Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

Allen Ginsberg
(1926-1997)

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 11:50:48 -0500 From: Charles Bernstein [bernstei@BWAY.NET] Subject: Allen Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg has been diagnosed with liver cancer and is not given much more time to live. There are articles about his illness in today's New York Post and Philadelphia Inquirer. I would imagine everyone reading this will have the same intense reaction I am having. It seems like Allen Ginsberg has been with me all my life.

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 17:55:05 -0500 From: Charles Bernstein [bernstei@BWAY.NET] Subject: Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) Piping down the valleys wild Piping songs of pleasant glee On a cloud I saw a child.. And he laughing said to me. Pipe a song about a Lamb: So I piped with merry chear, Piper pipe that song again So I piped he wept to hear. Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy songs of happy chear So I sung the same again While he wept with joy to hear. Piper sit thee down and write In a book that all my read -- So he vanish'd from my sight, And I plucked a hollow reed And I made a rural pen, And I stain'd the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs, Every child may joy to hear

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 15:04:19 -0500 From: Alan Jen Sondheim [sondheim@panix.com] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg The Daily News said 4 months to a year. If it wasn't for Howl, I would have broken down in Pennsyvania; it was my first epiphany. I found it at a local bookshop when it first came out; I was around 13 at the time and already depressive. Alan

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 15:37:27 -0500 From: Steven Marks [swmar@CONNCOLL.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg I was about 13, too, when I first heard of Allen Ginsberg from my 7th-grade English teacher who clandestinely read us the beginning of Howl. All I remember was that it wasn't the sing-songy verse we were usually fed. I also remember wondering why our English teacher was being so secretive. This was in 1965 or 1966. Now I know why and now I also know that things haven't changed nearly enough. sadly, Steven

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 16:30:37 -0500 From: Don Cheney [doncheney@GEOCITIES.COM] Subject: Allen Ginsberg i've never met allen ginsberg but i was within arms reach of him one late afternoon many years ago. stephen rodefer was having allen talk about jack kerouac for one of his ucsd literature classes and invited me to drop in. i remember walking to the lecture hall and allen was walking in front of me amidst a small crowd of people trying to get through the door. and i remember he was wearing this dopey dark blue polyester sport coat and i remember that nobody seemed to notice him really and i had the urge to tap him on the shoulder and say "what's up with this ginsberg goofball anyway?" but i didn't and obviously i've regretted it over all these years. and i've regretted it because i've come to understand what a large and open sense of humor he has. Don Cheney

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 16:02:53 +1000 From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg?

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 16:50:32 -0800 From: Stephen Cope [scope@SDCC3.UCSD.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg This is sad, tho expected, news. I've had dreams in the past of receiving such information, which I suppose says much about the depth to which he's entered my own consciousness. I've always found Allen, in my limited experience, to be among the most generous, open, encouraging, and dedicated members of the poetry community. A leader in so many ways... God bless him...

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 19:19:03 -0700 From: "Jeffrey W. Timmons" [Timmons@ASU.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg? yes.

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:36:36 -0600 From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg At 7:19 PM -0700 4/4/97, Jeffrey W. Timmons wrote: >On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > >> shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg? > >yes. okay, somebody else start please, and can we not talk about him as if he's already dead please.

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:38:11 -0500 From: Wendy Battin [wjbat@CONNCOLL.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Alan Jen Sondheim wrote: > The Daily News said 4 months to a year. > > If it wasn't for Howl, I would have broken down in Pennsyvania; it was my > first epiphany. I found it at a local bookshop when it first came out; I > was around 13 at the time and already depressive. Ditto, except Delaware. Wendy

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:40:55 +0600 From: KENT JOHNSON [KJOHNSON@STUDENT.HIGHLAND.CC.IL.US] Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > At 7:19 PM -0700 4/4/97, Jeffrey W. Timmons wrote: > >On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > > > >> shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg? > > > >yes. > > okay, somebody else start please, and can we not talk about him as if he's > already dead please. As if that would be a terrible thing? Oh, awful death. Let us not, for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, what will be the first line of this renga? ketn>

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:51:04 -0500 From: Wendy Battin [wjbat@CONNCOLL.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, KENT JOHNSON wrote: > for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, > what will be the first line of this renga? Now, since death is so pornographic, where can they sell it?

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:53:26 -0800 From: Daniel Zimmerman [daniel7@TRIBECA.IOS.COM] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg KENT JOHNSON wrote: > > > Date sent: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:36:36 -0600 > > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group > > From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] > > Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > At 7:19 PM -0700 4/4/97, Jeffrey W. Timmons wrote: > > >On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > > > > > >> shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg? > > > > > >yes. > > > > okay, somebody else start please, and can we not talk about him as if he's > > already dead please. > > As if that would be a terrible thing? Oh, awful death. Let us not, > for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, > what will be the first line of this renga? > > ketn> pull my daisy, poet

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:06:14 +0600 From: KENT JOHNSON [KJOHNSON@STUDENT.HIGHLAND.CC.IL.US] Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > KENT JOHNSON wrote: > > > > > Date sent: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:36:36 -0600 > > > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group [POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU] > > > From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] > > > Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > > At 7:19 PM -0700 4/4/97, Jeffrey W. Timmons wrote: > > > >On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > > > > > > > >> shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg? > > > > > > > >yes. > > > > > > okay, somebody else start please, and can we not talk about him as if he's > > > already dead please. > > > > As if that would be a terrible thing? Oh, awful death. Let us not, > > for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, > > what will be the first line of this renga? > > > > ketn> > > pull my daisy, poet Happening to notice the willow leaves in the garden, a braille page of words

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 23:10:59 -0800 From: Daniel Zimmerman [daniel7@TRIBECA.IOS.COM] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > KENT JOHNSON wrote: > > > > > > > Date sent: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:36:36 -0600 > > > > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group [POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU] > > > > From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] > > > > Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > > > > At 7:19 PM -0700 4/4/97, Jeffrey W. Timmons wrote: > > > > >On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > > > > > > > > > >> shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg? > > > > > > > > > >yes. > > > > > > > > okay, somebody else start please, and can we not talk about him as if he's > > > > already dead please. > > > > > > As if that would be a terrible thing? Oh, awful death. Let us not, > > > for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, > > > what will be the first line of this renga? > > > > > > ketn> > > > > pull my daisy, poet > > Happening to notice the willow leaves in the garden, a braille page > of words the wind a simultaneous translation

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:14:55 +0600 From: KENT JOHNSON [KJOHNSON@STUDENT.HIGHLAND.CC.IL.US] Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > > > KENT JOHNSON wrote: > > > > > > > > > Date sent: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:36:36 -0600 > > > > > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group [POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU] > > > > > From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] > > > > > Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > > > > > > At 7:19 PM -0700 4/4/97, Jeffrey W. Timmons wrote: > > > > > >On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > >> shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg? > > > > > > > > > > > >yes. > > > > > > > > > > okay, somebody else start please, and can we not talk about him as if he's > > > > > already dead please. > > > > > > > > As if that would be a terrible thing? Oh, awful death. Let us not, > > > > for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, > > > > what will be the first line of this renga? > > > > > > > > ketn> > > > > > > pull my daisy, poet > > > > Happening to notice the willow leaves in the garden, a braille page > > of words > > the wind a simultaneous translation the sorority girls sing of fucking in a plaintive way>

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 23:18:47 -0500 From: Alan Jen Sondheim [sondheim@panix.com] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU pull my daisy, poet Happening to notice the willow leaves in the garden, a braille page of words the wind a simultaneous translation the sorority girls sing of fucking in a plaintive way nothing has happened, no one has died

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 23:24:12 -0800 From: Daniel Zimmerman [daniel7@TRIBECA.IOS.COM] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > > > > > KENT JOHNSON wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Date sent: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:36:36 -0600 > > > > > > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group [POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU] > > > > > > From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] > > > > > > Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > > > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > > > > > > > > At 7:19 PM -0700 4/4/97, Jeffrey W. Timmons wrote: > > > > > > >On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > >> shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg? > > > > > > > > > > > > > >yes. > > > > > > > > > > > > okay, somebody else start please, and can we not talk about him as if he's > > > > > > already dead please. > > > > > > > > > > As if that would be a terrible thing? Oh, awful death. Let us not, > > > > > for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, > > > > > what will be the first line of this renga? > > > > > > > > > > ketn> > > > > > > > > pull my daisy, poet > > > > > > Happening to notice the willow leaves in the garden, a braille page > > > of words > > > > the wind a simultaneous translation > > the sorority girls sing of fucking in a plaintive way> brushed silk blouses darkening in the midday heat, dank hyacinths

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:27:04 +0600 From: KENT JOHNSON [KJOHNSON@STUDENT.HIGHLAND.CC.IL.US] Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > pull my daisy, poet > Happening to notice the willow leaves in the garden, a braille page > of words > the wind a simultaneous translation > the sorority girls sing of fucking in a plaintive way > nothing has happened, no one has died beside a bowl smelling of old cat's milk, Jeniffer weeps>

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 23:29:23 -0500 From: Alan Jen Sondheim [sondheim@panix.com] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Is it necessary to quote with, to include post headers, to ignore other contributions? Alan, bowing out On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > KENT JOHNSON wrote: > > > > > Date sent: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 23:10:59 -0800 > > > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group [POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU] > > > From: Daniel Zimmerman > > > Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > > KENT JOHNSON wrote: > > > > > > > > > Date sent: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:53:26 -0800 > > > > > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group [POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU] > > > > > From: Daniel Zimmerman [daniel7@TRIBECA.IOS.COM] > > > > > Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > > > > > > KENT JOHNSON wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > Date sent: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:36:36 -0600 > > > > > > > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group [POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU] > > > > > > > From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] > > > > > > > Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg > > > > > > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > > > > > > > > > > At 7:19 PM -0700 4/4/97, Jeffrey W. Timmons wrote: > > > > > > > >On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >> shall we write a group poem/renga/range of affection for allen ginsberg? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >yes. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > okay, somebody else start please, and can we not talk about him as if he's > > > > > > > already dead please. > > > > > > > > > > > > As if that would be a terrible thing? Oh, awful death. Let us not, > > > > > > for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, > > > > > > what will be the first line of this renga? > > > > > > > > > > > > ketn> > > > > > > > > > > pull my daisy, poet > > > > > > > > Happening to notice the willow leaves in the garden, a braille page > > > > of words > > > > > > the wind a simultaneous translation > > > > the sorority girls sing of fucking in a plaintive way> > > brushed silk blouses darkening in the midday heat, dank hyacinths >

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 20:34:54 +0600 From: KENT JOHNSON [KJOHNSON@STUDENT.HIGHLAND.CC.IL.US] Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Allen Ginsberg's death Here is the great equalizer, it would seem. Language is slippery, pronouns are fuzzy, poetry is not poetry. But death? Death is death, and there it is, no experimental messing with it. I suspect Ginsberg would not want any sentimental sniffling. He's been talking about death for a long time. I remember at the Orono conference in--was it--'93? I approached Ginsberg after his reading there and introduced myself as the person who had edited the Buddhist anthology of contemporary American poets in which he prominently figured. I was sure he owuld be impressed, probably would embrace me warmly, since clearly this was the most important anthology to appear in post-war America, intro by Gary Snyder, numerous avant-garde poets along with big mainstreams, unknowns, etc. He had a red bandanna tied to four corners around his head, sipped deeply on a soda and said in a decidedly laconic way: Oh, so yu're the guy who did that... And then he turned and started talking to someone else. I felt hurt and felt resentlful for a good time after that-- especially after riding back to the motel in the same van with him and he was yakkety yakketing with Marjorie Perloff and Jerome McGann and it was as if I was not there. Invisible. Look Allen, I have adored you, wanted to be like you, wondered what it would be like to walk down the street with you, read you out loud with my friends inthe bar, and all you can do after I edit a Buddhist anthology of poetry is treat me like shit. Did I think to myself: I wish you would die, motherfucker. (but no, no, I don't mean that,that's a wrong thing to feel, that's jsut my drunkenness, I'm not that kind of dperson...) And of course he will. And of course all of us will. The intensity comes out of the factness of death, doesn't it, like a beatnik on acid with beads, staring us in the face with all of his teeth? Now I realize death was probably teaching me a lesson, saying so what if you did so and so, you sorry idiot? No merit. So don't be sad. I'll bet Allen wouldn't want it that way. But then again, I could be worng. And only death will prove us all, in the end, immaculately right. Right? kent

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:04:50 -0800 From: Daniel Zimmerman [daniel7@TRIBECA.IOS.COM] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg's death Singing "Father Death" & Blake's Songs, Allen's left more life than death can take away. Don't feel bad, Kent. He brushed me off once, after I read a few poems at the WCW festival in Paterson, as "very intelligent." No blame. Om Kavaye Namah. [Honor to the Great Poet.] Dan

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 21:22:45 +0600 From: KENT JOHNSON [KJOHNSON@STUDENT.HIGHLAND.CC.IL.US] Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg's death Dan: I'm not trying to be smart, but when you say that Allen left more life than death can take away, it sounds like you might really be scared. Kent

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 22:36:20 -0800 From: Daniel Zimmerman [daniel7@TRIBECA.IOS.COM] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg's death Not scared, but struck by the sublime: that 18th century sense of the awe-ful or, as Blake says, who died singing of angels, the "terrific": "portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man." Scared of what? Dan

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 11:14:33 -0600 From: Joseph Zitt [jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM] Organization: Human Systems Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg Wendy Battin wrote: > > On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, KENT JOHNSON wrote: > > for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, > > what will be the first line of this renga? > > Now, since death is so pornographic, where can they sell it? OK, a first line: Now, since death is so pornographic, BTW, if a renga evolves, I *will* keep on top of this one and try to make it into a hypertext as it goes along. --

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 12:19:34 -0600 From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg >KENT JOHNSON wrote: As if that would be a terrible thing? Oh, awful death. Let us not, >> > > for it is not to be spoken of. Now since death is so pornographic, >> > > what will be the first line of this renga? >> > > >> > > ketn> spare me your sarcasm, you don't know anything about my experiences with death or anything else for that matter.

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 13:04:23 +0600 From: KENT JOHNSON [KJOHNSON@STUDENT.HIGHLAND.CC.IL.US] Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg I didn't mean to offend. But I apologize, because the message was silly and unnecessary. I'm sitting here now, just having read Alan Sondheim's post. I feel really weird. Is anyone else out there crying too? Kent

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 14:39:37 -0500 From: Alan Jen Sondheim [sondheim@panix.com] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg On Sat, 5 Apr 1997, KENT JOHNSON wrote: > I feel really weird. Is anyone else out there crying > too? > > Kent Yes - many of us - Alan

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 16:20:01 -0600 From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg At 1:04 PM +0600 4/5/97, KENT JOHNSON wrote: >I didn't mean to offend. But I apologize, because the message was >silly and unnecessary. I'm sitting here now, just having read Alan >Sondheim's post. I feel really weird. Is anyone else out there crying >too? > >Kent > not yet. just having a quiet time. it's raining outside, like it's crying in my heart; what *is* this lethargy that penetrates my heart? must be grief.

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 16:28:00 -0600 From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" [pritchpa@SILVERPLUME.IIX.COM] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg Comments: To: Alan Jen Sondheim [sondheim@PANIX.COM] I'm with you Kent & Alan. Listening right now to P. Glass's "Wichita Vortex Sutra" which sounds all of a sudden like ave atque vale. And I'm truly surprised by how hard and how deeply Allen's death is affecting me. I've driven around town today in a weird daze, everything feeling and looking uncanny, as if a great silent shockwave had passed through the world and nobody's noticed, nobody's noticed at all. And everything is the same and goes on being the same, just as it ought. It ought to be the same. Only it isn't and it can't be. But it's the same all the same and only this very weird feeling of a tiny vacuum at the center of things. I never knew Allen; only brushed by him twice in passing as it were. The first time was 1989 at City Lights, the day before the quake and the Series and I was handing out copies of a miserable poetry rag I'd put together and which is best forgotten but we bumped into each other at the crowded front counter and naturally being alert for favorable omens I was delighted. The second time was last year in Anselm Hollo's backyard where I found myself sitting, rather like Aldon, apart from the main group, on a lawn chair, and Allen and his nephew I guess it was Al came up and joined my wife and I and Lindsay Hill. We were all eating veggie burgers and watermelon and I thought how frail Allen looks and then he and Lindsay talked a bit about somebody's mother, maybe it was Steven Marks'? maybe not - the name has faded. He was wearing bright red suspenders which I put into a poem a few days later. And that was all very funny really since I'd panned his last book in a brief review I'd done for the Daily Camera and was mortally afraid to introduce myself in case someone had told him about it and that review was how Anselm Hollo and I met, by vigourous exchange of letter, and eventually led me to joining the list so I owe it this chance of expression and amends I guess in retrospect to my hubristic attempt to take Allen Ginsberg down a notch what a silly thing to do and I will miss him who else has done more for poetry and there should be a state funeral if there was such a thing as a state with honor that could see itself that way but then what need for Allen Ginsberg except the example of his beauty and anyway such ceremonies are deceptive flatteries that cannot take the place or can they of real grieving as this list will do very nicely even better for that I say. I intend to get drunk tonight and watch Jerry Aronson's "The Life & Times of Allen Ginsberg." GINSBERG AT 70 Dharma Lion thin now, skin a little sallow. Huddles over veggie burger on the half bun, pink crescent of watermelon shining on plate (adjunct to Gemini). Big red X of suspenders marks the spot on his back as if to say, here it is folks, look no farther: the matchless candor of the human heart.

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 18:59:12 -0500 From: Peter Jaeger [pjaeger@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca] Subject: Allen Ginsberg I write you a poem long ago already my feet are washed in death Here I am naked without identity with no more body than the fine black tracery of pen marks on soft paper as star talks to star multiple beams of sunlight all the same myriad thought in one fold of the universe where Whitman was and Blake and Shelley saw Milton dwelling in a starry temple brooding in his blindness seeing all - Now at last I can speak to you beloved brothers of an unknown moon from "POEM Rocket" in Kaddish

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 19:35:37 -0800 From: George Bowering [bowering@SFU.CA] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) >Piping down the valleys wild >Piping songs of pleasant glee >On a cloud I saw a child.. >And he laughing said to me. etc. Charles, I am glad that you quoted that poem. I have been today and yesteday trying to call up all my Allen memories since first talking with him on his return from Asia, 1963. And you reminded me of the time I drove Allen westward thru the streets of Montreal, probably 1969, and he sat beside me and sang that song, pumping on that weird meoleon or whatever it was from India. so I veered off the street and took him and banged on F.R. Scott's door, and introduced the 2 poets, and Frank made one of his famous martinis for us, and I do believe that AG drank his, too. George Bowering. ,

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 12:00:29 -0500 From: Alan Jen Sondheim [sondheim@panix.com] Subject: Allen Ginsberg + WCBS just announced Allen Ginsberg has died. Alan

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 11:34:35 -0800 From: michael corbin [evadog@BITSTREAM.NET] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg + Alan Jen Sondheim wrote: > > WCBS just announced Allen Ginsberg has died. > R.I.P. "Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?" (A Supermarket in California) mc

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 11:35:15 +0100 From: Miekal And [dtv@MWT.NET] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg + hath die sly bath died live as death live as who those lips kiss miekal

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 22:53:38 -0400 From: Steve Shoemaker [shoemakers@COFC.EDU] Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg / No Apologies No need for apologies, David, as far as I can see. And there was nothing "superficial" about your "dabbling"--that's just *writing*. I think Kent's right that everyone will deal with the news in their own way, and in their own time. As it happens, I feel like writing--out of the sense expressed by others of Allen's death sudden and hard, harder even than might have been expected. I saw/heard Allen "live" on two occasions, most recently at the Orono Confernece in '93. There, thanks to Burt Hatlen's generosity, I got the chance to introduce Allen's tandem reading with Carl Rakosi. That double reading was a moving & beautiful event for me, a bridging and spanning of poetic lives & energies drawing on experience of the better part of the century (Carl 88 at the time). The other time I heard Allen read was when i was an undergrad at U of MD, College Park, ca. '83 or '84. I think Allen must have read, or rather performed, for about an hour and a half or 2 hours--reciting, chanting, singing & playing that little harmonium--or whatever it's called. As i recall, he did it all from memory, no recourse at all to the printed word, a real bard--something i have not heard/seen anyone do since. I made a tape, using a cheap little portable recorder, and just now, remarkably, i managed to dig this tape out of an old box of junk. I rewound it to the beginning of a side, which turned out to be side 2, coming in somewhere in the middle of the reading. The first words are Allen asking a question "Go on...?" asking the audience whether he shld keep going, and the crowd responding w/ rousing affirmation. (As i remember it, it was a not very large room filled to overflowing, people standing in the corners & sitting on the floors, spilling out into the halls--the tape is full of sounds of people gabbing, chatting & laughing between & sometimes during poems.) Then Allen begins talking about the death of his father from cancer, & reads 2 sections from "Don't Grow Old," and then sings/plays "Father Death Blues." My first listen-thru to this sitting at the kitchen table sent a chill up my spine, & then when i tried to play it again the tape began to self-destruct, but i did manage to transcribe Allen's intro to the poems: "1976--On the death of my father, Louis Ginsberg, who was a poet...who was a considerably gifted lyric poet...& for the 10 years before he died, at the age of 80, I gave poetry readings with him & we were relatively close. He died of cancer in 1976, in a relatively philosophic mood, without much pain. So these are a few notes & a song written during his illness & after his death. He was a high school teacher & he used to teach Wordsworth...and, uh, Poe. So I've learned a lot of poetry from him..." [reads sections 3&4 of "Don't Grow Old"] (Even on this very poor tape, his wonderfully warm, expressive, charismatic, humorous, playful voice comes over.) III. Wasted arms, feeble knees 80 years old, hair thin & white cheek bonier than I'd remembered-- head bowed on his neck, eyes opened now and then, he listened-- I read my father Wordsworth's *Intimations of Immortality* [Allen reads following quote w/ deep and comical sonority] "...trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home..." "That's beautiful," he said, "but it's not true." "When I was a boy, we had a house on Boyd Street, Newark--the backyard was a big empty lot full of bushes and tall grass, I always wondered what was behind those trees. When I grew older, I walked around the block, and found out what was back there-- it was a glue factory." [as read, father's story hits quite funny note of anticlimax, audience laughs--Allen helping them to see this humor even in death] IV. [Reads opening question w/ great, childish credulity] Will that happen to me? Of course, it'll happen to thee. Will my arms wither away? Yes yr arm hair will turn gray. Will my knees grow weak & collapse? Your knees will need crutches perhaps. Will my chest get thin? Your breasts will be hanging skin. Where will go--my teeth? You'll keep the ones beneath. What'll happen to my bones? They'll get mixed up with stones. [Goes on to play & sing "Father Death Blues"...] Steve Shoemaker

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 13:53:07 -0500 From: Bob Holman Nuyopoman@AOL.COM Subject: Allen Ginsberg's Death Kent, it is never too late to stop and not smell the cat's milk. Please, Loss, cut "smelling of" and let cat's milk simply be cat's milk (my opinion, good edit). First thought, Second thought... I was 15, New Richmond, Ohio, 1964, cursing under breath, weeding the weekly chore, HOWL Pocket Poets Series in back pocket, touchstone of sanity, poetry. Bob Holman

Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 00:52:49 -0500 From: Bob Holman Nuyopoman@AOL.COM Subject: Allen Ginsberg's Death Tonight at War Resister's Benefit, Grace Paley tells wonderful AG tale, as does David McReynolds, a story of AG at Gem spa, walking out w/ Sunday (appropriately) Times, into a sidewalk junky drama, defused with the offer of a fig newton... Kimiko Hahn reads "tomb" section of Moloch/Howl... David Henderson reads Bob Kaufman's "To Ginsberg Allen" from SOLITUDES CROWDED... I read "Nazi Capish" (from new Longshot), new verses "Amazing Grace," "After Lelon," "Ballad of the Skeletons," and as benediction (we were gathered at Washington Square Church), "America" end, starting with "America you don't really want to go to war." It was a great place to be tonight. WRL is 75 years old next year. All day swamped with grief I just sit, all day swamped with grief. Allen, the great orchestrator, has outdone himself with his passing. BobH

Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 04:36:41 -0500 From: Joseph Zitt [jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM] Organization: Human Systems Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg's Death Nuyopoman@AOL.COM wrote: > Tonight at War Resister's Benefit, Grace Paley tells wonderful AG tale, All of yesterday and today at the Austin International Poetry Festival, people have been performing pieces for and about Ginsberg (Friday in honor, Saturday in memory). I heard about a wonderful event that erupted at one venue, where various parts of the audience got into chanting sections of his name while other recited bits of his poetry. My group will be performing "Hum Bom" tomorrow night -- we had been thinking of retiring that piece, but it seems appropriate to do it one more time. --

Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 00:48:50 -0400 From: SHOEMAKERS@COFC.EDU Subject: ginsdead.htm April 5, 1997 Beat Poet Laureate Ginsberg Dies NEW YORK (AP) -- Allen Ginsberg, the poet laureate of the Beat Generation whose writing and lifestyle shaped the music, politics and protests of the next 40 years, died this morning. He was 70. Ginsberg died in his Lower East Side apartment at 2:39 a.m. of a heart attack related to his terminal liver cancer, said Bill Morgan, his friend and archivist. The poet was surrounded by family and friends. Ginsberg suffered from chronic hepatitis for years, which eventually led to cirrhosis of the liver. His diagnosis of terminal liver cancer was made eight days ago and made public on Thursday. He suffered a stroke Thursday night and slipped into a coma. Ginsberg has spent several days in a hospice after the diagnosis, but then decided he wanted to return home. ``He was very energetic,'' Morgan said. ``He wore himself out (Thursday) talking to friends and writing poems.'' He wrote about a dozen short poems on Wednesday. One of the last was titled ``On Fame and Death''; others ran the gamut from nursery rhymes to politics. During the McCarthy era in the 1950s, when TV's married couples slept in separate beds, Ginsberg wrote ``Howl'' -- a profane, graphic poem that dealt with his own homosexuality and communist upbringing. ``I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, '' began the seminal ``Howl.'' It was dedicated to Carl Solomon, a patient he met during a stay in a psychiatric ward. Ginsberg became America's most popular and recognizable poet, his balding, bearded visage one of the enduring images of the 1950s beatnik explosion of Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassady. The group, disillusioned with conventional society, created their own subculture. Ginsberg's acolytes comprised a who's who of pop culture: Bob Dylan, Yoko Ono, Vaclav Havel, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe and Billy Corgan. Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, in Newark, N.J., the second son of poet Louis Ginsberg and his wife, Naomi. The family moved to Paterson, N.J., while Ginsberg was a youngster. Ginsberg intended to become a lawyer and enrolled at Columbia University. But while still a teen-ager, he fell in with a crowd that included Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady -- the leaders of what became known as the Beat Generation. ``I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs when I was 17 that I realized I was talking through an empty skull,'' Ginsberg once said. ``I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.'' Ginsberg's first taste of notoriety came after the publication of ``Howl'' in 1956. Copies of the book were seized by San Francisco police and U.S. Customs officials, and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was charged with publishing an obscene book. Ferlinghetti was acquitted a year later, but the case generated enormous publicity for Ginsberg and his work. Ginsberg was suddenly in demand. One of his other great works, ``Kaddish,'' was a confessional work dealing with his mother's life and death in a mental hospital. It was written, stream of consciousness-style, in his Manhattan apartment, fueled by a combination of amphetamines and morphine. Ginsberg experimented heavily with drugs, taking LSD under the guidance of the late Timothy Leary in the 1960s. As he grew older, Ginsberg became a guru to the counterculture movement. He coined the term ``flower power.'' He was arrested in 1967 for protesting against the Vietnam War in New York, and tear-gassed a year later while protesting at the Democratic convention in Chicago. His National Book Award came in 1973 for ``The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965-1971.'' He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1995 for his book, ``Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992.'' Ginsberg toured with Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue in 1977, doing spontaneously composed blues poems. He toured Eastern Europe in 1986, receiving an award in the former Yugoslavia, recording with a Hungarian rock band and meeting a congress of young Polish poets. ``In the Eastern bloc, the people realize the governments are up to no good, whereas Americans still maintain that the government is looking after their best interest,'' Ginsberg said at the time. Ginsberg remained vital and active well into his 60s, performing in Manhattan nightclubs and doing poetry readings. Last year, he recorded his poem ``The Ballad of the Skeletons'' with musical backing from Paul McCartney and Philip Glass. He did a video version of the poem, a pre-election political rant. At 69, Ginsberg's video appeared in heavy rotation on MTV's ``Buzz Bin.'' The funeral will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to Jewel Heart Buddhist Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. Back to the Archives

Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 14:23:04 +0800 From: Schuchat Simon [schuchat@MAIL.AIT.ORG.TW] Subject: Allen dead Summer 1975, I've just moved to New York, with roommate Steve Hamilton go to call on Allen since we're living in the poetry fortress, 437 E. 12th Street, where Allen also lives; we sit in the kitchen and, among a variety of topics, Allen tells us, "you can never experience your own death" what an awful feeling now, so strange to think of him gone

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 23:42:17 -0800 From: nico vassilakis [subrosa@speakeasy.org] Subject: eternity queueing o i'd l ike t o to t h r r e o w w o a l f from here goodbye allen ginsberg goodbye paterson and so many things hello everything hello

Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 09:41:57 -0500 From: Maria Damon [damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU] Subject: Ginsberg first time i met ginsberg 1977 he told me how great peter was in bed and quoted the tempest to me. (he was making chicken soup with grapes; i sd, that looks pretty potent, he sd, this so potent magic i do abjure, what's that from. i sd tempest, he sd any student of the tempest is a friend of mine, and are u related to s foster damon. no, i sd, it used to be diamond, i'm half jewish. why only half he sd.) later that summer i spent a few minutes in bed w/ him before i bailed. the last time i saw ginsberg 1996 was at St Marks do for Bob Kaufman. we both presented stuff along w/ many others. (i'd had many encounters w/ him in between, and often he seemed petulant and distracted as i was awkward around him and not of the right gender for commanding his attention. one time i wove him a white silk opera scarf. when i gave it to him he sd what's an opera scarf, i sd it's what they all wear in proust novels, so he seemed happy with it or at least gracious about accepting it.) so, last time i saw ginsberg about a year ago after the kaufman evening's ceremonies i pulled him aside and said, allen i want to tell you something i think you would understand. when i saw bob kaufman's ashes i put some of them in my mouth. he said, yes, that's a very common understandable impulse, eating the ashes of the dead. he was nice, tender as he'd been all evening when recounting tales of kaufman, not petulant and distracted but patient and kind, i thought, he knows he's going to die soon, that' why he's being so nice. then ira cohen? or someone? snapped a photo of us that i would love to have. just last week i was at the ginsberg archives at stanford looking for kaufman stuff, and found some.

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 18:02:25 -0500 From: Kenneth Goldsmith [kennyg@BWAY.NET] Subject: Ginsberg's Body Lies In State According to Usenet, Ginsberg's body is lying in state at: Shambhala Center 118 W.22nd St. NYC Usenet advises to call first: (212)675-6544

Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 13:53:08 -0500 From: Nuyopoman@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Ginsberg's Death The harmonious roar. Words hollowed out for Life to fill