Welcome to Venice West: Audio Recordings from the Lawrence Lipton PapersMain MenuIntroductionLawrence Lipton, the Beat Generation in Venice West, and the Lawrence Lipton papers at USC.Lipton and the Beat Generation PoetsLipton’s interviews with or about Beat poets, featuring Stuart Perkoff, Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others.Lipton and VeniceThe Venice West Picture Essay, the Gas House, and the history of Venice.Lipton and JazzJazz Canto, Langston Hughes, and Lipton’s recordings of poetry jazz sessions.Audio CollectionBrowse all the Audio in this ExhibitProject Contributors
Tape 158, Side 1, Part A: Lawrence Lipton introducing poems read at Venice West: "How to listen to a poem" (1:15) written and read by Lawrence Lipton […]
1media/high-volume.png2019-07-18T12:32:08-07:00Curtis Fletcher3225f3b99ebb95ebd811595627293f68f680673e346106Tape 158, side 1, part A) Lawrence Lipton (0:06) introducing poems read at Venice West: "How to listen to a poem" (1:15) written and read by Lawrence Lipton; Bruce Boyd reading his poems "The noetical predicament" (2:57), "This is what the watchbird sings who perches in the love tree" (5:10), "In the meanwhile, nothing" (5:53) "How moonbird sings in sunrise land" (7:15); Stuart Z. Perkoff reading his poems "The clown" (14:59), "Letter to my younger brother" (16:55), "Bird" (18:04), "Alba" (20:45), "Flowers for Luis Bunuel" (22:22), "Peace" (24:41); Charles Foster reading his poems "Let us count among the customs of the dying islanders the gift of love" (25:55), "Parlor'" (28:32), "Preliminary report on rarum naturum" (30:04), "Memorial Day, 1957" (34:01); Saul White reading his poems "Seated here, I'll shuck a while" (36:45), untitled "Alone my devils sing" (37:22), "Moondog" (38:03), "Fluted fear" (38:58), "One to five" (39:31), "Very profound" (41:43); Lawrence Lipton reading his poems "Improvisation on a theme from Bird Parker" (42:32), "I was a poet for the FBI" (44:57), "The dreaming hands" (51:06), "End of the line" (53:17); Jazz music (1:03:24). Lenore Kandel poems.plain2020-06-26T14:14:07-07:00Lawrence Lipton Papers, USC Digital LibraryLipton, Lawrence, 1898-1975, speaker; Lipton, Lawrence, 1898-1975, poet; Boyd, Bruce, speaker; Boyd, Bruce, poet; Perkoff, Stuart Z., 1930-1974, speaker; Perkoff, Stuart Z., 1930-1974, poet; Foster, Charles, speaker; Foster, Charles, poet; White, Saul, speaker; White, Saul, poetBo Doub59bddb0b27f7b3138b6b5c39e4cc435e9208ebad
1media/Venice-West-Cafe-exterior-CROP.jpg2019-07-27T14:07:17-07:00Audio Collection67Browse all the Audio in this Exhibitimage_header2019-08-10T11:51:26-07:00Below is a collection of all audio clips included in this exhibit.
To view and access timestamps for each clip, click on "Annotations" below each audio player. To collapse the annotations for a clip, click on "Description."
To see where, in this exhibit, a given audio clip appears, click on "Citations."Introduction Lawrence Lipton, the Beat Generation in Venice West, and the Lawrence Lipton papers at USC.Lipton and the Beat Generation Poets Lipton’s interviews with or about Beat poets, featuring Stuart Perkoff, Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others.
Lipton and Venice The Venice West Picture Essay, the Gas House, and the history of Venice.
Lipton and Jazz Jazz Canto, Langston Hughes, and Lipton’s recordings of poetry jazz sessions.
Lawrence Lipton (1898-1975) was a Beat poet and chronicler of the Beat Generation as it manifested across the cafés and artists' pads of Venice, California. At various times in his life, Lipton also worked as a graphic artist, a journalist, the publicity director of a large movie theater, a writer and poet, an editor, and a jazz composer.
Lipton's papers, held at USC Libraries Special Collections, document his prolific output through typescripts and manuscripts of his works; correspondence between Lipton and various members of the Beat literary movement; photographs of Venice and its countercultural scene; Lipton's research materials and collected works; and interviews that Lipton conducted with a variety of notable writers and musicians. One significant part of Lipton's papers that, until recently, has been largely inaccessible and undescribed is his collection of audio recordings. Lipton's audio recordings comprise 300 hours of original interviews with monumental artists, such as Kenneth Rexroth and Langston Hughes; live readings by numerous Beat poets from the "Venice West" scene; and live jazz and poetry experiments with musicians like Dave Brubeck and Buddy Collette. Lipton recorded much of this content during the research and writing of his landmark study of the Beats, The Holy Barbarians (1959), and his study of sexual mores, The Erotic Revolution (1965).
In Tape 158 from the collection, Lipton welcomes listeners to "Venice West" and introduces concepts of modern poetry, such as metrical style and strophic form. Lipton then introduces listeners to some of the "interests" of the Venice West poets: to restore the vocal arts and oral properties to poetry, experiment with the integration of poetry and jazz music, and introduce modern dance to the performance of reading (or singing) poetry. Lipton then commences the readings on this tape with one of his own poems titled "How to Listen to a Poem."
12019-07-27T15:17:37-07:00Introduction11Lawrence Lipton, the Beat Generation in Venice West, and the Lawrence Lipton papers at USC.plain2019-08-10T11:29:47-07:00Thanks to generous support from the Council on Library and Information Resources' (CLIR) Recordings at Risk grant program, the USC Digital Library recently digitized a selection of 147 recordings from the Lawrence Lipton papers.
Lawrence Lipton (1898-1975) was a Beat poet and chronicler of the Beat Generation as it manifested across the cafés and artists' pads of Venice, California. At various times in his life, Lipton also worked as a graphic artist, a journalist, the publicity director of a large movie theater, an editor, a jazz composer, and a writer and poet.
Lipton's papers, held at USC Libraries Special Collections, document his prolific output through typescripts and manuscripts of his works; correspondence between Lipton and various members of the Beat literary movement; photographs of Venice and its countercultural scene; Lipton's research materials and collected works; and interviews that Lipton conducted with a variety of notable writers and musicians. One significant part of Lipton's papers that, until recently, has been largely inaccessible is his collection of audio recordings. Lipton's audio recordings comprise 300 hours of original interviews with monumental artists, such as Kenneth Rexroth and Langston Hughes; live readings by numerous Beat poets from the "Venice West" scene; and live jazz and poetry experiments with musicians like Dave Brubeck and Buddy Collette. Lipton recorded much of this content during the research and writing of his landmark study of the Beats, The Holy Barbarians (1959), and his study of sexual mores, The Erotic Revolution (1965).
In Tape 158 from the collection, Lipton welcomes listeners to "Venice West" and introduces concepts of modern poetry, such as metrical patterns and strophic form. Lipton then introduces listeners to some of the "interests" of the Venice West poets: to restore the vocal arts and oral properties to poetry, experiment with the integration of poetry and jazz music, and introduce modern dance to the performance of reading (or singing) poetry. Lipton then commences the readings on this tape with one of his own poems titled "How to Listen to a Poem."
