Okay ... I just got back from an amazing weekend in Northport, Long Island hanging around with a bunch of people performing at this event, a four-city marathon reading of Kerouac's novel 'Big Sur'. I got to spend a lot of time talking with Carolyn Cassady, who I'd never met before, and who had flown in from London just for this gathering.

Poet Gregory Corso died last night at his daughter Sherri's home in Minneapolis. Go here for more ...

 
 
 
 
 

I'm happy to present an addition to this site that has been a long time coming. As my longtime readers know, there has never been a way to directly contribute to this site. When I first launched Literary Kicks six and a half years ago, my plan was to invite contributions by email. I would review these contributions, edit them, convert them to HTML -- simple as that. This not-so-brilliant plan crash-landed about two years later.

1. I've been hearing the hype about e-books for a while. Surprisingly enough, I think I'm turning into a believer.

The first e-book to catch my attention was 'The Plant' at Stephen King's website. I downloaded the first couple of chapters, which were free at the time, and I had fun reading them.

Time to report on some interesting new books. First up are two venerable poets, both publishing new works in unusual formats. Robert Creeley has collected the results of an email correspondence with a group of SUNY Buffalo poetry students into a fresh and sophisticated short volume, Day Book of a Virtual Poet.

News for Summer 2000: one rave review, and one complaint.

1. I just saw the new movie version of "Hamlet," starring Ethan Hawke and directed by Michael Almereyda. Folks ... this movie is a masterpiece.

Sorry I've been gone so long. I know some people think I died; I assure you this is not true.

It is true, though, that I've been avoiding my responsibilities as owner of this site. I've been going through a sort of dark night of the soul recently, and dealing with some heavy things in my life that I don't want to talk too much about, except to put it in brief: my marriage broke up last year, around the beginning of September. Meg and I are both doing fine, and the kids are too.

The new millennium is coming and ... novelist Joseph Heller has died. I recently reread Heller's classic World War II black comedy "Catch-22", and found it funny and rewarding -- a cry against conformist thinking that stands alongside Kafka's "The Castle" and Orwell's "1984" and also seemed very much related to Ken Kesey's contemporaneous "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest".

The novelist Paul Bowles has died of a heart attack at the age of 88. He had earlier this month been taken to a hospital in Tangier where he had lived since 1947. Paul Bowles, an elegant expatriate with a refreshing tolerance for human differences and frailties, was a friend and inspiration to many of the younger Beat writers, like William S.

I've written a lot here about David Amram's appearances at poetry readings and events recently, but now a more serious event has occurred. The farmhouse where David lives with his family, in Peekskill Valley just north of New York City, has burnt down. The house was not insured, the family is seeking shelter with friends, and a fund has been set up for those who want to help the situation with a small (or large) contribution. The mailing address is:

David Amram