Rukeyser Reading Series: Grace Paley and Allen Ginsberg interviewed by Dennis Bernstein
Rukeyser Reading Program on the Air. Part one: [30 min.] Dennis Bernstein interviews Grace Paley about her fight against the nuclear madness in America. She talks about the big lie about civil defense and the history of struggle against the evil effects of nuclear science and what can be done. Need for renewable resource living. Refuse to do destructive work. Interview is interrupted periodically by an anti-nuclear musical song. Part two: [30 min] Interview with beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg, at Boulder, Colorado about the evolution of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Talks of teaching at the Nuropa Institute (Tibetan Buddhist foundation at Boulder). Kerouac's influences; meditation benefits, teaching styles; "first thought, best thought" actuality tradition of Kerouac; Trungpa; Bohemian chaos vs. Buddhist discipline traditions; writing and meditation; Buddhist and active resistors; blocking the nuclear tracks at Rocky Flats emblematic approach to nuclear problem. Produced at studios of WBAI by Dennis Bernstein.