Allen Ginsberg, Beat American Buddha Bard

Who will be the Bard for the aughties (I mean, the 00’s)? Will s/he/it appear on Reality TV and we’ll text in the words and they will be the poem and conjure up the poet? You tell me. This is not a Rhetorical Question! Please send in your nominations and methodology for voting.

But for the end of the 20th century, there is no doubt: Allen Ginsberg was a mountain of possibility, growing tree of life, beyond-laser zap for poetry expansion and integration into the life of the citizenry. All you had to do was hear him, hunched over the harmonium or ranting at the mic–here comes the Bard!

When I was growing up in rural Ohio in the 60s, Ginsberg was my salvation, as he was for so many others, the voice of freedom and dynamism, the prophetic voice of an America you could be a patriot for. This was not your father’s poetry. On account of him and the Beats I moved to New York, went to Columbia, migrated to the St Mark’s Poetry Project where he was a regular, spent time at Naropa, at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, which Allen started with poetry goddess Anne Waldman.

Imagine walking into the post-reading party and finding Allen there! That’s what started happening in the mid 70s around the Bunker on East 12th Street in New York, where Bob Rosenthal, poet and Allen’s trusted secretary for over 20 years, lived, where Allen (and his library) moved to.

“Howl” may be the most famous American poem. “Famous” brings up all kinds of poetry contradictions (see Daniel Kane’s amazing Don’t Ever Get Famous). Ginsberg walked the contradictions. He was father/mother of the Beats, instigator of spoken word, a brilliant, incisive critic (listen to his talks at Naropa or speak with his Brooklyn College students), activist for peace, gay rights, marijuana. Naked at the parties, he got William Carlos Williams to intro Howl and other Poems, he camped out on Ezra Pound’s doorstep, was loyal friend and co-worker to Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and his life-long heart, Peter Orlovsky, whose care is endowed through Allen’s will. “Ballad of the Skeletons,” with his band including Paul McCartney, Philip Glass, Lenny Kaye and Marc Ribot, with Hal Willner turning the dials, was the first poetry video in regular rotation on MTV, as directed by Gus Van Sant. (The video and CD were produced by Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records–full disclosure: your guide, Bob Holman, was a partner in MA/M.)

Related articles:
The Bard His Own Self: Allen Ginsberg says “That’s all good night” is our own memoir, written by Bob Holman and posted the week he died in 1997.
Chorus of Poets Gather for "Howl" Celebration: the 50th anniversary is an account by Teresa Conboy of the reading at Skylight Books celebrating the 50th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” -- “a group of local poets and friends of Ginsberg really captured the cadence of the landmark poem” that night in October 2005.