Daniel Snyder Steve Dalachinsky helped organize Tuesday night’s tribute to Tuli Kupferberg.The Living Theater on Clinton Street was the scene of an 87th birthday party Tuesday night. Unfortunately, the guest of honor, poet and pacifist Tuli Kupferberg, was not in physical attendance, having died last summer. His friends had a wonderful time on his behalf.
Tuli Kupferberg, born on the Lower East Side in 1923, and in his last years a resident of SoHo, will be forever associated in many minds with the East Village arts underground of the 1960s.
He was a member of the quintessential East Village radical band The Fugs, performing alongside poet and novelist Ed Sanders, then owner of Peace Eye Books on Avenue A.
The Fugs, along with David Peel and the Lower East Side, and The Holy Modal Rounders, formed an underground music scene which mixed raw folk-rock with anarcho-pacifist politics, an approach now widely regarded as a prototype for the punk rock of the 1970s. Fugs songs like “Kill for Peace,” “C.I.A. Man” and the nihilist classic “Nothing” (“Monday nothing, Tuesday nothing…”) occupy an eccentric niche in music history.
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Meredith Hoffman Jane Kwett gazes down at 12th Street from her new home, Allen Ginsberg’s apartment.Jane Kwett, a marketer for Yelp who prefers Kerouac to Ginsberg, is the new tenant in Allen Ginsberg’s old apartment.
After the landlord raised the rent in her West Village residence, she found the Ginsberg apartment online and thought it looked like a great deal for $1,700 a month. She moved into the apartment at 437 E. 12th Street, last Thursday. Now Ms. Kwett, 26, often writes by the very window where Ginsberg sat, but the books he wrote are missing from her shelf. She said her favorite part of the apartment is the light that comes in through that window, which is “very iconic Ginsberg.” Calling the space “my apartment,” she admitted she thinks less about Ginsberg now than when she first moved in a week ago.
“I do think it’s funny that people are so interested in the apartment, but I can understand, I mean it’s the East Village. It’s the ultimate hipster apartment and I’m not at all a hipster. Though I don’t know if there are too many ‘angelheaded’ hipsters in the neighborhood anymore,” said Ms. Kwett, quoting Ginsberg’s “Howl.”
With her light blonde hair and relaxed California demeanor, Ms. Kwett could hardly strike anyone as a hipster.
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Samantha Ku Drenched but undaunted, two young spectators at the Howl! Festival in Tompkins Square Park.Over the last three days, poetry and spoken word, music and theater, performance art and visual art combined in Tompkins Square Park for the annual Howl! Festival.
Samantha Ku Models for the Hemma collection applaud the designers.Howl! Arts board member Bob Perl estimated that around 20,000 to 30,000 attended the festival this weekend. Saturday drew the most people because of a mix of programming and pleasant weather. But the sun didn’t last. “Whether it’s the weather or inclement rain coming, today so far is quiet,” said Mr. Perl of Sunday’s performances.
The festival started on Friday night with a group of local poets reading Allen Ginsberg’ epic poem “Howl.”
From 1952 until his death in 1997, Beat poet Ginsberg lived and worked in the East Village.
Holding the event in the East Village adds “a sense of roots,” said Anne Waldman, the poet laureate of this year’s festival.
“In the spirit of continuity or a sense of lineage of honoring all the arts that have gone on here, it’s important to remind people of that at this site.”
Were you there?
Please share your stories of the Howl! Festival.
This post has been changed to correct an error.
Samantha Ku Master of ceremonies Bob Holman encourages audience members to join in the howl.
