“It’s a kind of furtiveness, a weariness with all the conventions of the world so I guess you might say we’re a beat generation.” - Jack Kerouac
No-one else so accurately captured the turmoil and uncertainty of the restless post war years than the New York Beat Poets whose radical, rebellious, literary youth culture took Kerouac on the road and Ginsberg howling.
Allen Ginsberg died aged 70 in 1997. During the final days of his life, close friends including composer Philip Glass and singer Patti Smith kept vigil in his apartment. Smith had known him since the late 1960s, sharing his views as an anti-war activist, and Glass had collaborated with Allen setting several poems to music.
As a personal homage, The Poet Speaks is a vibrant cabaret blending the beat of music and poetry. Ginsberg, Kerouac & Co, were all about turning the word on the page into live breath and musical time: their poetry was written to be performed with the spontaneity, raciness, freedom and ironic humour of jazz.
Patti Smith has a rich, deep, gravely voice, shifting in pitch and pace from the rhythmic, rapping delivery of Wichita Vortex Sutra, to the quiet emotion of family memories in Aunt Rose.
The words are beautifully coloured and enhanced through soft, melodic piano chords played by Glass, the master of film scores. The subject matter covers Buddhism, sex, drugs, politics and travel, illustrated with photographs of Ginsberg and friends on their spiritual adventures in Tunisia and India.
Philip Glass also gave a short piano recital of his work, (Etudes #2 and #10), after Patti Smith recited her own poems and performed a couple of her blues-rock songs accompanied by guitarist Tony Shanahan.
Poetry too by Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Land of Nod” and “Looking Glass River.” Patti's introduction was rather touching - she had left her battered, beloved old book of “A Child’s Garden of Verses” behind, but bought a copy in a second hand bookshop near Stevenson’s childhood home at Inverleith, Edinburgh.
RLS gave a neat geographical connection, but not with Ginsberg.
From the title The Poet Speaks, I was certainly expecting to hear the voice of the “angel headed hipster” himself. There are DVD recordings, poetry with music by Philip Glass.
Instead, Smith reads the Footnote from Howl, “Holy, Holy, Holy... The typewriter is holy, the poet is holy....”
At the majestic memorial service for Ted Hughes at Westminster Abbey, there were readings and stories by friends, family and actors. But the last word was left to Hughes with a recorded reading, his rich voice resounding around the stone pillared cathedral.
Likewise, it would have been electrifying to end the concert with Allen Ginsberg’s sonorous tone of voice reciting the opening lines of Howl,
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, …”
Moving away from a true celebration of Ginsberg and the power of Beat poetry, it was more a platform for Glass and Smith to show off their musical talents in this rather laid back, casually-curated concert.
Event: 13 August, 2013 - 8.30pm.
One performance only.