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He Helped Ginsberg HOWL

The celebrated Beat poet Allen Ginsberg's upstate retreat/artists' colony/utopian crashpad was the East Hill Farm.  The farmkeeper, Gordon Ball, now lives in Lexington, Virginia, and he's put together the inside stories and pictures in his new book, East Hill Farm.  Gordon's films have appeared at MoMA and at the Guggenheim. Gordon took thousands of photos of Beat-era people.  He is now a professor at VMI.   Here's his bio.

An earlier book of Gordon's ('66 Frames) was celebrated by the Village Voice, American Book Review, and Publishers Weekly. Also, the normally-unflappable deadpan NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu squealed, "This book made me want to take acid and have sex with lots of people.... made me want to stay up all night in the company of my genius friends in the mid-sixties in New York's Lower East Side.... Gordon Ball writes with compassion and nostalgia about a unique and nearly indescribable epoch."

Gordon's web page includes schedules of live-readings of East Hill Farm and also has vintage snapshots including a group picture of him and fellow guests of a Mexican jail.

East Hill Farm on Amazon.

(webtext:tw)
 

Marth Woodroof has retired from WMRA and is now spending her time as a full-time writer and published author.