ALLEN GINSBERG,
American poet was born on this date (d. 1997); Prophetic angel poet,
best known for the poem Howl (1956), celebrating his friends of the Beat
Generation and attacking what he saw as the destructive forces of
materialism and conformity in the United States at the time. The
influence of Ginsberg’s poetry on an entire generation was enormous. How
Ginsberg and the other “beats” appeared to readers in the 50’s, still
wearing flats and dress shields and seven crinolines, is hard to
reconstruct, much less imagine. Sixty-plus years later, when today’s
youth make the “beats” look as if they were wearing flats, dress shields
and seven crinolines, it makes one wonder who the poetry, the
pronunciamentos will hold up in the future.
The trouble with telling the truth – and Ginsberg was one of the most
directly honest writers who ever lived – is that the truth dates much
more rapidly than the elegant lie that rarely shows its age. W.H. Auden,
who really couldn’t stand Ginsberg’s poetry, once visited by the beat
poet who had come to Oxford to pay him homage. Auden, to cut the visit
short, showed Ginsberg around Christ Church Cathedral, and, in parting,
was horrified when the young poet – with the utmost sincerity – knelt
and kissed his trouser cuffs. Auden, who knew more than a little about
the elegant lie, once wrote that “Sincerity always hits me something
like sleep. I mean, if you try to get it too hard, you won’t.” Of the
two poets, it will be interesting to know whose work will survive the
longer.
In 1954 in San Francisco, Ginsberg met Peter Orlovsky, (7 years his
junior) with whom he fell in love and who remained his life-long lover,
and with whom he eventually shared his interest in Tibetan Buddhism.
Ginsberg won the National Book Award for his book The Fall of America.
In 1993, the French Minister of Culture awarded him the medal of
Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters).
Allen Ginsberg gave what is thought to be his last reading at The
Booksmith in San Francisco on December 16, 1996. He died on April 5,
1997, surrounded by family and friends in his East Village loft in New
York City, succumbing to liver cancer via complications of hepatitis. He
was 70 years old. Ginsberg continued to write through his final
illness, with his last poem, "Things I'll Not Do (Nostalgias)," written
on March 30.
Ginsberg is buried in his family plot in Gomel Chesed Cemetery, one of a
cluster of Jewish cemeteries at the corner of McClellan Street and Mt.
Olivet Avenue near the city lines of Elizabeth and Newark, New Jersey.
The family plot, located toward the western edge of the cemetery at the
far end of the walk from the third gate along Mt. Olivet Avenue, is
marked by a large Ginsberg and Litzky stone, and Ginsberg himself and
each family member have smaller markers. Though the grave itself and the
cemetery are neither picturesque nor otherwise notable (Ginsberg's
grave is located near the rear fence of the flat cemetery, which is in
the midst of an industrial area), and it has not become a major place of
pilgrimage, there is a steady trickle of visitors as indicated by a
handful of stones always on his marker and the occasional book or other
item left by other poets and admirers.
TODAY'S GAY WISDOM
Part I of Allen Ginsberg’s
Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg 1894 - 1956
I
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I’ve been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm—and your memory in my head three years after—And read Adonais’ last triumphant stanzas aloud—wept, realizing how we suffer—
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember, prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of Answers—and my own imagination of a withered leaf—at dawn—
Dreaming back thru life, Your time—and mine accelerating toward Apocalypse,
the final moment—the flower burning in the Day—and what comes after,
looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city
a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed—
like a poem in the dark—escaped back to Oblivion—
No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream, trapped in its disappearance,
sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worshipping each other,
worshipping the God included in it all—longing or inevitability?—while it lasts, a Vision—anything more?
It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder, Seventh Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shouldering each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an instant—and the sky above—an old blue place.
or down the Avenue to the south, to—as I walk toward the Lower East Side—where you walked 50 years ago, little girl—from Russia, eating the first poisonous tomatoes of America—frightened on the dock—
then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what?—toward Newark—
toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards—
Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school, and learning to be mad, in a dream—what is this life?
Toward the Key in the window—and the great Key lays its head of light on top of Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the sidewalk—in a single vast beam, moving, as I walk down First toward the Yiddish Theater—and the place of poverty
you knew, and I know, but without caring now—Strange to have moved
thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again,
with the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstoops doors and dark boys on the street, fire escapes old as you
-Tho you’re not old now, that’s left here with me—
Myself, anyhow, maybe as old as the universe—and I guess that dies with us—enough to cancel all that comes—What came is gone forever every time—
That’s good! That leaves it open for no regret—no fear radiators, lacklove, torture even toothache in the end—
Though while it comes it is a lion that eats the soul—and the lamb, the soul, in us, alas, offering itself in sacrifice to change’s fierce hunger—hair and teeth—and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, break rib, rot-skin, braintricked Implacability.
Ai! ai! we do worse! We are in a fix! And you’re out, Death let you out, Death had the Mercy, you’re done with your century, done with God, done with the path thru it—Done with yourself at last—Pure—Back to the Babe dark before your Father, before us all—before the world—
There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you’ve gone, it’s good.
No more flowers in the summer fields of New York, no joy now, no more fear of Louis,
and no more of his sweetness and glasses, his high school decades, debts, loves, frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives, hands—
No more of sister Elanor,.—she gone before you—we kept it secret—you killed her—or she killed herself to bear with you—an arthritic heart—But Death’s killed you both—No matter—
Nor your memory of your mother, 1915 tears in silent movies weeks and weeks—forgetting, aggrieve watching Marie Dressler address humanity, Chaplin dance in youth,
or Boris Godunov, Chaliapin’s at the Met, hailing his voice of a weeping Czar—by standing room with Elanor & Max—watching also the Capitalists take seats in Orchestra, white furs, diamonds,
with the YPSL’s hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirts pants, photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waste, and laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920
all girls grown old, or dead, now, and that long hair in the grave—lucky to have husbands later—
You made it—I came too—Eugene my brother before (still grieving now and will gream on to his last stiff hand, as he goes thru his cancer—or kill—later perhaps—soon he will think—)
And it’s the last moment I remember, which I see them all, thru myself, now—tho not you
I didn’t foresee what you felt—what more hideous gape of bad mouth came first—to you—and were you prepared?
To go where? In that Dark—that—in that God? a radiance? A Lord in the Void? Like an eye in the black cloud in a dream? Adonoi at last, with you?
Beyond my remembrance! Incapable to guess! Not merely the yellow skull in the grave, or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon—Deathshead with Halo? can you believe it?
Is it only the sun that shines once for the mind, only the flash of existence, than none ever was?
Nothing beyond what we have—what you had—that so pitiful—yet Triumph,
to have been here, and changed, like a tree, broken, or flower—fed to the ground—but mad, with its petals, colored, thinking Great Universe, shaken, cut in the head, leaf stript, hid in an egg crate hospital, cloth wrapped, sore—freaked in the moon brain, Naughtless.
No flower like that flower, which knew itself in the garden, and fought the knife—lost
Cut down by an idiot Snowman’s icy—even in the Spring—strange ghost thought—some Death—Sharp icicle in his hand—crowned with old roses—a dog for his eyes—cock of a sweatshop—heart of electric irons.
All the accumulations of life, that wear us out—clocks, bodies, consciousness, shoes, breasts—begotten sons—your Communism—‘Paranoia’ into hospitals.
You once kicked Elanor in the leg, she died of heart failure later. You of stroke. Asleep? within a year, the two of you, sisters in death. Is Elanor happy?
Max grieves alive in an office on Lower Broadway, lone large mustache over midnight Accountings, not sure. l His life passes—as he sees—and what does he doubt now? Still dream of making money, or that might have made money, hired nurse, had children, found even your Immortality, Naomi?
I’ll see him soon. Now I’ve got to cut through—to talk to you—as I didn’t when you had a mouth.
Forever. And we’re bound for that, Forever—like Emily Dickinson’s horses—headed to the End.
They know the way—These Steeds—run faster than we think—it’s our own life they cross—and take with them.
Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, married dreamed, mortal changed—Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under pine, almed in Earth, balmed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless, Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I’m hymnless, I’m Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not light or darkness, Dayless Eternity—
Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some of my Time, now given to Nothing—to praise Thee—But Death
This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Wonderer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping—page beyond Psalm—Last change of mine and Naomi—to God’s perfect Darkness—Death, stay thy phantoms!
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