Forwarding, with permission, a personal flash on
Ginsberg's death. Followed by a digest of bits from Poetics
from those not subscribed there.
Might counteract the somewhat equivocal obits in the
British press - vide The Times:
'. . .Yet Ginsberg never won a major literary prize. And there is another
school of thought which finds his work free-wheeling and shallow - the
rantings of a drug-befuddled mind. Ginsberg did, indeed, (get that honky
punctuation folks!) experiment with a beqildering array of narcotics, from
mescalin to morphine, from dope to LSD. Bob Dylan, with whom he
collaborated for some time, once described him as a "con man
extraordinaire"; while John Giorno, the poet and former lover of Andy
Warhol, described him as "the founding father of bullshit liberals".'
(7/4/97)
>Allen G passed away tonight 2.39. (5/4/97) a couple of hours ago, dying
>peacefully
>and painlessly in his bed attended by friends - congestive heart failure
>following a stroke following that initial death sentence of last week
>(inoperable liver cancer) - it's been a roller-coaster last few days. .it's
>gonna be a crazy coming days...just wanted to let you know ... can let you
>know more later
>I left him just a few moments ago as the Tibetan lamas recited prayers and
>now the body must stay apparently untouched for several hours. Peter there
>at the end. Gregory came as soon as he was called. Allen looked beautiful
>and relaxed / let go - We held his hand. We watched him sleep. He lasted
>maybe 24 hours after the stroke. He died with considerable dignity. Ah
>Ginsy! Ah unimagineable generosity! What a vacuum!
>fond love
>in sadness
>and in shock
>
>Simon
From: Maria Damon <[log in to unmask]>
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: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 15:54:30 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Allen Ginsberg's Death
To: [log in to unmask]
Bob Holman's remark that Ginsberg was the great orchestrator quintessentially
describes my favorite memory of AG.
I think it was 1966. I was home from college and hanging out in Washington
Square Park in NYC. All of a sudden some people started cheering and
otherwise celebrating, shouting that "The War Is Over." People around the
park took up the mantra; very soon hundreds of us, with Ginsberg and Corso
in the lead, starting marching up Fifth Avenue. As we exited the park, cheering
continuously "The War Is Over," people of all kinds, dressed all ways, and of
all ages joined us. I remember seeing two middle aged guys greeting each other
on the edge of this crazy parade, shaking hands and joining up as they were
laughing out loud, obviously enjoying the wonderful pranksterish seriousness
of the spontaneous occasion, saying to each other in unison, "Hey the war is
over!" By the time we were approaching 14th Street we were at least a thousand
strong. The police, for whatever reason, did not try to stop us. We kept on,
with these two zany poets in the lead, until we got to 42nd Street, now
in the multiple thousands. There, like two possessed visionary field
marshalls, the two, conferring at the tops of their lungs, decided to split
up, the one leading those who would follow to the United Nations, as a final
destination, the other, Allen, to Times Square.
I followed him. It was a rainy day, kind of gray, but it was a day of
wildly unfounded, Surreal optimism. It was a moment of genius, flamboyance,
and lyricism. It now sums up his poetry for me. As Charles B has said,
how can one imagine life without Allen?
From: [log in to unmask]
I met Ginsberg briefly in an airport van at the end of the Orono poetry
conference; we were wedged up against each other, hardly a space in which to
breathe. He asked what I'd been speaking on and when I said that I'd given a
talk on Hart Crane he said how much he loved Crane's work. Then, that he had
his Naropa students read "Atlantis" out loud because the movements of the
mouth while reading that poem were so like those of cock-sucking. I've never
quite known how to take that remark, though I choose to think of it as
representing the words of a man for whom nothing was shameful. He had been a
very generous presence at the conference, seemingly in attendance everywhere.
Susan
From: Marjorie Perloff <[log in to unmask]>
A number of listmembers--Joe Amato, Norman Finkelstein, Cole Swensen, and
I were in the middle of a conference in Denver--a conference on relation
of poetry to theory--when the news came in that Allen had died. It was
truly heart-breaking. I thought immediately of the wonderful way Allen
read the lines "To die in Denver...." from "Howl" and of the last time I
saw Allen, which was appropriately in a California Supermarket--Gelson's
in Pacific Palisades. I was approaching the deli and there was Allen with
Stan Grinstein, the art patron, with whom Allen was staying for the
Burroughs festival. We were happy to see each other and wandered around
the gorgeous store and when we got to the bakery Allen said, "Marjorie,
don't tell anyone you saw me in this FANCY grocery store!" But he was
half-kidding. It was shortly before his 70th birthday and he was in good
spirits and was having dinner with Dennis Hopper.
It's a nice memory of someone I always found totally endearing--the way he
CARED about his work, your work--everything that was happening...
Marjorie P.
From: Jamie Reid <[log in to unmask]>
Allen Ginsberg, our great poet and teacher, this saint and holy madman, has
died. I first heard of his illness last week without hearing any details,
and thought, oh, he will still be with us for years yet. Then George Stanley
told me last night that he had been diagnosed with incurable cancer.
Together we discussed the need for Vancouver poets to come together and
write to him in his extremity expressing our undying gratitude and
appreciation for his great life.
This afternoon, I spoke to George Bowering on the telephone to begin this
process, and George told me Allen had died during the night, and now it is
too late. He had been scheduled to read in our city on the very night that
he died, but the engagement was cancelled because of his illness, and now we
will never see him in the flesh again.
He had not visited in our city for many years, and all of us, including a
whole new generation of young people who remain interested in his work and
vision were looking forward to seeing and hearing him again. The last time
I saw him in the flesh and talked to him was in 1963 at the poets'
conference here. My wife and I and some friends took Allen on the Grouse
Mountain chairlift for an outing. I the day as one of the most beautiful of
many beautiful days that summer. Allen carried with him a set of thumb
cymbals, which he beat together prayerfully as the chairlift slowly ascended
the mountain, delivering us an exalted view of the ocean and the city. I am
not at all religious, but Allen was able to inspire in me a sense of the
tremendous beauty of the world and the cosmos, and of human beings which has
never left me. I don't often speak of the soul, it's something that I
barely understand, but the human soul and its universal quality of love was
always the substance of Allen's discourse, so I am free to do so today, and
I have Allen to thank for this freedom.
The silvery, insistent sound of Allen's cymbals echoed off the tops of the
mountains. The top of my head seemed to open and become part of the sky. The
thundering power of Hare, of Rama, of Krishna, gods I still do not know,
seemed imminent, seemed present. Yet the day remained a perfectly ordinary
day, and all of us were here on earth, plain beings of human flesh.
The night before at a party at my place, saying he liked the way he danced ,
he had propositioned my friend Dallas Selman, who was accompanying us that
morning. But Dallas, who was not gay, put him off by lying, telling him
that his wife wouldn't like it if he went with Allen. In the morning, as we
set out to drive up the mountain, Allen asked Dallas about his wife, and,
stupid me, big mouth, blurted out, "What wife?' There was plenty of
silliness and laughter surrounding Allen Ginsberg, but he was serious, and
critical, too. I remember he made harsh fun of me later for my "hip"
affectations, because that was his way of love. His aim both in his poetry
and his life was to shock and to awaken, and he was so momentously
successful at his work.
The last time I saw him was in Montreal in 1975. Thousands, (literally
thousands!) of Quebecois young people came to see him and William Burroughs
there, and listened with close attention, even though many of them spoke
only French, and they were awakened as they had expected to be, because
Allen never stinted in his the speaking of his truth.
He came to Vancouver again about 1990, when he gave a reading with Gregory
Corso and Michael McClure, I think. But I was living elsewhere and wasn't
able to attend. Gregg Simpson, an artist friend who is also a musician and
lives close by to me, often speaks with great pride about working as the
percussionist in the band that opened the reading. There are many people in
Vancouver whose lives have been touched by his presence in ways they will
never forget. In the near days to come all of us will be talking together
about Allen and remembering what he gave to us from the unparalleled
generosity of his American soul, from his grand passion.
There are not many poets and poems of which it can be said that they have
changed the direction of human life. Leaves of Grass is certainly one such
poem, and Allen Ginsberg, through the stewardship of his beloved William
Carlos Williams, is the direct inheritor of that wonderful fearless American
public democratic voice. The opening lines of HOWL, that holy poem, cannot
be erased from the consciousness of North America or the world. From the
moment that I first read HOWL, my life was changed forever, and the same is
true of almost all my contemporaries and friends. This sexy apocalyptical
rant was the clearest and steadiest voice of the visions of a
generation.There was a time when I could recite the poem completely off by
heart like the Bible itself. Mad as Ginsberg sometimes like to act, had a
scholar's knowledge of so many things, of the Jewish rabbinical tradition,
of Buddhism, classical and Zen, of Hindu visions, and of Tantric
meditations. He was instrumental in awakening an entire generation of
America to the fact that there were other powerful forms of knowledge that
could enrich the American pragmatic and scientific consciousness and expand
the possibilities of human life. From this mix, Ginsberg concocted a stew
both flavourful and spicy. And full of a delightful laughter. He never went
passive in the world, he was always striving to make an effect, to wring
some changes, and even when at his most clown-like, playing, the fool,
beneath it and under it all was a deep and important human dignity which
commanded respect, but especially love.
Official America laughs and makes a joke of this holy fool, but he, in his
person and in his work, represents the new soul of the New America which is
still being born. For many years he mainly disappeared from the public
media, but recently I have seen on television a wonderful documentary about
the life and work of William Carlos Williams, in which Allen gives a wise
and beautiful analysis and summation of the contradictions within the
American society and psyche which were expressed by Allen's great teacher,
the hope and the desire for a richer and more humane human life, thwarted
by the blindness of official morals and society in America--
"The pure products of America/go crazy."
"I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness."
With these and the lines that followed, Ginsberg fashioned a call and a
program for a kind of mental and social insurrection which is still going on
in America, and there is no going back. Once said, this cannot be cancelled,
and the message will be heard by this generation, and the next generation,
and the next. Allen cannot die. He has already joined the Immortals.
Then again, during the Gulf War, Allen Ginsberg appeared on television, the
only one among thousands of Americans who gave their views during those
horrifying traumatic months, to speak unequivocally and clearly in the voice
of an Old Testament prophet, with the learning of a rabbi, and the deep
understanding of the American democratic political tradition, condemning the
holocaust visited on the Iraqi people by the merciless bombs of American
military power, so unjustifiably, so contrary to the purest ideals of
American democracy. It was the speech of a hero, an act of the purest human
courage and made me proud that I had once stood in the living presence of
this wonderful American human being. That one speech erased forever my
skeptical doubts about the power of the truth that Allen Ginsberg carried in
his soul and daily spoke, the mightiness of that "queer shoulder" he vowed
so many years ago to put to the wheel in hiis poem called "America,"
tough, unbending speaker of human love that he was.
These two television programs and anything else that he has done, should be
made available to the world as we think back upon the life of this great
poet and the profound knowledge he has given us of America and its soul.
It was through Allen Ginsberg and his friends that I came to know so many
things I would otherwise have never known. Today, I know I am together
with poets in my own country and in the United States, England, The Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Cuba, India, Mexico, Japan--all the places in
the world that his monumental love has touched. Allen was instrumental in
bringing to the consciousness of ignorant North Americans, the beauty and
wisdom of the religious texts of the East, including the Tibetan Book of the
Dead. Now Allen is receiving the emanations of all our love assisting his
soul in its passage to that other world.
Dearest, beloved Allen, I am not alone in loving you: there are thousands
world wide who are thinking about you today with love and gratitude. People
everywhere are sending you their blessings as you pass into the spirit. All
of our shoulders are still at the wheel, still at the work which you showed
us must be done, and how to do it, given the example of your own magnificent
courage and devotion, the splendour of your awakened human vision.
Jamie Reid
From: David Bromige <[log in to unmask]>
While AG and I met several times over the
decades, I did not become close with him until we were neighbors in the
faculty dorms at Naropa. During those conversations I learned about him
firsthand what everyone has been speaking to the list--most notably, of his
breadth, humility, and unremitting hunt for the intelligent heart of the
world. Through his position and stature as a world leader, he bore the
continual brunt of exponential information and once I had to ask him to put
aside what he knew of injustice and misery from all over, so that we might
feel happier while we talked. Scrupulously obliging, as one hears he so
often could be, he did what he could to shut out what must have been a
virtually uninterruptible clamor for succor and witness beaming in to his
radio-brain.
Where AG was concerned, it was not love at first sight for me (the first
time we met, in Vancouver in 63, he was wearing white robes and would have
preferred to bow, I guess, but reluctantly did shake my hand, saying "Oh,
are we still doing that?" : one might have said the same to him!) but at
Naropa I found myself on his wavelength, an unforgettable experience.(For
which opportunity, which this once I was not so dumb as to reject, my
thanks to Anselm Hollo, Anne Waldman, Andrew Schelling and the other Naropa
lights.)
He and I spoke of his health problems, and he complained of being tired,
but he gave off a spry resilience that assured one he was good for a long
time yet. That was only 18 months ago. But we see what life he continues to
have as anecdote and eulogy flood in; and it was never clearer that he
belongs to the ages.
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