1. After interviewing Philip Roth, James Marcus turned a culturally significant Roth utterance into an audio dance track (via Moby Lives).

2. Sarah Weinman unearths another writer in the Singer family, Hinde Esther Singer.

At least once a year, the folks at LitKicks corporate headquarters drag me out of my dungeon and demand my yearly report on the latest audio gems in the literary world. From spoken word to more traditional poetry readings, a verse takes on a life of its own when read by the voice that dreamed it up in the first place. I have a special affinity for the blending of poetry, personality and music, so it's my pleasure to bring you the 2006 Audio Roundup:

Ask a group of poets for their advice on how to read or write poetry and you'll likely get as many answers as there are poets. When these differences are distilled into poems, we end up with a rich array of work. Here are two poets on poetry just in time for the weekend.

In a recent online discussion of how to teach students haiku, someone pointed out this gem of a recording: Ginsberg on "writing slogans", haiku and more...

LitKicks is proud to present, for the first time ever, an original 1970 recording of Gregory Corso performing his classic poem 'BOMB', courtesy of Graham Seidman.

Graham Seidman is an artist who presents culture and history as beauty through his photography and mosaic presentations. As a Beat Hotel "alum", he has generously shared his memories and stories of Corso, Allen Ginsberg and others with the LitKicks community. Here Graham tells the story of how Gregory Corso visited Puerto Rico and recorded the reading of BOMB that we are proud to present in this feature.

1. I'd always wanted to see a production of Beat poet Michael McClure's controversial hippie-era-vintage play "The Beard", which was the subject of a famous Los Angeles censorship battle back when Ronald Reagan was governor of California (other famous censorship targets in that era included "The Love Book" by Lenore Kandel).

1. The Literary Kicks Summer Poetry Happening at the Bitter End in New York City turned out to be an amazing night -- read all about it and check out some pictures here.

Also, Bob Holman was nice enough to remember the event by putting up the words spoken by Charles Plymell here.

1. Just in from Rykodisc: the very cool track list for a new Jack Kerouac tribute CD, due to be released March 18. Check out this lineup! The name of the CD will be "KICKS JOY DARKNESS."

Morphine - Kerouac (original piece)
Lydia Lunch - Bowery Blues
Michael Stipe - My Gang
Steven Tyler - Unpublished dream: "Us kids swim off a gray pier..."
Hunter S. Thompson- Ode To Jack (original piece)
Maggie Estep & the Spitters - Skid Row Wine

1. Allen Ginsberg will be appearing on a HotWired chat moderated by my cyber-buddy Steve Silberman on Monday, Dec. 16 at 4 pm Pacific Time. Check here for more info. Warning: you MUST have RealAudio installed for HotWired chats. Also, if you miss the chat on Monday, you can listen to the RealAudio file later.

2.

1. The Spoken Word Network is an interesting web space devoted to poets, storytellers and performance artists. Their newsletter, Shout!, is running an original interview with Allen Ginsberg. Worth checking out.

2. The LOWELL CELEBRATES KEROUAC gang (Lowell was Kerouac's hometown) is soliciting entries for the annual Jack Kerouac Literary Prize.

Wow, I've been away a while. Still recovering from the ordeal of organizing a fiction/poetry reading last month -- it went *great*, by the way, and we're already thinking of doing it again. Here's a bunch of pictures from the event. (I even centered my text on this page, suck.com style, just because I've been in a wacky mood and it looks kinda cool.)

Lots of good new Beat stuff out there. Let's see ...