Tuesday, December 20, 2011, at Books and Bookshelves, 99 Sanchez in San Francisco’s Duboce Triangle, a group of fans and friends of the late poet Alden Van Buskirk will gather to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of “LAMI” (Auerhahn Society Press, San Francisco).
The panelists and speakers will include Matt Gonzalez, Jack Hirschman, Garrett Caples and David Highsmith.
Van Buskirk was a 1960 graduate of Dartmouth College, where Hirschman was a professor, and moved to Oakland after also attending graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis. He died on December 11, 1961 at SF General of a rare kidney disease called PNH.
Allen Ginsberg wrote a brief introduction to the volume, and was also instrumental in getting the imaginative yet challenging work published in journals like City Lights and Fuck You, according to John Paige, of Oakland, who befriended Van on the Dartmouth ski team and also roomed with him on the West Coast. The volume “LAMI” — a pun on the word “friend” — was published by Andrew Hoyem who now operates under the name Arion Press.
More info at (650) xxx-xxxx or (415) 621-3761. The event is free and open to all, starting at 7:30 p.m. Earthwise Productions is a Palo Alto-based concert and artist management company whose founder Mark Weiss is, like Van Buskirk, a Dartmouth College English major graduate, although he graduated a generation later. (He studied poetry with Tom Sleigh, for example). Weiss became interested in Van Buskirk after a chance meeting in 2010 with City Lights founder and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
“I asked him if he had ever lectured at Dartmouth”, Weiss said of the author of “Coney Island of the Mind” who published Ginsberg’s “Howl”. “He said that he had visited Hirschman there in 1961; I couldn’t picture Hirschman in Hanover– it’s quite a conservative place — so was intrigued. My subsequent sussing around made me think it was a timely idea to fete Mr. Van Buskirk. I didn’t imagine that soon I would be having tea and biscuits with his former roommate or ringing his ex-girlfriend, people who seemed quite willing and quite pleased to indulge my little whim. My ‘whim’ being their dear, departed friend.”
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Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 
that’s van in the shades, above, by the way….
The Origin mss., 1960-1962, consist of the editorial office records of the poetry magazine Origin, edited and published in Kyoto, Japan, by Sidney Corman, Will Petersen and Ami Petersen.
The collection has been arranged in three sections: 1) Correspondence, 1960-1962. The great majority of these letters are written to Sidney Corman in his capacity as editor of the magazine. They are from contributors and others interested in contemporary poetry, and are basically concerned with contributions, requests for copies of Origin, criticism of contemporaries and descriptions of activities participated in by various individuals.
Correspondents represented include Carroll Arnett, Marvin Bell, Carol Berge, Robert Bly, Ernest M. Carmichael, Frederick Eckman, Mary H. Eldredge, Seymour Faust, Robert Francis Grady, Jonathan Edward Greene, John Haag, William Harmon, Jack Hirschman, Frank William Jones, LeRoi Jones, Robert Kelly, Gerrit Lansing, James Laughlin, Carl A. Linder, Arthur McFarland, Kenneth Alan McRobbie, Mrs. Kathleen (Fraser) Marshall, Jeffrey Masson, Norman Moser, Alden A. Nowlan, Padraig O’Broin, Simon Perchik, Timothy Reynolds, Rhoda Rissin, Beverly Shafer, Gilbert Sorrentino, Raymond Souster and Alden Van Buskirk.
2) Writings. These are manuscripts of poems and articles submitted for publication in Origin. Authors included are: Robert Kelly and Charles Nicol. Material of this type accompanied by a covering letter is filed with the covering letter in the correspondence section of this collection. It includes writings of Ernest M. Carmichael, Mary H. Eldredge, John Haag, Beverly Shafer and Alden Van Buskirk.
3) Printer’s copies and proofs of Origin, arranged in order of the numbers of the magazine. See the Manuscripts Catalog for further information.
Collection size: 343 items
at indiana universitybloomington
This, according to Scout, MD, the best website ever — particularly the blinking eyes.
http://govindtiwari.blogspot.com/
http://govindtiwari.blogspot.com/
(from shampoo poetry events at blogspot — “Ceely” here is John Paige above),
Tuesday, December 20
7:30pm
Alden Van Buskirk: A Tribute
‘Hailed by Allen Ginsberg in 1964 as a poet who “felt truth,” Alden Van Buskirk died in 1961 at age 23 of a rare illness. His surviving work, published as Lami (Auerhahn Press, 1965), remains an underground classic of the San Francisco Renaissance. Join Van Buskirk’s friends and admirers – including Jack Hirschman (his teacher at Dartmouth), Matt Gonzalez, John Ceely, Garrett Caples, David Highsmith, Clive Matson, and others – in the first event celebrating the poet’s life and work.’
and this:
http://www.sfheart.com/ArtPoetryEvents.html
and from the Dartmouth alumni website, thanks James Von Rittman, for your support:
A Tribute to Dartmouth Poet, Alden Van Buskirk ’60
Date: Tuesday, December 20th
Time: 7:30pm ’til 8:30pm
Location: Books and Bookshelves, 99 Sanchez Street, San Francisco
Cost: Everyone: Free
Join Dartmouth alumni, along with a group of fans of the late poet Alden Van Buskirk at a panel discussion to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of LAMI (Auerhahn Society Press, San Francisco).
The panelists and speakers will include Matt Gonzalez, Jack Hirschman, Garrett Caples, and David Highsmith.
Van Buskirk was a 1960 graduate of Dartmouth College, where Hirschman was a professor, and moved to Oakland after also attending graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis. He died on December 11, 1961 at SF General of a rare kidney disease called PNH.
Allen Ginsberg wrote a brief introduction to the volume, and was also instrumental in getting the imaginative yet challenging work published in journals like City Lights, according to John Paige, of Oakland, who befriended “Van” on the Dartmouth ski team and also roomed with him on the West Coast. The volume LAMI – a pun on the word “friend” – was published by Andrew Hoyem who now operates under the name Arion Press.
PNH = Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hematuria.
Even the name of the disease that killed him has a poetic ring to it.
Van was a phenom in my 19 yr old life. We met in Sept’60 in St. Louis, each having taken small rooms in a home near the university. He met Johnny Sherrill at a bar and we soon shared an apartment for several months in early ’61, with three lovely blossoms. We got on well, trading my work keeping things habitable for his spell-binding poems and riffs on Baudelaire, VLindsay, Ginsburg, les troubadors, so many others…and Coltrane, Davis, Roach, Monk, and Coleman spun into our lives. Last time we met, he gave me his ragged leather portfolio. Hail Lami!
Gary Merritt, Dec ’12
thanks, gary. as this column is partially a tribute to ornette coleman and his “plastic alto” the white acrylic sax i am pleased that Van heard Ornette, by your account….
Glad to hear that Springfield native Vachel Lindsay was acknowledged as an influence on Van.
this is kind of a red herring but in my time prepping for the Van event I kept being conscious of my urine; his disease presents as a darkening of the urine. I was also thinking of Dayna Stephens the Berkeley-based sax player who is fighting what I think of as a related kidney conditions, FSGS: http://alternate-takes.com/2011/06/30/benefit-concert-for-saxophonist-dayna-stephens-july-4th/
Gary, where are you? I was speaking with David Berger earlier today and we were both wondering where you are today. The two of us are in NYC: He and Holly in Manhattan; Bobbie and I in Brooklyn.
ummm….not sure who Gary, Michael Gordon or David Berger are but happy to add them to the growing legion of Van’s fans and friends coalescing and coagulating — getting together, in person and over the wire — 50 years after the writing of “Lami”…
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