours of sleep,  made my espresso, and after a hot shower settled in front of the computer to write, answer and send emails, and do my networking on facebook. I know a lot of you play games about farms or zombies, trade favorite grade school photos, videos, etc. But I use it for work. Lots of it. I dream for the day when I'm trying to chat with people on Facebook and they tell me they can't, they're too busy networking!  This weekend my two main chores are to write catalogue essays for...