drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries...

Overshadowed by "Howl"

Listening today to the podcast of BBC's Witness (the most consistently interesting nine minutes on radio and a sterling example of public broadcasting), I was reminded that Allen Ginsberg was not the only poet reading at the Six Gallery on October 7, 1955.

Michael McClure presented three poems, including For the Death of 100 Whales — way ahead of his time in environmental awareness. Listen to him read it at 6:35...

Text of the poem can be found here.

Google's Homage

Today's background image at google.com

Google today remembers the publication of M-D (in London, 161 years ago) with the above background image on its search page.

Another hat-tip to brother #3, T. (I've abandoned Google for duckduckgo.com!)

Moby-Dick Marathon in NYC!

If you can't wait for January's (preeminent) M-D marathon in New Bedford, there will be a "marathon-style" reading in New York City next month.

Broken into four sessions over the course of three days, it will start Friday, November 16 at 5 P.M. at Word bookstore in Brooklyn.

Details are being released on mobydickmarathonnyc.org.  It appears that readers ("crew" in this marathon's parlance) were recruited from NYC's community of writers and "book people." Sarah Vowell was the only name I recognized immediately (from her days on This American Life).  Searching on some of the more distinctive names revealed details:

• Anne Margaret Daniel - writer and teacher
• Ophira Eisenberg - comic, radio personality
• Rachel Fershleiser - author
• David Goodwillie - author
• Miles Klee - writer, critic, improviser
• Matthew Love - writer at Time Out New York
• Michelangelo Matos - author and contributor to Village Voice and others
• Said Sayrafiezadeh - playwright and author
• Joanna Smith-Rakoff - author and poet
• Simon Van Booy - author
• James Yeh - writer, editor, and occasional DJ

I'm interested to hear what these representatives of the literary world of NYC, arguably the world's current art omphalos, bring to our treasured text.

Hat-tip to brother #3, T.

Chapter-a-day audio streams

Prime yourself for MDM17 with a chapter-a-day streamed to your PC or downloaded to your MP3 player. (These readings are worth saving.)

The Moby Dick Big Read includes as readers some big names from British film and theater, such as Tilda Swinton, Simon Callow, Stephen Fry—and they're only up to Chapter 16!


Hat-tip to Henry Ferrini (filmmaker behind Polis is This, which interprets the work of Charles Olson).