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Poet’s Apprentice Book One
Available December 20, 2021 Amazon.com: Poet’s Apprentice: Book One: At the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics: January-March 1980: 9798784241917: Roark, Randy: Books Continue Reading »
Interview with Emily Rivera, Giant Steps Press, May 11th 2021, about Poet’s Apprentice
Video link: https://youtu.be/evkFWb956Ks Emily Rivera: Hello, everyone, welcome back to Giant Steps Press Goes Zoom. My name is Emily Rivera, and today we have with us Randy Roark, the author of Poet’s Apprentice. Later, we’ll have a reading from this book by Randy himself along with an interview. Thank you for joining us today, Randy…. Continue Reading »
Allen Ginsberg’s Annotations to Tom Clark’s “The Great Naropa Poetry Wars,” March 1980
One of my last projects as Allen Ginsberg’s apprentice was secretarying his attempt to correct errors in Tom Clark’s attack on Naropa Institute in 1980. We ran out of time and his literary executor and I cannot find an instance of it being published in any form. These are the first eleven pages. Here’s a… Continue Reading »
Allen Ginsberg on Bob Dylan: Excerpted from miscellaneous classroom lectures and interviews, 1974-1993
Allen Ginsberg on Bob DylanExcerpts from interviews and lectures 1974-1993 Transcribed and compiled for AG by Randy Roark, August 1993 Introductory Note: In 1993, I transcribed 10 hours of interviews between Allen Ginsberg and Hal Willner, producer of the box-set “Holy Soul Jelly Roll.” I edited this down to 87 pages and submitted it and… Continue Reading »
Background Information for Sleepless Nights Show–Nouvelle Chanson Francois–October 9, 2019
Sometimes You’re Lucky, Sometimes You’re Not Nouvelle ChansonAn Anthology 1997-2009 Randy Roark Cover Photo #s 1-12: Anna TernheimCover Photo #s 13-24: Emily LoizeauCover Photo #s 25-36: Anja GarbarekCover Photo #s 37-50: Emilie Simon Published by Laocoon Press in a limited edition of 50 and distributed for free to friends and others on the occasion of… Continue Reading »
TEDx Talk, Mindfulness as a Means of Self Discovery
Berkeley Lake ParkDenver, CO. September 22, 2019 Produced by Passport to Mindfulness I was asked to give the opening talk at a mindfulness retreat for the parents of the children who were off doing other stuff. Mindfulness as a Means of Self Discovery First I’d like to acknowledge Lauren and Ahva and Jason and Drew… Continue Reading »
A review of my selected poems by my first poetry teacher at Naropa.
CO-EMERGENCE IN RANDY ROARK’S MONA LISA’S VEIL: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (1979-2001). Stanley Fefferman Posted on August 11, 2017 by Stanley Fefferman INTRODUCTION A light veil covers the hair and forehead of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. That veil is the organizing image of Roark’s book Mona Lisa’s Veil: New and Selected Poems (1979-2001) where he… Continue Reading »
Passing the Torch: The Beat Generation and Velvet Underground in Paris
As part of my role as “Foreign Desk” of the Museum of American Poetics, I was asked to review two exhibits in Paris, July 2016. PASSING THE TORCH: The Beats and the Velvet Underground in Paris. In July 2016, on opposite sides of the city, Paris hosted two exhibits that began with Allen Ginsberg. At… Continue Reading »
A Book That Changed My Life: Gregory Corso’s “Gasoline” Athenaeum Book Store, Amsterdam, Holland 16 01 13
I was invited by the Literary Activities Committee of the Athenaeum Book Store in Amsterdam to speak last night for ten minutes and take questions on a book that had changed my life. This is a slightly cleaned-up version of the talk that I gave. Because spontaneous poetics was so important to Allen and the… Continue Reading »
For Many Voices blog: The Quality of Silence
The Quality of Silence In 1983, I was working as an assistant to the director of Naropa Institute’s first Summer Writing Program. One of founders of the poetry program there—Diane di Prima—was teaching that summer, and reports were coming in that she was refusing to “workshop” students’ poems. As lowest in the chain of command,… Continue Reading »