2,000+ Cassettes from the Allen Ginsberg Audio Collection Now Streaming Online

Last month Col­in Mar­shall gave you the scoop on Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s dig­i­ti­za­tion of Allen Gins­berg’s “Howl,” a project that takes you inside the mak­ing of the icon­ic 1955 poem. As a quick fol­low up, it’s worth men­tion­ing this: Stan­ford has also just put online over 2,000 Gins­berg audio cas­sette record­ings, giv­ing you access to “a stag­ger­ing amount of pri­ma­ry source mate­r­i­al asso­ci­at­ed with the Beat Gen­er­a­tion” and its most acclaimed poet.

For a quick taste of what’s in the archive, Stan­ford Libraries points you to an after­noon break­fast table con­ver­sa­tion between Gins­berg and anoth­er leg­endary Beat fig­ure, William S. Bur­roughs. But you can rummage/search through the whole col­lec­tion and find your own favorite record­ings here.

via Stan­ford Libraries and Austin Kleon’s newslet­ter (which you should sub­scribe to here)

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Reveal­ing the Beat Poet’s Cre­ative Process

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, “Howl” (1959)

James Fran­co Reads a Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Allen Ginsberg’s Epic Poem ‘Howl’

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

Allen Gins­berg Record­ings Brought to the Dig­i­tal Age. Lis­ten to Eight Full Tracks for Free

Allen Ginsberg’s Hand­writ­ten Poem For Bernie Sanders, “Burling­ton Snow” (1986)