Allen Ginsberg

This is the centennial birth year of my old friend Allen Ginsberg. He was one of the 20th century’s most influential poets, regarded as a founding father of the Beat Movement and known for works like “Howl.” We had many interactions over the years, and he referred to me as “The Dream Man.” I first met him following a lecture by another friend, J.B. Rhine, the founder of experimental parapsychology. Allen and William Burroughs had written The Yage Letters, an account of their search for the powerful mind-altering brew better known as ayahuasca. Rhine listened politely and said he would make a note of it. Years later, Allen would be one of some eighty writers, artists, and musicians I interviewed for my 1968 paper, “The Psychedelic Artist.” In retrospect, I wish I would have written Allen instead of interviewing him because when he signed his letters, he put a drop of LSD in the ”I” in “Ginsberg.”

Allen was a prolific writer who also championed gay rights and anti-war movements, as well as coining the phrase “Flower Power.” Despite this countercultural stance, he became recognized as one of American’s foremost writers and artistic icons.

Early Life

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in the city of Paterson. His mother, Naomi, had immigrated from Russia to the United States while his father, Louis, was a poet and teacher. Allen began keeping a journal at an early age, took to the poetry of Walt Whitman, and attended Columbia University, where he met Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, who would all become literary icons. Allen started to focus on his writing during the mid-1940s, while also exploring his attraction to men.

Writing ‘Howl’

Allen graduated from Columbia in 1948, but in the following year was involved as an accomplice in a robbery. To avoid jail time, he pleaded insanity, spending time in the university’s mental health facility. He then started to study under poet William Carlos Williams while working at a Manhattan advertising agency.

In 1954, Allen moved to San Francisco and became part of the countercultural coterie that became the “Beat Movement.” Its members used a number of artistic modes to circumvent what they saw as rigid and stultifying rules of society. It was also in the Bay Area where Ginsberg met model Peter Orlovsky, who would become his lifelong companion.

In 1955, Allen gave the first public reading of his poem “Howl,” which became a manifesto of the Beat Generation and was published the following year by City Lights Bookstore. “Howl” was an eye-opening work in its explorations of sexuality, anguish, and social protest in a non-traditional freewheeling literary form. Allen was tried for “obscenity,” but he was vindicated once the presiding judge ruled the work had merit. The resulting publicity placed Allen and his work in the spotlight and as paragons of anti-censorship.

Growing Influence

Allen’s next published work, Kaddish and Other Poems 1958-1960, featured the poem ‘’Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg,’‘ which explored his mother’s past and his feelings about their relationship. It is regarded by many as one of his strongest, most affecting works.

During the 1960s, Allen’s published titles included Reality Sandwiches and Planet News, and he also worked with musicians such as Philip Glass and Bono. Allen used the phrase “flower power,” to describe the peace movements that fueled many of the demonstrations in which he engaged, including the protests against the Vietnam War.

Allen was an advocate of marijuana, having been introduced to it by Louis Armstrong, the jazz musician, although he would walk away from it after he studied yoga and meditation during a 1962 voyage to India. Allen later converted to Buddhism and founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, where he taught for several years. He was a world traveler, living for extended periods of time in various parts of Latin America and Europe.

Honors and Awards

Allen won the 1974 National Book Award for his work, The Fall of America: Poems of these States 1965-1971, and over the ensuing years, became increasingly renowned for the importance and influence of his work, receiving accolades such as the Robert Front Medal in 1986. He became a Gugenheim Foundation Fellow in 1997, and the accolade compared him to Walt Whitman, his youthful idol.

He died shortly after on April 5, 1997, in his East Village loft, surrounded by friends and old lovers. He was 70 years old. A massive collection of his work can be found in the book Collected Poems 1947-1997.

Personal Reflections

Allen was very gracious whenever I introduced him to friends of mine, and when I gave a student-initiated course at New York University he accepted my invitation to speak to the students, even though there were only two dozen young women and men. He brought along another prominent Beat poet, Gregory Corso, and they regaled the students with anecdotes and answered questions about the creative process.

In January 1968, my wife and I attended the recently completed Felt Forum of Madison Square Garden for a standing-room-only appearance of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. His genial countenance complemented the cushions on which he was sitting, bedecked by dozens of floral bouquets. For nearly an hour, he declaimed about such Vedic concepts as the importance of “creative intelligence.”

Following the Maharishi’s presentation, we spoke with Allen who said he found meditation superior to drugs in imparting wisdom. In December 1976, Allen and I were both invited to a reception for His Holiness the 16^th Gwala Karmapa, head of the Kargu Order of Tibetan Buddhism.

Of course, Allen had a lighter side. In October, 1968, a friend of mine and I attended The Living Theater’s production of “Paradise Now,” an anarchist semi-participatory production during which cast members would challenge members of the audience with such questions as “Why can’t I travel without a passport?”, and “Why can’t I take my clothes off in public places?” Actors asked these questions to several audience members and when one came to Allen, he immediately took off all his clothes, providing a dramatic conclusion to the show.