Allen Ginsberg Love
WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Thu, 08 Jan 1998 11:17:18 -0700 (MST)
I think Allen Ginsberg was a great poet
Echoic of Whitman and more
When someone writes a better poem than Howl
Let me know
The link to Salinger is that like Buddy, Allen Ginsberg suffered from
liver disease...and more...both Salinger and Ginsberg were fundamental in
bringing buddism and respect and exposure of eastern thinking more
centerally into western consciousness. Ginsberg may have been better at
being a poet than writing poems, but he still wrote plenty of lines that
stand toe to toe with Blake, Whitman, Yeats, Eliot, Stevens, Neruda,
Ashbery and others I love to read...he was a kind and gracious man who
gave so much of his spirit to modern poetry in my life that I can only bow
in humble thanks. I might admit to sharing liver disease as part of my
perspective, but putting down a poet for the bad poems he tries seems to
obscure the fact that he wrote some great poems the world can never
forget. For me, only poems and poets who "stick" matter--and there is
enough of what Ginsberg has written to stick close to my writing and
reading ribs...he has given poetry a shape and place in my spirit as much
as any in him in his time, and more than most. I'm simply too much in his
place not to post this love.
Hotel Allen Ginsberg
Bongoes in every room, man
Ice machines may have been out
Of the question
But not our cool,
Holy unsafe place!
will