The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder / Edited by Bill Morgan
Author: Allen Ginsberg
Date: 2008-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Poetry; Non Fiction; Autobiography
Description: One of the central relationships in the Beat scene was the long-lasting friendship of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ginsberg introduced Snyder to the East Coast Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, while Snyder himself became the model for the serious poet that Ginsberg so wanted to become. Snyder encouraged Ginsberg to explore the beauty of the West Coast and, even more lastingly, introduced Ginsberg to Buddhism, the subject of so many long letter exchanges between them. Beginning in 1956 and continuing through 1991, the two men exchanged more than 850 letters. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg’s biog
Publisher: Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint : Distributed By Publishers Group West

Praise for Family BuJinesJ

'An absorbing and often moving record of an intense relationship . . . We have here an imponant part of the record of a major figure's development, and a rare example of the power of cenain family pieties.'

The New York Times Book Review

'Surprisingly poignant . . . Schumacher's thorough, amiable introduction sets the stage for the remarkable father-son performance that follows . . .

what overwhelms throughout is the adamantine bond of affection that connected the two . . . An eloquent, affecting collection that offers lessons in poetry, in love, and in family.'

KirkuJ ReviewJ (starred review)

'This volume . . . presents some of the most astonishing correspondence in American literature . . . Anyone interested in either Ginsberg, the beats, American poetry or the '60s should not miss this ferociously tender and comical collection.'

PubliJherJ Weekly (starred review)

'Tracing their journey toward a shared conviction that poetry has the power to change history makes Family BuJinm imponant reading for us all.'

San FranciJco Chronicle

'Inspiring . . . behind the anger and anguish, what shines through these letters is love.'

The Forward

'Family 8UJinm chans in surprisingly affecting eloquence the gradual, wonderful radicalization of the king of the Beats.'

Orlando Sentinel

'Allen and Louis' correspondence demonstrates a mutual respect, a strong desire for reconciliation, and pride in each other's poetic accomplishments

. . . Highly recommended.'

Library journal

'A look at 30 years of love and words between the Beat poet and his father.'

The Record (Hackensack, NJ)

'Rich . . . the three decades of exchanges between Allen Ginsberg and his father offer a backstage pass to the post-World War II cultural drama in which Ginsberg and associates such as Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti played starring roles. '

The IndianapoliJ Star

'As much an intellectual exchange of ideas as a personal family dialogue, these letters provide material for studies of differences between two generations of writers who had much to say regarding US culture.'

Choice (Middletown, CT)

A L S O B Y M I C H A E L S C H U M A C H ER

Reasons to Believe: New Voice in American Fiction ( 1 988) Creative Conversations ( 1990)

Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg ( 1 992) Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton ( 1 995) There But for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs ( 1 996) Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life ( 1 999)

FAMILY BUSINESS

SELECTED LETTERS BETWEEN

A FATHER AND SON

ALLEN AND

LOUIS GINSBERG

Edited by Michael Schumacher

BLOOMSBURY

PICTURE CREDITS: Courtesy of Elsa Dorfman (Eisa@photo.net): page I; Courtesy of the Allen Ginsberg Trust: page 2, page 3 top and bollfml, page 4 top left and by Allen Ginsberg top right, page 5 top and bollfml, page 6, page 7 top and by Allen Ginsberg botlont; Courtesy of John Cohen: page 4 bollfml; Courtesy of Liyle Silbert: page 8.

Jacket photograph (f) Richard Avedon, 1970

Every reasonable effort has been made to ascertain and acknowledge the ownership of copyrighted phocographs included in this volume. Any errors chat have inadvertently occurred will be corrected in subsequent editions provided notification is sent m the Publisher.

Leuers copyright the Estate of Louis Ginsberg
and the Allen Ginsberg Trust

Introduction and text copyright '{: 2001 by Michael Schumacher All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without wrinen permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in cricical anicles or reviews.

For information address Bloomsbury, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury, New York and London

Distributed to the trade by Holrzbrinck Publishers Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ginsberg, Allen, 1926-1997

Family business : selected leners berween a father and son I by Allen Ginsberg and Louis Ginsberg ; edited by Michael Schumacher.

p. em.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-58234-107-9

I. Ginsberg, Allen, 1926-1997-- Correspondence. 2. Ginsberg, Louis, 1895-1976--

Correspondence. 3. Poers, American--20rh cenrury--Correspondence. 4. Farhers and sons--United States. I. Ginsberg, Louis, 1895-1976 . II. Schumacher, Michael.

Ill. Title.

PS3513.1174 Z485 2001

811'.54 -- dc21

[B]

2001035431

Paperback ISBN: 1-58234-216-4

First publ:shed in hardcover in the United Stares by Bloomsbury in 2001

This paperback edition published in 2002

109 8 7 6 5 432 1

Typeset by Hewer Text Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Printed in Great Britain by Clays Limited, St lves pic

In Memoriam

Eugene Brooks

1 921-2001

CO N T E NTS

Books by Allen and Louis Ginsberg
xvii

Acknowledgments
xtx

Introduction
xxt

Editor's Note
xxxt

Early Correspondence

I

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. August 1944) 3

Louis Ginsberg to Hannah Litzky, January 1 6, 1 945

4

Louis Ginsberg to Lionel Trilling, February 2 1 , 1 945

5

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. 1 945) 6

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1945

7

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 14, 1945

8

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, November 2, 1 945

9

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, July 23, 1947

II

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 1, 1 947

I2

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 18, 1947

I3

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, September 3, 1947

I4

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, September 1 2, 1947

I6

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 1 5 , 1 947

I8

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, July 1 1 , 1 948

I9

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, July 23, 1 948

20

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. 1948) 2I

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. fall 1 948) 23

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, October 6, 1 948

24

Louis Ginsberg to Lionel Trilling, June 29, 1949

25

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, June 30, 1954

27

v111

Contents

Allen Ginsberg co Louis and Edith Ginsberg, Eugene Brooks, and Family, July 10, 1954

28

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, December 12, 1955

3 1

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, December 14, 1955

32

1956

35

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, February 29, 1956

35

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. late March 1956) 36

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, March 31, 1956

39

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, April 26, 1956

40

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, April 28, 1956

43

Allen Ginsberg co Eugene Brooks, May 16, 1956

44

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, May 20, 1956

45

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, May 27, 1956

46

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, May 28, 1956

49

Naomi Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, n.d. June 11, 1956 (postmarked) 50

Eugene Brooks to Allen Ginsberg, June 11, 1956

5 1

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, June 20, 1956

52

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 4, 1956

53

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 13, 1956

55

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, September 13, 1956

56

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, October 13, 1956

57

1957

59

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, June 1957

59

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, June 26, 1957

60

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, August 10, 1957

63

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 26, 1957

6 7

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, September 1 , 1957

68

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. early September 1957) 7 1

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, September 30, 1957

72

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, October 19 and

November 6, 1957

74

ContentJ

1x

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, November 20, 1957

78

Allen Ginsberg c o Louis Ginsberg, November 30, 1957

80

1958

83

Allen Ginsberg co Louis and Edith Ginsberg, Januacy 14, 1958

83

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, March 2, 1958

86

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, March 6, 1958

98

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, March 1 0, 1 958

100

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, April 10, 1 958

101

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, April 1 6, 1 958

102

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. lace April 1958) 104

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, April 23, 1 958

107

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, May 24, 1 958

110

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, June 4, 1 958

112

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, June 4, 1958

113

1959

117

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, May 1 2, 1959

117

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, May 14, 1959

JIB

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, May 20, 1959

121

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, May 24, 1959

123

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. lare October 1 959) 124

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, October 23, 1959

125

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, November 2 1 , 1 959

126

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, December 27, 1959

127

1 960

129

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, March 8, 1 960

129

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, May 14, 1 960

130

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, May 21, 1960

131

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, June 2, 1960

132

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, June 1 0, 1960

134

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, June 2 1 , 1960

135
x

Contents

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1960

13 7

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 18, 1960

140

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 19, 1960

140

1961

143

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, February 24, 1961

143

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, March 2, 1961

143

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, June 12, 1961

150

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, June 27, 1961

155

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, August 3, 1961

15 7

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1961

158

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 15, 1961

159

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. late August 1961) 160

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 2, 1961

161

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. fall 1961) 162

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, October 16, 1961

163

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, October 26, 1961

165

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, November 2, 1961

165

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. November 1961) 166

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, November 17, 1961

168

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, November 25, 1961

169

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, December 9, 1961

170

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, December 27, 1961

171

1962

173

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, January 21, 1962

173

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, January 30, 1962

174

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, March 16, 1962

175

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, March 20, 1962

177

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, April 21, 1962

178

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, July 27, 1962

179

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, August 5, 1962

180

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 13, 1962

182

Contents
xi

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, September 10, 1962

I83

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, September 2 5 , 1962

I 84

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, Ocrober 8, 1962

I87

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, Ocrober 1 9, 1 962

I88

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg, October 29, 1 962

I 90

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, December 7, 1 962

I 92

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg, December 17, 1 962

I 95

1963

I 9 7

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, January 1 0 , 1963

I 9 7

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, March 1 0 , 1 963

I 99

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg, March 23, 1963

20I

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, April 8, 1963

203

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg, April 1 5 , 1 963

205

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. early May 1 963) 206

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, May 1 3, 1963

208

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, May 22, 1963

209

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, June 14 and June 22, 1 963

2 1 0

Allen Ginsberg t o Louis Ginsberg, June 1 7 , 1963

2 I 3

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, August 16, 1 963

2 I 5

Louis Ginsberg r o Allen Ginsberg, August 23, 1 963

2I6

Allen Ginsberg t o Louis Ginsberg, August 28, 1 963

21 7

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, September 9, 1963

2 1 7

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, Ocrober 4 , 1 963

2 I 8

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, October 1 2 , 1963

2 I 8

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, November 6, 1963

2 I 9

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, November 23, 1963

220

1964

22I

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg, July 26, 1 964

22 I

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 10, 1964

222

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 30, 1964

223

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, October 2, 1 964

223

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, December 25, 1964

224
xii

Contents

1965

225

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, February 5, 1965

225

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, March 1, 1965

227

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, March 2, 1965

228

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, March 3, 1965

229

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. March 1965) 230

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, March 22, 1965

23 1

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, March 29, 1965

232

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, April 10, 1965

233

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, May 15, 1965

234

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, May 2 1 , 1965

234

Allen Ginsberg to Eugene Brooks, May 25, 1965

235

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, June 1, 1965

236

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 27, 1965

236

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, November 6, 1965

238

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, November 19, 1965

241

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, November 23, 1965

245

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, November 29, 1965

248

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, December 10, 1965

25 1

1966

253

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, April 6, 1966

253

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, April 9, 1966

254

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, April 1 2, 1966

254

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, April 27, 1966

255

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, May 23, 1966

256

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, May 31, 1966

25 7

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, June 20, 1966

258

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1966

258

Louis Ginsberg to Hannah Litzky, August 16, 1966

259

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 29, 1966

260

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 30, 1966

261

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 27, 1966

264

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, December 8, 1966

265

Contents
x111

1967

267

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, March 25, 1967

267

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, June 26, 1967

268

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 4, 1967

268

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 1 2, 1 967

269

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, September 1 3, 1 967 2 70

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 18, 1967

2 72

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, October 1 7 , 1 967

273

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, October 2 1 , 1967

274

19�

2n

Louis Gi!lsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 19, 1 968

2 75

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 9, 1968

276

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, October 13, 1968

2 7 7

Louis Ginsberg t o Allen Ginsberg, November 16, 1 968

278

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, December 7 , 1968

279

1969

281

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, January 25, 1 969

281

Louis Ginsberg: "My Son, the Poet"

282

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, January 3 1 , 1 969

288

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, January 3 1 , 1 969

289

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, May 30, 1 969

290

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, June 19, 1969

291

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, July 4, 1969

292

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, July 7, 1 969

293

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 26, 1 969

293

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 3, 1 969

294

Allen Ginsberg: "Confrontation with Louis Ginsberg 's Poems"

295

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 3, 1 969

303

1970

305

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, February I 0, 1 970

305
xiv

Contents

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, February 15, 1970

306

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg, February 17, 1970

3 1 0

Louis Ginsberg c o Allen Ginsberg, April 7 , 1970

3 1 1

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, May 5, 1970

3 1 2

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, May 25, 1970

3 1 3

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, May 2 7 , 1970

3 1 4

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, June 5, 1970

3 1 6

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, September 1970

3 1 8

197 1

3 1 9

Allen Ginsberg co Louis and Edith Ginsberg, April 1 2 , 197 1

3 1 9

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, April 19, 1971

320

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, May 3, 197 1

321

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, May 5, 197 1

322

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, May 24, 197 1

323

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, August 18, 197 1

324

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. December 197 1 ) 325

1972

327

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, January 7, 1972

327

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, January 1 1 , 1972

327

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, February 10, 1972

328

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, February 15, 1972

329

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, February 17, 1972

330

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, February 20, 1972

331

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, February 20, 1972

331

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, March 16, 1972

332

Allen Ginsberg co Louis and Edith Ginsberg, March 24, 1972

333

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, April 19, 1972

333

Allen Ginsberg co Louis and Edith Ginsberg, May 24, 1972

333

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, July 12, 1972

334

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg, July 2 1 , 1972

335

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg, September 24, 1972

336

ContentJ
xv

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, September 26, 1972

337

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, September 27, 1 972

338

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, November 10, 1 972

339

1973

341

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, February 12, 1973

341

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, May 5, 1 973

341

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, May 22, 1973

342

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, May 3 1 , 1973

343

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, June 23, 1973

343

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, June 29, 1973

344

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg,
n.d. (ca. early July 1 973)

344

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, July 2 1 , 1973

346

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, September 1 7 , 1 973

347

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, September 21, 1973 347

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, n.d. (ca. fall 1 973) 347

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, October 14, 1973

348

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, December 1 , 197 3

350

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, December 22, 1973

350

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, December 28, 1973

351

1974

357

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, January 9, 1974

357

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, January 28, 1 974

358

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, February 1 6, 1974

359

Louis Ginsberg to the Editors of Liberation, March 16, 1 974

361

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, March 16, 1 974

361

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, April 22, 1 974

363

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, June 1 , 1974

364

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, June 1 3 , 1974

364

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, June 18, 1974

365

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, June 27, 1974

366
xvi

Contenti

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, July 10, 1974

367

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, July 1 5 , 1974

368

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, July 22, 1974

369

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, Augusr 12, 1974

3 70

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, Augusr 1 3 , 1974

371

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, Seprember 8, 1974

372

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, Seprember 1 2, 1974

374

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, Seprember 30, 1974

375

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, October 5, 1974

3 75

1975

3 7 7

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg, Augusr 9, 1975

377

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, October 27, 1975

378

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, November 4, 1975

379

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg, November 7, 1975

379

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edirh Ginsberg, November 10, 1975 380

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg, November 18, 1975

380

1976

383

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edirh Ginsberg, January 28, 1976

383

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edirh Ginsberg, February 1 , 1976

384

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edirh Ginsberg, April 4, 1976

384

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, May 2 1 , 1976

385

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edirh Ginsberg, May 23, 1976

386

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edirh Ginsberg, June 14, 1976

386

Pomcript

387

Index

397

B O O K S B Y A L L E N A N D L O U I S G I N S B E R G

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

Howl and Other Poems 0956)

Kaddish and Other Poems 096 1 )

Empty Mirror, Early Poems 0961 )

Reality Sandwiches 0963)

The Yage Letters (with William Burroughs) 0963)

Planet News 0968)

Indian Journals 0970)

The Fall of America, Poems of These States 0972)

The Gates of Wrath, Rhymed Poems 1948-52 0973)

Iron Horse 097 3)

Gay Sunshine Interview 097 4)

Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness 0974) First Blues 0975)

Chicago Trial Testimony 097 5)

To Eberhart from Ginsberg 0976)

As Ever: Collected Correspondence Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady 0977) Journals Early Fifties Early Sixties 0977)

Mind Breaths, Poems 1 97 1-76 0978)

Composed on the Tongue: Literary Conversations 1 967-1 977 0980) Straight Heans Delight, Love Poems and Selected Letters 1947-1 980 (with Peter Orlovsky) 0980)

Plutonian Ode, Poems 1 977-1 980 0982)

Collected Poems 1947- 1 980 0984)

White Shroud, Poems 1 980-1 985 0986)

Howl, Original Draft Facsimile, Fully Annotated 0986) Cosmopolitan Greetings, Poems 1986-1992 0994)

Journals Mid-Fifties: 1 954- 1958 0994)

Selected Poems 1 947- 1 995 0996)

xv111

Bibliography

Luminous Dreams (1997)

Death and Fame, Lase Poems 1993-1997 (1 999)

Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995 (2000) Spontaneous Mind: Selecced Interviews 1958-1996 (2001) BY LOUIS GINSBERG

The Anic of rhe Past and Ocher Lyrics ( 1 920)

The Everlasting Minute ( 1 937)

Morning in Spring (1970)

Collecred Poems 0992)

A CK N O W L E D G M E NTS

I originally approached Allen Ginsberg about editing this book in 1992, shortly after the publication of Dharma Lion. I told Allen that, during the course of writing his biography, I had reached the conclusion that his relationship with his father had never been properly explored, and I felt that their correspondence would be valuable to readers and scholars interested in a longer, more detailed look at his development in poetics and politics. As I mention elsewhere in this volume, Allen used his father as a sounding board for both his poetry and politics, and their correspondence found him honing his position in literary and world affairs. Allen liked the idea of the project, though he complained that he couldn 't consider working under another deadline. I worked on it on my own, with neither deadline nor publisher, but, unfortunately, Allen passed away before he had the opportunity to see this book in its final form. So it's too late, although still very necessary, to thank Allen for his faith in this project.

Edith Ginsberg, Allen's stepmother and Louis's wife, was a wonderful, witty, and intelligent woman, and she was very excited about the prospects of this book's publication. I spent a lovely afternoon with her, going over photo albums and talking about Allen and Louis. Sadly, she, too, passed away before she could see this volume in print.

Eugene Brooks also spent an afternoon talking to me about his father and brother. Gene, a fine poet himself, also provided me with missing letters and generously agreed to allow me to publish one of his own.

Anyone who has ever worked with the "Ginsberg people" knows how valuable they are, as friends and as associates devoted to overseeing Allen's continuing literary legacy. I owe them a huge debt of gratitude. Bob Rosenthal, Allen's secretary, has been incredibly helpful over the years, dating back to my early work on Dharma Lion and continuing through the editing of this book; running the office has always been a prodigious chore, but Bob manages to accomplish it with grace and efficiency. Bill Morgan, Allen 's archivist and bibliographer, has provided great assistance, never failing to answer one of my
xx

Acknowledgments

(countless) questions, as well as providing me with photocopies of many of Louis Ginsberg's letters. Peter Hale was always very obliging when I called for a telephone number or needed information, and he, along with Bill Morgan, assisted me greatly in the selection of the photographs for this book.

Thanks to Polly Armstrong and the staff of the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Green Library, at Stanford Universiry, and to Bernard Crystal and the staff of the Buder Library at Columbia University, where most of the enclosed letters are housed.

Ann Charters, the Kerouac biographer and scholar, and Gordon Ball, who managed Allen Ginsberg's farm and edited three volumes of his work, offered valuable advice on the editing of this book. David Carter, editor of Spontaneous Mind, also chipped in with needed advice.

Thanks for assistance and friendship to: Peter Spielmann, Judy Hansen, Paula Litzky, Judy Matz, Rochelle Kraut, Simma Holt, and Amelie Littell.

A book is always a collaborative adventure, and in this case, it seemed especially so. Thanks to Jeff Pasternak and the staff at the Andrew Wylie Agency; to Kim Witherspoon, Maria Massie, and David Forrer at Witherspoon Associates; to Karen Rinaldi, Panio Gianopoulos, Andrea Lynch, Colin Dickerman, Jason Baskin, Susan Burns, and the staff at Bloomsbury USA. Carol Edwards did her usual incredible job copyediting and factchecking the manuscript.

As always, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my wife, Susan, and to my children, Adam, Emily Joy, and Jack Henry, who support me in every way imaginable.

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge a long overdue debt to my father, Alvin J. Schumacher, author of three books (including a wonderful young adult biography of Roger Taney) and, to a great extent, the inspiration for my own career. In reading through the Allen Ginsberg-Louis Ginsberg correspondence, I found myself reflecting on my relationship with my father - often in ways that were rather uncomfortable. Like Allen and Louis Ginsberg, my father and I have differed in our politics and outlooks on life and society, and we have been known to engage in more heated exchanges than either of us cares to remember. And, like Allen Ginsberg, I grew up in a household in which I was accustomed to seeing my father working on his writing, struggling to get the word on the page while holding a teaching job and raising a family. Finally, like Allen and Louis Ginsberg, my father and I know something about the ties that bind, and how those ties are stronger than all the forces that separate. I love you, Dad, and I owe you more than these few words could ever state or repay.

I N T R O D U CT I O N

Allen Ginsberg often remarked that writing poetry was the "family business." His father, Louis, earned a modest reputation as a lyric poet, and his older brother, Eugene Brooks, published poetry in a number of newspapers and magazines. Neither, of course, would ever come close to achieving Allen's lofry status in the literary communiry, but that never stopped Allen from promoting the merits of their work. He often appeared at joint poetry readings with his father and, on a rare occasion, with his brother. He wrote introductions for poetry collections by Louis and Eugene. He was proud of his father's and his brother's work, even though it was vastly different in sryle and content from his own.

Like Allen, Louis looked at his family's interest in writing poetry as being almost inevitable. "Asking why we write is like asking why fire burns," he said. "It's our nature . . . . How can we perpetuate ourselves?

One way is by children, another is by art. "

When I w as researching Dharma Lion, m y biography o f Allen Ginsberg, it occurred to me that Allen's relationship with his father, as well as the lineage of poetry and political interest passed on from father to son, had always been overshadowed by the interest in Allen's relationship with his mother. To a certain degree, this made sense: Allen's masterwork, "Kaddish," was a heartwrenching homage to - and biography-in-poetry of - his mother, and Naomi Ginsberg's story, in terms of sheer drama and emotional impact, seemed to have so much more to offer.

Still, Allen's debt to his father is undeniable, and the debt extends far beyond Allen's following in his father's footsteps as a poet and, later, teacher. Allen had many literary influences, but Louis was his first, and even after Allen met such important friends and literary contemporaries as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, who strongly influenced the direction of his writing, he continued to discuss his work with his father. Perhaps even more important was the ongoing debate on political issues. Since neither Burroughs or Kerouac cared much for politics, Allen used his father

xx11

Introduction
as a sounding board, which becomes very clear in this volume of letters. You can just feel Allen working his material, running statements past his father, and developing his position for later writings and political proclamations.

I remember mentioning all this to Allen when I proposed this book project to him many years ago. He was overwhelmed with work, as he always was, but he was intrigued by the idea. He remembered his letters to his father in only the most general of terms, but when he reread a small sampling of them, he agreed that they might be useful to scholars and biographers in the future, as well as to general readers fascinated by twentieth-century American history and politics.

Louis Ginsberg, the first of Pinkus and Rebecca Schectman Ginsberg's five children, was born on October 1 , 1895, in Newark, New Jersey. Both of his parents were of Russian Jewish ancestry. Pinkus, a socialist, was active in politics, and both Pinkus and Rebecca belonged to the Yiddish Arbeiter Ring, also known as the Workman's Circle. Louis would recall his father's taking him to socialist meetings, where he had occasion to hear Eugene Debs speak. Pinkus ran a small laundry business, which barely earned enough ro pay the family's bills. Louis occasionally accompanied his father on the horse-drawn cart, picking up laundry and making deliveries, but he had very little interest in the business.

Louis attended Barringer High School, one of the first high schools in the country, where he excelled in his studies and began writing poetry. In a 1990
interview, Hannah Litzky, Louis's youngest sister, accredited Margaret Coult, one of Louis's high school English reachers, as the one responsible for Louis's initial interest in writing poetry.

"She had given rhe class an assignment to write a poem in imitation of Milton's 'L'Allegro,' " Litzky remembered, "and Lou went home and did it.

She was absolutely amazed, and that was a very meaningful experience for him, that he should have been so successful at it. That's what started him on his career in poetry."

While at Barringer, Louis met Naomi Levy, a short, slender, attractive girl his age. Naomi had emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1905, when she was ten years old, at the rime a pogrom forced the Russian Jews to flee the country for their safety. Naomi was Louis's intellectual equal, and her strongly stated opinions, especially on political affairs, led to many discussions and arguments. Like many of the Russian Jews living in the western part of the country, near the Polish border, Naomi was a Communist.

Neither of Louis's parents had much use for Naomi, largely because of

Introduction
xxiii
her politics: She made very little secret of her disdain for socialism, and she wasn't afraid to confront the elder Ginsbergs, especially Rebecca, with her views. For a while, Louis and Naomi's relationship was put on hold, while Louis attended Rutgers University and Naomi attended a two-year college to earn her teacher's certification, but in 1 9 1 9, against the wishes of Louis"s parents, they married.

Naomi's politics weren't the only reason Louis's parents objected to the marriage. Just months before the wedding, Naomi suffered a nervous breakdown, beginning what turned out to be a tormented adult life of gradual mental deterioration. She quit teaching and, in 1 92 1 , bore her first son, Eugene Brooks Ginsberg, named after Eugene Debs. Almost exactly five years later, Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born.

Life was never easy for the Ginsbergs. As Louis's teaching jobs took him from Woodbine to Newark and then to Paterson, the family moved frequently. With Naomi unable to work, Louis had to scramble to find ways to support a family of four, as well as pay for Naomi's mounting medical bills, on a teacher's salary. The lack of money, along with Naomi's increasingly irrational behavior, led to great tension. When they grew a little older, Eugene and Allen were occasionally kept out of school so that they could keep an eye on their mother.

Although teaching took up most of his time, Louis continued to write poetry. He joined the Poetry Society of America and associated with the likes of Marianne Moore, Maxwell Bodenheim, John Dos Passos, and Edwin Arlington Robinson. He published poems in numerous literary magazines and newspapers, and he privately published two books of poetry, The Attic of the Past and Other Lyrics 0920) and The Everlasting Minute ( 1 937). His poem

"Fog" was included in Louis Untermeyer's important anthology Modern ATMrican and Modern British Poetry. Although he would never reach the stature of some of his contemporaries, he was well known on the East Coast, and he liked to call himself "Paterson's principal poet."

Allen Ginsberg was always "high-maintenance," to use a current expression. He demanded more attention than his older brother, and his need for physical affection was so great that his father jokingly referred to him as

"my little kissing bug." Allen would often crawl into bed with Louis, which, in all likelihood, was precipitated by his anxiety over his mother's manifestations of insanity and subsequent institutionalization, but which, nevertheless, contributed to confusing semierotic thoughts in a child already mixed up by his sexual identity. (Throughout his life, Allen would
xxiv

Introduction
have eroric dreams involving himself and his father, much the way he was plagued by disturbing nightmares about his mother's insanity and the guilt he felt in authorizing her eventual lobotomy.)

Allen would never characterize his childhood as being a joyous one, but he never wrote ir off as unhappy, either. Hannah Litzky remembered him as being "happy, playful," while her husband depicted his nephew's childhood as strongly family-oriented.

"I remember him as a happy, frolicking kid, who would be with the family down ar the shore," Leo Litzky said in 1 990. "He loved to frolic in rhe water and play with his cousins and ride bikes in the street. He'd just have a wonderful rime. And race with the adults: Louie and he would race for a hundred yards. Louie was very agile, and frequently Louie would win.

That camaraderie in the family was very strong and prevalent."

There's no doubting Louis's early influence on Allen. For as long as Allen could remember, his father recited poetry from memory, often while he was doing domestic chores - "rhe way people sing or hum while they work," as Allen pointed our. Every night after dinner, Louis would retreat to his desk in the comer of rhe living room, where he'd sit and grade his students'

papers and, if he had the time, write poetry. For Allen, the desk became an important memory and symbol: After his father's death, he claimed it, moved it to his apartment, and used it himself.

Allen said nothing about his desire to write poetry, mainly because, as he noted later, he wanted Louis to think he was "normal." Allen had once overheard his father joking that Allen, as the only nonpoet in the family, was the only normal member of the household, and he took his father's words seriously. Although his early journals indicate that from a very early age he felt that he would be a writer someday, he kept these ambitions a secret. When he began attending Columbia University in 1943, he intended to study labor law.

The mid- to !are 1940s was a twnulruous period for borh Allen and Louis Ginsberg. Louis and Naomi, separated since 1943, were finally divorced in 1948. A short time later, Louis married Edith Cohen, a divorcee with rwo teenaged children, Harold and Sheila, and the family moved into a new house in Paterson. The marriage provided Louis with the kind of companionship and stable home life that he had lacking for most of his adulthood.

Vivacious and intelligent, Edith had an enormous influence on Louis, panicularly in matters involving his youngest son.

During rhis period, Allen confronted one crisis after another. In 1944, three of his closest friends - Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs -

Introduction
xxv
ran afoul of the law in the now-legendary David Kammerer murder; Carr was imprisoned for manslaughter, while Kerouac and Burroughs faced minor charges, stemming from their neglecting to repon the crime, and because Kerouac had assisted Carr in hiding evidence. The following year, Allen was expelled from Columbia for housing an unauthorized guest (Kerouac) in his dorm, and for scribbling obscene slogans and drawings on his gritty dorm windows. That same year, Allen met Neal Cassady (a Denver native and hero of Kerouac's On the Road), and though Cassady was essentially heterosexual, the two began an on-again, off-again affair, which lasted for nearly a decade. When Cassady initially tried to break off the relationship in 1947, Allen traveled to Denver to rekindle the affair, and when that trip ended in failure, Allen found a job on board a ship bound for Dakar.

Up until this point, Louis had no inkling of his son's sexual preferences, but he was understandably quite concerned about the direction Allen's life was taking. Louis never had much use for Allen 's friends - panicularly Burroughs and Cassady- and he exploded when Allen finally told him that he was homosexual. Fonunately, Edith, who loved Allen deeply, acted as a buffer between father and son.

But the rurmoil was far from over. In 1948, Allen confessed to Louis that he'd had a series of"visions" involving William Blake and the mystic poet's work, and a year later- the same year that Naomi Ginsberg was permanently committed to Pilgrim State Hospital - Allen was arrested for allowing Herben Huneke, a friend, and Huneke's small burglary gang to store stolen goods in his apanment. In lieu of a jail sentence, Allen was sent to Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute for treatment.

The stress on Louis Ginsberg during all of this was immense.

"When I think of Louis in those days, I think of Job," Eugene Brooks recalled in his introduction to his father's Collected Poems. "These incidents in themselves are far from funny, but the dysfunction in lifestyle and attitude between Louis and Allen takes on, in retrospect, a farcical quality."

"Lou would talk to me about the difficulties that Allen had gotten into, how distressed he was about it," Hannah Litzky remembered. "I recall him saying, 'Maybe there's something in the genes that has created all this turmoil in Allen.' "

" I just admire Lou's equanimity in handling Allen," added Leo Litzky,

"because, in comparison, I would have had such anger. But Louis . . . I marvel at his control and his ability to tty to reason, even when he raised his voice. And he did raise his voice when he differed strongly, but it was always with a sense of reason.''

xxvi

Introduction

Fortunately, Allen's life became much more settled after his string of troubles in the late 1 940s. He moved back home, met and was befriended by William Carlos Williams, and, in general, tried to lead the kind of life recommended by his therapist. As his journal entries from this period indicate, he was far ftom content with this arrangement, but at least he was staying out of trouble.

Allen Ginsberg's early poetry was derivative of the poetry he had grown up reading - and the kind of work that would meet his father's approval. Allen made a point of showing his poetry to Louis, and Louis would respond with detailed criticism of the work. As rebellious as he could be, Allen also had a powerful need for approval - from his father, his teachers, and his friends, all of whom would see his work. Allen's facility with language and ideas was obvious, but in adhering to traditional forms, he seemed to be lost in rhyme and meter schemes, as well as in confusing symbols and metaphors.

Allen realized that his poetry needed to take a different direction, but he had no answers until he met William Carlos Williams in 1 950.

Allen showed some of his early rhymed poems (many of which can be found in his collection The GateJ of Wrath) to the elder poet, who lived in nearby Rutherford, New Jersey, but Williams rejected them as imperfect imitations. Williams was more interested in American idiom and language, with their unique rhythms and sounds. In an attempt to please his new mentor, Allen paged through his journals, pulled out prose passages, and broke them into shorter lines imitative of Williams's poetry. Williams responded favorably and promised to find a publisher for Allen's work.

Thus encouraged, Allen abandoned the traditional forms and wrote much of the poetry eventually published in Empty Mirror.

Allen's relationship with his father shifted slightly as his friendship with Williams blossomed. Louis was no longer the major influence; Williams, along with Jack Kerouac, had replaced him. According to Edith Ginsberg, Louis was pleased that a poet of Williams's reputation had befriended his son, although he was slightly put off when Williams would visit and he and Allen would huddle together in Allen's room, excluding Louis from their conversation.

With the publication of Howl and Other Poerm in 1956, Allen attained fame, stature, and influence. As the letters in this volume indicate, Louis was thrilled for his son, and if he felt any envy over Allen's success, he kept it to himself. Louis was never comfortable with some of the language and frank sexualiry in Allen's poetry, but after initially criticizing these elements in

Introduction xxvii

"Howl" and "Kaddish," only to see these poems widely praised and anthologized, Louis became less vocal about his objections. He and Allen continued to debate the merits of works by Beat Generation writers, but Louis tempered his criticism of Allen 's own poetry.

In time, there was almost a complete reversal of position. While Allen published virtually anything he wrote and submitted, including poetry collections that were issued every few years or so, Louis was continually frustrated by his inability to find a publisher for a new volume of his work.

He enclosed new poems in many of his letters to Allen and solicited his son 's criticism, and though he was far too proud to ask Allen to use his influence to end his publication woes, some of his letters were thinly veiled appeals. When a publisher finally agreed to publish Morning in Spring, Louis relied heavily on Allen's position and experience almost every step of the way, from asking for his suggestions on the selection and revisions of the poems to be included in the volume to seeking advice on the promotion and marketing of the book. Louis's humiliry during all this is touching, as is Allen 's devotion to his father.

The joint poetry readings, beginning in 1966 and promoted as "the battle of the bards," provided Louis with new exposure (and income) in his advancing years. At this point in his career, Allen was maintaining a crushing work schedule, which included extensive traveling for poetry readings and lectures, but he always found time for a handful of appearances with his father. Although Louis clearly had more to gain from these readings, Allen enjoyed them immensely. Not only did he revel in the lively banter over poetry and politics; he also relished the opportunity to spend more time with his family.

Louis might have deferred to Allen in literary matters, but he was loath to concede a single point when they fought over political topics.

"Letters between Allen and Louis contained wrathful political grenades,"

observed Eugene Brooks, who, along with Edith Ginsberg and Hannah and Leo Litzky, saw many of Allen's letters to his father. The disagreements were almost expected. From the days of their youth, Allen and Eugene had been encouraged to speak their mind about political matters; both were reading and clipping articles and editorials from newspapers when other boys their age were more concerned with baseball scores than with world affairs. Both wrote letters to the editors of the PaterJon Morning Call and Patmon Evening NewJand, on at least one occasion, the New York TimeJ. Allen filled his diary wirh his opinions on local, national, and international politics.

xxviii Introduction

The detonation of the atom bombs in Japan, as well as the Cold War with the Soviet Union, had profound effects on Louis and Allen. Both feared for the planet's future, agreeing that science and technology might have created, in the nuclear bomb, a means of humankind's suicide. But they strongly disagreed over the solution to the problem. Louis believed that peace should be maintained through military strength, and that communism (the greatest threat to world peace, in his opinion) would only be defeated or contained by an alliance of countries with superior firepower.

There was no reasoning or negotiating with the Soviet Union, he'd argue; the only language the Communist leaders understood was brute force. Allen disagreed. The world, he proposed, was divided by blind devotion to nationalism and religion, with different nations and peoples willing to decimate the world over their differences, rather than to unite and survive in common humanity; the best solution was to extend a hand, rather than aim a missile.

The Cuban revolution brought out some of their most passionate debates.

By the time Fidel Castro seized leadership in Cuba, Allen had spent an extended period of time in Europe, Mexico, and northern Africa, where he'd had the opportunity to see and analyze American politics from afar; he had already formed the worldview that he would maintain for the rest of his life.

He wasn't buying his father's contention that Castro's government, with its ties to the Soviet Union, posed any immediate threat to the United States, nor did he believe that the Castro regime meant continuous oppression to the people of Cuba. Allen saw Castro as a benevolent dictator committed to improving his impoverished country's medical and educational systems; U.S. opposition to Castro, Allen felt, only pushed Cuba closer to communism and away from Castro's original socialist intent.

Louis, quite predictably, dismissed Allen's opinions as so much idealistic drivel. The Bay of Pigs invasion forced Louis to reassess his stance, but he held to his position. When Allen visited Cuba and was expelled from the country in 1965, Louis found it impossible to resist ribbing his son about how his free speech went over in a totalitarian regime.

The tesry exchanges between father and son over Israel and Judaism are particularly interesting, not just for what they say about the two men's individual beliefs but for the ways in which they represent general longstanding debates about dual loyalty, heritage and religion, and Israel's conflicts in the Middle East. As these letters illustrate, Louis became very angry over his son's slightest criticism of Israel's politics, and he badgered Allen about exploring his own Jewish heritage, even though he himself

Introduction
xxix
rarely observed the practices of his faith. He did celebrate Jewish holy days and holidays, but he rarely set foot in a synagogue, the household meals were not prepared kosher, and neither of his sons were bar mitzvahed.

"Allen was not brought up with a strong Jewish identification, in terms of the religion itself, but he was brought up with the values," Hannah Litzky explained. "Because my parents were socialists, religion, per se - the observance of religious practices - was not important. Then Lou married a Communist, who, of course, was totally antireligion. There was no observance and no interest, really, in bringing the boys up as Jewish, but there was a very, very strong commitment to being Jewish. That was part of one's identiry."

That identification was the cornerstone of the disputes between Allen and Louis Ginsberg. Louis had been shaken to the roots by the Holocaust, and he saw the establishment and continued welfare oflsrael as tantamount to the survival of the Jewish people and their heritage. Allen, of course, detested any brand of nationalism, which he believed only led to further division in the human race, more hatred and warfare, and, in the age of nuclear weapons, a greater nudge toward planetary annihilation. Allen enraged his father with his occasional essays or statements to the press about Israel, and Louis responded with harsh letters (including one letter to an editor of a magazine, for which Allen had written an essay), his language as strong and confrontational as anything he would ever say to his son.

Their arguments over the Vietnam War were almost as contentious.

Louis, like most Americans of his generation, had witnessed Hider's conquering of Europe, as well as the Soviet Union's domination of Eastern Europe after the war; the domino theory in Southeast Asia made perfect sense to him. Allen, on the other hand, believed that the conflict in Vietnam was a civil war, and he argued that a Communist victory might not be the worst thing that could happen in that part of the world. As always, Louis boiled over anytime Allen showed the slightest sympathy whatsoever for communism, and on more than one occasion, he waved off Allen's arguments as a matter of Naomi's influence over her son. In several letters, Louis berated Allen as a "pinko" or "commie."

The letters concerning Vietnam are poignant symbols of the country's view as a whole. Louis, like many Americans, hated the idea of warfare, but he regarded it as a necessary evil; one had to stop the growth of communism or face the consequences. However, as time passed and the war dragged on, Louis's stance softened, and though he would never concede the idea that the nation 's escalating involvement in Vietnam might have been a mistake,
xxx

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he grew more critical of the government and its inability to resolve the crisis.

At times, the intensity of Louis and Allen's political bickering can be unsettling to a reader, especially in this day and age, when passion for politics has been largely replaced by a sense of cynical resignation, but heated opinion never fractured the bond between father and son. "Allen and Lou would fight with each other like cat and dog," Edith Ginsberg reflected, "but they always wound up in each other's arms."

"Please save all my letters. Some day someone might want to collect them or want to see letters between you and me. "

Louis Ginsberg wrote these words i n a December 6 , 1965, letter to his son, but he needn't have worried: Allen saved everything, from correspondence to rent receipts, from his high school term papers to the different drafts of his poems. From all appearances, he saved every letter Louis wrote to him, including those sent to all corners of the world, when Allen was living or traveling abroad. Unfortunately, Louis was not as careful with Allen's letters to him. Many were discarded after reading; others were misplaced after they were passed around from Louis to Eugene to the Lirzkys. Both Louis and Allen eventually sold their letters to, or stored them in, university archives, but even so, many of Allen's letters - including those written after 1965 - are missing. One regrets their loss, just as one can't help bur wonder about the contents of Allen's voluminous correspondence with William S. Burroughs - letters that Burroughs tossed our after reading.

However, what remains is significant. The letters offer an intimate portrayal of a complex father-son relationship, as well as a running commentary about some of the most turbulent times in U.S. history. These letters chart Allen Ginsberg's intellectual and emotional maturation, his development as a poet, and the evolution of his political views, all within the context of a loving relationship, which, while often rested, endured throughout two exemplary, yet greatly differing, lifetimes.

E D I T O R 'S N O T E

The sheer volume of che Allen Ginsberg correspondence is scaggering, consiscing of chousands of leccers, noces, and posccards ro his family, friends, fellow wricers and poecs, policicians, social acciviscs and organizers, members of che media, and weal scrangers. The number of leccers increased in proportion co Ginsberg 's fame, and ic was nor uncommon for Allen co complain abouc being buried beneach che weighc of che obligacion co answer che mail. Nevertheless, he was duciful in responding co chese communicacions, somecimes in wricing, ofcen by phone. When Ginsberg's selecced leccers are evencually published, readers will likely wonder, as have Ginsberg scholars already familiar wich che correspondence, how Allen found rime co wrire his poerry, lee alone rhe huge volume of essays, journal encries, book incroduccions, jackec blurbs, and so on.

When reading and edicing che Ginsberg correspondence, I kepr in mind several faces. Allen had che habic of designacing blocks of rime for correspondence, and he would wrice many leccers on che same day. As a rule, che leccers were wriccen in hasre, wich liccle or no consideracion of rhe face char one day chey mighc be published. Allen, whose spelling was acrocious co begin wich, filled his leccers wich misspellings, horrible punccuacion and capicalizacion, and grammacical errors; on occasion, he would forger whac monch ic was or- usually in che monchs of January and February - whac year ic was. None of chis is particularly uncommon in a large volume of correspondence - as I learned when I was researching Dharma Lion and reading che leccers of Ginsberg's licerary concemporaries bur ic does presenc an edicor wich a puzzle and a challenge: Do you publish rhe leccers uncouched, warts and all, caking a purisr's approach co scholarship, or do you "clean up" rhe leccers, making chem more readable for a general, less scholarly audience?

Obviously, my cask would have been easier had Louis and/or Allen Ginsberg been alive when I was compiling chis book. They could easily have gone over rhe manuscripc and, since chis book bears cheir names, made

KXxii

Editor's Note
any minor corrections they wished. Having known Allen and having observed him working on other projects, and having discussed this one with him in great detail, I can state rhat he certainly would have corrected many misspellings and some of the incorrect capitalization; in all likelihood, he would have tinkered with punctuation. Such was his method, even when preparing previously published poems for his Collected Poems and Selected Poems or reviewing his published essays and interviews before reprinting them in Deliberate Prose and Spontaneous Mind.

After mulling over all this, I decided to edit in favor of readability, with as little intrusion upon the original texts as possible. I corrected misspellings (especially of proper names) when it was clear that these were unintended; I kept the original misspellings when it was evident that they were intentional, meant for humor, emphasis, or some other reason. I did not alter any of the prose or syntax, although I did use standard capitalization with regard to proper names and places (unless, again, I felt Ginsberg had a reason for doing otherwise). Finally, I left the punctuation intact, except on those rare occasions when an added comma or period would clear up an otherwise confusing sentence. Ellipses in the original letters are maintained in the text of this book. Whenever material has been cur, either because it was repetitious or of little interest to scholars or readers, or, on a rare occasion, when the handwriting was illegible, I used brackets and ellipses: [ . . .

].

For the sake of brevity and simplicity, I have used abbreviations in the footnotes: AG (Allen Ginsberg), LG (Louis Ginsberg), and CP (Collected Poems).

Finally, for the sake of readability, I used a standard format to indicate the date on which a letter was written, or, for Allen, the location from which it was written. Since Louis Ginsberg always wrote at home, I indicated his address only on the first letter written from a particular location. The reader should assume that until a new address is introduced, all letters were written from the address given previously.

E A R L Y C O R R E S P O N D E N C E

When Allen began hiJ firJt term at Columbia Univmity in the Fall l 943, he waJ
precociouJ intellectually, but, at barely Jeventeen yearJ of age, he lagged behind hiJ Ivy LMgue claJJmateJ in termJ of maturity and JophiJtication. MOJt of hiJ claJJmateJ had come from wealthier familieJ and Jtronger educational backgroundJ. ThiJ, however, meant little to G imberg, who, after hiJ youth with hiJ mother, had great empathy for the underdog and an attraction for people who were different.

During hiJ fim term at Columbia, Allen met a Jtrikingly attractive, highly intelligent, and openly rebelliouJ St. LouiJ native named Lucien Carr. Although only two yearJ Allen' I Jenior, Lucien Jeemed to be a lifetime ahead of him in knowledge and experience. Through Carr, Allen met William Seward BurroughJ, another St. LouiJ
native, a Harvard graduate who, at twenty-nine, became a kind of group elder.

Allen a!Jo met jack Kerouac, another friend of Carr\ a former football Jtar who wanted to devote hiJ life to writing. Allen immediately developed cruJheJ on Kerouac and Carr, although he kept hiJ feelingJ to himJe/f If the memberJ of thiJ group had one thing in common, it waJ their open diJdain for what they comidered to be the Jtifling JtandardJ in American literature and lifeJtyle. BurroughJ waJ conducting hiJ
own private Jtudy of the people living on the margim in New York -petty crimina!J, drug addictJ, the homelm, Jexual deviantJ, and other rebelliouJ typeJ - while Carr and Gimberg (and Kerouac, to a /mer extent) diJcuJJed what they called a "New ViJion" for literature, in which the individual mind and experience would dictate the language, form, content, and meaning of a work of fiction or poetry.

Such lofty ambitiom might have been Jtandard fare on moJt college campuJeJ, where JtudentJ were encouraged to Jtretch the boundarieJ of youthful preconceptionJ, but G imberg, Kerouac, BurroughJ, Carr, and other memberJ of their circle were definitely a cut above the average. Kerouac'J literary ambitionJ alone were awe-inipiring -
according to the legend, he had written over I million wordJ before he arrived at Columbia - while Burroughl'J fierce intelligence, coupled with hiJ natural diJtruJt of all Jocial, political, and religiouJ inJtitutiom, provided the group with creative and intellectual Jpark.r not often found in the uJual college cliqueJ.

LouiJ Gimberg waJ /m than enthralled with Allen'J new choice of friendJ, or

2

Family Businm: Early Correspondence
with Allen's open rebellion. Louis might have been liberal by nature, but he still believed in an orderly standard of behavior; anything else, he'd argue with Allen, invited chaos or insanity. Besides, Allen and his friends weren't experienced enough in life to challenge the norms of a system that had been functioning so well for so long.

Allen was getting an education at Columbia and in New York, but it was not the one Louis had bargained for.

In August 1944, the group - and Carr, in particular - became the focus of a scandal that rocked the Columbia campus and literally changed the course of a number of lives. For some time, Lucien had been stalked by a former St. Louis physical education instructor and college teacher named David Kammerer, whose obsession with the younger Carr had led him to pursue Lucien from city to city throughout the United States, ending in New York. There was little question that Kammerer was deeply troubled- he went to the lengths of breaking into Lucien's apartment to watch him sleep - but he seemed to be more tragic than dangerous.

However, late one evening in mid-August 1944, after a night of heavy drinking, Kammerer confronted Carr in Manhattan's Riverside Park. Kammerer threatened Carr and, largely fearing/or his own safety, Lucien pulled out a Boy Scout knife and stabbed Kammerer to death. He then dragged Kammerer's body down to the river, weighted him with rocks, and left him in the water.

Carr eventually turned himself in, two days later, but first he paid visits to Burroughs and Kerouac. Burroughs urged Lucien to surrender to the authorities, but Carr was worried about getting "the hot seat. " Kerouac helped Carr dispose of the knife and Kammerer's glasses, and then the two spent what they felt would be their final hours together, wandering around New York. Then Carr went to the police and led them to Kammerer's body.

Allen was horrified and saddened when he heard the details of Kammerer's death.

He had liked Kammerer and was appalled by the way his life had ended. He worried about Carr, who was certain to face prison time; in addition, Kerouac and Burroughs were being held for failure to report the crime. The immediate future looked very bleak.

The following letter is very revealing, not only for the details that Allen selected to provide his understandably concerned father but also for what it reveals about Allen's personality and state of mind at the time. Dramatic to the point of hyperbole, yet framing the core of his letter with small talk, Allen displayed a naiiJeti that would haunt and embarrass him when he was reminded of it many years later. Taken as an introduction of the correspondence that follows, the letter leads one to a better understanding of Louis Ginsberg's frustrations with Allen, and his concerns for his son's direaion in life.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

3

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(New York City}

n.d. (ca. August 1 944}

Dear Louis:

Your visit last night I remember only as a rather surprising dream. I was pleased to see you, but felt quite contrite, when I fell back to sleep, that you'd have to travel all the way back for such a short talk.

I have been reading Dickens" Great Expectations in my spare time.

The time seems to be out of joint - oh, cursed spite' - but is slowly readjusting itself to normality; or at any rate, it is becoming as normal as it can be under the circumstances. I don 't remember what I told you last night. I was at the D.A.'s office, and was asked routine questions about Character- that was compositively unimportant. I also had a long talk with Kerouac. He told me all about the following days - how, says he, the two rode around in taxicabs discussing the ramifications of the deed - emotional, moral, and artistic. Carr cried a little without knowing it and kept saying, perhaps a bit distracted, "He died . . . this is the way the world ends: nor with a bang but a whimper."

There were a few heroic scenes, as well: Before Carr went upstairs to his mother, he shook hands with Kerouac, bidding him goodbye for the last time. As Kerouac grasped his hand, he found several dollar bills between their palms. Carr withdrew his hand irritated and flung the money away into the street, then shook hands, turned, and went upstairs. Kerouac added, with a smile, that Carr knew he would pick up the money later.

Celine1 is taking it all rather well. She saw Carr today, and said that he is chastened and serious, that he is much like old L. Carr when he dropped his attitudes and masks and defenses, and waxed serious. He seems to be, for the first time, openly considerate of others, without consciousness of being what he would have called "Bourgeois," as Celine said. He worried about Jack, whether he would get out, etc. He asked about me, about my interview with ---, and even very solicitously hoped that I didn't get burned.

Celine is the only one to have seen Carr: the attorneys have forbid any other visits. I may, however, be allowed to go next week. If I have time, I shall go, for I really pity Lucien under the circumstances, and, although I would profess to be a moralist, I can't find it in me to condemn him.

I. Celine Young, Lucien Carr's girlfriend.

4

Family BuJinesJ: Early Correspondence

Celine also asked him, as she put it, a rhetorical question, which he took up: "Why did you do it." He told her in confidence that the reason given was the true one - that Kammerer had suddenly become more violent than ever before, and that Lucien, frightened, had drawn his knife. Lucien told her that for the most pan he could not remember what had happened. He said his mind, to use the usual phrase, was blank - and that, as an anist, he was sorry to have lost so much of the experience.

School otherwise is coming along. Chemistry was trouble, as usual. I've about 5 books to read in the very near future, and I've got to apply myself now or be lost, so I've been applying myself for the past few hours.

Any letters from Eugene?

I spent most of the $5 on phone calls, newspapers, carfare, and (the first evening) drinks for Edie1 and myself when we heard the news. Can you send me a dollar to tide me over to next Friday?

Allen

From the beginning, LouiJ Gimherg diJappmved of hiJ Jon'J new friend!, whom he conJidered to he bad influences. The talk of Rimbaud, derangement of the JenJes, a New ViJion for modern literature, the ''junkieJ and genium" of the Jubculture- all offended Loui/J JenJibilitieJ, particularly in the aftermath of the Carr-Kammerer epiJode. In Loui/J opinion, Allen'J new obmJiom were dangerouJ invitatiom to diJaJter.

Allen countered that literature needed to take a new direction, moving away from the mannered, comtrictive approach of the paJt, though he waJ not certain what the new approach might be. He had only recently informed hiJ father that he waJ writing poetry - an announcement that pleaJed LouiJ more than Allen had anticipated- and their correJpondence waJ now filled with diJcuJJion, Jometimes contentiouJ, of literature and what might be appropriate Jubject matter for it. In hiJ letterJ to Allen, LouiJ maintained a balance between intellectual diJcourJe and hiJ duties aJ a father diJpenJing advice to hiJ Jon, yet, aJ the following two lettm - one to hiJ JiJfer and one to one of Allen'J favorite teachm - reveal, LouiJ waJ gmwing increaJingly diJtreJJed about the path hiJ Jon waJ taking.

1 . Edie Parker, Jack Kerouac's girlfriend. Kerouac married Parker immediately after his release from custody. The marriage was shon·lived.

Allen and Louis Gimberg

Louis Ginsberg to Hannah Litzky

324 Hamilton Ave.

Paterson, N}

January 1 6, 1 945

Dear Hannah,

Relative co our phone conversation, I 'd like you co show this letter of Allen's to Saltman.

Allen, as classwork, is writing a novel whose hero is a fictionalized Lucien Carr, a twisted eccentric. In addition, Allen regards any protest against his use of vulgar words in rhe novel as questioning his artistic integrity. I remonstrated that (a) Carr is not a desirable protagonist and (b) vulgar words do not necessarily prove artistic integrity.

His letter was an answer to my criticism. [ . . .

]

Love.

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Lionel Trilling

February 21, 1 945

Dr. Lionel Trilling

Columbia University

Morningside Heights

New York City

Dear Dr. Trilling:

I wonder whether I may rake the liberty of writing co you about my son, Allen Ginsberg, who is one of your students.

Allen, whom I am trying to appraise objectively, is a brilliant youngster, precocious inrellecrually, but lagging, I fear, emotionally. He dramatizes himself as a writer, though he does have some potentialities.

At present, he is making clever but false verbal rationalizations that the immoralist way of life (a Ia Gide, I think) is a valid one. He thinks merely co rationalize some inner tendency proves a satisfactory way of life, harmonious with what we might term normal values. He seeks co philosophize abnormality into normality. I am not sure whether I make myself clear co you.

6

Family BuJinesJ: Early Cormpondence

Since Allen holds you in high esreem and places great value on your dicta, I wonder whether, if ir is nor inconvenient for you, I might meet you.

I feel that you could exerr a salutary influence on Allen, who, by the way, has fallen in with some undesirable friends.

I believe Dean N.M. McKnight' has some knowledge of rhe situation.

May I hear from you)

Sincerely yours,

Louis Ginsberg

Louis Ginsberg to AUen Ginsberg
n.d. {ca. 1 945}

Dear Allen,

Received your lerrer. On the whole, ir was a clever and even brilliant one; bur ir was subrly infecred with fallacy.

Even if normal values are rarionalizarions as well as abnormal ones, the latter, as normal values qua normal ones, result in a berrer and safer adjustment ro sociery and a greater integration of rhe person. According ro your blanker statement, you would bracket rhe rationalizations of a homosexual or an insane person as satisfactory for sociery and for the person. The homosexual and rhe insane person is a menace ro himself and ro sociery. Danger and disaster lie char way! Your clever verbal solutions are incongruous with realiry of life. You are developed inrellecrually; bur, emotionally, you lag.

You exaggerate my own tendencies. I find compensation in rhe development of my own inner being in accordance and in harmony with salutary, social values. My personality is dominant in my own way; i.e. in achieving a poetic life of modest bur definite accomplishments. I fail ro discern a sadistic force.

No, I disagree wirh you - bur definitely - char an immoralist can confirm

"enduring human values," in chaos, "democratic civilization." You're all

"wer," Allen. You simply have lirde experience in life. Where is your former, fine zeal for a liberal progressive, democratic society? Your sophistry

- for rhar is what it is - is a series of half-rrurhs, verbal cleverness, and dangerous ideas expressed in specious and dexterous verbiage.

I . Nicholas McKnight, Columbia's associate dean, asked Allen to refrain from writing his novel about rhe Carr-Kammerer episode. In McKnight's opinion, Allen's novel was "smu[[y."

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

7

I don'r rhink, ar bonom, Burroughs is serious. Even granring, for rhe sake of argumenr, rhar he is, ir is rhe sinceriry of a fundamenralisr, hell-andbrimsrone, bigored preacher whose ways sow harred and disrorrion. He racionalizes his malice resulring from his maladjusrmenr, does Burroughs.

He's dangerous nor because he rarionalizes bur because his end produce of choughr and ani rude resulrs, evenrually, if carved our in accion, in danger and disharmony and chaos. You don'r know enough of life co separace his non-conformicy from rrurh or realicies. Frankly, I shall be - juscifiably -
disappoinred in you, if you persisr in your inrimare relarion wich him.

You are wrong rhar Trilling, Weaver, and Van Doren will side wirh Burroughs. Some of his arr values rhey may like bener chan T. D. Adams; bur Burroughs' social values rhose reachers will rejecc. I challenge you co presenr Burroughs' views, arr and social, co Trilling or Van Doren1 ! 1 I dare you co rake rhem up co Trilling.

No, pleasure is nor che final reference of moraliry. Were ic so, chaos, confusion, anarchy would resulr, nor communism or socialism or a bener sociecy or a bener man. License is nor liberry. Pleasure, if ic harms rhe individual or sociecy, is bad. I cell you, Allen, you are living in an Ivory Tower.

Your poems: The one abour rhe rose I don'c care for. You don'r have enough warranr for rhe reader co glean rhar rhe rose refers co a vaginal one.

I didn'r care for Poem II. "No Soap" co me.

Poem III is good. I like ir: ic has subrle and epigrammacic aspecrs, wellknic merer, a valid idea.

Whar abour a psychiarrisc?

Louis

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

AuguJt 8, 1 945

Dear Allen,

Received your lener.

Glad you have so much wearing apparel. This solves one problem for che nonce. When you are home, I'll have picrures raken, as Eugene had.

8

Family Business: Early Correspondence

All is quiet here. I have rwo more days of school; then I'll have a three week vacation co loll abouc.

When and if you need more money, don't hesitate co write for it.

Your description of a "regular" fellow was abouc a randy type of somewhat inferior grade. Regularity includes variety of types; and the one you alienated was of rather low grade. (I'm afraid your letter is rather too vulgar co show co Hannah.)

I do think that obeying orders and reasonable self-discipline are essentials in a "regular,'" which I make coincide with a reasonable or sensible mode of life. The effervescence of your revolt is an ingredient of youth; but if it all makes you anti-social and disoriented, there is a great deal of rue co pay. Don't let yourself get rid of your common sense co make room for your textbooks. A little of rhe Greek ideal of moderation would do you no harm, m'lad.

The scories of the acomic bomb are exciting. I'm poring over the papers for it all. We may be on the threshold of a new era, though, I suppose it all takes a century or two for the effects co sink into the social body of the common man.

I've been reading a variety of items: essays on Kafka, a book on the electron microscope, the poetry of Hart Crane, essays on modem and modernistic poets, etc.

Feel well - and keep your shirt on!

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to AUen Ginsberg

September 14, 1 945

Dear Allen,

Received your letter.

Glad you are O.K.

Sorry you won't be in for the Jewish Holiday. When do you expect to be in Paterson next?

Am doing a bit of reading lately rather than writing, as I am lying fallow a while. Read or re-read Edmund Wilson's The Triple Thinkers with interesting interpretations of Henry James, especially his tale, The Turn of the Screw. There is also a good essay on mannerism and literature. Have also dipping into Stefan Zweig's autobiography, The World of Yesterday. I'll

Allen and LouiJ G inJberg

9
read soon Farrell's new book of essays, wherein he cudgels the genteel writers.

All are well in Newark and send their regards to you.

Love

Louis

P.S. I re-read some of your recent poems. They have good qualities: have good ideas with penetration. However, your verse is at times a bit amorphous and not focused enough into concrete images which sum up and unify and integrate your ideas. I suggest you 1 . use concrete images; 2.

concentrate more; 3. watch the grammar for greater simplicity and clarity.

L.

Louis Ginsberg to AUen Ginsberg

November 2, 1 945

Dear Allen,

Received your interesting letter, that is, what I could decipher of it. In pencil and in scrawls: I was barely able to decode it all.

You say: "In part I agree with Shapiro. The rest, I differ." Me too - with Shapiro and with you.

As for S.'s poem, it is not a poem but clever verse a Ia Pope.

A fine poem - to continue our discussion - has indirection and allusiveness; it operates on different levels. But too much modern, or rather modernistic poetry, is willfully obscure; it hides in private occult allusiveness, which leads to dadaism and echolalia. This obscurity and cerebral mumbojumbo has widened the gulf between the poet and the intelligent reader.

I realize well enough that the modem poet has to cope with difficulties which did not lie in wait for him in previous epochs. The disorder of modem life;; the explorations of Freud, Einstein, Marx; the mechanization and [ . . .

] of
many activities; the pluralism of many conflicting values - all these make the poet shrink into himself. The enormous expansion of science, anthropology, sociology, psychiatry; the influence of the radio - all frighten the poet into hiding in his obscurity. He is afraid of clarity, not finding clarity in life. So he thinks he says something profound when he achieves the verbal duplicity of imitating clever associations. Life may be that way but not the best art.

I 0

Family BuJinm: Early Corropondence

Rimbaud was an intense seeker but not after adequate normal values. He sought absolute moral values. That's a horse of a different color. Anybody who seeks absolute values gets stalled! He must resign himself to pragmatic values or commit suicide. No one ever will or can find, with infinitely microscopic minds, the designs and meanings in the macroscopic vastness. Pragmatic values have not btought us to chaos; it is the indifference of the masses to those values and it is the amoral cynicism power-ridden moguls and tycoons, aided and abetted by the unorganized masses, that has btought us to the past war.

I don't say that our modern problems are properly faced as they should be; they are solved in a hugger-mugger, bad fashion; bur ro wait rill you get absolute values which you'll never ever achieve - rhar is infantilism or quixotic incompetence, to say the least.

You in your infinite wisdom are less successful in solving dilemmas than rhe pragmatic individual, ir seems ro me. You don't seem to me ro be searching for moral and political values. You deny there are any absolute values - then you butt your head against rhe universe, straining after those absolute values. What a sorry paradox!

When you end by your saying society is destroying itself and therefore you can do nothing to blend personal and societal gains, you are, well, off balance. Your statement reminds me of a lady who went ro a psychiatrist ro prove ro rhe doctor and her husband rhar she was sane. "I like pancakes; does rhar make me neurotic'" she asks rhe doctor.

"No," he said.

"Well, my husband says I'm off."

"Because you make pancakes?" asked the doctor.

"Yes," she replied. "Will you come sometimes over ro my house ro rasre my pancakes?"

"All right," replied rhe doctor.

Smiling, as rhe woman turned ro leave, dragging along her non-plussed husband, she added, "Certainly, come ro taste my pancakes. I have barrels and barrels of rhem hidden all over rhe house'"

More anon.

Louis

Allen met Neal CaJJady in 1 946. CaJJady, a Denver native who would become the legendary hero of jack Kerouac'J 1 95 7 novel, On rhe Road, repruented a diJappearing frontier Jpirit that greatly excited both Kerouac and Gimberg. Allen waJ deeply attracted to CaJJady, and, to hiJ JllrpriJe, CaJJady, a heteroJexll41 with a

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

I I
seemingly limitlm appetite for women, reciprocated Allen's affeaiom, setting off an inteTJJe affair that was doomed from the beginning. Allen wanted CaiJady exdusively to himself; CaiJady was incapable of any kind of monogamy. Soon enough, he returned to Denver, leaving Allen crushed and tkpressed.

Louis G imberg knew nothing of his son's homosexuality, let alone his relatiomhip with CaiJady, so he was justifiably confused when, during the summer of 1 947, Allen journeyed to Denver and sent home a series of letters speaking of what he termed his "Denver doldrums. " As far as Louis was concerned, Allen's tkpression was attributable to his being away from home for the first extended period of his life; his inability to find a suitable summer job; and the general fragility of his state of mind.

As one can surmise from Louis's chatty letters to Allen, father believed son would be fine when he returned to the East and resumed his studies in the fall.

In fact, Allen was disturbed because CaiJady, involved with several women, had little time for him; Allen's initial frustration and jealousy evolved into horrible black moods, leaving him emotionally paralyzed. His future was far beyond uncertain; it seemed impoiiible. Columbia. Allen felt, was not the amwer; perhaps psychoanalysis would be helpful. By the end of the summer, he had hatched a new plan: He and Neal CaiJady would hitchhike croiJ-country and visit Burroughs in Texas (where he was now living with Joan Vollmer, his common-law wife, and their son), and Allen and Neal would attempt a reconciliation. The trip to Texas fell through in the worst way, with Cassady again rejecting Allen in favor of a woman, and Allen, now utterly dispirited and tksperate, tkciding to take a radical route and ship out of the country.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

July 23, 1 947

Dear Allen,

I was relieved to get your letter of the 2 1 st and to know that you were well.

Sorry about that night porter job, but maybe you can give it up soon for something more congenial. That's a poetic situation: a poet alone at night listening to records . . . .

Speaking about the movies, did you know that the Fabians, who own movie chains, live in Paterson? I know Mr. Simon Glass, an in-law of Mr. Fabian's.

Was interested in "Swallow": glad you will appear in an anthology of young poets. Keep on writing: you've got the "good" in you.

I'm enjoying my summer leisure. I read, as I write you, Wilhelm Reich's

12

Family Business: Early Correspondence

The Function of the Orgasm, in which I glimpsed a number of things. The essence of his book is sound enough. His theory of masculine armor is, ar least, divening. I dipped inro Orro Rank's Will Therapy, ere. bur I found rhe group difficult: roo much abstract area. The same author's Art and Artist I read more carefully in pans. Here are one or rwo quorarions:

"Whereas rhe average man subordinates himself, borh sociologically and biologically, ro rhe collecrive, and rhe neurotic shurs himself off from both, the productive rype finds a middle way, which is expressed in ideological experience and personal creativity . . . . An anisr willingly accepts limitations that appear in the form of moral convenrions and anisric standards nor merely as such bur as protective measures against premature and complete exhaustion of the individual. . . He masrers rhe conflicr by giving it form and aesthetic shape."

Incidenrally, I procured Freud's General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, which I am reading carefully. I read it once, long ago, bur am rereading it.

In berween, I'm writing verse a Ia the Ginsberg lyric touch. I have had things taken by my old stand-bys like Spirit, The N. Y. Herald-Tribune, The Sat. Rev. of Lit, ere; bur I'm trying ro break inro new places wirh new verse.

Thus, with reading and writing and thinking, if any, I manage ro juggle away rhese summer days.

Eugene spenr a couple of days here. He's marking rime, as I wrote you.

Also, he's raking a play-writing course at Columbia. At leasr, he obtains stimulation of ideas and social conracr.

Hannah is at the shore for a few weeks. Drop her a line: c/o The Llkeshore Hotel, 1 2 1 7 Ocean Ave., Bradley Beach, N.J.

Keep up your spirits. If you need anything, don't hesitate to write ro me.

Drop me a line today.

Love.

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 1, 1 947

Dear Allen,

How's the improvidenr genius in rhe West)

Received your letter of July 27, and am glad you are morecomfonable now.

A couple of strictures firsr. My senrenriousness, as you pur it - well, you

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

1 3
must pardon the solicitude o f a father writing to a son who was i n the doldrums . . . . I write as I feel. . . .

As for your too loosely used word, "bourgeois," anent Rank's quotation, I used Rank's own words. Awareness of limitations and respect for some of them are what Rank means. You mutilate his meaning by your quaint use of "bourgeois."

So much for my demurring. Now as to Reich. I'll look further into his musculature amor. I guess rhere is a good deal of that. I'll get, sometimes, Reich's Sexual Revolution, though I believe I glimpsed this thesis in his Function of the Orgasm (which, by the way, I obtained from Daliels' bookstore in Los Angeles).

Last week I ran down to Belmar for a day where I partook of a hot bath, listened to Hannah's financial problem, shrugged off Clara's complaints, and cheered up my mother. This weekend, I'm going, with some friends, to an island off Connecticut, where, on a small farm, I'll be in an unbutted mood to enjoy, so they tell me, green fields, sunning brooks, and a wood that has aspirations to be a forest.

Did you get a copy of your marks from Columbia? I have one copy. I rerouted to your Denver (Grant St.) address.

Well, here's luck to you trying to unscrew the inscrutable, solve the unsolvable, and approach the unapproachable.

The Passaic Valley Examiner reprinted your poem, "A Lover's Garden,"

enclosed herewith.

What's new?

Love.

Louis

P.S. Here's a quotation from Benet I like: "A good poet puts you inside a poem rather than puts you on the spot1"

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 18, 1 94 7

Dear Allen,

I'm sending you an article, called 'The Canceling Out," by Joseph Warren Kuch, in the current issue of Accent. He develops a stricture or note or

14

Family BuJinw: Early CorreJpondence
warning or conneClion wirh modernistic verse with irs "depth psychology."

Please return rhis anicle, after you have used ir.

I bought a copy of rhe "Accent Anthology," which has a fine poetry section. I'm dipping into ir rhis week.

I just came back from a three-day sray ar rhe island in rhe Housatonic River near New Milford, Conn. I relaxed in an army life raft on rhe river, prowled in rhe wood on rhe island, and ler rhe gurgling of rhe river over countless rocks interweave wirh my rhoughrs, so rhar rhe influences of nature might evoke an answering grace in me. Did you ger my postal I sent from there?

All's quiet here. Eugene is in srarus quo. He expects rhe results of his bar exams ro come our in about a week.

(While writing rhis, my eye falls on a sentence of mine which you quoted in your lasr letter: "You must pardon rhe solicitude of a father who is writing ro a son in rhe doldrums. " There floats in my mind a suspicion rhar you missed rhe slight sarcasm in "pardon": a slight sarcasm ro rebuke your use of your word, "sententious," on your reaction ro my worry over your srare of doldrums.)

Summer is passing rapidly for me. In abour three weeks, Sepr.9, high school srarrs again and pay-days begin again. I've read quire a bir, mostly poetry and criticism, also written a number of poems wirh more irony and complexity rhan usual, albeit returning my "lyrical rouch," - poems called

"Side-Srreer Bar," "Bus Terminal," "Walking in a Hurry," ere. I hope rhey will eventually sreal their way pasr rhe vigilance of some editor.

What have you been writing?

When do you rhink you'll be home?

Love.

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

BrayoJ Motel, HouJton, TexaJ

September 3. 1947

Dear Louis:

I came into Houston today - rhis morning ro be exact - in the hope of getting a ship ro N.Y. or a short rrip elsewhere ro make money. Surpris-

Allen and LouiJ Ginsberg

1 5
ingly, after all the N.Y. bureaucratic difficulties, I walked in the union hall here and they gave me a job on a ship going ro France. So what am I going to do but rake ir' I leave romorrow or the next day, the ship is a wheat carrier, going thru Gibralter to Marseilles, on the Mediterranean. I am so disgusted with personal & financial & aesthetic problems that shipping out seemed the only way our. Now, I am going ro be 20 days out and 10 days in port & 20 days back so (surprise!) I won't be in rime for school's starr this term. Now, I've decided nor ro enter rill January for obvious reasons.

Financial & emotional are predominant. I can't think really of going back to school & spending money on it rill I have the psychoanalysis, which I need much more, and climactically & crucially this year, starred at least & securely progressing. I ought to finish school by next summer, and finish analysis at that rime, also. So I expect things will work our. Frankly I am not very sorry that I have gotten myself in this position by going our West my rage or frustration of the other letters was at my own blunders of will in working things our, not in choosing to come our here. The experience has been more salutary than I can describe. I say so because I can't describe it in any bur explosive psychologizing and statements of degeneracies of psyche which I have (as a French novel letter might say) "hinted" ro you more than once, and made explicit more than once. I really tell you seriously, Louis, that if you want a fine upstanding completely virile son, in me, you'd best rake this word to the wise & approve, if you will. Otherwise (and I am not in any sense suggesting an "ultimatum") I will have to just go ahead with what I think best on the matter, which is analysis first & foremost, & school as a matter of course. I have never understood your angle in your fear that somehow, like all the stupid Yiddish boys of yore, I will leave college uncompleted. That is furthest from my mind, to go into the world sans the B.A., even, in fact, an M.A. , so don't worry about me becoming a permanent wastrel first because I'm trying to "save my soul" as scientifically as possible. The analysis is important to me, and if you knew (Horrors, alas, roo terrible to indite!) my sexual & soul-ful difficulties you would bless my efforts. Forgive the irony. Anyway I shall come back with a little money, at least, and be able ro engage the analyst who has agreed to take me.

I have been in Texas just a week, and am rather sorry to leave the serenity of the bayou for the onerous job (messman) I have aboard the ship. Bur I have been so perturbed (irritation & ennui & floating anxiety & constant self-lacerating introspection) that I cannot continue to stay here any more than in Denver. A 50 day isolation at sea may or may not be pleasant, but the prospect of at last settling this analysis deal - however painful the

16

Family BusinesJ: Early Correspondence
analysis will be - is pleasanc to me, and the only concrete plan I have in mind for the next year. So, go. Things happened so happily speedily, that I hadn't more time to consult you, which I would have, if you're curious about that.

Now, what is Eugene's latest? I still haven't heard from him, nothing at all. And the family?

I have been running around Houston all day & am tired & must close. I can't tell you where to wrire, but will communicate to you from the first port I hit. It may be N.Y., I don't know: if so, I may sign off ship there to follow alternative plans, all depending on how passable rhe ship work will be.

Love,

Sonny Boy,

Irwin

I won't have time ro wrire. Tell Gene to norify Naomi & Elanor of the prolongation of my absence from the city. Tell them, also, I have gained some weight.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Freeport, Texas}

September 12, (1947}

Dear Lou:

Sorry I didn't get in touch with you sooner but things have been prerty hectic, pleasantly so.

I am in Freeport Texas, 75 mi. south of Houston. You got my lasr lerter?

I gave ir to a friend to mail as I was rushed & I don't know if it was mailed, rhough I expect so.

When I lasr wrote I was signed aboard a ship ro Marseilles, bur I changed my mind & signed for a longer cruise ro Africa (Wesr Africa-French Equatorial-Dakar ere). I am wriring on ship now - ir is 10: 1 5 , and we sail in 6 hours, stopping firsr ar Galveston, where rhis will be mailed, I suppose, rhen our thru the Gulf & sourh.

I don'r much suppose, srill, you are in accord with me as far as rhe discretion of my laresr deed of prodigality. If you need reassurance, I have (& always had) every incencion of getting my degree. My motives in shipping

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

1 7
our are spiritual, to be sure (I'm tired o f everybody) but are predominantly practical, and I embark mostly for financial reasons. I will come back with a few hundred dollars, I expect (and some souvenirs). I am flat broke otherwise, and I don't want ro have ro squeeze thru another term borrowing money, & trying to live on $ 1 5 a week. Of course I could go back & work part rime, bur I also want psychoanalysis and that will rake a lor more money, & the only thing for me to do, Lou, is to do what I'm doing. Aside from that, it will be healthful & will be a pleasant experience. I've already gained weight & my physique, curiously enough, is already improved; further, I feel finer than I have in a long rime, and wait departure with much amiable anticipation, ere. ere.

Bur I really want to tell you, don't worry, I'm nor really unconscious in the sense that I am aware of your consciousness & your anxieties about me, and have anxieties about myself equal & much greater, so you must trust me to work things our. That is all that would be done, anyway, whatever happens.

I heard, at last, from Eugene, a pleasant letter. Incidentally, give him money to redeem the valises. I will (as I wrote him) send you (or him) money to rake care of the matter, the first port I reach - in 3 or 4 weeks. As for the typewriter, I will send money to rake care of fixing it. It belongs half ro me & half to Neal Cassady. He will be in N.Y. in a month & may need it for use, so please give it to him if he calls on you ro pick it up. Fix it meanwhile, don't worry about the money, that will, as in God's providence, be taken care of in a short rime.

My address is

Allen Ginsberg
john Blair

Poncheler Marine Corporation

2 1 West Street

New York 6, N.Y.

They will forward all mail.

I am in touch with Prof. Guttman. Incidentally, will you write to him (or the Dean) asking the college to arrange a leave of absence for the Fall term. I will (barring an act of God) be back in rime for the spring semester, and a june graduation, which I've always rather wanted.

I enclose some clippings of yours. As you know, I'm nor much excited by your "incidental" lyrics, bur I think these and all I've seen of yours the last year are way better than the average of those before (except those in the book, which are all pretty good).

Speaking of books, if Cassady shows up for the typewriter, show him my

1 8

Family Businm: Early Correspondence
shelves of modern poesy and tell him to take along anything he thinks he can use. He is trying to learn to write, & is talented & perceptive, though not much educated, and I have been teaching him grammar etc. This is how I got half tide to the rypewriter. Also give him a concise grammar book.

Please don't forget this. He will appreciate your kindness.

All my love,

Allen

P.S. I have been reading Henry James. Would you send me the book of short novels I had home? You loaned it out.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 15, 1 947

Dear Allen,

I received your cwo letters, including the one mailed from Galveston.

Your news was a surprise to me, of course; but I took it in stride . . . . It's O.K. Lots of luck to you, Allen.

Before your letters came, I had borrowed cwo hundred dollars in preparation for your college. I was going to set you off right, though, as to the psychiatrist, I thought you'd have to wait [until] after your graduation, at which time I'd help you out for the doctor.

Do take care of yourself, Allen. Don't dissipate your youthful resources.

Save your money; and what additional you'll need, I'll provide later.

I have written to the Dean today asking for a term's leave of absence.

Your typewriter is being taken today for an overhauling.

When Neal Cassady shows up, I'll give him the rypewriter and a grammar.

The book by H. James I shall call for and send it out to you.

Otherwise, all is quiet. School started last week and is running smoothly.

Eugene passed the bar last week. He is now casting about for a position with a law firm. He's answering and putting in ads. It may take a little time.

The folks in Newark wish you luck in your venture.

Let your mind be at peace and have no misgivings. (I am relieved, of course, that you are determined to graduate in June.) So, have a good time, build up your health, and soak in experiences for future poems.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

1 9

O f course, I miss you very much; but I trust all will turn out well; and before long you'll be back.

Love and kisses,

Louis

P.S. Write as often as you can.

Allen did not graduate from Columbia, as he had hoped, in june 1 948, and his emotional state remained fragile. Neal Cassady, nrJW living in San Francisco, had married, and he and his wife, Carolyn, were expecting their first child. William Burroughs had moved to Louisiana, and it was doubtful that he would be returning to New York anytime in the near future, if ever. jack Kerouac was totally preoccupied with putting the finishing touches on The Town and the Ciry, his massive first novel. Allen, for the most part, was on his own and feeling lonely.

He continued to spark P=erful emotional responses from his father. As part of his psychotherapy, A llen had finally told Louis of his homosexuality and affair with Neal Cassady, and Louis respondd with anger, confusion, frustration, disbelief, and deep concern. Louis and Allen continued their heated tkbate over Allen's interest in what Louis consitkred to be the seamier sick of society. Then, if all this wasn't enough, Allen shocked Louis with the announcement that he'd had a series of "visions, " in which he had heard the audible voice of William Blake speaking to him through the ages - a proclamation that alarmed some of Allen's closest friends, not to mention the effect it had on his father, who worried for his son's sanity. Louis had married the former Edith Cohen, moved into a new house, and was attempting to establish a calm domestic life, which had eludd him throughout his troubled years with Naomi, his first wife, but Allen proved to be a challenge to his own peace of mind. His advice to Allen, at home and in correspontknce, remained consistent with his advice of the past: Drop the rebellion, move closer to the center, and try to fit in.

Allen, of course, was hearing very little of it.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg
july 1 1 , 1 948

Dear Allen,

Exorcise Neal.

Louis

20

Family Btuinm: Early Correspondnue

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg
july 23, 1 948

Dear Allen,

Received your letter and mulled over your poem. It's got some weighty thought, closely packed, bur I can't say that I am sure of what you mean.

Your piece seems knotty, slightly crotchety, and blurred in places. The glossary helps. The main idea, even if I mutilate it in the simplification, is that your real self is struggling to be free from the false selves or neurotic influences which cling to and hamper it. What I like about your piece is the play of wit lambent about it or through ir, and the "sound effects." Your figures are a bit roo impacted ro rake an expression from dentistry: i.e., a bit roo inchoate. I do think, though, you are moving toward greater unity and so you lose less strength in diffuseness and bright irrelevancies.

I think the ideal of a poem is that it give a general meaning to rhe many and a deeper and more complex experience to the few.

Incidentally, I am reading, now and rhen, in Empson's book on ambiguity. It's rather hard and tedious reading, roo arid in spots and roo heavily laden with learning. Yer, it has fine insights and is rewarding. I read merely two chapters, bur I'll continue on. What he does is, as I rake it, to pur an intellectual microscope over a poetic line, so rhar the rich complexity or simultaneity of a line which we felt vaguely is now enlarged and magnified; so that we see the actual merging and fusion of rhe various hints, ingredients, overtones and nuances.

Nothing new here. Am attempting a reasonable facsimile of plain living, so-called high thinking, with occasional attacks of writing.

Good HouJekeeping is holding a poem of mine. Also, The Wertern Review, formerly The Rocky Mt. Review, rook a poem of mine, called "My Clothes on My Chair." The editor, Robert Stallman - Do you know him? He's done some writing in avant-garde magazines - wrote me the poem will probably appear in rhe Autumn issue. Ir is issued by the University of Kansas.

More anon.

Yesterday I wrote a poem whose ride is: "Don't Look Now Bur Your World Is Slipping." It's a kind of mocking, sardonic thing: I'll revise it shortly and send it our.

Love.

Regards to Eugene.

Louis

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

2 1

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(New York City}

n.d. (ca. 1 948}

Dear Lou:

I received your letter, and disagreed with most of ir. As you said, it is too incomplete to be judged as a novel; 1 for that reason the section you read did not communicate, except by implication, the purposes of the novel and its concerns.

Thus I was surprised (in two ways) by your deploring of my studying eccentricity. For you followed that sentiment up with the comment that the world was devastated by barbarians with the civilization of man in jeopardy.

The juxtaposition of"eccentricity"' & "devastation," in contrast, struck me as humorous. For it is my point that the whole society is decadent and eccentric, that this has produced Nazism, and that it is the stupidity of society which makes its eccentricity all the more offensive. If you remember the scene in the Rational Cafe, I contrast the avowedly decadent Rimbaud with the "normalcy" of the Cafe patrons - sailors, farmers, wives, bourgeois businessman. More important, the perversion of the principal is directly a result of bourgeois "normalcy." l.ast, the whole society is diseased, and the heroes of the novel know they are diseased (as they must be since they are the symbols of society) and are trying to escape it (which comes out later).

There is a correspondence, as there must be, between the emotional disease and the intellectual. Which is why I do not hesitate to pervert my characters (and I paint them worse than they are in real life) emotionally, when discussing principally their intellectual dilemmas.

Further, you are horrified by their emotional unbalance. You shrink from it, half in fear. This to me is a symptom of the smug normalcy of the bourgeois intellectual attitude. You assume we are all sexually stable; while on the other hand, as I have become acquainted with people, I find that they are all perverted sinners, one way or another, that the whole society is corrupt & rotten and repressed and unconscious that it exhibits irs repression in various forms of social sadism. The emotional crassness and philistinism of the two "average" "normal" sailors in the Rimbaud part was one illustration of this.

Bur most of all, eccentricity is only a reflection and caricature of the 1. Allen had resumed writing 1he novel he had begun several years earlier. He never completed it.

22

Family BtnineJS: Early Cormpondence
normal; its value lies in revealing the outlines of the normal, in teaching the normal. Above all, personality strikes me as being perhaps the most important consideration in a novel; personality is above good and evil in the sense that having selected a significant personality, I am not sure that the author has a right to impose his standard of values so palpably as to prejudice the efficiency of character portrayal. To disapprove of a novel because the characters are irresponsible or eccentric does not seem to me to be passing a valid aesthetic judgment.

In sum, I am writing a naturalistic-symbolistic novel. Naturalistic because I am trying ro reproduce rhe actual life of a whole community

- in irs own terms; I am not trying to prettify what is ugly about civilization; I won't hesitate to say outright what ir is, and I won't rely on euphemism & presiosite or a censorship of crucial language and detail to make it palatable. What will make it palatable is the symbolism of the naturalistic detail - that lack disgusting fact (like the snot in the sailor's beard) is intended as a symbol.

As to the anti-Semitism - rhe comment was pretty obviously intended ironically. Remember, the hero is primarily above the usual societal mores (and prejudices). But he is not above defensive, mocking opportunism with regard to the [ ]. The point specifically, though, was his sadism at the moment - for the purposes of iconoclasm, breaking idols that he is aware should stand. He mocks here selfconsciously, with a smile. The proper reply is not to rise up in righteous wrath, but to smile back mockingly and say "I can't escape my conditioning." I have not yet forsaken the Jews.

I went downtown to Naomi today, showed her Eugene's letter - she was well. She had been feeling grippy last week.

So far I have been dressing up, and cutting is almost eliminated. I chatted amiably with the dean's secretary, and have started to really get an education, making the most of college, by returning unread to the library all my volumes of Baudelaire and Gide. Under Fritz's advice, I have taken to wearing a black tie.

I'll be in Saturday at 4:30 or 5: 30--

Allen

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

2 3

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(New York City}

n.d. {ca. fall 1 948}

Dear Louis:

Your letters on hand. Sorry I can't be in to see you read. I have a class Thursday evenings.

As for scholarships, I am annoyed, but that is Columbia as usual. I'll borrow the tuition, so it will be off your hands in any case. As for working, this letter is presumptuous. As for myself, I went to the employment bureau and all I could get were the usual 75c per hr. jobs. My time is wonh more than that to me. I registered for a tutorial position and they told me it might be possible, but no promises. I'm looking around; if I see anything at all feasible, I'll take it.

Next time I take it upon myself to write you a long letter of complaints, please don't be unpleasant enough to reply with three paragraphs to the effect that you got to take your medicine and make the most of it. Somehow, when these things are concretely applied, and psychoanalytically considered, the platitudes are true, and that's a fact. But I wonder what in heaven's name is the meaning you attached to them; what kind of concrete applications do these pietistic abstractions have in your mind? Sometimes I wonder what semantic level these Polonious-like tirades issue from. And, funher, my problems are as external & real as they are internal and rise out of weariness and disgust. Very well, to be cheery, but in situation like this where it's a question of veritable survival I can't feel very sanguine about pluck and life etc. Tell a man in a concentration camp to make the best of it.

This school is hardly a concentration camp, but my feeling that the school offers equivalent external problems (in a lesser degree) on a non-physical level, and that the culture is a huge concentration camp; funher, believe it or not, the rain this year will be boiling hot.

Don't send me a check for Monday. I'll cash the blank check on Friday for I week's sustenance & 5 (or $30) so that I'll have cash with me at Harvard in case of emergencies. I leave Fri. morn.

Allen

24

Family Businm: Early Cormpondence

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

October 6, 1 948

Dear Allen,

Here is seven dollars.

Come in rhis weekend, either Sat. or Sunday morning. Eugene said he is coming on Sunday for dinner, as Edith will make a big meal ar my house Sunday.

This is water past rhe dam, but, if you had raken my advice in my lerrer a few years ago (instead of . . . laughing at it wirh Burroughs), you would have been graduated already. So, take my advice now: pur a tourniquetknot around your affection for N., rone your lerrers down properly. . . .

Don't worry about a job; don't be apprehensive.

Work steadily and regularly ar your last paper for Ban:in.

I'll give you a check for your rent when you come in rhis week-end.

Love from

Louis

P.S. Ask Eugene whether he called up Judge Rosenstein, please.

Louis Gimberg's greateJt Jean concerning his son's welfare were realized in April 1 949, when Allen was arreJted and charged with burglary and receiving stolen goods as a mult of his permitting Herbert Huneke and two of Huneke's friendr to store burglarized goods in his New York apartment. Although it was dear from the omet that Allen had been little more than an unwitting dupe in the burglary ring -
in fact, on the day of his armt, Allen had been attempting to move some of the stolen property from the apartment - Allen found himie/f facing a poSiible prison term, if he was found guilty of the chargeJ agaimt him.

Fortunately, Columbia University came to Allen's assistance. Mark Van Doren, an award-winning poet and an early Gimberg mentor, acted as a character witnm, whereas Lionel Tri//ing helped arrange for Allen's attorney. In the end, Allen was spared time behind bars in exchange for his agreeing to seek treatment at the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric lmtitute.

For Louis Ginsberg, the plea bargain was a mixed blming: He was relieved that his son was not going to be spending any time in prison, but he was still concerned about Allen's mental stability.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

25

Louis Ginsberg to Lionel Trilling

June 29, 1 949

Dear Dr. Lionel Trilling:

This letter is to thank you very much for your generous aid to both my son, Allen, and me in our predicament.

As you no doubt know, Allen's mother has had a long series of nervous breakdowns; and she has been in and our of sanitariums for the last twenty-five years. I tried to give Allen what compensations I could; however, I suppose his wounded childhood had secreted from imbalance; or some trauma had precipitated some disorder deep in his psyche. Bad companions in the last few years had aggravated his attitudes; though it may be that his choice of some bad companions might be the results rather than causes.

At any rare, his arrest seems to have shocked him back to sobriety. My lawyer has had Allen cleared of the legalities in the matter; and today Allen entered the N. Y. Psychiatric Clinic [sic}. I do hope he will be salvaged for a brighter future, for I think Allen has fine talents.

Ever since Allen entered college, your name has been a household word with us. He has read, and we have discussed, your articles (in The Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, ere.). Allen looks up to you with something of veneration.

Permit me to extend to you my deep gratitude for your generosity and your invaluable aid to both Allen and me in our trouble.

Sincerely yours,

Louis Ginsberg

For the next several years, Allen stayed close to home. He served his time in the Psychiatric Institute (where he met Carl So/rmzon, a brilliant but disturbed intellectual who worked in publishing; Allen would eventually dedicate "Howl"

to him); finished school at Columbia; and, in general, attempted to live the sort of

"normal" existence recommended by his therapist. During this period, he met and corresponded with William Carlos Williams, who was not impressed with Allen's rhymed verse. "In this mode, " he instructed Allen, "perfection is basic. " Williams encouraged Allen to write about his own experiences in American idiomatic language, paying attention to the "minute particulars" - advice, ironically, that

26

Family Business: Early Correspondence

Louis Ginsberg had given his son years earlier, but which Allen had chosen to ignore.

This time around, Allen took the advice to heart, extracting descriptive passages from his journals and breaking them into poetic lines. Williams loved the results.

"How many of these poems do you own?" he asked Allen. "You must have a book. I shall see that you get it. Don't throw anything away. These are it. "

A /len was also heing heavily influenced by old friends. Neal Cassady had sent Jack Kerouac an incredibly long, rambling, stunningly detailed letter, written entirely in the stream-of-consciousness riffs so common in Neal's speech. Kerouac was utterly astonished by the letter, as was Allen, and Kerouac, in particular, vowed to let spontaneity dictate the path and style of his future writing.

William Burroughs arrived in New York in 1953, and he immediately moved into Allen's apartment, much to Louis Ginsberg's disapproval. Burroughs had been in a lot of legal trouble in both the United States and Mexico. He had run afoul of the law in Texas, due largely to his taste for drugs and alcohol, but it only got worse when he fled to Mexico, where he accidentally shot and killed joan Vollmer when the two were engaged in a drunken game of William Tell. Rather than deal with Mexico's unpredictable justice system, Burroughs returned to the States.

The Burroughs-Ginsberg reunion, though pleasant enough at first, fell tbrough when the two attempted to cross the lines of friendship into a sexual relationship. The two eventually parted, with Allen taking off for an extended trip to Mexico. While in Mexico, Allen explored the Mayan ruins of the Yucatan Peninsula, resulting in

"Siesta in Xbalba, " his first successful epic poem.

Unfortunately, neither Allen nor Louis Ginsberg saved their correspondence from this period. The extant letters that Allen wrote to others -jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, and Neal Cassady - are wonderfully descriptive, filled with news and details of his first lengthy journey outside of the United States. Louis, for his part, was thrilled that Allen was gathering material for future poetry.

Allen returned to the United States in the spring of 1 954, making his way slowly up the California coastline before finally stopping in San jose, where Neal Cassady was now living with his wife and children. Even in the aftermath of his disastrous affair with Burroughs, Allen was willing to risk another long-shot proposition with Cassady. With any luck, he reasoned, he would be able to assemble a book of poetry while revivin?, his affair.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

27

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(San Jose, California}

June 30, 1 954

Dear Lou:

I have your letters and poems. I finally got around to looking at the Bodenheim clippings - really very sad. [. . .

}

Is Joel all settled now?

I liked "The Blossom" most. I always liked the idea of using a flower for platonic symbolism. "H Bomb" seems most fugitive.

I got my telegram money today. Apparently it was just waiting at WTS
for months.

I am seeing about the school idea, first getting in touch with whoever is around here I can connect with, and so wrote a few letters the other day. I'll let you know what happens.

I am meanwhile putting another book together and writing a few poems.

They look alright. I'll send some along when I have them in final form. It always takes me half a year or so to be fi nished with anything over 2 pages.

Such deliberation ought to produce something wonhwhile, I figger.

You sound quite busy with jobs. I can't imagine what the garden must look like with a fence and no great hedge. Neater and less private I imagine?

I have a few copies of the Voices around and will send one for you to put up in my room. The poem is nothing much and is printed with 1 949 date underneath.

I am glad you have a new subject in driving. I always thought cars were poetically interesting but I always saw them as symbols of wild flight rather than cooperation. [ . . .

}

I have no fixed plans except finish book at hand and look up school. I am well off, staying at Neal's house. There is plenry to eat, lots of writing paper.

I have some money and no expenses presently and I come out of retirement or reading at dusk and help cook up some great NY dish like steak or sweet and sour, even lotkes. His wife is painting my ponrair and there are three children to insure that I get up early and not go to bed too late. Also, there is wire recorder broke but being fixed and San Francisco amusements an hour away. It's a wonderful place and I'll probably move up there for work or school when I'm finished with the book. I've been working daily but hope to gee to the all day interest I found when working in Paterson last time. That way finish midsummer.

28

Family Businm: Early Correspondetzce

I may also cook up a few stories for LA Times on Mexico. This is being inquired about now.

Nothing new except I go to dentist in week for checkup. Tell Edith

{that] Celine, if she's interested, has a new book out, Guignol's Band. I saw a review in Time which said it was great though as usual strong stuff.

I have no present emergencies or needs. Everything taken care of, laundry, health, ere.

Climate here fine. No threats of winters, bareness. Perpetual springsummer feeling, though trifle hot.

Love,

Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg, and Eugene Brooks, and Family

San jose, California

July 10. 1954

Dear Louis, Edith and Gene and Kinder:

I applied at the Railroad for brakeman's job, a good job if it works our and I can do it, which would be difficult bur valuable experience and good pay (3-5 hundred mo.) but no hiring going on at present. Will reapply in a few weeks. The situation I am told fluctuates rapidly and I have friends on RR
who recommend me (who got Jack similar job). Meanwhile no worry and I can wait beyond summer if necessary without strain.

I looked up Rexroth's connections here. He's away on vacation but sent me name of a Prof. Witt Diamant at San Fran State Coli who runs a poetry institute or club. Moderators are Kenneth Patchen (of all the creeps) (I have been spared meeting him so far bur will see him for the sake of my universal conscience), Norman Macleod who is whirehaired and has a speech defect and is sucking around rhe course to see if he can get a job in the school there, apparPndy he's taught a lot but in S.F. is presently unemployed, and Robert Duncan, a young Pound student, about 30 and smarr but sort of a pathetic type, cries to browbeat these poor nowhere would be student poets at round table workshop type meetings, admission 50c and not worth a nickel. Macleod most simpatico of the trio. I gave him my book uninrroduced and he wrote me a letter next day saying he liked it and would

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

29
pass it on and suggesting a nasty lirde local magazine named Inferno co send some co. But he's a nice guy. Rexroth apparendy the only real brain around here except for Winters at Stanford, I haven't mer him bur will soon. I have a meet co discuss merrics with Duncan some afternoon when I get co town.

I've also seen a lor of Chinatown: the food is more excellent varied casey and original chan NYC Chinatown, it's easier co gee co and it's about half as cheap as NYC. They have basic dishes I never heard of, a brand of Won Ton soup new co me and better chan original NY style, 40 cent Fried Rice and rea ere. I also hie all rhe Nonh Beach bars - their Village - and found more life even chan in NYC, more bars even anyway, and the same people as NY
or their spiritual cousins; a very depressing sight in some respects and I'm glad I'm in San Jose where I can be protected from the temptation co run around ro wild surrealist movies, an shows, jazz bands, hipsters panies, cellar lounges filled with hi fidelity Bach ere. All in all a very active cultured city the rival of NY for general relaxation and progressive ardife.

Probably a very fine place ro live if you like cities. When I gee money I'll move there for a while, at lease a few months ro absorb it all. Spectacular views of the bay, bridges, Alcarraz, whireroofed city on hills, clean, expansive horizon, ships in the roy harbor (really so huge). Communise murals in the rower (Coir) where sightseers go co observe, bur they've decided after much public birching co lee them stay, and they're funny and charming as they are. Also keeping the cablecars, also apparendy a big issue here.

I have unnecessary piles of correspondence with Kerouac at the moment a monumental exchange of descriptions of SF-Mexico trip and him sending news of NY. Plus long dissenarions on Buddhism which he's been reading in for a year and is all hopped on. In between I work daily on poems bur still nor really shoveling at the mountain of notes yet.

Eugene sounds positively angelic. Louis sounds happy roo. I had a haunting sense char most of my Mexico letters were gibberish since there's no map around, as Edith ripped me off. The parakeet is really a new and shocking development. {. . .] Incidentally I travelled with a monkey for several days on the way our and if you chink parakeet crap comes anywhere near the nuisance value of a monkey's bowel movements . . . I should say, you could have done worse. I hope Louis is behaving himself with the animal. I've always suspected him of having a strange unnatural savage fascination with the lirde dears. It was one of his poetic eccentricities, one of the few he allows himself. Let me warn you about him. If you find the bird dead like some mystical swallow under a rosebush one summer morn I will write Harold.

30

Family BuJineJJ: Early CorreJpondmce

Regards to all, Sheila. Tell her (again) to dig Gerry Mulligan's music. He must be playing around the Apple (as NYC is referred to from afar).

Nothing new special to report. I visited the Rosicrucian meeting here and met some lady spinster Rosicrucians. They keep seeing imaginary auras and talking about their lousy Karmas (You pay in one life for what you do in the last few) (you keep getting reborn) and they keep having dreams about when they were in Egypt and Atlantis. This is the occidental Rosicrucian center. I sure would have liked to pick up on them in the middle ages but now they're a bunch of mystical bobby soxers.

Everybody appears to be either off their rockers or getting religion.

Cassady has some mediumistic cult that has changed him so that he kneels and prays with his children; the doctrine is screwy and absurd, almost on a Reader'J DigeJt level, but the seriousness of the search for uplift is real enough and respectable; Kerouac seems all hung up on Buddha doctrine of life as a dream; even Burroughs in far off Tangiers appears to have undergone a humanistic conversion and Jack sent me a letter from him declaring, "I say we are here in human form to learn by the human hieroglyphs of love and suffering. It is a dury to take the risk of love. I know that ultimately the forces of death will destroy themselves." Such generalizations belong in a Nobel Prize speech. As for me sanctiry is a worn out suit. I've been reading everything from theosophy to W. C. Fields biography and Eliot criticism. I hear WCW has a new book out. Jack's recommending me some Buddha books so I'll eventually read those too.

Nothing like a wide range of information.

Well enough of this prattle. Forgive me if I don't write too often but I'll keep well in touch. It's just that when I get started like this I wind up spending hours instead of writing book.

Love,

Allen

Allen' I Jtay with the CaJJadyJ came to an abrupt, painful halt when he attempted to renew hiJ affair with Neal and waJ literally caught in the act by Carolyn CaJJady, who promptly drove Allen to San Francisco and dropped him off The mwe turned out to be fortuitouJ, Jetting off a chain of eventJ that totally tramformed Allen, perionally and aJ a poet.

Allen thrived in San FranciJco'J open, tolerant community, with itJ benevolent attitude.J toward the artJ and, perhapJ more importantly, homoJexuality. In no time at

Allen and Louis Gins berg

3 1
all, Allen assimilated himself into the city's bohemian subculture. He attended Kenneth Rexroth's and Robert Duncan's literary soirm, wrote and reviJed poetry, connected with the y011nger poets, and, in general, realized a new, stronger intellectual maturity.

He also met Peter Ori!Wsky, who became his lifelong companion and I!Wer. Although essentially heterosexual, Ori!Wsky had come from a difficult background and needed someone to look after his emotional and intellectual needs. Allen was more than willing to pr!Wide this, in exchange for Ori!Wsky's satisfying some of his own needs. The relationship, as intense as any in which Allen would ever engage, was rocky from the beginning, and in the summer of 1 9 55, while Peter was off on his own, leaving Allen feeling lonely and depressed, Allen sat down at his desk and, in one marathon writing session, wrote a frank, startlingly honest depiction of all his friends, "the best minds of my generation, destr(l)ed by madness. " The first section of "Howl, " Ginsberg's landmark poem, would establish his permanent literary reputation.

When writing the poem, Allen had no intention of publishing it; as far as he was concerned, it might be of interest to some of his friends, but it was far too risky for commercial publication. Allen worried about what others - especially his father -
would think of such a poem, and he didn't show it to Louis for many months. Fate, however, intervened when Allen read the poem at the now-historic gathering at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. Allen Ginsberg became the talk of San Francisco, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, fellow poet and publisher of City Lights Book.r, offered to publish the poem as part of a Gins berg collection.

With all the attendant publicity, along with Allen's own reports, Louis Ginsberg was aware that his son was in the vortex of a literary storm on the West Coast, yet as the following letters illustrate, he was unwilling to concede much to what he considered to be a wild, rebellious lifestyle translated into art.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

4 1 6 E. 34th Street

Paterson, New jersey

December 1 2, 1 955

Dear Allen,

Glad to hear from you in your long, meaty, lusty letter.

We have completed our remodeling of the house. Tenants live peacefully upstairs, while we have a newly decorated, glittering apartment downstairs.

News items:

Eugene and Connie bought a house a couple of days ago. A split-level

32

Family Business: Early Cormpondence
cype on one floor, seven rooms, 2 l/2 baths somewhere in Long Island, an hour's ride from N.Y.

Item:

I received a letter today that the Poetcy Sociecy of America elected me to a new board membership to the Executive Committee. There was a field of 1 2
names.

Item:

Clara sold her house and is moving into an apanment near her daughter Johanna's. Sheila lives a few houses away (in Hillside, L.l.).

Glad to hear your readings went over fine. Wish I had heard you.

Read with interest your "Sunflower Surra." I did not like the diny words dragged in nor the long, long lines. However, it had feeling and fervor and good concrete details. The ending builds up well.

Eugene comes in tomorrow. After he reads it, I'll send your poem off to Solomon. 1

No, Williams2 did not get in touch with me.

Received a note from Jean Witter Byner who likes my verse.

Let me see Variegations with your things in it.

Bet you're making a literacy reputation! Keep it up! You'll land somewhere in time!

About Dylan Thomas: Waiving aside his women (who is without sin should cast the first stones), I claim that it is stupid for Thomas to wreck his life with riotous drinking. Like pouring sulfurous acid into the innards of a Cadillac. All your vehement, vaporous, vituperations of rebellion move me not one jot. Your attitude is irresponsible - and it stinks!

Love.

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

December 14, 1 955

Allen,

Moreover, I'm not condemning; I'm judging. As rational beings, we must recognize that libeny needs laws for wise direction (as you've heard me say).

1. Carl Solomon.

2. William Carlos Williams.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

33

It's true. You are taking Pope's line, "Whatever is, is right" to read

"Whatever is, is wrong." Your rebelliousness strikes out blindly at all things. (What I fear is that you are striking out at your own self.) Prescott or no Prescott, Thomas behaved abominably to others and also to himself. A fine genius went wildly amuck. What inner compulsions tore deep within him we have still to unearth. Yet we can see, whatever they were and whatever compassion for him they may evoke from us, yer the fact remains that a fine, opulent genius wrecked, ruined, blunted himself, wittingly or unwittingly, ir matters not in retrospect.

And for you to condemn the world which lay down ar his feet, is, as I have said, a blind, irresponsible rebellion char I have no stomach for.

And where is your blindness? Condemning all things around you -
except your close friends who agree with you' Compassion isn't only for very special, extra pals you like.

As for the Machine, the Machine�power. The machine is innocent: it's how people use it. The machine is magnificent means but the ends - there's the rub!

Louis

1 9 5 6

In January 1 9 56, Allen and Gary Snytkr (a new poet friend who had also read at the Six Gallery) traveled to the Padfic Northwest to give a series of university readings. Allen needed a break frrnn the San Francisco poetry scene, and the trip was the perfect respite. He had recently sent a copy of the first part of"How/" to his father, and Louis's response was awaiting him when he returned to San Francisco.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

February 29, 1 956

Dear Allen,

I was happy to get your letter. It is good to learn that you have escaped any trouble or sickness in the wilds of the Nonhwest.

I was gratified about your new ms. It's a wild, rhapsodic, explosive outpouring with good figures of speech flashing by in irs volcanic rushing.

It's a hot geyser of emotion suddenly released in wild abandon from subterranean depths of your being. I'd like to see it in irs entirety; and, moving back a bit, I like ro discern its music outlines. I still insist, however, there is no need for dirry, ugly words, as they will entangle you, unnecessarily, in trouble. Try to cut them out.

It was interesting what you wrote about Irene. Guess she's been through the mill - as who hasn't? She, roo, wrote to Abe and Anna that you have changed for the better with more firmness and developed wiseness - or words to that effect.

Glad to hear of your success at Reed College. The rafters must have shaken. Any sirens try ro loop a curl of their hair about you?

All is quiet here. The dust has settled on our remodeling of our house here. We have a tenant, a business couple, with a daughter, just married, who goes to Montclair State TC.

36

Family Bminm: 1 956

Last Sunday we visited Eugene and Connie in N.Y. They drove us to their new house, nor yet furnished, far our in Long Island. Theirs is a beautiful house of seven rooms, with a living room of cathedral ceilings.

The house is in a new development which are springing up all abour (as I remarked in the car, there's been plenty of kissing going on everywhere).

The only fly in the ointment is rhar it rakes about 1 1/4 hours to drive to the house from N.Y.C. On inclement days, Eugene can rake a Long Island train. Eugene speaks of building a country practice in law there, while retaining his N.Y. office. Connie is due to have her baby during the middle of May. The house, Eugene repons, will be ready in April, but, as such things go, I doubt it. Maybe it will be ready at the end of May or June.

Everybody in Newark asks about you, especially Grandma. It would please her, if you wrote to her when you are in the mood.

Write me more often now. If you need any money, ask for it.

Wish I could see you. I miss you.

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

{Berkeley, California}

n.d. {ca. late March 1 956}

Dear Louis:

Nor written for long since I've been running around and busy. I'm working full rime at Greyhound in the city, 1 bur haven't made decent living arrangements, so I only get back to Berkeley a few times a week where all papers and letters are on desk in big mess. I stay over in city on various couches on workdays, since I've been back I haven't had rime to really sit down in leisure and figure out what to do about living arrangements, I almost moved back into SF rho I hare to give up this cottage, 2 and was in fact supposed to this weekend bur roo many things came up and I can't find time. I am really all up in the air.

l. See "In the Bass•se Room at Greyhound," AG, CP, p. 1 B.

2. Allen had recendy moved to Berkeley. See his poem, "A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley," AG, CP, p. 1 >5.

A llen and Louis Ginsberg

37

Mainly I'm waiting for a ship or some equivalent moneymaking project since I do want to leave here and take off for Europe sometime this year.

Meanwhile the Greyhound job brings in 50 a week, Seattle debts are being cleared off this month. I'm also surprisingly enough teaching one class a week at S.F. State College - State is the school that's been promoting poetry workshops, readings, etc. and I am now the local poet-hero so was invited to occupy the chair of guest gorilla at their writing class. I work with another regular teacher who handles all the details, registration, mimeographing of poems to be handed out and discussed etc, and I act as pro in conducting discussions. The class is about 20, half old ladies and half hip young kids who have been attracted by all the recent activiry. My teaching technique could shock you undoubtedly and certainly get me kicked out of anywhere else or not be countenanced, I bring in bums from North Beach and talk about Marijuana and Whitman, precipitate great emotional outbreaks and howls of protest over irrational spontaneous behavior - but it does actually succeed in communicating some of the electricity & fire of poetry and cuts through the miasmic quibbling about form vs. content etc. and does this phrase ''work'' and is that line "successful" and are all those "p & f" sounds too intense, etc. The woman who runs this program is a Prof. Ruth Witt

Diamant who has dug my work - there appears to be, according to Rexroth, a semimajor renaissance around the West Coast due to Jack and my presence - and Rexroth's wife said he'd been waiting all his life hoping for a situation like this to develop. The thing I do in class is get them personally involved in what they're writing and lambaste anything which sounds at all like they're writing "literature" and try to get them to actually express secret life in whatever form it comes out. I practically take off my clothes in class myself to do it. The students all dig it and understand and the class is now grown weekly to where it's too big to handle, starting with 8 and ending with 2 5 .

W. C. Williams read "Howl" and liked it and wrote an introduction for the book; and meanwhile there is the possibility of expanding and making a whole book of poems. We put on another reading in a theatre here in Berkeley, I read some other poems, "Whitman," 1 "The Sunflower,"2 and a new poem called "America"3 - a sort of surrealist anarchist tract - all of which came off very well, so the publisher is now interested in a bookful of representative work not just the one poem. The reading was pretty great, we I . See "A Supermarker in California," AG, CP, p. 1 36.

2. See "Sunflower Surra," AG, CP, p. 1 38.

3. See "America," AG, CP, p. 146.

38

Family Business: 1 956
had traveling photographers, who appeared on rhe scene from Vancouver ro phorograph ir, a couple of amateur electronics experrs who appeared wirh rape machines ro record, request from Stare college for a complete recording for rhe night, requests for copies of rhe recordings, even finally organizations of bop musicians who wanr ro write music and give big west coast traveling roues of "Howl" as a sorr of Jazz Mass, recorded for a west coast company called Fanrasy Records rhar issues a lor of national bop, ere. No kidding. You have no idea what a srorm of lunatic-fringe acriviry I have stirred up. On rop of rhar the local poets, good and bad, have caught up and there are now three groups of people purting on readings every other week, there's one every weekend, all sons of people - rhis week Eberharr (Richard)1 arrived in rown for readings ar Stare, there is a parry for him ron ire, I was invited ro give a private reading, refused (sheer remperamenr), and so rhe recordings will be played. Tomorrow night Rexroth invited me over ro meet a group of Jazz musicians and discuss rhe possibility of making some form of jazz-poetry combo. There is also another group of musicians, rhe leader of which used to arrange for Stan Kenron who wanrs ro record with me. Finally I was asked ro write an arricle which I haven't gorten around ro do for Black Mountain RevieU', & also conrribure ro 2 literary magazines starring here. Bob LaVigne, a painrer whose work I've been buying and digging, has been purting up wild line drawings ro plaster the walls of rhe readings and painring fanrasric 7 foot posters a Ia Laurrec.

Really a charming scene. My big problem now is nor having enough rime ro do all I could, working ar Greyhound and nor having moved our of Berkeley, so I ger lirde rime for actual writing anymore - ir will be a relief ro get our from under and away on a ship or up ro Alaska possibly on a fishing industry job.

Rexroth's house - Friday evenings, open house, 2 weeks ago Malcolm Cowley,2 I gor drunk and made a big inflammatory speech denouncing him for publishing Donald Hall as a commercial shot and neglecting & delaying Kerouac, a funny scene, no blood spilled; lasr weekend Eberharr rhere, a long non drunken recollecrion of a parry we'd mer ar in NY 5 years ago, he remembered rhe conversation in derail, I'd just got our of hospital and was hungup on rhe religious experience in rhe Groundhog poem.

l. Poet Richard Eberhart's Neu· York Tiww article on his visit m San Francisco (''West Coast Rhythms'') was one of the most imponam early anicles on the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance and Ginsberg's

"Howl.''

2. Cowley, an editor at Viking Press, had been working with Jack Kerouac on the editing of On tlx Road.

Allen and LouiJ Ginsberg

39

English publishers want handle Howl, that is English Printers (Villiers) and so there is now difficulty in getting it through unexpurgated. I revised it and it is now worse than it ever was, too. We"re now investigating Mexico, if necessary will spend extra cost and have it done here tho. Civil Libenies Union here was consulted and said they'd defend it if it gets into trouble, which I almost hope it does. I am almost ready to tackle the U.S.

Govt out of sheer self delight. There is really a great stupid conspiracy of unconscious negative inenia to keep people from "expressing" themselves.

I was reading Heney Miller's banned book Tropic of Cancer, which actually is a great classic - I never heard of it at Columbia with anything but deprecatory dismissal comments - he and Genet are such frank hip writers that rhe open expression of their perceptions and real beliefs are a threat to society. The wonder is that literature does have such power.

How is Gene's new house' I think I" II begin shipping stuff home - where is there room? - for a box & trunk full of excess clothes & pictures & papers.

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

March 3 1 , 1 956

Dear Allen,
last night I sent you a note wondering why I hadn't heard from you.

This morning I received your letter breathing much activity.

I was very much interested in your teaching project. It certainly sounds unonhodox, but you do build fires under people. { . . . ] You cenainly have helped stir things up there. Why not keep it up to see where it ends?

Maybe you could work yourself into a decently paying college position so you could write at leisure and let down your hair in the wide margins of vacations?

Glad W.C.W. wrote an introduction. It would be wonderful if you could get out a whole book of your poems. It would do much toward solidifying your reputation. Maybe you are a modern, incipient Whitman? Could be.

When and where could I get the records of your reading? "Howl" as a jazz mass with photographers, etc sounds flamboyant and attractive. Could you get that recording from that Fantasy Co.?

40

Family BuJiness: 1 956

I've read R. Eberhan. His "Groundhog" is rhe best. He has ocher good things, but lately I note his poems are roo aridly intellectual, nor emotional and imagistic as they used ro be.

Sorry I can't agree with you about leering yourself go all our, no bars, ere.

with expression. Too many writers will nor be able to distinguish between filch and realism. To act our inner fantasy is a danger touched with psychopathology and lunacy. There must be a bar sometime. I go for rivers, even strong ones, having banks.

Try nor ro get drunk; one gets disabled and sometimes injured.

You can send any packages or trunk to me here at our Paterson address.

I'll hold it for you.

Eugene's house won't be ready rill end of April or so.

Write soon again.

Lots of luck.

Keep up your fine work!

Love

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

1 624 Milvia

Berkeley, California

April 26, 1 956

Dear Louis:

Nothing really new since last wrote. Still working at Greyhound, now making $280 a month (small raise) and will stay there perhaps another month or more. Shipping still uncenain.

Have laid off reaching for this week and am revising final mss. for the booklet bur nor getting very far, rho I set a deadline for this weekend for City Lights & said I'd bring it all in. I don't seem to be able to do any imaginative work rill I've slept and read and goofed for a week or more in complete timeless bored meditation. I have a longish absurd poem on America to finish:

Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time magazine?

I'm obsessed by Time magazine.

Allen and LouiJ Ginsberg

41

I read ir every week.

Ics cover scares ar me every rime I pass rhe N.W. comer of Sutter and Monrgomery srreecs.

I read ir in rhe basemenr of rhe Berkeley public library.

They're always ceiling me abour responsibiliry. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious bur me.

It occurs ro me chat I am America.

I'm calking co myself again.

etc. for 7 pages.

I cover everyrhing from inrernarional relarions to the dope problem.

Robett Cree ley who I menrioned is in cown, edicor of rhe Black Mountain Review, collecring mss. from me, Jack, Gary Snyder (rhe Buddhisr I wenr nonh wirh), Phil Whalen (friend of Gary's who shares corrage wirh me now), Burroughs, ere. And also Grover Jacoby of Variegation was around again, creeping & peering like an old lady, murmuring abour obscuriry & his morher wouldn't like THAT or chis in his magazine (she suppons it & reads it), and took 2 small inoffensive poems abour rrees, $ 1 3 .00 wonh.

Ciry Lighrs also proposed co me co bring our a series of records of spoken poerry, scarring with my book, and we may do somerhing abour char if I'm around.

I keep having nighr dreams abour Europe, seeing dockside foggy London, rears and Nosralgia, ere. I would like when I ger over rhere co go to Russia.

Apparendy ir's quire feasible, Brirish consul issues passpotts and US no longer officially objecrs. It would be a ball co wander around rhe acrual Moscow and wrire poerry on Red Sq. and do verbal sketching of rhe walls of rhe Kremlin. Do you have any relarives addresses rhere'

The recenr Russian news by rhe way (lase few monrhs of desralinizarion) is roo much - almosr miraculous.

Whar do you chink it all means? Rexrorh opines it's a new sinisrer parry line to whirewash rhemselves & scan all over worse, bur it seems ro me they've burnr rheir bridges behind rhem in a way - who will rhe Russians believe in hencefonh - they'll have ro think for rhemselves. It muse leave a lor of Communisrs here feeling really sold out.

The Wobbly-anarchisr tradirion here is srill a force among painrers and wrirers, in SF I mean.

Summer's coming on prerty soon, what will you do' I srill anricipare shipping our, rhen a rrip cross-counrry East, stay home abour a monrh and do some arranging of papers and chen rake off for Europe. I may be rhere in

42

Family BuJiness: 1 956
the Fall chen, depending on shipping. If shipping looks bad I'll just cake a few hundred dollars from Greyhound work and head Ease and figure how co go from there. I wane in any case co arrange a few years absolutely free co write in Europe and crave!. I may be in line for a Guggenheim or something next year, but those are in the hands of successful chic madmen who aren't trusrworthy. Speaking of such I met Karl Shapiro, Eberhart took me to see him at Davis College 50 miles north of here where he teaches. Blank eyed, dull, acts like an advt. executive and about as sympathetic, greying groomed temples, artsy craftsy ambitious wife and spoiled avaricious children (I'm exaggerating I suppose) - seeing him in the flesh put the final nail in the coffin. Official literature, the foundations, the colleges, is run by people like him who have no interest in life except what they can get out of ic through acceptable channels and all their work is one big psychic asslicking operation. I mean dominated by a desire for respectability & acceptance rather than the biner gaiety of their own souls. Or whatever gaiety it is. What he Shapiro has wound up with is a lousy job in a jerkwater college after all and the strain of this shows through a brisk incernational cigarene holding mannerisms. I have not however described the impression of him after these years of knowing of him like a god of some sort, a Jewish boy made good. Not at all just another scared respectable stinker. I mean there was no light in his spirit at all, just money. "India was nasty,"' he said, and his wife agreed. "Or I didn't like it there at all." Too much suffering,

"what can you do but ignore it'" Consequently the themes of his poems is moderation and the virtues of middle class existence, which is for him a refuge form experience: And HE teaches a creative writing course and is admired by a flock of dull eyed professors as the poet (successful) type, and allowed his small eccencricities, like a few jibes about the advertising industry. I longed for souls to begin a REVOLUTION when I saw him.

Yop.

Write - love,

Allen

Allen and LouiJ G imberg

4 3

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Afwil 28, 1 956

Dear Allen,

Glad, indeed, ro get your letter and to know you are well. I was beginning ro get worried not hearing from you so long.

Let me know when you hand in your poem to City Lights. Am eager ro see it printed.

Send me the address of Variegation: maybe I might have something in my files to submit.

About Russia: I think Rexroth is near the mark. The Reds confess now like Stalin was a butcher (their words) and that untold thousands were framed, murdered, etc. I think Russia knows that its past sins will never be forgotten so they are making Stalin a scapegoat ro whitewash themselves.

By force alone, they'll never win so they will try ruthless amiability. They still have a party line which allows no deviation so that they are still totalitarian. (In the long run, after a century or two, there may be erosion of their fixedness; so that, in the end, a reconciliation of the West and the East will be evolved for the peace from the world.) Meanwhile, they fish in troubled waters. Even the Daily Worker confessed that they are grieved ro have been so taken in by evils that they never believed existed in Russia.

Yes, who will believe the Commies now'

Was interested in your delineation of Shapiro. His creativeness in poetry seems ro have dried up, and he is capitalizing on his previous increments. (I personally believe teaching in a college and writing poetry is ideal, but the duet must resist corroding influences.)

I'll be at home summer, relaxing in the garden. When you come East, ship your things here. Stay here all you want. I'll fix up a desk for you and stake you, if you need it, for a long spell of writing.

You should like our home now. We get an income, which, in five years, will pay off the expenses of converting. Then we'll live rent-free in comforr.

It will come just in time. I'll retire in five years with a good pension (we are integrated now in Social Security).

Write more often, please.

Try to come home soon.

Love

Louis

More anon.

44

Family Businm: 1 956

For his entire adult life, Allen would suffer deep feelings of guilt over his relationship with his mother. He agonized over the thought of Naomi's living in a sanitarium, and he was tormented by the fact that he had signed the legal papers authorizing her prefrontal lobotomy. (Doctors had told him the procedure was necmary because Naomi was given to violent mood swings and apt to harm herself, and since Louis could not legally sign the papers - he and Naomi were divorced - and Eugene was reluctant to authorize the procedure, Allen, with great misgivings, signed the documents. A reading of such poems as "Kaddish" and

"Black Shroud" indicate the depth of Allen's emotional turmoil. ) After meeting Peter Orlovsky, Allen devised a new plan, which he hoped would allow his mother at least a modicum of freedom. As the following letters indicate, fate had other designs.

Allen Ginsberg to Eugene Brooks

(Berkeley, California}

May 16, 1 956

Dear Gene:

[ . . .

]

My idea on Naomi is this: (tho of course I'm off the scene & don't know what the score is) if she appears to be well enough to get along one way or other on the outside she ought to be put out to pasture with a family say in Long Island. I even have a specific one in mind, a friend whose mother is poor & slightly addled herself - in any case one could be found where she could be boarded for around $100 per month. If it is practicable I would contribute. The main problem with Naomi is that nobody wants or can help her, really. Perhaps we can find a place to settle her. I had not thought of it before reading her letters but they seemed mild enough. It's not necessary that she be sane to live outside, just peace[ful), & the new pacifying drugs seem to do that from what I read in the papers. Write me what you think of this. The family I had in mind was Mrs. Katherine Orlovsky [ . . . ] I know her son Peter very well, I gather she's living a sort of Russian poverty life on Welfare of about $95.00 a month herself. I'll look up the situation when I get back unless you think there is any use in sooner

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

45
action, in which case let me know and I'll find out more specifically what I can here from Peter 0. [ . . .

]

My book is being printed in England. There was a long delay while I held on to the mss for revisions, & also I added 3 other poems. It will be quite a volume. I sent Louis a complete mss. this week. I don't know how he'll react to the wilder pans but I am very pleased with the whole deal. I have a feeling he'll be too scandalized to want the family to see it but it really is quite a high spirited & funny & serious collection of statements. I son of feel unchallengeable on the solidity of the contents & expressions.

W. C. Williams has written another introduction and 1000 copies will be made. I'll even make a little money on it says my publisher who's so pleased he decided to give me royalties in addition to publishing it.

[ . . .

]

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 20, 1 956

Dear Allen,

How are you?

I'm awaiting the letter you wrote you sent here.

Last night we went into N.Y. and saw Connie, Eugene, and the new baby boy. He is a 9 lb. chubby, round-faced youngster. His name is Alan Eugene Brooks. (I guess we'll have to refer to you as big Allen, and the little boy as little Alan.) So life goes on.

Shadows there are, too. Grandma fell last week on the kitchen stairs and broke her hip. She was operated on yesterday in the Irvington General Hospital. She is doing as well as can be expected for an 88 year old lady. The doctors say she will be out in about three weeks. (Drop her a postal: c/o Irvington General Hospital, Irvington, N.J.)

How are you feeling?

Do you need anything?

Love from

Your father,

Louis

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 27, 1 956

Dear Allen,

I saw your mimeographed book of poems1 and wish it luck in the world!

I'm roo near it to appraise it fully. My expression, at first blush, is that it is a weird, volcanic, troubled, extravagant, turbulent, boisterous, unbridled outpouring, intermingling genius and flashes of picturesque insight with slag and debris of scoraic matter. It has violence; it has life; it has vitality. In my opinion, it is a one-sided, neurotic view of life; it has not enough glad, Whitmanian affirmations. (The fact that you write in such an energetic glow of poetry is one affirmation.) The poem should attract attention and perhaps be a sensation; one will hear defenders and detractors. Bur it should give you a name.

The poem I liked next was the fine and vivid one called "Sunflower Surra.'" You should do more of this style.

I'm keeping the poems by my side in order ro get more into them.

Concerning my poem about rhe grains of sand and necessity, I feel that, no matter how you thrash about, you must, more or less, as a inescapable condition of our predicament of living on the earth, give in in some way to necessity. That last word is an ambiguous one, and there are many ways of yielding. When one makes a truce with necessity according ro the most harmonious nature of his being, then there is a minimum of eternal fricrion.

However, I realize no words of mine will fall on your heart as will those of your cronies; so that I must perforce, despite all my love for you, let rime tutor you.

Meanwhile I am glad that you are finding happiness and perhaps some purgative cleansing in your writing poetry. I fervent[ly] hope fame and success will come your way.

We saw Connie, Eugene, and little Alan yesterday. They are all well. Till their home will be ready, they are living now at Hotel Regent, 1 04 St. and Broadway Ave. NYC.

l. Howl and Other Pot111J. Allen primed up mimeographed copies of the booklet, which he disrributed among friends and family prior to the official Ciry Lights publication.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

49

Grandma is still in the hospital. Have you written her? (Irvington General Hospital, Irvington, N.J.)

More anon.

Your father,

Louis

P.S. Send me a copy or two of the book, published in England, with W.C.W's introduction.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 28, 1 956

Dear Allen,

Received your letter re draft card.

I'll be downtown tomorrow to interview the draft board to get you another card. Will write you tomorrow again.

Eugene's present address is: do Hotel Regent, I04th St. cor B'way N. Y.C.

He'll be there about a month after which time he expects to move into his new home in Long Island.

Your ms. looks fine - with new poems and an introduction by W.C.W.

it should attract attention and make a name for you. I fervently pray for that!!! (It's not my type of poetry; but there are many mansions in poetry so that, with its exuberant, lusty, gusty vitality, it should draw a crowd!) Best wishes!

Love,

Louis

Allen sent his mother a copy a/Howl and Other Poems, and Naomi's response was probably the last letter she would write. She died on june 9, 1 956, and thefollr;wing letter was postmarked the day of her funeral. Her heartbreaking letter was one of the most powerful /etters Allen would ever receive, and it was largely the inspiration for his determination to write a proper eulogy - or Kaddish - for his mother.

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Family BuJinesJ: 1 956

Naomi Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg
n.d. (poJtmarkedjune 1 1 , 1 956}

I hope this reaches you.

I sent one before which, maybe, they didn't send out'

Congratulations on your birthday!

Received your poetry. I like to send it to Louis for criticism.

Now what does he think of it!

It seemed to me your wording was a little too hard. Do tell me what father thinks of it.

You know you have to have a job to get married. I wish you did have a good job. What did you specialize in when you went to college.

This going to North Pole, 1 who supplies the wearing material? They say when you visit the Eskimos you need a double coat of fur. Are you fit for that flying job? Don't take chances with your life!

I wish you get married. Do you like farming?2 Its as good a job as any.

I hope you behave well. Don't go in for too much drink and other things that are not good for you.

Eugene and his wife visited me. They expected a child then. I suppose they have it by this time.

I do hope you get a good job so you can get a girl to get married.

Eugene's wife is beautiful.

As for myself, I still have the wire on my head. The doctors know about it. They are still cutting the flesh & bone. They are giving me teeth-ache.

I do wish you were back East, so I could see you.

I met Max's daughter, she is charming & married.

I am glad you are having your poetry published.

I wish I were out of here and home at the time you were young; then I would be young. I'm in the prime of life now -

Did you read about the two men who died at 1 39 & 149 yrs. of age? I wonder how they lived.

I'm looking for a good time.

1 . Allen had recendy enlisred to work on a ship delivering supplies to the discant early warning radar system workers in rhe Arctic Circle. He left in early July.

2. Off and on, Allen had spoken about buying or working on a farm - a goal he would m�eh nearly a decade later.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

5 1

I hope you are not taking any drugs as suggested by your poetry. That would hurt me. Don't go in for ridiculous things.

With love & good news,

(mother) Naomi

Eugene Brooks to Allen Ginsberg

{New York City}

june 1 1 , 1 956

Dear Allen:

Good to hear from you the other day. I don't {know} where this letter will catch you, but these are the details of the burial.

The day was nice and sunny. We started out from the Hotel Regent at noon.

We were a pitiable corporal's guard for Naomi - seven (7) of us. Lou, Abe & Anna surprisingly enough, Max Frohman, Connie and me, and Fanny Freiman, Naomi's high school chum. I guess it was the smallest funeral on record.

Naomi was lying in a funeral parlor in Hempstead, Long Island. We saw the body briefly - she was quire recognizable - her face was perhaps a little sad, although in repose.

After the box was closed, a functionary said a few words. He had to ask her name in the middle of the brief services and even then didn't have it straight.

We followed the box to a cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island called Beth Moses. I rook some brief footage on movies, but not much. The cemetery has a wide expanse; the stones there are low; there are some pine shrubs; it has a rather pleasant look and not crowded, and there is a lor of blue sky.

After a brief prayer by the functionary, who could not give "Kaddish"

because a quorum of ten males was not present (a "minion") and engaged in a short discussion with the funeral director, the casket was lowered, and as Lou said, Naomi (mother) was "let down" for the last time.

So ended a somewhat pathetic life.

On the way back, Fanny reminisced a little of Naomi's school days; her poverty and the fact that she always borrowed school nores from Fanny.

We visited Elanor'sgrave. Elanor is buried about one hundred yards distant.

Naomi's wedding ring was given to me, and I gave it to Connie. I transferred the thousand dollars to your bank account.

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Family Businm: 1 956

Well, today the world is inexorably evil; I suppose tomorrow it will be better. Let me know when you plan to be in New York.

Love from Connie and little Alan, who is thriving nicely.

Eugene

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

June 20, 1 956

Dear Allen,

Your letter of June 1 3 on hand.

It is difficult to write you and tell in a few words a life-full of love for Naomi. Though Fate had severed her physically from me for the last few years, I confess she was in my heart always. There was no day during which I was in a crowd or happy that thoughts of Naomi, torn within herself and cooped up in a desolate room, did not invade my mind. As I saw her coffin lowered into the hospitable earth, I thought that now she would at last have peace and rest, something I had struggled all my life in vain to give her.

Seven of us met at Eugene's hotel room - Fanny Frieman, Max Frohman, Connie, Eugene, Abe, Anna, and I. We were driven out to Long Island to Hempstead where the funeral services were held briefly, a sexton murmuring prayers in Hebrew. When the cortege went to a cemetery in Farmingdale - a plot a stone's throw from where Ed Frohman lies. As Naomi's casket was lowered, the sexton prayed again. The pathos and tragedy of her well-meaning life, the constant struggles within her, the flashes of our happy early moments together - all blinded me. [ . . . ]

Well, Naomi is now at peace at last. Maybe I, too, will sleep better for knowing she is at last at peace.

Eugene rook pictures of the funeral; so you will sometimes see them.

Yes, recently I had written to Naomi and she to me. I was planning, as I told Eugene, to visit her this summer to see whether we might not act on your suggestion. But Fate had other plans and eased her sufferings.

I'm glad she wrote that letter to you.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

5 3

There is much I long to write, but the teats blur me. Some other time.

When you get back East plan to stay here a spell. We are much nearer and dearer, as you say. You and Eugene are part of her and me, and she will always be a part of me. Be at peace, Allen, because she is at last at peace.

I'm glad you will come into some money, which, together with the money you'll send here, should make a future bulwark for you to lean on when you do writing later.

I'm awaiting your book and hope it is a success. Don't forget, there are many mansions in the house of poetry. If Trilling doesn't like it, W. C.

Williams & others will.

Congratulations on your 30th birthday. I did not know whether you had taken ship already: will save your present.

Peace to you, Allen. Keep writing poetry. Come visit me soon.

Love

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

AuguJt 4, 1 956

Dear Allen,

Glad to receive your letter dated July 29, as I was getting a bit worried.

Seems you have a margin of leisure to do plenty of reading. It must feel curious to have daylight at midnight there.

I'll explore to find a brief synagogue prayer book. 1 The Jewish holidays are coming very early in Sept so, no doubt, I'll come upon it soon. Those chants therein have a rhythm and sonorousness of immemorial years marching with reverberations through the corridors of History . . . and laden with the tears of things.

That was a pretty piece of translation, erotic but beautiful.

l. Allen had asked Louis to send him a copy of a prayer book with the "Kaddish" included.

Disappoimed that the Kaddish had not been read at his mother's funeral, Allen was determined to write his own version - one that combined poetry with the rhythms of the Hebrew prayer.

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Inrerruprion: I jusr called up a friend who will procure rhe Kaddish in Hebrew and English so I shall dispacch ic co you shordy.

Eugene and rhe baby and Connie are fine. No, che red cape of rhe VA is scill eying up rheir house. The knoc may be broken any rime. Meanwhile, chey come here every cwo weeks or so, and we have good rimes wich che baby which seems co like our garden and sleeps under che cherry rree. Once chey came in Sacurday and srayed over and enjoyed ic.

My morher is srill in a nursing home, geccing over a broken hip and also a broken ankle. All rhe five families are sharing che expenses.

Edich is scill working, as chere is scill something co pay off on our reconversion of che house co a cwo family house. I chink char abouc rhe Spring she will scop working.

Harold is soon finishing a summer college srinr in Columbia. He has a room in N.Y. near Eugene, and he plans co cake a four-year course in Columbia on his G.I. bill for a B.A. wich specialization in journalism. He avers he has che urge co wrice.

Sheila reaches in Newark. Her husband is struggling co build up his elecrrical business.

Hannah, Leo and rhe children are OK, as are Anna and Abe, although Abe continues his inescapable panern of falling off che wacer wagon every six months or so and chen slowly climbing up again.

As for me, I am enjoying rhe Summer's leisure in reading, mosdy poeccy and critical articles. I am wricing slowly and unabated. Had a piece called

"Horel Lobby'' accepted by che U. of Kansas Review. Also am working on a few lyrics re Naomi's funeral.

Afrer chree years, our car has a few ailmenrs, such as, new brake linings, carburecor, fuel pump, cires, ere. bur chese have been remedied and she's now running O.K. Edich drives ic well and also drives Harold's car, which he leaves for her during che week.

Keep well and wrice more ofren.

Love.

Louis

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

55

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

AuguJt 13, 1 956

Dear Allen,

I was glad to get your letter with your brochure, called "Siesta in Xbalba. " 1

It's very interesting with cinematic flashbacks of scenes and people. There is entangled in your lines a nostalgia for the past and for ruins that make a pulpit for mortality. Congratulations! I'll reread it again for more glimpses of your wanderings. Keep up your good work!

Yes, Eugene's poem, as I told him, was one of his best. His lines caught commingled pathos and heartbreak.

I myself am working on half a dozen lyrics about Naomi's funeral, as it affected me. One of these poems, a brief 8 line lyric, called "Burial,"2 has a condensation and a hunt of the Emily Dickinson touch. This poem has been accepted by The N. Y. TimeJ. It should appear in a week or so; and I'll send you a copy, as soon as it is published.

Clara is getting married at the end of September. I'll advise you of her new address, when she moves. Grandma is still in a wheelchair at a nursing home in Caldwell where she is recovering from a broken hip and a broken ankle.

Eugene and Connie and the baby boy are fine. They visit us here often and we go into N.Y. to see them frequently.

Concerning our relatives in Russia, so far as I can glean, they had been slowly exterminated by Stalin's Russia. Any relatives that are living had sought refuge in Israel. I believe there are a couple of nieces and nephews still living. When you are in Newark, Hannah can give any details she has.

When will I see you? It's been a long time! I miss you. I hope you'll stay with me here [in] Paterson for a spell before you cast off for your European travels.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

I. Allen privately published a mimeographed booklet of his long poem while he was serving in rhe Arcric Circle.

2. S.. "Burial," LG, CP, p. 247.

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 13, 1 956

Dear Allen,

I sent you a letter last week to your Mil via St. address, but the letter came back.

Yes, I saw the account about your book in the N. Y. Times Book Review. 1 I was happy to see it. Edith has a copy in her purse, and she shows it to all and sundry; I have passed it around to the Newark folks. I rejoice that your book is coming out. I predict it will make a name for you; you may wake up some morning and find yourself famous. I do hope so.

I'll save any other notices I see of it. I have a couple special envelopes labeled ''Re Allen Ginsberg'' and am saving all your poems. Keep up the good work - and congratulations!

Send me a couple of your books, or let me know where I can purchase some. I presume Eugene will also procure some copies.

By the way, are you living or getting your mail at the Mil via St. address?

Ic's good to know you are saving money, as it will stand you in good stead when you relax for an interlude of further writing.

All is quiet here. School has begun and I am in harness again, teaching Tues-Friday nights at Rutgers-Newark.

Edith is fine and keeps busy working.

Grandma is still at the nursing home, slowly recovering. Hannah was pleased with the receipt of a fine lener from you. She dispatched an answer to you. Clara got married last Sunday. She moves to Freeport, L.l. on Oct. 1 .

When will I see you? When are you coming to Paterson? I keep missing you.

I keep writing on and off. The U. of Kansas City Review took two of them.

The N. Y. Her. Trib also took rwo poems. I wrote a couple of poems about Naomi's funeral and am sending them out.

Write again soon. I am eager ro hear more good news about your book.

Congratulations again!

Love

Your Father,

Louis
l . Richard Eberhart, "West Coast Rhythms," Neu: York TitrW Book Revieu.-, September 2, 1956.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

57

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

October 13, 1 956

Dear Allen,

I was glad to get your letter, brimming with your literary activities. How does it feel to be a celebrity? I was happy for you.

I bought a number of copies of your book and sold or gave them away to interested people. Aunt Hannah and Eugene, of course, ordered copies.

Send me any reviews you get. I'll paste them in a scrapbook I have for you.

You should get publicity for your book so that it will all stand you in good stead for your future writing.

I am happy that your poetry is finding such response. The long first poem is a powerful piece with volcanic eruptions intermingled with good and bad qualities, bur all marked by exuberance vitality and force, though, sometimes, unbridled. Of the smaller pieces, I liked "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound" with its imaginative and concrete details, "Song" with its tender yearning.

Incidentally, did you dispatch a copy of your book to Mr. Max Herzberg, of The Newark Sunday NewJ, or shall I do so? He will probably disapprove of your pocketbook, but the publicity will not be amiss.

Am looking forward to seeing Ark: send it on.

When you see the Levys, give them my regards. Tell them to visit me, when and if they journey East.

[. . .

]

Eugene finally moved into his new home, and the new furniture is being rolled in. I bought them a new crib for the baby. In a week or rwo, we'll ride in. It takes about 2 1 14 hours for the journey from Paterson.

Allen, if you wish, you can dispatch your goods to Paterson. I have plenty of storage space here in our cellar.

Otherwise, all is quiet. I'm busy teaching, as usual. I have four more years to go before I retire. How time passes! (Am 6 1 , and I kid that I'm going to have my sex life lowered; it's still in my head, I aver, with tongue in cheek.) Grover Jacoby took a poem of mine for his Recurrence; as did The U. of KanJaJ City Review. Am having another poem "Epitaph" (on Naomi's funeral) in The N. Y. TimeJ any day now.

I'm looking forward to your visit here Thanksgiving. We can have a merry get-together here in Paterson and then another one at Eugene's home in Long Island.

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Family Business: 1 956

Keep well and keep sending me mail. Tell when will your Milvia St.

address be good?

Edith sends you her regards.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

1 9 5 7

After years of fantasizing and planning an extended trip to Europe, Allen finally was able to realize his dream. He and Peter Orlrwsky departed by sea on March 8, 1 9 5 7, and arrived in Tangier, Morocco, at the end of March. According to the plan, they would reunite with William Burroughs, who was presently living in Tangier, and Jack Kerouac, who was already there, visiting Bill and working with him to aJJemble the collection of routines that would become Naked Lunch. Allen's plam were sketchy, at best: He wanted to visit his friend Alan Ansen (who had been W. H.

Auden's secretary, and who was acting as an adviser on the editing of Naked Lunch) in Venice, and he hoped to hook up with Gregory Corso in Paris. Other than that, his only hope was to see as much of Europe as time and money would allow.

Allen's immense curiosity made him a natural traveler, as the following letters indicate. Allen made a point of visiting all the well-known tourist sites, particularly museums and cemeteries, yet he also enjoyed wandering off on his own and taking in the local color. He would travel extensively rwer the next five years, and his letters from this period are easily the most descriptive, detailed letters he would ever write.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Tangier (Morocco}

june (1 95 7}

Dear Louis -

Long time no hear from you. Things O.K. here. Work on Burroughs mss.

about complete now, 200 pages. So I will leave here in a week - Seville, Cordova, Grenada, Madrid, Toledo, Barcelona. You can write me here, mail will be forwarded till the end of June. I'll be in Madrid I think around June 25. After leaving there around July 1 , I'll go (thru Barcelona) crost the Pyrenees and thru Southern France to Italy, Venice, & stay in Alan Ansen's place there - he has large apartment. Plans after that are indefinite. Perhaps

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Paris the next stop. I n fact I think will go from Venice rhru Switzerland ro Paris - the middle or end of July.

You can reach me in Venice at this address - c/o Alan Ansen, American Express, Boca de Piazza, Venice, Italy. Can start sending me mail there around June 20 or so, Alan Ansen will be there & hold it for me.

Spending lots of rime with Paul Bowles & an excellent English painter, Francis Bacon - he has a big picture of a gorilla in a tuxedo under a big deathly black umbrella - in the Museum of Modern Art.

Evergreen Revieu} should be our with my poetry in June, n=; also, Partisan did have a review (bad, I hear) by John Hollander.2 Can you send it?

Poetry will have something this summer. 3 Please subscribe ro John Wieners'

magazine Measure, 22 So Russell Sr, Boston - it should be a very good avant garde magazine & he needs about 47 more subscriptions ro make it - also I'd like ro have a complete set of rhem at home, they'll be valuable perhaps or if you can, request the Paterson Library ro subscribe. A good cause.

Wieners is going to try rounding up all the threads we've been gathering.

Ansen sends his regards. He leaves here in a few days, roo. Peter & Bill also send theirs. Peter's mother send him a clipping from the Times of a poem of yours called "Trees." Very good 3rd verse especially.

Weather is fine, I'm reading Melville, IJrael Potter & Typee, and Guidebooks to Spain.

Gene back from his trip yet) Have you gone off ro Cape Cod or anywhere yet also)

Love, Write

Allen

AUen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

American Express

Venice, Italy

June 26, 1 95 7

Dear Lou:

Received your 2 last letters, including the page from Poetry magazine. I guess the seizure works our fine as publicity; except that I am afraid of l. Evergreen Review l (May-June 1957) reprinted "Howl."

2. John Hollander's review of Howl t2nd Othw Ponm appea.red in Parti111n Review 24 (Spring 195 7).

3. The publication of Allen's poetry in this masazine fell through.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

6 1
what will happen in coun - trial set for August 6- maybe City Lights lose, be out dough, & screw up the whole publishing deal. 1 Jarrelf been no help according to Ferlinghetti, who's written him several times asking for official Lib Congress statement but no answer. The issue of PartiJan is the Spring one;3 had a big pany here again last night, Philip Rahv, one of their editors, was here - lots of PR people around, I don't care much for them, Paul Goodman & Nicholas Calas. Tho Goodman writes good poetry I think.

Bumped into him here by accident last week, he passing thru. Guggenheim4 finally broke down & invited me over but the war still goes on since she excluded Orlovsky. Jack wrote & says he's moved again, to Mexico, his mother apparently didn't like Calif & wanted back to Fla. so Jack spent a lot of loot resettling her & retired to Mexico, says he'll be here next Spring, in Paris. His book is out; at least he got copies - from Viking. I received nice 2nd issue of Evergreen here already, with irs pictures. Jack's piece in that is the same railroad prose I had around the house5 - that nearly unreadable mss all black & folded. How does it look to you in print?

What New Directions checkj I seem to remember a check - from them?

- back in Tangiers. Is that what you refer to - or was it a check you sent here to Venice? By the way, Grove is issuing a record, Pan I of "Howl" included, with Snyder, Whalen, Rexroth, Ferlinghetti etc.6 By coincidence, the sound editing was done by Jerry Newman at Esoteric - who wrote me a few days ago - asking what about his money. That's the $ 1 7 bill I sent from Tangiers to be paid out of my account. I think there's still some money left with Gene to take care of that. Please ask Gene to do it this week, it's long overdue & he did me a favor, about 50$ work for $ 1 7 , cost of the tapes.

Send check to Jerry Newman, Stereo Sound Studios, 238 East 26th St. , NYC. I guess hold o n t o the New Directions, I'll see i t in Paris o r when I remember. All that running around in NY paid off; 7 Grove sent me a nice get back. Very funny Mexican whorehouse scene by Jack in that too, I I. Huwl anJ Other Ponm had been subjected ro a seizure first by United States Customs officials and then, later, by the San Francisco police.

2. Randall Jarrell, poetry consultant ro the Library of Congress.

3. John Hollander's negative review of Huwl and Other Poems.

4. Peggy Guggenheim, socialite and an patron, had an on-again, off-again relationship with members of the Bear Generation.

5. "The Railroad Earth."

6. San FranciJco Poets (Evergreen Records, LP no. EVR- 1 , New York).

7. Allen acted as an informal literary agent for many of his West Coast friends' work. In New York, he haunted editors and publishing houses, badgering them about the merirs of his friends' prose and poerry. His efforts paid off: Many were published in such magazines as New Dir'tJttiom and Evergf'tnl Review.

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letcer with the magazine and a check for $50, unexpectedly, "in payment for anything we owe you now or will owe you." They said they were selling (4000 copies) all over S.F. including Ciry Lights store, so police apparently haven't got wise to that yet. Taking the $50 tomortow and going down by train to visit Florence, for a few days, and then a week in Rome. Be back, then, in a week and a half, so may not write till then. Looking forward to this trip; almost couldn't make it but for the Grove Surprise. Be great to see all the Giotco & Fra Angelico in Florence and all the Coliseums & Vaticans at Rome, like a week of historical visions. Things are working out pretry great for me here in Europe - I didn't think I'd see so much of Italy & Spain. Will rerum to Venice for another month perhaps, and in September, or before, figure a way to get to Paris for an extended stay. It's the most expensive place in Europe, unfonunately. Corso says he has a free apanment there now. If so things will be easier, he invited us to stay with him. But I'm afraid the apanment won't exist when we get there, Gregory is quixotic. Burroughs now in London, he has some liver trouble & they have good free health plan there. We'll meet again in Paris. Read some of his mss. to Rahv last night who dug it as an Orwell type prose & said he'd publish some of the less obscene ponions. It'll be quite a day for Bill when he gets into print, he needs it, psychologically, more than anyone, with all the horror of life he's gone thru, endured & survived. Venice still charming & had enough leisure here to get familiar with the alleys & some canals; Orlovsky jumped fully dressed into the Grand Canal the other day, a joke; and we've all been bathing at the Lido, the beach here. Best swimming I ever saw was at Nice. The main American meet place here is Harry's Bar celebrated in Hemingway's Across the River (and into the Trns} - if you want to get an idea of social life in Venice, look it up. Rain in Venice is beautiful - "a great huge rain 2 weeks ago ended the heat wave. Strange town in that as I can tell. Just a big pleasure palace on water. I don't care for Venetian painting as much as Florentine, I find, now that I'm familiarizing myself with the actual painters and schools - but there are some great things here - Giorgi6ne, who was just a name to me, but who is like Keats in poetry and temperament. Last week we took an hour's ride by bus to Padua, saw the famous Scrovegni chapel which is covered with a cycle by Giotto, scenes from life of Christ - best Giotto in Italy so I've heard.

Getting very museum hungry, which is the reason for the Florence trip -
the Uffizi Gallery there has Giotco, Boticelli, Da Vinci, Angelico - all the greatest.

I wander around St. Mark's Plaza here often surrounded by the mad buildings, feeling great & fonunate to have all the time here. I had gone on

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

63
the Maid of the Mist years ago when hitchhiking to Niagara & remember how beautiful it was & blinding: tho I never got far into Canada. Edith been wanting co go co Thousand Isles for a long rime. Did Gene go coo' I'll write Grandma a note at Irvington General. It's amazing how tough she is, surviving all chose breaks. What does she say? Regards to Connie. I sene Sam a postcard. How is grandpa's life with Alan around? Or that nor begun yet? Regards from Ansen & Orlovsky. Glad you subscribed co Measure, they need it. I get less and less sympathetic to Partisan rho, they seem very slow on the uptake, the recent issues I've seen are dull, they have no good poetry, just academic Hollander or Kunirz. Re natural speech. It's undeniable char every so often the rhythms of poetry are refreshed by exposure to everyday speech, words & rhythms - as with Wordsworth & Eliot &; Williams & Whitman. Normal speech has great rhythms - it's nor a question of abandoning rhythm at all, it's a question of being conscious, as in WCW, of the beauty of the rhythms of regular calk; and of constructing perhaps from chat regular calk, artificial rhythms which are at best more closely related to regular calk chan the fixed rhythms of past poetry. Bur aside from char . . . 1

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg
do A merican Express, Venice, Italy

August 1 0, 1 95 7

Dear Louis:

Just got back to Venice yesterday, received all your letters, one rather delayed, bur safe, including the small check from New Directions, another with SRL clip & poems.

I've already seen #2 of Evergreen, you'll get it evenrually. The Partisan issue as I said was the Spring issue. Ran into Louis Simpson (in the Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo's Last judgment) (of all places) & spent part of evening with him there, he was friendly, diffident & apologetic, said he'd written a satirical poem on "Howl" which would be published in Hudson RetJiew. If you ever do see char, send ir on, rho it's nor worth subscribing to the magazine for. Said he didn't know the book was having legal trouble & wouldn't have added his satirical 2¢ if he'd known. The trial should be over now - due Aug 8 - I hear from Whalen char some famous SF lawyer - maybe Bartley 1 . The resr of 'his lecter is missin8.

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Family Business: 1 95 7

Crum o r someone like rhar - has taken over rhe defense, for free. I don't know who & am somewhat our of touch.

Has Gene & Connie's baby come yer? Let me know what happens.

How is Grandma?

Glad you are in rouch with Moore1 - she's a great poet, rho I suspect an eccentric person (voting for Eisenhower & never marrying) - what else did she say about your work? Her judgment is very reliable, in respect ro rhe precisions she admires.

I read Sartre's article & was interested when I read ir, also in what he said about Algiers - rhar he felt honest in objecting ro Hungary since he'd been also objecting ro French doing similar thing in Algiers. Haven't heard of Djilas book.

Enclose rhe clip of ''Concert'' - rhoughr rhe 2 first lines of stanzas 2 & 3
rhe jazziest - rhe rwo couplers. The tigers practice ''Gentlemen in Hotel Lobby" is also fine, sounds like some highclass phrasing from Hudson Review.

Your July 6 letter arrived here only last week.

Left here July 28 or so, train ro Florence, I think I sent you postcard perhaps from there - stayed 3 days, saw Michelangelo's David and a lor of his sculpture, saw a whole churchful of paintings & frescos by Fra Angelico, and spent a day & half at the Uffizi Gallery - that, the Prado in Madrid, the Louvre in Paris, and the Hermitage in Moscow supposed ro be the biggest

& finest collections in the world. Botticelli's Birth of Venus & Allegory of Spring, great halls full of naked Greek statues, Venus de Medici, Rembrandt

& Fillipo Lippi, Da Vinci, all the great Florentine painters, Giotto & everything else. I got a student's card to get in free & so took my time & saw everything I could. There's a great Square in Florence - one side a huge impossible castle & rower, rhe other side a vast porch for lounging filled with Renaissance naked Parroklos's & Perseus & Davids & Sabine women being raped 20 feet tall, in berween a great alleyway of the Uffizi galleries, in rhe middle a huge wild fountain with great bronze drunken saryrs - a very striking place - the spot where all rhe medieval stiffness & religious fear gave way & the Renaissance burst through with huge naked idealized realistic human bodies - David's nakedness being Michelangelo's great historical statement. Never been more anticatholic than since I took this rrip. From Florence went on to Rome by train, lived cheap in Student 1 . Poec Marianne Moore.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

65

Dormitory for four days, rushing around madly - arriving at nice ran down a mile to the Coliseum in moonlight, place so vast, as Orlovsky said, stones so huge they can want nothing but death, & in the moonlight awful with spotlights shining rhru arches like an artificial light in Hades. Next day went to St. Peter's, a little disappointing & filled with cheap bric-a-brac, then went out of town to the beach & ruins of Ostia, an afternoon. Next day, fountain ofTrevi, & gravesite of Keats and Shelley - both in same yard, very sad, I plucked a clover from mad Shelley's grave & will send it to mad Corso in Paris. After, the ruins of the Forum, Capitoline & Palatine hills, right in the center of Rome, the greatest thing there. Spent all afternoon wandering there & came back later to write a little. Next day went to the Vatican museums, saw Michelangelo - and they've painted drapery over all his naked bodies in LaJt judgment. Then to their great collection of classical statuary - and there again, everybody has a figleaf. I never saw the Church in such vulgar & ugly relief. After Florence & its classical openness, & after seeing the statuary in the Forum & various state museums, to go in Vatican

& see them desecrating the very significance & point of ancient sculpture -
idealized human bodies, but real ones - they even put a fig leaf on poor old Laocoon & his prepubescent sons. How they get away with it I don't know: I mean, it's so opposite to what you see everywhere else in Italy, it stands our like the piece of dirtymindedness that it is.

Began running our of travel money in Rome & so threw caution to the winds & decided to hitchhike around Italy & eat up my train fare & extend the trip, so took cheap train to Assisi, where St. Francis came from - great beautiful mountain town, overlooking classical old familiar (from paintings) Umbrian valley. Had read a lot about Francis up North last summer

& was all prepared historically for the scene & really had a ball there, we came into town unshaven & dirty & eating milk & salami & fruit on the way, invaded the Franciscan monastery, mer all the English speaking monks & argued about St. Francis & looked at his tomb & relics & robes & climbed up hills to see caves where he'd hidden & secret hermitages he'd spent winters in, all in hot summer sun, with small bagful of food & rundown heels & needing a haircut & a broken straw hat, wound up sleeping 2 warm nights right out on the front lawn of the monastery & waking up at SAM going in church to see the Giotto cycle of frescos there (daybreak the only rime you can really see them in the dark church, the sun comes right in) and arguing more with the monks about fig leaves in Vatican & how St. Francis would have at least shared his hut with pilgrims (more than those poor old Franciscans do - they wanted money) & in fact

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Family Bminm: 1 95 7
behaved like mad Franciscans & read poetry ro rhem & had rhem trooping our ar night peeking ro see if we were really sleeping ourside in from of their holy refuge. This is about rhe besr & funniest rime I've had since been in Europe.

Then began hitching up ro Venice, very bad, and so spent several more nights very pleasantly sleeping in rhe fields, warm summer nights, full moon, great landscape ro wake up in, plenry ro ear - fruit & cheese & bread

& ham all cheap, rho my feer began hurting. Finally gor back ro Florence, went back ro Uffizi & saw rhe Square again & found a long ride all rhe way almost back ro Venice, abour 50 km. away, so bought ticker partway back

& sneaked in Lavatory & gor rhe resr of rhe way home & arrived in Venice tired & wirhour a cent bur had a great perfecr rour of Italy. The New Directions check & Orlovsky's govr. check waiting when we gor here. Also passed rhru rown of Perugia, saw museum & square rhere, and Giorro in Padua again.

No definite plans. Will sray here another few weeks ar Ansen's and resr up & read and write. Our of money except for Orlovsky's monthly check.

Next move will be rrip ro Paris, Ansen coming along also, in September, meer Burroughs rhere, & rry ro peddle his mss. Jack now in Mexico again, says he'll rry w meer us rhere sooner or larer. I'd like ro go serrle down in Paris for ar least a half year, really dig in rhere and live in rhe ciry, from everything I hear ir's rhe besr place in Europe, also rhe mosr expensive. I will rry ro borrow a thousand from Gene. I don't know if he has ir or wants ro lend ir bur will see - maybe wirh new baby he has roo much expenses.

Anyway I'll write him & rry arrange some monthly sri pend like $80 & go w Paris and sray rhere. Can come back nexr spring and ger job, shipping - or else if luck is good, may have Guggenheim 2 or 3 thousand by rhen -
applying for rhar rhis month. 1 Though I doubt rhar'll really come rhru.

Talk rhis over wirh Gene. If you have enough money ro go halves wirh him

& can do so, please do. Though I don't know what your expenses are now wirh Grandma in rhe hospital again.

I'll be here in any case rill probably rhe end of month, so can be reached.

As ever,
love, Allen

Regards ro Edirh

1. Reference to award from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

67

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 26, 1 95 7

Dear Allen,

Received your last letter of Aug. 10.

How are you rhese days'

From all the experiences and sights and sounds you detail, new poems must be smoldering deep in you for utterance. What new poems have you written?

Have you still the clover you plucked from Shelley's grave' If so, send it home. I always dreamed of visiting the grave of Shelley and Keats, as those were, of old, my first inspirations and ardors.

I don't suppose you'll visit Israel. I was wondering whether the sight of those Biblical hills would stir any faint vibrations or reverberations slumbering deep in the subterranean psyche of your blood and heritage?

As I wrote you last, Eugene & Connie have a new son, Peter, named after my father. We kept little Allen {sic] here for a week and had a delightful time with him: a blue-eyed, golden-haired, sparkling and intelligent youngster. Little Peter looks broad-jawed like Naomi's family. We are visiting this week, and I'll report to you further.

School starts in another ten days. My summer money has run our or I'd send you some money; bur, perforce, I'll have to wait for my first check on Sept. 1 3 . I'll ship off something and send it to you. (Should I send my personal check or the bank's cashier's check or a money order?) Are you in touch with Rexroth & Williams'

Wondering why I don't hear from Partisan Review? I sent a subscription check and four letters, bur still they have nor responded.

Keep writing - and love from your father,

Louis

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Family Businm: 1 95 7

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Ischia (Italy}

September 1, 1 95 7

Dear Louis:

By rhe rime you ger rhis I'll be back i n Venice, probably preparing ro srart off for Paris, via Vienna - srop off rhere a few days. Nor seen any mail for over a week, since I been traveling. As I rhink I wrore, Time mag. called up for an interview from Rome, and as rhey were summer vacation shorthanded rhey readily agreed ro my proposition rhar rhey pay my way down rhere & rhey gave me rwo days living expenses (35 dollars) as well as plane ricker round rrip. I've srrerched rhe money our for ren days already and came down further ro Naples - went ro museums, saw large collecrion of Pompeilian [sic] arr in rhe Naples museum, including a whole roomful of interesting & sometimes beautiful Pompeilian pornography. Also walked a lor around Naples which is a beautifully siruared city - slums honeycombed onto sreep hills rhar come down ro high waterfront rich boulevards and a grear blue wide bay overlooking Capri a few miles our, and overlooked by vasr slope of Mr. Vesuvius. The second day here I climbed up Vesuvius & spent an hour looking at steam coming out of the rocks in the walls of the great crater on rop; and then slid & walked down the side thru pulverized lava sand & down lava fields into beautiful grape growing country (picking

& eating delicious blue grapes along the road) and down further ro the Bay of Naples and the ruins of Pompeii - spent the end of the afternoon walking thru those deserted & strange streets. Still quite a bit of statuary and painting left there including a lot of naked Venuses & satyrs & drunken Bacchuses, mythological figures all over the walls, including a set of priapic illustrations in a ruined ancient bordello. I srayed over in Naples at the youth hostel, very cheap & charming collecrion of traveling young Germans

& South Africans & 2 mororcycling Vietnamese. Then took boat ro Capri & spent day walking around steep cliffs overlooking azure sea and also went swimming. Stayed overnight, in hostel, very cheap, & drank fresh milk & made cheese & salami sandwiches & ate tomatoes so I dropped very little money there, tho hostel & restaurant prices are high. Then took early morning boat back ro Naples & railroad for an hour up the coast & by foot for 4 miles into the country by more grapefields & lakes, ro rhe ruins of Cuma - site of the Caves of Cumaen Sybil - one of the most beautiful and least visited of the local archeological sites - high dark echoey caves and

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

69
underground stairways and passages, a whole hill honeycombed with dark prophetic rooms, and on top of the hill a calm shady broken temple where I ate picnic lunch alone & took a nap. Then returned to a small town near Bay of Baia ("Lulled by the crystalline streams of Baia's bay" - Ode to West Wind?) called Pozzuoli and took another cheap fisher ferry boat thru Baia Bay to Isle of Ischia, where Auden has settled every summer for past l O
years. It's a big ( 1 5 miles circumference) island with several cities, blue Mediterranean sky & clear bright sun showering on the translucent azurerype water. Found a hostel here, spent last evening arguing furiously & angrily with Auden on the merits of Whitman at a cafe table in "Marie's Bar" in town of Forio, outdoors under grapevines drank a lot of wine, woke this morning, had breakfast (huge peach, half quart of milk & large sugarbun) and went swimming. Yesterday also rook buses around the island and climbed Mt. Epomeo, which is in the center of it, a high rough craggy mount, ex volcano, with white spurs of wind worn rock jutting our crazily on top. More German tourists all over, afoot & on donkeys. This island very interesting, since it has great variety of landscape, mountainscape, seascape, & cliffs, little peninsular mountains, and every type of civilization from grape-peasants living in caves to hut dwellers, fishermen & strange English high society types wandering around in red shorts & sunglasses. Mostly it is an Italian resort island, contrasting with Capri which is famously international. I'll leave here tomorrow morning (Monday) on 5AM boat, catch Naples-Rome train, be in Rome by noon, catch plane that afternoon and arrive in Venice early tomorrow evening. Now sitting in the afternoon, relaxing with lemonade in shady cafe table, writing letters, everything very slow & calm - I've been on my feet most of the time till today, tramping, strolling & climbing.

Auden stays in all day & comes our to cafe in evening & sits with a tablefull of dull chatty literary old fairies & they seem to vie with each other in making deprecatory home-made sophisticated small talk. I tackled the whole table on the Whitman issue & wound up tipsy calling them a bunch of shies - Auden seems to have a longwinded rationalistic approach to his opinions - I doubt if he respects his own feelings anymore

- I think his long sexual history has been relatively unfortunate and made him very orthodox and conservative and merciless in an offhand way - he sounds like an intelligent Time magazine talking. Ansen has the same peculiarity - approaching such questions as capital punishment and literary censorship as if they were complicated bureaucratic problems in which they have no right to have private feelings but only series of

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Family Busine.rs: 1 95 7
factual logical considerations - a son of ferish of objecriviry - which srrikes me as no objecriviry ar all bur a son of abjecr disrrusr of people & rheir own lives. I quored rhe firsr line of Whirman, "I celebrare myself,"

ere., and Auden said, "0 bur my dear! char's so wrong and so shamelm, ir's an unerly bad line - when I hear rhar I feel I musr say please don't include me" (re - "whar I shall assume you shall assume") - said rhar he was an orrhodox Englishman, nor a democrar (in rhis comexr). lr all boils down ro some son of reacrionary mysrique of original sin. Auden is a grear poer bur he seems old in vain if he's learned no wildness from life - son of a Wordsworrhian camp. Said he "imensely disliked" Shelley. He rhoughr my own book was "full of rhe aurhor feeling sorry for himself" and saw no viraliry or beaury beyond rhar as far as I could see. All rhis gives me rhe convicrion, or srrengrhens rhe convicrion I have had, rhar rhe republic of poerry needs a full-scale revolurion and upsening of "values" (and a rerum ro a kind of imaginarion of life in Whirman's Democratic Vistas rhar I've been reading in Venice). In all rhis scene, wirh rhe grear names like Auden

& Marianne Moore rrying ro be conservarive, and Elior ambiguous & Pound parrly nurs, Williams srands our as rhe only beauriful soul among rhe grear poers who has rearfully clung ro his humaniry and has survived as a man ro bequearh in America some semblance of rhe herirage of spirirual democracy in indesrrucrible individualiry - herirage esrablished and handed down by Whirman & perhaps Emerson, I don'r know I never read him. Han Crane seems like rhe only ocher live soul - he roo generally described by academicians [as] improper, sloppy, or immarure. Bur I rhink rhey srruggled roward freedom wirh grear knowledge & in grear soli rude. Auden rhoughr Whirman "dishonesr" for wriring an anonymous review of his own work. I rhink ir wd. improve Auden's presem lax poerry if he had ro rerum ro such anonymiry. Well, I've filled our four pages & so will close & mail rhis. Wrore p.card from Capri.

Love

Allen

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

7 1

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Venice, Italy}

n. d. (ca. early September 1 9 5 7}

Dear Louis -

Arrived in Venice again, leaving for Vienna in 4 days & rrying ro clear up all business. No news yer on ourcome from rrial; tho TiT!Ui mag man in Rome said rhere was ro be some report in Sepr TiT!Ui & Life also. W rore you 2
days ago from Ischia. Be in Vienna 3 days & go straight ro Paris.

Received your lerrers - Aug 26 and a long delayed one enclosing Brazil lerrer from June 9. Saw & commented on irs "Horel Lobby" before. Yes? Lasr poem abour washerwoman very good. MeaJure Wieners wrote he rhoughr ir be a good idea prim borh of us. Send him rhar, maybe orher sharp ones.

Wrire henceforrh ro American Express Paris France. Mail already senr here will be forwarded.

Been wriring some poerry & lors of prose nores. Correspondence mounrs

& is being bad problem now. Too much publiciry ar rhis poinr; I'm beginning ro rhink - "Howl" roo slighr ro supporr so grear a weighr of bull.

Arricle in London TimeJ Literary Supplement' roo, sorr of favorable.

I may send you a pile of papers ro dump away in my rrunk - wanr ro lighren my knapsack & clippings & lerrers gerring heavy.

I guess you spoke ro Gene. Wrore said he was doing poorly, senr $50
which came in handy, said he mighr be able ro send anorher 50 in couple of monrhs. If you can send me a lirrle larer rhis monrh ir would help a lor, bur only if you can spare ir. The money problem will somehow solve irself- I'm nor roo worried yer - and, wonder of wonders, when I gor back here yesrerday, I found a check for a whole hundred dollars from Ciry Lighrs -
rhe firsr money he's senr me. Seems he sold our 3rd edirion, 2500 copies, and is even priming a fourrh. So rhar means I'm due some more money from him, anorher one or 2 hundred, before end of year. So rhere is a sready unforeseen income for a lirrle while. At this rate I should be able to hold out in Paris till Xmas at least when Jack will pay me 225$ & Peter has 50 a monrh.2 Tell Gene I have the City Lites money, so things are OK.

At any rate I want to stay in Paris a while & think I can do it with City Lites new source of loot.

1 . "The American Way,·· TimeJ Literary Supplement. August 16, 1957.

2. Allen had lem Jack Kerouac the money, which he was very slow in paying back; Peter Orlovsky received fifty dollars' disability a momh from the Veteran's Administration.

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Family Buiinesi: 1 95 7

I enclose the clover from Shelley's grave - happy to send i t - you'll be here in a few years & see all this yourself - Europe a great experience like going to college. I may not get to Israel at this rate but you never can tell. I almost went to Istanbul last month.

Reading Whitman's Democratic Viitai which struck me as excellent & original & unique statement of American possibilities - as near a "program"

for a new race of poets as anywhere I've seen.

Love to Edith - here's the clover - tho just like any clover anymore I guess - I cried when I saw Keats stone tho.

Love,

Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg
c/o American Exprm

AmJterdam, Holland

P.M. September 30, 1 95 7

Dear Folks -

Lo & Behold! I'm in Amsterdam visiting Gregory Corso. Never thought I'd be in Holland. Anyway I was in Paris a week, but it was too expensive to stay there and I couldn't find a place where I could cook in. Well I have a room reserved there beginning Oct. 1 5 - it has a cook-stove, gas, & heat tho it's small & expensive ($30 a month). So I'll stay here for 2 weeks & return to Paris then. Sleeping on Corso's floor till then - nice big room with a rug.

Amsterdam is very quiet, canals with huge fantastic weeping willow trees hanging down into them, food is very cheap, there are art & poetry bars, a literary magazine & movements here, modern huge museums filled with 50

Van Goghs, and old museums with Rembrandt & Vermeer paintings. Rode thru by train & saw low green fields & canals & windmills & cows - long plain, huge sky, everything still & green, except for windmill turning furiously in the unseen wind. Been here two days now.

Everything else fine. Evergreen Review wrote & asked to publish my long Mexican poem, 1 so that will bring in some money. They've also put out a record, which will bring in a small amount - tho the record is I hear very I . ''Siesra in Xbalba" appeared in Evergrr:m Rwitu· I , no. 4 (Wimer 1 957).

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

7 3
bad - have you seen or heard it? I guess they sell them - ask Gene ro pick one up in N.Y. A California company will pur out a full size good record of

"Howl" tho, sooner or later, says Ferlinghetti. I haven't heard news of the Trial recendy, perhaps it's over now. Time is supposed to have a srory soon. I wrote ro my Time connection lady & asked her ro ask Luce to send us all ro Moscow ro find out about Russian poetry. Maybe on a fluke, they will (send us). City Lights has sold about 5000 copies & is printing up a 4th edition now, so more money is due me in several months. I saw a review of Jack's book in daily TimeJ1 - Sept 5 - which speaks for itself- a great triumph for Jack, finally. Have you seen his book? Amazing how well things have worked out. I never thought any less of my own poetry and Jack's prose than the reception it's finally met with, bur it is amazing to find my own valuations accepted by the outside - especially in The TimeJ.

Gregory sends regards. I'm writing an introduction to his book upcoming for City Lights2 - he says ro tell you he's lost his Ever!aJting Minute, but he "still thinks about the lost." His own book should be very fine. Says it's alright because he lost it some time he lost all his old boyish poems in the Miami Greyhound terminal "with my poems went his" unquote.

How is your writing now & what's the date of your book? Properly pared down now you should be able ro make it soon - when I get back will see what can be done ro find a sympathetic house to put it out - though it's difficult working with N.Y. hardcover - as you see everything we have done (except Jack's novel) has been done thru more offbeat informal avenues.

N.Y. is hard, closed, commercial, ingrown, mechanical & not intelligent as far as publishing machinery.

Paris is beautiful - the only city I've seen so far that would tempt me to expatriate & setde down. The rest of Europe has been interesting, and each city has its one, two or three marvels or charms, but Paris has universal interest and permanent charm as a living place. I'll try ro stay there for a half a year and then come home, unless I get enough money for a trip to the Far East. Went up the Eiffd Tower which is much vaster than I thought, spent several afternoons at the Louvre and at Notre Dame, lived several nites near Place Pigalle, lived a week in a hotel on the Seine overlooking the great Facade of Notre Dame & the bookstalls along the river, everything as I . Gilbert Millsrein, "Books of the Times," Neu· York TimeJ. September 5, 1 957. Millstein's glowing review, comparing Orr the Road ro Hemingway's The Sun Also Rise;, was one of rhe great "accidents"

in modern literary hisrory. The usual book critic was on vacation, and Millstein inherited the Kerouac review. The Time! review launched Kerouac's career and, ro a certain extent, set the Beat Generation phenomenon in mO£ion.

2. Gregory Corso, Gasoline (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1958).

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Family BuJineJJ: 195 7
charmy and any & free & grotesque as advenised - the very faces o n the srreet look like they've stepped our of painrings by Lautrec & Van Gogh.

The streets look like impressionistic streets, the cars & faces look like Gershwin & Genrude Stein & all the millions of Hemingway & legendary cafe & boulevard & movie recollections of Paris I've stored up since I got to college. Best place in Europe so far. I'll be back there in 2 weeks, so write me there - rho till then I can gee a letter here at American Express Amsterdam, Holland. Will try to get to The Hauge before I leave. In Rotterdam already. All new & modern, having been destroyed in war - nor

[ . . .

] modern - futuristic looking even. Love to Gene, Edith, Connie -

Allen

In mid-October, Allen, Peter, and Gregory took up midence at an unnamed hotel at 9 Git-le-Coeur in PariJ - known by Beat Generation Jcholan aJ "The Beat Hotel, "

not jmt became of itJ ancient ramJhackle conditiom, deJcribed in the following letter, but became the eJtabliJhment houJed JO many writerJ, poetJ, artiJtJ, and muJiciam aJJociated with the Beat Generation. ThiJ would be Allen'J headquarterJ for the remainder of hiJ Jtay in Europe.

The trip to Europe had done much more than Jimply give Gimberg the opportunity to experience European culture and tradition; for the firJt time in hiJ life, Allen waJ

Jeeing the United StateJ through the eyeJ of otherJ. In talking to Europeam, and reading their newJpapm and magazineJ, Allen felt the Jlripping away of any American ethnocentricity he might have poJJemd He had alwayJ been, by nature, critical or Jkeptical of American politicJ and Jocial practiceJ, and hiJ trip to Europe only fortified hiJ belief, Jetting off a JerieJ of lengthy, often angry exchangeJ with hiJ
father, eJpecially on iJJUeJ pertaining to RuJJia or communiJm.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

PariJ 9 Gil Le Coeur

Apt 32

October 1 9, 1 95 7

Dear Lou:

Back in Paris - received all your letters, clippings, $ 1 0 - it had been held here, several letters anyway. Holland trip was very good, saw a lor of Rembrandt & Vermeer, met some inreresting people, Gregory wrote an

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

75
article on American Poetry for their equivalent of Sat Review - a magazine Litterair PaJpoort1 - we got interviewed by newspapers & made enough money off the land to stay 3 weeks. Back here, my room was ready, it's a small furnished room size place, rather damp in rain, leaks in fact, with paper thin wall so I can't talk after 10 PM on account of nextdoor working couple, one weak yellow light bulb, a small sink with hot water Thurs, Fri

& Sat., discolored plaster, charming view of roofs and chimneys & small round table covered with oilcloth. Big sagging bed, all three of us, me Peter

& Gregory sack out in it, Gregory looking for a room or a girl with a room.

The $10 came in handy, I was broke when I got it, so I stocked up on groceries that will last till next check comes in for Peter from Vet Admin.

All in all a typical Paris vie de foreign boheme. Not uncomfortable, a I i ttle crowded, - but my room, costs $35 a month, is apparently a rare thing to be able to find - awful housing shortage, everybody huddled like rats in rotting old picturesque buildings without hot water. Day we arrived back, there was strike, no gas or electric, metros not running, candles selling for 35c ea. Landlady says she'll give me a cheaper smaller room where I can make noise as soon as one is free, in a week or so. Main thing is to have gas, which I have, to cook on, which I do - long as I have that can live almost comfortably no matter how little money, - potatoes, bread, vegetables, very cheap, & meat nor bad. So cook fine spaghettis & lentil soups, big pots. I live in the Left Bank, near Place St. Michel, near one of the famous bridges that crosses over the lie de Ia Cite whereon Notre Dame is - I'm only a few blocks from Notre Dame & see it every day - out of my window I can see the river, down the side of the street, & the booksellers stalls in the rain, & I'm 10 minutes walk from the Louvre, and 1 0 min. in other direction to St.

Germain, the place where all the hip & existentialist & foreign intellectuals have their cafe area - Sarrre lives upstairs from Cafe Bonaparte - on the corner, the celebrated Cafe Deux Magors & Cafe de Flore, hundreds of tables full of odd respectable looking literary & theatrical types. Landlady just burst into the room looking for secret radios adding to her electric bills -
fortunately it was the people next door, & Gregory was gone. So she was pleased, & undoubtedly will get us the cheaper smaller room where we can make more noise.

Got the record from Evergreen, it certainly is terrible, in fact it stinks.

Fortunately I can put a full 12 in LP our rhru Ciry Lites that will come off better I hope. Grove screwed up that deal, rook wrong tapes, wrong I . "The Lire cary Revolution in America,·· LillertJir P41poort. Number 1 1 0 (November 1957). According ro Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's bibliographer, Allen "wrore much of chis article."

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Family BuJinesJ: 1 95 7
sections, wrong people. I got news o f trial from S.F., the Chronicle there had it in headline on first page. He's1 sold 5000 & has another 5000 in print he says. He'll send me more money when there is some, he's quite honest, he sent me the last hundred at time I didn't even know I had it coming. I wouldn't shift publishers in any case, since no NY publisher would go to court, as he did, nor would a NY publisher manage to print & sell 10,000
copies cheap, as he can do. Like I say, all NY has is prestige, but not much of that - since it's mainly a money-prestige racket they're in, not the poetry racket as City Lights is. Evergreen took some more poems, also some of Gregory's. I finished short intro to Gregory's book, which should come out in a month or rwo.

Did you see review of Jack's book in daily Times Sept 5'

Re Williams 2 I don't know what the answer is. I don't ·think he's antisemitic since he has Jewish friends & attacks Pound's antisemitism.

He's anticatholic as far as politics, and with that I agree with him - though rhose who arrack him in letters for antisemitism also arrack him for anticatholicism - as if he had no right ro speak frankly what he thinks.

Whar ir boils down ro I don't know. I'll ask him what he means by shylocks when I write next. However he's not anti-Semitic as you know full well from his treatment of me & other Jews. Louis Geldman's letter seemed pompous. Why does Geldman care ifW. attacks Catholics in politics? Just ro have official type arguments, arguments, arguments, that can be written in letters to editors. That level of official type sensitivity seems obnoxious, & is not however a particularly Jewish trair, Negroes, Chinese, Americans, Russians all have it.

November 6, 1 95 7

Sorry ro be so slow i n writing, I had just about finished the lasr page when I came down wirh rhe Asian Flu, full scale, & have been in bed for 10 days, had a bad case & relapsed several rimes before it was all over. I couldn't do any writing & even if could, had no money for sramps to mail them so have just been in bed letting rhings slide for the last 2 weeks - a pleasant rest once the severe coughing & ague discomforts passed. Have been absolutely broke since d.e 20th of lasr month & living on lentils & Gregory Corso's charity - he fell in with a rich girl forrunarely at the rime we all went broke.

Finally Peter's check arrived roday, rent's paid & we're all stocked up on l . Publisher Lawrence Ferlinghecri.

2. William Carlos Willliams.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

77
groceries. Orlovsky is preparing co leave in a few weeks & recurn home as his family seems ca be in crouble & he has co cake care of his various brochers in cheir various scages of bugginess. 1 Fonunacely his recurn coincides wich Kerouac's new fonune so Jack sez he'll pay me my several hundred in a monch. Ferlingheni sene me a pack of books co sell here, so I'm making a licde looc discribucing my own book & che resc of his series & some Evergreen Reviews co scores here. I'll wrice Iacer as chings develop. I am swamped wich usual unanswered mail.

I hope Gene has nor been doing badly in che Srock Markee, whac does he say. European papers reponed Licde Rock abouc same space as US papers, ic's jusc char che impacc here seems more shocking, since Europeans have more beccer personal relacions wich Negroes chan Americans have, norchern or souchern. If nice whice girls go our wich big black nigger looking spades

& nobody cakes nocice &.parencs aren'c upsec bur racher inceresced. I saw a Joe of char in Holland parcicularly.

Spurnik I & II greacesc scary since discovery of fire, has everybody here delighced. 2 The side issue of America caking che Fall finally is coo bad bur seems inevicable, like che fucure is nor ours, American, any more, as we used co chink. Ac lease so ic appears from chis side of che Adancic. I would say America seems co have goofed in her mission - coo much macerialiscic self indulgence - as if che whole $$ machine has been running ca sacisfy che casce of che menopause sec. I nociced scary in Time lase week abouc how whole auca induscry now definicely geared for excernal fashion scyle - and chis che largesc US induscry - now no longer run wich relacion co use, sciemific principle, or high qual icy long lascingness - now che whole accenc is on crashy & yearly ca be changed scyle design - billions of dollars spenc on bad poecry so ca speak.

Things really seem very bleak & ac che same rime wich che moon ahead very excicing. Whac does che Daily NewJ have co say lacely? I was wondering whac kind of pachecic cries are issuing from che edicarial pages of che nacion) Ike is supposed ca speak conice - wrice me whac che subconscious policical or social scene looks like. I mean ic sounds like deach from here - even Gregory, who's never been inceresced in policies in his life, is beginning ca worry abouc America.

Saw che Chaplin piccure, King in NY, ic has a badly conscrucced ending, l. Peter Orlovsky's brorhers, Julius and lafcadio, suffered from SC'tious menral disorders o�nd spenr much of their lives insriturionalize<.l.

2. On Onober 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, rhe firu unmanned orbiral scudliu:, into space; Sputnik II was launched on November 3. The "space race'' had beg,l.ln.

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bur it's a great picture - would cause riots i n America i f they showed it.

Despite report of it I'd read attacking it as humorless, it's very funny.

I mean, as you can gather from above, the position of America seen from Europe, in light of recent events, seems really unlike what I imagine it must seem in America - the normal order of things, a new crisis or two, etc.

Seems more like it appears in surrealist poetry or Whitman's more pessimistic moods in Democratic Vistas.

Been indoors mostly so have seen little of Paris life. So far I did get up beautiful Eiffel Tower & been in Notre Dame & seen the bohemian Quarter & walked a few streets & met a few people, but no large scale interesting social life yet. Jean Garrigue was in town & visited me when I was sick, Jack has been writing, his book is a best seller & he expects $ 20,000 on New Year's Day, he'll establish a trust fund so he'll always have some money, & he may yet get a lot more from movies. I'll wnre.

Love,

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

November 20, 195 7

Dear Allen,

I read your letter to Edith.

Hannah's address: l l Pomona Ave.

Gregory Corso: what happened to that affair i n which Corso was supposed to marry the daughter of a mid-West official?

Glad to hear Esquire will air rhe S. F. group. Let me know what it appears so I can get a few copies.

I'll be awaiting the books you write about. Maybe, it will titillate an old codger like me, apart from beauty, perhaps, of some lives. If you run across a cheap but good etching of, say, water, let me know.

Spoke to Eugene over the phone today. They're driving down for the Christmas week to Connie's folks. When they come back, we'll run in to see them.

Otherwise, things are quiet here. Tomorrow I start my Christmas (Hanukkah) vacation. I expect to pore over literary quarterlies, read odds

A !len and LouiJ G imberg

79
and ends, and, if I get an inspiration, do a little private writing. I'll also work over my ms. book, when I'm in the mood.

You must be soaking in the spirit of Paris. How do you like the sights and scents there?

No doubt, Edith and I will come to Paris, but not this coming Summer.

Probably, next Summer. We're getting our noses above fi nancial waters and have started saving; but by next Summer, we'll have, I expect, a sizable amount to undertake the trip.

Grandma is now at the Jewish Home for the Aged (it was formerly the Old Beth Israel Hospital on W. Kenney St., Newark). She is more satisfied there and has adjusted herself pleasantly there with old cronies.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. About the burden of your multifarious correspondence, I suggest you send our only postcards, except to a selected few.

Will write you a longer letter during the coming, leisurely week.

L.G.

I note by the papers that Ben Hecht has written a play abour Maxwell Bodenheim. It will have its premier as an off-B"way play on Jan. 14. If l can make it, I'll do so. At any rate, I'll look for the drama reviews abour it.

Are you saving all the clippings about your work that I send you ' Gather them together. If they're too bulky there, send them here and I'll store them for you.

Also, mull over them. Consider, with candor, all the good and bad criticism and then let your heart of your own deep-seated literary conscience guide you. You - and you alone - should map your course.

Love again!

L.

P.S. again

Joel Gaidemack just called up. He met Kerouac in the Village Vanguard.

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They made a date to come inro Paterson mid-January r o visit me. Joel said Kerouac is going well financially and talked ro Joel quire a bit about you, narurally.

More anon.

Love again.

L.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

9 Rue Git Le Coeur

PariJ 6, France

Nwember 30, 1 95 7

Dear Lou:

Everything's fine, received your $ 1 5 & also a check from Gene, tell him I got it; been living on that all month, crisis mostly passed, expecting money from Grove now - they sent me proofs on 1 5 pages of Mexican poem. Also got a check from PartiJan, & they rook 2 sizable poems of Gregory's also, finally. Have better room downstairs, same price or cheaper since the Franc is worthless. I fried a chicken for Thanksgiving, by time you get this Xmas be near so Merry Xmas. I wish Grove had not issued that record, it's so lousy. They rook wrong rapes against my faraway advice. I'm supposed ro make another LP for another co. I wrote Honey last week. Spend or waste a lot of time answering strange letters, everything from Jesuit appeals ro Christ in me ro young poets who write on roilet paper. 1 Citadel Press purring out an anthology of "Beat Gener[arion)" material, wrote for permission ro reprint "Howl" & also a piece of Burroughs.2 Seems Carl is out & was advising them. Also letter from Chicago Review wanting ro assemble SF material. I've written a lot I find bur nothing ryped up in final form so don't have much ro send our; lately been working on Requiem or Elegy for Mama, should be long. Spending days going ro museums here & covering Pari< rourisrically. The Eiffel Tower is grand, much huger & more dreamlike than I imagined, the high mansion apartmentS clustered only ro I . Poet and editor L:Roi Jones (who larer changed his name co Amiri Baraka) contacted Allen in Paris by lener written on wiler paper.

1. Gene Feldman and Max Gartenberg, eds., The BMt Gm"alion ����J the Angry Y011ng Aim (New York: 0.11, 195H).

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

8 1
irs roes, ir rises way u p over rhe ciry like giam. Haven't seen copy of Jack's book yer; the main rhing about ir is rhe merhod of prose for me - his recording of rhe rime was very good as I remember except rhat he avoided sex rhen. The Timn review by G. Millstein struck me as righr rho. People keep seeing desrrucrion or rebellion in his writing (as mosr reviews here seen same in "Howl") but rhar is very minor elemem, actually: ir only seems to be so to people who have accepted standard American values as permanem. Whar we are saying is rhar rhese values are not really standard or permanem, & we are in a sense I rhink ahead of the rimes - rho nor roo far ahead - Sputnik has already changed rhe comem of the editorial pages I read. We're nor of course talking in political rerms. The week before Sputnik I remember in Time rhe cover story on American car design & styling. Did you see it? Whar it wound up saying, was rhat this largest industry was now geared to try sell irs product nor on basis of use or durability but on basis of a cheap Texan 1 0c store sryle. Whole industry competing ro turn out flashiest (& purposely impermanem) design, to change yearly, bring customers who wam ourclass neighbors. When you have a whole economy doing that & everybody involved in some version of moneymaking like rhar - rhis jusr is no standard of values. That it seems to offer a temporary security may be enough ro keep people slaving for ir. Bur meanwhile ir desrroys real value. And ir ulrimarely breaks down. Whirman long ago complained rhar unless rhe material power of America were leavened by some kind of spiritual infusion we would wind up among the

"fabled damned." Ir seems we're approaching rhar srare as far as I can see.

Only way our is individuals raking responsibility & saying what they acrually feel - which is an enormous human achievemem in any sociery.

That's just whar we as a "group" have been crying to do. To class[ify] rhar as some form of "rebellion," in rhe kind of college-bred social worker doubleralk of mosr of the reviews of Jack rhar I read, misses rhe huge awful poim. None of rhese reviewers even knows how to write, much less sound off, abour their idiotic mature standards of values. But rhis is off the poim, Jack's book probably lacks a good deal of character developmem, I rhink char's probably rrue. I rhink he wrore in in about 20 days back in 1951 as an exercise in immediate fasr-wriring without revision.

Sputnik - I am impressed how far rhe Russians and Chinese have come & will come. People starve rhere but communism has cried & succeeded in improving marerial living conditions. The presem governments of Russia & China will undoubtedly change in rhe nexr hundred years. And with their populations they'll run rhe world. I'm nor (don't misunderstand) apologiz-

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ing for Trials & Hungary ere. Bur the impression I ger now i s that after all those countries & some form of communism are now permanent & worlddominant. In the US I had impression that they would simply disappear someday & leave us alone. To be cont.

Was looking at your poems - they all say what I've been saying last page

- "speeding around/their vacuum," "the blast of seconds," "arrive roo late."

We seem to be in agreement. Will mail this now.

Going to Russian Embassy to see if I can con rhem our of a free trip to Moscow.

Love,

Allen

1 9 5 8

The popularity of On The Road, along with the publicity surrounding the lengthy Howl trial, made the Beat Generation an international story. All of a sudden, newspapers and magazines rushed to the presses with stories - usually poorly written and almost always missing the point. Over the next two years, the Beat Generation would be both the darling and the scourge of American popular culture, a status that did not sit well with either Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg, who were more concerned with the literary than the social. Kerouac, in particular, hated the crush of publicity.

Allen thrived on the attention, and he was thrilled that his work, along with that of his contemporaries, was in constant demand; however, he soon grew weary of trying to explain what seemed obvious to him.

Louis Ginsberg reacted to Allen's fame with mixed emotions. He was thrilled that his son had gained international repute, but he was often angered by what he felt were the group's sanctimonious attitudes. His arguments with Allen (through the mail) intensified, and when reading these letters, one feels a slight shifting of position between father and son: Allen was clearly more famous than his father, and his opinions were being solicited all over the world, and from this point forward. Louis often found himself making reluctant concessions, not nl!l:essarily in his opinions, but in deference to Allen's position. Louis would always be able to hold his own in arguments with Allen, but in dning so, he would be confronting the considerable aura of his son's fame.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

9 Rue Git Le Coeur

Paris 6, France

January 14, 1 95 7, (1 958}

Dear Louis & Family:

Everything OK here, got your last leHer. I'd seen the Reporter1 in rhe Ben I. David Perlman's "How Captain Hanrahan Made 'Howl' a Best-Selltr," an accoum of rhe poem's legal history, appeared in the December 12, 1957, issue of Report".

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Franklin American Library here. Also an anicle last weekend in the London 0bJerver1 reviewing Evergreen Review & SF & attacking "Howl" by John Wain, a member of British "Angry Young Men" group - said "Howl'' was no recognizable form of poetry that he could see. The more the merrier good or bad, copies sell, & "the vision of justice is the pleasure of God alone," as Rimbaud says.

Lerrer from Prof Parkinson in England (a Berkeley prof whom I knew & who visited here over Xmas) inviting me to stay & visit London at his place

& also maybe make BBC recording for a series on American poetry he's giving for them - I may go over there in February if Jack ever sends that money. He mentions it (the money) in every letrer & said originally he'd pay it Xmas, then January when he got royalties, now he says Royalties don't come till February &'s left me flat broke waiting. I wrote him I needed some of it meanwhile to live on, so I should get it next week, I hope.

Meanwhile broke but not desperate. Don't send money, Burroughs arriving this week.

Orlovsky succeeded in convincing US Consul he was broke & needed at home or he would flip over here, so they're sending him on the Mauretania in three days - he leaves Friday. I'll give him some books & papers to bring out to Paterson & deposit in my trunk - mosdy literary letters etc. I guess you'll see him & get a repon on Europe when he calls.

Gregory Corso was here the last few months broke & sleeping on our floor, he went off to Frankfun to try sell encyclopedias & failed at that, but wrote today that he's contacted a German Literary magazine (through Dutch magazine that printed a long anicle of his with pictures of both of us

- I'll send it sooner or later) - the German editor of which, Walter Hollerer, is a poet who visited SF & had my book already & gave Gregory some money & said he'd find a translator for Howl & Gregory's GaJoline, also invited me to read at Frankfun University & found a publisher who would be interested in a German anthology of SF material - so I may get to work on that if it really materializes. I don't know what will happen - I may pay a week or 2 trip to Frankfun & find out if it's all serious & give reading and go to work on the anthology. No collection so far has been solid enough, if I spent a little time & contacted enough poets I might be able to assemble a book which would be useful permanendy & be peddled in the US as well as Germany & Moscow. I saw Jack's agent here & made arrangements with him to get my book offered to foreign publishers & gave him a Moscow I . John Wain, ''Revolting Ani[Udes," Ohurt'n'. January 1 2, 1958.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

85
address ro rry. Russia published 6 rimes as many books per year as the US you know rhar? - & wanrs US material, pays high prices in dollars on a Swiss bank - this info I have from one of 4 1 China trip yourhs I mer here & talked ro.

Burroughs due in town this week sometime also, so we may both give reading in Frankfurr if he feels like more traveling. I got a cheap room for him in the hotel here, rooms are hard ro find, so he may wanr ro serrle down now it's possible.

New Year's I was broke so someone drove me ro Monrmarrre Pig Alley Pigalle & I wandered around all night & walked at midnire rhru Paris past all rhe whore srreers & carousing areas of bar & walked back ro Left Bank under rhe noisy stars.

I've been reading Shakespeare - Timon, Pericles, Coriolanus - trying ro finish all the obscure plays I'd neglected; also some Balzac & Dickens and various French modern poets. Also bought French translations of the Russians Yessenin & Mayakovsky - the latter parricularly great - a major world poet like Lorca or Eliot - first great voice of rhe new Orienral Age ro come - sorr of a Whitman of Russian aspiration which made use of Democracy. It's a tragedy he isn't known in America, his scope & power.

Here is a case of an aluminum curtain, culturally, much worse than our ignorances of Soviet Sputnik science power. Russia is here ro stay, as a great nation, in one form or other, despite changes of leadership or fluctuations in democratization there. Or sray a few hundred years anyway. I'm writing a long political poem. [ . . .

]

Thanks for sending Wieners - I'm glad he's publishing your poem. I'd wondered what had happened ro him, hadn't heard anything since Venice seems he's moved to SF. I hope you senr him real sharp poem. Lot of things coming up - arricle on Zen in Mackmoiselle quoting "Howl" I hear from Jack, and SF issue of Esquire in April, the anrhology, from Citadel, Evergreen 3 with 1 5 pages of mine, Partisan Review with poems by me & Peter roo & Gregory & The Chicago Review - rhe plague is on! I'll write soon as I've made plans for England or Germany in a week,

Love,

Allen

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AUen Ginsbe�g to Louis Ginsbe�g

9 Rue Git Le Coeur

(Paris, France}

March 2, 1 958

Dear Louis:

Back from London & settled down in Paris, writing a lot lately, running around, have co make tape for Fantasy label L.P. record, 1 have French translacor, made (did I tell you?) half hour BBC poetcy tape, for which I'll be paid several bucks a minute when (& if) rhey use ir - mostly uncensored so there's some doubr in my mind, rho rhey said rhey would play ir, have girlfriend here larely roo, (did I say? - Indonesian girl, been seeing her on and off rhe lasr few months - nice calm piece of Asia) (giving me new ideas also abour Asia and miscegenation & rhe white race complex) (horro�) -
cooking big srews here again, money is alright, gor your $5, also some money advance on rhe LP record, & money also due from here & rhere, I seem co be alright - rell Edirh rhanks roo - I'll wrire larer - don'r send more money, now, I am doing alright, more smprised rho, we'll see larer.

Parkinson, who is advisor on Guggenheims, says he thinks I'll probably ger one. He's one of rhe commirree of rhree rhar rhis year gave our Shelley Memorial prize, & said rhey would have given ir ro me ($ 1000) except ir was assumed I wouldn't need ir on account of Guggenheim. I hope rhar's so, rho I won'r narch believe rhar rill I see rhe loor. Anyway, settled here in Paris for awhile again, I don't know whar nexr, would really like ro go co Berlin & ger on rhe scene rhere & see Easr-Wesr culrure-conflicr bur I have wriring ro do here & Bill Burroughs don'r want co come along for rhe ride as he's consulting an analyst here for lasr minute parches ro his psyche, & won'r move. In any case I'll be back rhis summer, July probably, sray awhile, I have no plans, if come back rhen will ger a room in NY for awhile or roll our sleepbag on wall co wall carper, Harold no worcy sray where you are. By rhe way, whar's new - show rhis co H. & rell him co drop me a line, what's happening. Anything I would be interested in' I mean, wrire (rrurhs) Hawld. God knows I've done enough confession, in public, worse.

Continuing on Easr-Wesr affairs. Been having revelations all week, in facr. By rhe way, did you dig Heisenberg's announcement of Unified Field Theocy - evecyrhing variants of one basic Glook, & narure of marrer irself I_ Allen Ginsberg Reads Hou·l and Od1n· Poem.J (Fantasy Records no. 7006).

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

87
finally hypothesized? I've only seen a few newspaper releases but it's bigger I guess than Einstein, A-bomb or Sputnik. Or Fire for that matter. Won't the Apocalypse come this century? Everything accelerating so fast, I begin to think so (tho don't mean St John's Apocalypse - Mr. Unknown's perhaps).

Read analysis of new Class & various anicles & it seems important & true

& excellent analysis. Also read (in London) Khrushchev & Mao Tze Tung's speeches & dicta on Literature: they say, boiled down, the writer must write for people, the Pany is the People, the writer must write for Pany, the Party must control writer. Obviously mind-murder brainwashed culture & thought control - even in their own propaganda. No question on that

- that's why Mayakovsky (& his suicide & Yessenin's) so interesting, & his work so crucial. They offered an alternative vision of communism, just as Whitman offered an alternative vision of democracy in America.

Suddenly realize I am answering your Jan 25 letter again. Where's your other, excuse me while I look for it.

Yes I have it, ro continue.

First re question of slow inner change. Yes it takes centuries, but I think we haven't got centuries to wait. I don't see America changing, basically yet

& it won't it's as set in its neurosis (so to speak) as could be. I don't remember all I wrote last time but to sum, the neurosis is money-egoacquisition-competition-materiality, coupled with an immense selfdeluding selfishness that allows Chinese Exclusion Act, which was a piece of unmerciful criminality helped set the world afire (by hindsight) so that (to go on a tangent for a second) America is filled with mad moralistic religious white Europeans who (like Dulles) are waging a "religious war" against communism like a crusade of force. But I better begin slower, please don't get mad at wild language. But I don't really know where to begin, I don't remember what I wrote last & I've thought beyond that since, a lot of my perceptions seem to be crystallizing after having seen London & gotten an idea of the enormous difference of opinion they have with US there, & of the complete US ignorance of what all the European yelling is about - I had in US always taken it for granted that the US could really basically do no wrong & might blunder but was on the right track - but one thing I do feel (I'll try explain later) is that we have to understand that we are capable of awful deeds (blind like any neurotic is blind to his own aggression & can only see someone else's hostility, not his own), have done some really horrible things, & have to be responsible for our own salvation's sake - and there isn't much time. I mean the world is bigger than we are finally, & is changing so rapidly, the changes of history are accelerating as rapidly as the

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changes in science. U.S. could - I'm afraid will, soon be like England (or in ruins) in a decade or so - no one seems to realize that there, except in a way unconsciously & not knowing why, that's what all the crisis in US is about, the sudden seriousness also hysteria - in a way, at this point, actually, I think, there is as much to be feared from a sudden rash mad reaction in America, if not more, than from Russia - in a way it's a good thing that we can't have our way. Our way, in any case, be impossible, we have no way, really, at this point, just hostility & defense & confusion - no idea what needs be done.

What needs be done & what needed co be done for 50 years, it seems by hindsight obvious, was a raising of standard of living over the whole world,

& shift to cooperative socialism, an abandonment (perhaps) of money itself, of the whole profit motive, as the socialists said, to each according to needs.

The US (& capitalist Europe) on contrary tried to, basically, keep down development of communism - instead of organizing & feeding it. I think, finally, we are in great part responsible for the development of totalitarian dictatorship in Russia & China.

It may be there was no way to industrialize those countries without maniac totalitarian singlemindedness. It's our own pressure on them that's contributed to that necessity for brainwashed mechanization rather than slow peaceful socialist mechanization. But mechanization was inevitable & necessary there - didn't we care?

These things, tho sweeping, seem just - and not particularly idealistic since we're faced with a holocaust which we won't win, they hate us now with some good reason.

The aftermath, I mean the process of incomprehension of the need for peaceful or forced violent change, the incomprehension on our parts, still is apparent. We still don't recognize Red China. Dulles still makes mad religious speeches praising Christian enterprise & capitalistic democracy as against not totalitarian communism, but communism itself.

I think it is basic, that we have been against communism itself, as well as totalitarianism. Tho this is sort of a problem of chicken or egg which came first. I don't mean to say it's only on account of our adamance that totalitarianism developed there. But it developed in the void & hostility that we left with it.

The money we've spent for armaments would have democratized the world. We are not interested in democratization of the world at that high price. We did not do it.

This year 40 billion armaments & 4 billion foreign aid. Of that 4 billion

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

89

3 billion go ro maintain rhe futile Chiang & Rhee governments, & various military subsidies. Abour 1 112 billion goes ro acrual useful aid. We'll destroy the world and ourselves that way.

Our economy is based on armament now. What would we do if that were ended? Total economic collapse. The only way our would be to produce for need nor for profit & rhar['s] impossible without roral collapse of capitalism.

So we are faced with continuous armaments, continuous war threat, denial of the necessity for production for worldwide use.

I can't fir all rhe pieces rogerher in one lerrer, light & dark, the enormous virtues of individualiry in America, I'm just randoming now, bur I mean it's nor a question of black & white who's right & who's wrong, it's a question of what in fact is happening & why.

Now one huge threat is the Middle East & Norrh Africa. We've given France enough money to continue a suicidal war there. Bourguibe cannot stand, pro West as he is, with the pressure of our berrayal pur on him.

France will war, and lose, perhaps by the rime she's lost, Tunisia & Morocco and Egypt will be all lined up against her, and us. Why do we support France's economy for war there - for that's what our last week's loan did. It's all over the French papers & English papers, rho I doubt if rhar interpretation has fully penetrated rhe US consciousness yet. Bur there is no misinterpretation in North African - or Chinese & Russian newspapers -
they have us down red handed - & we are. Well we supporr France there so she stays with Atlantic Pact, so US armies can defend Europe. Bur land war is already obsolete with Sputnik & meanwhile all North Africa is righteously offended, & this is going inevitably screw us up. It's serious. The French political scene itself's a madhouse. I won't go into that. They're afraid ro stop the war for fear the army will come back & start military invasion of France, their own army - it's gorren ro such a mess here. That and other weird reasons - tho everybody here knows they can't win & are only fucking up N Africa.

Well this letter is gerring too long. That it boils down ro - rhe old line socialists in the US, with all their idealism, had a really prophetic awareness of the horrible possibilities & immense changes & needs ahead. The US has been mad as a hatter & everybody thinks they've got rich, so everything is OK & the radicals were goofy & eccentric. The richness is false, it's been based on armaments, the rest of the world has been starving, we haven't shared the wealth, mad dicrarorial developments have developed all around us, they threaten to outgrow us, outproduce & outfight us if necessary, we still dream that we are the king of the earth, nor realizing rhe yellow race

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probably be rhe rich majority in 30 or 40 years - jusr a few years ago people were ralking of rhe American Century, as if we were Rome - & we were a Rome - I rhink rhe Fall is on - "Babylon is fallen, is fallen" -

Whole problems of US consciousness - like disinclination to intermarry among races - automatic acceptance of competition for personal material gain

- rhe possibility of earing well when millions starve in Asia (this decade srill)

- rhe whole American fear of sex - rhe longing (my generation of college boys, rhe Silent) for secure job & comforr home firsr above all things, honor, love, honesry in work - ache where to begin or end. I've departed from your lerrer & run on - sorry if rhis seems our of joint wirh whar we, even I, usually rake for granted in US - ir seems ro me - having seen now personality & opinion over Europe & Norrh Africa - apr comments.

The strange rhing to me is I realize how mad a lor of rhis sounds in America - yer in another form ir's only whar everybody has been saying all along, thinking ir was jusr ideas, nor rhe wild stony hand of fare coming smash down on real buildings & cities. lr's happened in Europe already, rhar Apocalypse.

As you say, monolithic governments founder - scarring already in Russia wirh increased democratization. Bur I am afraid rhe brainwash mechanization will be in a sense permanent & rhey, even wirhour force dicratorship, in years to come, will srill be robor stares, rhe people sacrificing (as in US heretofore) rheir individuality to comforr, they'll be satisfied wirh cars & refrigerators & rhoughr control television. The U.S. has ser rhe srage for rhar historical development alas. Undoubtedly China in a hundred years will wind up wirh 2 parries - borh believing rhe same rhing as in America now.

France gave up Morocco & Tunisia because she had to. She had a huge war & losr nor to give up Indo China. Don't know why rhey rhoughr rhey could give up Tunisia & Morocco (which surround Algeria) & yer keep Algeria.

We gave up Philippines, very good, I approve. Though nor sure how much we did for rhem. They seem to be slowly rurning Red, or having communise trouble. England gave up India - wise England - she was righr.

Ir was rime. Russia never gave up anything & probably never will now rill l. She doesn'r need rhem (as she did, Hungary, rhen, for whar she rhoughr was defense, I presume).

2. Dictatorship collapses

3. U.S. quirs war pressure
any one of rhe rhree will do, or combination.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

91

What I'm trying to say, it's not a question of choosing sides on black & white either or, who's better who's worse. For myself, for that matter, neither side is right - I'm trying to dig what happened, & not choose side.

Whose side can I be on? Sides are an illusion. I'm saying, about America, she thinks in terms of side. She always has, since the days of the Chinese Exclusions Act. But an individual is not a side. I mean I feel far from the interests of both sides, actually. America better for me, tho. But I don't forget that China better probably to a once starving now selfsatisfied Chinese bureaucrat.

Back to Algeria, your paragraph. The French scene is quite mad, and not what appears in the newspapers. Various reasons for holding Algeria -
sugar, wine, & the vast petroleum, as well as the million Frenchmen. She worked out quite nice agreements on same line with Morocco & Tunis, but was afraid US would get the oil, & the million Frenchmen who run Algeria wanted to keep running ir. Do you know that those million are so mad, there is a movement to secede from France, & wage all out war against Algeria & win it, by the extremists whites? Well, the initial balking in giving Algeria her freedom was bad judgment, the Algerians didn't want to take that. So they appealed to UN & fought. UN declared it internal matter. So the Algerians rebelled. They killed Frenchmen. And Frenchmen killed Algerians. The French atrocities are so horrible (much worse than Hungary & on larger scale) that newspapers are censored here in France.

Last week Le Monde I believe & Sane's NRF, or whatever the name of his magazine, was banned, for carrying official report on atrocities. The Algerians fight among themselves - the FLN extremists (who are running the war) against moderates who want to cooperate a little. The French do same vice versa. The war stretches on tho its conclusion is inevitable. The hatred, mutual, has now grown to such proportion that NOW THERE IS

NO SOLUTION IN ALGERIA. Plain dead and blank fact. The whites won't give in without (everybody says here) invading France and taking war. The Algerians at this point don't want the whites anywhere around them, with good reason. Nothing but mad Frenchmen at war - as they were at war for years in Indochina. Plain case of screw up with classical Marxism background. And when Algeria gets free there will be bloodbath among Arabs - and whites too if there are any lefr - but, the real horror, what the stalemate is really leading up to is alignment of Egypt, Tunisia & Morocco against France - and, since France backs the US - against the USA. So by our loan to France we continue the war - by allowing the war instead of insisting on UN mediation. If we throw the case into the UN everybody in

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rhe world would be in our comer - even Russia. Bur rhar's rhe lasr thing Russia wanrs now, for US to do something sensible. Russia gains from Algerian war - alignmenr with North Africa. So why don't we throw ir in rhe U.N.1 God knows whar mad capiralistic Eisenhower & American ignoranr & indifferenr reason there is for that. Ir's a real horror! Yet when I menrioned ir to you, in same breath as Hungary, your reply was, well, France after all had inrerests there, and 1/10 the population so ir was . . .

natural . . . or understandable . . . . Whar I'm trying to poinr out is that the sense of news & significance of evenrs that filters inro your consciousness now in America is filtering rhru newspapers, radio & TV - you have the same sense of rhings rhar I have, when I'm in America - but that sense of things is nor necessarily in proportion - in fact the inrerpreration of rhings thru media of mass communication in US is very weird & provincial -
nobody knows what is happening - nobody can know what is happening -
unless rhru eccenrricity - it's sort of a mass hypnosis - or self hypnosis - or, in a sense - a brainwashing. And it's this sort of thing that people mean when they talk of mass brainwashing in Russia. Russian opinion is molded in the same way - - - - - more consciously, cenrralized, from the top - bur in the same vast way - and what in these letters I am rrying to say is that America, individuals in America, rake things for granred because they have co, under the vast sprawling mechanical organizarion of rhings rhere, money, motives, richness, comfort, illusion of freedom - take rhings for granred rhar will wind up in narional suicide, & rhar means nor so much bombs on NY as - well I lose the thread.

Re Korea - I don't know what the story is, was. Rhee still calls for war

& is a dictator. Presumably it would be easier for me to get along (non politically) in Sourh Korea than in North. Bur Rhee's an old reactionary capitalist - and apparently did also cause the outbreak of hostilities, and I d<Jn't believe the U.S. inrerpretarion of rhe story that I believed then, and I don'r believe Russia's. And probably the North Koreans are communizing

& mechanizing & raising standard of living - which is importanr. I don't know. I'm saying here - wirhour knowing much facts - rhar North Korea is nor black & white - and that our inreresr in it was not to preserve anybody's liberty or good governmenr - bur to prorect what we rhoughr was attack on our conrainmenr line of defense. And rhe Chinese & Russians attacking that line. I mean they don't even like Rhee now in Washington, he's a liability - and is fomenring war - it's even in the US
papers, that.

As for our backing of Chiang & nonrecognition of China, rhat's

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93
impossible. So many angles on this. Britain recognizes her, sensibly - we are simply too HOSTILE. Canada wants to but we put pressure not to. No South American country does but they wanr to trade. We put pressure.

But mutual trade at this point is necessary for Chinese and SA economy would lead to more prosperity in China & thereby relaxation of dictatorship, would hasten the process. Why this policy? Some sort of containment? Allegiance to China lobby? Or finally, deeper, I dunno? fear of economic competition. It's on this level now that Russia & China think they have us, perhaps they do. But what do you think the Chinese think at this point? We may object to their dictatorship - they object to our aggression & encirclement & opposition. And here is a case where we are aggressive. It would take ten mules to pull the admission out of the consciousness of one average American that here is a case of our classical capitalist imperialist warmongering sanctimonious neurotic aggression.

And yet Dulles makes speeches denouncing China as irreligious & immoral. No wonder they hate Dulles - you would see the raging attacks on him in brainwashed prosaic Chinese poetry. (I have a book of recent Red Chinese verse - sample: "Old America, your volcano/will soon erupt; if a Truman or/a Marshall dares to start a fire/Negroes will rise/and tear the electric chairs to pieces . . . .

" Only good image in the book tho, the rest
just rant & prejudice.)

A point you bring up re both Korea & Hungary - Russia's defensive psychosis. I think that a great deal of Russian moves can be clearly see[n} to rise from this, just as many of our moves do. I think this is generally accepted, now since Kennan's lectures - this was partly his analysis. Applies in part of Korea, Hungary, etc. As ours does to France - Algiers, Spain, Korea, Mid-East dictators we support, etc - purely fear reasons.

Russia's reason for Hungary undoubtedly that she thought it part of her land defense line against containment policy. And undoubtedly fear of liberalization politically spreading to other Iron Curtain countries. Breakup of defense line. And breakup of internal control.

Well enough politics, I tried to answer as much as possible sensibly without waving red flags - tho some are inevitable - I mean red flags of psychological conflict between us, I'd rather we came to peace & harmony, it's time, we're both growing old. I've already got beerbelly like you.

What happened to me, partly is - talking now about "poverty vow" etc no it's not really serious - I mean I use money & eat & sensible etc. - tho not as sensible, so to speak, as most Columbia Graduates - but I was after

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something I had intuition of & believed in, i.e. beauty & poetry & freedom, which meant real things to me - giving strength & humor in mad situations I found myself in search process - hospital, jail, strange beds, moneyless, undignified, dependent on family at times, goofed up - but what it basically represented, in a way, was attempt to find own values & strike out on own - rather than conforming for safety's sake - for life is roo short and rhe price of fear-motivation & the wastage of that is roo great - I didn't clearly realize how wild a step I was raking - forced ro rake in a way since in most situations, normal work situations, I found myself so completely our of step - felt the world was crazy (which it is, always has been) - in office or facrory - the sight of all these people living in such spiritual poverty, with, mostly, fake loves, even in a sense fake babies - by fake I mean incomplete - compromised for some sense of safety-comfortroutine - what was expecred, rather than what they wanted - the sight of hundreds of people in offices, ships, schools - leading lives which are doomed - or lives which I felt were doom for me - - - - - I mean it's as if the whole system were our of joint - for simple reason (false personality rhru adjustment ro what's cusromary so therefore no self knowledge, therefore no knowledge of other selves therefore inability ro love, therefore, finally, it makes no difference what happens ro neighbor long as I got mine, therefore, China starves, therefore, in the end that America must Fall, for rhe love of God): that is ro say, I could nor adjust ro Newspaper, because rhar was superficial & lies (the last 5 pages of explanations, rho just intuition rhen) nor ships, carrying goods for war, nor offices & advertising for that's just Evil, nor Law - too slow & compromised for me - nor reaching - since rhe things I felt most deeply were things ir would be strange ro reach - I'd get kicked out telling kids to go our have ball ger laid dig life love bums forget money dodge draft - which is the message (in vulgar terms) of language & education, for me - so I wind up without rhe basic social values of the culture, bur with my own - which are rhe ideal & necessary values, perhaps, if Whitman is right in Demo ViJtaJ, if we are ro survive competition with brainwash machine of Asia - but wind up completely sort of disconnected with rhe flow & rushes of organized life around me, rhe flow of money (40
billion ro armaments - the whole economy - that or prestige cars ro prop competitive ego) - so much of the machinery of life unnecessary, a waste - I even had a few moments of comparative mental release a few (8) years ago in Harlem 1 when I was so completely free of my own guilts, struggles, I. Reference to AG"s "'Blake Visions" of 1 948.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

95
competitions, the forces rhar molded & strained me, rhar in the momenr of peace I thought I saw a living God - an experience so natural, & yet so our of conrext of rhe civilization & rhe emotional world it creates - rhar rhe experience frightened me - and anyone around me. Bur ir was a great sense of the unity & mercy of narure - & a creative freedom of rhe will - a creative freedom of the will which, in a sense, every governmenr is scared of from China ro America around rhe world - because ir is nor dependenr on the armor, myths, lies, rationalizations which hold rhe srrucrure rogerher - for this brainwashing is necessary in Russia and China - and even in America, in irs own weird form - bur ar any rare this sense of freedom is the enemy of both capitalism & communism - bur I've lost rhe thread of discourse again -
so end finally with poem:

I sir in my room
and imagine rhe future
talk ro eternal genius

Sunlight falls on Paris

Love chokes me ro death

I am alone, there is
no one whose love is perfect
eye mercy & mouth ro kiss

World! World' World!

man has been mad, man's
love is nor perfect

I have nor wept enough
my breast will be heavy
rill death, the cities
are spectres of cranks
of war rhe cities are
work and brick and iron

The smoke of rhe furnace
of Selthood makes rearless

eyes red in London bur
who knows of rhe sun'

meadows cankerd & canned
meek crowd underground
chrisrs parish creeps

No street woman is loved
under a lamp or neon

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nor women in house loves
husband in angel unity
nor boy loves boy with soft
fire of breast politics
for radio streams ago
elecrricity scares night
mad light on TV screens
laughs at dimmed lamps
in empry rooms no dream
of man's joy is made movie
rin dreams of eros
facrory makes bad cars
mind eats its flesh
in starvation and no
man's fuck is holy for
man's work is mostly war

India starves forever

China slaves & starves
on American machinery

America chews fat steaks
of capital Britain cooks
her Jerusalem too long

France & to oil & dead
salad of war in Africa
selfhood devours Arabia
white & negro warring
against the golden nuptial

Russia manufactures feeds
millions bur no soul yet
dreams of Mayakovsky's
rainbow over machinery
and backtalk ro rhe sun

& it rains in February
as once on Baudelaire

I lie in Paris alone in
red underwear, symbolic
of desire for union with
man in eternity, I
hear cars on the street

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

97

I know where they go
to death but that is OK

It is that death comes
before Life, that no man
has loved perfectly, that
none see the giant sun
ray down from a vast cloud
streaming light on cliffs
tanker size of ant heaved
up shining in the mindless

Vast panorama, Dover and
from the cloud a seagull
appeared flying thru lighr
bearing its message of ants
in myriad English meadows
dolphins streaming thru Mediterranean
steaming & shrieking in Andes
cemeteries littered with tombs

Asias million rivers, glittering
under mindless sun, mankind's light.

Well this is nor very good, first drafts, 1 not ending right, I wanted an image of vast mindless sun at end, I saw it over Dover that way, too much rewriting at this point & most of the images too generalized. Hard writing lately, tho I do a lot.

Well I've spent practically all nice, Louis, writing, for gods sake don't try replying in equal length, I just starred battering away at typewriter & wound up with almost everything I was thinking about, abour politics anyway, regards to Edith, I wrote such a big letter this time this should cover hers roo.

Edith, winter in Paris very balmy, today spring like, I rook walk rhru Luxembourg Gardens, huge park near students center full of naked statues of Greek goddesses & Roman politicians, trees nor budding yet tho, soon.

[ . ]

.

.

Love

Allen

I. See ''Europe! Europe" (AG, CP, pp. 171-173) for final version ofrhis poem.

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

March 6, 1 958

Dear Allen,

Received your long lerrer of March 2 wirh irs rorrenr of words, con raining, in irs ourpouring, many glittering, good perceptions and also some brillianr misconceptions, inrermingled with rarionalizarions, all breathing a semireligious fervor. Ir was a formidable, good lerrer.

I'll answer only parts of your lerrer, and rhose largely of more or less personal nature.

First, I'm pleased, above all, rhar your mind is working on ro a fine, creative ardor and rhar you are busy writing. Second, I'm glad rhar you have a good chance for rhar Guggenheim Award. Ler me know any good news ar once.

Yes, I read about rhe Heisenberg announcemenr, bur rhe information rhar filtered in here was roo meager, though irs implications were astounding.

I musr demur - ir breaks our though I didn't mean ir ro - abour your glossing over Russia's instigation of North Korean invasion because rhey rhoughr we were attacking on a conrainmenr line, defense. The fact is rhe U.S. had withdrawn her troops and was leaving rhar area defenseless. Then N. Korea arracked. "Truman's War" some called ir; bur ir was a U.N.

action ro srop aggression. You accuse rhe Communists, no marrer what evil arracks rhey make (and rhey vow ro conquer rhe world) by claiming rhey feared us. I don't accept rhar. The facts are otherwise. Russia never gives in a poinr. lr has broken every promise ir made (re unification of Germany, elections in Poland, Yalra, Dulles aside (I hold nor much brief for him) some of rhe Communist propaganda has nilly-willy seeped inro you (however much you vociferously disclaim ir) when you say rhar rhe U.S. is guilty ("of imperialist warmongering sanctimonious neurotic aggression.") I'll burrress my views larer with other lerrers.

But to go back to personal matters, which I originally intended to.

"Beauty, poetry, freedom." Noble ideals of noble natures. But in a world so our of joinr and in a world where changes and evolutions move with vast cenruries-old inertia, the individual who seeks ro wrest these at once is either a sublime saint or a neurotic fool. It can't be done at once in one lifetime.

PortionJ of beauty, poerry and freedom, though, can be rescued.

I myself love beauty, poetry, and freedom. But I do what my nature

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99
allows me. True, in the beginning, when I loved a woman who grew incurably psychotic, I was handicapped; yet in my handicap I used the handcuffS as bracelets by letting my spirit feed in creative poetry and also by providing the best I could for Naomi. I did more than I could, but the odds were against me. (Some day I suspect - as they are even beginning it now, science will show that Naomi's illness was rooted in a molecular or atomic maladjustment of her brain or nervous system.)

(I hope you never know what it is to love a woman as I did and then have to lose her.)

Later, when Naomi was lost, I rescued some stay of comfort and home by remarrying, hoping, in our house, you would let down better roots here.

Yet, I presume, you had to follow, as you do, your own inner compulsion of your nature according to your own lights.

That great confession you speak of - that mystic message (which I now and then try to adumbrate in some of my poems) is an ideal the world moves very slowly to. It will take centuries. (Don't forget the physical man is millions of years old in development, while his mind has just begun to dawn on him.)

When you come back in July, as I hope (it's been so long since we saw each other) I'd like you to live here with us in Paterson. The double bed will hold you and Harold (he expects to stay here only till October, as he expects to live in N.Y. (There he will resume college in the Fall.) We bought him a metal clothes chest which stands in the cellar; and we'll get one also for you for your clothes. You'll find it comfortable here.

We might fix up the cellar to be more attractive so you can store all your impediments.

More anon.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. Save this letter and also some of my better ones. I'm saving some of yours.

Maybe - who knows - parts of our correspondence might be published when we both are dead and gone.

L.G.

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

March 10, 1 958

Dear Allen,

To continue -

Well, the French-Algerian situation is a bad mess. (See enclosed article.) There are two sides or more. Neither black nor white.

BUT to say, as you do, that this French situation is worse than Hungary

- here I reject vehemently your analogy. Hungary was, is, a black & white situation. The Hungarians desperately rebelled against a totalitarian terror, but were butchered by thousands of Russian tanks. That the Russians did not want to see their empire or satellite slip from their hands is no justification for the Russian bloody terror. To me, the Hungarian situation is the litmus paper touchstone: anyone who condones or whitewashes that Russian brutality is just either confused or mixed up or blinded to the facts. I accuse you, Allen, of those charges re Hungary. (I'd love to see Mark Van Doren's face when you fob off Russia's terrorism and bestial actions in Hungary by your earlier rationalization.) Please remember. I vehemently reject your whitewashing of Russia's action in Hungary.

You have a right to your opinion, according to your lights; but I retain my energetic insistence to differ with you, nor only on the Hungary situation but on your whole Beat Generation's views that everything that is, to paraphrase Pope, is wrong. Everything, according to your views, is all wrong, all in ruins, all warmongering, all immoral - except you (plural; i.e., the Beat Generation). Nobody wants "beauty, poetry, freedom" but you (plural). All husbands and wifes [sic] fornicate selfishly; all is false; all civilization messed up, all progress in the wrong, false track; all doomed.

Everything wrong except your Beat Generation. Well, all I can say is "Save me from that mixed up, confused view of the Beat Generation which maintains it has a blueprint on all Truth, obviously handed down to them in a mystic, blinding revelation from Heaven.

Your pot'm which I mulled over has, to me, flashes of insight and rich lines of compressed felicity, intermingled with false assumptions; viz. "no woman loves man with angel uniry." Well, mortals are not perfect angels, but, as mortals, many marriages possess true love. And so on. (I do wish you'd use sentences and punctuation so as to clarify many of your statements.) And cars: Are they all evil? Have they no use, beaury, expediency, value? Your mystic,

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

101
visionary vtew in the poem is brilliantly myopic. Has fervid energy. A creditable performance.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

April 1 0, 1 958

Dear Allen,

Well, Allen, how is the whirlwind of crises eddying about you there in Paris? Are dilemmas backing up against your door or flowing over your windowsill? Maybe you can block 'em off, for a while, with a nice girP How is chery Ia femme [sic P

What are you writing these days?

I'm having my Easter vacation now, though it is somewhat marred by reaching at Rutgers College two nights a week. I read the papers and draw my own confusions (as is my wont); I read the magazines and books for new viewpoints or srimularing vistas; so that, in that way, I can mend the hardening of my platitudes and prevent the shrinking of my latitudes, checking intellectual arthritis, ere. In other words, am having a good rime at my desk. My chinking I do on a brainy day.

Are you making any plans for coming back in July? I hope so. I've been missing you a grear deal.

Afterthoughts on some norions in your recent lerrer.

Dulles may be guilry of wrathful vacillation, ostentatious piery, aggrieved intent; and Eisenhower, guilry of dynamic inertia and earnest smugness and sancrimonious status quo and backing aggressively into the 1 8th cenrury; bur rhar is much berrer rhan the bestial bruraliry and the cynical barbarism of Khrushchev, who smears bloody many countries with merciless crime; kidnapping ideal words co cover cynical desporism. Eisenhower may be a

"big dumb cop," bur ar least he is nor bloody.

I rake the Liberal position: "the grearesr happiness for the greatest number," happiness being variable, according co the nature of the in-

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dividual - and rhe individual may be free ro be happy according ro his lighrs and disposition so long as his freedom does nor mar or obsrrucr someone else's freedom and happiness.

The Bear Generation are rebels wirh cause (of a disordered world) bur wirhour a Cause; all, ro rhem, is all wrong; only they in their specious humiliry and arrogam piery are righr; rhey go ro exrremes and rhrow our rhe baby wirh the dirty warer in rhe washing-basin.

More anon.

Love from your farher,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

April 16, 1 958

Dear Allen,

Glad ro ger your lasr lerrer.

Yes, you may keep rhe picrures I sem.

You're righr abour fame. Only rime will rell. Meanwhile, as you say, rhe genuine wrirer musr go ahead and lisren ro rhe dicrares of his own conscience.

Re my poem "Distances": lr is rrue rhar, in facr, you and I say rhe same rhing: rhar sociery is disordered; rhar money and lusr for power undermine men and narions; rhar mass media routinize, tranquilize, homogenize, wirh a steamroller, many groups imo a gelatinous conformiry and amorphous mediocriry; rhar man's inhumanity ro man, whar wirh rhe menace of rhe arom bomb, leaves gulfS berween man ro explore. I say I agree wirh you in part.

Where I disagree wirh rhe Bear Generarion is rhar ir sees no good and positive values anywhere ar all, at all. As I wrore, rhe B.G. rhrows our rhe baby with rhe dirty barh warer. The B.G. sees no leavening influences, no positive values in our modem rimes. lr disengages irself from all acrion, yielding only ro irs own undiciplined series of blind "kicks" - brightcolored beads withour a suing of purpose. The B.G. is nihilistic because ir recognizes no values excepr rhose "kicks"; ir rebels againsr everything.

"Whatever is, is wrong," ir fulminates.

I go, in part, wirh you in criticizing rhe ills and disorders of sociery. Bur I

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

103
see also positive values. I see men and women trying to make a better world (the A.D.A, the Socialists - not fantastically arrogant blind Commies - the U.N., the Brotherhood movements, Lehman, Stevenson, etc.). I see the joys of regenerating nature; I see joys in contemplating the harmonious order and wonder of rhe universe. 1 Jee a joy in having a Jon, like you, develop hiJ gift of poetry to experience the ecJtaJy of writing poetry; I see a thousand and one leavening inf/uenm feuding with evil inf/uenceJ. I see the delight in wrestling saniry and order from an absurd universe (Camus). I see science curing many ills. There iJ honey in the world beJide.J wormwood.

I read Gregory Corso's book of poems, GaJoline. I can't honestly say I understood all of it, but some parts I found interesting - poems like "Vision of Rotterdam," "Birthplace Revisited," "Mexican Impressions." Somehow, I'm fascinated by his line, "I pump him full of losr watches." As you wrote in your introduction, it is like opening "a box of crazy toys."

Otherwise all is quiet here. Spring has finally come with full energy and lavish sunlight; our garden is burgeoning. My night school classes at Rutgers make inroads on my time, but I have another month - and then I'll be free to do more writing and reading.

Here is a poem I dictated over the phone to the Poetry Editor of the N. Y.

TimeJ. The poem starts off rather in a mediocre way, bur, near the end, a few lines rescue it somewhat.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. I read almost 1 /3 of Kerouac's book, The Subterraneam, but I had to drop it. Lost interest. For me, it is formless and mutilated in irs English: wretched, abominable English sentence structure that makes a hodgepodge and mish-mash. Suppose here and there, a telling, vivid phrase floats among the flagellation and confusion and wreck of the English language, yet, on the whole, it did not communicate to me. Maybe, behind it all, hides "his confessional openness," as you say; nevertheless, it's not my meat; confusion compounded with wretched English. I'd flunk any pupil of mine who mangled the language like that. Sorry, but this is my honest opinion.

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P.S. Why wait co come home till Summer' How about coming home earlier. I miss you.

L.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Paris}

n.d (ca. late April 1 958}

Dear Lou:

Can't write much, have been preparing mss. for an anthology Grove is bringing out of young poets 1948-1956, 1 looking at old poems of mine & figuring what's besr. Will go co England around May I , give reading there for some small poetry group, $20 pay, Corso go along roo for kicks maybe read or record for BBC. "Transmuracion"2 is very good, char's one of rhe best of your poems recently, I guess a lor of rhe material you've used before bur here all adapted well together & has considerable power. 4th line cater I like 6th line also, 8rh line, last 3 best & sharpest for me. Great you could do chat on phone.

Happy chat you found Corso's book'' interesting. I was always really impressed by chat lose watches 4 coo (and similar phrasing in ocher poems).

It's his particular weird gift - an almost surrealist phrasing chat makes strange sense. The line means, as I understand it, in context, since he's revisiting unhappy scene of garbage Dirty Ears loss poverty, and sees the same poverty still there, tho he's escaped it, when it's image raises up co attack him (Dirty Ears aims a knife at me), he realizes he's now free, escaped on the road of his own beauty desire chru time, time has passed, he's no longer a kid involved with same ugly conditioning, he's escaped free of the tragedy of lower Ease Side, he's aware of death & time, he no longer attacks back with a vicious gun or knife, but pumps him full of lose watches - lost watches being rime gone by, realization of mortality, old forgotten contemplarions (as the hours of watches on ships) - while Dirty Ears, still caught in the environment, doesn't realize the immense change - the lose I . Donald M. Allen, ed., Th. Neu· A..,.;con Pottry: 1945-1960 (New Yorke Grove Press, 1960).

2. See "Out of Any Dearth," LG, CP. pp. 257-258.

3. Gasoline (San Francisco: Ciry Ligh[s Books, 1958).

4. See Gregory Co�. "Birthplace Revisi[ed," Gasoline. p. 3 1 .

Alltm and LouiJ Gimberg

1 05
watches, then, basically, as human consciousness - achieved by Gregory, denied alas to Diny Ears who's still hung up. What I like about that is the language and images - the most unpoetic, garbage cans, Lower East Side realities, Diny Ears, stairways, hand on gate (fantasy of returning a big Italian successful heroic hoodlum - which is, hoodlum of poesy) - all so realistic, and yet thru strange combinations capable of expressing very lucid and eternal thoughts. That's really making poetry of everyday life, the strangeness of the commonplace, writing about real things. He has a peculiar imaginative second-sight. There's another example in the poem

"Italian Extravaganza" 1 - the weird almost frightening beauty of "small purplish wrinkled head" - followed by the last two lines, comparison of the small coffin, a cause so small & real, and the 10 immense black Cadillacs of sorrow, almost pathetic the great display from the funeral home. Yet all done without abstraction, in simple images.

In the poem "Coit Tower,"2 the language is at its most imaginative - the situation is here he, the poet Gregory who was in Jail in youth, is looking down on Alcatraz from a hill: "And I cried there in your dumb hollows 0
rower (Coit Tower up on Telegraph Hill) clutching my Pan's foot (imagination, life, & consciousness & experience) with vivid hoard of Dannemora" - that seems a line worthy of Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill."

(Dannemora Gregory's prison.) I've cried reading that, his grief & understanding seem so great (underneath his facade of childish egotism).

The sun poem3 is an experiment at pure wild images without direct sense, just fantastic combinations - they do make a kind of mystic sense actually, since the mind has its own secret language, as in dreams, we're not always aware of the significance of certain compelling phrases - from another poem there is the line "Rose is my wise chair of bombed houses" -
which I don't at all understand - but it's a line that haunts me like some of Kubla Khanish mysticdoms. That's poetry. It takes a weird gift to imagine up a wise chair in a bombed house . . . . Spring started here too, a few trees in flower tho it's been chilly last week - I have a cold. Re Jack's prose, well I like it of course, my reason being that it has the same syntactical structure of fast excited spoken talking - this is an interesting event in prose development, and it's no less communicative to me than heard speech, mine, yours, his, - when you speak you also talk a little like that, especially when you're moved, excited, angry, or dizzy with happiness etc etc - heightened 1. Stt Gregory Corso, ''Italian Exrravanza,'' Gasoline. p. 3 1 .

2 . � Gregory Corso, "Ode to Coir Tower," Gaioline, pp. 1 1-13.

3. Sec Gregory Corso, "Sun," Ga!oline. pp. 25-26.

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speech in other words. Normal conversation does not necessarily follow formal syntax, nor need it as long as it's communicative. So written prose.

Perhaps you find it uncommunicated or uncommunicating because you expect to see a different written order of syntax. But it actually gets across very well, what he's describing, faithful to his own way of talk. It's obvious from On Road or Town & City that he can write normal prose, simple & straightforward. So if he writes experimentally one has to give credit for it being you know at least sincere & even intelligent, an approach, a try -
most people don't even try - and it isn't as if he hasn't personally sacrificed a lot to pursue his sense of craft - that book was written long ago without a hope of publication - as On the Road was written 8 years ago. I do find it interesting though - I know the girl he writes about - who took off her clothes & flipped - I heard her story about it - that was the way she spoke, the syntax even, her style of speaking - a very common style - he's caught her very well - and if you add his interpolations & private thoughts which he records semi-simultaneously with her monologues, & their conversation

- you have a very complicated but very real structure of events to try and get down on paper. Hemingway tried simplification & reduction (and was attacked for being too inhumanly stripped down) - Jack trying (as Proust & Celine) to include all the little private thoughts you normally wouldn't mention - so he arrives at a complicated sentence structure. It's not trying to be English sentence structure. It's trying to be American actual speech and thought - reproduction. So it shouldn't be judged by standards of a high school or college grammar course. It's not meant to be grammatical that way, it's meant to be right another way. Nor can one say that standard English syntax is the fixed and only standard way of transcribing human thought - all languages have different syntax structures - the Latin ones are one group - the German type inflected is another - and many primitive cultures have approaches to syntax that are almost incomprehensible to us (but make perfect sense to them - no verbs for instance in some languages, no adjectives in others). And there is Chinese syntax which I'm told is of a totally different order from ours. Syntax is only a tool to speak with, there are many syntaxes, & many variations possible to our tongue, common in use even, in talk - English grammar is only the formal way tied to fixed habits of feeling & communication - Jack, broken free of these fixed habits of thought, has to think & write his own way, find a mode. Look at the sentence I just wrote - it's crazy, bur it followed the spontaneous convolutions of my thought very flexibly - would I change my thought to fir the sentence structure better, or alter my thought & pare it down near &

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

107
leave out the hesitations, changes, and halts, interruptions, to make it fit a school copybook? I'd wind up writing gibberish if I tried to halt in midsrream & box it up neat to fit some imaginary standard. The ideal is for me a sensitive prose or poetry syntax or metric that is practical & follows the changes actually going on in the process of thinking or writing - where a normal metric or syntax works, fine - but where it doesn't apply, why' I no longer worry about that so much - just go my way - that's all any man can do - live - and do what he thinks practical. And real. See now take that last bit, and real, added on to the sentence. I thought it up next and added it you can follow my actual process of composition - what I mean is there directly no less and no more - I just rhoughr to say, and real, and added ir in, just like rhar. What freedom - and why nor? Language is to use nor dictate our thoughts. Bur so much of our lives & feelings are tied down to the limitations of what we're taught - rhis is rhe importance of striking our into variation & experiment - rhis is not nihilism but courage - nor really rhar - Joy' Well I'll end on elevated note. Love to everybody - wrote Gene ton ire - will rry Warsaw yer see under skirr of Iron Curtain perhaps. There is no Bear Generation it's all a journalist hex.

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

April 23, 1 958

Dear Allen,

I received my copy of Evergreen Review No. 4. Did you get your copy? If nor, do you want me to send you mine' Ir contains your long poem, "Siesta in Xbalba." Ir seems to me a bit roo long. There were a number of passages I liked; such as (p. 30) your dreaming back ro a gathering at a parry; and also, the feeling of ancient rimes shifting and intermingling with present time (p.

34) (p. 36); and, also, a passage prefiguring your future travels (p. 4 1 ). In the same issue, Ferlingherri gives a review of rhe rrial1 of your book, wirh excerpts of comments - all of which, though I read ir before, was interesting.

I. lawrencc: Ferlingheui, "Horn on Howl;· Er'tT�rem Rn!teu· I, no. 4 (Wimer 1957).

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Family BUJinm: 1 958

I see Ezra Pound was released from rhe asylum and will go ro Iraly. The way I look ar him is rhis: in yourh, he was a caralyric agenr, deanimaring rhe doldrums of feeble poerry. Larer, his verse became too cryptic and fragmenrarily occult for me; so I became bored with him. Then, when he broadcast anri-Semitism in Iraly and supported Hider in the latter"s abominations against the Jews, I despised Pound. Now I say, "Good riddance with Pound and the hell wirh him!" (I suggest thar you do not commenr on my attirude roward Pound, as my mind is made up.) Recently I was invited as a special guest at a luncheon and a reading by Robert Frost at the Paterson Srate Teachers College. (We did not eat with Frost, since he came in late, just in rime for his reading.) I enjoyed Frost: his homely, sage-like wit and wisdom flavored his deceptively simple lyrics with ambiguities and revealing double-meanings. It was all a rare treat.

I senr away for The Reporter in which the enclosed arricle was called ro my attenrion. 1 Ir's about your Beat Generation. (lr did not arrive yer, so I'll send rhe clipping in my nexr letter.)

Well, you see, your poeric efforrs are in the limelight, whether praised or condemned; nevertheless, rhe publicity gives you power. Not only the offbeat and the eccenrrics bur the sleek men in the ''Brooks Brothers" suit in All hail 0 America looks ro see what you are doing! Is not all this some cause for affirmative joy, Allen'

Just received your lasr lerter.

About Jack's prose. Synractical grammar follows and is deduced from rhe besr speakers and writers and is not fixed or foisred on communication. lr assisrs in clarity of communication. See Proust's senrences with other sinuosities and inrerpolations and simultaneities, as well as Henry James'

language, wherein, like a coiling serpenr, his senrence squeezes our nuances and shades of meaning.

I will half-allow you your explanation of rhe fluidities and looseness of synrax wherein rhe srream of consciousness inrermingles and inrerfuses with rhe outer, formal rhoughr; but here, nevertheless, there must be enough I . Eugene Burdick, "The lnnocenr Nihilists Adrift in Squaresville" Reporter. April -�• 1958.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

1 09
clues and transitions to communicate. I feel Kerouac's pell-mell, tumultuous chaotic style does nor yield communicative clarity. Carried just one degree more, and Kerouac's style becomes the confused outpouring of echolalea or the obscure outpouring of a disturbed person in a sanitarium.

Another thing: an is inescapably anifice; rhe arbitrary imitating fluidity for the sake of clear communication; otherwise, you have a clueless chaos. All an is arbitrary and fix form to simulate flow; else, you have the unsraunched disorders from a dictionary. All art is arrangement (see W. C. Williams). I feel that Kerouac, in his latest book, is too much disjointed and chaotic for me. The masters in writing have used the sentence but have varied it and given it such flexibility that in their own unique way they Jeem free and yet communicate. Limitations in an provide opportunities for exciting adventures in expression. Even Libeny needs laws for wise direction; else, "could a river be'"

More anon.

Love,

Louis

I received an invitation from the nominating committee to be on the Exec.

Board of the Poetry Society of America; bur I had to turn it down, since I teach at Rutgers those nights they meet. Well, I guess I'll reach at Rutgers for two years more; then I'll retire from all reaching (I'll be 65 rhen) and devore most of my rime to writing.

Another thought: the English sentence is a marvelously flexible structure: by irs various participles, phrases, subordinate clauses, ere., a writer can obtain variety and subtlety and relationship of thought. What Kerouac does

- and you often do - is to keep on racking short sentence after sentence at an interminable succession; until you destroy your ideas. Because all your ideas are of the same importance like a child's continual repetition of "and" and

"and," you blur your clarity and damage your communication. Personally and frankly, I think it's a bad way ro write. What saves Kerouac is his vividness of a phrase jumping up our of rhe text. I'm inclined to feel that, in his last book - as one writer declared - Kerouac is a vivid eye recording impressions but nor connecting them with his brain.

You are nor so bad as Kerouac but your method of obliterating rhe sentence structure blurs your clarity. No, I don't buy your method of interminably mcking on sentence after sentence ad infinitum.

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As I said in the other paper, an is arrangement and selection and maneuvering of words for the best effect. Your method you think is real: I think it's an easy way out. You are saved by the vehemence of your ideas and the vividness of your phrases or the felicity of your words

- but you move against obstacles that damage rather than strengthen your utterances.

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

{Paris}

May 24. 1 958

Dear Lou:

Thanks for letters and articles, the ). D. Adams a fine harvest. Strange to be there. Thought that the sentence he quoted from Kerouac contradicted his remarks on the prose, it's a good sentence by my lights, for reasons aforementioned - & the sharp picture of the junky girl. While in England, read the same sort of article in last Sunday's Observer by John Wain, an

"Angry Young Man" attack on me & Jack with lots of quotes, which satisfies me fine, as long as they keep quoting. Had a fine time in England tho as usual wound up broke & hungry at midnight at pavement on Piccadilly one evening - rescued by one David Archer, who fed us & gave us a little money for poetry's sake - he published first Dylan Thomas & Barker & Gasgoyne - showed us around London literary society & so got great glimpse of remnants of the Thomas era & his friends, & George Barker saw much of in Soho pubs - also I passed out a few anti A-bomb leaflets for fun, they were having a lobby of Parliament led by surrealists,

& anarchists. Saw more of England than last time, also, as I probably wrote, went to lunch at a ladies club with Edith Sitwell & had tea and a walk with Auden at Oxford - better time this time, he lone & sad away from Ischia, more approachable & friendly - in facr heard that at a party later he said he'd been out of sorts & had acted evil with me at Ischia - so I gave him a copy of Artaud poems (great modern dead Frenchman) that he'd never read - madhouse poetry sort of. And met all the teddy boys and bebop hoodlums & angels around Soho - one particular fellow named Adam, with a Mad comics What-Me-Worry' face & porkpie hat 17 years

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

I I
old, works in the complaint department of a pajama factory & spoke si: languages & was translating a small play of Brecht, a lower class East En< kid, speaks an exaggerated US bebop hiptalk swears & wears teddy bo: clothes - weirdest character I found there. So it was a great trip & th'

readings were OK.

Still here in Paris, doesn't look like Warsaw trip will materialize s1
thinking about heading home in a month or so. Have to raise fare back still I don't know how but expect it will turn up by magic so to speak sooner o later. Getting nostalgic for home & NY & see everybody - so be back thi summer sometime - July probably. Burroughs in psychoanalysis here s1
may stay longer; and Gregory will stay on, he has no home to go to anywa:

& likes Europe. Or maybe they'll come back around summer or fall toe nobody has any definite plans. Gregory working on an anthology of youn1

US poetry for some Germans who offered him a house in Goettingen so h may go there soon & settle down for as long as he can hold on. Discovere< another writer living downstairs from us, 20 years old & very sharp kid finished a novel with interesting prose, tho kind of unjelled novel, bu brilliant for someone so young, sort of Salinger like.

Nothing's happening in Paris - I mean about the Revolt, politics, excep a few day potato shortage - not seen the massed cops & missed what smal riots there were - appearance of everything the same as before - everybod·
shrugs and laughs at the politics that seems to be going on somewhere elsf Very safe here. No action at all.

3rd stanza of "Pond" 1 very good, I didn't dig "Love Song" too much

"The Quarrel" seemed the best, very funny tho, or was it age, interjection �
repeat. The sharpness of the poem is somewhat lamed by the seems-to-m trite inversion "no more will I flout you" & dull rhyme that follows, & fla moral. I thought the poem excellent but found the end not excellent as th idea & phrasing of all the rest. What you think? As Williams once said, "i1
this mode perfection is basic." Enclosed find the clippings. "Quarrel" is on of the best of your poems, can it be fixed up?

I'm writing a little but not well or anything, mostly automatic ramblin,g I wonder what NY will be like on return. It'll be hard to keep some kind c non commercial, non hypocritical social, non bullshit balance - pressure al the time to do this or that, for money, or posicion, or ego. But it should be great happy ball & I'll meet a lot of strange people. I think need for makin1
money

I . S.. ""Pond,"" LG, CP. p. 3 1 8.

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some kind of inreresring way ro be a good parh - mighr rake up acring, bir parrs or something. I won'r be reading much. Hear rhere's a grear deal of ir in Village now. Well, larer. I'm snowed under as usual wirh lerrers & crying ro ger rhem all ar once. Paris lovely & green righr now and wearher warm, I boughr some whire sneakers & new bluegrey reashirr & French Levis. Srill rorn corduroy black coar. Did you ever receive rhe Genet book I sene by mail 2 monrhs ago' Or was ir seized by rhe Cusroms' I'll send Henry Miller nexr.

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

June 4. 1 958

Dear Allen,

I was glad ro receive your lerrer dared May 24.

Found your account of English rrip inreresring, whar wirh rhe intermixture of weird characrers and poers of fame.

Thanks for your srricrures on my poems you returned. I musr say rhey (rhe poems) are nor of my besr. lr's puzzling rhar some of my besr poems poems thar won prizes, ere. - keep going on rhe rounds wirhour any acceptances. I have fairh in them, rhough, and feel rhar eventually rhey will see lighr of day.

Here is a clipping of a review of a book on The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men. I ordered rhe book and will save ir for you. I'm saving, in a bookshelf in rhe cellar, all rhe Allen Ginsberg clara, clippings, ere.

Also, here is a comic wirh reference ro the Bear Generation!

This Sunday we are having our annual Ginsberg Picnic of rhe whole family. Expecr abour 35 people. Wish you were here.

In July, when you are ready ro come home, wrire me wherher you need fare home. Berween Eugene and me, we'll garher rhe funds. Ler me know whar ir will cosr. Or, could you work your way by boar? I'll speak wirh Eugene abour rhe latrer.

Did you receive my birthday gifr of ren dollars ro you ro arrive on June 3 '

Happy Birthday again! !!'

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

1 1 3

All is quiet here. In three weeks, school is over. Tra-la!!

I miss you.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. I see, our of che confusion and rurmoil in France, de Gaulle will cry co bring order from chaos. It seems co me - as are many things in life - it was a choice of rhe lesser evil.

Write soon again.

P.S.S. Yes, I received the Genet book. Rather scabrous. I didn't care for ic much. Sorry.

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg

9 Git /e Coeur

PariJ 6

June 4. 1 958

Dear Lou:

Your lener & 10$ on June 3. Thanks, I went our had drink at ritzy bar on Champs Elysees, I seldom otherwise gee co.

Well looks like rhe whole French scene is permanently cooled, and everything worked our alright, with de Gaulle who, if he continues as he presendy announces - some kind of large concession co Algerian democracy

- will solve rhe whole problem. Cops still all over rhe screer bur no real opposition - the lefc wing has nothing co complain abour since de Gaulle's program is more liberal chan char of rhe socialises (who supported rhe war great shame) - and rhe communists here scill grumbling bur they have no ocher program chan a civil war for the same goals which he proposes co gee bloodlessly . . . . The lesson, if any, or among rhe lessons, is char rhe left wing here sore of bankrupt & rhe right wing lunatic, & the moderates sensible - if de Gaulle can be called a moderate - rho he's more an independent who just kept our of che whole idiot tangle - as if maybe 500
people created an entirely artificial war situation which lasted for years and years & involved the whole nation, with both sides wrong, Algerian Rebels

1 1 4

Family Business: 1 958

& French Army - all cleared up in a few days wirh some simple sensible arrangements. I hope de Gaulle cackles Russia wirh rhe same lucidity -
break rhe Easr-Wesr deadlock which seems a similar piece of arrificial lunacy on borh sides as I've been crying co say.

Spent day ryping up some Burroughs mss. for Chicago Review - rhey offer co publish him complere ar lasr if no one else will - so he's recasting material in form acceptable co US censorship. 1

Everything here fine, lors of people around. I'm casring around now for some way co gee home, soon as I can. Problem is boar ricker, or ger job on ship. Haven'r figured a way yer bur somerhing usually has rurned up & will again. As I rhink I wrore I should be back in July sometime. Earlier if an opporruniry rises earlier . . . ship our of Rorrerdam or somerhing like rhar

. . . Whar'd Eugene do for birrhday, spend day home or go co Paterson?

Gor $20 for BBC rebroadcast of some poems, and made anorher rape of

"Sunflower [Surra)" rhere, wirh Gregory also, when rhere, so have more coming in . . . also sold some poems rhere & will rry co gee something in rhe Paris Review here - rhe ediror carne by yesterday looking for material, so rhar looks possible. Said he had wanted co ask before, bur Donald Hall edired poerry & was againsr rhe idea I guess - now rry co bypass him - rhis being one revolution I'm in favor of. Was cold some conservative gem wrore Partisan (a man who edirs a new criticism arc magazine & wrires arc for rhem) & proresred rheir publishing Gregory (& presumably me) on rhe ground ir vulgarizes rhe mag. All sores of arracks in English papers also, rather like ). Donald Adams arrimde. Almosr like a dream (forrunarely nor niremare) co see rhese rypes who have always been anti-Pound-Elior-ercexperimental now come our wirh same sorr of proresrarions againsr work I'm living rhrough - rarher like a pleasant dream in which rhe world shrinks as I ger older - and whar suspicions & intuitions I had when younger confirmed by subsequent experience. Adams always did bug me.

Bur all rhe publicity is fine, and will only bankrupt rhe squares in the end, as far as I can see. Nor rhar Squaredom will ever exhausr irs maniacal energy.

I begin co see why Pound wound up paranoiac. Pogo ar least has sense of humor 2

I. The selections from Nakf:d L11nch. published in the Fall 1958 issue of Chicago Revieu·. set off a furious controversy. The magazine's editors intended ro publish ocher excerpts in the Wincer 1958 issue, but officials from the University a( Chicago, which sponsored the magazine, refused to allow it. Six of rhe magazine's editors resigned in protest, and a new ··underground'' magazine, Big Tablt.

published by former Chicagfl.Rez,ieu• edirors Irving Rosemhal and Paul Carroll, printed the excerpts.

2. The satirical carrcxm strip had poked fun at the Beat Generation.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

1 1 5
notice new style by younger writers 20-24 yr olds - in MeaJure & elsewhere - a sort of clipped laconic syntactical change - avoidance of angelic bullshit I indulge in - speech pared down to very hip conversational stoicism almost - almost incomprehensible, since they never finish sentences artificially, just break off with a dash or . . . when first idea of the phrase is written down - and move on to the next perception - difficult reading - but there is I think-beginnings of another "generation" of poesy and a new style. I'll write later.

Love,

Allen

I've been reading thru Vachel Lindsey's complete poems - some Negro rhythms very original & great - "Santa Fe Trail" I like.

1 9 5 9

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

A !len Gins berg
do City LightJ

261 ColumbuJ Ave

San FranciJco, California

May 1 2, 1 95 9

Dear Louis:

[ . , .] Busy organizing poesy activities & reading. Spender' heard m e read

"Kaddish" & objected to the intrusion of personal material. But then he dropped in on Parkinson's office in Berkeley & said he hadn't been able to forget it & had begun writing (for the first time in years of dryspell) poems with personal material. Then he came by Parkinson again and asked him to ask me to send it to him to print in Encounter. Took him about a week to hear it & get the point & accept the possibility of that kind of poetry - very good to hear that he did finally see. Unfortunately the poem's already promised out.

Horrible in-group article in PartiJan by Diana Trilling2 - rather selfsmug & bitchy & all balled up psychologically. She's trying to be sympathetic too. Rather embarrassing her mistaking that "Lion for Real"·1
poem as a "love" poem to [Lionel] Trilling. I dedicated it to him as a sort of ironic gesture since he's the Analyst or Professor who sees "no value" in the experience of the Lion which is supposed to be God, not Lionel Trilling as she apparently mistook it. Rather ugly mistake, I must say.

I. Poec Scephen Spender.

2. Diana Trilling's essay, "The Ocher Nighc at Columbia" (Parti!an Rtvim·. Spring 1959), was a report of a reading by Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Peeer Orlovsky ac Columbia University on February 5, 1959.

3. See ""The Lion for Real," AG, CP. p. 1 74.

l i B

Family BUJineJS: 1 959

I got a check for $450 from Kerouac's Agent for my parr in collaborating with Jack on an article for Holiday. Good deal. Now I have some money and can come home slowly & see the Grand Canyon. Half of it's Peter's who also worked on the article rho.

The weather here is beautiful - you ought to visit here some day - bright blue sky like North Africa on a nice day.

Here are some portions of the "Kaddish" that are ready, I don't think you've seen these. They are extensions of the rhythmic organization I began in "Howl [Parr] Ill." This not the final version but near it. The Caw Caw Caw section is like a fugue with two parts that meet & harmonize in the last line - which is a very weird line. Built on the structure of a fugue, like Bach.

The "With your eyes" section is an extension of the stanza shape-form of

"Howl [Parr] III," used sort of as a stanza, it builds up 3 rimes & the third it diminishes back down. I sent these sections to Yugen.

We are doing a benefit reading to finance Measure mag here for another issue. Wieners is a good kid, but no money & not a businessman.

What's happening with you, & Gene' I sent him a postcard. Love to the family, to Edith & to you,

Love

Allen

Staying here at Phil Whalen's apartment, eat at Chinatown cheap in evenings.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 14, 1959

Dear Allen,

Was glad indeed to hear from you.

Thanks for your sending me the section of "Kaddish."

I like it very much; ir is nostalgic and poignant; some lines are he-drtwrenching, what with not only you but me being at that time in the middle of the anguish. Some of the lines are poetically magnificent and imaginatively vivid.

I do object to one line: about the "beard about the vagina." It's bad taste and offends my sensibilities. Also, to a lesser degree, I have

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Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

1 2 1
reservations about all those "caw caws," though you might have something there.

Eugene is O.K. as well as his brood. They were here one afternoon, and we enjoyed the antics of the children.

Nothing much new about me. Pupils from Clifton H.S. and Barringer H.S. in Newark are doing terms papers about my poetry; the Rutgers Alumni monthly is doing an interview of me shortly. I sent on the ms. of my third book of poems to the Indiana University Press about two weeks ago to Mr. Bernard Perry but have not yet heard their decision.

I miss you and hope you are having a good time.

Write me more.

Love from your father,

Louis

P.S. Yes, I read Diana Trilling's article in the PartiJan Review. Frankly, I did not think it was so bad as you make it out to be. Too bad about her mistake about the Lion poem.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

{San FranciJco, California}

March 20, 1 95 91

Dear Louis -

Got your letter & poems, which I return as per instructions. They are all fine. What happened with Indiana? I'm OK, I will be here another few weeks, then start home slowly, overland. I went down to Stanford Univ. the other day to be subjected to a research experiment with a new drug - LSD-25 (Lysergic Acid) which Huxley 2described in his books DoorJ of Perception

& Heaven & Hell. It was astounding - I lay back, listening to music, & went into a sort of trance state (somewhat similar to the high state of Laughing Gas) and in a fantasy much like a Coleridge World of Kubla Khan saw a vision of that part of my consciousness which seemed to be permanent I. AG misdared rhis lener. Ir was acrually wrinen on May 20, 1959.

2. Aldous Huxley, novelist and early pioneer in psy,hedelic drugs.

1 22

Family Business: 1 959
transcendent and identical with the ongm of the universe - a sorr of identity common ro everything - but a clear & coherent sight of it.

Rather beautiful visual images also, of Hindu-type gods dancing on themselves. This drug seems to automatically produce a mystical experience. Science is getting very hip. It's a very safe drug - you ought ro contact someone at Rutgers who's doing experiments with it & try it -
like a cosmic movie.

The line about the "beard around the vagina" is probably a sort of very common experience & image that children have who see their parents naked

& it is an archetypal experience & nothing ro be ashamed of- it looks from the outside, objectively, probably much less shocking than it appears to you I think - ir's a universal experience which almost everyone has had rho nor many poets have referred to it bur it can do no harm ro be brought to consciousness.

Caw Caw I still rather like since it's the climax of a sort of musical form, a fugue - two themes (Caw Caw & Lord Lord - representing realistic bleakness-pain-materialism, versus Lord Lord which is mystical aspiration) rhar alternate and in the last line merge into one cry. I've read it aloud here

& it sounds alright.

I'll be here rill around June I (I'm going back ro Stanford then for another bout with the Lysergic Acid) and then see if I can find someone with a car driving east - would like ro see the Southwest & Grand Canyon on rhe way home.

The Jet plane ride here (5 hours) was like a movie of Topographical Geography.

This Sarurday all the poets get together ro give a reading ro raise money ro resuscitate Measure magazine & so that'll be on irs feet again at least for another issue.

Partisan asked me ro reply ro Diana T's article bur I am busy with other worlds so I'll shut up & let things rake their own course. Hope you are O.K.

& having nice springtime.

Love,

Allen

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

1 2 3

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 24, 1 959

Dear Allen

Glad ro get your letter of May 20.

I showed your sections of the KADDISH poem ro Eugene who liked ir, especially the lase rwo pares. I chink, on reconsideration, char rhe line "Caw Caw and Lord Lord" are good: rhe unity of the assonance and rhe contrasting implications of the rwo names do hover above the grave.

However, I still have reservations about the "beard . . . .

" Ir still offends
my rasre, and I object ro it. Definitely. Bur the decision is yours . . . . In words, begin responsibilities . . . .

The other day I read an item in rhe N. Y. Times. Ir seems char a group of Americans, including some reachers and their wives, were surrounded in Kremlin Square by some Russians. Amid a host of various questions, suddenly was asked, "What do you chink of Kerouac and Ginsberg, of the Beat Generation?"

Irrelevant, ro me, was rhe answer by rhe Americans: "'They are not high on our list." My own comment is that it is wonderful that your name has spread to such far-flung regions. I am happy about ir.

That was an interesting experiment you had with Lysergic acid. I have heard about ir. I think Waugh mentions ir in one of his narrative books.

Well, the fantasy in which you floated and on which you were borne on some mysterious waves to some transcendental first source is a mystical experience. My own opinion is char rhe drug chloroforms rhe consciousness and that the subconscious into which have poured and have been deposited sensory impressions during your life floats up and swarms up into a heterogeneously intermingled surge. Yet, these are all but sensations originally sunken into rhe mind from THIS LIFE. Science knows of no ocher.

The only ocher explanation, according ro Jung, might be that these floating impressions might be some archetypal remnants from the racial subconscious sleeping in rhe genes. About rhe latter, I should like to consult some scientific expert on human biology. Meanwhile, why not enjoy the sensation and extract some poetry from the illusion?

I have nor heard from Mr. Bernard Perry of rhe Indiana University Press.

He has had ir abour a month now.

If you see Wieners, give him my regards. He is holding a poem of mine,

1 24

Family BusineJs: 1 959
called "Still Life," 1 about the atmosphere in 324 Hamilron Ave. when you were in college, Eugene was away in the army, and I was surrounded by ghosts . . . .

Regards, too, to Ferlingherri. Have him send me a catalogue of his new issues; I'd like to order some that interest me.

Take care of yourself.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(New York City}

n. d (ca. late October 1 9 59}

To My Father in Poetry

As often, on the phonograph, in youth

I heard your voice half rremble near a rose,
some image of eternity . . . the nasal hall
of ancient colleges . . . and heartbreak knows
at last what Hebrews in a row
moan in a Synagogue thru endless time

. . . up to the wall, here on the New York street full of Puerto Ricans . . . and your aptest rhyme can nor bring back that knowledge ro the mind
that has forgot . . . What lightning on the jagged mount?

What woman weeping in a long grey hall'

I can· t account

For all my hatred of the forms you used
knowing full well the bags of intestines & eyes the lungs and sputum classrooms of the grave
all the experience that brought you to your sighs.

l. See "'Srill Life," LG, CP. p. 253.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

1 2 5

Father, I read you i n a n ancient book
and as you prophesied I know you best
and love you most when the last page is turned and hear the echo of your soul in my own breast and night is quiet, and I have forgot the rest.

notebooks 1958

Dear Lou -

Here is a strange deformed rhymed poem I wrote in 5 minutes one night last year after reading thru the book of Jewish poetry. Thought it would please you, tho some of it is awkward & obscure.

Love,

Allen

Everything is fine, working thru some notebook material on that politics I
poem -

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

October 23. 1 959

Dear Allen,

Thanks for sending me the poem of yours called "To My Father in Poetry."

A minor demur: Why should you hate the forms I use? The house of poetry contains many mansions, among them regular forms and free verse ones. Poetry is where poetry is. To exclude regular forms which the bulk of the best poets of times present and past have used only mutilates the fundamentals of poetry.

As to the main idea of your poem, it is a valid and seems a true one; namely, there is something to the fact that my soul does echo in yours.

(little did I know, when I wrote my poem, "To My Two Sons,"2 about thirty or so years ago in a dinky, dilapidated room with tawdry furnishings in James St., near the Newark Library, that my lines were prescient and prophetic of a dark note in our future years!)

1 . Most likely "Europe! Europe!" (See AG, CP, p. 1 7 1 .) 2. See "To My Two Sons," LG, CP, p. 144.

1 26

Family Businm: 1959

Glad co hear you are busy working ar your poems.

We enjoyed our sray wirh you ar your place. Frankly, I feel rhar, however dingy a place ir might be - even less dingy rhan rhe one I had in James Srreec memories ago - what really counted and counts is rhe glow of creative poetic acrivicy rhar illuminates rhe place and transforms ir ro a happy habitation for rhe soul's endeavors.

By che way, did you see Eugene's poem in roday's N. Y. Times' I'll save a copy for you, in case you missed ir.

Love a-plenty from

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

Saturday morning, November 21 (1 959}

Dear Allen,

I obtained some copies of rhe London Times Lit. Supplement and saw your poem. 1 Congratulations! I am proud of you. The poem is a feature!

My own poem, I was surprised, did not appear in rhe issue. Could rhey have raken ir for a subsequent regular number?

Lee me give you my reaction co your poem. First, whar did nor appeal co me. There was no punctuation nor any sentence srrucrure co guide rhe reader; rhen, no transitions co help rhe readers, for heterogeneous images crowded nilly-willy upon each other in unrelated fashion. Then, roo, some pares of ic were obscure: rhe metaphors were, for me, nor clear. Whar does

"Dearh co Van Gogh's Ear" mean? I realize thar your mode is semi-surrealistic and has a validity, bur, candidly, ir is nor my cup of rea.

Besides, some lines, as "nobody publishes a word rhar is nor cowardly robot ravings of a depraved mentality," are nor rrue. Really, nobody publishes anything worthwhile? Only you'

Now, on rhe good side. You have mixed in rhe smoke and fury some scarding, imaginative images flashing our! True poetic genius!

Bravo! I like also such a sage statement as government will fail bur nor rhe country. Then again, your fiery indictment of rhe God of money I . "Deach ro Van Gogh's Ear," TimeJ Literary Supplement, November 6, 1959. (See AG, CP, pp. 167-1 7 1.)

Allen and Louis Gimberg

1 27
is a good and valid one. All in all, your poem, in general, is a lusty, fiery, energetic, modern outcry and diatribe, a slashing, burning jeremiad against the false god of money! The poem should add laurels to your world-wide reputation.

I look forward to seeing you on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday.

Pride and love from

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

December 27. 1959

Dear Allen,

What did the doctor say about your illness? Lee me know, as soon as it is convenient for you to phone.

I missed you after you left.

It was good to exchange ideas with you. While our methods in writing poetry may differ, we both aim at the central ideal of greater awareness, deeper insight, and richer delight in the astonishing phenomenon of life.

You use the outpouring, torrent-like, telescoping, run together semisurrealistic line; while I use the compressed, controlled traditional (fundamental) line. But both aim at the flashing revelation of the metaphor with its lightning of delight.

About your view of old about Hunky 1 [sic]: I am not unaware of a certain nobility of your concept of love (a central and divine principle of the world).

Yet such is the inertia of society and its laws (made for the greatest good, the greatest number) chat, as a father, I don't want my son to get hurt. I like a statement Roosevelt once made: "I sometimes compromise in certain matters in order to be present in the furure to be able to decide on a greater matter."

When you'll have a son, you'll see the feeling I have.

(Parenthetically, does the fact that one writes a book entitle him to break fundamental laws? May one sreal or rape because he has a good command of

1 28

Family Business: 1 959
language or writes a book? I'm thinking still about your attitude to Hunky once.)

Love.

Your father,

Louis

P .S. I was lonesome for you, after you left.

I . Herberr Huneke, the Times Square husder and percy chief befriended by Allen, William Burroughs, and orhe�. Allen's association wich Huneke led to Allen's arrest in 1948, and while Louis Ginsberg found it difficult ro forgive Huneke for his role in Allen's arreSl, Allen had no such problem, and he cominued. co see him (and help him), from rime ro rime, over the next three decades.

1 9 6 0

In mid-January 1 960, Allen arrived in Chile, where he and Lawrence Ferlinghetti participated in a writm' conference at the University of Concepcion. Not surprisingly, Allen decided to take advantage of his being flown to South America. and. for the better part of the next six months, he visited Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru.

Years earlier, William Burroughs had told him of a hallucinogenic drug called ayahuasca, or yage, supposedly the most powerful hallucinogen naturally available, and Allen was eager to visit the Amazon region and try the drug himself Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

{Santiago, Chile}

March 8, 1 960

I'll be in Peru in 2 weeks so write me there c/o US Embassy, Lima Dear Louis:

Got your letter & poems, now back in Santiago staying with a poet Nicanor Parra. My checks from City Lights have been (as usual in traveling) delayed or lost in transit and so am waiting here another week till my mail gets straightened our, then I'll fly up to La Paz, Bolivia. My planeticket expired, so I am giving a lecture at Univ of Chile this Friday to make up the $40
necessary to extend the planeticket. I'll be gone another month then, between Peru and Bolivia. Everything is fine here, I crossed over to Argentina and saw a lot of Andes and some very marvelous lake landscape

- tho didn't go far beyond the Argentine Barriloche town on the border. I eat lunch here daily in the poet's cafe & meet a lot of famous old Chilean literateurs & veterans of ancient literary latinamerican wars, notably one Pablo de Rokha. Will visit [Pablo] Neruda this week too. Parra is professor of Newtonian Mechanics & had studied at Oxford, a very intelligent and

1 30

Family Businm: 1 960
sympatico man, & good poet - City Lights put out a book of bad translations of his work. "Kaddish" is getting translated here too, so I'll probably have a second book out here. Meanwhile all's well & I'm getting familiar with the scene somewhat like SF & my Spanish is improving.

Conditions for writing letters are very difficult - am downtown usually daytimes, and nights there are no lights to write by, so will not send many letters for a week or so. I'll write from La Paz next probably. I'm fine, hope you're well. I must say the communists here are very strong and much more interesting than in the States - mainly because here there are outstanding labor & hunger problems, the masses are poor, and the Reds seem to be the only active party interested in actually changing the situation. Saw Eisenhower on the street here & heard a speech he gave to American Colony in a theater - he got mixed up in middle of a sentence answering a student union open letter & talked weird.

OKOKOKOK LOVE

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 14, 1 960

Dear Allen,

Received your card of May 5 and am glad you are well.

I miss you here and wonder when you will get back.

Still, I feel that your sojourn in S. America should be salutary for your health, seeping in the quiet rural atmosphere and being away from the hectic N.Y. scene.

Ellie Dorfman1 writes me often and keeps me informed of the garde scene. She sent me Don Allen anthology The New American Poetry in which you are, of course, included. 2 Have you seen the volume?

Meanwhile, your name is accumulating more fame. The April's Reader's Digest had a condensation from a Life story; and a book, The Beat Scene, 3 will I. Elsa Dorfman, phorographer and friend of both Allen and Louis Ginsberg.

2. The anthology contained a large selection of Allen's work: "The Shrouded Stranger,"' "Malesc Cornifici Tuo Catullo," "Sunflower Sutra," ''A Supennarker in California," "Howl,'' ''Sather Gate Illumination,"' ''Message,'' "Kaddish" (an excerpt), and "Notes for Huu:l and 011Nr Poetm."'

). Elias Wilemz eel, The Beat Scme (New York: Corinth Books, 1960).

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

1 3 1
appear soon. I presume you know abour it. I am saving all the Allen Ginsberg data for you.

Nothing new here. I am busy, at this rime, with heavy school chores; college examinations are in the offing; book reports. Still, I see the end of rhe runnel. I have set rhe dare of my retirement on January 3 1 , 1 96 1 . In other words, I have one more term - which will mark forty years rhar I have been at CHS.

Edith is working, as you may know: she gets bored staying home. Harold is the perennial scholar, living in N.Y. and attending Columbia. Eugene and Connie are OK. Tomorrow we shall run in and visit them. Otherwise, things are running in the same old way.

I may have Dave Haselwood of Auerhahn do a book of poems for me. I have enough poems for rwo books. In a few weeks, when I can concentrate on ir, I'll pick our some of my best poems published and unpublished, in and our of my Morning in Spring ms. So I may have rwo volumes ready: one Auerhahn will get our and the other will be making rhe rounds rill something fortunate srrikes. What think you' Ellie Dorfman seems ro be my unofficial agent or mediator or go-between.

Write me a long lerrer and tell me how you are and when you plan ro come home and what you are writing.

Regards from Edith.

Love from your father

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 2 1 , 1 960

Dear Allen,

Glad indeed to get your card and ro read of your insatiable zest for reave!

and adventure. You might as well rake ir all in and absorb ir while you are still unimpeded and are on rhe scene.

Did anyone send you a copy of The Beat Scene' The articles and rhe prose exposition are nor rhe best, bur rhe profuse pictures - you're everywhere make rhe book interesting. I'm saving you a copy, as well as other material rhar crops up about you.

How does ir feel ro be world-famous? I am very proud and happy about ir1

1 32

Family Bminess: 1 960

All's quiet here. I have a few more weeks of paper work for my reaching; and then I'll get down ro the business of sifting my poems ro get our the very best volume I can for Dave Haselwood of rhe Auerhahn Press. He writes ro Miss Ellie Dorfman that he keeps looking forward ro issuing a volume of my poetry.

We miss you here and talk about you often. Hope you get back soon and tell me all about your adventures. Hope you'll stay here with me for a spell.

Absorb the peace there and let it heal you.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Huanuco, Peru
do US EmbaJJy

Lima, Peru

June 2, 1 960

Dear Louis

Forgive my spareness in writing, bur occupied traveling, what quiet hours I get I try ro write in journals or poetry. Now sruck in a small rown on way ro jungle & writing letters finally - wrote Eugene Birthday letter roo today.

Enclosed a lousy phoro from Lima newspaper. I had given a good poetry reading here & will have a small book of translations published here roo - so they rake pictures of my beard whenever they can.

I'm delighted you accepted Haselwood's offer - it's a very good deal, and I'm getting a book our with him roo, later. Give him the best book you can

- I mean the cream of crop. If many copies sell, that's all ro your credit. If few copies sell, you can always reprint the good poems in a hardback book.

So there's no point not purring best foot forward. I got a ron of letters from Ellie Dorfman - I wrote her back bur I'm sure nor what she wanted ro hear.

[ . . .

] Bur the point of Haselwood press is, rhar good & discriminating poets do see it. I hope I get back in rime ro see your mss. & make sure you don't hold our your pearls. - Nor seen Beat Scene bur am so far away it's only a nightmare, all that bad journalism. I'll see it when I get back.

The solitude been very good - this afternoon rook a nap & heard in a

Allen and Louis Gins berg

1 3 3
dream some very strange Divine Music. Being "world-famous" is a minor child play compared ro the beaury & terror of what I can guess of the narure of rhe universe. That is ro say, most of my conscious acriviry is concerned with rhar obscure parr of the mind which conneci:s with rhe Creator. I am more & more convinced I'll wind up srudying mind-control in India for a few years, later. Meanwhile been writing a lor & srudying Inca & pre-Inca archeology, & gotten interested in funerary urns and ceramics which is an extensive field here & nor much known. The ceramic (pots & pottery sculprure including representational ponraits 2000 years ago) arts here were as highly developed as any civilization in the world before Christ's rime. I'll bring back some samples.

Give my regards ro Hannah & family, & Clara and kids, & Grandma, if she's in any condition to remember. And Abe, if he's in any condition ere.

I got copy of Don Allen's anthology - it's prerry good but there are some gaps - the Creeley selection is poor & the poems difficult so Creeley's charm doesn't come thru. The Kerouac section is too small and scanry. And Gregory Corso's selection is nor his best poems, like "Bomb" & "Power." Have you seen Corso's new book? 1 - Did Reader's Digest repeat that srory about Edith Sirwell? I saw a letter she wrote correcting Life, bur R.D. probably rook no note of that. - Well, delighted that you're done with school next year. Maybe if we all have rime we can drive down ro Mexico or fly.

I repeat, please select the very best for Auerhahn - they can be reprinted in a collected works, or a hardback volume later if you're not satisfied with Auerhahn sales and splash. Bur the book won't make no splash if you give him secondary work & hold out your gems for some furure fantasy - publisher because publishers are ( 1 .) hard to get (2.) srupid. Have a ball with this book. Forget about tomorrow.

Enclosed the clippings of poems 1 . "Golden Morning" - All golden is trite for you, i.e. you've used that trick. Why nor make an image, leaves golden, or sun golden, ere. [ . . .] 2. "Autumn Leaf"2 is one of the best poems - almost perfect I'd say except for possibility rhar the panicularization or individualization of The Leaf, a leaf, is slightly lacking - some local color - perhaps in place of "a fragile, wafted" - a red veined leaf, a brown dry - some visual focus on the image of the leaf itself. I dunno. However the poem is quire exquisite. 3. "The Kiss" less deep - rho reminds me of Donne sryle.

I'm running our of paper. Enclosed two poems. Love ro you as always. I'll be seeing you soon - another month to finish with the jungle & a few l. Happy Birthday of Death (New York: New Direcrions, 1 960).

2. See "Au<umn Leaf on a Pool," LG, CP, pp. 225-226.

1 34

Family Businm: 1 960
rhings I wanr ro look up rhere - local wirch-docrors & herbs. I'm all OK and feel fine & sirring ar rable in bar downsrairs from my 40¢ a nire horel room in small rown.

Love,

Yr Son,

Allen

I'll be back in Lima in 2 or 3 weeks - wrire me rhere.

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

June 10, 1960

Dear Allen,

Glad indeed ro ger your lerrer and ro find our how you are.

You say norhing abour earrhquakes. How far are you from rhem?

Yes, I've resolved rhar I'll pur my besr foor forward wirh Auerhahn Press. I wonder why Haselwood wanrs my book' He was in rouch wirh Ellie Dorfman by phone urging her ro solicir my book. As I say, I'll pull our my besr poems from my mss. and from uncollecred and published and unpublished poems and presenr rhe very besr I can. School is over in rwo weeks so rhar rhen I'll bend my arrenrion ro ir. Ellie seems ro wanr ro ger inro rhe acr by helping me seleC[ poems. I hope you ger back in rime ro give me advice. I'll rry ro hold ir up a bir, rhough I hazard a guess I'd like ro have it all complete by rhe end of July.

Being world famous does pur ar rest one's more surface or even hidden strivings of rhe ego and sarisfies rhe age-old infirmiry of man: i.e. fame.

Wirh rhar aside, rhe rrue inner being may rhen, unmolesred by more worldly agirarions, sink deeper inro rhe core of himself ro search our a link berween him and rhe universe, sink inro some archerypal submerged, subliminal region (cf. Jung), when Time was young . . . . Do nor rhe Inca ruins and urns give you a queer feeling of some mysrerious imminence, as if Time were immurable, immovable, while ir is man who changes and who rhinks Time makes rhose felonious marks on him and rums him ro dusr.

The family is O.K. On June 19, we give our annual Ginsberg cook-our here in our garden. Sorry you will be missing in body; no doubr, all will wanr ro know abour you. Everybody is O.K. Abe is working, rhough for how long, ir is problemarical.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

1 3 5

[ . . .

]

Regarding Don Allen's anrhology, I think you came out perhaps the best. Maybe I'm prejudiced. But your "Howl" and pares of "Kaddish" are strong and moving. I like Madeline Gleason, Ferlingheni, Doyle, and a few others. But most of it, frankly, I thought fragmenrary, pretenrious, chaotic, fustian rather than Faustian.

Really, some of those youngsters think the world began when they opened their eyes and that with them begins poetry ! ! !

I have taken a "Sabbatical" from college teaching, s o that next year I shall not teach at Rutgers. The authorities wrote me that, whenever I wish to go back, they will give me classes. As for high school, my retiremenr date I have set as of Feb 1 , one more term. This will complete just forty yeats of teaching at dear old Cenrral High.

Write me more, when you get a chance. Did you receive my birthday bill for you?

Love and kisses. Write more often.

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

U.S. Embassy

Lima, Peru

June 2 1 , 1 960

Dear Louis:

Wrote rwo weeks ago or so - by now I've· crossed over Andes & spenr 10
days in Pucallpa, a small town on a huge river big as the Hudson - The Ucayali - which winds 1000 miles up to the Amazon - so took a small steamboat 6 days ago and, sleeping in hammock with mosquito net on passageway on deck, spenr the week traveling up to the Amazon thru huge flat area of jungle - on riverside small grey thatchroof huts and every 20 or 50 miles a small cluster of houses and every 100 miles a little town, frontier towns, of several thousand gents. Cost of boat trip including 3 meals a day is $6.00 which is cheap - am now on last day of trip & just a few hours ago entered the Amazon proper - big wide flat brown shining water wide as a

1 36

Family 811Jinm: 1 960
big lake with sticks & greenery floating on surface, balsa rafts and canoes paddling near shore - we dock at Iquitos this evening & I go find hotel, stay a week, & then fly back to Lima, to catch plane home a week later. Iquitos is the river port at western-Peruvian end of the Amazon. From Iquitos one can take another steamer down thru Brazil & the Atlantic, 2500 miles, for $50

- but I haven't the money or the time, & have to get back to Lima.

While in Pucallpa my main purpose was to look up a local Curandero or witch doctor & try a native herbal brew named Ayahuasca which reportedly gives visions - similar to peyote, Mescaline & Lysergic Acid - Well I tried it 4 times and with remarkable results as far as I was concerned subjectively

I certainly saw ''visions. "1

What the drug seems to d o i s activate the unconscious without putting the regular consciousness asleep - so that you can both be awake and dream real solid dreams at the same time - a neat trick, but quite possible. The local Indians use it for curing illnesses, finding lost objects, communicating with the dead, religious visions, etc. and I'm sure they can do all that, from what I've seen. It was like stepping into a voodoo movie & finding it was all real.

Anyway the main dream or vision I had was of the condition of my own death, i.e., how it feels like to die - and I don't think I've ever (except once before having "visions" in Harlem) been so terrified before in my life while awake. It seemed that Death was a Thing, not mere emptiness, a Living Being - and my whole life was being judged & found a vanity, as in EccleJiaJteJ, - and I saw as in X-ray my skeleton-head settling in final position on pillow to give up the Ghost - a familiar feeling, strangely - with the realization chat I had known all along, bur avoided consciousness, of the fact that I am flesh and that flesh is crass. The main after effect, aside from a desire to widen further the area of my consciousness, and realization that my life so far has been relatively empty, was resolution to bear children sooner or later before it is too late. The question is to be or not to be - and also, what Thing is beyond Being. I saw something - a sort of great consciousness which was familiar, but unhuman - as if in one being were united an Elephant & Snake & Mosquito & Man - and all the trees - nothing like the terrible hidden God of Moses or Revelatiom, it felt like. Whether this is vision or Hallucination makes very little difference - I passed thru several hours of intense suffering awareness of the Worm at my Ear. I thought of I . Sec William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, The Yage Ltllerr (San Francisco: Ciry lights Books, 1 963); "Mag;< Psalm" (AG, CP. pp. 255-256), and "The Reply" (AG, CP. p. 257) for Allen's immediate writings on the O)'ahJtam:J experiences.

Allen and LouiJ Ginsberg

1 37
you and the whole family - everyone I knew passed thru mind at one time or another - with tears & love - realization that sooner or later, I, or everyone, enters a great solitude and give up everything - which was painful to realize, which is why I said my life seemed a vanity, for I as yet had thought of it as semi-permanent & had nor considered the i nevitable. It also seemed that until I were able to freely give myself up, entrance into some great Joy (in life or beyond life) would not be seen - but that there is some kind oflnhuman Harmony yet to come. But this is speculation. In any case the universe did seem like one Being.

Well that's enough of that for awhile - I wrote a great deal this month, huge ranting wild poems, psalms, notes, sketches, drawings, a whole book actually - I'll have to reread it in a year & see if it"s still hot. But poetry doesn't seem enough - "in the vast strange & middle of the night."

Also bought a lot of native pottery - hand-painted ceramic ashtray types

- for souvenirs, which I'll bring home - and a hammock & mosquito net.

I thought of poor Williams, living so long on the edge of death - "for this is rhe first - and last - day of the world"" - he wrote. Had a dream of him entering Non-Being with huge snowy ; feathered angel wings. And saw you Louis as a sort of Elephant-nosed seraph or Diety with old human eyes. Well the Indians in the jungle certainly don't lack a huge metaphysical inner Civilization, half the town of Pucallpa drinks ayahuasca every week & has its own secret life aside from radios & movies of the A-Bomb. So that's I suppose the proper poetic climax of my trip down here - it's been almost half a year & I am nostalgic to get back to N.Y.C. & see everybody & see you.

Love,

Allen

Regards to Edith & Eugene - I wrote him June 3 or so.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 8, 1 960

Dear Allen,

It is only today that I received from you a letter you wrote in Peru on June 2.

It was a very interesting and intriguing letter with much food for thought and speculation.

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Family Businm: 1 960

Especially did I nore your mention of a narive brew called Ayahuasca, similar ro peyore and mescaline and Lysergic acid. The phantasmagoric imaginarion char flowed around you and in which you had a vision char you were as rhe grass char passes away, as does all rransience, muse have been a vivid and sranling one.

As I cold you, ir is my belief, supponed by my scientific readings and also by chose of rhe psychiarrisrs, char every vision of phantasm which floars rhrough our minds when rhey are excired or enlarged or intensified by some means, as a drug, has irs roors in somerhing concrere, somerhing char senses saw in waking life which chen sank down deep in some remore subterranean region of our brain or our subconscious. When reason is allayed by a drug, rhese images merge and fuse and recombine ro weird or imaginary shapes ro assail us.

Or, ir may be in our germplasm, in our chromosomes, and genes, rhe ancesrral memories of ancient primirive rimes, according ro Jung, are srill clinging rhere; so char, when our subconscious is asrir, as a pool is srirred by a rhrown rock, primordial memories are roiled up.

However, I do nor believe - rhough our enlarged imagination may simulare a revelarion - char we acrually glimpse rhe Oneness or rhe Primal Source from which all narure and beasrs and flowers and rrees and fish and men draw rheir being. I suppose we may speculare char all rhese growing and living rhings are bur manifold and mulrirudinous pulses of chis crearive process.

Yer, as a poer, seeking ro enlarge frontiers, you may, in your fired imagination, sink yourself in fantasies in which you seem ro be ar one wirh rhe universal. In chose moments of ecsrasy, your soul on fire merges wirh rhe Absolure. Then, when you chink of rhe inexorable rransience of rhings and rhe irresistible forces which will overcome you, as ir does all mona! rhings, chen splendid moments of beaury srir us and inspire us ro cherish chose moments and, as crearive poers, we rry ro caprure rhem and fix rhem in symbols of arr char perperuares rhem so char rhey may rranscend monaliry.

I, roo, dwell upon rhe above rhoughrs, rhough I muse say char you, perhaps more venturesome chan I, rry ro explore rhem wirh enlarging and heighrening drugs. When nexr I am ar my docror's, I'll ask him abour Lysergic acid and some ocher drugs.

I am reminded, in chis connecrion, of whar Malraux said, I rhink, "The mosr unique qualiry of modern lirerarure is rhe eruprion of rhe unconscious wirhin rhe conscious mind, which is nor able ro undersrand and conrrol all char has forced irs way up."

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

139

In any case, I believe it is our duty, as creative artists, to let ourselves be used by forces deep in us, forces which we do not fully understand but which seem greater than we are or which are the fountains of our beings, while at the same time, living a double life, we also move among mortgages, box-tops, teeming streets, eating places of our daily routines, not forgetting the irreconcilable paradoxes and predicaments and animosities strewn over the world.

Reinhold Niebuhr claims that, as humans, we cannot resolve all big conflicts but we should resolve those little ones we can. Meanwhile, we can hoist above us the bright dream of a social conscience, which, as Romain Rolland claims, craves a world where lovely things will not seem out of place and where the chief human impulse will be not to destroy.

Further, brief bits of ephemeral clusters of atoms, our minds can still ponder on the mystery that, though we seem transient motes of insignificance, we still can wrest some significance from this absurd welter of the world. And, as I wrote in a poem in my new book, we are greater than any sun because we really know how small we are, even if the biggest sun does not. Again it was Malraux - one of my favorite authors - who wrote: "The greatest mystery is not that we should be thrown up by chance berween a profusion or matter and a profusion of stars, but that, in that prison, we should be able to get our of ourselves images sufficiently powerful to deny our own insignificance."

A few of the above ideas in this letter I have smuggled into a recent, rather long poem of mine, which I'd like you to read when you come next into Paterson. The poem is called "View from the Grave". (Remember our conversation we had last when you asked me what I think, at my age of 65, of death?)

Lots of love.

Keep writing. And come to spend a few days with me, while my flesh is mine, so we may ruminate or wander into poetic thought.

Your father,

Louis

On September 1 3, Allen Jat down and put the finiihing toucheJ to "KaddiJh. " The poem had been a mighty Jtruggle, beginning almOJt immediately after Naomi Gimberg'I death, when Allen had begun mearching the Hebrew text and making preliminary noteJ, continuing through the early writing in PariJ, and extending

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through variom additiom and permutatiom thereafter. Louis G inJberg had JeeTJ and commmted on earlier, incomplete draftJ, and when Allen Jhlm!ed him the final draft, LouiJ waJ once again Jtunned by the power of the poem, even if he did have a number of reJervatiom about what A /len had included.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 1 8, 1 960

Dear Allen,

I read your "Kaddish" with tears. It's a magnificent, heart-wrenching poem!!'

My revisions:

First take out on p. 17 references to "my affair. ·· It's too embarrassing and will prove troublesome to me
p. 4 "fear of Louis" ambiguous: and "paranoiac fear"

p. 1 3 delete "homosexuality" - why give power to calumniators?

p. 24 Remove "Louis found himself a girl" too embarrassing to me p. 35 Take our "homosexuality"

You'll be exposed to sensation
mongers: Why court trouble'

p. 39 "long black beard around vagina" - delete: too obscene for reference re: mother.

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 1 9, 1 960

Dear Allen,

I was in a hurry and hastened revisions.

Here they are fuller.

p. 4 It would be clearer to say "paranoiac" "fear."

NO'

p. 1 3 Delete "mountains of homosexualiry." Why give grounds for attacks on matters extraneous to literary merit?

NO

I. The "NO" here and subsequem ones were written in Allen's hand in rhe margins of the letter.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

1 4 1
p. 17 By all means, omit the part of "the dentist"s wife writes love letters to Lou . . .' to "on sleep - what it seems.'' It's too embarrassing. Do omit this section.

p. 24 Omit all of l/2 page from lst line to "idealism.'' It's too embarrassing for me. (Also, first part sounds like incest: Why bring attacks on yourself)

NO
p. 35 Near end, omit homosexualiry. You'll invite slander, irrelevant to consideration of literary merits.

NO
p. 39 Omit "long black beard around vagina": Too vulgar.

NO

Otherwise it's a great poem.

Love

Louis

1 9 6 1

On January 1 , 1 95 9, Fidel Castro led a successful werthrow of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba, setting off a furious international debate, not only between the United States and the Swiet Union, which had their own reasons for watching Castro's new regi11Ui, but in Central and South A11Uirica, where communism was favored by intellectuals looking for a means to elevate the oppressed masses. Allen Ginsberg was extre11Uily interested in the Cuban revolution, and he made a point of meeting Castro when the Cuban leader visited New York in September 1 960. Oddly enough, however, he and Louis spent little time arguing about the revolution and its international implications.

All that changed in 1 961, when father and son exchanged fiery letters, which would continue for years to C011Ui. Louis, a socialist sympathizer, had spent years arguing with Naomi, a Communist; he was not about to listen to his son voicing the same old arguments. Allen, for his part, felt that his father was caught up in a combination of Cold War nationalism and a patriotic fervor whipped up by the recent election of john F. Kennedy. (Louis Ginsberg favored Kennedy; Allen Ginsberg did not. ) Allen's letters reflected his continuing development of a worldview spawned by his travels to Mexico, Europe, and South A11Uirica: He had visited the Mayan and 1 ncan ruins, and he feared that the survival of the planet was endangered by the presence of nuclear technology and political leaders willing to wage wars - including the final one - wer strange territorial, philosophical, or political disputes.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

February 24, 1961

Dear Allen,

Thanks for the leaflets.

I'm all for the Franco one; that is, protesting against the Franco dictatorship and for the two Spanish sailors.

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Concerning rhe Cuba one, I have my reservations. Ir doesn't prim the other side. Visitors tell of being in manipulated throngs chanting pro-Soviet and ami-American slogans in whose frenetic atmosphere it was as dangerous to dissenr as "Amid a hosrile throng of benighted, hare-mongering white citizens, KKK groups in rhe South." The fact remains that the Commies have poured in arms inro Cuba and that rhe Commies call the rune in Cuba: there is no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech in Cuba. That some of rhe workers have been given new homes is quire true, bm rhey have been mosdy showpieces for visitors (re Wallace once in Russia). Further, the people, as I say, have been robbed of free speech so that it is dangerous in Cuba to dissent.

Last night I ran into N.Y. where I attended a meeting of the Poetry Sociery of America. I was one of rwo discussion leaders. First, the anonymous poem is read; rhen I rook to the podium and delivered my srricrures on the poem.

Then rhe other discussion leader (a Miss Farrar, daughter of John Farrar and a reacher ar Barnard) delivered her commenrs. I had a good rime and mer many people, some of whom mentioned you. (I caused a couple of lifted eyebrows, when I said, though your manner is nor mine, I was proud of you for your achievement.)

Well, as I wrote you yesterday, I am now in semi-reriremenr with a Rmgers class here in Paterson on Monday and Thursday, due to rhe sudden illness of a reacher.

Spring is coming, and I am thawing om .

Keep well.

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(New York .city}

March 2, 1 961

Dear Lou:

Tho it's rrue that some of my information comes direcdy from Heaven a good deal of ir comes from earth, particularly on the Cuba scene for the reason that I have been in Cuba, I speak and read Spanish, I know a lor of S.A. poets & intellectuals here in NY, I spent half a year talking about these problems in S.A. This year, I have mer Castro slighdy & had chance to talk

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

145
lengthily ro govr officials visiting here, I know and have ralked ar lengrh wirh people who have visited Cuba (LeRoi Jones, Marc Schleiffer, Wright Mills, Dr. Halper and several others) and I have done a lor of reading in rhe marrer including Castro's speeches before rhe revolution, Che Guevara's writings, Mills', Huberman and Sweezy's Anatomy book, Sarrre's and Francois Sagan's essays - in ocher words I have done partial investigation of subject; in addition had chance ro resr and partially confirm my paranoia about mass media reponing of Cuban facts day ro day wirh people from

[New York] PoJt & United Press [lnternarional]; in addition have a first hand experimental working knowledge of rhe possibilities of factual distortion and opinionarion replacing facr in rhe mass media and now have a 3rd eye so ro speak in reading X-ray rhru newspapers on accoum of rhe genesis and developmem of Bear myrh & drug myrh. In addition I am involved borh rhru jazz and poerry world wirh rhe Negro intellectual colony here rhru James Baldwin, LeRoi Jones & Bob Kaufman all experienced Negroes who have connections wirh Castro & African nationalist groups and so I ger a view of rheir world which has been new ro me rhe lase 2 years and quire differem from rhe idea of rhe Negro world I knew previously from rhe outside.

I don'r rhink rhe TimeJ article which I read before was very helpful as ir tended ro make rhem all seem eccemric furile and crackpot; a good many Negro groups have decided on direct acrion (like rhe sir-in movement in which now I am also involved in sense of meering M. L. King and receiving rheir propaganda & meeting sir-in students lately) and rhis action is a healthy rhing, borh in North and South including rhe U.N. proresrs; and any arrempr ro discoum ir as not repreJentative of US Negro thinking or northern hip Negro thinking is a mistake fostered by complacem whire liberalism and TimeJ-rype conservative press. You should read rhe Negro newspapers ro see rhar.

Lumumba was elected premier by an elecred Parliamem which he had a majority in; and one of rhe long struggles has been ro reconvene Parliament all along ro reaffirm his position, and rhar has been blocked by Kasavubu, Moburu, rhe U.N., rhe US CIA, the Belgians ere. He "insisted" on uniting rhe Congo - and there is where I found him heroic and a marryr since rhe main impulse ro secession and rhe main form rhe secessions rook were according ro Belgian-American economic-influence boundaries; nor tribal warfare which was imporram bur which did nor determine rhe process of secessions. Kasai and Karanga which seceded are and were strongholds of Belgian influence which has been so often denounced by U.N. and by

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Family Businm: 1 961

Russia - and only after Lumumba's death gently chided by the U.S. finally

- after it was too late. And the leaders who seceded who are Belgian

"puppets" quite literally are now in power running future of Congo. The

"U.N. addressed many letters to them," the Belgians, telling them to get out; but they are still there and that was [what] Lumumba was yelling about; and the U.S.A. refused to back Hammarskjold in this particular aspect of Congo problem all along; and Hammarskjold in his speech last week complained about that; but all the USA has eyes for psychologically is the Cold War and getting the Russians out; and possibly preserving Belgian interests there. Rockerfellers now own 22 112% (controlling interest) in Katanga Mining Co. The "imperialism" here is more outright than you want to see or Stevenson can deal with. But it is the same old problem which you deplored when it happened 50 years ago but see as normal part of scene when happening right now. The myth of political instability and warring tribes is one which may or may not be true but I would say it is fostered and used consciously as the excuse for Belgium etc to retain control. Let the UN pacify warring tribes in a united Congo if they want to. But past & present policy has led to destruction of the socialist leftwing radical unified nationalist leadership, and left Congo now in control of the worst types who started the economic secession movement - Kalonji and Kasai, and Tshombe in Katanga. According to the NY Times Lumumba did not receive unnatural help from Russia until the secessionist movements were backed by U.S. & U.N. refusal to protect sovereignty of Congo. Your facts are wrong here, as far as I know. Lumumba originally asked for US
troops to quiet his army which was rebelling against continued white Belgian officership; then asked for UN, which said it was an internal problem when Katanga seceded as result of Belgian influence; and then asked for Russian help which he got; and from then on the Cold War was on and Congo was in it.

The Cause is that we granted Congo nominal independence but when Lumumba wanted to make it stick with economic take-over as in Cuba, we felt economic interests (uranium) threatened and entered a policy which ended in his murder. I see him as a sort of tragic hero caught in Cold War.

Originally all sorts of excuses were used to denigrate him (tho before independence he was built up in US press and "responsible") and make him irresponsible, power-hungry, unable to control army, unable to stop warring tribes, communist dupe, etc. Now that he is dead and the conservatives have power and the tribes are still warring and the black army is still committing atrocities just as under his rule, and Kasavubu and

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

147

Moburu are fighting with the U.N. and the Belgians are still in control of Kacanga all these excuses have been reduced co what they were - a series of rationalizations and excuses blown up in headlines and snide editorial comments co full blown "Reasons for Maruricy" but only old gossipy second-hand typical US hysterias.

No, I am saying chat the German people were guilty or better directly responsible for Hitler's scene, and the US people are now in same posicion, and unless we do something now to liberalize and radicalize the US govc all future blood is on our hands and we can't keep on forever blaming the Russians for everything chat goes wrong as in Congo. The problem in Congo is Russian interference coming in to combat and screw Belgian and US interference. You wane to see it as all Russian interference with the US
as having clean hands. Well we don't.

As for your info on electrical workers union it is nor I chink accurate. The Daily NewJ generally distorts news anti-Castro direction. Obviously, I'm nor caking it as fount of truth. I'm saying, even in the Daily News (partly because they are so hysterical they can't see they're undermining their own arguments) there was an extended series on anti-Castro forces in the US
which the NewJ thought made them look good; and that included a proud account of Electrical Union leaders sabotaging Castro govc with bombs before they were purged. That's been reported elsewhere coo. The bombs didn't begin after they were kicked out. The resentment was over communist influence in govc I chink; partly, because unions were being subject to general Revolution rules etc. It's complicated. Castro revolution is now destroying freedom and Reds have coo much influence rho not nearly so much as reported here and not in the nasty way it's reported here since all over S.A. the Reds are considered part of the spectrum of parties and when the left wins they assume more importance; i.e. Reds are pariahs as per US
psychology does not apply there and only in the USA is it considered absolutely necessary to hare the communists as pare of "liberalism."

There is a publication of anti-Castro material on larger scale in Cuba - on larger scale percencagewise - pamphlets and Catholic newspapers coo - chan there is pro-Castro material in USA. [ . . .

}

I don't personally care whether or not Castro paid for Fair Play committee ad. If he did I don't chink it was a great conspiracy. If it's a conspiracy how do you know it's not a conspiracy to embarrass Fair Play? Circumsrances of this TimeJ ad deal might well be investigated. I'm all for chat. Except chat US Congress, UN-Amer Activities Committee, etc - is the context wherein it will be done. But the point is:

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Do you rhink rhe Fair Play commirree is a communist from? Do you rhink irs direcrion is Red'

I don'r care wherher ir is or nor. The communist from fear is a producr of McCarrhyism & hangover.

However, I do know a lor of people involved wirh Fair Play commirree and rhey are nor communists. So rhar's rhar. So if Casrro paid for an ad, rhar's fine, so whar. Ir's ridiculous rhe arremprs ro desrroy radical proresr groups like SANE and Fair Play rhru accusations and proof of communist influence. Of course rhere will be Red influences and various fuck-ups.

However rhe dominam rone of Fair Play is nor only non communist bur ami-communist. Same wirh I. F. Stone. You rhink he's a communist? Well he's nor.

The Ad business is an arrempr ro cripple a useful organization. Ir seems to have worked in rhar your response to Fair Play issues is ro reply wirh quesrions abour rhe ad.

I don'r approve of Jusrice Depr being swepr our illegally, I don'r approve of rhe executions, I don'r approve of rhe communist influence, I don'r approve of rhe nationalism, I don'r approve of rhe ami-Yankee fervor, I don'r approve of rhe ban on marijuana.

I do approve of rhe social reforms, I do approve Castro's sincerity, and I do rhink rhar had nor rhe US imerfered here as in Congo something very grear would have been worked our in Cuba. The faulr of rhe Cuban Revolution is now wirh rhe USA and nor Casrro and if anybody gers hanged berrer ir should be Kennedy ar rhis poim rarher rhan Casrro.

And if Stevenson defends a more ami-Casrro position, rhe position rhar Kennedy rook which is no differem from Nixon's, rhen I say rhe End has come openly symbolically for US Liberalism.

Only way our of Cuba siruarion is Kennedy invire Casrro to Whire House (YES YES YES); offer financial aid for reconsrrucrion of Cuban economy on socialist revolutionary lines, rake off rhe economic & military pressure which is driving Cuba ro dependence on communist world, and ask for free elections and free press as exchange. Bur we are so far from doing somerhing practical like rhar, and as a resulr we're building confusion and propaganda chaos and war. And I won'r srand srill and accepr cominued propaganda on yr negative ami-Red basis on Cuba. The issue is nor rhe Reds, rhe issue is rhe facr rhar Cubans have 30 years less life span expectancy rhan USA.

I rhink rhe siruarion will calm irself because now Brazil & Mexico are raking independem srands from US to recognize and have rrade wirh China

Allen and Louis Gimberg

149

& Russia, U.N. recognition, etc. - so that Cuba's actions will seem less eccentrically leftwing than before.

OK - later - enclosed more I. F. Stone - this time pessimistic.

Love, Allen

P.S. I notice that everytime I open my mouth on Cuba or Congo I get accused of being a Red or Red-dupe and if Castro reacts to this in the same way I do I see nothing strange in his present anti-US hysteria. These Red accusations and obsessions are basically used to obscure the issue - which is that he and SA are declaring economic, psychological and political IN

DEPENDENCE from US domination. If we fight that independence naturally they'll have to get help from Russia and China and naturally they'll get to be prejudiced in favor of the communists in these situations.

And naturally you'll become more and more convinced that they're a bunch of commies. Whatya expect' They'll finally become communists, if this keeps up.

I'm complaining that the USA is not radical enough. What would you say if I went to Jail for a cause? I don't intend to, but don't you realize how comfortable & secure the liberals are in USA that jail for causes is no longer something to be considered? Yet down in So. with the sit-in movement, that is the way of protest.

For years, Allen had dreaTllf!d of visiting India and the Far East, and his growing dissatisfaction with ATllf!rican politics acted as a catalyst in his de<ision to take another extended journey outside of the United States. On March 23, 1 961, he and Peter Orlovsky boarded a ship bound for Paris, where they hoped to spend some time with William Burroughs at the Beat Hotel. Burroughs, however, had left for Tangier. Allen was reunited with Gregory Corso in Paris, and after spending a few weeks hanging out together, they de<ided to pay a visit to Burroughs in Morocco.

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Family Business: 1 961

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg
do U.S. Consulate,

Tangier, Morocco
june 12, 1 961

Dear Lou:

Sad to hear Max had died - and whom ro write condolences to now' I saw less of him the last few years but when I did we were pretty close & I always felt for him, in thought, and that apartment in the Bronx was landmark always - was there last year again looking at it knowing I'd not see it much evermore, it was a mellow place for Max-Elanor there. Eugene must be sad tOO.

Say hello ro everyone at picnic - I wrote long letter ro Honey yesterday, details on Paris, for Ruth & her.

Glad you had poem in Second Coming and Liberation - I also had prose piece in Second Coming1 - I hear it is out. I haven't their address. Can you send them a card or note telling them ro send me a copy of the issue with my & your writings and also remind them they owe me money which I have nor received & which I need - so tell them ro send it here ro above address.

They said they'd pay me I think it was $50 & that payment is overdue by now if the piece is out. Have you time ro drop them a note? I could but I don't have the address.

Glad you are getting Liberation as it is a sincere magazine compared to most - interruption -

[This section of the letter is written in Gregory Corso's hand. ]

Hello everlasting minute, I could have become king of Israel if I wished ir so having met the daughter of heir apparent Moyse [sic] Dayan in Greece

- what with a little bit of wooing and digniry I coulda been her husband and in turn everybody's king when she became queen - but I thought best against the idea and continue on this seemingly wanderous crusade of gods knows what, perhaps towards Louis Untermeyer's anthology - whatever I've been seeing your noble work in the European Herald Tribune quire often, and am always nodding my head yes upon reading a poem of yours, there's no poet like you really, and in a way you're like me, in that I I. ''When the Mode or the Music Changes, the Walls of the City Shake'' appeared in the July 1961
issue of 5e£ond Comiwg Magazine. See AG, Deliberate Prose, pp. 247-254.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

1 5 1
acknowledge what you say right away, you leave me with something I have already known - maybe we is on the same muse-ical show, and the radio is just different - but anyway there ain't nobody like us because we is very funny kind of poets, I mean the first of their kind, we stand to Shakespeare like Sirting Bull would to Christ; happy - Great to see yr son, perhaps the funniest kind of poet ever, surely funnier than Max Eastman, again - he looks great and has an artitude toward life - things with such cenainry and gentility to be around my golden friend again, send me a new book of poems.

I tried my hand at prose, wrote a novel, one month time, very careless exercise of youth-fantasy done, though, in grammar-school style - I really enjoyed writing it, and feel it in to be for it is unique; yet something there is when I write poesy does not touch me with uncenainry - But surely you must have something of great certainty if you haven't had a book out since ELM; you must have a lot of good poems - I do hope you have them published soon and get another book of yours, I'm tired of reading Ever LaJting Minute; I've had enough, I want an end to it; the book is magic for sure - OK; I will write a nice letter to you about my trip to Greece and all the temples when I find myself in a less silly mood, goodbye and love, gregory Gregory just came upstairs, read your letter & sat down at typewriter so that was the result - he's very funny - I live on top of a roof, a little tile room in hot Mediterranean clime, and that leads to a glass enclosed sunshack, and that leads to a little terrace overlooking rooftops and Tangier.

Bay and parapets of Spain (as last time, I'm around the block from hotel I was last time) - all this costs $20 a month - Gregory has a slightly larger room downstairs for $ 1 4 a month - Peter walks around the Arab streets & keeps diaries - Burroughs around the corner in his old room just finished novel (The Soft Machine)1 now cuts up newspapers & photographs to make collages in spare time (weird juxtapositions of news stories, Kennedy stepping off airplanes onto Queen Elizabeth's forehead) - everybody busy

- I'm typing up journals and answering letters - the weather is great - lots of young beatniks suddenly in town swinging with the poor Arabs buying old clothes & smoking pot (it's legal) - Paul Bowles takes us to his favorite cafe on mountain-cliff overlooking vast blue crawling hide of the sea & we sit silent watching the universe, everybody tranquil - Gregory & Peter & I at nite on roof discuss Galaxies - We eat 50¢ shishkebab meals in dark Arab 1 . William S. Burroughs, The Soft Machine (New York: Grove, 1962).

1 5 2

Family Bminm: 1961
fry restaurants - sometimes go co European quaner and gee highclass French meals for a buck - cheaper chan Mexico here - in face chis place is more interesting & weirder to live in & happier chan Paris at the moment for me - so everything's fine. Since independence Tangier no longer is international freeport trading pose & so's more tranquil less paranoiac less Europe-Arab conflict, calmer few people less business less tourists less surface confusion, more calm to live in & cheaper. You can gee $180

Yugoslav boac here from NY - ought co come for a few weeks sometime.

Anyway as I say glad you read Liberation, seems more active radical chan the old-time-radical-now-liberal-weeklies. I agree generally with Finch, the guy who resigned, more chan the ocher editors in disapproving of Castro dictatorship; & Finch's ideas on chat are based on more specific and accurate informacion chan generally circulated in U.S. - excellent derailed accurate info in previous issues of Liberation attacking Castro by Cuban Anarchistpacifist groups who are persecuted there. Do you ever see I. F. Stone Newsletter? That's the best glances political comment & reponing I see from USA - I gee it regularly, someone put me on a lise. Enclosed if I have sample around.

Now chis above (disapproving of Castro police scare) not to be taken as change of opinion on my pan as to complete vileness of U.S. Govc. & U.S.

people in lase year regarding Cuba. Nor if I were Castro am I sure I'd be able to do any better with Cuba chan he's doing, given the US for neighbor.

All lase year I was complaining about the CIA and I chink by now what sounded in me to be eccentric has been puc into perspective by events & some general public consciousness, realized - the whole complaint I had chen is now the general US complaint. What sounded in Castro as Mussolini-hysceria - his screaming about US attack - has also been justified by event.

I wondered how you reacted to the Cuban invasion 1 & if chat made sense of what you had taken to be mere communise propaganda before., i.e.

accusations by Russia and Castro chat US was preparing military blow at Cuba. This was dismissed as paranoia for a year before it happened.

According to Gallup poll at invasion time 80% of US people, on basis of U.S. mass communication data - including NY Times etc - thought chat Cuban masses were against Castro. I remember Leo thought so, coo. I disputed chat point wildly & was puc down for it, as a "dupe." I was merely I. On April 1 7 , 1 96 1 , Cuban exiles, advised by the United Scates and promised military support, invaded the Bay of Pigs. The U.S. military support never materialized, and the rebels were easily defeated. The invasion intensified rhe hostility chat Cuba felt mward the United States.

A lim and LouiJ Gimberg

I 53
reponing facr and amazed co realize rhar all rhe liberals even were complerely misinformed ro rhe poinr co mind-conrrol or brainwash on rhe facrs of rhe case. Now rhe facr is no longer ambiguous and i r is generally reponed in US press (NY Herald Trib, Times ere) rhar majoriry of Cubans are behind Casrro. I keep warning, rhis coral reversal of public informacion is rhe resulr of illirerare manipularion of informacion reaching rhe US public and unril people scop believing rhe newspapers in rhe US rhey will have as inaccurare informacion and opinions on rhe cold wars as rhey have on rhe Bear Generarion, co give an example close ro home.

Whar was really shocking was rhar rhe old-line liberals & socialises like yourself afrer 20 years of McCanhyism are complerely our of conracr wirh any kind of perspecrive on whar's happened ro America.

Pur ir rhis way - co my generarion, rhe Cuban scene is similar co rhe old Spanish Civil War scene - wirh many of rhe same srresses and inrerior conflicrs -

I don'r see any way our excepr full public invesrigarion of CIA acriviries in Guaremala, Iran, Cuba, Formosa, Korea, Laos, Congo, ere for rhe lasr 10
years - coral reversal of policy of secrer manipularion of foreign policy and hiding or wirhholding news and info from public - rhe exrenr of which nobody knows fully bur whar I already know has made me gasp wirh horror and has jusrified rhe worsr Russian rirades in rhe U.N. -

I also see lasr week's banning of Communise Pany as formal police srare acrion by rhe U.S.

In facr ar rhis poinr I rhink rhe U.S. is roo far gone and now useless co complain since I don'r see rhe people of rhe U.S. awake enough co rake rheir own life up again & begin ro swing polirically in some imaginarive free expression.

The reason I kepr yelling ar you is in a sense you represenr rhe inrelligenr liberal symbol in my mind - rhe people who are supposed co be depended on ro be able ro defend rhemselves from righr wing police srare - rhe srable progressive old school - and I see you inundared by Hisrory, by a USA rhar wd have been inconceivable in Roosevelr's day, by a US rhar is suicidal and unable co srraighren our in rime ro prevenr irself from being blown up by rhe communise world, and rhar will sreadily lose ground & degenerare & ger more righr wing every year, no marrer whar pany is in power.

The only way our for America now as far as I can see is socialism, rerum of governmenr power from oligarchic holding companies & Milirary power groups rhar run rhings - indusrry and informacion-propaganda (We do NOT have a free press. Period.) (Acrually abour 8 people in rhe USA

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Family Bminm: 1 961
determine policy for majority of newspapers & TV and Radio) (That's why it's possible ro have such massive factual misinformation as on Cuba) (i.e.

one year of consranr information rorally at variance in fu.crual data & arrirude from British, French & Moroccan papers, to say nothing of Russian or Chilean) - and shift of US economy from presenr monopoly capitalism ro some relaxed socialistic form wherein a shift can be planned from conspicuous consumer & military production ro world-inregrared useful production for undeveloped counrries (This be Toynbee's suggestion too). Which means a lower standard of living for US and a more meaningful life maybe, at least be of some use to the rest of rhe world instead of a mockery and horror of fake democracy gone nuts. More and more from outside US everybody digs US as approaching some vast crisis which people inside USA are almost completely unconscious of, as if everything was well in the refrigeraror and hisrory be escaped.

I.e., ro French socialists, the "world struggle" is not the Cold War at all but struggle against "power" monger groups in US & in Russia both, and it makes very little difference if the US power group loses, in fact it might be preferable for the Red power group ro win since at least it's a power that's still ALIVE in the sense that the U.S. is dead from the neck up and more rerrogressive & less promising of flexible development than the Red power groups. I could imagine the world developing & relaxing (maybe) after a total Red vicrory; bur after a TOTAL US victory I wd see nothing but medieval scenes of Cuban Guatemalan horror sort of, a McCarthy-Kennedy

Max Lerner state, I'm nor making sense.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, some new sense of a serious fix is coming inro consciousness on the American scene, is ir not? Something's got to give, I hope it's the right wing not the left - at least there's the beginning of some open fight - Republicans calling for war on Cuba and Democrats beginning to draw back from that & be neutral.

It simply is a shame that there is no real progressive parry because now there is a progressive scene possible, i.e. historical demand for reversal of US
policy on Latin America so that we encourage peaceful socialism - which neither parry is willing ro admit - outside the USA and even inside if necessary.

Anyway I be here a while, I don't know how long. I should get loot from City Lights for books soon. "Kaddish" was taken by my German publisher

& will be translated; also in Italy I think it's arranged. I'm writing a little.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

1 55

Whar derails did you hear abour Max - Ask Gene ro write me maybe?

Ir's roo late ar nire, I quir - gerring farigued & not said anyrhing clearly.

OK

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

June 27, 1 96 1

Dear Allen,

I was glad ro ger your lerrer dared June 1 2 .

Regarding Max, I garher rhar his lasr few years were one o f a semi-sad resignarion and loneliness. He died alone of a hearr arrack. I surmise the only one ro send condolences is his sisrer, Edith, who lives in California, bur I do nor have her address.

I wrore a nore ro rhe ediror of The Second Coming and asked him ro send you rhe issue conraining your prose arricle, roger her wirh a check. They senr me a copy of rhe arricle of yours.

I senr ir ro Dr. Mones who visired me. We borh discussed your arricle.

We rhoughr ir was brillianr wirh magnificenr passages. I liked especially

"Cornerless mysrery, mysrical illuminarion, sponraneous, irrarional juxraposirion, sublimely relared facr. One musr verge on rhe Unknown, rhe parrern of rhe poem discovered in rhe mind. The only poeric rradirion is rhe voice our of rhe Burning Bush." Splendid.

My only reservarion would be rhar the mysrical ourwelling and gushing forrh from rhe subrerranean subconscious should have irrelevancies combed our and selecred so as nor to ler rhe smoke, so ro speak, choke some of rhe fire.

Tell Gregory rhar I enjoyed his passage ro me. Tell him I'll wrire ro him soon a separare lerrer.

I am glad you're enjoying yourself wirh your cronies. Wish I were wirh you ro ruminare on rhe galaxies on rhe roof-rop. Larely I have been reading abour rhe macrocosm (as well as rhe microcosm). I wonder ever rhar enigmas are ferried where by rhose counrless gyraring galaxies rhar are speeding ourward, away from rhe us: rhe enigma is rhar rhe furrher away from us, rhe fasrer rhey are rushing . . .

Enclosed find a review by Dr. Charles Angoff in rhe Philadelphia jewish

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Exponent. He liked your KaddiJh. I keep scrutinizing the press for other reviews. Incidentally, I bought fifteen copies of your book and have distributed ir to relatives and friends.

All is quiet here with me. I keep pounding my typewriter, not wishing to rust on my laurels, and now and then have poems punished in the papers and magazines. Will send you some new poems rhar have been accepted bur have nor been published yet. My own book of poems is still in the hands of my literary agent who tells me ir is being read, bur I have no word yet.

Cuba. Yes, the U.S. did made a boo-boo, which ser us back. Yes, rheCIAdid blunder, and there is protest against ir here with universal criticism. Yes, we did the wrong thing in feebly helping the Cuban anti-Casrroires. Bur we were on the horns of a dilemma: To maintain our policy of nonintervention plus to help the liberal refugees srem the Commie ride, which in Cuba is sending ammunition and pouring Red propaganda throughout Larin America. It will be a good lesson from which Kennedy will profit.

I do nor believe rhar 80 percent of the Cubans are for Castro. Between the lines, I rhink it is half and half: the half against Castro are suppressed by a terrorist police stare.

There is one idea in your letter rhar I am vehemently against. You say that "it is preferable for the Red power to win since it is alive."' Listen to this: Top former Commies like Djilas, ere. assert - which I believe - that the ills that the Reds seek to cure are less evil than those which the Commies introduce. The fact that they are strong or alive proves nothing.

So was Hitler alive. At present, all rhe satellites - Hungary, East Germany, ere. - are restive and suppressed with revoir squelched by brute force. The Democracies, despite their blunders, have more free speech and human liberties, however less than one hundred percent. The Democracies advance, three steps forward, rwo steps back, bur they advance. Should the Reds win, there will be no relaxation bur little volcanoes of rebellions will erupt all over the world, for the spirit of man and his freedom, though temporarily suppressed, is in the end inviolable. Despite rhe CIA, many voices in America are rising in protest and demanding changes; and those changes are beginning to be made under the Kennedy administration. We have a long way ro go, bur rhe way of the Commies leads to a dead end of suppression of human liberty and a totalitarian police state which the wave of the future will in rime engulf. I am sad to think that ,YOU are fooled by a poor perspective and illusory symptoms. You remind me of the hapless Lindbergh, who saw in the Nazis the wave of the Future.

More anon.

Allen and LouiJ G inJberg

I 57

Yes, we had a delightful annual family picnic. All asked for you. Joel fell in love wirh a school reacher in E. Orange. She lives in rhe same apanmenr house. They are gerring married ar rhe end of Augusr. Eugene and Connie were rhere wirh rheir rreasure-rrove of rhree children, all bright as a whip.

Relatives were rhere of assorted kinds. (I am pondering a poem called

"Family Barbecue," where rhey are all ranged around rhe grill and rable, balancing joys, envies and jealousies, ere.)

Give my regards ro Gregory, Perer and Burroughs.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg
do U.S. CounJel

Tangier, Morocco

AuguJt 3, 1 96 1

Dear Louis -

All's well - how are you' I came back from rrip ro Marrakech (see phoro orher side) and will sray here a shorr while before pushing on. The Harvard Mushroom professor1 came ro visir also, & is bringing Burroughs ro Harvard ro experiment in consciousness alrerarion - all is going very well.

I rhink I'll go wirh Gregory & Bill ro England for a monrh, firsr & see whar London is like ro live in. I rhink of you ofren, wirh love & everything is all righr wirh me [ . . .

]. I'll write soon - finished proofs of a new book, rhe old Empty Mirror2 195 1 which Brh Sr. Bookstore publishes nexr monrh. OK, Love Allen

1. Timorhy Leary_ Allen had mer Leary rhe year before and, under Leary's supervision, had taken psilocybin, a hallucinogenic drug discovered by Dr. Albert Hofmann, who had also discovered LSD.

Leary's comroversial experimenrs with psilocybin and 1.50 t"vemually led to his departure from his job at Harvard.

2. Empty Mirror (New York: Torem Press, 1 96 1 ).

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Family Business: 1 96 1

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August B. 1 961

Dear Allen,

Glad co get your short letter today and am glad that you are well and that you are writing.

Empty Mirror is a fine title for your new book. When will it be out and who is publishing it) More power to you!

I have had a quiet summer. Have done a little writing, but not much. A poem of mine appeared today in the N. Y. Times, but it's a rather old topic for me. Have had poems accepted in assorted places, but they are not out yet.

Haven't heard from my literary agent for more than a month. They wrote me on July I that Harcourt Brace had turned it down after holding it three months. The ms. is being read now by another publisher. Hope for the best and expect the worst. Some day lightning will strike.

In the Fall, I am having two classes at Rutgers here in Paterson: Freshman composition class and a course in advanced composition, called Language and Literature. Had an offer from Montclair State Teachers College co give a night course there, but rejected it, as I'll be busy nights with Rutgers.

Edith is fine and busy working in her office.

Eugene and Connie are OK. They are expecting a new baby in a couple of weeks. [ . . .

]

Am enclosing a review of your book by your friend Paul Carroll in The Evergreen Review. 1

I think of you often and hope I shall see you soon as I miss you. However, so long as you are well and happy and busy at poetry, I take pride in you.

Keep up the fine work.

Will send you soon a sonnet to appear in a school magazine called The Clearing House. The poem is called "On Reaching the Age of Sixry-five."

With love and pride from

Your father,

Louis

I . Paul Carroll, umitled review of Kadduh awd Other Pocus. Erwgnrn Reueu·. July-Augusc 1 96 1 .

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

! 59

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 15, 1 96 1

Dear Allen,

Thanks for showing m e the tercer from Olympia Magazine, with a h i m that I write about a father's view of you.

Frankly, I chink I am roo much involved with and roo close ro your writing ro make an objective report. My candid view, as you may know, is char you have done work of a high order, with exuberanr vitality and with magnificenr imagination - all of which makes me proud of your eminence. I have some reservations about one or two aspecrs: namely on your going overboard in some marcers and also on your undisciplined and ungrammatical outpourings. I am well aware of your able and even eloquenr defense of your method , as delineated in your article called

"When the Mode of the Music Changes the Walls of the City Shake," in The Second Coming Magazine. I believe in conrrolled abandon, while you have a bit too much of the abandon. That virtue has irs defects. An uninhibited flow of the mystic subconscious should be followed a bit more by conscious scrutiny.

Be that as it may, in general, I hold that poetry is where you find it; and char, in the house of poetry, there are many mansions. While you denigrate good regular meter which has permanenr values, I take a larger view and mainrain char free verse with excellences, such as yours, has strong validity as poetry.

I'd rather wait a while before writing an article on your poetry from a father's objective viewpoinr, though I doubt I can really be objective, for I am prejudiced in your favor. At any rate, if, in rime, I do write such an article, I'll submit to you for your commenrs.

All is quiet here. No news yet. { . . .

]

Love from

Your father,

Louis

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Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Tangier, Morocco}

n.d. (ca. late AuguJt 1 961}

Dear Louis -

Thanks for the reviews - here - things going well - changes & thoughts - I go probably co London for a month or so with Gregory & Bill-Peter left to go travel to Istanbul alone & try out his soul - I'm answering letters today -

1 2 so far, I wonder how I can get out of this Allen Ginsberg trap - I'm halfway out now I think - so all be well -

Yes I did think that one poem was really great, about your father, & I feel the same way about you about your brow - all strange & beautiful & awesome - I'm too bemused now co write much - so will keep this shon

I finished proofs of old Empty Mirror book - looks sharp & spare & prophetic now after a decade, better than I remember -

I wrote to Honey too - how are you & how pass the days? - got any advice) - That James Dickey review 1 is really exactly the summary of all that I was getting away from at Columbia - it's just humanly & spiritually closed door forever, it sounds like. [ . . . ]

How's Gene? I still haven't heard from him, send my love - What is his address -

Love,

Allen

Hello Edith?

Allen never made the trip to England. lmtead. he boarded a ship for Greece on August 24. He and Peter had quarreled and split up, and Allen was feeling lonely. With any luck, Allen u-rote his father, he would spend some time in Greece and hook up with Peter later in Israel. For Louis. who always felt a vicarious thrill when hearing the details of his son ·s travels, the idea of Allen's traveling first to the native land of democracy and then to the land of his jeu•ish heritage was too good to be true.

I . James Dickey's umided review of JUddiJh and 01ht:r Pot:t�u, which appe-ared in che July 9. 1%1, issue of the Neu• Ym"k Timo Book Rf!llieu·. underscored Dickey's generally negative response co the Beat Generation.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Saturday, September 2, 1 96 1

Dear Allen,

Am glad t o hear you are in Athens, Greece. Take a look a t the Parthenon whose columns, as I glimpse them through literature, are bathed in a light that never was on sea or land. Then, too, the classic clarity of air that illumes the islands . . . The Acropolis, too, must look with calm disdain on the frantic gestures of modern man. Maybe you can take notes inspired by "the glory rhar was Greece," the glory that is rill suffused through History.

In case, as you hinted, you might go to Israel, there, too, you will find hallowed light where the momentous still shines through every moment in the current rimes of Israel; in rhe J udean hills of Israel, something timeless leaned down into time, which the centuries has sanctified as the heritage of the Jews; so that, apart from religion or institutionalized religion, there is a heritage there, which, if you believe the validity of the "subjective unconscious,"" flows deep in rhe subterranean psyche of all Jews, whether he knows ir or not. So I believe.

Received your SOS for one hundred dollars this morning. Banks are closed Sat. - Sunday - Monday (Labor Day), Early Tues. morning, I'll go ro my bank and obtain a cashier"s check for one hundred and dispatch it to you air-mail. (Eugene is providing 50 and I, 50.) Let me know when you get the cashier"s check. Allen, send rhe loan back to me when you get your money.

Hope you are feeling fine. Soak up impressions like sponge so rhar you can, undoubtedly, squeeze them our later for new poems.

I'm still waiting for Godot. The last I heard from my literary agent was two months ago. Am keeping my fingers crossed.

Speaking of religion, it has been defined as the active reverence for a dominant moral ideal.

Or, as Einstein has it, "as rhe awe and wonder at the harmony of the universe."'

Or, as the adoration of the First Cause.

So be ir. Bur rhe inquiring voice within asks: who made the First Cause'

Also, while there is great hominy at the balancing and gravitational equilibrium of rhe galactic systems and the island universes in rhe unfathomable reaches of space, yet, yet, astronomers rell us that even these systems have entropy and expire and lose their power; or there are vast

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collisions or, as in supernova, there are explosions. Then down to earth, a mindless force seems oblivious of man; nature, like a mother, is all bosom bur no hean; cancers, malformations, still-binhs, monstrosities, wars, volcanic eruptions, natural and various kinds of catastrophes all attest to disprove that

·'God watches the fall of every sparrow."

The truth, as I divine it, is that man's knowledge cannot plumb the enigma, that we must pause in a general doubt; that nature, in the words of Shaw, is the life force which tries to attain a greater power of contemplating itself. As an ardent agnostic, one can hold, at least this that man, however doomed to be overcome by trampling forces indifferent to his fonunes -
man at least can have this power of comprehending in his pinpoint of consciousness, in his infinitesimal speck of his mind, the infinity of the universe, even if he expressed it or explained it darkly with complicated errors and intricate fictions.

More anon.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. Tuesday Morning.

Just as I was going down ro the bank ro send you one hundred, I received your letter of August 3 1 , telling me not to send the money, as you received your three hundred dollars. All's well that ends well.

That phoro of you in front of the ruins was fine.

Keep well. Love. Keep writing.

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg
fA rhens, Greece}

11.d. (ca. fall 1 961)

Dear Louis:

I am getting plenty of Greek "glory" bur it don't seem to stand up againsr the unhuman sense of things that is making my skin crawl lately. The light thru Panhenon columns is a great white-blue solid color - like looking thru eyesockets of a skull. I traveled all week, Delphi & Olympia, walking all

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

163
day rhru idyllic valleys - char's rhe besr rhing I've seen so far & made me acrually happy for a day.

I hope ro be in India - Bombay - by Jan 1 , & will visir Israel before rhen for sure.

I cried quirring smoking yesrerday & have held our so far 24 hours rho my chesr feels empry & my rhroar srrange & I am almosr drunk wirh dizziness & awareness of somerhing missing. The wirhdrawal-symproms of nicorine are fanrasric.

I'm in Arhens for weekend ro pick up mail, rhen off on a few more side rrips - Crere, Hydra (Islands) Mr Arhos (srrange monasreries) - I'll keep sending you cards if I'm nor in place for regular Jeerers. All's going well, I've been drawing & filling norebooks wirh scraps of descriprion & rhoughrs ere.

Norhing special - I don'r know whar for even ro wrire poerry larely.

Inreresring rurn of evenrs. [ . . .

}

I would arrempr ro explain more whar I am chinking abour, bur larely words & language rhemself seem ro be a kind of misrake - I would like ro rry ro reach some level of consciousness involving anorher parr of my brain rhan rhe correx (I chink ir is) which reduces all experience ro "srrucrure"

"meaning" and words, language, logos. I gor rhere wirh some drugs ofren,

& ir was a differenr universe - much richer & more " real" rho exrremely painful as ir involves rhe dearh of any idea of self, ere.

Spenr all day wandering around in cafes downrown Arhens, & in rhe park, calking wirh people & gerring informacion on Islands, crave!, India, ere.

Enclosed find a bunch of clippings ro srore - maybe some are duplicares.

O.K. - Love ro you & love ro all -

Your son,

Allen

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg

AthenJ. Greece

October 1 6, 1 96 1

Dear Louis -

Closing u p accounrs in Greece, finishing Iliad, probably move o n coward Middle Easr rhe end of week - here are some papers, reviews ere. co file,

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including yr. cur our poems & a poem on snow by W.C.W. you might be interested in -

Everything fine, back in rhe $ for awhile, red. from City Lights.

Wrote Honey (rather intemperate incoherent lerrer on US politics as usual) - things seem ro get worse & worse & will not get berrer rill people in the U.S. do something ro change U.S. life & govr. ro make ir more human & socialist, and end the puritan-Catholic-Jewish Middle Class materialism & conformity. Greece, France are in the same hole - Countries racked by lousy governments, stupid wars, the people completely indifferent, inactive, supine, believing everything they read in rhe pap�rs is real & inevitable, all political parries corrupt & no one able ro ger enlightened groups rogerher. { . . .

}

Always the same choice between Kennedy & Nixon & nor one human being in the government able ro say shit ro the Cold War and get on with more pressing problems of evolution & world prosperity. The whole human race at an impasse and everybody willing ro pour our their filth and frustration on someone like Bertrand Russell who at least makes sense & takes individual action. Whole idea of individuality has become a disgusting joke in U.S.A. & rhar's rhe only place there is hope - or was hope tor a humane alternative ro mass mechanization under communism.

Greek intellectuals all in same boar, they have police stare super McCarrhyism supported by U.S. bases - none of my bohemian artist friends here can ger passpon:s, half the intellectuals on prison islands, folk music concerts canceled by police with fire-law excuses, newspapers full of pre-election hysteria, shootings in the suburbs ar left wing (non Commie) rallies - and nor one candidate willing to declare independence of borh TJ.S.

and Russian rhrears. Same scene North Africa, Sourh America. West Berlin

& Adenaur is just rhe old Nazi middle class turned Catholic now voting for Adenauer & wanting another war. East German communists are also creeps

& thieves bur no worse than West German scene: any U.S. propaganda on West German side is (I rell you) crap.

So much for roday's editorial. I'm alright - I hear people on E. 2 Street are all flipping & LeRoi Jones been arrested for picker line activity in U.N. - 1

Allen left for Israel in late October.

I . The bottom of che leuer, including signature, wa'i tom off.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

165

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

October 26, 1 96 1

Dear Allen,

A man was here t o say that you owed the Internal Revenue about twentyfive dollars. He asked you ro fill out this form. If you can't dope out the form, send it to Eugene, our lawyer. Sorry.

Here is a poem I wrote a few years ago, called "My Mother at Eightyeight." [ . . .

}

Otherwise, there is no news here.

I received five copies of your new book, Empty Mirror, and will read it shonly. Have you received any response about it? Am saving all clippings about you in a box.

How is Israel? lfl were there, I presume that, somehow, I would receive a rug somewhere deep in my subterranean regions, in the deeps of Jung's collective Unconscious where genetical vibrations stir from our Jewish historical lineage. Write and tell me how you felt.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Haifa, Israel}

November 2, 1 96 1

Dear Lou:

Received letter here, answered Treas Dept one - asked them for more info on why I owe them loot. I'd already written & got no answer. Poem on your mother last 2 lines very funny & bleak roo. No, probably no reviews for Empty Mirror, minor book in long run. I wept on ship pulling into Haifa, old holy land blues, I'm a sucker for anything like that. Having a nice rime, it's like being at vast anarching Family Circle meeting, everybody hospitable, have places to stay here & Jerusalem & Tel Aviv - I've been keeping to myself a lor rho, no public scene, avoid readings and newspaper interviews, I have rho seen literary cafes & mer painters & some poets ere. The

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great thing is all the old-world socialists have made their utopias here - rhe kibbutz atmosphere is like Camp Nichrgedeiger 1 - NY state summer camps. Lots of "lectures" a Ia Sam Freiman or better - it's very charming.

Intellectual life rho is very tame, painters & poets all in-group professionals, they make a good living, nobody does anything astounding - the Prophets be out of place. They even have artist's villages (mainly commercial arr dreary - the few good artists complain) - Also lots of complaints by rhe old rimers that Israel's getting roo middle class & Pioneer spirit slowly fading - except for Arab rhrear which is huge incentive to energy & growth & flexibility. Arabs here nor treated very well at all, basically an insoluble problem until people forger their differences & identities - which neither Jews or Arabs are capable of doing. You'd probably enjoy visit here, I do a lirrle, rho I found rhe first week a little depressing - Spent a few days in Galilee near Bible-spots, a day in Tel Aviv & most of rime in Haifa so far. Bur still haven't gone out ro see rhe land and countryside & kibburzes yer. I'll be here a month, then ger ship from Eilar, which is port on Red Sea - ship ro Orient.

I see by enclosed rhar LeRoi Jones is in soup again. It's discouraging.

Don't feel like writing letters today so will end here -

Love

Allen

I sent a package of books from Greece - just store everything in basement when ir arrives.

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg

(Haifa, Israel}

n.d. (ca. Nowmber 1 961}

Dear Louis:

Still here in Israel, stuck, can't get our thru Arab Stares toward India & can't get a ship fron; southern Israel parr of Eilat. I sent to Playboy magazine asking for $500 on promise of a small article on India, which I guess they'll O.K. so then when rhar comes rhru in a week or so I'll fly our - toward I . A camp in upstate New York, heavily political in cone, where che Ginsbergs camped when Allen was young.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

1 67

Teheran in Persia or Mombassa in Africa - and trans-ship from there. Am anxious to get to Ceylon near the new year - as Paul Bowles will be there & has a house & knows the country - also Gary Snyder is there by then & we're to travel together.

The main beauty oflsrael (aside from democracy as I mentioned) is that it is a haven for persecuted Jews. Many are here by necessity and not all are happy to be here just by necessity - after that it is another thing, to live for future. And living for future is not necessarily fun here as it's not for some kinds of people as interesting a place as N.Y. or Paris or even Mexico City or Athens. I don't personally feel much historical connection in my bones after all - I feel it more in the Idea or Ideal than I do in the realiry while I'm here that is to say, this place is just another small country while & when you're here for real - unless you have a pronounced tendency to be Yiddish which I don't - as a matter of fact I feel a more pronounced tendency to feel at home among Indians & Arabs in Mexico or Tangier - and that Oriental atmosphere is slowly disappearing here, to the dismay of many Sabras -
disappearing to be replaced by a materialistic polyglot modern second rate industrial country. That is the significance that's attached to the slow decay of the idealistic socialist kibbutz scene - which now has a minority place & in a sense is no longer the soul of the new nation. All I'm saying is that unless you have a pronounced single-minded dedication to an exclusive jewish frame of reference in life, this place is not so exciting. Granted it's fine as a refuge for the persecuted, and granted also that the persecuted themselves are not so kindly to their own Arab minority. But it's like being in a Chinese place where all the Chinamen are hung up on being Chinese and that's all they talk about - can be maddening too. It demands an exclusively Jewish mentality, whatever that is (everybody here's always arguing that) and I find that a definite limitation on my own mentality which is Jewish enough but a lot more than that. This is XX Century and I still say the old order of Identity is a big nationalistic hang up on every side.

It would be something if there were any folk songs to preserve, but here they invent second rate folk songs so they can "cherish tradition" -

Thanks for the poems - Glad you hope to travel. I'm off to India soon I hope - Please forward the enclosed letter? - "Upstairs and Down" 1 is very modern, have you tried New Yorker with that?

Love

Allen

I . Sec "Ups<airs and Down," LG, CP. p. 245.

168

Family BmineJJ: 1 961

P.S. I mailed 2 packages - slow mail - one envelope full of old letters, please score those unopened, they're all mixed & no mss. in ir. The other a square package of books, guidebooks co Israel & Greece included. Open those & pur rhem on shelf & skim rhru rhem, rhey might be interesting.

I heard from Eugene & am in touch wirh him.

OK,

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

Nrwember 1 7, 1 961

Dear Allen,

Glad co get your postal from Tel Aviv. That was a fine panoramic view of rhe ocean front of Tel Aviv. I guess you have much leisure ro browse around and ro ruminate and even make notes on new poetry.

We all are O.K. here. This Thanksgiving we are having Eugene and Connie and rhe children, cogerher wirh some others, for a regular feast.

Wish you were here.

Nothing new otherwise. No news from my agent yer. He's trying.

I received a sudden summons from rhe Paterson Stare Teachers' College ro do some subsrirure work. A reacher fell seriously ill so rhar I was asked co complete rhe parr of her program until rhe end of rhe rerm, another rwo and a half months. Starring on Tuesday, Nov. 2 1 , I'll give rhree courses: advanced composition, a shorr srory course, and also, guess what? - a creative writing class. Ir looks challenging; so I hope I shall enjoy ir, though ir will require work on my parr, much reading.

I gather you had a favorable review of your KaddiJh in The Nation. 1 If you have nor already received ir, I'll rry ro procure a copy for you.

More anon.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

I. The review, wrim:n by Robert Hazel and published in the November 1 1 , 1 96 1 , issue of Tht Natiun, was actually a review of Empty Mirror.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

1 69

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg
ljeruJalem}

November 25, 1 961

Dear Lou:

Got your letter. No haven't seen Nation. Enclose an article i n Hebrew.

Met some interesting poets, met Buber & Gershom Sholem who is Caballa scholar, seen rabbis dance in Synagogue, now getting India visa

& trying to figure how to get there. [ . . . ] I will leave here around the 4th or 5th or 6th; today is the 2 5 th . About 10 days. How're you, nice to get your letter. Having weird dreams about arriving in India and early impressions of life, like leaving wombs, tho that's a little literary all this.

Lots of Politics discussed all bound up with questions what is a Jew, nobody here knows, and also a lot of guilt about Arab population among poets & intellectuals & almost everybody, who talks, who I talked to. I met lots people, Tel Aviv & Jerusalem where I passed last week. Too much American money, too many cars, the "old spirit" giving way to television in 2 years, same confusions as the rest of the world, except teetering on Arab brink but no worse than US & Russia - all Time & NewJweek talking about US bombshelter & that appearing weird here, & that type news is received with raised eyebrows. Happy Thanksgiving.

I'll be here for Hanukkah, but that's not a big holiday. The Orthodox Jews have voice in Party politics & keep buses from running on Sabbath, also handle divorces, so that Jews and Arabs can't marry which is not democracy nor a satisfactory situation for the majority of people who are annoyed at theocratic intransigence & ugly character; same time the Hasidic Karta orthodox group don't even recognize the State because it has nothing to do with the Laws of Messiah, & they throw stones . . .

threw stones at an ambulance on Sabat, and someone lost an eye. A Cannanite group says forget about West & go back 2000 years & be Levantine. I'm going to bed.

Love to you

Allen

Great courses you're giving. Well you have good experience, just encourage them to reveal their souls!

170

Family BusineJS: 1 961

Please mail chis leccer enclosed. I can'c send mail direcc co Morocco fro�C�
here. Terrible block! Also have locs of crave! com plicae ions in figuring how co jump from here co India.

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg

December 9. 1 961

Dear Allen,

Glad co gee your long and incerescing leccer of che Nov. 29.

I dispacched char leccer of yours co Paul Bowles.

I observed your adimadversions on [Henry] Miller's sex descripcions: 1
am nor offended by his wricing on sex, bur many of his pages are - ro rae

-
casceless and unillumining. As for goofy happiness, James Thurber is much admired chere in America. The more I read him, che more I like him.

I didn'c go co che Newark Lie. Club, since I had co accend a f:�.culry meecing of Rucgers.

Abouc Israel: I have already wriccen you abouc che sense of belonging co Israel because of an inhericed hiscorical hericage in che bones of che Jews.

Also, che face char Israel is che only councry in che world char longs for che inflowing of all Jews in che face of a refuge from all forms of virulenc and coverc anci-Semicism. True, Jews, as all people, have a commor. bond of humanicy which humanicarism progress will enhance in coming rimes.

Besides, all cypes of nacionalicies concain universals, each addmg cheir concribucion co che general. A rose differs from a marigold, ch0ugn chey are boch flowers.

I read wich much inceresc che clippings. Will file chem.

I am keeping busy here. I cook che Pacerson Scare Colleg� work, because, chough I prefer reciremenc, I need co save up money for craveLng Iacer.

Seems my pension jusc abour almosc makes ends meec. In my creacive wricing cla�s, we are geccing our a mimeographed mag:uine, concaining che besc cerm's efforcs.

Am enclosing my poem, yec unpublished, which was �ead ac che lase meecing of che Poecry Sociecy meecing. Also a clipping of a poem,

"Concerc," which appeared in che N. Y. Herald Tribune.

My licerary agenc reporcs char some publishers like my poems bur are afraid co cake a financial chance. So ic goes . . .

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

1 7 1

Keep well - and keep writing to me.

Eugene and Connie and the kids are fine, though the kids are always having dripping noses from colds. We'll visit them next week before the Christmas holidays, as is our wont.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Tel Aviv (brae/}

December 27, 1 961

Dear Louis -

Fast note - I'm leaving tomorrow (exactly rwo months here now) by ship for Mombasa, E Africa - that's in Kenya - I'll get a few days sniff of the Mau Mau &: catch the first ship I can on to Ceylon. [ . . .

]

I'll probably be there around the 3rd week of January. Spent Xmas in Holy Land, but not much happened &: I couldn't manage to get across into old Jerusalem because of the bureaucratic mistake on my passport making it impossible to pass Jordanian Customs - so missed the party. Israel's Customs had absent-mindedly stamped Israel visa onto my passport instead of on separate paper as is customary to deceive Arab border officers. When he realized what he'd done he looked unhappy &: then spread his hands.

4000 miles travel nullified in half a second's goofing.

I'll write soon as I get to Mombasa.

Love,

Allen

Please tell Eugene change of address, when you next call him.

1 9 6 2

AJ he had hoped, Allen reunited with Peter OrlovJky during hiJ Jtay in hrael. HiJ
plam to viJit India, however, were Jlow in reaching fruition, mainly becauJe he and Peter were having difficultieJ in Jecuring paJJage on a Jhip that would take them to Bombay. They finally took a Jhip from IJrael to Kenya, and they Jpent a month exploring Africa.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg
do EaJt African AirwayJ

Jubilee I nJUrance Bldg.

Kilindini Road

MombaJa, Kenya

January 2 1 . 1 962

Dear Louis:

Fast note: Been in East Africa for about a week - Mombasa & now in Nairobi - seen lions and giraffes from bus living in cheap Negro-Arab hotel in Nairobi. Will travel further inland ro Lake Vicroria this week probably.

I have ticker for Bombay, India, on a ship chat leaves from Mombasa on 1 5 February - about 3 weeks from now. You can reach me here rill then (don't mail anything here after the 5th Feb) - I'll send you Bombay address later.

Today I sene a huge skin drum and a smaller drum ro Paterson by slow boac mail. The drum cost $ 1 0 here and is worth a hundred or more in N.Y.

Treat it gentle when you get it - you can even use it as a coffee cable till I gee home co bang on it. It should reach you in about two months. One big drum wrapped in cloth, and another box with small drum & a wooden percussion instrument coo.

1 74

Family Businm: 1 962

Also roday went ro huge political rally in Nairobi Stadium, Jomo Kenyana main speaker, vast thousands of Negro audience, Peter Orlovsky and I were literally the only white people in the crowds - a weird dreamlike experience. I'm writing in haste - very exciting & curious human scene here in Kenya - spent several days last week in Tanganyika too - all independence fever here. I'll write -

Love,

Allen

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg

January 30. 1 962

Dear Allen,

Received your letter from Mombasa.

Sounds exciting abour the lions and the tigers. Will save the drum when it comes.

Here is a letter from the revenue officer, saying you owe $25 .00. If you can't pay it, let me know, and I'll pay it.

As I wrote you in my previous letter, which you may not have gotten, I rurned down, at the last minure, the regular position at Paterson State College. Two composition classes at night plus three composition classes by day plus a drama course would loosen a tidal wave of papers that would smother me.

Had anorher poem taken by Ladies' Home journal. The Outsider wrote me and asked for a poem. I sene them one called "Still Life" 1 (which you may recall about you and Eugene away and me in the movies in the empty apartment where a ghost rattles the lock . . .

)

No other news. Write soon ro

Your father,

Louis

P.S. I miss you.

Love and kisses.

I. See ""Sr;ll Ufe,"" LG, CP. p. 253.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

175

Allen and Peter finally found a Jhip that would take them to India. They arrived in Bombay on February I5, I 962.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg
c/o American Exprm

Dadabai Naoroji Rd.

Bombay, India

March I 6, I 962

Dear Louis:

I've been last 3 weeks traveling with Gary Snyder and his wife1 & Peter from New Delhi, sightseeing here, up to the foothills of the Himalayas - up to about 6500 feet, old towns called "Hill stations" which the British used to use for summer resorts to escape the heat - it's spring here now & we saw some great views of the high Himalayas - 200 miles all along the horizon ranged high as clouds a series of flat snow peaks going down to Nepal & into Tibet - been 100 miles from the Tibetan border & had great trip.

Maybe go back later in summer if the heat here proves as bad as they say it is. Health is fine, India no less healthy than Mexico & I'm used to that now so everything hunky dory.

India is really great - don't know where to begin there's so much to see & do. Next move a trip thru an area called Rajasthan & a city Jaipur full of Arabic-Persian influenced castles & towers built by oldtime Maharajas -
and lots of elephants & monkeys there too.

The tax collectors letter made sense to me. I have no way of paying him from here. Will you please send a check for $25.59 to U.S. Govt { . . .

}

Add a note saying you are sending it to cover 1960 Income tax for Irwin Allen Ginsberg as per request of Mr. Mullen's letter of Jan 29, 1 962.{ . . .

}

In the meantime you should by now have received or will be receiving $20 sent to me by American Express - use that to make up the money you're putting out. Has that $20 arrived yet? Is it in a form you can cash & keep? If it is not, send it on to me here, and I'll send you the $25 as soon as I hear from you. O.K.? In other words I'll see you get your money back promptly, one way or another.

Meanwhile I've sent you 2 packages yesterday from New Delhi. One is 9

1. Potl Joanne Kyser.

1 76

Family BUJiness: 1 962
small Indian & Tibetan sryle brass & copper statuettes - religious figures mostly. If any of these please you or Eugene, take them for mantelpiece. The rest please put away for my return with the rest of my papers and Junk.

The second package is some books & pamphlets & some personal papers of Orlovsky, a bagful. Please puc his papers in the basement unopened, and read or store the books for me. Gregory wrote that he picked up his box of mss. Put Peter's away safe - some collectors & libraries are already asking for letters & mss., they're worth loot some day & so should be kept safe from harm. They're his private notes & letters so best not go thru them. The books are mostly abouc India.

English Penguin series offered me 1/3 of a paperbook - 25 ,000 copies to be primed - so that's going OK. Also I have an Italian translation set for Jan 1 963. And a German Kaddish next year, and a Hebrew-Israeli selected poems volume being done this year. Dribbles of money come in so I'm OK especially as living is so cheap here - We go from city to city living practically rent-free in Hindu & Buddhist Pilgrim's rent houses. I've been eating cheap vegetarian food which costs 20¢ a meal. Interesting to try no meat for awhile. It's a general custom here, and "inrrapersonal" relations with cows & chickens are much improved in this part of the world. Tho the diet is boring

I take vitamin pills to supplement it & eat lots of fruit & nuts. Not bad.

I sent Eugene a big Tibetan wool blanket to use or save for me, plus some extra clothing I want stored for return.

If you want any kind of Indian blankets, rugs, paintings, statues - if Edith wants a silk Sari - let me know and I'll try to ship it across to you.

Prices are very cheap. I don't have enough to pay for very expensive items buc if there's anything definite you would like, send me some loot & I'll shop around for you & ship it. Kashmir shawls for instance. I saw one fantastic huge (8 feet by 8 feet) brown shawl of exquisite warm thin Kashmir weave - so delicate it can be pulled thru a ring - warm as heavy wool blanket - light as a hand towel - rare - buc costs $ 1 50.00 - If I were richer I'd send it. If anyone wants something like that, I can arrange. Be a great life-long present for Kashmir shawl lovers - etc. or a baby elephant) OK - Later - Love -

Allen

Vekselman1 I don't think knew your father, I'm not sure.

I. In a November 2, 196 l , lecrer, Louis had encouraged Allen co look up Israel Vekselman ''che son of a woman who is my facher .. s sister. He mighc recall my father, Pinkus Ginsberg.'

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

!77

Enclosed poem "Age 65" - you sure sound peaceful & rha£'s sad happy thing ro read.

Say hello ro Harold & Olive & congratulations on their baby.

Sounds besr nor ro reach so much bur rake ir easy & write poems - What else ro do - why work when it's nor absolutely necessary. Nice they offered you a steady job.

Say hello ro Claira & Honey & Leo & Abe. Tell rhem I'm !erring my hair grow down ro my shoulders, I'm earing vegetarian and I'm wearing Indian Gandhi-sryle shin & pants made of white hand loom cloth. I look exacdy like an Indian native. I'll send a phoro sooner or later. The way I look, nobody nor ices me here, whereas if I dresr U.S. style everybody would stare

& ask questions. Anyway my long-hairomania has finally found a practical use.

I'm sending lirde brown envelope of clippings by slow cheap mail - stow away when you ger rhem.

Louis Ginsberg ro AUen Ginsberg

March 20, 1 962

Spring today

Dear Allen,

Received your letter from India today.

I also have on hand a check for you for twenty dollars from rhe American Express Co. Will cash it. Then I'll send $25.59 ro the local Revenue officer in payment for your 1 960 income due.

Yes, rhe big drum arrived. We are keeping here in my sun-room: a good conversation piece.

Glad ro hear you are widely translated. Send me copies of all when rhey are available. Am happy you are so successful!

(Incidentally, an anicle by Rexroth in rhe current Nugget1 mentions you.

He says that "you are slave to your public image, bur you are very good poet and have exened a liberalizing influence in current poetry."

Send photo of yourself: ir should be intriguing.

Enclosed find rwo recent poems from N. Y. Herald-Tribune and rhe N. Y.

Times. The larrer has a new policy: about four poems a week with "names,"

l. Kenneth Rexroth, "San Francisco: The Cool Frontier," Nugget, June 1962.

178

Family Businm: 1 962
like I. A. Richards, Stephen Spender, and I think R. Lowell, etc. McCall's Magazine will have a poem of mine out in a few days.

Oberfirst Associates reportS no news. If nothing happens with my book, they are considering putting it out themselves. They have published books of short stories and anthologies, I'll see.

In a week, when I get paid from Rutgers, I'll send you a small money order to get a shawl for Edith.

I am teaching two nights a week at Rutgers; the rest of the time I have an abundance of leisure to read and write and am enjoying myself. A new rather avant-garde magazine called Poet and Critic took three poems of mine.

Also the Book Review of the N. Y. TimeJ reprinted a short poem of mine called "Microscope." ' Am going to the March meeting of the Poetry S. of A. where I am to be a critic of the mimeographed poems.

Eugene and Connie are OK. The kids are thriving, except for periodical colds. They are all coming here this Sunday, and I'll regale them with news from you.

It was a long rime since I had heard from you so I was getting worried.

Try to write more often.

Otherwise, all is status quo. Abe, following his pattern, fell off the water wagon, but he is recovering. Harold and Olive got a four-room apartment in a project and are happy.

I'll store safely all those things from your friends. Kerouak {sic] admitted his paternity in his case, defended by Eugene, and has to pay twelve dollars a week for support. Eugene had him sleep over his house a few nights so he could get Kerouak sober in the courtroom for the trial.

I send you my love. I miss you.

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Bombay, India}

April 21, 1 962

Dear Louis & Edithe

Arrived back in Bombay a week ago after trip thru Ajanta Caves & Sanchi I . See ""Microscop<,"" LG. CP. p. 369.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

1 79

(ancient sculprure) and Ellora rock-cue cave temples & been staying in comforc in house of rich friends & gave a linle poetry reading here with Gary Snyder, who is sailing back co Japan coday. So I'll stay here a few weeks & catch up on mail & fill our income tax & read books. I got all yr.

leners & $ 1 5 check. One leccer says buy a shawl & the ocher, a sari. I'll gee a shawl, I guw char's what's wanted. If you want a sari, fine, I'll get one coo.

Do you want a sari coo Edith? India is lovely, & che hoc season is just beginning - so I'll see what char's like in Bombay. I'm reading lots of classic Indian poetry & legends & philosophy. Nor tended co my mail yet so I'll answer yt. leccers in a week or so. We did some climbing - up co 9000 feet in Himalayas - mer the Dalai Lama of Tiber for an hour's interview - saw all sores of Tibetan refugees - been traveling 3rd Class trains sleeping in luggage racks & eating Indian style with my hands. So, after a few weeks here next scop probably be Calcuna & then co Himalayas for summer.

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg

July 27, 1 962

Dear Allen,

The inevitable happened. Yesterday, My mother - your grandmother -
died, and today we buried her.

She had been fading for che lase year; and a few days ago, a stroke half paralyzed her. Yesterday morning she died; and because Sarurday is a Jewish holiday, we had co bury her today, Friday.

As the pallbearers carried che coffin co the grave, dug our beside my father's, I fancied I heard the faint echo of the hoofs of Emily's horses as

"their heads were coward Eternity." I had something of che same notion when Naomi was buried (and you mentioned che notion in "Kaddish").

So, now my mother joins Naomi in a deep rest and peace on which nothing more can disturb them.

We all spoke about you and wondered when we would see you.

Take care of yourself.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

180

Family Business: 1 962

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

American Express

Calcutta. India

August 5, 1 962

Dear Louis:

Received your Jeerer July 27 about Buba dying. I'm sorry I was nor there to comfort you if there is any comfort or if any is needed, bur I guess rhe whole family muse have had a mass vision of Time, all gathered together ar once to see rhe last word spoken on all our childhoods. Are you alright'

Give my love ro Hanna & Clara and Abe, I am missing a great deal nor to be ar 1 1 Pomona this week. I guess there's no way ro roll back rhe picture.

July 28 I was writing poem in Journal:

"Now I am brooding on a pillow
with my arm resting on my head
eyes closed open on gulfs black rime

(water buffalo herds, wide srreers,
rhe liquid image of Olive Oil
popeyes in and out of a second
mixed up wirh rhe vase blankness)

This is myself in rhe flesh. Whom
am I to rrusr' I feel companion
to all of us now before death
waiting inside life. One big
place we are here. Others have
left before us - Where could they keep
themselves absent now - bur
what cricks they had to play to
escape from rhe far bodies -
to rake char seep ar last, cracked
open from head to foot, choking, blind
swallowing themselves entire like
rhe snake char does remain
to rhem rhe old reminder of
before rhe solitary Question
one became one was familiar -

That poor hopeless being in rhe dark

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

1 8 1
knowing irs own whole univecse
a big selfish lie become so
painful ic muse vomit all its
memory away - and lee char
reptilian vastness recreate itself
apart from eye or ear of any dreaded
touching any more - Who am I in bed
with my eyes closed, so familiar
from before -?"

Well this went on for several pages recalling ghosts of people bur I'll leave it off for now. Yes Emily Dickinson's horses are amazing Prophesy, chat is at moments the Symbol of their destination cakes on a cosmic inevicabiliry and a strain of unforeseen light enters che mind. Ic is co that area of unforeseen awareness I was directing my attention, almost scientifically, trying to widen my own conscious rill it be continuously in fuller contact with the source of the uncanny light - because ic is there, always constant or "eternal" ac moments of crisis - recurring - Also deeper awareness, at a depth as a day co day experience may lead co some difference in evolution of human sociery. I don't know if poetry can carry all chat weight once the awareness becomes more chan a transient poetic flash, rho chat's all we moscly experience, except I guess as age comes nigh or life freaks us into abnormal awareness. The "reptilian vastness" above is che sense of non human or non egoistic radiance chat is underneath Time.

So how's Eugene) I sent him a package of 2 Tibetan Tankas lase week which should arrive in 6 weeks.

What kind of mind was Grandma in the lase weeks) Did she have anything special coming chru? Or was she coo weak co remember much) And what do you feel like now orphaned so old - I guess you were used co your mother as a permanent fixture of life - bur I guess you muse have been prepared? OK Lou, I'll close & write Iacer, I received Cuban pamphlet which I had seen in Encounter. No plans except leave Calcutta & continue travel India when money is sufficient.

Love

Allen

Are you OK? Too many memories crowd in. I wonder if it's worth writing them down or is ic more sand. Love, Allen.

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Family Businm: 1 962

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 13, 1 962

Dear Allen,

A few monrhs before my mother died, she kept asking about her grandchildren. I showed her clippings about you and told her about your international reputation as a poet. She seemed pleased and remarked that the poetic abiliry of ours descended from the literary strain of our forebears.

The last monrh she faded rapidly, like a candle going slowly out. Then a stroke laid her low unril she died shonly after, without pain, more like a gentle falling asleep.

At the burial, as the casket was roiling its way slowly down inro the impartial hospitality of the open grave, there flashed through my mind, like a rapidly running movie, some incidenrs in her life: her coming to America, her marriage, my childhood and irs scenes in Newark, my starring to write on 1 5 Ave. (Often she insisted, though tired, in wrapping the laundry bundles, because, she told my father, I was too busy upstairs writing poetry), her efforts at consoling you and Eugene at the various summers in Belmar while Naomi was away, etc. etc. All in a flash, as the coffin slowly sank, her body emptied of her countless errands, dust to dust, bestowing her immonaliry to her children and grandchildren . . .

About that unearthly light granred to earthly creatures: it is a transcendent experience, as we call it, visited on sainrs, lunatics, drug users, flagellanrs, poers, etc. It does give one a feeling (I have had it at times during some of my poems) as if one has been lifted to the heights where some luminous stream of empirical light streams from secret sources to find all things porous and open to its influence, knitting near and far, linking the momenr to the momenrous, in a momenr when the timeless dips inro time, like a sudden holy sanctification. True, all true in effect; however, I find no scinrilla of scienrific evidence to prove that we explore sources outside of our own being's or body's senses . . . What radiance there is beyond Time we conjecture: but in truth, the sky is black in outer reaches of space and we see light because of thick atmospheric dust on eanh . . . There is blackness in the universe except for the unimaginable brilliance of the millions of suns, some exploding or dying through aeons, as our own sun evenrually will, so scienrists tell us, dooming our own eanh to inevitable extinction. Says Schweitzer: "The universe is a riddle: it both creates and destroys." Meanwhile, man is differenr from all other creatures: he is not

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

1 8 3
indifferent to the indifference of the universe, but tries to snare a meaning from a seemingly meaningless universe, trying at the same time to heighten his awareness and intensify his contemplation of himself and his surroundings.

Otherwise, all's well.

Here is a review of your book from the current issue of Poetry. 1

Am also enclosing a condolence card of a Rutgers student of mine, a staff writer on the PaJJaic Herald-NewJ. (Please return it.) Write soon to

Your father,

Louis

AUen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

American Exprw

Calcutta. India

September I 0, 1 962

Dear Louis:

You all right? Everything fine here. I send back your borrowed $50 in a week. I been busy last 2 weeks reviewing proofs for a new City Lights book Reality Sandwiche/ which will be poems 195 3-60 uncollected, mostly published in scattered magazines here & there. So been working & happy.

I'll leave Calcutta & go to Benares the end of the month but keep writing me at this address till I notify you otherwise. Everything settled down in NJ
now. Grandma's gone) How's Gene) I sent him some Tibetan paintings.

I go back to work now - mail unanswered a month & piled up. Also probably prepare a selection of poems for Penguin books in England to publish in one of their series. Received friendly message from Yevtuchenko1
a few weeks ago. I suppose the Cold War is really over all but the shouting.

Will require compromises by both sides & cessation of propaganda & paranoia both ways. No way out other than that or blowing up the world.

(B. Russell4 makes most sense of anyone. I hear his scientists at Pugwash have come up with a little black box that solves the problem of bombtest l. George Oppen, umided review of K4ddiih and Other Poems, Poerry, August 1962.

2. Reality Sandwichu (San Francisco: Ci<y Ligh<S Books, 1 963).

3. Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtuchenko.

4. Bertrand Russell.

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observations. That puts ir squarely up co politicians of both sides. If they don't stop now, ir means they are in some kind of secret league ro screw up the race which I doubt.)

OK I write Iacer

Love

Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Amer Express

Calcutta, India

September 2 5, 1 962

Dear Louis:

Enclosed find your poems, the last stanza of "Funeral" looks solid &

"Blunder," 1 "Diners Cards in Pockets" etc very modern. "Spring Rapture"

you wrote before & the years thru you repeat this attempt each time a little more information on the sensation, but if ir proceeds from a real occurrence, or a series of real experiences, why nor make an attempt (nor necessarily in any free verse) to write in direct autobiographical derail about one such specific experience - like say Wordsworth locates rhe site of his Imimarion in Mom Blanc poem - or ochers - in other words I mean instead of generalizing rhe experience why not try one poem locating ir in time (giving your age specifically & autobiographical circumstances surrounding the momem transfigures) and space (your backyard or ar seashore where Jersey or NY State or Newark Public Library wherever it occurred) - and throw in as much prose, prosaic, factual material as can be rhymed oddly or interestingly - that be an interesting variation on chis poem - because you repeatedly return to the theme making new attempts periodically, very good why not try from a new angle the same theme but throwing in all the personal derail & data that accompanies rhe experience, or as much as seems relevant to get across the experience as a living experience of a modern man not just a "poetic" experience to be generalized - "leaf & grassblade" looped

- where - in your garden, in Eastside Park? - or just general leafs - in other words direct visionary data wherever possible to fix & locate. Working in l. Se< "Blunder," LG, CP, p. 208.

A /len and Louis Gins berg

I B 5
that direction you might come up with a new powerful statement of this old theme you been breaking your haid on for years & years. I take it you're not entirely satisfied with earlier efforts to fix the sensation artistically because you keep re-trying & re-writing that experience. So, if it is locatable, when

& where did it first happen, for instance, & where recur, & in what laundrycart or campus in what decade under what tree or on whose lawn near what smokescack or suburb? Don't that make sense'

Received letter from Bertrand Russell he says: "The nuclear technology is faulry . . . it is a problem in elementary mathematical statistics: nuclear war is a matter of statistical near certainty unless we prevent it." He also says "I have a very personal admiration for Blake, & was so powerfully affected as a young man upon hearing Tiger Tiger read out that I nearly fainted." It's a scary letter, that is he does say, as mathematician, that mathematical probability is that there will be an explosion, given the present setup. What do you think? If I thought his figures & reasoning were really correct, I would be inclined to set our to do something. I'm not sure he's exaggerating or not. Yet on thinking it does seem to make sense, that with all the hysteria

& hairtrigger network there will be bad trouble unexpectedly. Well here's a real problem for you. What you think? I am nor sure whether to do something seriously, or not.

I figure to be back in US on visit next summer coming - Creeley wrote me from Vancouver offering 3 week writers conference invitation with round trip fare paid - which would mean a round the world plane ticket - I could stop off in Japan, NY & return via Paris & Moscow to the Far East

Chance to spend a few weeks in Russia on my own (nor sponsored by US or Red bureaucracy). So I wrote him OK - so I should be in NY late August or Sept for a month at least. So see you soon. Then go back for a year in Japan.

I see Time magazine is this week calling for invasion of Cuba & appears to me the right wing is solidifying in the US do you notice that. This will prevent Kennedy in future from making real conciliation with communism, & compromise, & that looks dangerous to me. Newsweek & Time diametrically opposed in tone & facts & attitudes now - looks like sheep & goats separating & possibly some sort of fatal decision taken in the US - and the people not aware.

Do if you have a chance look up whatever material there is around on Russell & his peace marchers etc & ban the bomb propaganda in the USA it seems to be growing serious, the situation, nor the marchers - at least I have been more or less ignoring Apocalypse as actual possibility but difficult to do so when Russell writes me directly that there is urgent

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danger. He says also both governments hiding news & faces etc. Very much like 1 984, the situation, or a science fiction storybook. What do you think'

The other question that presents itself, if there is such danger as he says, is it worth doing anything about - that is To Be or Not To Be. Not that I don't like life & the human race but I wonder - if the race is threatened - if it is so important that the human experiment continue. I guess I would want it to be, yes. Russell seems very convinced that it should go on. At this point however he seems ro think it depends on decisions of individuals to intervene ro prevent Govts. from blowing everything up. Do you think he's right' Or do you think we should trust the Govts & let things drift.

The alternative ro drift is individual action warning yr neighbors, waking up Chuck Joelson (yes why not) etc etc - actual individual responsibility, in cooperation with others who feel an actual threat.

I would pay no attention to purely rational prophesies of doom, except that also intuitively I do sense something very wrong - always have - but now this year I have dreams of policies & deathsheads & bombs - i.e. I receive both subjective & objective (Russell) warnings. So what you think.

Of course Russell's anxiety & tension only adds ro the overload of world fright, & chat doesn't help.

Well father, you got any advice' Should we save the world or let it -
possibly - blow itself up? I really don't know the answer, or not sure Russell has posed the right question. It's a scary proposition.

Book I sent Ferlinghetti was poems 195 3-60 as yet uncollected in a book

- poems published in mags but not in Howl or Kaddish - writings from Mexico & So America & travels - about 100 pages - Reality Sandwiches by name - out in a few months.

Enclosed find $50 travelers check made out in your name from Peter -
pays back the money I borrowed months back. Immediate financial pressures here are much less - Peter got 600$ from Veteran's Administration.

Regards ro Eugene. OK -

I'll write later.

Love

Allen

What do Honey & Leo say about Bomb? I'm not trying ro get anyone hung up on it, I'm just inquiring, what do you, & they, think on this subject nowadays - is it a problem?

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

187

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

October 8, 1 962

Dear Allen,

Received your letter of Sept. 25 today.

Thanks for the fifty dollars, though, if you needed it, you might have held it.

Re your admonitions regarding my poems anent "revelations," you might have something there. (Reminds me of a remark by Gertrude Stein:

"There's no there there.") Sometimes, though, I have "located" the matter in hearing music. Ruminating in my garden touches off some geyser released from subterranean, subconscious fissures or clefts. . . . No, my friend, I am not breaking my head: it's my subliminal self that's struggling for utterance till it rushes out in a final, timeless lucidity.

Here is enclosed a poem called "I Met an Alligator," from the N. Y.

TimeJ. While we were in St. Augustine, Florida, we went to an alligator farm where I looked, eye to eye, at an old, time-beaten, worse-for-the-wear, enigmatic alligator.

When your new book comes out, Reality SandwicheJ, let me know so I can order a number of copies. Am eager to take a good bite on those sandwiches.

No doubt there's meat but will it give one gas' (From the sublime to the meticulous: Sign at a diner and auto station: EAT HERE AND GET GAS.) Cuba is a thorn in the side. Despite jingoists, Kennedy is keeping calm. I doubt whether he will let Russia mouse-trap us into some real action so Russia can slice a bit of baloney or "salami," as they say, in West Berlin. But why is Russia stuffing with such arms? Why is Russia making a so-called

"shipping port" off the East coast of Cuba? Can it be a submarine base or a base to let the Red subversion seep into the fabric of South America?

Be that as it may, the nub of the question is in West Berlin. I foretell that Russia will make a "pact" with her satellite, East Germany. Then, when East Germany attempts to stop Allies from access to their battle-won rights, there will be bloodshed. But Russia will halt there, not wishing to wet her own paws. Then the U.N. will take up the matter. Of one thing I am certain: if the Allies let a hole go in the dike in West Berlin, the Red rivers of Russia will invade all, till the walls or dikes crumble and the whole continent will go under.

Were Stalin living, there might be a nuclear war. As Khrushchev holds now: Stalin's era was one of assassins and cannibals There is a thaw now; not

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much, but something. There still is some dialogue. It's coo bad, though, that the Russian people are not told the truth: they don't know the reasons for the wall in Berlin; they don't know about Russia's breaking the moratorium; they don't know about arming Cuba. In truth, no Russian can leave any of the satellites. The Commies fear to contaminate their people with the truth . . .

From all I've been able to read: from Time and the N. Y. Times, The N. Y.

PoJt, The Nation, Norman Cousins in The Sat Rev. The Lomum Times Lit Supplement, The Evergreen Review, The Reporter, and AtlaJ, The Magazine of the World Prw - from all these I add and subtract and deduce that there will be no nuclear war but that there will be brush fires stopping shon of universal decimation.

We are not living but we are encamped in the world, but the dark clouds will slowly roll away. In conclusion, I would say: Keep your shin on.

Regards to Peter,

More anon.

Love from your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Amer Exprm

Calcutta, India

October 1 9, 1 962

Dear Louis:

Probably the most communicable way to waken latent timeless sensation in reader is by making economical use of the actual daca, circumstances & panicularicies of your own subjective events - i.e. which music, when, what orchestra, what kind of radio, what kind of room, what did you notice then about the furniture, eyes open or closed, what pan of che music, whac instruments, what kind of gum were you chewing ac che time, what your feet feel like, ecc etc - all these as the "objective correlative" of che subjective sensation. The subjective feel is otherwise indescribable except chru abstract generalized idea words which carry litde emotional realiry acrose to che readers mind's eye. "No ideas but in things."

Not only "ruminating in garden" but when, which time were you

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

1 89
ruminating, this year, last, what month, etc all the details which are the life of the moment. All those details to be assembled in whatever form possible makes the poem, rhymed or free as you please. As long as the Form doesn't by its very stiffness rule out use of real doggy derails. "Alligator" is excellent first half & last half tho it proposes questions is not as poeric as the photo of the alligator in first half . . . impulse wandered off is still half photographic (wandered) & so carries meaning.

Reality SandwicheJ, plenty of gas as the last poem is 25 pages of notations on Ether gas.

What Russell (& also I see this week Burdick book) warned was not rhat

"evil men" would starr a war but that already the narure of rhe machinery makes a war inevitable: Russell says "The nuclear technology is faulry. Rockets cover the planet and are on a hair trigger. lr is a problem in elementary mathematical statistics: nuclear war is a matter of statistical near cerrainry."

NewJwelik Oct 22, page 7 3 quotes Burdick saying his questioning of scientific experrs working in the field, they all agree that now "war by accident is not probable or likely, but inevitable." I don't know. All non govr scientists seem to agree on rhis. The govts have not commented & can't be expected to. You are rhe only one who can do anything about it, not the govr., now. That is, I wouldn't let no Govt do your deciding for you any more, on this particular issue. That's like asking for it. The good thing about this siruarion, it will force people to be individuals again, whether they like ir or not.

I guess I am so far apart, from yr political views, it don't make much sense to argue by mail. Several letters ago I was describing how this Maj.

Weatherley, Eatherley, whatshisname, flipped & got thrown in the bughouse for saying he was sorry he dropped the atomic bomb. When you wrore back that, right, man was undoubtedly neurotic.

No, what I meant was the govt is neurotic, Truman is mad, rhe USA is off irs rocker, the ONE sane statement in it all is this one lone individual saying he was sorry he dropped the atom bomb. When you wrote back the poor man had a hard time & was undoubtedly suffering strain I was sure we were in 1 984. Usually I would start screaming in this simation bur now ir's too sad & impossibility of basic communication makes even rhar hopeless.

Suffice to say, I think it would be helpful if rhe Russians could read rhe NY TimeJ every day, and ir would be equally helpful if you could read, carefully, Pravda every day. Or better if Burroughs' method were followed,

& somebody cut up the Times and Pravda, mixed them surrealist ar random,

& dished up the mixture for international consumption. I'm not kidding.

Try raking a statement by Kennedy on Bomb rests & a statement by

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Family Business: 1 962

Khrushchev, cue chem co ribbons wirh a razor, shake in a paper bag, reassemble ar random. You'll emerge wirh a complete coherent international manifesto displaying rhe subconscious incencions of boch parties. Try same wirh Cuba, Berlin, ere. Why anybody in his righr mind should wane ro rake SIDES in chis suicidal concesr of Srupidiry I'll never understand.

Leave ir, char as far as I'm personally concerned, I don'r care if Russia or rhe USA wins rhe Cold War. As ir is forrunarely neither can win so they're both sruck, and everybody wirh rhem. As for Cuba, I hope rhe Russians arm her ro rhe reech & Cuba makes as much trouble for rhe USA all over Sourh America as she can. If ir were lefr ro rhe USA alone nothing would ever happen, nothing has for rhe lase hundred years. I been there. The only answer for rhe USA is ro LOWER irs srandard of living. $ 1 2 billion spent on advertising in USA every year diverted co Sourh America would solve rhe problem. Gercing involved wich further dogfight wirh Casrro only diverts arrencion from rhe real problem which is char Sourh America is everywhere a big goddam economic-political mess & rhe Communists are che only ones char will do anything abour ir because rhe Capiralisrs certainly won'r, haven'r, and won'r acr until ir's coo lace. Alliance for Progress was hopeless from che beginning. 50 ro 1 00 billion is needed nor 2 billion. Casrro said so 2 years ago. And co chink char huge minorities in USA wane co arrack Cuba NOW' And char chis minority & Time magazine are now swinging everybody's rhoughr so far co rhe righr in rhe USA rhac a pro-socialise reconscrucrion of SA is unthinkable' Then ler rhe Communists triumph!

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg

October 29. 1 962

Dear Allen,

Received your air mail Jeerer of Ocr. 19. Have read ic carefully. Your remonstrances and indignations are nor unfamiliar co me.

I agree char rhere is danger in rhe acorn bomb. Bur Russia is pursuing salami racrics and provoking us. I suppose you have nor heard che lacesc; namely, Russia had sec up or was serring up missile bases in Cuba, while ac che same rime she was denying ir. Kennedy threatened ro extirpate rhe

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

1 9 1
missile bases with forces of bombers, paratroopers. Then, Khrushchev capitulated and promised to dismantle them, crate them, and return them to Russia, all under U.N. supervision. Note: the people of Russia did not know about the missile bases in Cuba as, indeed, they know very little about the threatening postures of their country. No protests are allowed in Russia again Kruc., but here in America, we allowed peace protests against the White House, even while we were mustering our forces and imposing a quarantine!

Today's New Republic says, "The challenge presented by the Soviets was real. The President had to act. "

I f you were here and saw the loud outcries and protests aired publicly by the COP, peace groups, Commies, and a hundred other dissenters as CONTRASTED with the monolithic one party press in Russia, you'd have pause for doubt or you would be bemused.

There is a little thaw in Russia, but K. still thinks he can bury us. K. is telling Little Red Riding Hood that he is Grandfather . . . The corybantic protraction of the Russians once before Stalin who tried to explain away rivers of blood by downright lies may be over, but the thousand and one distortions of the truth by the Soviets at present only needles the precarious world situation.

Now what about the Chinese Communists))?

Listen, boy: Why didn't you answer my challenge which I am now repeating for the fourth time: namely, name one country that Russia released from its despotic grasp compared to the forty or so countries that have been and are being released into independence by the West. Do answer, please.

The method you mention about tearing up statements then shaking them in a paper bag, etc would result in chaos - that way is anarchy. I am surprised that you take it so seriously.

I'm shocked that you want Russia to arm Cuba to Death. As you may by this time see, Khrushchev has promised to remove them. Yes, I am in favor of bombing those missile sights off the earth. You have a mental block aLout the Commies. Could it be a rationalization of a childhood bias? I any case, I am just as indignant as you are, only I'm against Russia, and I don't give a God damn how you fulminate or froth at the mouth, so kindly talk in a low tone and with low voltage and do reply about my challenge underlined in red.

About the first part of your letter, about the "objective correlative" or about "No ideas but in things" and about concrete details: yes, yes, yes. But

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one forgers himself in rhe urgency of writing and one's writings do nor come up ro one's knowledge or aims. Still, I keep trying .

Just keep your shirt on and I'll keep mine on.

Love from

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

U Je Jame addresJ

Calcutta, Amer Exprm

December 7, 1 962

Dear Louis:

Leaving tomorrow ro settle down in Benares. Same Calcutta mailing address can be used, till further notice - they'll forward. Cleaning up & packing, not much time for letters and also I want to cut down on correspondence and get back ro solitary writing.

Have been spending a lor of rime in rhe burning ghats (where Hindus dispose of bodies in small wood fires) on Ganges bank, sitting at night and talking & smoking ganja (same as marijuana) with holymen. It's the custom here, sort ofTantrik discipline - ro see & familiarize self with dissolution of the body & be at home wirh corpses & hair burning and eyeballs sizzling etc. Amazing how after a few visits one realizes nothing is happening except a lot of old sofas and pillows of meat are being disposed of.

Received both yr last lerrers with clippings. I thought my last lerrer ro you have been sensible, in any case I've tried to avoid the hysteria rhar's drowning everybody left & right. I don't have much more ro say than what I said rhere. I read the clippings you sent. The Jurists report seems fair & Castro regime comes off very badly. This is nor news to me as you may remember I began complaining against police state suppression of marijuana also ar rime of meeting Casrro people in Hotel Teresa. The argument by Draper is less convincing, since I am generally against compensation for expropriated industries, and rhar seems ro be rhe main point at issue, in the general argument as ro what turned Castro so anti-US. US aid according ro the letter set as precondition such compensation. I do remember as the crucial headline during that whole period (leading to the expropriation of oil refineries) that US owned refineries refused to process Soviet oil, & that

Louis and Naomi Ginsberg, in happy times. Their turbulent marriage was marred by quarrels over politics and Naomi's lifelong battle with mental illness.

The Ginsberg family during
one of its summer vacations
in upstate New York. Both

Allen (front) and his older
brother, Eugene, would
follow their father's lead and
write poetry.

Allen, as a student at

Columbia University.

William S. Burroughs, at the Metro

Neal Cassady, ca. 1 947. Cassady,
politan Museum of Art, New York. An
fictionalized as Dean Moriarty in Jack
early mentor to Allen Ginsberg and Jack

Kerouac's On the Road, was a pivotal

Kerouac, Burroughs achieved fame and
figure in both the Bear and hippie
notoriety with such novels as junky and
movements.

Naked Lunch.

The New Visionaries: Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, and Allen Ginsberg in 1 959, at the rime of the filming of l'ull My Daisy.

Edith and Louis Ginsberg, summer of 1 954. Edith's wit, intelligence, and compassion brought stability into the Ginsberg household. Quite often, she acted as a buffer in disputes between Louis and Allen, and her extraordinary tolerance was greatly influential in Louis's coming to terms with his son's homosexuality.

In the classroom: Louis taught English and composition on both high school and college levels. Later in life, Allen would follow his father's example, first, at Naropa Institute, where he co-founded a poetics school, and at Brooklyn College, where he taught until shortly before his death.

Allen and Louis, 1 964. By this point, Allen, with his characteristic beard and long hair, had become an internationally known figure, with a reputation as a poet that surpassed his father's.

Allen typing in his Cherry Valley, New York, retreat.

Louis, only a few months prior to his death in I 976.

"Battle of the Bards": Allen and Louis, reading together in 1 972. lntially marketed as a kind of poetic oddity, the father-and-son poetry readings became highly regarded and popular events for nearly a decade.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

1 93
was followed by expropriation, and that was followed by wholesale outbreak of anticastro propaganda in the US and anti US propaganda in Cuba.

Too much technical detail to argue over in letters. As for instance Draper in the clip you sent me calls Castro's call for $30 billion foreign aid to S.A. a

"grandstand play." Since you remember perhaps that at that time I wrote in Buchwald column supporting that great amount of money as necessary; and wrote you saying I thought the half million proposed by US was just too minute; and since in the last few months the US itself has admitted the failure of its new frontier aid to SA; I now find myself on Castro side of this argument, not yours, Draper's or the US.

I take it you sent the clipping to propose the argument that it was not US
intransigence that forced Castro into Soviet sphere. My conclusion through all this time is that US intransigence is the main problem. It remains so today. After concluding agreement with Russia on Hands Off Cuba & withdrawal of missiles, I see in Newsweek that the US no longer considers itself bound to not invade Cuba. Movements such as this are what whip up war hysteria on both sides - especially as in this week's papers I see reports that US based anticastro raiders are continuing attacks.

The US is not sure how, but wants to get rid of Castro. The real problem is that the USA has no proposition who to put into his place. The US did the same thing in Guatemala as I emphasized before to you in letters & conversation, and if you read this week's Newsweek you will see the present Guatemala mess. It's no less of police state than Cuba, and not en route to solving any domestic problems anyway. The only difference is that it's pro US - so there is no agitation in the US to change regime there.

As far as I can see the only route at this point is an attempt at conciliation between all parties.

Anticommunist people I know who've recently been to Hungary Poland etc say things are much better. Newspaper reports of recent Czech party congresses - more destalinization campaigns. Read recent Yevruchenko volume. The main direction seems to be liberalization. Probably because Bomb inevitabilities make war impossible for everyone.

It's just that I'm not interested in fighting "communism" as such. I don't really see the imperialist tradition of Russia as at present in regard to the satellite countries as anything equivalent to western colonialism, "the satellites looted plundered profaned" etc. I would guess that beginning several years ago &, given peace, the tendency of development will be toward more liberalism & economic prosperity in the satellite countries. By 1960, there's no percentage for the Russians in "plundering" Bulgaria,

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Family Businm: 1 962

Hungary ere. I don't think that's what's presently happening there. The worst place is probably East Germany right now. Once pressure from Adenauer is off & imagine rhe Russians will kick our the intransigent E

German communist leaders & try to get things liberalized & destalinized there.

What I'm saying is the present tendency of Russia is relatively rapid movement against old police state scene & I think that will all work our well in the next decade. If you read Yevruchenko, & recent Ehrenberg etc also been receiving leners from Villagers who've been in Russia - the worst now seems to be over in Russia. Hypocrisy nor over, bur worst police is.

China's a different matter. My own feeling is, the only way our (re India) is admit China to the UN & support development of a liberalized communism. See the new Snow book.

In facr I imagine rhe recent Toynbee analysis makes sense, rho it was much anacked several months ago when it came our.

Continued maintenance of emotional hostility on both sides can't solve the problem. Forcing Castro our no solution.

In other words rhe Cold War gona stop on both sides. Acrually it is stopping bur it is raking rime for both sides to adjust emotionally to a neutral non hysterical attirude.

Cessation of the Cold War is the only way to insure liberalization inside the communist countries. I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with communism. Trouble is, the US was fighting a Cold War against communism itself rather than abuse of communism by power-heads.

Unless you WANT communism to "Fail." I don't. Rather see it succeed and come our allrighr, adjusted & with power as decentralized as possible in an electronic civilization rhe techniques of which rend as in US and Russia to centralize power.

Endless agitation & hysteria about war here, now quieting slowly as negotiations begin. Nobody understands Chinese motivation, which is basically irrational, the Chinese motivation I mean. Only way to end that irrationality it to rake pressure off China. See Snow book.

In other words force is gening nobody anywhere. Force and righteous wrath which is just tiresome on all sides. The combination of Roy Howard, Luce & Hearst press is holding US psyche back from recognition of simplest neutral necessities as you can even find in Newsweek. Newsweek now owned by Liberal Wash Post people this year & coming on more & more sensibly.

I don't think either US or Russia all last year were ready for Bomb agreement so I don't "blame" either side exclusively - certainly nor Russia -

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

195
for failing to agree. The Parry Line I am following here was first enunciated to me by I. F. Stone & Walter Lippmann.

The situation is roo dangerous (or was a month ago) for anyone to indulge any longer in righteous wrath, "anti-communism" "anti-capitalism" blame on the other side, etc. It's obvious communism is here to sray in Russia and China so the problem is to make communism feasible & easy to live with and under etc. The original Dulles line, which corresponded to the original paranoid Stalin line, was death struggle between the two.

Present China war scene rends to further liberalize communist world scene since it splits up the parries into individualized groups. See clip enclosed. The Indian Reds had ro shit or ger off the por finally. Enclosed another clip in which U. Thane parrots the parry line I am parroting. Was this featured in US press' I imagine so, or hope you saw it already.

The one place where I think "communist imperialism" was/will be ultimately destructive is Tiber. Loss there irreparable.

That's about ir. The main problem everywhere is the emotional hangover, everybody been so degraded, everywhere.

Love - Allen

I will go to Moscow next fall I think.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Monday, December 1 7, 1 962

Dear Allen,

Glad to hear from you.

Sounds like a gruesome thing: sitting and smoking and watching dead bodies burn. Ogh.

Am enclosing two reviews of your KaddiJh: one is good; the other is what you'd expect. (It's nor a review of your own book, but you are brought in.) All's quiet here. The population explosion continues: Olive, Sheila, and Connie are all pregnant. How's that) Edith is beaming, for she will be able to boast of nine grandchildren.

Yesterday we visited Eugene and Connie: they are all OK, and keeping busy. Eugene dabbles in astronomy; also, he is writing some fine poetry, which I am sending off to publications for him.

196

Family Bminess: 1962

I suppose you heard of the death of Mrs. Roosevelt. Sad but inevitable.

Stevenson said: "She did not curse the darkness but lit candles. Her glow warmed the world." [ . . .

]

I continue teaching at night at Rurgers in Parerson. Nexr rerm I am having three instead of two classes.

I suppose in rhe long run, rime will erode rhe truculence of rhe Soviets and rhe Wesr; and each by osmosis and viability and reconciliations will interfuse some of each orhers qualities.

However, in rhe short run, I charge you wirh being a brain-washed Commie - brainwashed by a rationalization of childhood memories and anachment ro Naomi's family or by your inbuilr, blind rebelliousness.

The main charge I have against you, re above, is rhar you blindly waive aside Russia's conquest and rape of her sarellires and cavalierly dismiss ir all as nor in rhe imperialist rradirion. Whar kind of perverted logic are you giving me) Ir's all righr for you ro foam ar rhe mourh and fulminate in wrathful indignation, nor forgening ro splash a few obscenities abour, when you are strongly indignant about any of rhe West's faults. Russia's imperialism, I maintain, is worse rhar rhe Wesr's former imperialism, because more modern rimes and more social enlightenment regarding imperialism now as an anachronistic throwback. Yer here you blindly waive aside Russia's rape of her sarellires. Hungary, like a brainwashed Commie, you blink ar. Whar if rhere is one degree less brutality rhan formerly: Russia's tanks srill menace Hungary and Russia's claws (a bir sheathed in wool) are still deep in Hungary. So "rhings are bener in Hungary," you blear. What garbage, you give me!

Abour Cuba, you feebly mention "Russia's withdrawal of missiles" and rhen pass rhar off into an obscure corner. No, you have no indignation against Russia's introducing atomic armaments into Cuba. You hail Russia's conciliation. You praise rhe robber for leaving rhe house, after he has been discovered and rhrearened if he doesn't leave. How noble of you and how compassionate and understanding!

To conclude my main point: if you don't see the imperialism of Russia in holding on w raped and plundered satellites, there is no further use of arguing wirh you �ut rhe West vs. Russia.

Yours,

Louis

1 9 6 3

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg
do PoJtmaJter, DaJmwamedh P.O.

Benam, U.P. India

January 1 0, 1 963

Dear Louis:

Been traveling the last month & returned to Benares where now living.

Note new address above. Yr letters were forwarded here. Hope all the Beings upcoming see the light safely. Happy New Year, late, & Happy Xmas. I spent Hanukkah in Benares the "oldest continuously inhabited city in the world" - and have a large room, 9 French doors, balconies overlooking market and Ganges bank bathing ghat, $9 a month rent. Then took trip to Agra, slept inside Taj Mahal for two nights, Xmas Eve there, sublimest hotel in the universe - Taj Mahal unexpectedly great place -
greatest human construction I ever encountered - worth trip to India for that alone - Picture Postcards don't reveal the great vibration of the place

I even scribbled a new poem I was so awestruck - awe's the word - that human beings could have got organized to create such a thing - I haven't seen an H bomb explosion tho that alone might rival the Taj Mahal - Peter says the Pyramids in Egypt do something similar - But Taj Mahal moved me much more than Acropolis or anything in Rome. /II Delighted to hear Eugene's looking at planets & stars again. /II Benares burning ghat, holiest in India is ten minutes walk along waterfront from my room. Well gruesome only at first encounter; actually the scene is so real; is traditional place for meditation; after familiarity the sublime transcends the gruesome at the burning ghats. If you can take that as a human picnic ground you can take the thought of death, and the thought of life, easier.

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I didn't know I was on trial. "I charge you wirh being a brainwashed Commie" ere ere. Oh well. All yr clippings from Cuba ere. depressing.

Hard ro separate propaganda from legit complaint, ere. Ar same time I receive yr letter - written in somewhat excessive fury - I also ger furious letters from LeRoi Jones, Marc Schleiffer, Irving Rosenrhal ("Cuba's alright if you like socialism"), & others who have been to Cuba, who rhink Cuba's great & rhe faulr's with America. I trusr rheir judgmenr - ro a poinr. Also I trust Draper ere - to a point. To rhe exrenr thar I have had direct personal first hand acquaintance wirh any specific issue in rhe Cold War scene - I have found all sources of public information as inexact (in politics) as they have been in poetry. So l don't really judge rhe way you do. Certainly hostility, as I have been saying lasr monrhs, will solve norhing. Best rhing would be guaranree nor invade Cuba by US, and promotion of democratic development in Cuba. Borh sides now so hysterical rhar seems impossible.

Present U.S. policy as far as I can judge - i.e. rhe kind of policy thar alas flows from your artirude - which is representative US - seems ro me ro lead to blind alley, blood, stagnation. I don't think rhe US had proposed a legit alternative to Castro. Be rhar as it may as you say there's lirrle poinr arguing about Wesr versus Russia. l don't feel particularly ami-Communist nor ami-Western. The main problem is not Hungary etc - even the US & Russia are negotiating dropping rhat from UN agenda finally, haven't you dug that' Main problem is (I see ir rhus) inevitable cenrralizarion of power everywhere (E & W) rhru technology. I repeat I don'r equare Western & Eastern imperialism because I think they lead in different directions, infuriating as thar may sound to you. However I'm living in Asia at rhe momenr & ir alters perspective oddly. I have no particular sympathy for Chinese arrack on India naturally. The main single political issue, to focus

& concentrate all tendencies, is China however, & I don't see any progress anywhere rill USA tries ro make peace with Chinese communism. That is, I don't see any progress within China till thar happens. I'm more worried about that than anything else (rhis monrh). But I'm sick of yelling from every direction - not even sick, that's just a cliche - I'm sick of cliches - I mean they make so litrle sense & are so litrle helpful. Yr idea of my "inbuilt blind rebelliousness" is probably a cliche, "being a brainwashed Commie"

etc, "Russia'� conquest & rape" etc. We don't seem to be getting anywhere.

/// 1 think mainly, in these rerms - I don't predominantly judge the future by the health of America; thar is, I don't see why someone living in Topeka is more ro be protected rhan someone living in Nairobi or Calcurra. That's a side nore, & obvious sraremenr; but I think much Russian & US thinking is

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

1 99
predicated on protection of the motherland, & its safety etc. Certainly Kennedy's thinking and Khrushchev's. Ill It's senseless to fill letters like this with vapid political arguments. I think we should stop. Or keep it to a minimum; aphorisms.

Bought a stove for a dollar & shopping & cooking here to see what marketing & home food is like; no beef no pork no lamb; only mutton and fish; lots of vegetables. Below my window an encampment of lepers - must be about I 00 of them that live on this street (sleep in cold riverside street nite in burlap rags) - stay here begging because it's a famous pilgrimage holy street, many strangers give charity, tho not much. Women with baskets of vegetables beating cows off from stealing their turnips - they sit on curb & peddle greens, cows hang around & try steal a bite - it goes on all day till dark. Will rake trip end of month to Allahabad see gathering of 100,000 holymen to bathe (yearly) there in Ganges. Live in tents, come from all over India to bathe & bless the riverside. Also we visited Brindaban, binhplace of Indian God Krishna - important to them as Bethlehem to Xtians - met some saints & yogis and talked; they sd Blake was my Guru.

Love

Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Benam, 1 ndia

March 10, 1 963

Dear Louis:

Sorry not written in so long. Been reading second proofs on City Lights book, probably out this summer; many people visiting in and out the house here, professors, poets, musicians, journalists, Secret Police, holymen, American passers-by, etc; EJquire magazine sent out a photographer & later a writer to do a story on our stay here1 & that took up time & nervous energy; and all thru the last month we been bothered by the local CID

(Indian FBI) who couldn't figure out who we were & bothered landlord downstairs, dentist neighbors & me & Peter & finally ordered us expelled from India. We had to go to Delhi & see the higher ups in the govt. to find I . Alice Glas<r, "Back on <he Open Road for Boys," Esquire. July 1963.

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our what it was all about & gee it straightened our. Almost roo long a scory co go through, sore of Kafkian bureaucratic dream - it would have been a nightmare bur it was roo silly co qualify - Anyway we seem now co be OK.

Main thing seems co be char since rhe war rhe CID, which on local level is nearly illiterate, is looking for spies and decided we muse be Yankee

Capiralisr-Communisr spies. I don't chink it's possible co describe the peculiar provincial stupidness of rhe Gossip, as ir's another world. Forrunarely we had friends able co speak ro the Govr & explain who we were & why here in India so long & finally the Embassy relucrandy intervened & spoke for us. Meanwhile for a month the plainclothes police were visiting us, wanting co see what we write, peeking rhru the shutters at nice, gossiping with neighbors & pestering landlord & visicors. From here ro Delhi I got a good look ar the functioning of the bureaucracy & now begin co see why India's starving. A great corrupt Kafkian mass coppling in on itself.

Wriring a lor & publishing some Jeerers & journals material in small Bengali magazines - nice group of Bengali (Calcuna language) writers scaring a sore of renaissance "'Hungry Generation" they self-called - publish weekly manifescos - we catalyzed them into ace ion & some of their writings be published by Ciry Lights in rranslarion. Liveliest group here.

Also we went along walking one day with a Delhi-Peking Gandhian peace march, mer several saintly rypes & also the Chairman of British antibomb "Comminee of 100" who"s walking with them. They seem co be the only quiet sane people around. Everywhere else it's loudspeakers & hare

& World War I vintage nationalise propaganda & war taxes on rhe poor & attacks on Nehru & Gandhi tradition & bureaucratic hysteria. They were digging rrenches in Delhi & stoning windows of Chinese restaurants rill Nehru called a hair. Meanwhile people downstairs near my house dying on the street of hunger & rotting with leprosy, Communists here also hopeless, dogmatic, moralistic, hate-filled & almost as illiterate as the CID. In fact actually it was the Communists who turned the CID on co us. (Odd later co be walking with peace marchers who were being anacked simultaneously by right wing press here and Peking Radio.) Grear relief co sir down on the banks of the Ganges at sunset & smoke with naked holymen who've taken vow of silence & are the gendesr people around - no axes co grind.

Spent all our money telegraphing Nehru & training co Delhi & now wai ring for more ro arrive & chen rake off more touring. Lots co see before I leave here sometime in May. OK - hope you're well. I shipped home four small packs of books while in Delhi, they shd arrive in a month more or rwo

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

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- one interesting one, Boswellian conversations of the great 1 9th Century saint Ramakrishna - with pictures of him in samadhi state - ecstatic trances

- 1000 pages of odd conversations. Great introduction to the peculiarities & details of Indian mentality/traditions. Take a look at it if you have time.

Also there's a pack of old letters mixed in somewhere, to store away. I now accumulated so many papers I can't keep track. However I assume they should be saved as various agents/universities keep writing me offering to buy mss. & letters etc. I haven't sold any yet (except last year the typescript of Empty Mirror - just typed pages without corrections - for $ 1 00. (Some agent for bibliophiles at Yale. Said he bought copy of Howl first edition I"d signed over to Mike McClure for $25.)

Reading Lawrence's poems & also Salinger who's amusing. Odd to see how Time built him up as great American Novelist of Decade & now party line's changed and they're attacking him. I see in papers that Russians are cracking down on the poets again. I suppose that means Cold War beginning again in earnest. I feel more & more a general madness on all sides, mainly sheer angriness & incoherence - I'll sit this one out. Dread coming back to the US and encountering all that electrical hate. Tho the tide of same seems to be rising now in India. Feel sort of comfortable here with beard long hair floppy pyjamas in street looking like anonymous Indian. I suppose it would be unsafe to walk US streets looking like that, stoned by J .D.'s. 1

Reading Blake again. I"d like to go spend a month in London at British museum reading his original editions, they had colored pictures. What you writing, & how feeling now? I'm tired - answered 2 weeks mail yesterday now caught up. OK. Say what color sari did Edith want? I'll send one from Madras next month.

OK - Allen - love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

March 23, 1 963

Dear Allen,

I was wondering why I didn't hear from you and was hoping you are O.K.

I. Juvenile delinquents.

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Good ro hear about your next book ro be our in rhe summer. Will get some copies in due course.

Thar woman from EJquire called up before she left for India and after she came back. She said she'd srop into Paterson ro see me, bur she hasn't come yer.

That must have been a big Kafka affair with you in India. Too bad you were molested and your rime robbed from your work. Meanwhile, you gor a glimpse of rhe tangled inside of rhe messy outside of India.

What new insights did you ger of rhe caste system'

Send on all your books and papers and mss. I have them all. When rhe books arrive, I usually peek into them and scan some of them, especially rhe ones containing poetry. Yes, your own mss. will be worth more money some day so I press you ro save them. I understand one or rwo mss. have found their way into collecrors' hands. When you come home here, you can sift and sort and arrange all your things into proper and coherent categories for convenient use in due course.

I read rhe K. has silenced rhe group of younger poets, including Yevruchenko, for speaking our a bir roo literally for Russia. That's rhe way ir is with roralirarian nations.

As for fluctuation rides of hostility, well, a sage or elevated writer does nor let himself be disabled bur looks on, if he can, wirh an Olympian disenchantment.

I have nor heard anything new further from my literary agents, bur they persist in being oprimisric abour finally getting my poems published in book form. I now have ready rwo mss. books of poems. However, I continue writing slowly and steadily. (There has been a N.Y. newspaper strike here for the last three months so that the N. Y. TimeJ and rhe N. Y. Trib. have not appeared.)

Recently I have had poems published in these places: McCall'J, The American Weave. The Fiddlehead (Canada), The New Mexico Quarterly, The U.

of KamaJ City Review, The Plumed Horn. (The editor of the last named magazine sent me a long interesting lerrer and asked for more of my poems.) I am enclosing three poems selected from the above mentioned magazines.

Eugene is writing new poems. I think they are very good. He should have some accepted soon.

Everyone is O.K. here. Connie expects a new baby in July; Olive, Harold's wife, expects one in June. So, all in all, we'll have eight grandchildren.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

203

Get any gay color of sari for Edith. If you need any money for it or for you, let me know.

Write soon.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Dasawaudh P.O.

Benam VP India

April 8, 1 963

Dear Lou:

Everything OK here, general shortage of money as usual but some expected this week. Our visas now renewed but still some static from local CID. I read text to Khrushchev speech it's worse than it sounded in news reports even. Interesting to see ifYevtuchenko & boys will be able to fight it out at all; i.e. to what extent will pressure be economic-bureaucratic & to what extent strongarm. Amazing to see also how much the party's decisions dictated by sheer Philistine ignorance rather than purely politics/necessity.

i.e. for instance Sholokov opined Yev should not be allowed to travel as he was a bad propagandist, not realizing that the immediate impact ofYev was to create sympathy for present Russia generations rather than vice versa.

Also not realizing the beneficial (from their viewpoint) impact ofYev's visit to NY on people like LeRoi Jones & procuban militant poets. Also Khrushchev doesn't realize his attack on Jazz going to infuriate pro Red Negroes, i.e. a tactical mistake not realizing that Jazz is "authentic Negro common people's music" so to speak. Since the attack was on abstract paint, jazz, poesy, dedecaphonic music etc. I don't think in the long run the b'!reaucracy will make it stick - i.e. I think it will be too late for them to enforce (strongarm) their opinions; best they can do is make it difficult to publish play display commercially thru state monopoly, & cut off money to avant garde. All which will (as long as violent punishment not applied, maybe it will) tend to strengthen the avant garde which no longer identifies itself with Govt. Like the irony is Yev did identify self with & try to represent the WE of communist politics - now he'll be driven (unless the

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social pressure or need for money breaks his spirit) ro individualistic posicion more near akin ro his U.S. counrerparrs, i.e. not idenrifying self with state. The inreresting figure all along is Yessenin-Vol pin, a young poet natural son of Yessenin who's always in bughouses, writing obscene poetry

"Kill all the fans of the older generation" - that's what got Khrushchev really riled, he spenr paragraphs denouncing that & denouncing the juv del inks "trying ro starr war between father & son." Of course all the square sons of Russia probably line up to shit on Yevtuchenko & Voznesensky so they can keep their jobs in univ. {. .] I hope ro go this winrer as my plane ticket will rake me there free. All I got ro have is enough money ro live there & I may be able ro sponge unless the pressure is so great that Yev or people I already know will be afraid to have me around, an embarrassment.

Biggest thing that is happening to me here in last year is slow attempt to keep my temper and nor flip our with hostility & hatred & disgust every time I get crossed, bur cool it & try to pacify the scene. It began with letters ro you & insulting scene with backward head of English Dept of BHU

(Benares Hindi Univ), conrinued with trying not ro scream at local FBI (CID) creeps that were harassing us, not scream at local communist apologists for Khrushchev speech, not scream at USIS people in Delhi who wouldn't lift finger to help us our of CID mess, not react back every time I get frustrated. I think it's the massive accumulation of individual frustration angers amplified back & forrh from person ro person that has built up inro war psychosis. There seems no way out bur individuals becoming more aware of the irrational/un-functional nature of their resentments. Or at least no way out for me. Like living in madhouse getting angry at patienrs, hopeless. Delhi-Peking peace marchers here now slowly running inro trouble on from pages both India & China.

I wonder to what extenr it is possible to totally neutralize emotional violence in environmenr by total impassiviry/neutraliry/indifference/unmoved awareness in self, i.e. not trying ro force change on anybody. Difficulry of Russian/ American policy is it's all predicated on force; therefore creates counrer-force, both ways, an unbreakable circuit except thru complete neutrality, i.e. the temptation to - well this is all so abstract it's meaningless.

Enclosed the two primed poems - I've seen them before often - both awright. The "Radianr Dead" is ok but "the radianr dead is fled" leaves itself open ro inseam parody. "Is" I guess causes that.

I keep never answering about Caste system because the whole mess oflndia .

. . . I mean is big mess & caste system just small parr of it - There is an oldfashioned caste system as described in books slowly & messily breaking

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

205
down under impact of movies industrial cities, it doesn't mean anything anymore, impossible to keep Caste in a crowded 3rd class train for instance

. . . a system of rules like Kosher involving fooding, social mixing etc. The Govt has rules against it, which are OK in areas where Govt involved like jobs education etc but meaningless in private affairs - marriages etc.

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

April 1 5 . 1 963

Dear Allen,

Received your letter of April 8.

Sorry you did not "see" my poem, "Remembering Ruined Cities"; it's one of my better ones. Here is one of my "rain" poems, which periodically I am in the force of an inner compulsion to release.

The crackdown on the "new wave" of Russian poets I expected, knowing the ways of the totalitarian Commies. They fear democratic ideas. (Did you know that the Moscow University was closed for two weeks because the students began to ask questions when Russia drowned the Hungarian uprising in blood?)

Personally I think that, with time, the liberal ideas, especially with the ferment of youth, will seep their way into the body politic of Russia.

I can understand your hostilities precipitated in you by all the malignancies, cruelties, and evils swirling about you. I suggest that you gaze down from an Olympian peak of tolerant enchantment and sympathetic and philosophic urbanity upon the blizzard of paradoxes assaulting the nations. Be at the center of calm in the middle of the eye of the storm. Life is sucking honey from a thorn.

I don't mean that you remain indifferent or impassive; but I do mean that you don't permit your hostilities against injustices DISABLE you in either your writing or living.

Your answer about the caste system is unsatisfactory to me. Let it go for a while. Some other time I shall present you with some facts that you are too near to see.

Meanwhile, though I seem robed in seedy or somewhat mangy tatters of

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homilies, inside, my mind or spirit seems co grow vivid with rime, even as the flesh grows weak. I keep poking ac and crying co rearrange cliches and phrases in hopes char I shall hie a magic point where chose cliches explode noiselessly and, in che flash of illumination, they will transfigure things about me co something new and beautiful and strange and more meaningful!

Keep your shire on.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg

(Calcutta. India}

n.d (ca. early May 1 963}

Dear Louis:

Slowly folding up affairs here & be ready co leave in a few weeks, waiting for arrival of ticker & money. May stop off in Cambodia or Burma on way by plane. (I gee free scops all over S.E. Asia.) Or perhaps Vier Nam I'd like co see the war there - chen be in Japan June-July & Vancouver end of July.

Sept in S.F. & chen home before Xmas, stay of few months. Same plane ticker continues on chru Europe co Russia & back co Asia.

The many arms - usually on che God Vishnu - of chose pictures is associated with a lor of legends & myths. Most familiar one is in Bhagavad Gica. Krishna (who is an avatar or form of Vishnu) shows his friend Arjuna his cosmic form . . . "speaking from unnumerable mouths, seeing with myriad eyes . . . adorned with coundess divine ornaments, brandishing all kinds of heavenly weapons, wearing celestial garlands . . . annointed with perfumes of heavenly fragrance . . . lodged as one being within the body of the God of gods . . . " & Arjuna says

"Universal Form, I see you without limit,

Infinite of arms, eyes, mouths, and bellies -

See, and find no end, midst, or beginning . .

million armed, the sun and moon your eyeballs .

At the sight of chis, your Shape stupendous

Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

207

Terrible with fangs, 0 mighty Master

All the worlds are fear-struck, even as I am."

These passages from Gita, here the highest literary religious statement of India, sort oflike Dante's Vision of the Yellow Rose at end of paradise, except here everyone even illiterate knows the Gira by heart or hears it sung weekly

. . . so pictures like the ones I sent are mostly popular like calendar art, that hangs in barbershops & in cigarette stalls or over cash counter of dank eateries. If you never read Bhagavad Gita it's worth the short rime . . . I think there's a copy Harold had or I have in WiJdom of China & India Lin Yutang book . . . I'm fond of it as I've seen similar apparitions on Mescaline.

Several weeks ago noticed one of rhe hundreds of beggars on my block covered with shit & flies looking like last stage of Buchenwald skeleton lying in feral position in gutter of urinal so Peter & I washed him in Ganges

& fed him & hired boy to care for him on street & finally removed him to hospital. . . . I'd seen several Buchenwald cases like that die the last few weeks so finally decided to intervene . . . Doctor said it was starvation . . .

Since then have taken care of several other beggars rho nor so extensively

. . . if I stayed on here I suppose I'd go into the matter deeper. Horrible thing is this all happening right underneath loudspeaker blasting noisily about the evil Chinese.

I wrote whoever I know in Russia (K Siminov & others) to do what I could to support Voznesensky & Yevtuchenko. Togliatti, I notice, in Italy attacked Khrushchev art policy. Really a conspiracy of the most stupid elements of art world and bureaucracy . . . . Voznesensky one poet is really a Genius the most beautiful writer there since Mayakovsky. Crackdown presumably because new liberal element threatens a whole political bureaucracy with its roots in Stalin. I don't see how the liberals will win since probably the mass audience is probably conformist also. Still the issues Khrushchev attacked is on such obviously weak ground he can't roll back jazz & abstract art ere. I sent statement saying Y evruchenko converted me to Marxism so he was as far as I was concerned the best propaganda they ever had, if he represented the possibilities of Marxism, that because Sholokhov said he was callow bad propagandist abroad. I hope you noticed that the

"psychological" accusations against the Russian poets by the mediocre writers bureaus (i.e. that they are callow, jejune, bad writers, undisciplined, neurotic, pederasts, eccentrics, social misfits, etc) are the same as leveled against U.S. beatniks. The situation is roughly similar, rho everything is brought more to a head in Russia since Govt monopolizes & centralizes all

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activity, & the Russian poets perhaps less disillusioned, they still believe in possibility of social progress . . . . I wonder if I'll be able to get into Russia at all . . . probably be very tough scene . . . . One thing, Voznesensky says he interested in poetry as exploration of consciousness, first sign of that I've seen from Russia . . . which brings everybody up to date . . . did you see recent Encounter) Evergreen #28 brings one great piece of composition ("Hotels of the Moon") by Voznesensky.

Meanwhile here I've seen the Delhi-Peking peace marchers again, they just walked thru Benares . . . nobody paying attention to them at all except both Chinese & Indian politicians attacking them.

I only wish people in US would recognize need for a similar anti

Dulles-Luce popular revolt. The issue's never been clearly defined. Best definition is over recognition of China but liberals are afraid to publicly formulate that once for all, & so there's a maddening stalemate in US
psychic life. We didn't have one monster Stalin, we only had familiar Babbitt monsters so nobody yet recognizes how really perverse America became, and how much there is to revolt against. It's that very quality of blandness & smartness that's disguised the literal murderousness of US
heart & specifically US policy, as in Viet Nam & Formosa. Here goes again.

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 13, 1 963

Dear Allen,

Received your letter about your projected journeyings and your planing the starving Indian boy. Very absorbing.

However, your last line was rotten: Your deluded notion that the American foreign policy was murderous. What about the Soviet tanks bloodying l-bngary) You're silent about China. I have nothing bur contempt for your sanctimonious, arrogant, false assumption that you have the blueprint of al! the Truth. I charge you .with being a brain-washed fraudulent, hoaxed fool. Now don't send me any more of that crappy garbage.

A/11!11 and Louis Ginsberg

209

I sene you the proof of the Who's Who. What the hell is the memion of Orlovsky in the accoum? 1

Yours,

Louis Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

American Express

Calcutta

May 22, 1 963

Dear Lou -

I expect to fly out of here this weekend if all goes well - Calcutta --+

Bangkok -+ Saigon (see some of the Viet Nam war) -+ Angkor War (Cambodian ruined city in jungle) -+ Saigon -+ Kyoto Japan for a momh.

Don't send any mail to me in India now - Next address c/o Gary Snyder

[ . . .

] Kyoto, Japan (June 10-July 1 5 ) - After that I be c/o Tallman [ . . . ]

Vancouver, B. C. Canada (July 1 5-Aug 1 5) - After that c/o City Lights for a momh. Tell Gene I got his letter. I'll reply from Japan.

God you sound mad. News from Birmingham sounds good however in that perhaps finally the white-patriotic Southern Demo-Northern Republican stranglehold be broken. But I do think it was a "murderous" combine for as long as I can remember. If the Negroes win out I hope there be a whole cultural change in USA & China get recognized.

I'm in a rush having to fill out Visa tax health police ticket bank forms to leave here after over a year. M means married Orlovsky why not? They never had nothin like that in Who's Who it'll set a nice precedent. World's overpopulated anyway.

The Indian we were saving - that all worked well & we even contacted his family so after 2 weeks in hospital he could begin to walk again & his brother came for him & took him on train 500 miles away to home.

Meanwhile I brought several others from the street to hospital & tried to set up a rescue system in Benares around our neighbourhood - Peter's still there working that out - he'll stay in India to study music the next year -

Meanwhile I'm soon on my way. OK. Take care of yourself -

Love

Allen
l. Allen listed Peter Orlovsky as his spouse in his Who's Who entry.

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Family Businm: 1 963

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

American Exprm

Calcutta, India1

June 14, 1963

Dear Louis:

I got back a few days ago from nearby Himalaya hill-stations Darjeeling, Kalmping & Sikkim, & found your letters - just sitting down now to answer weeks of mail. Glad the shawl came - I got the check for ten & will get a sari. I have already bought Eugene a terrific Tibetan picture & will have to ship that in a week or so.

June 22

Got your letter from Florida also. Hope this reaches you in rime. In any case I think I sent a letter from Darjeeling a few weeks ago. I spent a few days in Florida, mostly passing rhru - but never found it too interesting, except the Negro disrricr in Jacksonville. Miami Beach feels like Reno a little - the gaudy money hotels. They're a real wow, almost beautiful so much in bad taste. How was visit to Arthur Kline' He was always friendly to me, rho the last rime rhru I'm afraid I shocked him since I was anti-U.S. policy on Cuba

& he is lawyer for refugees. I had the impression he couldn't understand how an American could come by the point of view I had which was obviously eccentric & sort of sinister in his eyes. I told him I was a Red, which probably finished the job.

Gene & I saw Gettysburg hitchhiking years ago, I remember a few hills

& some antique houses.

Plenty caste system here, rho one encounters it pure form mainly among the extremely pious Hindus who're nor caught up in Gandhi's modernizations. There are 4 castes: Brahmins - who are scholar-priests; Ksharriyas -
who are warriors; and then Businessmen; and then Sudra or untouchables.

In course of centuries development, these caste lines apply primarily now to formal scenes like marriage & church attendance (untouchable nor allowed in some unreformed temples). However social lives are so mixed that it becomes more or less of a formality - at least in the big cities i.e. Brahmins (who wear white string around their bare shoulders) 1 . This lener was begun in lndia and finished in Japan, probably aher Allen had sent the following leuer home.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

2 1 1
who work as coolies and untouchables who are chairman of the Congress Party; also there are no real warriors anymore. Caste distinction mainly survives among die-hard pious old Hindu families and is extensively observed by masses in countryside & village. Nothing seems to make inroads on it in country because it is built with the economic-social static primitive village life pattern.

The people I know best here are products of inter-caste marriage. The people I meet on street or trains don't observe caste rigidly at all because otherwise they wouldn't mix our trains - so rhat my direct experience of casre system has been very offhand & minor. I r does exist on large scale in country provincial scenes where I haven't yet been. But I see marriage advertisements in Bombay papers which mention caste of partner, most of them. It's more like Jewish-Gentile distinction than Negro-white.

Thank you for June 3 birthday wishes & cake.

Not much reaction co poet & critic poems - The one light visuality of

"Trains" was good, but ending wirh rhe word loneliness, rather rhan an image pure, weakens the vision. "Nude in Art Gallery" has yr. old routine glow in it almost like rears. But you sent some poems this year I thought were more crafty & higher level.

(I got all upset about Laos after reading some communist propaganda accusing the U.S. of consistently intervening to overthrow - neutral government there with CIA "henchmen." I checked in the last 4 weeks stories in Time, Newsweek, & London Times and find that the present official U.S. line seems to coincide with the Red line on our responsibility for the mess. I think more and more, it is not possible to get an accurate picture of local conflicts without absorbing both Western & Communist versions of history, (seriously) and canceling & checking one against the other. There is valuable information on rhe communist record which doesn't appear clearly in the western record, and vice versa.

I am still not exactly pro Cuban but certainly anti American on that scene. I don't see we have anything to offer Cuba but further confusion & violence. My remark about Castro was that his present repudiation of obnoxious party control was refutation of the unfair earlier accepted US
propaganda that he was a strict communist. I mean, they made him out to be something he isn't, and ever had me suspicious and I think had most of U.S. sold.

My recollection is that most active anti-US vitriol in Cuba is chron-

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ologically result of ami Castro vitriol in U.S. after nor before seizure of private property - especially after he started doing business with Russia. Ir was rhe economic break-away from U.S. dependence & economic conracr wirh Russia rhar got US upset. I thought ir was a healthy sign & still do, in fact. I wish rhe US would start trade wirh Red China. Oh well this is all ancienr hisrory. I see by a copy of rhe respectable Columbia Alumni Forum rhere is now some ""liberal" rethinking being done abour Korea itself. And also a summary of recenr books on A Bomb Hiroshima concluding rhar in acrual facr, rhe bomb dropping on our part was a mistake since rhe Japanese already had offered ro surrender & various orher derails. My poinr in all this is rhar something wenr dreadfully wrong in rhe USA since rhe war & we did all sorts of really ghasrly things rhar didn't show up at the time in rhe papers

- and are beginning ro show up now 17 years later when it's roo !are for anybody ro feel responsible - a public siruarion much like rhe Germans who didn't really feel directly responsible for rheir arrociries, or like rhe Belgians who ro rhis day are unaware of rhe genocide rhar wenr on in rhe Congo ar rhe rime of King Leopold (population decimated by ren million - from 25
ro 15 million) - and which got Mark Twain all worked up, bur was hardly noticed in America except by Vachel Lindsay (leopold's ghost burning in Hell) ere.

All I've been saying for years now has been rhar on a purely political level, rhe U.S.A. has committed some really outrageous deals. These have

"justified" communist fear of U.S. as much as Stalin-Khrushchev outrage have justified Western fear. The only way our of Cold War impasse is for change on both sides & reform ere. This seems ro be rhe course of rhe Laos Compromise.

Bur if rhe U.S. public wanrs ro follow a Black & White line, & refuse ro see what we have done - in Guatemala, all over So America, in supporting French in Algeria & Franco in Spain fi nancially, in Korea, in Formosa wirh Chiang Kai-shek, all over So E. Asia, Malta, Congo, as result of Dulles conrainmenr policy - if there is no reevaluation on all these issues as now there is one on Laos (which you can see in all lasr monrh's papers), rhen rhe progress will be very slow & sray as dangerous as ir has been rhe last 20
years. 20 years completely wasted in 2 way psychosis with Russia & US
both behaving wirh almost unforgivable viciousness. Anyway I think Laos shows the way out.

A good deal of my fury & energy in writing you about politics goes back to that traumatic momenr in Newark when Leo told me to see the FBI before I went to Cuba - I felt I was in 1933 Germany with all the solid

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

2 1 3
citizens collapsing with an irresponsible brainwashed police state-comrol conformiry which could only lead co some horrible climax of blood in the streets. Actually it has led to that, only forcunately the U.S. has not yet been on the receiving end. Buc I don't see how the US can make any progress till it accepts its own share of guilt. But I don't [know] how it can do thar till there is a complete re-thinking & re-evaluation of what's happened from Hiroshima day onward. And I don't see that happening unci! it gets co the surface in mass media. And that won't happen till individuals begin insisting on it and really revolting against a system which has allowed like 4 years of completely obscure confused reporcage on Laos, rreachery double dealing, half a billion poured down the drain co old creep right wingers - and a sudden about face like this momh when all the old unreporced story slowly creeps out & there's a change of policy.

ere etc. I'll scop here.

Anyway I wem to Sikkim & saw all sores of Holy Lamas and heard about how monstrous the Chinese were in Tibet. I may go back in a few weeks & be initia!ed with some of the secret psychic games of the Tiberans. For my money they're the most imeresting people on the face of the earrh. I got a supply of mushroom drugs from Harvard so I will try to experimem and exchange information with the Tibetan Lamas & maybe East will meet West somewhere on the other side of the moon.

Love

Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg
do Snyder

3 1 N iihinoyama-che

Omiya, Kita-ku

Kyoto, Japan

June 1 7, 1 963

Dear !..ou:

Traveling by jetplane kind of a gas, you do get in and out of cemuries from airporc hangars & glassy modern dowmowns co jungle floating markets &

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Family Businm: 1 963

900 year old srone cities in a matter of minutes & hours instead of weeks & months. Like space cur-ups or collages, one minute paranoiac spyridden Vietnam streets, the same afternoon quiet Cambodian riversides. I spent a week in Vietnam talking with opium poets & USIS direcrors & Stare Department spokesmen & Army public relations sergeants & most of all with newsmen & also the Buddhist priests. Horrible mess as you can read in the papers. Curious scene here [about] the reporters is that they are all young & relatively eager there, unlike most "hotspots," so this a rare instance if you follow the politics war there, one can get a relatively straight account within the limits of assumed anticommunist slam & the euphemisms of ticklish situations (i.e. Diem govr. not referred to outright as Diem dictatorship, bur as "Diem Govr which has been called dicrarorial"

etc.) (i.e. phraseology picked to suggest idea rather than say it outright as is done with Red dictarorships). Anyway I'm glad I saw what little I saw of that. Gave me nervous stomach after a week. Then spent a week in Angkor War ruins in Cambodia & now here in Kyoro with Snyder & his wife in near little Jap house sitting typing on the floor. Big week of Zen meditation in the monastery, I've been going with Snyder & sitting 2 l/2 hours immobile crosslegged the last 3 nires & learning proper belly breathing for that kind of sitting. Hard on the ankles but interesting subjective effects. I'll be here a month & thence Vancouver. Japan amazing after all the other Asian & Arab countries - not much police state, everybody neat & keen stylish & motorcycles & transistors & cameras & civilized, nobody starving in his shit in the street like India & everywhere else practically. Native Japanese quickness plus the fact they aren't saddled with active participation in coldwar so all their energy goes into selfimprovemem. Lucky they lost the war. Jap sryle living very lovely, houses with sliding walls & clean food & mars barefoot on floors leave shoes at door & sense of taste & cleanness in all the woodwork & carpentry & weird little careful gardens everywhere, and all the young people real chic like they srept our of an Italian fashion magazine with girls Jackie Kennedy hair mops & the men hip downswept over forehead like Brando as Marc Antony - just amazing to see all these Asians prosperous - Quitting now, 6:30 PM going out to sit early eve in temple.

Soon - Love

Allen

Allen and Loui.r Gimberg

2 1 5
h.l/::n left Japan in late july. He had been out of the United StateJ for more than two year.r - a period that had .reen him contemplating hi.r Jewi.rh heritage in brae! and democracy in Grel!<e; he had lived among the impoveriJhed in India, and .rought advice from a number of the country'.r holy men; he had .reen Vietnam in the day.r when the nu.nber of American advi.ren e.rcalated. and had t•i.rited the ancient ruim of Cambodia'.r Angkor Wat. Ea.rtern religion, my.rticim1, and philo.rophy had given hiJ
worldview /Jronuunced Hindu and Buddhi.rt .rhading.r. Yet, for all hi.r travel.r, he wa.r deeply troubled by the di.rparity between day-to-day global. pOJt-atomic bomb politin and the u'l.rpeakable mi.rery and JU/fering that he had witnmed on the du.rty .rtreet.r.

By hi.r own admiJJion, he jidt traumatized, the victim of "a long, .ru.rtained .rtate of SHOCK. " Lfe had jo�trneyed to India and the Orient in .rearch of an.rwen, and yet he

.reemed to be departing with even more que.rtion.r.

H ow111•er. on July 1 7. u•hile traveling on a train from Kyoto to Tokyo. he had an experience .rimilar to hi.r Blake vi.rion.r of 1 948. in which he recognized hiJ ou•n mortality a.r a part of an enom1ou.r continuum of human experienre: so much of exiJtence involvtd .ruffering. but in the eternal .rcheme . .rmh .rulfering u·a.r fll1nporary.

Rather than reach for unattainable an.rwers lo.rt in .rpiritual riddle.r. one had to live in the p�ernt. Deeply moved, A /len took out a notebook and .rcribbled a long poem -

"The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Expre.r.r. "

The key, Al/.m l>elieved, wa.r to love oneself, which, in turn, helped in the que.rt to love other.r, and he took thi.r newfound .rpirit to Vancouver in late July, where he participated in a joyou.r poetry conference wioth Charle.r Ol.rm1, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Deni.re Levertov, and other.r.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Vanwuver, Briti.rh Columbia}

Sunday, Augu.rt 1 6 (1 963}

Dear Louis:

Sorry so :;iler.t - wrapped up teaching great spirit poetry course all last 3
weeks - lovdy nnion of souls - plenty pretty girls - I seem to be back on girls again (after all! ) - maybe I'll bring you back some baby Ginsbergs after all - I'll write you when I get to S.F. in a few days - driving down -

Everything's OK - How are you Louis - Because of Fate, poesy, drugs, loves, etc. I seem finally to be returned back into my body after many years absence - I think the Indian Gurus did it, as well as you - I'm actually happy! - Hope you are. Love yr son Allen. I'll write, soon. Back East Xmas.

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Family Businm: 1 963

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

AuguJt 23, 1 963

Dear Allen,

I bought three copies of your book from City Lights Books. Reality SandwicheJ
seems a more mellow book. I liked among others, "Siesta in Xbalba," with the title's romantic ovenones. That is a fine description, in that poem, at the bottom of p. 26, hinting at the passage of Time. Also, in that same poem, on p. 3 2, I liked your ruminations projected forward of "what vag cant rooms and streets and lights in the long lights urge my expectations. What wild houses do I go to occupy." "Psalm II" is good. I like especially the poem "Squeal," a vivid satire. Another poem, ""My Sad Self," has good passages that remind me of your wandering in the N.Y. streets.

""Aether" is fascinating as a poetic speculation a Ia Rimbaud, with his derangement of the senses. He used poetry to attain the unattainable, to reach the sense behind the senses, the seeing beyond all sight, the vision of the Unknown. Yet man will try to do this in vain. Rimbaud's poem, as well as your poems with hallucinatory drugs, etc., cannot find the vision, but they do widen experience, because, in the words of Archibald Macleish,

"The voice amid the oxications and the hallucinations and Peradics, though strange, is his own voice."

How is your book going? Hope it does well! Meanwhile, congrntulations aplenry!

(Say, how about dedicating a book of yours, not always to your own friends, but to your own brother, Eugene?)

Enclosed please find an interview with me about my puns and my poetry which appeared recently in the Patmon Evening NewJ. (Kindly return it, after you have frowned over it.)

Give my regards, if you will, to Ferlinghetti.

More anon.

When do you think you will be home?

With love,

Your father,

Louis

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

2 1 7

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(San Francisco, California}

August 28, 1 963

Dear Louis -

Too much to do here - can't write - better save it for conversation - hope to spend a couple months here at least - have things to type & people to see & old affairs to straighten out & books to proofread - anyway I'll be home by or before Xmas I'm not sure - probably in 2 or 3 months - just want to get everything cleared up that's been accumulating for years - people, mss -

I'm in fine shape - never felt better in my whole life - I'll write when I have a breather - Patience - Love - All hell breaking loose in Vietnam - Allen Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(San Francisco, California}

September 9 (1 963}

Dear Louis -

Still too busy to write - Enclosed your poems - I saw another stack of them at Ferlinghetti's office - "Women Queerly Bus," "Bed Pictures," "Mother Burial," "Two Porch," "Meeting Hall" etc were excellent -

Lucien Carr got on a jetplane & arrived here last week to say hello welcome back - He left 2 days ago - Made me realize it don't cost much to phone at nice so I'll phone you in a few days.

Love to Eugene & Connie & Edith & everyone. I'm tied up with all sortsa work - Much typing to do. Also Robert Frank who made Pull My Daisy movie has money & planS to film Kaddish. He seems to know what he's doing. He's coming out here today - Also I have to sit down with Neal Cassady & reduce his manuscripts to order for publishing - all sorts of old threads being tied up once & for all, with happy endings for everyone -

As I wrote I'll be back by Thanksgiving or Xmas or before. Want to unload [what] I can before coming home. I'm well. Take care of yourself -

Love

Allen

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Family Bminm: 1 963

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

October 4. 1 963

Dear Allen,

Camus says, "One may fight a lie in rhe name of a quarter truth."

Louis Ginsberg

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

October 12. 1 963

Dear Allen,

I wrote you, I think, some time ago that I had a "kick" on the Symbolists. I had read rhem, in translation, in college, but recently I re-read lives and works of Mallarme, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, etc.

Recently I read a book called SurrealiJm by one Yves Duplessis and translated by Paul Capon. (No, the book does nor seem castrated or bowlderized.) Aragon, Tzara, Eluard, and Freud are dwelt on; also Jean Cocteau, who died the or her day. Some of rhese writers, goes on rhe book, throw themselves into the marvelous, hurl themselves into the irrational, and repudiate the real world for the fantasy, finally blurring the difference between the two.

Reverting, for the nonce, ro the burden of my last letter, I maintain there are, as in religion, many mansions in the house of poetry. There is a part of rhe truth in all of them, the traditional, the academic, the Bear, rhe obscure.

Poetry is where you find ir. Much, too, depends upon rhe individual makeup of rhe poets. Bierce said, "Philosophy is rhe extension of a temperamental (generic) make-up or bias of the poet ro rhe incongruities of life." It depends, rhus, upon whar colored mental and emotional and intellectual glasses you view rhe ironies and dilemmas of life, seething around you. Perhaps one might maintain an Olympian disenchantment or urbane tolerances and ironic detachment [ . . .

]

Maybe I write so because I have seen roo many cliches and cliques and cults with their demi-gods spouting absolutes.

The Unground man becomes rhe top dog one day, and then another day he is bitten by a new dog who has his day. Just as in a democracy, there

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

2 ! 9
should be a plurality o f opinions, so in the poetic world, I hold, there should be a plurality of kinds of poetry. The current fashion of one (still wet behind the ears with "embalming fluid") should nor invalidate ocher kinds of poetry. What I chiefly resent, as I intimated in my last letter, is the unalloyed and pontifical certirudes of empyreal pronunciations by authorirarian gurus and panjandrums, who, wirh egregious infallibiliry, lay down the dogmatic, self-righreous laws to all and sundry!

Each to his own compulsion.

"Absolutes in criticism smell of fusciness and faggots."

In politics, I am a theoretic Socialisr somewhat deflated by rhe New Deal, against the 16 Century far Right and against the Totalitarian Commies; in religion, my hearr is like Einstein, in awe and wonder ar rhe harmony of rhe universe, bur my head is agnostic and scientific; in poetry, I am a pluralist or an eclectic, seeking rhe besr in all rypes.

If rhar be rreason, make rhe mosr of ir - "and damned be he who firsr cried 'Hold! Enough!' "

With love from

Your farber

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

November 6, 1 963

Dear Allen,

Received your postal.

Speaking of masks of Gods, as you were, I rhoughr rhar in life, one becomes many; in dearh, rhe many become One.

"Mind-feelings-moments" is nor bad. I rry controlled abandon.

Just flew in from a rhree-day sray in Derroir. Had an exciting rime. On Tuesday, at 1 1 in the morning, I talked and read my poems to about sevenry Wayne State U. medical srudents for an hour; at 3:00 P.M., I read before The Merrill-Palmer Institute child psychology srudents. In the evening, I addressed and read poems and answered questions at a dinner given in my honor by Dean Dorsey. Novelists, special English students, some ciry and university big-wigs crowded in. Besides questions about inspiration, modern poets, methods of writing, a favorite question was: how

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do you and your son gee along? What do you chink of his poetry? In rhe main, I cold them I approved and was proud. (Besides gerring $ 1 50.00 for expenses, I received an honorarium, as rhe phrase goes, $200.00) And all rhe way, Edith and I had red-carper rrearmem. (Incidentally, lase in chis lecture series, they had Archibald Macleish and Mark Van Doren; chis rerm they were having me and John Ciardi.)

I have been missing you very much. You have been away roo long a rime.

Could you - as soon as you ascertain ir - cell me just when you will be home? All rhe relatives, their children and grandchildren, all wane co see you again so we are planning an evening. Lee me know so I can sec a dare.

Take care of yourself.

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg

Saturday, November 23, 1 963

Dear Allen,

I was happy ro hear your voice over rhe phone lase night. Ir did me good. Ir has been more chan rwo years since you have been away, wandering over rhe world - and your name has been snowballing co fame! I hope, when you come home soon, char you will sray long enough for us co calk our way through many things.

Yesterday rhe shock of rhe assassination of President Kennedy shook me as ir shook rhe world. Nor since FDR has such a tidal wave of incredulous grief hie America. Somehow, rhe lase rwo days, I have no desire co work ar my desk.

Ir all shows how impermanent are things. Nothing is constant bur change. In rhe midst of life, there is death.

I hope you will come here soon.

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

1 9 64

Allen Jfent mOJt of 1 964 on the EaJt CoaJt, viJiting hiJ family and becoming very active in New York'J art.r and politiral communitieJ. He worked with Robert Frank on a Jcreenplay for "KaddiJh. " became involved in the underground film world of

.1 �dv W m·hoi'J Factory, and cruJaded tirelmly agaimr cenJorJhip, whether it involt-�d the grrnl'ing battle between avant-garde filmmakerJ and play producerJ and

:he government agencieJ trying to mpprm performanceJ. or the crackdou-n on JatiriJt Lenny Brure. A./len aim teJtified in BoJton on behalf of the literary meritJ of William BurrnughJ'J Naked Lunch, now the focUJ of a highly publicized trial. In addition, the war in Vietnam waJ now becoming one of Allen'J major obJmiom.

DiJagreemeniJ between the two GimbergJ over Vietnam heated up conJiderably during 1 964, and while none of Allen'J letterJ to hiJ father for thiJ year are available, LouiJ'J letterJ to hiJ Jon are emblematic of the battle lineJ being drawn throughout the United StateJ. Not JurpriJing/y, LouiJ (who had witnwed the riJe of Hitler, the Soviet takeover of EaJtern Europe, and the Korean War) waJ inclined to JUbJcribe to "the domino theory" and the DefenJe Departrnent'J Jtance that the conflict in Vietnam waJ a necwary evil. HiJ teJty /etterJ to Allen reflected the edginm b-tween the JupporterJ and opponentJ of the war.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

July 26, 1 964

DP.ar Allen,

I enjoyed our talk last night at Harold's.

By the way, do you chink chat flexible iambic rhythm has an instinctive appeal or communicates co a subliminal level?

Do you think chat rhyme is really "filthy"?

Cordially yours,

Louis

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P.S. Those questions, among a hundred others, are brought to mind by an article I just read in Books. called "The War Between lam and the Id. " The article contains much mention of you. Congratulations and many more!

Kindly return the article, as I need it for my notes.

Do you know FM radio station WSOU ' I have been asked for an interview for them next month.

L

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 10. 1964

Dear Allen,

I read with care the statement, ''Memo on Vietnam," by David McReynolds and A. J. Muste. (You will, of course, recognize that people see things not as things are, but as people are.)

While the Memo says that the Viet Cong forces gathered other resistance groups, it does admit that some Communists gave it direction and were active in So. Vietnam.

I received through Congressman Joelson a statement from the government ro the effect that The Viet Cong forces violated the Geneva Agreement and that, at the request of the South Vietnam[ese], our help was requested.

I'll let you read the fuller statement of the State Department. It depends on what colored-glasses you wear as to what you see. From my life-long experience with Communists, I wouldn't trust them from here ro the corner curb, though now both time and its turbulence and general erosion of Absolutes make them a bit more tractable.

Yours,

Louis Ginsberg

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 30, 1 964

Dear Allen,

Received your notations on that statement from the Stare Department.

From years of experience I don't believe anything in the Daily Worker.

The N. Y. TimeJ and Stone are more reliable, though I don't consider them as oracles of Delphi.

I'll pursue those comments of yours to see if I can track down the truth.

I wish, though, I had your untainted certitude empyreal declarations. I stand in awe of your omniscience and infallibility. Your humble smugness in granting such unflawed knowledge, italicized by your dogmatic selfrighteousness, really touches my heart!

Yours,

Louis Ginsberg

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

October 2, 1 964

Dear Allen,

Your letter on hand.

In reply, I assert that even ifU. S. reports are unrealistic and bend news to more favorable position, the fact remains that the overriding assessment is that rhe Commies, the Chinese ones, are bent on gradually conquering North and S. Vietnam and rhus, in "domino fashion," sweeping down gradually on demoralized and unarmed countries, eventually exercising a hegemony in all S. W. Asia, menacing Australia and Japan. They are our to conquer the world, in spite of Russia.

That's what Russia did, pouring into the vacuum in Europe. As for deaths, you say nothing about guilt of Commies.

The S. Vietnam mess is a tangled dilemma. You add nothing to it bur churn up half-truths and quarter-truths. I'll say what Joelson says: "Your opinions ought to be discussed and are valuable."

I am very busy writing poetry. Bur when I get a chance, I try to track down some things. How about sources in the New Leatkr?

You say, in a previous letter, that "Joelson ought to be ashamed of

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himself in passing the buck like chis." How do you know char he feels he is passing the buck? How can you creep into his mind and see whar is there?

Maybe he believes what he asserts. If so, you are, as I said, smugly arrogant and even slanderous.

Yours,

Louis Ginsberg

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Friday December 25, 1 964

Dear Allen,

Thank you for bringing me all chose magazines.

Frankly, I find char many of those so-called avant-garde magazines are yawns ticked our in deranged verbiage or display new words of arranging boredom. Also, I see char they chink rhey have invented honesry. I say rhere is enough genuine feeling for life ro be shared by ochers.

My point, however, in writing ro you is rhis. In your "statement" in The Burning Bush II (of San Francisco), 1 you make a few statements char have an extremist flavor. For instance, you equate the Jewish norion of"chosen race"

with the genocide of rhe Nazis. Well, modern Jews do nor believe literally in rhe "chosen race"; rhey believe in doing good ro others and practicing or rather preaching brotherhood, even if they don't come ro actually practice ir. (Who does except a few great souls?) Bur the Jews never practiced or preached genocide.

However, rhe main point of rhis lerrer is ro call ro your arrention an episode in your and my life rhar you failed ro mention, in order co help balance your one-sided picture.

Do you remember rhar, when we lived on the first floor of a building on the corner of Haledon Ave.' One day you came ro me and said char a colored boy in your class was hungry; char you wanted ro bring him ro our house ro have a bite, bur char the landlord downstairs refused to admit him with you. Although I knew char chis Gentile landlord might make things difficult for me (He did later when he gave bad references when I sought ro get an apartment), yet, in spite of any dire consequences, I said to you - ro show justice and ro remove prejudice - yes, bring him ro the house. 2

1 . "'Sraremem co Tht Burning Bush, Burni11g Bush. no. 2 (September 1 964). See AG, Deliberate Prrue. pp.

58-<\0.

2. The rt"St of che letter is missing.

1 9 6 5

Near the end of 1 964. Allen was invited by Cuba's minister of culture to participate in a writer's conference in Havana. The U.S. State Department was less than thrilled about having an outspoken member of the ··beatnik element" appearing in Cuba. but it had little choice but to let him go. Still. the travel arrangements were outrageous, to say the least: to travel to Cuba. Allen had to fly first to Mexico City and then on to Cuba; to return, he had to fly first to Czechoslovakia and then to the United States. The arrangements irritated Allen. but he was also excited about the prospect of visiting Cuba and a prominent Iron Curtain Country, and of drawing firsthand conclusions about the Communist governments in these two countries.

He ran into trouble almost from the beginning. As an advocate of free speech, he was not about to tone down his rhetoric in Cuba. Whether he was being brave or politically naive - and there have been arguments supporting both positions - Allen stirred up a controversy that would eventually make international headlines.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

{Havana, Cuba}

February 5, 1 965

Dear Louis -

Re'd your lecter, it is faster via Mexico. [. . .

]

I'm OK - have been keeping day by day notes of what's going on & filled several notebooks already. Work as juror in poetry contest finished

& now will relax & stay a month before moving on to Czechoslovakia.

All told "socialist" Cuba is both good and bad. I was here in '53 and the country is much better off, that is everybody eats has work & has shoes and also has education. Economically, compared to other Latin American countries, it's a much healthier place than before.

They get this done thru total organization like a big government monopoly.

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Family BuJinm: 1965

The Cubans have a funny latin humor in creating this huge bureaucracy and so far the genern.l attitude tOward experimental formation of the structure is basically "existential" - i.e. the structure is open & constantly changing, & perJonal in the sense that it's run by only 23 people, Castro at the tOp.

Being a huge structure run experimentally by people, the directives & direction is as sane or as neurotic as the people running the joint are.

So far they are quite puritanical. I arrived here in the middle of a big wave of hysterical crackdowns on homosexuals camping in the street & a bunch of professors & students were kicked out of an schools. As soon I opened my mouth & began complaining co journalists about che persecution of homosexuals & saying repressive measures were stupid (they ought co encor;rage heterosexuality but being Catholic/bourgeois chat's also inconceivable co them) - and also calking about marijuana & ending capital punishment - waves of gossip & anxiety spread throughout the journalist/
licerary/Casa de las Americas 1 world. A couple young kids I had mec were taken co jail overnight & questioned. I got paranoid & immediately began complaining. Finally I went co Nicholas Guidlen, a poet head of Writers Union, & Haydee Santamaria,2 [who) are the Cabinet ministers (who'd invited me) and got the young poets out of trouble. But by chat time ic was a sort of general scandal i.e. the unjust arrests, and everybody began feeling guilty coward me & I got co be quite popular, tho I was obviously an embarrassment co my hoses. There is a heavy bureaucratic bourgeois element, a liberal utopian element, a dogmatic Marxist puritanical element.

Castro is very popular & actually much loved. Everybody expects him co gee Cuba out of its internal & external mess - like a ship with Castro/Ulysses as the captain. A quasi police state with no constitutional protection, and on the ocher hand a fantastic optimistic unanimity of agreement co go ahead with the "Revolution" which is spoken of everywhere & which has changed everybody's life - So ic's a weird scene - all in all rather hopeful than not despite my own direct experiences with limitations on freedom of expression. If the "dogmatists" as they're called here cake over - which would only come if the Cubans experience so much U.S. pressure they get paranoid - it would be Stalinism. If the liberals slowly cake over it'll be a sore of latin Utopia. The Liberals - as at the Casa de las Americas which invited me feel the older squarer Communists will just slowly die off & the younger generations be alright. So like everything, che scene is mixed. The one l . The
de las Americas was Allen's sponsor during his sray in Cuba.

2. Haydee Samamarla was rhe direnor of C...asa Je las Americas.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

227
intolerable element which is screwing everyrhing up is rhe U.S. rhrear, continuous anririon & economic srrangularion which maintains Cuba in a srare of perperual neurosis & marerial scruggle. If rhe U.S. would let go ir would resolve rhe whole 2 way Cold War here & everyrhing end happy wirh some sore of democraric socialism like Sweden. The basic emmional rension berween rhe countries is similar ro char berween over prorecrive over aggressive parent & independent yourh in whose consciousness rhe parent has no dominant place.

OK rhere's repon on Cuba. I'll sray here anorher month & go on ro Czechoslovakia. I'll wrire soon. Was wairing for someone ro rake a Jeerer our. Direcr mail co rhe U.S. is sropped or delayed for weeks by rhe U.S.

Love

Allen

Allen'J Jtay in Cuba u•aJ cut Jhort in Febmary. u•hen he waJ armted, briefly detained, and finally expelled from the country. He waJ put on a plane to Czechmlovakia, where a new JerieJ of adventum wm about to begin.

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg

Allen Gimberg
do Peter Pujman

Writer'J Union

Vaarodni I I ,

Prague, CzechoJiovakia

March I, I 965

Dear Louis:

How are you' Had odd dream lase nice char I had a baby, you were in dream somewhere. I called Orlovsky a week ago from Newfoundland on my way here, asked him ro call you, did he? I gm kicked our of Cuba afrer a month probably for calking roo much abour marijuana & sex & capiral punishment. Police & Emmigrarion people husded me our in 2 hours wirhour ceiling rhe Casa de las Americas, which invired me. So now rhere's an inrernal struggle going on, they're all embarrassed. I haven't made a scandal

228

Family BuJinm: 1 965
lest it hun the people there who invited me. They have a hard struggle as it is. So from this you can measure rhe police-stare politics there. I'm still waiting ro hear the latest gossip.

Prague is absolutely beautiful, and much more relaxed. They had their terror in the '50s, worse than Cuba. Now rhey are opening up, which means, technically, decentralization of economic authority (and consequently political & arrisric). It is a whole special interesting world. I'll go explore more. I have royalties here, enough to pay for a road trip to Moscow, am living in nice horel 2 weeks, guest of Writer's Union. I'll go to Moscow - and maybe then Warsaw - on my own as a tourist. More freedom & less hassles that way.

Following tracks of Kafka here - The Trial a perfect parable of life here in the '50s everybody says.

His books are just published after years of silence. Also mer Jewish community - 77,000 pre war and 3,000 now - went to services last Friday in oldest Synagogue in Europe - mer them again this morning - all sons of Tales of Golem to hear & Rabbi Seou's grave & library full of Kabbalisric mss. Medieval squares and bridges & 1 9th century nostalgia all over the streets - happy ro be here -

Find our by phone from Bronx or Riverside relatives exact address of Moscow relatives & please send it to me fast. I'll leave here in rwo weeks, rho mail will be forwarded from above address.

Say hello to Gene - I'll wrire him soon.

Love ro you - as ever - & Love to Edith & all -

Yr son,

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

March 2, 1 965

Dear Allen,

Received your postal from Prague.

Called up Eugene and told him about getting a cousin's address (Joe Levy's) in Russia. Eugene will call up to obtain that and will then write you.

We were over ro Eugene's the other Sunday and called up Peter Orlovsky.

He transferred your things to a new address which I suppose you know (408

E. 10 Sr.). Peter also told us that you had been escorred to a plane and

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

229
direcced co leave Cuba. Whac infraccion of cocalicarian laws did you commie?

Whac law did you run afoul of ?

I suppose in Prague you are reconnoicering and soaking up local color. I cruse, coo, you will bring back here pieces of che "cruch."

All is quiec here and we are pursuing che even cenor of our ways. Eugene's kids are chriving. Edich is working and so am I, scill ac Rucgers, cwo evenings a week. (We are saving a liccle money for crave ling Iacer.) Now and chen I puc a glow in che scacus quo, so some days I live less daily by puccing a prismacic fringe of poecry around a few hours. Am having poems published here and chere.

Is che Wricer's Union scirring wich new fermenc) I gacher chac in Russia, che poec Brodsky ' is scill imprisoned, despice planced scories chac he is free.

Wrice me, if you are allowed co, a long leccer wich derails such as may be permicced from behind che Iron Curcain.

Wich love,

Your facher,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg

March 3, 1 965

Dear Allen,

Glad co gee your leccer daced March 1 . Seems like quick service by mail. Lee me know when you gee chis leccer. Also, I sene you an air mail leccer a day or CWO ago.

Eugene will gee che address of che cousin in Russia and send ic on co you.

Pecer Orlovsky did noc call me. However, Eugene, when I visiced him, called Pecer and received che informacion chat you had been escorced in Cuba co a plane. I surmised chac you forgoc in Cuba chac you were in a cocalicarian regime.

I gachered, from reading previous arcicles in che N. Y. Time.r, chac chere has been a relaxacion in Czechoslovakia, whac wich coexiscence. One of che by-produces of che relaxacion is che spread of word of Kafka. One of che symbolisms read inco Kafka is che blind cocalicarianism of che Scalin ironfisced, myscerious rule. As you say, che 50's were a parable.

I. Joseph Brodsky, poet and political prisoner, eventual winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Family Business: 1 965

Prague has an old Jewish communiry whose roms sink back deep co rhe Middle Ages and before. The Golem and ocher mysric rales were brewed in an atmosphere when Jewish mysricism and cabalisric legends helped rhe Jews ward off, as if by ralismans and conjurarions, rhe prejudices and anri

Semiric evils assailing rhem.

All is quier here. Spring is on rhe way, and we are preparing co help our garden rejoice.

In a couple of weeks, Edirh and I will join a group going for a week-end up rhe mounrains in a Carskill Horel. [ . . .

] Hope we don'r ger blinded by
rhe whire glare of rhe sour cream.

Ir was a srrange dream you had. Whar was I doing in rhe dream'

Keep well and warch your healrh!

My love speeds co you across oceans and conrinenrs.

Your farher,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg
do Ylena Romanova

Writer's Union

52 V orovsky S tr

Moscow USSR
n.d. (ca. March 1 965}

Dear Louis:

Received Levy's Moscow address. I leave by second class rrain rhru rhe snows of Russia co Moscow comorrow afrernoon. Trip paid by my Czechoslovak royalries, ir works our fine. I have enough $ for 4 days in Moscow ar Inrrouisr expensive races. I hear also rhar rhe Russians will invire me co sray ar lease a week on rheir expense & I'll see how long I can screech rhar our.

In Cuba I commirred abour every "infraction of coralirarian laws" I could chink of, verbally, and rhey finally flipped our & gave me rhe bum's rush. Ir was half Kafkian & half funny. I had been expecring co sray anorher monrh, and one govr. group rhere was (secrerly conspiring) working on char, while rhe police and emigrarion people were secrerly conspiring co gee rid of me.

Did you ger my Jeerers from Cuba' I chink I sene you rwo.

The inreresring rhing abour rhe communise counrries is rhe inrerior balance of forces working one way or rhe ocher. One group humane, orher

Allen and LouiJ Ginsberg

2 3 1
group sectarian police stare oriented. Same type1 o f people as you find in U.S.

proposing Joft & hard lines. The essential thing to do is ro help our rhe liberal types here (& in U.S.) - rhe heavier rhe Cold War arrack, rhe more the liberals suffer. Like, in Cuba, the more jJrnJure rhe U.S. puts against Castro, the more difficult ir is for rhe liberals ro fight police stare tendencies.

Prague absolutely beautiful. Old Medieval town, the Golem synagogue, weird castles and cathedrals, Kafka's homes - Kafka just published here this past few years after 1 5 years blackout - by that you can measure rhe winds of political change - I wrote Gene - Everyone here official & non-official complains about rhe Horror of rhe '50s as if ir were a nightmare. They're slowly waking our of ir. My visit seems ro have done some good. Everybody here adores rhe Bearniks, & there's a whole generation of Prague teenagers who listen ro jazz & wear long hair & say shit on communism & read H()UI/. I gave a reading ar Charles Univ. (on rhe banks of Die Moldau river) with big audience & answered all sorts of sex and brainwash questions. Food good middleeuropean soups & pork & knaedlich - I live in expensive Ambassador hotel ar Writer's Union expense & my picture's in all the literary supplements with long strange explanations about marijuana & L.S.D and Hari Om Namo Shiva Indian mantras - and I run around with teenage gangs & have orgies & then rush up ro Writer's Union & give lectures on rhe glories of U.S. pornography Henry Miller ere. All very happy - Love ro you -

I'll send you card from Moscow -

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

March 22, 1 965

Dear Allen,

Received your lerrer, undated, from Czechoslovakia, according ro your incidents, bur the heading seemed ro be from Moscow.

Grear news about you and for you caused rejoicing here with Eugene and me. Eugene heard from Peter rhar

YOU RECEIVED A GUGGENHEIM AWARD! CONGRATULA

TIONS! What are the derails?

232

Family Businw: 1 965

We are all well here. Edith and I had a brief holiday up in the mountains with a group, in the Borshr circuit. There were all sons of things to do, bur none of them beguiled me; such as, swimming in indoor pool, ice-skating outdoors, tobogganing, skiing, indoor practice of dancing rhe frug, alleycar, and wacusi. So I read the papers. At nighr rhere was an interesting show wirh comedians: chis rook my a[[ention. Otherwise, I lose rhe barde wirh food which overwhelmed me.

I was interesred in your account of Kafka. I knew char ir was only recendy char he was being published. A rich and fertile Jewish civilization reemed in Prague.

I see by rhe literary reviews here char a new vein of novels has poured in upon Russia wirh rales of horror about Stalin's concentration camps.

Am glad to hear char rhe young Beamiks have raken you to rheir bosom.

When you read rhem your poems, which ones do rhey like? Is sex your only subject you regale rhem wirh'

Wrire me how Moscow is. (I heard char once again rhe Parry Line has been laid down for wrirers in Russia. Whar do rhey say') Have you seen Joe Levy yer' The news rrickle led co us some rime ago char he admitted rhere was anri-Semirism and char, in face, he had lose a factory supervisor's job because he was Jewish.

Keep writing.

Once again, CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR WINNING THE

GUGGENHEIM! Wrire derails.

Love from

Your far her,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg

(Prague}

March 29. 1 965

Dear Louis:

Been in Moscow a week saw Joe Levy & old pictures & tearful stories of Virebsk 1 905 - Sac around Red Square & wrore poems - drank wirh Yevcuchenko - saw bailer & symphonies & plays & museums - heard old gossip about Dearh - Then 3 days also in Leningrad, visired Hermitage & chis Srreet Nevsky Prospect I read years ago in Gogo! - Now back in

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

233

Moscow in hotel overlooking Kremlin . . . be here a week & meet more poets & chen by train back co Prague - I may stop over a few weeks in Warsaw on the way, but Prague address is the best - All well, will relate gossip on return - Love - Allen.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

1 1 Narodui - Writer's Union

Prague, Czechoslovakia

April 1 0, 1 965

Dear Louis:

Arrived here in Warsaw1 several days ago and am seeding down for a few weeks, chen will train back co Prague. After chat if I have any money I'll visit Hungary, Budapest, & see what's happening there. My plane ticket is Prague-+London -+ New York.

I saw Annie & Joe [Levy] in Moscow. He was very sweet & so was she, almost familiar as if family. They weren't very open or talkative (co me) about their political experiences. Probably they cold more co ocher relatives they knew better. In face Joe cold me he thought Beria was in pay of

"Scotland Yard."

I spent a lot of time with Yevcuchenko, Voznesensky & others, and got more informacion from them chan from Joe. Also saw Yessenin-Volpin whose work's not published there.

Pany line has always been laid down for writers. It's determined by balance of forces between "good men" and "bad men" inside the bureaucracy. Right now it's relatively liberal. Yevcuchenko heard, lase day I was there, chat long new poem of his would be printed 1 ,000,000 copies.

Moscow was a big drag mosdy. I got around bur the weight of the State is coo heavy co be comfonable. Warsaw more open, but more small town.

Well I'll see who's here. OK - I'll see you soon -

Love,

Allen.

There might have been a "thawing" of the Cold War in Czechoslovakia, as Allen reported, but the country was still under Communist rule, and Allen's presence, I . Although AG used a Prague return address at the head of rhis lercer, it was wrinen in Warsaw.

234

Family Businm: 1 965
although not as controversial as his time in Cuba, was pr!Wing to be difficult for the country's officials. On May 1, Allen was crowned Kral Majales (King of May) in a huge student celebration in Prague; displeased officials immediately stripped him of the title. Over the next few days, things got worse: One of Allen's journals was stolen, and he realized that he was being watched or followed; on May 5, he was attacked and beaten on the street. Allen made hasty plans to leave the country, but on May 7, before he was able to depart, he was arrested and formally expelled from the country.

He was escorted to a plane bound for London, and while in transit, Allen took out a notebook and wrote "Kral Majales, " one of the highlights of Planet News, the collection of poetry that he would publish a few years later.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 15, 1 965

Dear Allen,

Glad ro hear from you after a hiatus.

How come they expelled the King of the May? Too much revelry with Pan?

Did you get my message - sent to you three times - that you won a Guggenheim' How much money does it give you?

Here is a clipping about you and me in the local Paterson Eve. News.

I am missing you here.

Come home soon with voluminous details and fascinating srories, what with new material for poems.

We bought a new car. Our old one was stolen and then found: we used it as trade-in.

Write more.

Love from your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

( Lont:Wn, England}

May 21, 1965

Dear Louis - Czech police srole my journals, notebook & later expelled me for anti-state orgies. They were jealous about May King. Now in London

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

235
since May 7, and traveling around countryside - spent this weekend at Newcastle & visited old poet Basil Bunting & met a lot of longhaired young lads and their wives - England very beautiful May sunshine & I'll go on ro Paris a week mid-June & then fly horne end June. Allen.

Allen Ginsberg to Eugene Brooks

London

May 25, 1 965

Dear Gene -

Sorry so sparse with letters - I wrote Peter more extensively because he's in contact with Lower East Side network -

As far as I know (re your question), I didn't violate any Czech formal (personal) laws. All sexual relations between adults (over 18) are legal. (In Poland oddly it's over 1 5 yrs.) I had no narcotics there at all.

I was May King and that upset the Communist Parry. I was more or less guarded in my conduct thereafter. But I lost (or had lifted from my pocket) one of my notebooks from previous visit (Feb 1 8-Mar 1 4). The police kept it, more or less illegally I believe - as far as law goes - and used it as they wished

-

10 days after I got bounced. I kept quiet ro see what they would do, & they opened the recriminations. The problem for rhem was ro get rid of the

"legend" I left behind & justify their own gaucherie in kicking me our.

Fortunately everybody in the Writer's Union & all the students know the whole story. I had also been attacked & beaten in the srreet by a supposed police "provocateur" several days before I was bounced. I reported it ro U.S.

Embassy in Prague (before I was expelled) about being attacked on street & loss of notebook, so they were all primed for further difficulties & so was I.

I checked in at US Embassy here to get word from Prague about my notebook - rhe Prague attache said he thought it would be easy to get back.

There's nothing against the law in Prague (as in US) in keeping private thoughts or diaries. He thought it wd be easy to recover, but that was before Czech police primed extracts in Mlada Fronta, a youth newspaper May 16.

London Embassy hasn't yet word on it. I wonder if they're putting me off.

There's nothing in the notebook I would be ashamed ro have published (with the exception of a few names of people whose conversation I reported sketchily) - so there's no threat there. The main thing is I'm afraid the

236

Family Businm: 1 965

Czechs will rry ro keep it. And rhere are a few good poems in rhe book. I may have ro look up international law when I ger back, unless rhe embassies prove more efficient rhan rhey've been so far. Thar's rhe sum -

Allen

I'll be back in NY June 1 5-20 - I rhink.

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg

(London}

June l, l 965

Dear Louis -

Prague scene too complicated long srory ro wrire. I'll be home in 3 weeks anyway - many derails in rhe newspaper are correcr & many are incorrect. I spent rhe lase week in Liverpool, where rhe Beades come from, listening ro new rock & roll groups - ir's a jumping ciry like San Francisco - ronire a parry ar my publishers, and I give a reading June 3 in London & June 6 ar Cambridge Universiry. Then ro Paris for a week, see Gregory Corso who's finally ar peace rhere - rhen I'll fly back ro New York around June 2 1 . OK

Love Allen

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

Monday, September 27. 1 965

Dear Allen,

Received your lerrer dared Sepr 23.

Glad you are OK. and keeping busy. Norhing like killing rime by working ir ro dearh.

Pleased you understand abour rhe Call interview. 1 You well describe drawbacks and blockages and filrer agents which communications are disrorred and mauled. So ir goes. Yes, even communications berween I . Regina Smaridge's interview wirh Louis and Edich Ginsberg ('"Childless, Lonely Old Gruffer"J
appeared in the ''Home Magazine" sen ion of rhe Sepcember 18, 1965, issue of rhe Pt:JterJon Morning Call.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

237
friends and lovers and father and sons are also mauled and distorted and garbled. More anon.

Wish you were here. This coming Sunday, Eugene is making a party in Plainview on my 70th birthday on Oct 1. The family and some friends will gather. Wish you could be present, too, as I shall miss you very much.

However, I send my love to you across the continent. I am happy that you are happy in fulfilling your inner nature and destiny. This quotation could apply to you as well as to me: "When a material object has lefi: me with the imprint of Beaury, the office assigned to me by narure has been fulfilled."

D'Annunizio.

I am fine and in good health, and my mind is teeming with ideas for new poems. Will send you some new poems, when they are published. (My third book of poems ms. is still going the rounds. Each time it comes back, I replenish it with new poems and take out some weak poems or those that seem so at the moment. The rejections seem a bit warmer so I am hoping that sometime here - or hereafter - a good publisher will cake them.) Edith is fine and so are all the others. Sheila had a new baby boy so Edith is all agog.

I just started my seventeenth year at Rutgers evening sessions teaching. I enjoy it and it keeps "my hand in,"" as the phrase goes.

I do a little more reading of my poems than in the past. In Nov. I am reading at the Newark, N. ). YMHA before a little book club. On the 8 of Nov., I fly (with Edith) for the third year to Detroit, Mich., where at the Wayne Scare U. I am to give two or three readings of my poems. The loot there is good.

I keep ever more busy at my desk, reading all sorts of magazines and writing slowly but steadily, trying to put a prismatic fringe about the scarus quo or a nimbus about the commonplace. All in all, nothing is happening except some new poems and my watching forces of creation concentrating on myself perceiving myself more aware of those forces composing a miraculous commonplace. More anon.

I ruminate a great deal on Determinism and Free will. I came across this thought on the subject (Nehru): ""Determinism is the cards you are dealt; and free will is the way you play them.""

Write again with letters and not postals for am eager to hear all about what you are doing and thinking, even if, at least, in politics, we agree to disagree.

With love from your father,

Louis

238

Family BuJiness: 1 965

The two GinJbergJ continued to diJagree vehemently about the war in Vietnam.

Demomtratiom and proteJt marcheJ were Jpringing up on college campuJeJ acroJJ the United States, with Jome of the country' I moJt notable ones taking place in the Bay Area, where Allen waJ Jtaying. ActiviJt Jerry Rubin, leader of the Vietnam Day Committee, planned a Jeries of marches and demomtrationJ, only to be countered by members of the Heii'J Angels motorcycle dub, who threatened to diJrupt the marcheJ
and beat up the demomtratorJ. The confrontation and potential for violence provided one of the JterneJt testJ of Allen'J leaderJhip, but, aJ the following letters prove, he waJ
up to the taJk.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg
do City LightJ

261 ColumbuJ, S.F. California

November 6, 1965

Dear Lou:

I guess you'll get this on your return from Detroit. 1 Nice rime' rtl probably go chru chere on the way home by car. In a month or so. I"ll be here rill Dec 5 or so, and chen drive south co Los Angeles & see Max Levy & Tillie in Riverside, & stay a couple weeks with friends in Los Angeles, chen head chru desert country & stopover at Albuquerque co see Creeley & on souch & north or wherever, thence co NY, in Jan or Feb.

I met some poets from Anise's Workshop in Detroit - group of young people jazz musicians & painters & poets founded an avant garde group, integrated with Negro musicians & hired a house for center for readings & cheater & an showings. They seem co be flourishing except char John Sinclair che young kid who was the organizer was trapped by cops into selling chem some marijuana a few months ago & sentenced co 20 years.

Some of char group had heard your lase reading there at Wayne.

Spent cen days at Big Sur by oceanside, & practiced singing Tibetan & Hindu mantras. I"m geccing good enough co puc our a record soon. Maybe blase char ecstasy chru the jukeboxes. Have you heard che new wave of popfolk-rock on ch.e radio' Bob Dylan's recent records are genuine poetry; also one called "The Universal Soldier" ("He's fighting now for Russia, he's fighting for Japan, he's fighting for the U.S.A.!Wichouc him Caesar would I . Louis and Edirh Ginsberg had recemly traveled to Detroit, where Louis gave a series of readings at Wayne State University.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

239
have stood alone, and Hitler wouldn't have had his way . . .

") - amazing to
hear preached to kids on radio - also another song "Eve of Destruction" is very strange - unexpected - message to hear on normal airwaves - political rockandroll prophesying end of earth. 1

I took some LSD for the first time in several years at Big Sur - very beautiful afternoon on magic earth, the ancient ocean and titanic cliffs & old sun solid in the atmosphere, great masses of kelp life-forms washed up on beach, & the tiniest flower on the path a violet jewel. All the young people out here are experimenting with it - by all I mean a huge number, maybe 10% of college kids, and those all the ones interested in poesy or politics or art. It'll have an effect. I wound up on my knees praying for Johnson going into the valley of the shadow on Gall Bladder table for operation. What seems to be happening is a slow shift of consciousness of the species to something more ample & tolerant - have to cope with the massive hatreds & wars ranging the planet & the threat of bomb annihilation hanging over it all.

I took part in the Berkeley Marches - read poetry at the teach-in with Louis Simpson & Duncan & Fer! & McClure - then Gary Snyder & I on the sound truck leading the march with mantra-chanting - Buddhist hymns to calm the crowd - everyone afraid the police would get violent. Stopped on Oakland border - reminded me of Hague & Journal Sq. days, refusing Thomas permit/protection to speak and the eggs etc. Next day we all marched again to Oakland border - I was in front row when Hell's Angel stomped up wearing swastika & tore down Peace in Vietnam banner. We all - 6000 people - immediately sat down calmly & watched. The Oakland police had last year encouraged the Hell's Angels to "have some fun" with the free speech demonstrators in Oakland, so I heard rumor. I know some of the Hell's Angels here & gather from them that the police this time were treating them well for a change & had sort of tacit agreement to let them thru the lines to attack. The leaders of the Vietnam Day Committee are mixed - some hepcats, some Marxists, some Progressive Labor, some liberals

- mostly neutral types not partyline. The majority of the 14,000 that came out and marched are Spiritual rather than political, i.e., not Marxist oriented but the opposite. New generation change-of-consciousness youths who listen to the Beades & Bob Dylan. There's lots of local attacks on them for being pinko cowards etc; but there are so many & all so independent that the 1 . "The Universal Soldier" was wrinen and recorded by Buffy Saime-Marie. Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destrunion," one of che hies of 1 965, punctuated a long series of folk songs protesring war, including Bob Dyan's "Masters of War," Phil Ochs's "I Ain't Marching Anymore," and Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

240

Family Businm: 1 965
generalized anacks show in relief the vast gap between actual event & massmedia reportage, & the students get more insight that way.

I'm giving a reading with other SF poets here to raise money for the next march, & then I'll be on that Nov 20, & then a week or so after head out for L.A. My main function seems to be trying to keep everyone calm & sing mantras to avert Disasters. A calm-belly'd OM ourbrearhed over loudspeakers does create a tranquil atmosphere in contrast to hate speeches.

Missed the comer here, did Gene & boys see it? I got up before dawn bur it wasn't visible chru che smog char's seeded down in bay like a chin brown haze covering the planer.

Also cried a new drug DMT which smoked lases a half an hour, somewhat like the magic cheater of Sreppenwolf or Laugh Gas apocalypsis of mindconsciousness - all visual phenomena separating our into a wall of colored wave forms like Einstein might chart & the somewhat horrifying discovery char it's all empty transient phantoms, including people. Firs with Buddhist metaphysics & Chaung-Tzu. i.e. the foundation of phenomena, empty. Felt like science fiction, the waves of disappearing colored vibrations alternating with solid Ginsberg realiry as I breached che smoke in and our. Much pondering over the years from 1 950 when I first cook peyote in Paterson backyard, I got no conclusion except char all perceptions are equally valid, bur char none including usual consciousness have any bur transient existence. Which is classic enough. Bur to experience it directly with senses is awesome. Where it's all coming from I can't imagine, except glimpses of it all as projections of desire in a void where there's nothing to stop desire from rising, if it insists.

To bridge the gap between this area of perception of phenomena & the waves of rage & blood char climax in Vietnam - I don't know where to finish char sentence.

Meanwhile the Army has taken over monopoly control over LSD and related drugs, so I understand from Leary & from the ex-head of a pharmaceutical house in LA who explained the situation. The Army sd come to him to ask him to develop an LSD char would immobilize people -
alter a few of the LSD molecules a little so it would be a bad kick or be usable for victimizing people - he quit the drug business.

Sorry I missed your birthday party bur I figure you'll have plenty more.

See you soon -

Love as ever
son

Allen

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

24 1

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(San Francisco, California}

N()!Jember 1 9, 1 965

Dear Louis:

Been even more involved in Berkeley March than I expected; all the poets here got together to give a reading & raise money for the Vietnam Day Committee. The last march a swastika-studded band of crazy motorcyclists The Hell's Angels attacked the march & were threatening to turn tomorrow's into a riot; all the newspapers played up the threat, the Oakland police opposed the march & so everyone was afraid rhe police would ler rhe Angels through as they did last time; all the VDC Marxists began talking counterviolence and a dangerous situation was developing. I went down 70 miles to San Jose College to get on a platform with some representatives of rhe Hell's Angels last week and did what I could to head them off; then the other night Neal Cassady & I and Ken Kesey went privately to their house, had a parry with a lot of marijuana and LSD, sang and danced & talked to them till some kind of communication began getting thru. 1 They're paranoid, rhe police stare conditions here fall heaviest on them as they're stupid and brutal rho sensitive, all products of the last Korean war, they think the communists are going to come here and liquidate them, rhar rhe march is a communist march (both last opinions they picked up from the Oakland Tribune & UPI and AP and SF

Hearst Examiner) and so the only way ro defend rhe country and themselves is to attack rhe marchers (mostly apolitical teahead pacifist bohemians) with chains. At San Jose State I began singing Buddhist hymns, tried not to debate or argue but to inquire & explain. The audience mostly hostile, laughing & cheering - 1000 young healthy Americans - when rhe Angels promised to come out & attack the march. I got up and asked if they really wanted to see wounds blood unhappiness on the march and a great youthful roar of Yeah! came up out of the crowded cafeteria where we were gathered with news photographers & TV Cameramen. "You want to see Unhappiness'" "Yeah we want Unhappiness!" This a specially conservative provincial school with second rate reachers, nor like the larger Universities, but the temper of the crowd was so Sick I was - surprised - the corruption of US
consciousness now advanced to a point enough to make even you ashamed.

I . See "First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels,"' AG, CP, p .. :n4.

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At the parry a few nights later we did better & the Angels promised nonviolence & anyway the Oakland Mayor got a coun order he had to protect the march and so called out the State troops & national guard - to protect a political parade! - This sickness is the same sickness as your constantly revening to calling me a communist - the same screams of the crowd "Pinkos cowards Commies Draft dodgers etc etc."

I'm not an absolutist and naturally everybody has different opinions and sees things different but even THAT role-playing is over inasmuch as at this point it is necessary for everybody to compromise and come to one mental place where the diversity can exist, lest the eanh be destroyed by this vast bomb which is not the Atom bomb but the egotistical rage & frustration which you see daily in the editorial columns & screams of parade attackers. Free to his own opinion ere. but the US has carried that roo far in Vietnam at this point and now it's not Johnson or McNamara at fault, it's the whole USA and how this country will ever get out of its Karma, how it will ever get our of having to pay for all that suffering and blood, I don't understand.

As you remember a year or more ago we differed on other matters but one thing we did agree on, you agreed on, that the Vietnam war was a farce and stupid policy. Since chen we've totally changed policy - at the rime we were only advisors to a So Vietnam Effon - the rationalizations are now all different, it's our war now even if the So Vietnamese don't want it - (and if you can find any scrap of printed paper saying the So Vietnamese DO want it you'll send it to me despite that every day you can read exactly the opposite in the Foreign press or even in the UPI dispatches - that Vietcong would win an election because the people are so sick of the USA - that So Vietnam army no longer interested, many deseners, that there's no Govt except one general who likes Hitler as an ideal ere) -
bur now I don't understand how you changed your position to correspond to this last year's Govt change of tactics???))?)???)? You began against the war, now that it's got serious thru US escalation you're suddenly for it) In 12 months? Now you're saying it's not a civil war? It's Chinese Absolutism threatening world peace? It's EVERYBODY'S stupid absolutism threatening world peace including yours Louis Ginsberg and now you got blood on your hands.

And if you don't like that sir on it. You're just like the Germans under Hider and all your talk since 1 9Alpha is the same hypocrisy. They were trapped in history and so are you. And if I get my head busted tomorrow in Oakland walking along singing with my fingersymbols it'll be a piece of

Allen and LouiJ Giniberg

243
rhe same Television-hypnosis hysteria you carry in your hearr rhar did ir.

That's whar Karma is.

Okay enough of my own hysteria on you. I was kinder ro rhe idior Hell's Angels rhan I am being ro you. Bur you're supposed ro be more responsible so rhe frusrrarion I feel is - ugh, I give up. This kind of screaming ar you certainly doesn't change your mind because ir backs you up inro a position where you have ro defend yourself. And rhar, as usual in our lerrers, only brings violence back from you in answer to my own violence.

Bur I see why LeRoi Jones gives up on rhe US whites.

This prophesy Merlin shall make for I live before his Time: rhe nexr great war crises for rhe US will be in South America. For rhe lasr 8 years since everybody including you gor conscious of the facr rhat there was a severe economic problem there, and thar the answer would be either Communism or US sponsored total reform, rhe US has been putting in small amounrs of minimal reform, nor enough even to make up for rhe increaJing social degradation, and pouring in large amounrs of military energy rhere, culrivaring right wing junras ere. Dominica a perfect example. In ren years there'll be a large scale war with US on one side and nationalist communists on the orher side. And rhe reason ir'll be all communist (ar worst) is because the US refused to ler the sream escape any orher way. And ar rhat rime ir'll be the same Paranoid U.S. cry, "Ir's US or Them Folks hurry up and ger in the barroom brawl." Exactly as now in Vietnam. Even though even you know (or knew a year ago) rhat Norrh Vietnam was trying to ESCAPE from Chinese domination and was raking rhe Soviet side of rhe sinosovier dispute. The one consequence of the war you're approving will be ro FORCE on rhe Vietnamese, exactly rhe rhing you rhink you're rrying ro prevenr. You'll force rhem ro side with China. And rhen you'll blame China for having paranoid world-conquest ambitions. Meanwhile rhe Idior masters of Communism and Capitalism will be rubbing rheir hands and gathering police srare power everywhere. The Penragon & McNamara ere are MIRROR IMAGES of the Chinese bureaucracy. Bur I must say ir's disgusting after years hearing you complain about flip flops in rhe parry line to see you doing a roral flip-flop in your opinions on rhe Vietnam war.

Which should show that rhe old parry line you were so angry about was nor an EVIL rhing, just a thing of subtle belief & exposure ro Imagery, as your flipflop has been.

And don'r say ir hasn't been a flipflop because we discussed this for rhe lasr years and you were always very Dubious of the Vietnam war, and there's been nothing since (including rhe Stevenson lasr conversations) ro change

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one's mind except a continuous barrage of overheaned imagery in the papers & a lot of pictures and soft soap on Television.

And if for 10 years I've been screaming like a paranoid nut about Mass Hypnosis - this is a perfect example of it in action.

I also saw it in action at the first Vietnam march, attacked physically, attacked by "patriots" as sedition - attacked by HUMPHREY as seditious

- and now suddenly in the last week now that war-dissent has become respectable in che newsprint of Reston, Lippmann & The Courts - suddenly legal and healchy. Bur there were a few dangerous days last month when those who organized the march were preparing for sedition trials. And if the wind had blown chat way, I could nor have depended on you to know che difference.

And that's why I always gee so bugged! My OWN FATHER caught in che same mass hysteria and sadism that is dragging planet to radioactive shit. My own high minded ex-socialise liberal family!

Well enough of my vomit. I'll write in a few days. I spent che last week running around from VDC co Hell's Angels to newspapers to insure the march would be peaceful so I wouldn't gee my skull bashed on che streets.

"Apollinaire: now is the time for prophesy without death as a consequence."

as ever

Allen

I wrote you card, OK for poesy society, maybe March OK.

Suture Self.

This is a disgusting letcer to write you. Ac lease it's better chan the Napalm you're paying for and approving. And justifying to yr son. Oughta be ashamed of yourself at yr age. Buc this tone of letter leaves no room for someplace to agree in. Forgive me. I'll be more calm when che parade anxiety's over.

P.S. Honey's article was well prosed but not cogent. Generalizations removed from reality; as, well, we didn't do no good wich Diem 1956--63; and nor much better since; but we will do better. Or Geneva accords nor good basis because quote international lawyer Diem repudiated it unquote. That's like a southern lawyer saying coloreds can'c vote because Gov. Wallace sec certain legal standards for voters. Sophistic legalism.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

November 23, 1 965

Dear Allen,

Received your long letter interspersed with sorrow and hysteria and emotional attacks.

First, let me applaud your efforts to bridge with love the hostility of Hell's Angels and the Peace Movement. It is a noble gesture. 1

Second, let me inform you of my attitude toward South Vietnam War. It was true that I am against our fighting there, despite the fact that the Commies from the North a few years back came down like wolves on the fold and murdered the village elders and ravaged the country and despite the fact that the Commies ravaged the South there.

I say I am against the war there, BUT we cannot just walk out. The Commies - it does not matter whether of Ming Ho or Mao - believe that they can take over the world by force: if we walk away without negotiation, they will regard us as paper tigers and continue with their infiltration and guerrilla tactics and overrun other countries and take over Southeast Asia. They say so.

Why do you deny you are a Communist? You admitted this in your Who's Who statement that you are a "theoretical Communist." You always took the side of the Commies, even though, later, you tried to admit some deficiencies there, such as restriction of free speech. Whether you are subconsciously rationalizing your mother and your Aunt Elanor, your redcolored spectacles always took the Commies' part. You blindly failed to see how Russia took over by hook or crook Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Estonia, etc etc. You never called the Russians the greatest Imperialist powers, even though they are.

When Stalin, as it leaked out gradually, terrorized Russia with so-called spy trials; and when Stalin, it is now admitted in Russia, caused wholesale butcheries, not one poop or whisper came out of you. It is not a sickness: it is simply your inability to see the evils of Communists. You failed to see the prefrontal lobotomy Stalin and Russia performed on the Commie sympathizers.

As for Pinkos, cowards, Commies, draft dodgers, etc, while it is unfair to I. See "Demonstration or Spenacle as Example, as Communication, or How to Make a March/

Spenacle," AG, Deliberate Pnm, pp. 9-13; and "Coming to Terms with the Hell's Angels," AG, Ddilxrate Pro1e, pp. 14-18.

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link rhem all, srill there are all sorrs and conditions of rypes, including Commies, who are against rhe U.S. So, roo, rhose who favor nor leaving South Viernam wirhour negotiation also are infiltrated and infested wirh rhe Righrisr reactionaries and rhe Rockwells.

As for my being responsible for napalm, I am against rhe use of rhar, and I recoil from ir. I did nor see you, when you always rake Russia's parr, I never heard your outcries against Russian purges or rhe bloodbaths or rhe Russian butcheries. These, roo, according ro your faulry logic, are on your head, because you always defended rhe Commies. The blood of rhe youngsters in rhe Hungary revoir, wirh rhe Russian tanks crushing rhem in blood-spattered streets, are also on your head, because you kept whitewashing Russia'

Unlike Russia, we have free speech here. Look ar all rhe dissent and opposition to rhe war; look ar all rhe parades defended, in rhe main, by rhe police and by rhe courrs. All is nor hysteria. If rhere are Hearst papers, rhere are many other papers (which I read) which are revolting against the war. I agree that there should be compromise: Russia at this stage of history would like, in a small measure, to compromise, bur China is Absolutist and demands chat we leave all Sourh Asia ro her. This is dangerous. We musr negotiate wirh sincere intentions ON BOTH SIDES.

I never said - you pur rhe words in my mouth now - I never said rhat the war is a farce. I do think it is foolish ro fight so far away and in the wrong place ro make a stand; but, once rhere, even by an error, one cannot rerreat or walk away without being called cowards, wirhour having one's honor besmirched, without having Norrh Viernam and China gloaringly prove rhar "the law comes from a gun" and its guns are rhe law of the world.

No, I say again, it is not a civil war; that is a figment you are guiled wirh.

I maintain the Commies infiltrated and used guerrilla tactics ro ravage and despoil and murder countless peaceful Sourh Viernamese.

You must ride yourself on your congenital Red viewpoint. Even if you are under rhe delusion char you are fair-minded, my conversations with you over rhe years have proved ro me you are Commie-oriented.

We see things not as they are bur as we are.

The U.S. may be wrong in its mounting such a massive war, but remember: a rhree-quarrers truth or a half-truth are better than an eighthtruth. To walk out of South Viernam, I reiterate, would leave the field ro the lying, butchering, Absolutist Commies.

As for LeRoi Jones, because of the wrong done ro his blacks, he, too, is

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

247
an Absolutist. He has exchanged his heart and put hate in the hollow. He is a madman. Even his wife he now discards; he sneers at white workers who are killed fighting for the blacks in the South. He is a madman and will get his comeuppance.

Please don't talk to me about my so-called liberalism with its flaws: you yourself, with your Commie-tinged viewpoints, have condoned most of the Commies' depravities for the last thiny years.

Your emotionalism - while it is nobly aimed and shows a great and kind character - nevenheless is blind to many aspects of reality. The old pany line of the Communist Pany was and is an evil thing, a Procrustean bed that lopped off limbs and minds. You yourself being a theoretical Communist do not appear to have clean hands, despite your blind nobility.

There may be mass hysteria on pans of some Americans, but many newspapers are questioning the government in free dissension. An example is the fact that the Democratic Governor of N.J., while he deplored Genovese's statement that he wanted the Commies to win - yet the Rutgers College and the Governor declared he had a right to his opinion. The goons and the reactionary Rightists are a small part of America.

In conclusion, I charge you, as a Communist with blood on your hands, because, in the past, with a few exceptions, you have condoned the blood baths of the Russian Communists. You are and have been caught in the prefrontal lobotomy and emotionalism of Russia. What about Russia's planting missiles in Cuba' What about tanks squashing youngsters in Hungary? You, by association and condoning, are guilty. Remember: Hell is paved with good intentions!

Your holier-than-thou attitude, with your noble intentions, does not prove that you have a Heavenly blueprint of the Truth.

You may be a great poet, as I believe you are, but you still can have false ideas and false facts, despite your noble intentions. T. S. Eliot and Pound had Fascist ideas.

As ever,

Louis

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Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(San FranciJco, California}

November 29, 1 965

Dear Lou:

Before we got on to whether or not I "am" a "Communise" or whether there's any point to your continuing chis line, which you do seem to continue despite rhe face chat it seems only to be playing with words -
capital letter Communise I nor ice chis rime - in fact we won't gee back co ir (unless you Iacer still want to play char game more) because it's just roo silly co go on with. Or ar any rare I'm nor playing chis game.

Your attitude to the war as you put it is that "The commies from the norrh a few years back came down like wolves on the fold and murdered the village elders and ravaged the country . . . rhe Commies ravaged the South there . . . .

" This is a specific set of interpretations of rhe events which are loosely presented, and inconsistenrly presented, in U.S. mass media. But in derail rhey have been contradicted, many rimes, even in the U.S. press, and I think you have seen those conrradiceions too often to set that forth as the actual event, much less the cause of the war.

Also "Ho or Mao believe they can rake over the world by force . . .

" I
think that in this context, it's nor far from statement of official U.S. policy, it also is statement of your sense of things, ir's also statement of Hell's Angel's undersranding; and I chink ir's a paranoid - Paranoid in rhe sense chat the Birchites are more extremely paranoid on same line - interpretation. In the same sense of Paranoia, it's the Mao-ist interpretacion char rhe

"Imperialist powers believe they can rake over the world by force." It's a paranoid mirror-image, as I was saying in last letter. Both lines of interpretacion can only lead to mass destruction.

I rarely "rake rhe side" of rhe communists bur I think basically you misinterpret my resisting "the side" of the US mass media as some sort of favoritism. "You never called rhe Russians rhe grearesr Imperialist powers"

ere. I don't think there's any benefit in chinking or aceing to resolve rhe conflice or even understand the conflict by switching the terminology of conflict ro "calling the Russians the greatest Imperialist" ere. That seems to lead nowhere bur to self-righteousness.

When time came on specifics ro speak & ace I wound up in conflice & bounced our of rhe mildeJt of Red police scares. I mean after all char . . .

well let's nor get back into it. Sri II I did nor at the time "whitewash Russia"

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

249
on Hungary; I remember quire disrincdy char I was ourraged by Russia chen. You don'r remember char because you were probably more oucraged or ourraged in a differenc way. 1962 we had correspondence & I poinced our char ar lease Hungary siruarion was nor dead end as Larin America say Brazil, and had improved. Ar rhe rime you denied chis. Subsequenc U .S.

reponing follows my incerprerarion char rhe sarellire councries in E.

Europe are slowly decemralizing; U.S. now pursuing char line by recognizing & rrading wich rhem (inc. Hungary) co encourage rhe decencralizarion of milirary scare.

I don'r remember proposing co you leaving Viemam wirhour negoriarion. Tho ar chis paine I don'r see whar rhere is co negoriare. We could have negoriared when (when I came back 63) rhere was srill some hope for a noncommunisr S. Viemam. Ar chis paine I chink rhe popularion of S.

Viemam is so hosrile co rhe USA (ir was already 80% hosrile according ro Eisenhower ar rhe rime of possible elecrions following Geneva, which is why we didn'r wane elecrions and srill don' c). If rhey are hosrile ir's rhe resulr of our own acrions and I don'r chink you can projecr char on co Ho.

We have free speech here, bur rhe mass media is sufficiendy screwed up char co chis day you chink rhe So. Vier. popularion is on our side. Thar ir's a Chinese maneuver co rake over. Thar rhe war is nor a civil war bur concrolled and direcred from rhe Norch. Thar if ir weren'r from rhe Norrh rhere'd have been no war.

I've said over and over, and you've read over and over, char Ho Chi Minh was aHempring co rake Russia's side againsr China, because hiscorically Indonesia & China were always in conflicr. And I've poinced our char ir was Dulles policy "neurralism nor acceprable" char is pushing S. Viemam policy inca a posicion so uncenable char rhe effecr of our policy is co GIVE China all of Viemam. Because rhe only chance we acrually had of concaining China was co build up neurral pro-Sovier sarellires.

"No, I say Ir again, ir is nor a civil war: char is a figmem you are guiled wirh. I maimain rhe Commies infilrrared and used guerrilla racrics ro ravage and despoil and murder coundess peaceful S. Viemamese. " Well chis is rhe crux of rhe problem, exacdy whar kind of war was ir from 1 954 on; whar kind of war did ir become umil a year ago; whar kind of war is ir now.

I chink you are accepring very loose chinking in rhe above.

I mean you are making ir sound like "Commies" - presumably from China or agems of China - ' ? - scarred ir all? If char were so, jusr like char, I wouldn'r disagree wirh you. Bur Experience there, as well as reading, makes ir sound so differem char your imerprerarion doesn'r really hold very well.

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Now the above imerprerarion you give is really "officially" the basis of US
policy; and it is the same as right-wing generalization; and it is the superficial stereotype of the war you might read in a provincial columnist or editorial. Bur it is nor the imerprerarion of Lippmann, or NY Times news stories or editorials, or Pulitzer Halbersram, or I. F. Stone, or the Lon®n Times, or the French press, or anyone except a minority propaganda group within rhe US.

Jones, LeRoi, and myself flip our lid because finally it seems the misunderstanding runs so deep it will lead to bomb war and violence. He's nor a "madman." Really.

When I said theoretical communist, it means what it says. I don't see any future for Capitalism as a theory. Actually I'm probably a syndicalist. The mass media have got to be taken our of private monopoly hands. Giving it to the Stare would make it as bad or worse, more cemralized. Union ownership probably be best . . . i.e. Lucien [Carr] & coworkers determining U.P. policy line, nor Roy Howard.

Enclosed a few - need I say non communist? - articles, one by Morgamhau & one by Scheer. Scheer gives background history & is very simple and readable & should clear up genesis of the conflict. It covers points raised in rhe article you sent me, such as whether or nor Geneva accord was legal, and exacdy what was Geneva accord, and who is the VietCong, ere.

The march wem alright - no violence at all, we'd persuaded the Hell's Angels to stay away by getting them high on LSD.

Also enclosed an anti-Marxist leaflet I wrote as directions for the marchers. Ami-violence, which the Marxists here were, just like you, thinking was necessary in the situation. In that sense you're mirror images of each other. I'm nor playing that game, to the best that I can escape it.

Trouble is, we're playing it with each other, at our age.

Love,

Allen

Please read the enclosed Scheer, check it with your memories of the shifts in U.S. emphasis and reporting, and try to follow the whole process from '54
to now.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

25 1

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

December 1 0, 1 965

Dear Allen,

I have read the enclosures of your last letter.

Your own delineations of a parade are eloquent and poetic and full of loving-kindness. I think it is a fine declaration and should be widely broadcast. I sent it to Eugene.

That article by Hans Morganthau I perused carefully and I find it plausible, though fine-spun and sophisticated statement. He is articulate and cogent, on the surface. I would be inclined to give him more heed, had I not heard him refuted and rebutted by Dr. Scopalini (or a name to that effect) in a televised teaching debate in Washington. Dr. Morganthau was even forced to admit openly that he had been in error in previous pronouncements.

The pamphlet called How the US Got Involved in Vietnam by Robert Scheer gave me pause. The pamphlet does contain damaging statements to the U.S. line. I'll peruse it and check it more carefully. I'll say now that, despite its damaging matter, it seems to me to be all one-sided. Nothing on the American endeavors are good.

(It reminds me that never have I heard you make a statement favorable to America. Also, why you deny you are communist oriented when you admit in your Who's Who article that you are a theoretic Communist? Also, in accordance with your red-spectacled viewpoint, you never admitted that the Commies were wrong when they raped Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Hungary, etc. etc.

These points will have to wait for your debate. I want to air the Vietnam situation.)

My own viewpoint, condensed, is this:

1. We should not be in Vietnam because it is not practical, being too far afield from our country.

2. The Commies are wrong in infiltrating and descending like a wolf on the fold (Scheer ignores that).

3. We should get out of Vietnam only by negotiation.

Am enclosing an article in today's N. Y. Times about educators backing the U.S. policy.

The pamphlet by Scheer I am sending to some knowledgeable friends in the State Department to get further enlightenment.

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When I am downtown, I shall get The New Leader m see what they say. I read the New Republic and other tracts and so get a wide variety of viewpoints.

Yours,

Louis

1 9 6 6

In December 1 965, Bob Dylan presented Allen with a gift of six hundred dollars, which Allen applied to the purchase of a reel-to-reel Uher tape recorder. Allen had been eager to "sketch" America through a series of spontaneously composed poems written while he was on the road, and for much of 1 966, he toured the country in a minibus, recording his impressions on the U her. Some of his finest work - including his classic antiwar poem, "Wichita Vortex Sutra, " and many of the poems included in the award-winning The Fall of America - was a result of these recordings.

The Vietnam War was now at the forefront of the American consciousness, and Allen and Louis Gins berg continued their debate on U. S. involvement in the war.

Louis, horrified by the nightly news reports on television, and by the headlines in the newspapers, slowly modified his stance on the war: He hated the war and its destruction, but he saw no way out of Vietnam - at least not in the way it was being proposed. (In this respect, he was not much different from a large percentage of the American population.) Although Allen's letters from this period are missing, one can surmise, from Louis's responses, that Allen was continuing with his insistent demands for the United States to withdraw from Vietnam immediately.

This year also saw the beginning of the Allen Ginsberg-Louis Ginsberg joint poetry readings - or "the Battle of the Bards, " as they were often called. The readings brought father and son closer together, even as they debated poetics and politics from the stage. Both Allen and Louis enjoyed these joint readings, and they would participate in d!Jzens of them in the years to come.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

April 6, 1 966

Dear Allen,

Are you taking care of your health?

Newsweek, dared April 1 1 , '66, has a paragraph about the "Bartle of the Bards," on page 63.

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Abe Greene, assistant ediror of rhe Paterson Eve News, suggests a reading by you and me in Paterson. Ir's jusr in rhe thinking srage. Would you be agreeable'

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

April 9, 1 966

Dear Allen,

When Mr. Abe Greene of rhe Paterson Eve. News asked me for suggestions, I wrore rhar a reading might take place, as a cultural event, in Paterson, in rhe hall of rhe YMHA. Perhaps Jos. Zimmel might promote ir. We'll see: ir's jusr an idea rhar is growing.

I spoke wirh Eugene abour his appearing wirh us in "A Night wirh rhe Ginsbergs - Poets."" To my surprise, he did nor seem ro relish joining in with us. He raised objections. Said something curious, i.e. rhar, as a lawyer, rhe resulting publicity might expose him ro annoying, unwanted phone calls. (!)

How do you figure him our'

Come in Sunday, April 1 7 , if your engagements permit.

Hope rhe weather is balmy.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

April 12, 1 966

Dear Allen,

Your array of facrs gave me pause, bur rhere are orher facts. Your formidable array of facts on hand bur you neglect ro mention: I. While rhe U.S. was pondering neurralisr election, H. Chi Minh and his

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

255
cohons (democrats' Baloney!) infiltrated thousands of Commies who butchered thousands of leaders of villages and terrorized thousands of villages.

Just as with South Korea, so in S. Vietnam the Commies infiltrated with terror. (As they are now infiltrating into Laos & Cambodia.) II. The Buddhists want no fighting but they want no CommieJ. You ignore this fact.

III. While I {am} against the military, sometimes they can hold a country together, otherwise the country would fall co pieces and the Commies would fall on a dismantled and fragmented country co devour those pieces ravenously. The military is a temporary expedient. The military agreeJ to hold electiom Jhortly.

R .E.D. The cause of all the conflict is the forceful, ravenous infiltration of Communists, even as they did in S. Korea, not speaking of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc. etc. The Chinese call it war of liberation; I call it foul aggression. (I'll send you clippings, too.)

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

WedneJtiay, April 27. 1 966

Dear Allen,

Paterson is waking up.

The Paterson YMHA phoned me to ask or co invite you and me co a joint poetry reading in the Fall. A Belle Krass asked me what the cost would be. I told her I would consult with you and, meanwhile, requested her to phone you to find out whether you would desire co join in such a reading. Did she call you'

Of course, as I said, your own celebrity summons you for enough readings. I gather, however, that the added father-and-son reading gives funher piquancy. Also, the fact that we are of two schools adds bait, so that the press licks its tongue with "the Barrie of the Bards. "

Hope you will like c o join in this Paterson reading this Fall. I suggest a fee of about $200.00 for each of us.

What say you'

How was your Princeton trip?

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Tonight, I am driving down co New Brunswick where I am co give a reading and calk before che Literary Club of che Rucgers Universiry evening college. The classes have been circularized so char I expect a good crowd.

Come in soon.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 23, 1 966

Dear Allen,

Congratulations on that magnificenr spread abouc you in this week's Lifo!!11

I rejoice i n your brillianr eminence as a world-wide poet.

You should feel fulfilled and happy indeed.

Some of your observations quoted in the text are admirable and deep: you cap roots of profundities.

Other commenrs you make I disagree with: that is because of my nature, che way I have been puc together.

Take care of yourself.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. One minor error: I am not an atheist. It is more complex a matter. On che batdefield of my mind, there is a perpetual conrest going on between my head and my heart, between an agnostic and a religious, though not an inscitucional one. When I think of che butchery of six million Jews, I am an agnostic. When I think of che infinite order of the universe, I am religious in the sense that Einstein meanr: awe at the wonder of the universe. Behind it all, though, there is a deep affiliation with the racial and hiscorical memories of the Jewish people.

L.

I . B<�.rry Emell, "The Guru Comes to Kansas," Lt/e. May 27, 1 966.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 31, 1 966

Dear Allen,

Congrarularions on that splendid interview m the current PariJ Review! 1

Your discourse had many fine and rich insights. Some of your sarori and visions I had already been aware of.

I was especially interested in your remarks on spaces between words.

"There be a gap between two words which the mind would fill in with the sensation of existence. " Very good, indeed. Are you aware of Arthur Koestler's The Art of Creation? He remarks rhar "the creative process comes from the collision of apparently unrelated areas . . . from an intersection of different frames of reference in which one matrix is crossed by another."

Lorca has the idea of the imagination leaping as on horseback over rwo different fields of thought.

I was also interested in your description of stares of illumination in which Blake gave you momentum or flashed revelations. It is all stimulating and inspiring. Some thoughts of others float into my mind in that connection.

Shelley said, "Beauty is the perception of the infinite in the finite." Also the poet discovers the timeless in the temporal . . . or the poet links the fleering and ephemeral with the permanent and the eternal.

Was interested, roo, in the idea you adumbrated - though nor express in this interview about your theory of the nakedness of the spirit and the holiness of every human feeling. Am I correct about the latter' What I want to question is whether everything in the human is holy' Since we are parr animal and parr human, narure plus nurture, are there nor some pans ro be chained and confined? For instance, what about the feeling of bruraliry and savagery in the Nazis who butchered 6 million Jews and others? What then, do you say, about what should be suppressed? What feelings of man should be suppressed'

Congrarularions again!!!

I miss you and at rimes feel lonesome for you; bur I want you to come to visit me only when you have an inner compulsion to do so, bur nor from some sense of obligation or duty.

Love from

Your father

Louis Ginsberg

I . Thomas Clark, "Allen Ginsberg: An Imerview," Paris Revieu·, Spring 1966. Rerrimed in AG, SpontafUOMJ Mind (New York, Harper Collins, 2001), p. 1 7 .

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

June 20, 1 966

Dear Allen,

How are you faring on the coast)

This is ro let you know char I have serried on a dare with the Paterson YMHA. Our joint poetry reading will rake place on Sunday night, on October 23, '66. Kindly confirm chis dare. O.K.) The YMHA plans to advertise our reading in all the colleges nearby; so that a good crowd can be expected.

All is quiet here.

What is so rare as a day in June) A night with June! Just for the fun of it.

Love from your
far her,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

August 8, 1 966

Dear Allen,

I reuse your voice is getting better.

We'll drive in by car on Sunday, August 1 3, about 2:00 P.M. After some calk, we might prowl about the Village or go ro a "happening" or find some offbeat movie or ear in a Chinese restaurant and/or go, if worthwhile, ro the Village Gate. We'll play it by ear, so ro speak. (In case something important comes up - for you, char is - we can postpone rhe visit, though I am getting lonesome for you and miss you.)

Blake's lines about the sunflower have also been with me a long rime.

There is a sadness lurking in the syllables of the poem char have always haunted me. The sunflower, symbolic of mankind, longs ro escape the limits of this mortaliry for a region of immortal aspects. In the second stanza, does the "virgin shrouded in snow" imply a coldness or a barrenness?

The end of the poem seems equivocal. What does the word "aspire," in next ro the lase line, mean) It means "long for," I rake ir; so char the youth and the virgin, as well as the sunflower, are still trapped on chis side of the

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grave. Nonetheless, the poem has always worked a mysterious, nostalgic, and sad magic on me.

I am keeping busy, as ever, at my desk, writing slowly new poems and revising many other poems. At moments some days, I live less daily, finding myself setting a prismatic fringe about the moment; until some sudden insight, pouring light into me, makes me catch a glimpse where, as Wordswonh says, "All lay imbedded in a luminous light/and aspired with inward meaning."

Love to you from

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Hannah Litzky

August 1 6. 1 966

[ . . .

]

I spent a day with Allen. We had long talks. We mentioned LeRoi Jones.

Allen, while he thought Jones was going too far in his animosity, felt that was partly due to inroads of the White Establishment. I countered, if that is the whole burden of condonement, then we Jews should hate all Catholics for their Inquisition and all Christians for their injuries upon us for the so-called deicide, and we should hate all Germans for the six million murdered Jews. And where is Love, love, love? He finally yielded to my arguments.

We went to a group of Village poets cutting a record of their poerry. I was invited to read some of mine but I declined. Frankly I did not care to be included in mererricious and scatological passages.

At night we prowled amid the Village purlieus. We heard a combo which I disliked: they were too loud and too obscene. (Such things should be obscene but not heard.)

At an eatery we had a crowd, including Larry Rivers, the painter. I regaled them (aside from some puns) with my salad days when I lived in Newark and would, of an evening, take the tubes and hie myself into New York to give readings of poetry in converted stables in the Village with Maxwell Bodenheim, Clement Wood, A. M. Sullivan, Henry Harrison, etc.

People here in Paterson are beginning to ask for tickets to the joint reading of Allen and me on Nov. 23, so we ought to have a crowd.

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Did you see che arcicle about Allen in che N. Y. Times Book Review1
yesterday)

By che way, what was che afcermach of the joinc reading of me and Allen at the camp) (Do I sniff something uncoward?)

[ . . .

]

Love from

Your brother,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 29, 1 966

Dear Allen,

How are you)

I am missing you. Hope you will come in soon.

I chink Eugene and his family will be in Paterson Labor Day, Sept. 5 , Monday. If you have nothing beccer co do, how about coming i n , coo, so we might have a family gathering?

Tridenc Press which looked with favor on my book of poems has merged with Simon and Schuster, and che Presidenc of che former Tridenc Press has frozen all decisions. His secretary cells me chat, when he comes soon from Europe, he will gee in couch with me. I am not sanguine: I hope for che best but almost surely expect che worse. I guess I'll send ic again on its rounds.

Nonetheless, I am keeping busy, more chan ever. My mind is fermencing wich ideas, but, of course, ideas need the proper words, which we poets gee by inspiration. The poet, I cake ic, consciously improves what unconsciously pours out from his subconscious. I guess ic is a question of a concrolled abandon. Concrolled wildness. Koesder in his book, called The Aa of Creation. says arc is a marriage of che conscious and che unconscious. One matrix or frame of reference is crossed by another. Bronowski in his book called Science and Human Values declares: "The act of creativity lies in che discovery of hidden likenesses. The arcisc cakes two facts or experiences which are separate; he finds in chem a likeness which has not been seen before and creates a new unity." I like Lorca's notion: "Metaphor links two antagonise worlds by a equestrian leap of the imagination."

I. M. L. Rost"nrhal, "Poet and Public Figure," Neu: York TitfW Book Rrvieu•. August 14, 1 966.

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261

I am aware that you rely more on the outpouring of the subconscious without roo much conscious interference. I daresay you make a minimum of so-called interference at the moment of your subconscious outpouring by having your mind instantly decide the competence or relevancy of the immediate utterance. Of course, late revision might improve the writing.

Your telescoping, roo, of images is fine, somewhat like Han Crane, yet there is a danger in nor quire getting the clues or connection so that the phrase seems obscure. The result is that the poem does nor quire rake the reader into his confidence bur bars his way in. Be that as it may, there is no doubt a great deal in the spontaneous eruption or outpouring from the subconscious. I might say that I do more rearranging than you do.

Well, I am keeping busy these days.

Did I tell you I talked a half hour reading poetry at station WBAI-FM?

They will let me know when the reading will be broadcast. My Detroit readings will rake place in the Fall at the Wayne Stare U niversiry. The dares have nor yet been fixed, bur we hope, as the phrase is, "[to] firm them soon."

As I say, I am busy writing new poems and revisiting old ones.

Sometimes I light firecrackers of the imagination and pur them under cliches so see the latter break apart so I can make new combinations for felicity. Often in this way, I alarm syntax and fever phrases and get a luminous glow, so that, in the new aura of light, old familiar things are transfigured new and strange.

Will send you some newly published poems soon.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. Please pardon two-fingered, hit-or-miss typing of a raggle-raggle, tatterdemalion nature.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 30, 1 966

Dear Allen,

I have been haunted lately by the first sight of the first photo made of the

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earth from 240,000 miles near the moon. Though it was only a quarter earth, there it hung, limpid, serene, tranquil, rotating (one imagined) on its rounds, quiet, with no wisp of any suggestion of any turmoil on irs surface. I thought what might an observer from, say, another planet wonder about the earth and whether it had intelligent beings and how far they had advanced. No one could derecr any hint of turbulence on that Hanquil, floating sphere.

Yet, down ro earth, we do find humans in whom technical skill has outrun their ethical status, and the marvels of their inventions have not at all matched the quality of their souls. I guess the earth is now in the best condition for everything - except man.

I have perused your letter with much interest and care. Ir is a reasoned letter with an abundance of supporting statements and with an urban and urbane sense of a detachment that does you credit. I do not want to rake anything away from the massive thrust of your splendid lerrer.

Nevertheless, according to my lights, I differ with you.

I wish ro make these preliminary statements.

First, we see things, as a rule, not as they are but as we are. I am a liberal, with a vestige or residing of socialism of Eugene V. Debs type. You are more Left, no doubt influenced by the Naomi sentimental communism plus your own inbuilr rebellious attitude.

Second, as you intimate - bur with a shift of emphasis - that one side is not all black and on the other side all white. As I phrase it, a three-quarters truth is more valuable than a half-truth.

Third, I still fail ro see that the S. Vietnam struggle is entirely a civil war.

While there may be some intricacies and partial involvement that may smack of civil war, and while Ky is by no means a democratic rule with no unblemished shield, yet, by and large, it was and is Communist aggression.

For all your authorities, I can mass contra authorities: The people in S.

Vietnam may not all be Marxists, but they have been aggrieved and Hespassed upon by the Commies. What may have been an incipient civil war by dissidents against the government was soon engulfed by the Viet Cong and then by Hanoi wirh three cheers from China.

I will send you some pamphlets from whence I get my information. I am aware of the viewpoints of those you quote, but I will ransack my nores I have recently made of those who hold diverse views.

The main point I want ro make is this as ro why the other side does nor negotiate. Johnson has said he will go anywhere and talk with anyone. My information reveals to me that the Administration is willing ro include the

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

263

Vietcong at the table but why only the Vietcong? I am unalterably against negotiating only with the Vietcong. I would include them, with representatives ofS. Vietnam (no matter what Ky says, he'll just have to knuckle down to the Administration position). I agree with R. Kennedy. Yet so far the other side - Hanoi, the Vier Cong, the Commies - have not at all responded!

Do you advise us to walk our without a face-saving device? I violently refute that. That way lies tragedy, for China and the Vietcong will rake that as leeway to run amuck and rampant over small countries; and our name will be mud. That way lies world tragedy.

No, I don't remember your being especially impartial in the past. Later, you admitted discrepancies on the Commie side. I heard not a breath our of you when Stalin's name suffocated the people in an orgy of sycophancy.

You ought to read The God That Failed to see the prefrontal lobotomy performed on a whole nation by Stalin. Yes, Stalin used the grave to correct mistakes. Well, later, when you had more experiences and traveled, then you saw flaws, bur I had to keep fiercely fighting with you to make you admit them.

By the way, I don't at all blame Naomi. Her heart was in the right place.

Bur she, with her noble, though sentimental wishes, had the best impulses misguided and traduced for the worst goals perpetrated by Russia.

There are, as you know, many intellectuals and professors who condemn your position, who feel that to negotiate only with the Vietcong is to let loose a wholesale war by the Commies. . . . Speaking about escalation, when the U.S. held off bombing for a while, was there a peep of a desire to talk from the Vietcong' No. A similar pause of our bombing would fortify the Vietcong in allowing them to bring greater masses of men down to the field of battle.

You talk about loosening control these days in Hungary. Bur we are talking about thoJe dayJ when the Soviets murdered the youth with their ranks. So there were, as you learned later, some semi-Fascist forces against the Commies. Does that excuse the Soviets from murdering or raping Hungary then?

About Benrand Russell. I admire him as a genius and as a philosopher.

He does some independent thinking, but being human, he can be wrong, roo. For instance, what sticks in my throat about him was that, when the Soviets rook out their missiles from Cuba, Russell praised the Soviets for their peaceful motives. But why did he nor blame them in the Jim place for bringing or Jtealing thoJe miHileJ Jecretly into Cuba? That he ignored and so, for

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me, he stained his impanialiry, so-called.

I abhor war. I think we should nor have gone imo South Vietnam. I think the game isn't wonh the candle. I think that the means is worse rhan rhe ends. Yet, afrer all is said, in the last analysis, I have searched my mind, and I cannot find any excuse or palliation for the aggression of the Vietcong, despite your array of authorities. I am gathering derails ro counterbalance your critics. To repeat, I am against negotiating only with the Vietcong; I would have them only as a pan, with S. Vietnam, at rhe conference table.

Yours for the truth or as much of it as our fallible, personality-colored glasses can envision, ro the best of our disability.

With love,

Your father,

Louis

More anon.

Please pardon my hit-or-miss, two-fingered, raggle-taggle typing as I do it hurriedly, from the top of my mind.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 27, 1 966

Dear Allen,

I miss hearing from you.

How are you'

I received a call from Miss Belle Krass. She is the supervisor of the Cultural Commirree of the Paterson YMHA. She told me the tidings rhar the house is well nigh sold our for our joint poetry reading on Ocr. 23.

I'm coming in on Ocr. 15, to hear you ar the Town Hall. Can you get two complimentary tickers for me and Edith?

It seems, no doubt, rhar you have vast drawing powers. Bur, in addition, if I may say so, there is an added intriguing spice when both father and son

- a poetic rarity - appear. If you see any opening, or a suggestion is made rhar both you and I appear, if you are so inclined, make such arrangements, say, in some neighboring ciry. What think you?

Some executive board members of the Paterson YMHA felt rhar, due to

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

265
the parochial or small town atmosphere of Paterson, that I should try to persuade you ro mitigate any "blue" or "raw" words. I said I would try. I wish you would.

When you get a chance from rhe pressure of your work, come in to see Your father

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

December 8, 1 966

Dear Allen,

As I wrote you yesterday, I am missing you and had planned to run in to see you in N.Y. bur, since you will run into Plainview, I'll see you on Sunday.

Am keeping busy, now and then rubbing the Aladdin's lamp of poetry in hopes of summoning some clouds of wonder or some convocation of images ro inspire me. Have written some new poems. Did you get the one I sent you, called "In Every Place" ?

A m reading the papers and magazines aplenty and, a s i s m y wont, drawing my own confusions, as good as rhe nexr man's. Some moments I feel that men accumulate more ignorance than they can assimilate and that people are a bundle of prejudices wrapped in misinformation and tied rogerher with rubberbands of mistakes. And philosophy is solipsistic; it suggests unintelligible answers to insoluble problems amid conspiracies of misinformation and/or silence. Is life a mysterious arrangement of relentless logic for a futile purpose' I had these thoughts viewing a TV program of exploration of underseas where bizarre species of fish and eerie creatures all spawned and proliferated abundantly, only to ear each other or devour other species. This reminds me of my favorite topic: free will and determinism. I feel that there is more determinism rhan we realize. For instance, did we ourselves determine that we would be born human any more than a cobra or a python determined what it should be born or a maimed Negro what he should be born' I like what Nehru said abour this subject: "Determinism is the cards we are dealt; free will is the way we play or use those cards. "

Then, ar other rimes, my mood is the opposite. I think of Shaw's srarement in Supemum that life is the effort of nature to multiply in forms that try ro find a greater power of awareness of themselves. Could man be

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bits of nature vocal and thinking? As a poet, I feel that the joy of life is being used for a greater purpose than myself; that the brevity of life reveals its wonderful moments which urge us, in art, to transmute them so that they transcend mortality. That is one of the purposes of art: to perpetuate moments of deep awareness that in life are fleeting.

So it is that, these days when I awake, I am surprised ro discover myself alive and to discover myself exploring the wonder of awareness and the astonishment of being a pare of the impulse of all creation.

If only in our times of turmoil, the marvels of our products could match the quality of our lives! If only our efforts ro reach the moon might be matched by our efforts ro make peace and spread well-being over the world!

What put me in this mood? Well, I wrote a couple of poems and found my mind still glowing after being enkindled by incandescent phrases.

Despite the fact that my book of poems - now condensed and sharpened with the help of Norman Rosten - is still unpublished and still going on its rounds, I have infinite faith in it. Also, while there's life, there's hope.

Wish I could see you more often.

The years are flowing fast.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

1 9 6 7

The bond between Allen and Louis Ginsberg, powerful to begin with, was strengthened even more in 1 96 7, when they toured Europe together and gave significant joint poetry readings in Italy. For Louis, who had never traveled outside of the United States, the trip was especially meaningful. Allen was already scheduled to appear at a poetry festival in Spoleto, as well as at a function in England, so it smned only natural that he meet and accompany his father and stepmother when they arrived in Europe.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

March 25, 1 967

Dear Allen,

Not seeing you much, I have to write to you.

Edith and I are planning to go to Europe abour Aug 15 - Sept 7. (I have to start teaching shortly after Sept 7 .)

I. Can you arrange lodgings for us - or give us addresses for same - in London, Paris, and Rome)

2. Will you be in London or Paris on these dates Aug 1 5-Sept 7 ' Maybe you can escort us'?? How sweet it would be!

Please advise.

Your father,

Louis

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Monday, June 26, 1 967

Dear Allen,
lr was a fine feeling I had ro see you relaxed in our garden and at home. I trust any tangled knots in you were unraveled, and all crossed lines flow parallel and free. I would relish more interludes like yesterday.

I visited my travel agent. There is no direct flight ro N.Y. from Venice, but there is one from Milan. Milan is three hours by train from Rome; while Venice is eight hours from Rome. So, I am having my travel agent confirm my departure ro N. Y. from Milan on the morning of Sept. 9.

I look forward with much expectation ro my first trip abroad. I'm sure it will be enhanced by your being with me. Maybe you and I will be able ro exchange impressions, confidences and ideas so that we can journey deeper into each other.

Call me up before you leave.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Friday. Augmt 4, 1 967

Dear Allen,

Received your card.

That is a good idea you mentioned: ro address our emotions to the best of each side. The only trouble, as I see it, is that the worst of one side might erase the best of the other side. Can't blame you for wanting no pan of escalation and want no pan of either side, though I myself, while I want no pan of escalation, yet, I have an hisrorical umbilical chord ro the ages-old heritage of the Jewish people from which I am sprung.

I like Tagore's words: "That which unites men is holy; that which divides men is unholy."

Here is a new poem I had in the current issue of the UniverJity Review (U. of Kansas City). How did you like that little piece of mine, called "Your Glance"?

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

269

Concerning the subject matter in the paragraph at the beginning about conflict in the world, these swim into my mind: "Writing is an attempt to settle one's conflict with the world . . . . Poets aim to find harmony amid an unharmonious world . . . :·

Says Emerson, "Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for his wrong condition."

"The world's imperfections are revenged by the poet."

Don't go co too many places without us. I'd like to see the Wordsworth country, and places of Keats and Shelley, my old and continuing poetic loves.

They say, some travelers do, chat there is anti-American feeling in Paris.

Maybe we could lop off a couple of days in Paris and add them to Rome and Venice? We'll see the lay of the land.

Browning wrote:

"Open
my heart and you will see

Engraved upon it 'Italy' "

All's well here, and Edith's excicemenc is mounting. We like flying so there will be no mounting apprehension! Stay well and wait for us on August 16.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. Pardon my two-fingered, rag-tag, higgledy-piggledy, hum-and-miss ryping1

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg

Monday, September 12, 1 967

Dear Allen,

We arrived safely after an eight and a half hour flight. At the Kennedy airport, Eugene and his whole family met us as did Harold and his family.

We all had a small bite and soda and chen Harold cook us home.

We unwound and relaxed and are now back into the groove.

Dear Allen, I wane to cell you chat I was touched, as was Edith, by your

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devocion and love for us. You certainly made our European trip much more richer than it might have been. You were wonderful all around, and I love you more than ever.

Well, tomorrow I start Rutgers teaching again. Edith went back to work today.

I dispatched a letter to Stanley Eker in London and also my third book of poems, called Morning in Spring. Maybe he can do something for my book of poems.

How are your lodgings with Mrs. Pivano' 1 No doubt you are busy concentrating on your work. Tell Mrs. Pivano I regret we could not meet but hope to do so in the future.

When you get a chance, write to George Rapp of Rapp and Carroll, publishers. There is no hurry about that, as I want to hear first from Eker.

Monmouth College has invited both of us to give a joint poetry reading sometime in the Winter or next Spring. If you are interested, tell your agent to get in couch with them about dates, financial terms, etc. [ . . .

]

Otherwise, all is now quiet here. No doubt, many impressions and scenes have sunk deep into my subconscious and will in time, at least some of the impressions will swim up and be transmuted into reasonable facsimiles of poems.

When you get a chance, write me a letter and tell me how things are with you now. More anon.

Love from

Your father

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

September 13, 1 96 7

Dear Louis & Edith:

Still sightseeing - now Milan, Brera art museum & others, and vast Gothic cathedral the Duomo here to explore. Living in luxury in giant apartment at Pivano"s - her husband designed the Olivetti and so is well off, she has secretaries, I have two room little suite-like section of apartment with my own keys, & invitatioils from Inge Feltrinelli to spend time in a giant Villa I Fernanda Pivano was Allen's Italian uanslacor. Through Pivano and her husband, Allen was able co meer Ezra Pound.

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271
ouc of town like the one we visited with Joel. 1 Meanwhile working, correcting translations [and] answering mail; leaving tonite for a few days in Florence and later will give small readings in bookshops in Naples and Turin. Don't know how long I'll be here. I'll stay a few weeks anyway.

Enclosed letter I got from George Rapp. I'll answer that I don't know your plans, that you may do something with Eker; and that I'll consult you, and that I think it's generally a good idea. We can transcribe my speech and use it for preface. Let me know what you decide with Eker, and you can also write Rapp if you wish, I'll tell him I'm forwarding you his letter - OK so all's going well.

How was your return? I hope you enjoyed yourself. I had a lovely time with you and be glad to travel with you anytime there's a chance. How did the pictures come out) All you need do is give them to photo place; get negatives and "contact prints," take home & examine & choose the ones you want enlarged to about "postcard size."

Enclosed another small tidbit of info on Bolivia from today's London Timer.

Trying to straighten my affairs from longdistance; contracts etc. Peter sounds fine again, more or less back in shape & house in good order, so no worry there.

I'll write before I leave here. NewJweek had sketchy account of Rome arrest2 I guess you saw. By eliminating background of 1 6 others arrested & history of arrests (probably oversimplification for mechanical space reasons) I appear in Image of an aging creep. What I'm pointing ouc is the inadequacy of modern media for actually reporting Event, and the consequent impossibility of public understanding of what's happening, and consequent vast errors of public mental judgment policy & action. One is "brainwashed" as Romney complains not thru any intention, merely that the abstraction necessary in mass media alters actual event, from tiny arrest to giant war.

OK - send me any Europe poems you write.

Love

Allen

[ . . .

]

I Joel Gaidemak, Allen·s cousin, lived in Iraly, and he briefly hosted Allen and his parents while rhey were in rhe country.

2. On the evening of Seprember 1, wh1lt: L)UJS and Edith were still wah him m lraly, Allen was arrested in Rome on the Spanish Steps, where he was a[[tnding a poetry reading. (Apparenrly. rhe police were alarmed by rhe congregation of rht ''hippie element" at the popular wurisr sire.) Allen was briefly detained bur then relt:"aSed. Although there was never any r�l substance to the arrest. rhe mcidem was reported in rhe incernarional media.

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September I 8 I 96 7

Dear Allen,

Glad to hear from you.

Edith and I are still calking how splendid it was co travel with you and how you enriched our sight-seeing, what with your devotion and love co us.

Pleased with the lerrer from George Rapp. A week ago I senr the ms. of my third book ro Eker. Lee's see what he does with ir. If he can't place ir, I'll send ir ro Rapp or ro you co send on ro him. I would be delighted ro have you use as an inrroducrion your superb and moving instruction to me ar our joinr reading at the ICA.

I senr away ro the ICA asking for the rape-recordings and offering paymenr for any charges. How will you gee rhe words of your inrroducrion'

Will you gee a rape, roo, and how will you transcribe your words, in the fast moving calk?

(How about using your instruction among your prose pieces? It's a fine documenr char breaks new ground, I chink.)

Meanwhile a copy of my mss. of my third book is also ar an American publisher (Bobbs-Merrill Co of N.Y.). I hope for rhe best bur expecr the worse so ir may be char my third book may come our in England.

(incidenrally, I have many, many poems which I debated purring inro my third book. Some of these are equal ro many in my third book, so I may begin gathering the best of them for a fourth volume.) Under separate cover, will send you some mail for you char accumulated.

lr has taken us a week of going ro sleep early ro free ourselves from rhe rime lapse between rwo conrinenrs.

I rook our rhe phoros of numerous black and white ones. They came our well. Do you wish ro see some' The colored ones are nor ready yet.

Edith is already calking about traveling next summer. With her, who knows where we will find ourselves' She's eager co crave! with you.

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

273

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(London}

October 1 7, 1 967

Dear Lou -

Occupied here daily working on translations & making publishing arrangements etc. My TV Baby book1 came our in London & will get you a copy when return possibly in 2 weeks. Red all yr. letters. Wrote to Eker encouraging him. I'll transcribe my ICA Intro soon's I get back. I suggest hold off till hear from Eker before sending mss. to Rapp. Enc. some gossip from London Times re Rapp & Carroll Publisher, present status shaky but hopeful maybe. Met Quasimodo & Montale etc here. Save ICA London tapes till I get back. Yes can include ICA intro in my prose book. Save photos till I return, I won't be here much longer.

[ . . .}

I'm not sure my movements next summer - tentative plans for Japan

India bur nm sure & glad to see Mexico again if not geographically impossible, I'll know better in a few momhs. Happy New Year & happy birthday. Lasr line "Tight Rope Walkers" very clear & subtle.

Don't like Violence, & don't like SNICK [sic] intense hysteric anti

Semitism. However the assumption of total discount henceforth of Snick complaints abour system & intensity of change-need, and also assumption of total acceptance of Israeli suppositions re Arab war will end in escalating antipathy & violence.

The main Moloch is violence in all forms: and the most massive center of planetary violence right now is centered in the hean of America

Pentagon CIA Military-Industrial complex, and every US citizen who participates economically in the military complex. The patient may die of cancer.

May be home soon - in haste.

Love

Allen

I . T. V. Baby PoemJ (london: Capt· Goliard Prt-ss L[d., l l)67).

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Louis Ginsberg to AUen Ginsberg

Saturday Oct. 21 (I 96 7}

Dear Allen,

Received your lener of Oct. 1 7 .

As I wrote you, Eker had nothing to repon so I decided to send on a copy of my book to Rapp and Carroll. I now see the clipping that Rapp and Carroll are disintegrating. This is the second time a publishing firm that offered to publish my book has dissolved. Oh, well .

I'll hold the rwo tapes for your return so you can transcribe them.

Things are popping here with the anti-war demonstrations. There will be a massive one today in Washington. No doubt, the English papers abroad will tell you the results.

What have you been doing all this time?

Thanks for your good wishes on my birthday Oct. 1 . I wake up each morning surprised to find myself alive but more than ever active and zestful.

Hope to see you soon.

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

1 9 6 8

In August 1 968, Allen's nonprofit organization, Committee on Poetry, purchased a ninety-acre farm near Cherry Valley, an upstate New York tliW1l. The farm, intended as a retreat where Allen could u•ork away from the pressures and interruptions of New York City, and where Peter could presumably avoid the drug and alcohol temptations of the big city, um very run-down and neuled a lot of work.

Back in Paterson, Louis never ceased in his efforts to market his third book of poems, though he met with very little success. He was well aware of the small market for poetry books, in comparison to those of fiction or nonfiction, but he was becoming increasingly frustrated by his inability to find a publisher for Morning in Spring.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 1 9, 1 968

Dear Allen,

We miss you.

How are you there up at rhe farm' What improvements have been made?

Will you be at the farm Labor Day weekend; namely, Aug. 3 1 , Sept. 1
and 2? If so, Edith and I will entertain the idea of motoring up there to see you, if there is room.

Did Eugene tell you he will be a participant in a radio program panel on

"Space Law" on Station WEVD, on rhe dial 1 330 AM, or 97.9 FM, Friday night, August 23, at 9:00 P.M.?

Robert Huff writes me that you and I are having poems facing each other in the next issue of his Concerning Poetry. Also, I am having two poems in Poetry, Australia and two poems in a scientific magazine called Biology and Scientific Perspectives issued our of Chicago under the auspices of the U. of Chicago.

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How did you like rhe firsr insrallmem of your Profile in rhe New Yorker, 1
dared Aug. 1 n You came our well, a benevolem guru. The edicors of rhar magazine phoned me, in connecrion wirh some correcrions, rhar rhere will be an accoum of one of our joim readings, a bir abour Edirh, me, and our living room, nor forgerring some of my puns which have infilrrared.

Wrire me, as I asked, wherher you will be ar rhe farm on Labor Day weekend.

All is well here.

Regards co all ar rhe farm.

Lors of love from Edirh and

Your farher,

Louis

P.S. I wrore for rhe second rime co Rapp and Whiring, wondering wherher rhe ren-momh submission mighr harch an acceprance' I am beginning co have doubrs.

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg

Monday. September 9, 1 968

Dear Allen,

Glad co gee your lerrer.

The posral from Umermeyer indicares char you, nor I, will be in his revised Modern American Poetry. However, he did rake a poem of mine for anorher one of his amhologies.

Enclosed find announcemem of a course on N.Y. poers.

I have invired my close friend Gordon Bishop co come up wirh us rhe nexr weekend, unless you have srrenuous objecrions. He deserves ro come.

(He has promised nor co wrire anyrhing abour rhe farm.) Whar new improvemems have you made ar rhe farm'

This Friday we sran again our nexr year's reaching. Have now been on rhe Rurgers sraff in rhe English Depanmem for rwemy-rwo years and srill going srrong and srill finding ir srimularing.

I. Jane Kramer, "Profiles, Paterfamilias'· - I .· The Neu· Yorker. August 1 7, l %8. The second pan of the lengthy profile appeared in dlt' Augusr 24 issue of The Neu· Y t#'hr. B<xh insCJ.llments were combined and published in j:look fonn, as Allm Gimherg in Am.ertfa (New York: Vintage Books, 1 970).

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

277

Glad you are finding quier and rranquilliry ro seep inro your soul ro enable you ro rolerare wirh philosophic benigniry rhe alarms and excursions and rrepidarions of rhe world, foreign and domesric.

If rhere are any foodsruffs you wish us ro bring up, do wrire or phone.

Love, more rhan ever, from your farher,

Louis

P.S. I bur dimly remember rhe roure ro your farm. I rhink I ger off ar Albany, exir 24; rhen rake Roure 20; rhen roure 6 ro Cherry Valley. Is rhar righr? Wrire.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Sunday, October 13, 1 968

Dear Allen,

I am glad you are feeling berrer. I would like very much ro see you.

Remarks you made recently have ser off a rrain of thoughr in me. When I had heard rhar your fame had ser high prices on your lerrers, somehow, on my parr, I drew back from selling your lerrers ro me. Somehow rhere lingered some son of a rainr of guilr in rrying ro barren on my beloved son's fame.

Yer, since your close friends are doing so, ir occurs ro me: why nor do likewise' Especially so thar, now in my sevenry-rhird year, I have jusr a few years ro go. I do nor like ro leave rhings ro a whim of chance, bur would like ro ridy up my esrare - jusr in case - and I would like ro ser rhings, financially and orherwise, in order.

I suggest, rherefore, rhar when you come in here nexr rime, ler us, you and me, examine rhose packages and bundles in rhe bin where you have srored your rhings. Maybe there we can exhume many lerrers you wrore ro me, lerrers, parricularly, when we corresponded ofren in long, three-page lerrers on rhe meaning of life, on Communism, on world evenrs, and poerry and so forrh. Some more recenr lerrers of yours ro me I have on hand.

Garhering all your lerrers ro me, maybe, we can ger rhem ready for a sale, as did your friends. Do you happen ro have in your aparrmenr any lerrers from you ro me?

Think abour rhe marrer. I am planning ro pur rhings in order for furure

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evemualiries. There are other things I wane to talk ro you [about}. The days may seem long, bur my years are growing shon. I look forward to seeing you soon. Think on what I have written.

Love from Edith and your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Saturday night. November 16. 1 968

Dear Allen,

Here is the letter from G. Rapp to you. I hope you pardon me for opening it to see what added information he might divulge.

I am pleased the prospects for my book look good. It may be fewer poems might prove advamageous.

Write to Mr. Rapp and tell him - as I shall - that we shall be glad ro sign jointly the numbered copies.

Him, roo, char you hope (I do) char he might have printed simultaneously in London and America rhe edition.

Here is an article or review I wrote about Bennett Cerf"s book of puns.

Ferlingherri sent me a nice postal and a copy of your new book. 1

Congrarularions! Ir looks rich wirh fine poems. I shall rake an evening off to revel in ir. The Wordsworrhian transcendental poem2 in your book is well worth rhe price of rhe book 1

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

On November 29, Allen was involved in a serious automobile accident. which left him with a broken hip and four cracked ribs. He had spent most of the fall in upstate New York, working on his famt and writing mmical charts for William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.

I. Planet Neu•J (San Francisco: City Li�hts Books, I 96H).

2. Sec "Wales Visitation,'' AG, CP. pp. -4H0-4H2.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

279

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Albany, New York}

December 7, 1 968

Dear Louis & Edirh -

All OK, pain mosrly gone, pleasanr wair in bed, read & wrire & ear and nap

- sorr of kindly vacarion wirh occasional srabs or rib pain from leftover bronchial cough. Anyway, nor smoking. How you doing Edirh' Thanks for prerry card.

Love

Allen

1 9 6 9

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Saturday night, january 25, 1 969

Dear Allen,

How are you? How are you gerring along on your crutches? Sometimes I become apprehensive and picture you stomping down the stairs and I worry lest a crutch slip on those narrow steps and you come sliding down. I hope you'll be careful.

Fate recently granted me a reprieve. I had been having long low grade headaches with drowsiness. My doctor took a few samples of my blood and felt suspicious that there might be a blockage of a kidney that might need an operation. Subsequently, my doctor took five X-rays which turned out negatives (hum). So, the doctor declared no operation was indicated but that one kidney was sluggish. As an antidote, he gave me pills (to increase circulation) and requested that I cut down on proteins. I am now feeling much berrer; and so, I say, Fate granted me a reprieve. Truth to tell, at my age of 73, anything can happen. I charged the doctor to keep me together, all in one piece for a while, as I have many poems to conjure up yet.

Had some new poems taken and will show them to you when they see the light of day.

My next reading is early in March when I make my annual flight to Detroit to talk on Humanities and Science and read my poems. Am taking Edith with [me], rhen, as usually, the night before, the two professors under whose aegis I read gather with their wives and families for dinner, and merriment plus witticisms abound about the table.

Our home here has been decorated and refurbished. All rooms have been painted or papered; my sun-room has an extension phone on my desk, and new shelves have been built along the windows. Our living room has been given special treatment: the air conditioner has been lowered; the radiator

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recessed; the fireplace broils painted white; the mantle-shelf colored a simulated antique motif; and a new russet carpeting is to be laid this coming week. It all looks clean and smug and cozy and warm.

I wish I could see you, as I miss you. When the weather relents, we'll trek up to your farm. Or maybe you'll be in N.Y. in mid-February so we may meet. It seems roo long a rime since I saw you.

Am still waiting for Godor . . . . If you hear anything from G. Rapp, let me know.

Did you have a chance to read my article called "My Son the Poet,"1
which appeared in Book Week of the Chicago Sun-Times? I hope you like it.

Let me hear your reaction to it.

Meanwhile, I am trying to eavesdrop on ideas and trying to get the right combination of words like the fortunate conjunction from words which never before mer; so that they start mysteriously shimmering on a suffused aura of luminousness to change common rhings around me to something new and stranger.

I wish my love to you and hope I'll see you very soon.

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg: "My Son the Poet"

The first rime I found our that Allen wrote poetry was when I paid a visit to him in his dormitory rooms while he was an upper-classman ar Columbia University.

Bur before I note this, it occurs to me to mention an incident that happened while Allen was still in grammar school in Paterson, N.J. In the school yard during recess, a bully, taller than Allen, twitted him with an anti-Semitic remark and advanced to hit him. Allen stood there and let our a few sentences with a string of polysyllabic, highfaluring words. This stopped his would-be assailant in his tracks. He wondered what Allen meant, and in his wonderment the bully forgot his punitive intent and asked Allen what he had said. I believe that my son then suddenly felt the power of words. His facility later grew to feliciry.

I. "My Son rhe Poec: 'The kids love him . . . . He is che voice of rheir secret dreams and desires,' "

Chicago S11n-Time; Book World, January 1 2 , 1969.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

283

To come back to my visit to his college rooms. While I was chatting with Allen and some boys, one said to me, "Mr. Ginsberg, do you know Allen is writing poetry? He has a poem in the college magazine."

Surprised, I said to Allen, "I didn't know you wrote poetry. Since when?

Why didn't you tell me'"

He responded, somewhat diffidently, "I thought you didn't want me to write poetry."

Astonished, I fell back. Indeed, I took it as an affront. "I never told you that. How do you figure that our'"

"Well, one time when we were having some people over at our house, you said to them that you and your older son, Eugene, wrote poetry but that I was normal. So I interpreted it to mean that you wanted me to be normal and not write poetry."

"Allen, you misconstrued my remarks. I was only jesting. It is true, in a sense, that I don't want you to write poetry merely because Eugene and I wrote. If you write poetry I want you to do so only because you have an inner compulsion, because you feel you must write, and because you can't help but write poetry."

"Oh," declared Allen, "that's different. I do feel I must write." His face was wreathed in smiles.

"There is no joy," I continued, "like the joy of creative activity, the delight of unburdening one's self of what life precipitates in one, of making aniculate what is inaniculate and imprisoned in most people, the exultation and exaltation of finding, at times, words happily mated, lucky words combining into vistas and visions. "

And later, after I left, I wrote to Allen: "You, Eugene and I - w e would live bad if we didn't write. And we'd write bad if we didn't live."

In the early years of my marriage, a shadow of sorrow fell on our family.

My wife, Naomi, somehow developed a neurosis, which, as the years went on, thickened into a psychosis. She would spend two or three years in a sanitarium, then I'd take her our for half a year or a year. After that, ominous hints of her worsening condition made me take her back.

Once, during an interlude at home, she grew worse, and I planned to return her to the hospital. She divined this and declared one night she was going to kill herself, since she didn't want to be a burden to me and the boys.

At the pany, all seemed to go well. A couple of times, when I hurried

284

Family Business: 1 969
into the kitchen for something, she happened to be there. She winked at me and drew a finger across her throat. At dawn the next day, she slipped out of bed and slipped into the bathroom and locked the door. I had removed everything and had pushed my razor into a deep recess in the old fashioned medicine-chest. But then I heard her murmur, "I have it."

"Open the door,"' I cried, "or I'll smash in the glass panel of the door!"

She opened it and came out with blood oozing at both wrists. They were surface cuts, so I bandaged them and put her to bed. The boys stood there, shivering in their night clothes, panic in their eyes. What traumas, I thought, might sink into them and burrow into their psyches?

When, after a number of years, Naomi died from a stroke in a New York sanitarium, Allen was beside himself with grief, no matter how much he had foreseen the end. He was then on the West Coast, and he wrote his long elegy on the death of his mother, the poem called "Kaddish," the Hebrew word denoting prayer for the dead. In it he combined Biblical prayers and Walt Whitman-like lines. When I read the poem, I cringed in places, for it was too naked, too raw, too uninhibited. But there were many fine passages which rise to emotional, poetic utterance in his recapitulation of his mother's life and her death. Allen's writing of "Kaddish" gave him a vent for his grief, a safety-valve for his pent-up anguish so that the poem was a purgative and an exorcism of his grief-raged heart. His book helped him, as lines in "Macbeth" assert, to "cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart."

Allen is the most compassionate man I know. People will think this is a father's natural prejudice, but this is not so. He is interested mainly in the good, not in goods. He was born with a generous heart, and this kindliness, I conjecture, was accentuated by his heart-wrenching sympathy and love for his disabled, helpless mother which led to Allen's empathy and sympathy for all down-trodden, disabled, helpless creatures.

For instance, fate dredged up from the side of humanity a person called Hunkie [sic], a junkie. Early in Allen's life, when Allen was living in Yorkville, I came to visit him and noticed that a new overcoat I had bought him was missing. A typewriter was gone, too. "Where are they, Allen'" He confessed that Hunkie had stolen then them and pawned them to get money for a fix.

On my next visit, who was there, lying on the couch, but Hunkie' When he saw me, he sidled out.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

285

"Allen, what's this?" I asked. "How can you let him in when he robbed you?"'

Allen spread his hands apart and replied, "What else could he do' He was desperate."

But that was not the end. In and out of prison, Hunkie haunted him and came to batten on Allen. Larer, Allen sublet an apartment of a literary friend who had an elegant library and fine records. It was not long before Allen noticed that books were missing. Who else was taking them out but Hunkie?

"He's helpless, he's struggling for survival," said Allen.

I remonstrated, criticizing Allen for his irresponsible attitude toward someone else's property.

'Til pay back the amount, when my literary friend returns," he said.

To make a long story short, we bought books at a Fifth Avenue store to make up the loss. Allen's father paid the bill.

Later, when Allen became famous and gor fat fees for his readings at colleges all over America, his generosity continued. Moderation in his kindness was no virtue to Allen. He organized a foundation called

"Committee on Poerry, Incorporated." Eugene was the lawyer and Allen was the treasurer and the power behind the throne. He poured most of his money into that company. In 1 967, Allen gave away $20,000. Who received money' His down-and-out friends, disabled unfortunates, poor poets almost going under, filmmakers, and, of course, Hunkie the junkie, cast out from jail and bobbing in the humantide.

"Allen," I admonished, "save some for your later years."

"They are desperate now," he replied. "''ll have it later."

In 1950, I married a second time and obtained a new lease on life. My second wife, Edith, was a divorcee with two children grown. She managed an office and could add and distract. Seriously, she was a very sensible, warmhearted, understanding woman whom my two boys took to. She created a warm household, just what they had needed for a long time.

Eugene was in New York where he established a law office and married a fine woman, who bore him five children. Allen lived with us. We assigned him a front upstairs bedroom for which he chose wall paper of an Oriental design, a hint of things to come. I offered to stake Allen and ler him write unimpeded, bur, after a year or so, he became restless and longed for rhe big ciry and its literary ferment.

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He often came tO visit us, bringing such friends as Carl Solomon, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac. Our house had a commodious garden with a huge cherry tree and borders of rose bushes and other flowers, and in it we often had cook-outs and plenty of room ro chat and ruminate.

Here, roo, Allen held long debates and arguments with me on all sorts of ropics. Allen was way our in left field, an avant-gardist, a guru to the young leaders of the Beatniks. We argued about drugs. I held that no matter how he felt about marijuana, he should obey the law. "Too bad," I would say,

"but the hippies want pot in every chicken." We also argued about the Vietnam War, politics, "the System," and what not. We fought furious battles about free verse and regular meter and rhyme and so on. I objected to his use of raw and obscene words, bur I guess rhat was the generation. My nature and my circumstances shaped me, and his nature and circumstances made him. I suppose we see things nor as they are, bur as we are.

I felt that Allen relied roo much on the surrealist outpouring of the subconscious, without conscious pruning, and that he was neglecting the age-old values inherent in poetry. My own nature inclined me tO hold that in regular bur flexible meter there is an elemental instinct for satisfaction in recurrent patterns with their variations, postponements and satisfactions.

Robert Frost said: "Merer is moving easily in harness." Meter magnifies and heightens emotions. And rhyme, while not absolutely necessary, added pleasure through fresh expectations. Ir emphasizes and burnishes symmetry.

Ir rings bells. It draws meanings near and right. It roves back, with rhythm, ro the primitive interweaving of the senses in the tangled roots of elemental time, down tO the threshold below the consciousness.

As time went on, Allen and I became more reconciled and saw more of each other's viewpoints. We began ro feel, as I expressed it, rhar there are many mansions in the house of poetry. We began to practice poetic coexistence. Once, on a radio program with Allen, I mentioned rhar a writer claimed Allen was in rebellion against his father. "No," said Allen, "we are not antagonists bur just different."

About three years ago rhe Poetry Society of America invited us to do a reading tOgether. The announcements drew articles in the press, saying it was a confrontation: "In this corner the father, in that corner rhe son." We frowned on this. At the reading, we had an overflow crowd. Allen had his devotees, I had mine. Since rhen, we have read rogerher at Los Angeles Harbor College, at Berkeley, Boston University, Paterson State College,

A /len and LouiJ G inJberg

287

Rutgers Pharmacy College in Newark, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Brooklyn Academy of Music and at the London Institute of Contemporary Ans.

I usually come on first, neatly-dressed, the "Square" poet, and I intersperse my poems with puns and witticisms. Allen is picturesque and charismatic. He has a kindly owl-like face with long hair and ringlets and a wide beard which is his trade-mark. His orange shirt with beads and amulets disdain his shabby, creaseless trousers. He comes on with small, tinkling cymbals and chanting mantras and Hare KriJhnaJ.

The high school and college kids love him. He is the audible voice, unabashed and uninhibited, of their secret hidden dreams and desires they themselves dare not voice. He is their guru, a prophet whose disarming manner and eyes, benevolent with love, capture them.

Often after our readings, we are asked questions of all sores. I, who am older, seem optimistic. Allen, who is younger, seems pessimistic. He often goes co extremes and he reminds me of Henny-Penny, who, when a pebble fell on her head, cried chat the sky is falling.

"What do you think of each other's poetry?" someone usually asks.

Allen says he likes much of my poetry and recites some. In fact, Allen has written an introduction co my projected third book of poems. Generally, I reply that, believing in poetic coexistence, I like much of his poetry and admire his courage. By and large, Allen's lines lash out, like Whitman's, with satiric flagellation of the hypocrisy and apathy and cruelty of the world. He has magnificent flashes of imagination as he pours out cascades of words. And the visionary side of his poetry is his search for exaltation in a mystical identification of compassion and his love for his fellow man.

If we bridge, in part, the generation gap, it is because we both have respect for the validity and integrity of each ocher's an and poetry.

Allen holds that, besides bridging the generation gap and despite our differences in manner and matter, we have in some of our poems a common denominator in our soaring from the material and physical co transcendent emotional and cosmic heights. In some of our poems, we both use the material world as a springboard into the spiritual.

Recently, Louis Untermeyer wrote to me: "You are good for Allen, and he is good for you."

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Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

RD 2 Cherry Valley

New York

January 3 1 , 1 969

Dear Lou:

Starring off tomorrow for Florida - I'll call you later ronite to get details on Clara - I have her address but no phone #.

Happy news your kidneys are in running order - It's lovely good luck you are still here for company and I feel sad I'm not more near your side - I hope what I'm doing is worth while - which is, precisely, setting up a refuge for people who need refuge - and the need for Balance here has kept me tied down (as well as the hip) more than I'd wanted or anticipated. I'd like to be able to leave this place running independently, or at least independent of my presence. It's getting along.

I got a lot of work done on music - have actually learned elementary notation and harmony & so have a new language & have written out some lovely tunes for Blake - which will last a long time & give pleasure & probably also make some $ to take care of farm.

I'll be in Miami a few days, first time in 1 6 years - (195 3 ?) - Then shon stops at Notre Dame and Ohio Wesleyan & Minneapolis and San Francisco

& Denver & home to NY in 2 weeks so will see you then - I'll be in N.Y.

Feb 1 7 - I will call soon as I get in.

I have Son the Poet which is very kind to me - what's amazing is the professional alenness of the prose style - style looks like you'd been writing for magazines in prose before, that's a whole new field open to you - as music is now to me.

OK - Love from

Your son

Allen

I'll probably have spoken to you before you get this. Love to Edith - We put in new floors insulated here too.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

289

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Friday, january 3 1 , 1 969

Dear Allen,

Here are two poems: one of yours and one of mine, both of which appear, facing each other, in the current issue of Concerning Poetry.

My poem, called "An Old Love," you glanced at one rime and thought it was interesting. Indeed, it is one of those poems which now and then I allow to well up from my unconscious without roo much scrutiny at first, and then I look at it curiously to discover what lurks there. As I recall it, when I wrote it, there hid, like some wavering shadow under the threshold of my consciousness, a thought of Naomi: it was as ifl was trying to tell her, while she was in the sanitarium, with the wall of madness between her and me, that I wrote her a letter (which it seems that it did not reach her) in which I told her I still loved her, in spire of all the rime that flowed by. It is one of those adumbrations that hide under the lines of the poem, and when you try to touch it, it slips away and eludes you. Still, there's rhe poem. What do you make of it)

All's quiet here. I start tonight on our second semester in Rutgers.

March 4 and 5, I fly with Edith ro Detroit for a reading at Wayne Stare.

The Unitarian Church of New Brunswick asked me to come and talk to them on a Sunday, bur their fee of $75 for two one-and-a-quaner hours sessions I thought roo small, so I am declining it, unless they raise their ante.

Have you had an answer to your last note from Rapp) I have not heard from him yet.

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

I. See ""An Old Love,"" LG, CP. p. 253.

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Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Friday, May 30, 1 969

Dear Allen,

How are you?

I miss you more lately.

Is this feeling a kind of omen' Meanwhile, my burial plot near the Newark-Elizabeth line waits very patiendy while I am writing new poems to badger Death and bait oblivion. Maybe I'll rescue something of myself from the flow of Time.

I have been working on my book of poems, taking out what I think are weaker poems and putting in new and perhaps more modern poems. A number of times my book teetered on acceptance. I know it is better than some books of poems appearing, but I guess there must be a conjunction or confluence of interests or forces of people for its acceptance. Maybe by now I have enough exposure, thanks, in parts, to you, to have my book given consideration.

Am keeping all the windows of my senses wide open, ready to receive intimations of the marvelous or the light of magic or the invading light of a sa tori.

Had new poems accepted in a wide variety of magazines. When they are punished by publication, I shall send them to you to frown over.

By the way, I liked your statement in your Playboy interview 1 that "by the holy spirit I mean the recognition of a common self in all of us and our acceptance of the fact char we are all the same one." What is Holy? That which unites the souls of men. Romain Rolland declared, "One never knows where one begins and where one ends."

How is your farm' Have you made any moves to buy it for your own?

Our garden is now bursting with brilliant, even magniloquent, rose bushes, so prodigal and I may say even redundant are the uncounted loading the air with perfume, Keats would have relished the scene. Some roses, already too lush, are shedding their petals. Reminds me that nature is all bosom b'lt no heart: she is eager to proliferate the species bur is careless about the individual.

How do you like the pictures of the earthrise seen from near the moon'

The earth looks innocent, blue-and-white, afloat in a black silence, I. Paul Carroll, ''The Plu)'I'"Y lmerview: Allen Ginsberg," "Playboy. April 1969. Reprinted in AG, Sp,mtaneOJn Mmd. p. l 'J9.

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voyaging along "in strange seas" of loneliness. Wonder whether any creatures in other planets wonder if there is any life in that roving globe of earth? A grandeur seems (ro me) to halo the globe. I look forward to the excitement on July 20 when men from earth will step on the moon. What an historic epoch it will be! Maybe it will spur men on earth to look at the earth and say, "We are all in the same boat."

Some time in July, Edith and I will come up to your farm and stay, I think, till Monday morning. We two ought to get into closer communication with each other.

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

June 1 9, 1 969

Dear Allen,

How are you? What are you doing these days'

There is a wrangle going on between my desire to see you and my desire not to trespass on your time. So I shall let your inner compulsion suggest to you to come here to Paterson.

Lately I have been writing more than ever. In any case, in the Spring, I usually thaw and flow out more than at other times. Meanwhile, each morning I get up to explore the wonder of being still alive and trying, when I am in the mood, to translate that wonder or astonishment into lines or images of poetry.

Our garden is in full bloom, and I often ruminate in it, trying, as you may have heard me say, to ponder on imponderables, touch intangibles, and unscrew the inscrutable.

In my garden, I often think on the statement of various writers to the effect that man is the mind with which nature contemplates itself or the world looks at itself through man's eyes. Or, as Shaw said, "Life is the effort of nature to strive for a greater awareness of contemplating itself." And so I try. Cynics would say that life is the mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.

Be that as it may, existentialists insist that, even though the world or the

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universe seems futile and absurd, the mind of man must wrench some design or pattern or reason, imposing order on chaos.

Strange, roo, that breaths or sounds or collocations of words - the frailest things - have more power to last than temples that may crumble and empires that may fade and once haughty cities that vanish through Time. 1

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Friday, july 4, 1 969

Dear Allen,

I enjoyed hearing your music to Blake. Some of it is really fetching.

When you are finished reviewing my book of poems, give one of ms. to Mr. Syare Ross and one to me. I am baffled as to why a publisher doesn't rake it. I insist the ms. is good poetry.

I sent the article from Book Week, called "My Son the Poet," to Parkinson in Cal. Enclosed find his reply. Sometime we might go again to Berkeley.

They seemed most receptive there of our joint reading.

Lately I did a few short surrealistic free verse pieces. Here is one which has been accepted by the revived North American Review.

RUMINATIONS

I bought stock in Time,

That rose,

Levitated by the sounds of the sunset.

If I stepped on my life,

I would step on bells.

I'll have to examine this sometimes, for I let my subconscious have irs way without intrusion of the conscious.

Let me know when you will be back in civilization.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

1. The rest of the letter is missins.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

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Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

RD 2 Cherry Valley

New York 1 3320

July 7, 1 969

Dear Lou -

Enclosed Parkinson's letter in return.

"Ruminations" poem is strange & valuable - some kinda mystery there that's not logical but is real. The nearest I got to that style (including a single bell) is "Guru on Primrose Hill" 1 in Planet News. Your shon: poem's interesting reading.

Yes, you're definitely right, and now no need to even insist, your poems are really good, in the mss I have - (requiring a little selection), but the body of work is quite intense, and as perfect as many of the poems are it should have a publisher. I'm sorry I never intruded before but I didn't think I should (reverse nepotism) but the qualiry of the poems outweighs other thoughts, & the shame that you're not enjoying their publication shames me - I'll try & do what I can swiftly now.

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Tuesday, August 26, 1 969

Dear Allen,

I am delighted that you are delighted that I am delighted to have my new book of poems published by a good company like Wm Morrow and Co of N.Y. C.

I wrote them a letter and told them I accept their terms and would be pleased to sign a contract.

I told them you are finishing the Preface or Introduction to my book and would send it to them shon:ly. I also gave Mr. Landis your farm phone number (which, as you know, has been slightly changed).

I. Se< "Guru," AG, CP. p. 356.

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Do send me the list of poems in the book so that I can begin to hunt in my scrap books for the places where the poems originally appeared.

When you are finished with the Xerox copy and the preface, send them on to me.

Naturally I am excited by the new book. Many people in the past, especially at my readings, have asked me for a copy of my book of poems; so, in due cour�e. I shall have an up-to-date one.

If you can offer me some advice about promoting the book, about where to have advance copies for review sent, etc., I trust you will tell me, in due course.

Thanks for helping me weed out some poems.

Edith has an appointment with her doctor about some bladder trouble, so that I shall not know until Friday afternoon just when we shall motor up to your farm. I am in touch with Eugene so that it may be we shall synchronize our visit.

More anon.

Love from

Your father

Louis

P.S. Will call you up when I sign the contract. Till then, I am not saying anything to anybody.

L.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 3, 1 969

Dear Allen,

Eureka!

I have the contract from the Wm Morrow Co. I have scrutinized it [and]

am satisfied with it. Will sign and send it off.

If there is an item (like fifi:y-percent of anthology reprints), well, as I haven't had a book of poems published for ages, I shall not demur. A man, long famished, [should] not quibble about food set before him.

Please send me the Xerox copy of my book. I wish to give it the final touches and send it to the publisher, together with the revised Table of Contents.

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295

I'll bring up the signed contract when I visit you on the 1 3 of Sept.

If you have any suggestions toward the advancement of my book, I shall be grateful.

Everything looks propitious - and I am on Cloud 9.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

AUen Ginsberg: "Confrontation with Louis Ginsberg's Poems" 1

Living a generation with lyrics wrought by my father, some stanzas settle in memory as perfected. "In this mode perfection is basic," W. C. Williams wtote, excusing himself for rejecting my own idealized iambic rhymes sent him for inspection. The genre itself seems imperfect on the XX Century page: a heavy leather Webster's International Dictionary published the same decade Louis Ginsberg (October l , 1 895-) was born defines lyric as

" l . Of or pertaining to a lyre or harp. 2. Fitted to be sung to the lyre; hence, also, appropriate for a song; -"

Few lyres sounded aloud in Newark, New Jersey, in the 1 920's, although in first editions of the then standard popular Modern A merican Poetry edited by Louis Untermeyer most of the poems anthologized still "rely greatly on the steady pace of iambics," including "A Quiet Street After Rain":

. . . While every front yard lawn is seen

Twinkling a myriad tongues of green.

Marvelous too, it is to see

A rose-bud dipped in deity'

Nearby a spider has begun

Upon a fence to thread the sun.

Continuing his attempts to perfect this form, L. G. received the anthologist's later praise: "You have the lyric touch. You know how ro make words sing something as well as say something." Yet no literal music was intended. Originally these forms were fitted ro music by Waller and l. Published as "Imroduccion" to LG's Morning in SJWing.

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Campion, Blake sang his Songs of Innocence & Experience wirh his own voice unaccompanied; even Years wrote "wirh a chune in his head" we were rold by Ezra Pound who consisrenrly remembered rhe musical body of which rhese lyric forms were skeletons.

Though lyric words had parred company from music a cenrury or cenruries before, rhe standard Educational System anrhologies are bulked wirh rhymed and metered stanza forms (including rhose of E. Dickinson) rhar look like rhe lyrics of shorr songs, rhar echo in rhe head wirh old rune fragmenrs, rhar might be pur ro melody had srudenrs world enough and rime, bur which were wrinen our of language symmetry rules adapted & parched rogerher from differing ancienr rradirions and rhen labeled

"traditional"' in schoolbooks for a few decades in rhe early XX Cenrury.

English measures of stress drawn from Greek and Larin nomenclarure originally definitive of pitch and quanriry (vowel-length) of sound were applied ro bold accenr and weak; foursquare stanzas abstracted from song still chimed with parallel sounds at the end of parallel-cadenced lines prescribed as standard - such forms were read less and less aloud and more solely in the universe of the eye-page or silenr mind and never sung from the lung. Since that mode of poetry losr track of music, its very rules confused the measures and weights of American speech, as W. C. Williams poinred out at the time. One collecrion of "represenrative American Poems for boys and girls" of 1923 "planned ro meer the requiremenrs of the College Enrrance Board" with the following illustration of Iambic Tetrameter : Thou too/sail on,/ 0 Ship/ of State,/

Nearly half a cenrury later the srudenr may have sufficienrly wakened from a rhythmical hypnosis proposed above ro notice rhat the only way ro make affecrive spoken sense of Thou, sail and especially 0 is ro pronounce rhem (conrrary ro schoolbook instruCtions) with expressive emphasis equal ro the syllables too and on and Ship. Iambic Trimeter was illustrated in a manner that completely disrorred rhe pronounceable sense of an exampled line: Whose hearr/-strings are/a lure./

In rhis case the stress indications for "srrings are" literally reverses sensible emphasis and obliterates significance. Awareness of this fault of ear caused by rote degenerate lyric meter was Ezra Pound's contribution ro U. S.

prosody after the turn of the cenrury.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

297

Thus from Whitman's rime rhru Williams and Pound to Kerouac & Olson, Horace Traubel ro Gregory Corso, early Eliot on ro Ted Berrigan a new tradition of poets improvised prosodies echoing our acrual speech our stutters our jazz our blue bop our body chanr rhe rone leading of our vowels or whatever mystic zap-talk char came natural. 'Til kick yuh eye,"

W. C. Williams quoted from New Jersey town srreers, as an example of musical phrasing which did nor fir the merric system described in 1923 by the Secretary of the New England Association of Teachers of English as

"particularly well adapted to the needs of English poetry . . . definite rules, which have been carefully observed by all great poets from Homer ro Tennyson and Longfellow."

Ironically, a self-enclosed Academy rose ro follow such "definite rules"

(No playing tennis without nets! Frost rebuked prosodaic anarchists) and an inrellecrually frosty accenrual prosody, non-physical or meta-physical and only remotely musical in narure, became the manner of versification professionalized at best from the later Eliot through John Crowe Ransom ro rhe earlier Robert Lowell in the fourth and fifth decades of this cenrury, and such stingy Rhythm was for a while rhe dominanr mode of poetics in the gianr Universities of cold-war megalopolis till rhe ampler-bodied and more naked brearh'd tradition began ro sound freely Prophetic a return ro common sense in the robotic marker places & electric media of apocalyptic planetary & pre-lunar-voyage rimes.

Ezra Pound's scholarly inruirions came true after rhe midcenrury when a third generation of minstrel poets including Bob Dylan sang their poems aloud in conremplarive rooms black alleyways or bardic halls rhru microphones and a new consciousness char had broken rhru rhe crust of old lyric forms like my father's evolved back ro the same forms refreshed with new emotions and new subderies of accenr and vowel articulation.

II

Larenr tn the unsung written lyric form, songs are suggested, echoed or new-jived, whole melodies buried their voices resonanr in rhe unconscious never sounded aloud - in a son of timeless eternal Imaginary place where poets' minds dwell after the death of their bodies, and this is rhe sub jeer of much of this mode of poetry. All poets from Shelley ro Housman knew rhar melancholy immortality, their body impulses, sensations, consciousness & feelings embedded like flies in amber verse. I have resisted rhis mode as an anachronism in my own rime - rhe anachronism of my own father writing the ourworn verse of previous cenrury voices, reechoing rhe jaded music in a

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dream-life of his own sidesrreer under dying phantom elms of Paterson, New Jersey - ar rhe very rime char Parerson irself was (having been arriculared co irs very rock-srrara foundations and aboriginal warerfall voice in W. C. Williams epic) degenerating into a XX Century Mafia-Police

Bureaucracy-Race-War-Nightmare-TV -Squawk suburb.

Yer if chis nightmare world explodes ir will all have been a dream wirh latencies, symbols, daydreams clairvoyant, & riny perfect poems, archaic sranzas full of intuirion and unconscious prophecy, fairhful crafr in ourworn arcs, triumphs of rhe meek and unmodish, forlorn ideals redeemed rhru faral changes, bankruptcy and prophecy confounded, morral icy and immorraliry confounded - Beaury as Trurh a lase remaining rearful smile ar dream's end.

Confronting my farher's poems ar rhe end of his life, I weep ar his meekness and his reasons, ar his wise entrance into his own morraliry and his silenr recognition of char pitiful Immensiry he records of his own life's Time, his farher's life rime, & rhe same Mercy his arc accords co my own person his son.

I won'r quarrel wirh his forms here anymore: by fairhful love he's made rhem his own, and by many years practice arrived ar sufficient condensation of idea, freedom of fancy, phrase moderniry, deprh of dearh-vision, & clarity of parricular contemporary arrent ion ro transform rhe old "lyric" form from an inverred fantasy co rhe deepest acrualizarion of his peaceful morral voice.

This lase book of Poesy begins wirh a contemporary prophetic glimmer of rhe planetary carasrrophe -

When bombs on Barcelona bursr,

I was a rhousand miles away -
char a rhird of a century ago established rhe permanent aurhorirarian bureaucratic police scare so familiar ro Iacer generations in almosr every country of rhe world. Remembering Ruined Cities follows wirh irs house rubble deja-vu superimposed on 4 1 6 Ease 34 Srreer, Parerson, New Jersey.

The warning deepens After the Blast; nexr Our Age's hallucination crowds downtown Parerson Cenrral High School Reporter's Class wirh phantomidenriry vicrims, rill rhe poer himself is included wirh Mr. Anonymous among chose Lost in the Twentieth Century.

The ancient recollection of cosmic-identity breaks rhrough one Morning in Spring and After the Rain. Here rhe clearest, suresr, oldesr personal vision commonly recognizable ro all human generations, squares and acidheads

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alike, is set forth as Testament of Wonder. These eternal generalizations are located perfectly in an Autumn Leaf on a Pool which, compared to Cleopatra's barge, displays in short magical verses an Emily Dickinson vision. Night in Silver sets forth artful lines plated with silent rhymes near to some pure tone imaginable while pictures flash on the mind: And with a shining crystal,

All shingled is the shed;

Each icicle shows in it

A moon is tenanted.

Following thereon, Morning in Ice beacons from the abode of Shelleyan realization of Platonic personality where

Trees are archangels thinking light.

This special gold radiance, seen through suburb-man's eyes as also through pastoral Wordsworth's in meadow buttercup, again manifests clearly around city houses:

. . . I could see

The street was like a long ravine of light.

Therefore At the Zoo the poet sees sacred monsters, & looking twice out through "Zoo" bars sees his own bestial person. A solitary humor among all this multiple identity frees the poet's imagination to exchange impressions with a caterpillar, comparing their visions and feet and doubts until The caterpillar crept away

In hurried ripples to a tree.

Time as the impression of Something Timeless recurs over and over in these three decades of poetry:

The autos, the buses,

The traffic all,

Like pageant, stream to

A festival.

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Thar awareness clarifies all phenomenal perceptions even Scents and Smells to

The crisp fresh mint of violers riner wirh chill;
and when specified to My Lwe rhe humor of world-identiry ends sensationally when In her rhighs,

Africa sighs.

Bur rhe deepesr tones are measured for dearh's woe and here ar Burial in

The cemetery drugged wirh lighr
a single man's voice is heard slow word by word unalterable in ererniry: Through blur of years, I saw you go,

From Time ar lase now moving free;
pronouncing farewell to Olden Days

We used to welcome Summers in

Wirh children by rhe shore,

Bur now how long rhe rime has been

We journey rhere no more.

For now our sons are rail and grown

And Summers come and pass

So rhar I never leave alone

Wirhour you under grass.

The Summers move above your mound;

The shore is full as chen.

Long will you sleep benearh rhe ground

Before I go again.

One by one all relations are resigned to oblivion: self, love, wife, morher,

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301

And if sometimes spring up the rears

That kennel loss of days we knew,

Be sure, my father, that the years

Keep leading me more close to you.

In vain my striving to decode

Some messages of hope and trust

Which truth has cached in that abode,

That synagogue of silent dust.

For, with myself less busy now,

I hear more clear your slender tones.

Mercy is flowing from your brow,

Forgiveness streams up from your bones.

This agnostic compassion emotionally dense as any deity-faith completes a cycle of generations and is transmitted through myself in KaddiJh as a litany in praise of Oblivion that buries monal grief. A rational image of the mystery of life perpetuating life enclosed inside itself is presented as in a ChineJe Box with irs very last Question self-answered in terse rhymes terminating thought -

And what do the years

Finally stow

In a box of wood,

Narrow and low?

Is this the end' Yes, stoic, agnostic & melancholy as that XIX Centurystyled closure must sound, Convmation with My Skeleton suspends further speculation:

"One shon rhyme, when I am gone,

Time may break his teeth upon."

Silent grinned my skeleton.

This An is a last grim remnant of the transcendental flash that life was, the consciousness of consciousness vanishing: "Suddenly I remembered rhar I was dead." As in Lonelinm, concealed in an anonymously formal sonnet, all human poets are

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Lackeyed ar lasr by fevers ro rhe grave,

Where we sink cold, as is, above, rhe srone,

Unfriended, unaccompanied, alone.

Ir is rhe same absolure darkness & endless void rhar shades mon:al appearance so renderly specrral, rhar surrounds rhe commonplace City Twilight wirh conscious glory fading in god's shadowy eye: And wirh a sofrness as of perals,

Like fringe of lighrs above some boars,

As on a lake where darkness serrles,

So, lamp by lamp, rhe ciry floars.

Would rhar all sons' farhers were poers! for rhe poem and rhe world are rhe same. Place imagined by Consciousness, and rhe squared exacr forms of rhese poems are riny models of Hebrew-Buddhisr Universes rhyming rogerher in Imaginarion, as if An: were rhe one acriviry in rhe flux of Time wherein Place becomes complerely self-conscious, Terse.

So I

Shall rry

To hammer

My srammer

And bear

Ir near

Exacr,

Compacr -
idenrical wirh irself Aeon ro Aeon, climaxed Immon:al. This Imaginary Place remarked earlier is precisely rhe subjecrive marrer of rhis mode of lyric, an Evanescenr Ererniry as Weir'd as any invenred by Poe (or mapped in rhe Zohar or unhexed afrer Avelokireshvara's Prajna Paramira Surra), ro which rhis poer rerurns obs�ssively again and again in poem-trances even ar

"Morning in Spring":

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303

. . . until I knew

I was the world I wandered through.

The same self of our odd universe recurs everywhere - observing a Dragonfly, upside-down in a Lake in the Park, glancing at a lion's

"shaggy, uncle-bearded face" At the Zoo, or watching At the Burial of My Mother

. . . the casket

With one who gave me birth

Take a curious leisure

To sink to earth

-feeling a familiar little sensation named Correspondences by Baudelaire and recalled in the "page of Baudelaire" framed by Snow at Midnight.

Buried in anthologies unvocalized and lack-harp, hundred of lyrics in this mode by generations of poets whisper Eternal secrets of their Place.

A frenzied feverish reader with third-eye open for a month may discover their reality & pathos - perhaps in a more leisure-populaced afterworld to our present apocalyptic Place such verses will be sounded aloud, Lizette Woodworth Reese herself syllable by syllable turned to electronic lyres. Living a generation with lyrics wrought in this mode by my father, some stanzas reflecting this Eternal Place settle in memory as perfected.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 3. 1 969

Dear Allen,

How are you?

Received a note from Mr. Landis of Morrow. He says everything is in fine shape. Your introduction, too, is fine, and he is happy indeed to have it. He further writes that I'll be able to have a final look at the poems when he sends me the galleys in about eight weeks.

You'll be interested to hear that the ami-war sentiment is mounting and that its waves are lapping into my Rutgers College evening classes.

President Gross has asked us teachers to encourage our classes to participate

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in the Ocr. 15 ami-war proresrs. Accordingly, I am planning ro have my two classes air their views in class on Ocr. 14. (I have no classes on Ocr. 1 5.) Love from

Your father,

Louis

1 9 7 0

To A/len Ginsberg, American political and societal life at the turn of the new decade seemed to be reaching a flashpoint. December 1 1-12, 1 969, he had testified as a witness for the defense at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, in which eight leaders of the protest and countercultural movements were being tried for their participation in the events surrounding the 1 968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; the trial, one of the greatest farces in American judicial history, weighed on A/len's patience, causing him to again consider the lengths to which the grwernment would go to silence its dissident voices.

The forthcoming months provided him with a hint of an answer, when he spoke u•ith f!JrTT/1!1' attorney general Ramsey Clark, who fi//ed him in on FBI director). Edgar Hoover's smear campaign against Martin Luther King,Jr.; when he learned (again from Clark) of the ways narcotics agents had, for a quarter of a century, been dealing drugs.

even as they tried to silence such dissident voices as those of Timothy Leary and John Sinclair by leveling bizarre drug charges against these men; when, on May 4, 1 970. the National Guard in Ohio opened fire on antiwar protesters at Kent State University.

ki//ing four people. In Allen's view, America was a police state running amok.

Louis Ginsberg was likewise shocked by these and other events, but in his correspondence with A/len, he continued to defend the grwernment, insisting that the sins committed by a few did not indicate a corruption of the system.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Tuesday, February 1 0. 1 970

Dear Allen,

I thank you for those batches of circulars about various subjects and movements. I do not thank you at all, however, for the David McReynolds circular. It is a bundle of whitewashes, rationalizations, half-truths, threequaners lies, etc.

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The Panthers aim ar violent overthrow of rhe government. I favor drastic reform. Violence breeds violence.

"The Panthers, ar lease officially, are nor ami-Semitic," writes McReynolds. Wrong. Their leader, Eldridge Cleaver, has claimed in Algeria char he will train Panthers as guerrillas against Israel. In Paris he said - in a vicious and venomous lie - char rhe Jews are creating the Arabs like rhe Nazis. Ironically, rhe Arabs were with rhe Nazis against the Jews.

The Arabs could lose a hundred wars, bur Israel could lose only one war and chen they are finished, kaput, driven inro rhe sea, butchered and massacred by feudal Arabs. After the six million butchered by the Nazis, chis is an abominable obscenity, namely, ro wam, as Eldridge does, and rhe Panthers declare - ro wipe our Israel. Any Jew who shares with chis view is a seeming renegade and seemingly treasonable (I am nor calking about religion) bur rhe fountainhead of char Jew's being and his historical heritage.

So don't give me char slush, sludge, crap, shit, feces, excrement about New Left or rhree world orientation whitewash of the Panthers' ami-Semirism.

Wherever rhe Panthers are, there is intimidation and violence. In Newark, they blackmail poor Jewish scorekeepers ro fork over money for rheir Pamhers' use.

Allen please don't send me any more crap whitewashing Panthers' anti

Semitism. My rage will know no bounds! !.1

Yours,

Louis Ginsberg

P.S. In Arab lands, rhe Jews are harried, imprisoned and rortured. In Israel, Arabs are parr of rhe country, are even in rhe Knesser. If an Arab guerrilla is wounded, he is created rhe same as a Jew in a hospital. Allen, no more Panther crap.

L.G.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

R.D. 2 Cherry Valley

New York 13320

February 15, 1970

Take ir easy don't blow your top, I rook it easy & didn't blow mine this last few weeks despite attacks of rage similar ro yours in letter "My rage will

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307
know no bounds." I chink probably rhe Panchers feel exacdy rhe same emotions we do, and rhe Arabs feel char precise violenc sense of ourrage, and rhe Jews idencifying with Israel feel char adrenaline brilliance pounding in rhe gorge & forehead.

I do imagine char ir's as Burroughs suggesrs some son of cruse of gianc insects from another galaxy operating rhru manipulation of images ro drive everybody our of rheir skulls in scares of outrage so blind ir will blow up rhe planer so rhe insecrs can rake over. Or if rhe metaphor's roo oudandish, irs a cruse of secret military bureaucrats (Israeli military vs. Egyptian military, Russian military vs. Pencagon) who have an inceresr in each ocher's mouncing opposition - symbiosis like Narcotics Police & Mafia who have a murual inceresr in keeping rhe junkies ( 1 00,000 in NY) persecured as badly as Jews or Arabs or Blacks anywhere.

My direcr experience of rhe Panchers hasn't been rhe same as your newspaper clips. I spenc rime smoking poe wirh Cleaver & Carmichael in Nashville while rhe Nashville Banner newspaper incited a rior ro coincide wirh Carmichael's presence in Nashville & was wirh borh of rhem rhe nighr of a violence which was blamed direcdy on rhem by U.P.I and NY

Times. Pancher means fight back when arracked. As I don'r believe in chis srraregy I pan ways wirh rhem rhere; and I chink they've sruck ro fighting back when arracked, and rhey have been arracked illegally & grievously, despite accouncings of Reisel & ochers, in accouncings by Life and ACLU & enormous mass of weekly repons I've read from dozens of ciries in underground press for 2 years now, material which you haven't seen. Which I can send as I keep ir all here in boxes, rho ir will only fatigue rhe reader wirh such a welter of "insrirurionalized" violence char you realize rhe Pancher cries are jusr what we hear, of unnumbered & unreporred myriad illegalities, bearings, false arrests, insulrs, unconsrirurional force & illegal courr process so deep and vase from Sourh where ir's acknowledged ro Norrh where ir's complained abour, suffered rhru, & bears scars on head from.

Panchers in concexr are Irgun in concexr. The amazing rhing is char Black Violence and Zionist Violence come head on like immovable force & unpushable objecr round rhe corner of rhe world, each wirh rhe same fear of extermination and violenc sense of ourrage. lr is precisely rhe same anxiety char motivated Panchers-like military competence in Israel char morivares Dyan-like language and behavior & propaganda among rhe Panchers.

As I would nor see myself as Black if I were black, I don't see myself as a Jew as I am a Jew & so don't idencify wirh Narion of Jews anymore chan I would of Nation of America or Russia. Down wirh all nations rhey are

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enemies of mankind! And nationalism is disease. If this be renegade treason ere remember that's precisely the rhetoric the Panthers apply to blacks who cooperate with white culture police.

You can't have Jewish integrity at rhe expense of Panther sympathy or Arab reality any more than you can have Arab imegriry at price of Jewish extermination - Napalm & violence & bombing from Jewish or Arab hands has already escalated rhe problem beyond reasonable solution. I don't have a solution except not to rake sides that involve bloodying anyone's ass or any kind of political violence. If however everyone insists on being violently right, then we will all have to suffer it through & die violently at various idiots' hands, Jewish idiots, Arab idiots, American idiots, Maoist idiots, liberal idiots, reacrionary idiots. All the same violence and it's always proved wrong. By hindsight I wonder ifWW II aCtually solved anything'

How many more would've been killed unnaturally if Hider had his madness enacted, than have already been killed as we've had our madness enacred ' I dunno. Obviously no reality to that thought except as it's a thought emertainable among many nowadays.

I didn't read Dave McReynolds' circular. Generally his judgment is good. He was among the first to protest A Bomb drills, and in the 1960's was early organizer with Dellinger1 and others of Ami-War movement. He then rook a pacifist position on war buttressed with reasonable arguments against the Vietnam war which arguments are now considered universal -
i.e. we have no right fighting their war, we shd hold elecrions as per Geneva Convention, it's wrong war wrong place etc. He also gave 10 years working against that war while others including myself had not yet had our consciences roused. He's not "communist." He may have different opinion re Panthers than you bur his sincerity is unquestionable and it doesn't help reconciliation to refuse his essay any dignity. It's reconciliation or death for everyone, that includes you as well as Arabs and Panthers. So don't blow your top.

I'm meanwhile worried about Dellinger going to Jail, & the rest of the Conspirators,2 because I suppose it's getting nearer I'm next unless I begin to shut up & give in and pan:icipate (i.e. pay taxes)' for the war. The thing that really amazes me is slow discovery of how much of my comfon: & ability is the result of labor of others and suffering of other forms of life. I I . Ptact- acnvisr David Dellinger.

2. A rcf<:rente ro thl: Chicago Conspiracy Trial defendants (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David DelllllJ.:t"C, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, Rennie Davis, Lee Weiner, and John Froines).

�- Alltn refused ro pay rhe percentage of his income raxes allocared for the war effon.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

309
don't think that we in US with all our ease are in a position w be very much ouuaged at dis£Urbances being made by people living in subhuman or nonhuman circumstances. Be glad you're not black & living on River Street or behind the marker by the Docks in Port-au-Prince & that I have a nice rypewrirer & comfy light to write you a letter with. Remember most people ain't got what to ear, and it's going w get worse.

Until we can recognize & solve Black problems we've created - like, in N.J. Mafia dominated police and politics that we've refused to acknowledge for over a decade rho blacks were outspoken about it - & that includes Paterson especially you know - we're nor in position w lecture Panthers. I once asked Carmichael what he'd do if he were me - he said sensibly, "Pacify the white violence, calm the whites." Obviously that's one thing we can do, it makes no sense to lecture Panthers on their violent rebellion against the police until you can, at very least, say that the police and Mafia are not working together in NJ as well as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, ere.

Well OK, don't blow yr mp, realize the actual problems drive people mad because they are maybe insoluble with present population pressure anyway. I blew my mp with Eugene like you blew your mp with me, rather than lay it back on you, & that's rhe net result of violence - passing it on down the line rill it re£Urns w the self. Well this is all obvious.

Regarding Reise!, Evans & Novak articles: They have reduced the number of probably killed by police w a Dozen or 1 0 depending on count; & blamed all violence on the Panthers. This is just doublethink. The number of publicized deaths may well be only a dozen. ACLU has more extensive analysis and details, even Life shows a different picture. I remember that the Panthers first began on West Coast after years of abuse of Blacks in Oakland, & I remember the context, Panther as "fight back when & only when attacked" from the beginning. You'd have to rewrite all the newspaper work SF 1 960-65 w eliminate that context. Read Cleaver's book. OK

Allen

On mp that, White Panther John Sinclair of Detroit, busted for 2 sticks of pot given to an agent who'd infiltrated his commune, & sentenced w 9 1 /

2-1 0 years by judge that thought Sinclair was a menace; then denied appeal bail & sent upstate northern Michigan prison away from direct contact with me or family or lawyers - I spent a week raising necessary $4500 for legal steps in Deuoit for him & still he can't get out of jail on a

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Family Businw: 1970
charge which elsewhere is misdemeanor as with Samuel's son. 1 Physician cure thyself.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

February 1 7, 1 970

Dear Allen,

Your answer came to me. It breathes nobility. Your heart is in almost the right place. Yet you raise a cloud of complexities and then, above the battle, give a simplistic answer.

What you don't realize is that there is a hierarchy of guilt.

There are three-quarter truths, half-truths, one-eighth truths and so on.

One truth in this mundane world that you are blind to is this: The Jews in Israel are fighting for their lives; they are fighting for survival: they refuse to be butchered and wiped out by the Arabs.

That is why rhe Pam hers, spreading anti-Semitism and aiding the Arabs, are, carried to a logical conclusion, doing or finishing Hitler's work: i.e., aiding the Arabs to wipe out Israel.

You listen to Cleaver's half-truth, but he did nor reveal his arrant anti

Semitism. The fact rhar he is wronged does nor give him the obligation or right to wrong rhe Jews or Israel which is fighting against irs extinction.

Cleaver who is violent against racism is himself rampantly racist.

No, I don't - nor do the Jews - have to be masochists to bow our heads before his venom.

If we carry his viewpoint to irs logical conclusion, we have to be venomous to the age-old injustices perpetrated against nor only the Jews but against all peoples by all peoples: the Crusades, rhe Inquisition, the Thirty Years' War, and endless destruction and evil of many people against many people.

To cancel out evil and say that all are equally guilty means that no one is guilty. You are wrong. As I claim, there is a hierarchy of guilt: something you fail, in your ardor for peace, to recognize.

Ir is easy to say, down with nations and up with universal mankind. In the l . Efforts to free Sinclair evencually paid off when, on December 10, 1 97 1 , a "frtt John Sinclair"

benefic concert was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Among those appearing were Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Ed Sanders, and Phil Ochs. Fifry-four hours after the rhe concert, Sinclair was released from prison.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

3 1 1
long run, I agree. But in the short run, there is no reason why one nation should try to wipe out another nation whose cohesiveness carries with it immemorial values of a heritage that enriched history and mankind.

I have read Cleaver's book. He was wronged. Does that mean he must wrong others? Those clippings show {he's} an anti-Semitic racist. He has only a part of a truth. I insist on my truth: I refuse to put my head on the block. I refuse to be a masochist or to agree that Israel should be obliged to be wiped out, a natural conclusion of the Panthers, led by Cleaver.

More anon from

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

April 7, 1 970

Dear Allen,

How are you) Are you resting up at Ferlinghetti's?

Under separate cover, I am sending you, via first class mail, three copies of my new book of poems, Morning in Spring. One of the copies has a special inscription to you. The two other copies are autographed. Give one to Ferlinghetti. Maybe you might give one to Rexroth, though I had ordered a review copy sent to him.

Our party May 3 at the Alexander Hamilton Hotel seems to be growing apace. Nearly everyone is accepting our invitation; so that it seems to swell bigger than we thought. (Your photographer friend is coming with three assistants!)1

Reviewing the dates, we have as follows:

May 3, Edith's party at the hotel in Paterson.

May 5 the Louis Ginsberg-Allen Ginsberg joint poetry reading at the Paterson State College, at 8:30 P.M.

May 1 1 the Morrow-Gotham Book Mart Publication Day Party.

May 1 7 Hannah's party in Newark.

l. Acclaimed phocographer Richard Avedon took a series of stunning family portraits at the book pany.

3 1 2

Family Business: 1 970

Incidentally, the P.E.N. reading of you and me has been postponed to the afternoon of June 3. My publisher who wishes to arrend, has been apprised of this dare. I hope the dare is nor inconvenient for you. [ . . .

]

Drop me a long lerrer and tell me how you are.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. Regards ro Ferlingherri and Rexroth.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

R.D. 2

Cherry Valley. New York 13326

May 5. 1 970

Dear Louis:

Enclosed the P.E.N. card I said I'd send you. Also see on reverse my last turn onsrage N.Y.C. for the season -

Visited Ramsey Clark, ex Atry Gen, who said ). E. Hoover had a microphone/bug rape of M L King (nor phoros) in "wild parry" at morel which he played around Washingron ro undermine King's position, & which Hoover tried ro publicize

- that the Junk problem could be solved by medical research for half the cost of one Polaris submarine

- that the hisrory of narco agents peddling dope could be traced back a quarter century

- that he thought the Mafia was less influential than I estimated in General Dynamics, rho it was present

- that there was a heavy secret report the government was hiding, or nor releasing so far, saying that LSD did not lead to chromosome damage.

Well that was interesting - OK - I'll go to Bosron June 10, & then Buffalo 1 2-1 3 chen back ro farm.

Love

Allen

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

3 1 3

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Monday, May 25, 1 970

Dear Allen,

Thanks for your postal. I found my schedule. I shall meet you at times and places designated.

Book reviews are coming in. All are favorable. Did I tell you that the Wall Street journal had a good word for my book? Am keeping clippings in a scrap book.

Received your letter. I deeply deplore the grievous injustice done Leary. 1

I agree with you char ineprness and stupidiry in places in government are aggravating the bad situation. Yes, the system is corrupr BUT only in pan.

In other many parts, it is giving due process of law.

You ask what to do? Not violence. That brings counterviolence.

"Trashing," burning of buildings by students, bludgeoning of professors result in mindless tyranny which tramples on the rights of others. That way lies madness, polarizarion and counterviolence (cf. righrist construction workers).

What to do again? The new movements of students, moderating influences, lawyers, etc NOW are infiltrating, crowding into congressmen's and senator's offices to warn rhem and press rhem ro oppose rhe President and the Pentagon and to demand END WAR NOW. Congress is hearing this. All this is more effective; it is slower bur more effective in working WITHIN THE SYSTEM OF DEMOCRACY. Don't burn the flag bur wash it (Norman Thomas). Mindless idiors raise the Viet Cong flag and so admire totalirarian tyranny .

. See you anon.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

I. Timothy Leary faced lengthy prison sentences and staggering fines as the result of several minor drug busts. Federal officials and narcotics agents favored the use of draconian punishment for mmor drug offenses as a means of silencing political dissidents - an abuse of power that did not go unnoticed by Allen and many others.

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Family BuJinm: 1 9 70

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

RD 2

Cherry Valley, New York

May 27, 1 970

Dear Lou:

Enclosed nore from Y. & yr reviews.

Regarding Leary & sysrem being corrupr "BUT only in pan. In ocher many pans, ir is giving due process of law." lr seems ro me you are depending on nonspecific generalizarions char do nor rake accounr of your basic inexperience wirh police corruprion because you have led a Jheltered middle class life rhe lasr 50 years, and nor sruck your neck our, and in facr supponed rhe sysrem panicularly in maners of narcorics policy and Indochina War policy umil only recendy. If you rook an acrivisr role in reform I chink your experience of rhe almosr universal corruprion of police scare in US would be more nearly char of rhe younger generarion. However regarding specific police corruprion, rhe series in NY TimeJ end of lasr momh, which I read rhru carefully roday, paims a picrure of irreversible and roral corruprion of law enforcemem. My own previous srudies in area of narcorics lead ro following facrs;

I ) by 1 925 Lindner Decision Supreme Coun, all junkies had righr ro go ro Docrors (like presem small scale Merhadone experimem, or English sysrem) 2) sysremaric evasion of chis consrirurional decision, sysremaric lobbying and propaganda creared a whole pracrice of denial of consrirurional righr of medical rrearmem ro junkies for rhe lasr 4 5 years. This was accompanied by universal corruprion in Narco bureaus, wirh Fed Scare & Local fuzz rhemselves peddling heroin and cocaine.

3) 70 percem of NY crime is anribured ro junkies caughr berween Fuzz and Mafia squeeze; over 60 percem coun cases; 40% males and 70%
females locally incarcerared are junkies; rhere are now esrimared 100,000 ro 200,000 junkies in NY as resulr of police corruprion; and 4) THEREFORE THE MAIN STATISTICAL BULK OF COURT, PO

LICE & CRIME & PRISONERS IN NY (and ocher large ciries, siruarion same) IS DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF POLICE CORRUPTION. In ocher words quite simply, New York would be safer wichour police. This same applies ro Parerson where rhe exacc same scarisrics now apply.

Leary's incarceration is byproducc of chis corruption. When I asked you whar ro do, my quesrion was really, how can we srop violence being done ro us by rhe govemmenr? I know you are not perhaps rhe righr person co ask inasmuch

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

3 1 5
as, co rhe exrenr rhar you even knew ir exisred, you have been a firm if nor vehemenr supporrer of rhar violence, and for rhar reason now rhar rhe war and police srare condirions seem quesrionable ro you I rhink you mighr have some clearer idea of how ro hair ir. The problem is, rhar rhere is now builr up in US
such vasr police srare locally rhar even wirh inrelligenr mayors like Lindsay, rhe police in NY are all rogerher our of civic conrrol and are an army unro rhemselves, and a complerely corrupr army. And I rhink rhar now borh Congress and judiciary are helpless before secrer police and milirary, even if rhere were an arrempr co curb rhe power ofborh. I don'r rhink you realize how serious rhe siruarion has become, rhere does nor seem co be any way back; and I regrer ro see rhar you rend co siphon your ourrage olf on "mindless idior"

violenr proresrers; you musr realize rhar rhe rheory of rrashing leading co polarizarion leading co police srare is an excuse for liberals ro venr rheir anger on a smaller scapegoar group rhan rhemselves; and rhar police-milirary srare did nor develop because of rhese rarsiers bur preexisred before rhe rrashing began; rhar rhe rarsiers are rrashing because rhey claim rhe police srare ALREADY exisrs; and rhar if one is going ro assign blame for police srare, ir would be more appropriare co quesrion rhe vasr majoriry of middle class who have supporred rhe milirary violence in Viernam which began over 1 5 years ago. Speaking of rrashing I am sorry you burned my lerrers from India.

Ir is rhe "unacknowledged & unreporred crimes" rhar doom America - rhe idea rhar "our morives were pure bur we jusr made a misrake ere." Ir was evil from rhe beginning, ir involved CIA secrer police brainwashing in USA and rraining of police srare Diem in Michigan Srare U., ir involved Narionalisr China opium fields in Burma, ir involved Tungsren lobbies, ir involved rhe facr rhar we are- racisr in our consciousness, and rhar we consume 60% of world's raw marerial producrion wirh only 6 or less % popularion.

Whar ir boils down ro is rhar unless we reduce our srandard of consumprion ro 1110 rhe presenr, probably, we will conrinue ro be ar war wirh "underdeveloped" narions as we habirually call rhem, for conrrol of rheir resources. As long as we exploir narions we creare communism; communism is rhe mirror image of capiralism, and in rhe end rhey are abour rhe same.

Meanwhile Leary is in Jail, I've wrirren Jusrice Douglas asking for explanarion, since his decision was acrually unconsrirurional.

I rhink roral pacifisr unilareral disarmamenr is rhe only way our here, in Israel ere everywhere; Leary's pracricing rhar, he's rhe only one I know excepr Dellinger. The difficulry of your posirion is rhar you like ro selecr who you'll be violenr ro, one year rhe Viernamese, one year rhe Wearhermen. Ir would be a lor more emorionally sarisfying ro me ro see you ger

3 1 6

Family BUJiness: 1 970
violem against someone bigger than you like the CIA or the police or the Capitalist system as well as the OGFU or the communist system; nonetheless I don't suppose that would solve the problem of pacifying rhe scene, so that's dead end roo.

Well I don't know where this will all end, I just don't see any way our. I think Mafia, CIA, Military, Police etc have now roo powerful a physical hold on US technology for any basic change to be effected by the pacifist democratic means I and others practice. It's like a cancer metastasis in the body politic. You know the budget statistics'

Total Fed Tax Receipts 1 969

$ 1 47,875 ,000,000

"Defense" Budget

8 1 ,240,000,000

Veterans Benefits

7,640,000,000

!merest on debts due to wars past presem future

1 5 ,791 ,000,000
total 1 969 expenditure war past presem future

104 ,60 1 ,000,000
or 70% of Federal Budget

The main business ofGovr is now char ofW ARS; just as with local police the main business is u·ar against the citizenry. See statistics p. I .

OK - Love

Allen

Just spoke with Ramsey Clark on phone who agreed w/me about Junk problem.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

June 5, 1 970

Dear Allen,

I certainly enjoyed our readings - and riffs - in our recem radio readings, including the one at the P.E.N. Club.

I am very relucram to trespass on your rime when you are so taxed by the pile of letters descending on you. Yet your admonitions on the ending of my poem, "To A College Girl on the Barricades," 1 what with my own ambivalem attitude, compels me to rethink what I meam at the end of the I. See "To a College Girl on rhe Barricades.'" LG, CP. p. 2H2.

Allen and LouiJ GinJberg

3 1 7
poem and to solicit your own thinking on the ending of m y poem. I like this poem of mine, but, as I say, I am heckled by my ending.

First, background. If the girl is raging against the rigidity of the college or the college's assistance in this unjust war, in either case her violence in abetting destruction of the college property constitutes a counter-measure.

If it be argued, as well it might, that the government is using violence in S.

Vietnam, should she follow that bad example of government violence by meeting it with her own violence? Two evils or two wrongs do nor make a right. Second, if she is destroying property or smashing windows of innocent storekeepers, why should she vent her rage on them?

Second, often the mindless violence is a sign of political dementia to think that these pathological characters, especially the Weathermen, can overturn a powerful government.

Again, the violence of the fanatics who mistake themselves for saints, roils up the know-nothings, the incipient Fascists, and the vigilante groups; so that in their blind countermeasure, they vote for [George] Wallace and

[Ronald] Reagan and even use counter-measure force. I am with the construction workers who resent the carrying of the N. Vietnam Communist flag, bur I am against the use offorce by the construction workers. I say, with Norman Thomas, "Don't burn the flag; wash it." I fail to see the logic of the stormtroopers, alias students, who, wanting a more democratic society, bray blindly for a totalitarian suppressive regime.

So, I am against violence being used by students in order to cure the violence of the government. They may get short-term advance bur longterm retrogression and suppression. Said Nietzsche, "Those who set out to kill monsters should take care not to turn themselves into monsters."

Broad, accelerating, widespread non-violent protests and dissent toppled Johnson and will topple Nixon in due course.

Now as to the poem, in the last two lines, do I mean that the girl has been carried away into violence by her outrage against the actions of the college'

Strange is it indeed that her violence should breed counter-violence. Is her outrage against the war carrying her away into violence? Here I can understand her rage, but still I must say it is counter-productive and follows a bad example of the violence of the government. In any case, I shake my head and feel sad at such a delectable nymph's being carried away into violence.

How about having the last three lines read:

"I know your feelings against the war,

Yet it is strange to see you so carried away

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Family Businm: 1970

By more chan the paddy wagon!"

If you can suggest anocher ending, lee me hear from you.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P.S. I cue om some redundant lines about her use of"billingsgace'' (which is the use of vile language unered by fishmongers at Billingsgate, a place in London where wives sell fish).

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Thursday, September {?} 1 970

Dear Allen,

Enclosed find an article about you and Corso in the current Village Voice.

I enjoyed my stay at your farm. Despite our wrangling about the Panthers, I shall chink there is much ro be said on both sides.

This morning I had a phone call from a student in Syracuse University.

They wane both of us co read. I gave the student the Edmiscon-Rochschild Management's address. Lee them cake it from there.

Thanks you for sending me all chose brochures breaching peace. I shall peruse them soon. I muse say, though, with my own time running out slowly and with so many poems germinating in me and seeking release, ic is difficult co spread oneself in so many worthwhile projects and movements.

[ . . .

]

My new college term begins chis momh on the 1 5 of September. It will be my 24 year, I believe. I received a small raise in salary.

I nocice chat, in our forthcoming college term, the dates of Oct. 26 co Nov. 4 will be a recess, a sore of moracorium, co allow the scudems co practice the Princecon plan; chat is, for che students co go om in che field co work for a new congress against che war.

Give my 1egards co the folks at your farm.

Keep well and stay calm.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

1 9 7 1

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

Over Michigan

2. 30 PM Monday

April I 2. I 971

Dear Louis & Edith -

Passed the week at Kent State school & drove to Cleveland (after overnight stay at Kenyon plenty talk with Gary Snyder & learned some new yoga postures & hand symbol mudras from him, & taught him new mantra & gossiped) then 2 days in Cleveland, read at Case Western Reserve & reminded them their entire administration was involved in Biological Warfare/lnscicuce Defense Analysis -

Plane in sunshiny misty day passing across Lake Michigan now - huge flat blue waters fringed with puffy cloudbanks -

Read in High School this morning in Cleveland -third time now, after Washington - had also read at Kent H.S. (gave them classroom assignmenr to invenr a May Day ritual to end War. ''Pillow fight all over campus" the best answer).

Going to Wisconsin state now - stay there then Milwaukee a couple days.

Then to Wyoming. Voice holding our OK tho a little strained on top notes for singing.

Easier traveling with Gordon 1 who in Folk/Rock jargon is the "roadie" or road manager, making phonecalls registering at hotels arranging aircickecs

& carrying Harmonium case - so I get time to write notes like this - goofy trip, awful luxury - can't last too long (the Airplane Age, I mean, not me) -

Love to you Lou & Edith - Yr son,

-Allen

I. Gordon Ball, manager of Allen's Cherry Valley farm. Ball recorded many of Allen's lecrures on this reading and lecture tour, and edited rhem inm Allen Verbatim.

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Family Business: 1971

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

April 19, 1971

Dear Allen,

Received your lercers. Glad you are O.K.

I miss you. I miss, also, with a feeling of nostalgia, our past summer vacations with you to Europe and ro Berkeley. We seem to move closer into each orher on those vacations together. Edith, roo, misses them. Maybe next summer, we three can commune and intermingle our spirits. (I feel I have nor too many years to go, though I am now feeling fine.) (Still, as you've heard me repeat,

"Always at my back I hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near."')

Things are running smoothly here. I am still reaching and gladly doing so. Edith is still at work in her office and likes it. I guess she'd rather work than stay at home where she gets restless.

Did I tell you I received the second royalty report from William Morrow.

My book is still selling, especially the paper-bound book. It has nor been reviewed by Poetry or the N. Y. Times Book Review, bur I am hoping they will do so.

I am gercing a few invitations to read on my own "write." Some pan our, some peter our. One I have finalized, if I may use that awkward word, is a reading at a convention, the N.J. Teachers of English, on Sept 24, '7 1 .

Let me know of your plans after you reach San Francisco. (There is a P . S.

of America, Celeste Heights, friend of mine whom I have alerted that you will read where she reaches at Davis, the U. of Cal.) Regards to Larry Ferlingherri.

How is my paper-bound book faring in his City Lights Bookshop) Eugene was here in Paterson with his brood recently during the Passover.

We had a fine meal. Have you had matzo balls recently) We are them to our hearts' content. [ . . .

]

Keep writing me letters for I want ro hear more derails of what you are thinking, doing, and reading.

I read a g(ear deal and, as you've heard me repeat, draw my own confusions. I keep my composure, in a turbulent world, by composing.

At my desk I purcer a great deal, hoping to find an accidental inevirabiliry

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

321
of felicity. In imagination, I hear remarks from my desk. My sheet of paper says "Try to [ . . .

] in fewer phrases"; my loitering pen-knife tells me,

"Whistle neatly"; my burning lens of magnifying glass urges me "To try to focus my meaning more sharply."' My stapler tells me "To try to write or staple the moment to the momentous."' Who knows: if I am lucky, I"ll save something from impermanence.

This Wed. l"m going into N.Y. to meet my publisher, James Landis, of W m Morrow Co.

Well, I really meant to say, most of all, that I miss you very much. Keep writing to me. Regards to Gordon Ball. (I like him. He is a courteous gentleman with gentiliry. Tell him to remind you to write to me.) Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

City Lights 1

1 5 62 Grant St. S.F., California

May 3, 1 9 7 1

Dear Louis -

Sitting on a rug o n wooden floor by fire-pit with hot water kettle hung from 1 5 foot ceiling, surrounded by 4 wooden pillars upholding Maidu

Indian style log rafters in Gary Snyder's new house in Sierra mountains of California - been here since before May Day - will stay a week.

Pressure of business unfinished so great that l"ve canceled Australian trip & will stay here in California & edit writings & edit recordings & make 2'nd Blake album2 while Miles is still in USA - otherwise opportunity passes & can't be reconstructed since he alone has the key to all the tapes he indexed. So l"ll stay here thru the fall.

Going in to post office now so I"ll send this note - no electric here either, beautiful Japanese style temple/household that Snyder build with crew of Zen/woodsmen friends.

I. Although Allen used che City Lighrs address in heading rhis lerrer, he actually wrore rht lener in Nevada Ciry, California.

2. Allen's second album of Blake songs, never released as intended - parts were released on his Holy Soul Jelly Roll boxed ser - was produced by Barry Miles, an old (riend and furure biographer.

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Family Business: 1971

I'll be up in that room in City Lights -

When you leave for Israel?

Love Son Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 5, 1971

Dear Allen,

Glad to hear from you in your letter of May 3.

I presume, as you write, that your heavy load of work will keep you from flying off to Australia. Wish you didn't have so much work so that you might be with us to enhance our trip to Israel and Greece!

We leave on June 1 5 on an overnight flight to Israel. Will spend a few days in Tel Aviv and then tour various places, visiting Jerusalem where I want to see the Wailing Wall, aching with ancient memories of Jewish nation. (I get less religious and more Jewish with time.) After spending eleven days in Israel, we fly to Athens to spend two days there; then by boat (where we sleep each night), we visit a number of islands like Delos, Mykonos, etc. We'll be in Istanbul for a day.

I have written to our distant relatives in Tel Aviv, whom you saw; also to some friends there: I have also written to Alan Ansen in Athens but have not yet heard from him. We return from our foreign sojourn on July 6.

Let's tty the next summer around to be together, because that's the time we explore the best adventures.

We have three more weeks of college classes and then joy will be unconfined and I'll gorge on expanded leisures.

Have had new poems accepted. Here's one just published in the Christian Science Monitor.

Besides working at new poems, I am gathering other poems, published and unpublished, and putting them together for a new book. I revised some old poems that have refused to hatch oblivion in my drawers but still glisten with feeling or pulse with life.

I keep percolating myself, while I wait ro be surprised or ambushed by rhe delight of rwo dissimilarities joining in a partnership of similarity beneath their skins to accost me with joy of felicity.

Of course, I am reading the papers and see old reputations bleaching on

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

323
che rocks of errors, while che History is bleeding from many wounds. Still, I am an incorrigible optimist, and Time surprises us with unexpected loopholes . . .

Stay sober rill we meec - which I hope will be soon.

Regards to Snyder and Ferlinghecci.

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

May 24, 1 9 7 1

Dear Allen,

Received your postcard from Bixby Canyon. I revived memories of delightful and happy times we had chere with the idyllic scenery seeping its romancic influences into us.

I cruse your siccing and medicating chere gives you vibrations from cosmic forces so chat these vibrations sink deep down inco the secret, subterranean passageways of your being, so chat they counce race and soothe the eruptive and bad reverberations of che curbulenc world that bears upon and molests your composure1 1

As for me - as I have no doubc wriccen you - I try co puc a halo around che commonplace or a nimbus around the status quo. By chat I mean, not so much to hide the realicy bur co reveal whac is behind the realicy. Thac is, I cry to concemplace myself perceiving che focusing forces chat urge me to discover che network of relationships or necwork of correspondences char converge on che pinpoint of my consciousness here in che sunlic sun-room of my home. As I wroce in my book of poems, "Time looks chrough che poec inco che timeless."

Be char as ic may, coming down co brass racks, we are leaving, as you know, on che evening of June 1 5 for an overnight flighc co Israel. In Tel Aviv, che Vekselmans have wriccen me chey will pick me up where we will be lodged in a hocel. A few days Iacer, in Jerusalem, I am co give a poetry reading, arranged by a friend of mine who works for an Israel official.

1. See ''Bixby Canyon Ocean Path Word Breeze,"' AG, CP. pp. 559-567.

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Family BuJinesJ: 1 9 7 1

A little Iacer, I shall send you our itinerary, i f you so desire one. After about ten days couring Israel, we gee on a steamer co visit several Greek islands, some of them, no doubt, where burning Sappho loved and sang. I am hoping che claret air of Greece which Henry Miller praised will also lee me inhale its euphorical influences.

Meanwhile, I read che current papers and feel like a lose footnote crying co keep from being swept into the deep chasm-like Credibiliry Gap.

Maybe, while I am away from America - which I love - I'll gee a beccer perspective of my nation now struggling for a soul. Meanwhile, using one of my own phrases, I am mainlining myself wich dreams and hopes and optimism.

I see the "Radical Left is split by a Cleaver.''

I cruse we shall gee together soon before Time leaks out of me.

Love from me and Edith.

Regards co Miles and Ann and Gordon.

Louis

Louis Ginsberg co Allen Ginsberg

WedneJtiay, AuguJt 18, 1971

Dear Allen,

I was wondering why I haven't heard from you for so long a time.

I received your long letter with the messages and enclosures. I glanced at them and will soon read them carefully. They poured out on me baleful tidings and omens and depressing evils. Will address myself co them soon.

I note you are going co India for a week. It seems a horrible tidal wave of evil is sweeping over Bangladesh and India's frontiers. 1 Russia's lining up with India and China with Pakistan. Hope fervently there's no devastating confrontation.

Read in the papers about che Living Theatre in Brazil. 2 While Brazil is brutal, I question the prudence of che members of the Living Theatre co venture inco wilds of Fascism where human wolves do not know the 1 . Flooding and famine had combined ro decimate India (and Bangladesh in particular), killing coundess people and Leaving an estimated 7 million homeless refugees in camps.

2. The Living Theatre, a troupe of actors long known for rhe controversial political and social narure of their performances, were being detained in Brazil, supposedly for marijuana possession. Allen suspected that the CIA-trained authorities in Brazil were trying to silence the group - suspicions that grew even stronger when he heard rales of the group members being beaten and rorru.red.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

325
thought of freedom. The U.S.A. needs their ministrations into civilizing knownothings here. This does not, of course, excuse the C.I.A. of contributing to the evils.

What beast, according to Yeats, is now shuffling or slouching to foal horror on horror . . . to give birth to a dark age of helpless refugees? Seems the chancelleries are sounding boards or echo chambers of euphemisms masking lies and cosmetic phrases hiding atrocities.

Still, Tricky Dicky has done something to bring a bit of sunlight appearing at the end of the tunnel: I think it is a good thing - to give the devil his due - of trying to establish relations with China.

I note those fine and majestic lists of literary works of yours! More power to you!

That was a good figure of speech about the so-called comfort in the lounge of a burning ship. Hope, somehow, the fires will be put out. Well, I can't say that you are not doing your part. More power again to you!

Summer here is slowly ebbing away. I have written some new poems, some about the war in S.V. and others about my trip abroad.

I am trying to edit and tighten my ms. of my projected fourth book of poems: taking some out and adding some new ones.

Hope, when you get back, we can do some joint poetry readings, if you are in the mood. But do as you please. I am loath to pressure you.

I received a phone call from the Hackensack YMHA, telling me your agent is agreeing that you and I will read there on Oct. 26. Do you know about it?

Call me up before you jump off to India. How are you going?

What's new about the farm and what is its status?

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg
n. d. (ca. December 1 97 1 }

Dear Allen,

This surging poem 1 i s fine! H as excellent rhythm which i s emphasized by the telling rhyme.

l. S.. ""Seprcmber on Jesson: Road."" AG. CP. pp. H l-575.

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Family Businm: 1971

I have two suggestions. As I heard you read it, the poem is too long and taxes one's patience. I'd omit at least two pages, including the 3 stanzas on p. 4, as these mar the general unity of the poem.

Best wishes and love from your father,

Louis

P.S. Come in soon, when you are free from pressures.

L.

1 9 7 2

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(San Francisco, California}

January 7, 1 972

Dear Lou -

Finished reading poem 1 several times - it's an advance ideologically beyond roots, that is to say, a further idea - but it is a lot happier & the statement does depend on a lot of generalizations & unattached radiances - Is there any way to even out the verse, condense it &, if possible, introduce more evidence of the senses from some specific visionary experience in yr writing room over last 20 years?

Better talk in detail when we meet.

Why not work on, work up, this poem as a solid statement of high mind'

Love,

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

Tuesday, January 1 1 , 1 972

Dear Allen,

Glad to hear from you.

Thanks for sending me your suggestions about my long poem called,

"When the Walls of My Room Flew Away." I shall mull over the poem to gather more evidence of the senses from some visionary experience which I know I had a number of times.

I. See ""When the Walls of My Room Fell Away,"" LG, CP. pp. 323-326.

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Family BuJineJJ: 1 9 72

I am sending you a short poem called, " A Woman Acted Queerly in a Bus." 1

Of course, sending you a poem is like sending coals to the proverbial Newcasde. Bur - aside from the fact that X. ). Kennedy took it for her new poetry magazine, called Counter MeaJUreJ, and commented, among other things, that "it was nearly a wonderful poem" (be that as it may) - I thought you might be interested in the poem. The lines' inception rose in me some time ago- many years and griefS ago- when once or twice or more, I was riding with Naomi on a bus, and she made twitches and strange motions. Her actions were sadly amusing to the passengers who soon thought better of it.

When you get a chance and have an inner compulsion to visit the old homestead, don't check that impulse but come in.

With love,

Your father,

Louis

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

February 10, 1 972

Dear Allen,

Did you see the article on Yevtuchenko in Time, Feb. 14?

The magazine reports that when Eugene McCarthy saw Yev's lines about the Statue of liberty & "the death of freedom" (in U.S.), McCarthy said to the translators, "Are you going to be associated with this crap?"

Why does Yev. bridle at questions abouc Russian Jews when Russia keeps up churning anti-American vituperation against everything in America' Nothing at all good in America. And how about putting dissident writers in Russian insane asylums'

I'd like to meet you in a debate on this subject.

Also, on LeRoi Jones' inflammatory and incendiary and poisonous rhetoric.

Did you hear that now Huey Newton declares that we (the Blacks) should drop the gun and work in the system'

Did you, Allen, hear anything good about America? Do tell me.

Louis

I . Stt "A Woman Aeted Queerly in a Bus,'" LG, CP. p. 295.

Alien and LouiJ Gimberg

329

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(San FranciJco, California}

February 15, 1 972

Dear Louis -

Getting ready for one or rwo musicals here, & then will leave for Hawaii, Fiji & Australia on 27 Feb.

Tomorrow will go upstate to spend couple days on the land owned in common wirh Gary Snyder and also one Richard Baker who is the teacher at the Zen Center here in S.F. Meditative Forest Community. I may buy some more land this year - for my own use not COP Inc.

Received Shenker's TimeJ piece1 - nice photos - I don't know whether yr.

terminology about my writing being "unselective, undiscriminating . . .

unstructured" is accurate language if you examine accurately the use of those words. You use as per dictionary. As I publish only a fraction of what I scribble the first two words you use are not used with discrimination. As for structure I thought we had long ago agreed that rhyme & stanza do not monopolize concept of structure. "Ungrammatical." That's almost O.K.

sometimes as I model syntax on mind flow, bur if I were really insistent and asked you for examples of ungrammatical speech you would likely have difficulty finding more than a couple of actual examples of actual ungrammatically used words. Check it our' You occasionally tend to use words somnambulistically. You do tend to fall into stereotypes when you talk about post Whitmanic verse forms. Remember the Bible didn't rhyme and had other structure, like vowel assonance. Re repetition, litany & double-clause sentences balanced etc like you say, "watch out for hardening of your platitudes."

Ltrry2 is on phone making Australian reservations, he'll take his son Lorenzo 9 years old to see world down under -

Anyway, rest of Shenker article very lovely and characteristic - yes I saw Jerry Tallmer's PoJt KaddiJh review3 & yes it sure did occur to me that you must been exasperated & tired our by the whole scene w/Naomi. In a way the play KaddiJh sentimentalizes it further unnecessarily.

I. Israel Shenker, "The life and Times of Ginsberg the Elder," New York TiflUJ, February 1 3 , 1972.

2. Lawrence Ferlingheni.

3. Jerry Tallmer, "Lament for Naomi," New York PoJI, February 1 1 , 1972.

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Family Businm: 1972

OK - I'll write in a couple of days. Feeling OK, arranging music and business -

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

February 1 7, 1972

Dear Allen,

Received your February 1 5 letter.

Yes, in the interests of truth and in all honesty, I apologize for the words

"unstructured" in affiliation ro your verse. Ir is, indeed, srrucrured. Thar word musr have caught itself, entangled on rhe flow of my garrulousness, in my mensentopause. I rrusr you'll pardon my mensentopause.

About rhe word "unselecrive,"' I reserve judgment in order ro medicare on ir. I feel rhar you think anything you pour our of your unconscious or subconsciousness, is, ipso facto, self-sufficient as being spontaneously authentic.

Also, often you are ungrammatical. However, these lasr rwo peccadilloes are nirs compared ro rhe outpouring of an avalanche of Whirmanlike lines which are incomparably Ginsbergian in flagellating rhe hypocrisy and apathy of rhe public.

I have always rhoughr rhar your epithet "anachronisr" regarding my poetry was wide of rhe mark. I aim ar an equilibrium, in my flexible traditional verse, bur rhe regularity of rhe meter and rhe naruralness of rhe speaking voice, as T. S. Eliot said, "The life of poetry is rhe recognition and evasion of regularity."

Yes, I shall scrutinize rhe "hardening of my latitudes and rhe constriction of my platitudes and rhe arteriosclerosis of my views."

Hope your tour of rhe Australian venture comes through. Do keep writing me letters, as I miss you.

Love & Kisses from

Your father,

Louis

P. S. Regards ro Ferlingherri.

Alien and Louis Gimberg

3 3 1

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

February 20, 1 972

Dear Allen,

After my enduring many years of grief and horror ar seeing my wife disappearing helplessly into insanity, how can you use such an unfeeling, frivolous, and wretched rerm as that I was merely "exasperated?"

Love,

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(San Francisco, California}

February 20, 1 972

Dear Lou -

Working w/musicians - enclosed interview w/Yevruchenko may answer some of your questions about him - he'll probably get in trouble for indiscretion of rhe interviewer in printing comments rhar were meant probably ro be off the record -

I'll phone you before I leave on 28th for Australia.

I didn't mean ro come down roo hard on your nice Times interview. Re selectivity I publish only a lirrle of what I write - rhe selectivity comes rhar way - skim off the peak perfect moments of spontaneous composition -
after years of practice you ger ro develop the improvisational facility - now I'm experimenting with improvising blues onsrage - as advised by Tibetan yoga reachers - odd new turn.

Love

Allen

We read (Fer!, Duncan, Whalen, Kay Boyle, & others) ar Farmworker's Union benefit & Yevruchenko relegrammed following poem -

"I bless you

Farmworkers w/American land

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Family BuJine.rs: 1 972

The end of all bastards

Would your sufferings end.

I bless you

Allen Ginsberg, Omissar of American lit

Each poet

Is a farm worker

If even a little bit."

-E. Y.

He's over-heroic & over starry but means well & plays a different public role

- dangerous.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Adelaide, AuJtralia

March 1 6, 1 9 72

Dear Louis:

Spending time with aboriginal song men whose epic connects with Eternal Dream Time - we all sang together in concert halls -

Very busy - 1 or 2 readings a day - Day after tomorrow with Voznesensky in Melbourne & Sydney, & then to Central Australia Ayers Rock a holy rock mountain with ancient Petroglyphs in the center of Australia - then north to Aruhein Land - Then to San Francisco at end of month.

Met A. D. Hope the national poet, a Blake fan.

Sitting in Moderne Hotel Australia looking over Adelaide late afternoon parks and towers in golden sunlight thinking of you - Love as ever -

Improvising a lor of Blues poetry on the harmonium during readings now -

Ferlinghetti & son Lorenzo off 2 days on big river house boat. Love, Your Son,

Allen

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

333

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

On top of Ayers Rock, Australia

March 24, 1 972

Dear Louis and Edith -

Flew into central Australian Aborigine sacred rock pictured here, climb up to meditate, & thought of you so sending love right here from the top, my face covered with delicate little flies buzzing -

I learned a few aboriginal songs. Readings here well received, saw lots of Voznesensky & read with him . . . . Next up to Aruhein Land north, different Abo. Tribes & arcs. I'll stay till month's end & head back to San Fran.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

Madison, Wisconsin

April 1 9, 1 972

Dear Louis and Edith -

Lovely trip so far - giving reading tonite in Madison - Marched with several thousand students a few hours ago to State Capitol & got on the megaphone & sang Vietnam War 10 year Blues, rhymed improvised bardic - Well, have you phoned & written your legislators insisting on end of War1 Only if you do that will war end, otherwise it drags on.

Parents should take the responsibility, not leave it up to college kids. On to Notre Dame! Love Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Denver, Colorat:W}

May 24, 1 972

Dear Lou & Edith -

Been living here at Hilton in luxury cheap room till end of this week, every day going down singing Vespers hour with teenage peace vigil geniuses on State Capitol steps - reading Kerouac's unpublished giant Denver mss. of

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Family BuJiness: 1 972
quarter century ago1 & walking nostalgic streets here, Neal & Jack both ghosts -

I'll go up to Montana for a few weeks, never been there - seems easier to detach myself & float loose wandering like homeless Buddhist rhan stay sunk in phonecalls & correspondence in N .Y.C. - also in these crucial weeks of planet war & bombing I want to see mid American emotions & landscape -

Sorry I didn't get back for birthday party, but poesy called me here & bid me stay & mourn & watch the Rockies - I'll be back sometime in June I guess. [ . . .

]

I'll give a reading the 30th at Montana State Univ. & then read again up north further in Missoula - maybe hitchhike back, on rhe road, I bought a new pack & an old down sleeping bag & poncho waterproof so am ready for almost any voyaging - lovely U.S. Western nostalgia of open road - that's what bemused me, reading all Kerouac's youthful lyric prose. All well here

- See you soon.

Love

Allen

In july, Allen traveled to Florida, where he attended the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. The main inue, aJ alwayJ, waJ the Vietnam War, but by 1 97 2, the counterculture waJ all but dead, and the conventiom, for the moJt part, were uneventful.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Miami, Florida}

july 12, 1 972

Dear Louis & Edith -

I pass by here [Famous Lincoln Road Mall, Miami Beach] every day -

Arthur has his office in the building at right in this photo - been inside the Convention Hall - Amazing collection of Middle Class liberal folk and 1 . Vi!i(JfiJ of Cody. This Kerouac novel was published later in the year, with an inuoducrion wrinen by Ginsberg. This introduction, slightly expanded and altered, was published, along with some of Neal Cassady's correspondence, as Tht Vi1iom of tht Grt4t Rtmnnbem- (Amherst, Massachusetts: Mulch Press, 1974).

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

335
freaks - sort of a revolurion inside - Gawd knows whar'll come of ir - Hope ir evokes peace - Clara was fine - Love Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

July 2 1 , 1 972

Dear Allen,

I rrusr you are finding rhings favorable and benign up ar your farm.

Somerimes rhoughrs swim up in my mind from our conversarions. I find, rhen, rhar sraremenrs which you make in your zealous espousal of peace are inflammarory and wrong and exrreme.

For insrance you equare rhe "Good Germans" of rhe Nazi period wirh rhe

"Good Americans" during rhe Viernam srruggle.

I am consrrained in rising anger ro refiHe your incendiary falsiry.

The "Good Germans" did nor - or could nor - as Americans and a good portion of Americans did - [succeed] in roppling one presidenr, Johnson, in opposirion ro rhe war.

The "Good Nazis" did nor rurn inside our a polirical party over a convenrion in which 80% had nor been delegares before. Never was Hider, ere. in danger of being ousred by rhe angered Germans, as was rhe case in rhe recenr Democraric Convenrion. There is an ever rising ride of anger againsr rhe war.

Moreover, in rhe press, arrociries are revealed and broadcasr ro rhe derrimenr of rhe leaders of rhe governmenr. This did nor happen ro rhe leaders of rhe German Nazi Party.

To conrinue, rhe exposure of rhe Penragon Papers, rhe Berrigan affair, rhe crumbling of rhe credibiliry of American officials - all rhese make ir a lie - if unconscionable (as in your case) - ro equare rhe supine "good" Germans wirh an ever increasingly angry people of America. How differenr all rhis abyss berween Germany (Nazis) and America.

Why are you so given ro exrreme and inflammarory sraremenrs?

P.S. One day you have given up hope for America. In anorher day, you see rescue of such hope when a major polirical party is rurned inside our ro provide an oprion or opening for a reversed and berrer day. Only in America. "Wash rhe flag - nor burn ir."

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Family Businm: 1972

P.S.S. [sic] I read the papers and draw my own confusions - which are as good (or as bad) as the next man - or the so-called experts.

As ever,

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Cherry Valley, New York}

September 24, 197 2

Dear Lou:

Here's the Kansas letter, Ok yes let's meet students. Also yr. clipping from Evans & Novak "Hanoi Embraces Arab Terrorists." I think all nations involved have used terror on greater or lesser scale; you are especially sensitive to terror against the Jews. Reverse the picture, imagine an ami-Israeli column in Hanoi - "Israel Embraces American Terrorists" (which Golda Meir did). "A Pox on Hanoi" and not "A Pox on U.S., Israel, Arabs, & Americans" is partial and ignores roo much of the total interrelationships. Are Americans better than Arabs' Are Jews better than Indochinese? Are Arabs better than Jews? Are Indochinese better than Americans' Are Jews better than Arabs? Are Americans better than Indochinese' Are Indochinese better than Arabs? Have the Indochinese suffered more than rhe Americans? Have the Jews suffered more than the Arabs? Have the Arabs suffered more than the Indochinese? Etc.etc. Is Arab terror not terror' Is U.S. terror nor terror? Is Evans

& Novak less terrifying than N. Viet Army Newspaper? We're all in a hell of terror.

Love,

Allen

A /len and LouiJ Gins berg

3 3 7

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Cherry Valley, New York

September 26 (1 972}

Dear Louis:

[ . . .

]

I don't understand the Israel-Arab situation and I don't feel panisan. I think both sides are following deathly suicidal policies - anxiery reactions which increase lethal pressure rather than decrease - and both sides are sleepwalking into catastrophe - So I feel there is little I have to say except AH which is irrelevant co the conceptual fury - like Lion's mouth - I imagine as the official position-feeling of the Israel community. Unofficially probably people feel there a lot of bohemian variant mellowness & strangeness on Arab and Israeli sides both.

In other words I guess no reason for me to run away from the situation, a trip/reading with you to Israel. So anything you arrange & think appropriate, O.K. I'm not going to be provocative there, the situation is too scary and tragic, but I'm not a Zionist. My own suggestion wd be to let back in all the Palestinian Arabs & make it a non-Jewish state, secular state. Roughly that's the nearest I can see co a resolution of the conflict. I'm not sure this opinion is practical, and I'm not sure this opinion is emotionally safe to express in Israel. Nor would I be insistent on formulating it. Nor will the question necessarily arise. Nor do I feel sure this is an answer. But as I can't hide my doubt over the validity of the official Israeli military/political/moral position re Arab refugees, Vietnam, the tactics of counter-violence, alliance with U.S.

military etc. you should not be disappointed or emotionally overexcited if I aniculate my consciousness frankly. I've already been in more difficult/
emotional pressure situations in Cuba and Prague where my recalcitrant eccentric complaining got me thrown out of the countries by morally outraged governments. I don't guess we'd get imo any such trouble in Israel; but I want to feel free co retain any kind of clarity & independence of opinion I can and not get into a situation where, finally, I feel I have to submit to mass or bureaucratic opinion in order nor to "offend" or in order to protect my traveling companions from high blood pressure anger attacks.

In other words yes alright let's go to Israel but without me being locked into some kind of silent submissive heavy-heaned acquiescence to Golda Meir -)!

Really I don't know what to say. See, I don't feel sure of my own opinions but I can't form them in advance & guarantee that they'll be agreeable.

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Family Business: 1 9 72

And it may turn out that my judgment is too heavy & we get there and all that's at issue is fun and music & poetry and not some hideous Arab

Israel willful mental death struggle. And it might do some good if we went.

Why shd. I be too cowardly to face it?

What wd. you like for Birthday? I'll be in N.Y. before this weekend, & call - How is Canada reading arrangement>

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 27, 1 972

Dear Allen,

I received your lucitration. It is true we are all more or less guilry, but your lack of perspective and your black-or-white indignation and your wishful blinking of gradations and hierarchies of guilt - all blur your judgment.

Take Israel. When the U.N. partitioned Palestine, the Arabs descended on Israel to wipe it out. The Israeli advised no Palestinians to flee, but the Arab countries panicked the Palestinians to flee, telling them they'd come back later. Remember, in all this, that the Jews lived in Palestine from time immemorial and had rights, too. Don't forger this.

After the wars - which the Arabs aimed to wipe out Israel (don't forget it)

- those Palestinians who remained, they now live in peace, have rights, obtain sanction jobs, have equal treatment, and even have members in the Knesset.

Israel offered to take back a portion of rhe hate-filled Palestinians and pay indemnity for the lands taken. But the Arab insist that all 1 112 million Arabs be taken back. This enormous number would swamp Israel 2 1/2
million and engulf it and wipe it out. Should Israel choose suicide? The Arabs want to wipe out Israel which now depends on its survival upon itself.

After the Holocaust of 6,000,000 Jews in Germany and the widespread anti-Semitism, e�pecially, in Russia, Israel, as a survival remnant, depends on irs life on irs own efforts, in spire of bluntly idealistic Jews like you.

Israel condemns terrorism. The Jewish Defense League, with irs American leader, has been eschewed and condemned by all Israeli leaders.

Allen and Louis Gimberg

339

While I am not unaware of the guilty position in all peoples, history has dealt harshly with Jews; and my inheritance of its immemorial culture makes me sympathetic with Israel's struggle for survival.

I bitterly regret your own so-called, above-the-battle, astropheric idealism, which blinds you to the rights of Israel as a viable nation.

Louis Ginsberg

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

November 1 0, 1 9 7 2

Dear Allen,

I enjoyed your stay here at the house, but it was marred by your arguments, which were either unencumbered by logic or were of a specious hairsplitting variety.

You read this enclosed clipping, but failed to realize or respond to the fact that the Jews have a humanitarian view while the feudal Arabs maul their imprisoned Jews.

Your ignorance of the Jewish situation distresses me and seems to widen a gap between us.

How about your reaching for Jewish Israel bonds instead of hungering after alien gods} 1

Louis
l . A direcc reference to Allen's Buddhist faith. Earlier in the year, at the Dharmadhata meditation cemer in Boulder, Colorado, Allen had taken formal Buddhist vows. His reacher ChOgyam Trungpa Rinpoche, bestowed upon Allen the ride "lion of Dharma."

1 9 7 3

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

February 1 2, 1 9 7 3

Dear Allen,

Congratulations on your being elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts & Letters!

I am delighted that my son has been bestowed this high honor. I am very proud of you.

Come home soon so that I may embrace you and kiss you in happy delight at your new laurels!

Your father, with love,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg
c/o City LightJ

1 5 6 Grant Ave SF

May 5, 1 973

Dear Louis -

Been in L.A. almost a week - reading once in Pomona College, and then two evenings downtown in an auditorium sharing stage with Baba Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert)1 - we raised $5000 in two nights for Tim Leary's lawyers - so this part of trip was success - and I stopped cigarette puffing & smoking living upstairs a vegetarian "mucuous-less" diet yoga food shop I. Richard Alpen (Ram Dass) worked wirh Leary ar Harvard.

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Family Business: 1 97 3
eating avocado papaya melons & beansprouts & nuts for several days - had been puffing nicotine a month again, but came off easy.

Los Angeles sure has grey cloud of smoke overhanging the sky to the mountains behind the huge flat city - giant freeways wind over hills & thru cities and it takes an hour to go visit friends over these huge bands of concrete in space-ship like cars.

I'll be up at City Lights as of tomorrow May 6 Monday - I'll write from there.

Love

Allen

Watergate gushing truths - It's like a woolen sweater - unravel one thread and the whole cloth finally comes apart - If the thread keeps unraveling the whole fabric of "mass hallucination" public imagety will fall - and what should be seen is that all of Vietnam - all the "Brainwash" imagety that Romney complained about in 1968-was also a giant Watergate-type conspiracy. That's basically what the Pentagon Papers proved. But the illegality of the war has yet to be publicized - as present Cambodian Bombing is awful Nixon gratuitous horror show, no good reason, all subterfuge & commerce, as the French say.

I'm OK - my leg comfortable in cast adorned with red hearts scrawled in felt tip color. 1

- Love Allen

When do you move'

AUen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

City Lights

(San Francisco, California)

9 A.M. May 22, 1 973

Dear Lou & Edith -

Been out here 2 weeks, saw McClures who, painting their house dark azure blue, say hello to you - I am staying at Ferlinghetti's office - Larty l. On January 2 1 , while at his Cherry Valley farm, Allen slipped on a patch of ice and broke his right l•g.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

343
and I drove up to the Sierra Mountains and visited Tim Leary in Folsom Prison - thin & pale & alert - and then to Gary Snyder's temple-like house in the Ponderosa pine woods - Next summer I'll take some money and build a cabin up here with local workmen - I'll be here another week & then

--+ Chicago --+ Vancouver --+ Cherry Valley June 4 to go to hospital. Leg feels fine.

Love

Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(San Francisco, California}

May 3 1 , 1 973

Dear Louis -

Back from visiting Gary Snyder in Sierra Mountains, and with him & Ferlinghetti doing a reading in honor of Rexroth down at Santa Barbara

Tonite a benefit for Leary, then plane June l to Chicago, and June 2 to Vancouver, and home to Cherry Valley June 4, hospital and see you in NYC
a week after that. Leg OK, very comfortable.

Love

Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Amsterdam}

june 23, 1 9 73

Dear Louis & Edith -

The poetry festival here went happily - the director A. Van der Staay asked about you, and said he'd invited you and me next year. Well OK
let's see. You should get a letter in the next months. Are you OK!?

Happy Summer Solstice. I'll go to Amsterdam for a few Jays, then London - Love Allen

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Family BusineJJ: 1 97 3

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

June 29, 1 973

Dear Allen:

We received your postcard and we are glad you are having a good time.

It would be an adventure for us three to go to Amsterdam next summer.

I don't want to press you but we have a good offer for you and me to read poetry at the William Patterson State College. They are anxious to have us come in the fall. Would it be too much for you to suggest or to agree to read sometime in October or November' When do you expect to come back'

I am feeling better and hope to see you soon. How are you doing on your crutches' When do you expect to discard them?

As you know we will be in our new quarters on July 16th at 490 Park Ave.

Love and take care of yourself

Edith and Louis.

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg
do Burroughs

Flat 18, 80 (} St. St. James

London SW1
n.d. (ca. early July 1 973}

Dear Louis & Edith -

Got your June 29 letter - I see Louis signed his name with close-near same control as before, so I hope his hand is steadying again.

Prices here same as U.S. inflated - the only stable currency is Swiss Franc

& German Mark at the moment. Hotel was expensive, first night - 5
pounds or 1 2 dollars for tiny fleabag room no bathroom. Meals in average restaurants are 2 pounds (cheap) - already 5 dollars. Burroughs is thinking of moving to Southern Ireland or Costa Rica somewhere cheaper - his income is shrunk from books, and his rent & food cost too much. He's selling his archives to Swiss library & putting his money in Swiss Francs. So that's an economic report.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

345

I saw a CIA fellow here who'd jusr been ro Washington who said Nixon'd tried ro rake over CIA and FBI for his own use, so rhey didn't cooperate (like they already had Ellsberg's psychiatrist's files) bur ler rhe White House secret police (plumbers) blunder inro a gianr self-made rrap.

My leg is healing. I began purring some weight on ir rhis lasr week in London. In a day or so I'll go ro a docror and ger Xrayed & diagnosed ro see if I can switch ro a cane. If so I'll be in berrer shape ro rravel. I have all sorrs of invitations ro Switzerland & Italy & norrhern England (Scorland) bur have been hanging around London, did rhe Inrernarional Poetry conference readings wirh Auden and MacDiaruided and others, and did some TV and radio. You were lucky ro be here in '67 - rhere was lots of money & lots of spirit & fine clothes - rhe economic depression has hir and there's less obvious spirit, poetry readings are duller and more formal, clothes are less showy, there's less of a cenrer & less spirit - people more marure bur no community poetic vivacity. I'll be giving a poetry reading ar a 500 sear rhearer here - proceeds ro charity an actor's fund - and see whar can be done ro enliven rhe scene. [ . . .

]

I'm having a good rime - people srill like me & respect my poetry - bur I shudder ro rhink what hassles a younger unknown person would have ro go rhru ro find food & lodging.

I expect I'll sray on rill early or mid August, and then come home & spend a week with you in Paterson & rhen go visit farm & hang around New York for a monrh. In mid-September I plan ro go to Wyoming on a meditation study retreat for 3 monrhs. I'll rake two weeks off of rhar for a fast reading rour ro raise money ro keep farm going and build a house (shack - about $5000) in California on the land there near Gary Snyder

Phil Whalen & I will both be able ro use ir, in furure. Bur I don't think Patterson College reading be convenient rhen as I'll be flying around roo fasr on that 2 week Fall trip. I'd rather do ir anytime afrer December 1 5 -
early January or February Louis - my schedule will be - in Meditation rerreat Sept 1 5-Dec 1 5 except for

)

Ocr 1 5-25

On the road, mosrly Midwest, reading

Nov 8-1 8

That'll be the first rime I h i r heavy yoga practice, sitting immobile 10-12 hours a day 10 days ar a rime, mixed with reaching & technique discussion. I don't know roo many poets except Gary Snyder & Phil & Diane di Prima who have rhar experience - it'll be useful.

Summer weather here, I lost my one shirr, and walk around on crutches

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Family Business: 1 973
in Bib-overalls and T-shin wirh Bomb srarisrics under bright blue sky. l..asr nighr had pany in my honor ar Turret bookshop in a lirrle alley in Kensingron Church walk - a hundred people or so, nearly everyone I knew well, I srayed up rill AM babbling ro Harry Fainlighr & orher poers.

This afternoon rhe firsr day I've srayed home ro answer lerrers and ger my papers srraighr.

Send me repon on your hand & foor condition Louis. Love as ever - see you in abour a monrh.

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg ro Allen Ginsberg

490 Park Avenue

Paterson, New Jersey
july 21, 1 973

Dear Allen,

How are you'

How is your leg I

I made an agreement - at the suggestion of your dares - for our joint poetry reading ar rhe William Patterson College on Feb. 20, '74. Our fee is $ 1 000. I hope rhis is O.K. (Do you have ro ler your agent know abour rhe dare?)

We moved ar lase afrer much packing and profusion of canons, and miscellaneous impedimenta. I rook Thoreau's admonition ro hean, "Simplify" - and casr off many rhings char, ro ger our of sight, we buried in the cellar and bin. We have four attractive rooms. In my srudy, a commodious one, we have a couch, called a high-rise, for your sleeping in with us.

I am in fair condition with hopes rhar my partially numb righr hand will get better.

Write what you are doing and how you feel.

Regards ro Mr. Burroughs.

Love from Edith and

Your farher,

Louis

Allen and LouiJ Ginsberg

347

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Teton Village, Wyoming}

September 1 7, 1973

Dear Lou:

Began sitting this morn 6:30 AM with food & tea breaks - will sir daily rill 9 PM for next two weeks, uninterrupted silent no-thought - a rest and pleasure. Hope you're as tranquil as a lotus on a golf-pond. Any news, write me here for the next month. I won't move. No newspapers unless I make special effort so won't know the latest massacres till later. I'll be out on way to Baltimore Oct 1 5 th. You'll get schedule by then from Rothschild.

OK - I'll write if I have a Vision - Love Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Teton Village, Wyoming}

September 21, 1 97 3

Dear Lou & Edith -

Been sitting meditation 6:30 AM-9 PM with food breaks - Interesting subjective experience of pain in legs & boredom dissolving into a sort of transcendence of identification with body & opening up of awareness of breath itself as a sort of free spirit bigger than the body self as usually played. This goes on another 2 weeks maybe then some technical studies.

Great trip. Lovely scenery! - Love Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg
n.d. (ca. fall 1 973}

Dear Allen,

Glad to get your letter and your postcards.

Pleased you are doing well in your meditation and clearing your mind -
or what rakes irs place - of trivia and impediments in order to see - or think you see - the larger circle. Let seems be is.

I am hanging on, despite my ailments, or, rather, trying to ignore them.

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Family BUJinm: 1973
haven't written much but hope tO warm up soon. I wonder what sentences, as Kafka wrote, "are waiting for me and impatient to coil about my pen-point." Had a poem, "Twilight" (symbolic), published in the magazine section of the Chicago Tribune. Another poem, called "Midnight Streets," will appear next month in the MidweJt Quarterly.

My binhday passed quietly with friends and relatives calling up or sending me cards. Well, I'll try to hang on till 80, etc.

I am working slowly on my founh book of poems, Our Time.r, and hope to get it in shape by the end of the year. Maybe, somewhere or other, a publisher is waiting for it?!?

Stay sober till we meet.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Teton Village, Wyoming)

October 14, 1 973

Dear Louis:

[ . . .

]

"It's a question of winning this war - or another Auschwitz." If all interpretation of phenomena - this situation - is narrowed down to this one interpretation - which is an image of past - then you enforce that interpretation on the situation, and no other. So either the war is won or it's Auschwitz. I hope your interpretation is not correct. I should pray that it's not. You leave Israel no space this way - no space to transcend or alter a fixed interpretation. lr's a case of double bind, both sides absolutely decided on a fixed closed interpretation of the same situation, each side with a mirrorimage horrific interpretation, victory or death. There should be room !eli: for withdrawal & compromise & reinterpretation of phenomena on both sides.

Space is what's needed: "A new world is only a new mind." Mental space is needed, everywhere. In a way, even Auschwitz is not as bad as a close down of all imagination, a shrinkage of all mental space, & a clinging to a dualiry of rota! power or tOtal fear. It is perhaps too late to behave otherwise, but both sides have been enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

349

There is no God. Everyrhing is permirred.

Meditation I'm doing here isn'r exacrly rranscendental. We just sit 1 0
hours a day doing norhing bur breathing, "like pigs." Mental images, fantasies, recollections flash by, over & over, till the mind wears our its dreamings - the same films repeat in mind's eye day afrer day till they fade somewhat and become more transparent - "I am Allen Ginsberg the poer

. . . whar am I doing here . . . Victory or Auschwitz etc . . .

" and afrer all
varieries of imagination of thar are played our for the 50rh time rhese mechanical images begin losing potency & another present sentience occasionally flashes [by] - what ir feels like to be in a body wirhour thoughrs - Something like the immediate presence of mind space rhe instant afrer I broke my leg - a more realistic appraisal of situation than habirual repeared visual-verbal rhoughr formations recycling rhru consciousness - kind of an uncanny sense of rhe realness of rhe mindless Aspen trees losing their leaves. So it's not exacrly un-locatable Transcendental Meditation - it's more exploration of larger mental space - Still haven't come anywhere clear yet except flashes - and a good inventory of my mental furniture to date. Ir's very boring "like an operation wirhour anesthetics"

says the Tibetan reacher - in the sense of painful just to sit there & do nothing, watching my favorite sex fantasies & polirical angers repeat over

& over till rhey begin to look like rhe empty stereotypes rhey are. There's 60 people in the room sirting & I've screwed everyone already 60 times & gone on to you & Edirh & Naomi & Grandma & repeared rhat till the old movie fades & gone on thru Auschwitz-Israel several dozen times rill I see it's a thought-formation rather rhan a present reality. Bur withour consciousness of fantasies we get trapped in them & act them out, as if they were the only realiry.

This is rhe general direction of rhe last few weeks experience - norhing definite except a sense of interesting relief co be more familiar wirh habitual pattern of "entertainments" creared by my own mind crying to create a self which ultimately is - not there at all - first an empry indifferent symparheric sentience - like the Aspen trees losing leaves. Mounrain tops all around covered with lighr first winter snow, I ger up ar 6 AM, full moon over the peak top 4,000 feet above my motel balcony.

OK - See you next week - I'll call when I ger to Cherry Valley Oct 20 -

Love

Allen

350

Family BuJinm: 1973

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Teton Village, Wyoming}

De.ember 1, 1973

Dear Louis & Edith -

I'll be leaving here (Teron Village) on Dec 6 - srop over a day in Salt Lake ro give reading - and arrive back in N.Y. on December 7 evening - so I'll be in Paterson on the 9th probably - I have reading in Connecticut the lOth & then free again. Money coming in from readings will afford the loan you asked for & repayment to Gene of money he put out. I have no regular bank account & can't cash the enclosed English check - Edith, can you give it in for payment in Paterson? Enclosed.

This last week here is mostly sitting 10 hours a day crosslegged - I watch snowy mountainside with fixed eyes unfocused, sitting inside my body immobile, observing thoughts rise and fall & repeat themselves. Effort of attention here is ro cut or limit space-travel daydreaming by attention to breath leaving nostrils - & so re-focus attention on present space & present empty mind filled with space. Nothing else to report except I'm reading Denver PoJt, White House soap opera. I see Vesco was linked to dope traffic!

Gee!

O.K. love ro you - Not seen the comet yet, have you' I get up at 6:30

AM but it hasn't showed above Gros Ventre Mountain range on S. E.

horizon yet. Sky blue & mountains crystal clear & snowyropped now.

Love, Allen

Again

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

De.ember 22, 1 973

Dear Allen,

I see that Aba Elan said, at rhe Geneva conference, that Israel would offer compensation ro displaced Palestinians (or to Palestinians who fled, though some who remained were well treated and a few rose ro the Kenneset).

How about compensation, Aba Elan added, to those thousands of Jews driven out by the Arabs without any compensation for their homes and possessions?) )

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

35 1

As for Jerusalem, when, in a previous war or panition, the Arabs took possession from Easr or Old Jerusalem, no Jews were admitted there. All slept well in other countries. No protests.

No right of possession by force? True, but how about Russia usurping possession of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, East Germany? What arrant, brazen hypocrites!

As for Rev. Dan Berrigan, he is decompanmented - he is riddled by Christian anti-Semitism. He charges Israel of not abolishing poverty. What nation has done that?

What crimes against humanity has Israel engaged in, according ro Berrigan? It has treated Arabs well & attempted to integrate them into the body politic.

He accuses Israel of savagery. What damned nonsense! Israel is fighting for its existence and refused to accept national suicide pleasantly.

Israel does not want Arab territories. It wants to trade them for national security and [the) right to exist.

Sometimes, Allen, in your astral heights, you are perilously close to taking the position of a renegade Jew.

I'd like to debate this question on the lecture platform where restraints would keep us both safe from hysterical outbursts.

More anon.

Yours for Israel with an honorable, safe, peace'

Louis Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

December 28, 1 973

Dear Lou:

The whole Palestinian/Israeli problem is so complex, like a family quarrel, that I don't find anybody's accusations helpful. Probably Berrigan makes it too black & white but the astringency of his challenge makes for good discussion if anybody wants to discuss it, which I'm not sure is common.

Everybody expert tells me different stories, actually, so I have no fixed mind, except on a few facts I know from direct contact rhere. There is as much racism among Israelis as among Arabs whom some pro-Israelis see as

352

Family BuJinm: 1 97 3
a "mob." There is the absolutely real problem o( displaced Palestinian Arabs and that's a major or the major place of thought.

I haven't read Berrigan's complete statement and don't think it's so bad as everybody makes out - because of the real criticism of American -

"Imperialist" - sryle of politics & life rhar probably Golda Meir & Dyan & the high rise hotels in Israel represent. There probably iJ a difference between Meir and rhe original socialist Zion.

I think rhe worst thing on both sides is rhe attempt ro browbeat everybody into agreement "Victory or Death" rhar seems sick.

I don't know YSA personally no? Read their actual statements so all rhis rhetoric "I accuse you" is meaningless, some kind of red flag ro rouse anger and contention.

Any move taken in anger or anxiery causes spread of anger and anxiery.

The harshness of rone of Berrigan may be more objectionable than what he's said as far as ideas.

To lump all "Arabs" together apparently is as mistaken as lumping all Israelis together. There are a lot of Israelis who think Golda Meir's sryle is

"imperial" i.e. get what you can by force, for your side, & screw rhe orher side. American Jewish opinion may nor be rhe same as native-born Palestinian Jewish opinion. lr is not black & white. No amount of love physical or emotional can simplify the scene.

I have absolutely no idea what the solution ro rhe problem is. Yours was

"Victory or Buchenwald" and that's no solution char's a remote slogan.

Resolution of the conflict seems ro be hung on rhe Palestinian refugee problem. No matter who is playing rhar up, rhe people are real & will nor vanish for anyone else's convenience.

The arrack on "radical self-haters" is based on rhe flat statement rhar

"genocide is the real aim of the Arab 'revolution'." I think that that statement is probably inaccurate, and is an inflammatory escalation of rhe actual Arab position and fantasy. Such statements are based on extremist propaganda (the mirror image would be an Israeli politician threatening ro A-bomb Cairo) by Arabs but are nor rhe actual Arab position. This use of rhe "Genocide" threat in the editorial confuses matters because ir is nor a practical r�alistic appraisal of ocher side's motives and grievances. It is used as a flat statement ro inflame your reactions. lr is much more damaging than Berrigan's speech ro any real understanding.

Re Palesrineans: Some "fled," some were "displaced," and some were driven out by force. This is a fact char cannot be gotten around or bought off with money. At least I guess so, judging from other fights. Actually I don't

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

3 5 3
really know, and I doubt char you do, or Aba Elan. Maybe somebody actually on the land might know, and I doubt they're being consulted.

I couldn't agree more char all governments Russia in E. Europe and U.S.

in So America Philippines Greece Indochina etc are hypocrites. In face the entire U.S.A. (Turde Island as the Indians knew it) being taken by force and raped by ourselves ever since - is still suffering the bad effects of char seizure & it may yet poison rhe whole world w/mercuric smog.

I doubt chat Berrigan is an anti-Semite and I chink it's dangerously paranoid for Jews co make char their first reaction. In the first place it's a tangle of language - the Arabs are Semites. So you'd have co accuse him of being anti-Jewish. And he's probably not anti-Jewish when you puc it char way, you know.

There's coo much co argue about and coo licde real informacion, at lease on my pare - I'm hoping you don't assume you for your pare are completely informed on living actuality there: Israel "has created Arabs well & attempted co integrate them into rhe body policies" - a statement like chat which I see as not complete or accurate, but a sore of well meaning gloss over a real tragedy and a real conflict which is not even perceived by you as a conflict - could lead co endless ignorant contention between us.

I don't believe the situation of "debate" with one side making points against another, as if one side could "win," "truth" is a useful attitude here.

Exchange of real informacion would be more useful. I don't chink either of us have any real idea what's going on and all rhetorical language like

"theological anti-Semitism" - "Victory or Buchenwald" - "I accuse you"

"Radical self haters" contributes co the confusion. I suppose Berrigan's generalizations also might have.

The really difficult thing is, the U.S. has about been taken over now by the military - and chis Israeli crisis with 2.2 billion war aid co Israel & the psychological strengthening of Jackson, Kissinger & the hawks, plunges the U.S. deeper into irreversible military control economically psychologically & politically - and so sees barriers co any kind of reversal of U.S.

imperial policy all over world, and barriers co reversal of ecological selfdestruction & economic burn-our. Watergate might have been beginning of roll-back of military dominance in U.S. but char has nor happened, and I feel char military hawk folk in U.S. like Jackson are being strengthened and the whole fearful role of the military - by their firm pro-Israeli stand rallying Jewish liberals (who might otherwise be anti-military) as well as middle-road people - all confused by scary modern world - co cake on

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Family Businm: 1 973
apathetic attitude coward Pentagon CIA etc. I mean, "if they weren't strong who would save Israel so maybe I should shut up & let someone else run the world . . . even if it's Jackson & the Pentagon" - And char attitude will end the planet.

Thus the whole problem of official Israeli O.K. of Vietnam war - and working relationship of Israeli military & U.S. military - is still a great hangover and interdependency. This is a whole aspect of world context co remember. It is just "She had to say it." Bur just as she uses U.S. military, U.S. military uses her & Israel hawks to increase control on philosophy & economics here, right now, these past weeks - All Congress afraid to attack Defense Dept & automatically granting huge defense budget intimidated by military's crucial role in beefing up Israel. One thing hangs on another in a weird way. I think it is oversimplifying to say "Israel has no other way co deal with Palestine problem chan get U.S. arms & rake on the whole Arab world & Russia roo." I think that somewhere in here is a primary mistake of choice & road char leads Berrigan co use his accusative word "Imperial" on Israel - in chis huge context.

So there's a real dilemma here - nor a matter just of psychological warping on my part if you want co see it as char - there's a vase unsolved political problem - that has irs roots perhaps in rhe first attempt to use any force at all in the wanime settlement of Jews in Israel - and char leads back to Germany. So rhe chain of aggression is unbroken. These problems won't be solved by passing on aggression & pain ro ochers, whether inadvertently or consciously. The Germans didn't see rhe Jews as humans

- nor with same eyes as themselves - and Jews at least in U.S. don't see the Palestinian Arabs as human - not with the same eyes - bur as a mob as you called it - or a vague mass of people char should be satisfied & happy with Jewish influx into their territory, bur somehow aren't, maybe because they're nor educated or they're of a weird religion or have primitive habits ere. That seems to be the basic problem of distortion of perception of others. To rhe extent that this split vision continues on all sides a resolution is hopeless, and hope co find a permanent security by armed force even 2.2 billion worth is a will o' the wisp.

I don't chink most of the Jewish/Israeli argument or rhetoric or language that I've seen rakes into account the real basic problem. In face most of the public discourse does not even go as far into flexibility of imagination as the actual political settlement at Geneva will be. I mean positions & concessions char were inadmissible a year ago - and which would have brought up "accusations" of "self hatred" or "treason" ere -

Allen and LouiJ G imberg

3 5 5
may well b e rhe practical compromises found a r Geneva. S o there's an elemenr in the situation of a son of patriotic oversraremenr, and like all political patriotism, accompanied by a lirde emotion flagwaving emotional blackmail so ro speak - "Don't you love me?!" "How dare you say things like that ro me?!!" ''I'm your mother! What do you mean I'm selfish! You're crazy!" ere. If you ger what I mean. They lay rhar kind of emotional blackmail on you i n Russia, too, if you disagree with their heroic policies. So you or I just have ro look carefully and nor accept sratemenrs - and positions based on sraremenrs - like "Genocide is the real aim of rhe Arab" or "Victory or Buchenwald."

OK - I haven't been very precise historically. I don't know enough about the actual history -

Love

Allen

I understand Jean Genet has written an essay or made a speech criticizing Palestinian Arabs for male chauvinist hypocrisy.

I enclose your clippings as they're related to my reply, OK?

P.S. Regarding oil: It would be wise for the U.S. to develop solar, wind, & other decentralized electric sources. The whole fight over preserving oil resources is something characteristic of oil-industry capitalist monopoly & industrial-military alliance on a menrally & economically sraric plane of fixation. The enrire "crisis" is our of ecological conrexr anyway. Cosr of Alaska pipeline would be enuf ro R&D ro create solar or ocean currenr power forms. If there's a crisis, rhe reaction ro ask for more oil is neurotic as a junky looking for a fix. That's pan of whole conrexr.

Hope you can read rhis. I wrote it fast off rhe rop of my head.

1 9 7 4

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

January 9, 1 974

Dear Allen,

So you are no more against the war against Hider? What caused Hider?

Many things. The Versailles Treaty? Partly.

But before I go into that, do you know that Commies, during the rise of Hider, said, "Let's make things worse so the people will turn against the Nazis and for us!"

Thus, the Commies joined with the Hider rowdies and louts to beat up Socialists and liberals. And thus they (the Commies) connived with the Nazis. (You blame me, a liberal, with guilt by association; by the same token I blame you, with your taint of communism in the debacle in Hider days.) Well, then, the Nazis, creating chaos with the Commies, turned against them too.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, I take your logic. Then, what caused the Versailles Treaty? (Does history make man, or man make history' Both. A megalomaniac turns evil times to his advantage.) Then, with your logic, what caused the causes and, prior to that, what caused the causes that causes the causes and that begat that and prior to that, what begat - and so on infinitum. Or as Emerson said, "By a chain of countless rings, the nearest to the farthest brings. "

So, at last, we reach the Garden of Eden, and there they ate of the forbidden apple. On the other hand, God said, "Increase and multiply." So who is to blame' And why the equivocation of God? What caused that'

In other words, your opposition view to the war against Hider (who aimed to kill all his so-called enemies - Jews, Commies, gypsies, etc.) is based, I think, on false logic.

More anon.

Louis Ginsberg

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Family Businw: 1974

P.S. And how are you going co undo ages of history?

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

RD2

Cherry Valiy (New York}

January 28, 1974

Dear Louis -

All this about Hider is a nonsensical argument, you realize, & let's not prolong it. I mean, & said on phone, or meant to say - as follows: I am not Allen Ginsberg of 1942, it is now 30 years later, I'm 3 times the age I was then & my whole experience of the universe has changed.

The abstract animosity I felt coward Hider as a newspaper symbol then is not the same as my understanding of today. My approach would be different.

As you remember, for instance, U.S. intelligence report concluded Hider liked co have Eva Braun shit on him. For some reason it never occurred to the U.S. Government co conduct psychedelic "warfare" making wide & funny use of this fact in giant world headlines. It may not have changed the course of hiscory, or it might have. In any case the same imagination that created international Hider conditions somehow found no use later for image-use of his coprophiliac masochism.

The world has co be re-thought from the botcom. Israel's unimaginative death-disposal of Eichmann a decade ago prefigured an unimaginative view of the Arabs or any "enemy" today.

I am not a pacifist (this in relation to war, Hitler or non Hitler wars) but do realize the imagination is only rarely used in problem solving on political level (except by maniacs like Hider').

There was something "square" about the outside world's reaction to Hider - encouragement of the capitalism that fostered him, indifference to fascism & co Jewish extermination, late fury of self interest, restitution of Krupp empire & Cold War later, & adoption of Hiderian methods in South America covertly & Indochina overtly. The "war against Hider"

solved nothing except local problem temporarily in a world where all problems are as you noted interconnected. Part of the problem is authoritarianism & (Communist) militarism, police state. Part is capitalism which is a sort of economic authoritarianism.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

359

That's what I meant when I sd. on phone I am reconsidering "Hitler" as an image, and especially my own emotional relationship. I remember at the age of 14- 1 5 I talked for war & by age 1 6-17-18 grabbed a 4F as nor to fighr in the war I talked. I was nuts in every direction as an adolescent. I suppose the whole world was, is. I don't see reason to retain my 1940-1943
worldview as a permanent understanding of the universe. There is a tendency to rake the WWII as a fixed jelled fact over & done with, one's opinion need never review it. Bur mind changes all the rime. No reason nor to. No need to fix thought-forms forever. Even Hitler can be turned upside down. Nothing to be afraid of or get mad or srarrled at. The imagination is supreme, "a new world is only a new mind," as W.C.W. said. I'm nor disputing facts about Buchenwald. I am reevaluating Soviet English & U.S.

hypocrisy in rhe final debacle, was Stalin as "bad" as Hitler or nor? Is U.S.

"American Century" and all that catastrophe of last decade any better than

"Good German" thousand years image? Is Rusk better then Eichmann' Is Westmoreland more virtuous than Bormann? Is Nixon holier rhan Rudolf Hess? Is the average American "better" than the average German? These are all open questions. There's no fixed reality you can put on ice & say stop thinking - OK -

Love

Allen

I think I'll Publish a piece on Berrigan controversy for Liberation mag.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Chen-y Valley, New York}

February 1 6, 1 974

Dear Lou -

Saw the Times piece, enclosed. I'm sure Arab armies are barbaric and the story true, I guess. Barbarism of that kind is now universal, as you know, including U.S. barbarism especially noteworthy in S.E. Asia, it present where it is refined mechanized & made scientific as in Saigon where there are 200,000 political prisoners habitually undergoing electronic torture according to Kennedy subcommittee on refugees.

As a matter of fact I think it likely rhar under conditions of increasing

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mechanization everyone on earth every cace is barbaric and of course rhere are srories of Israeli barbarism & rorture of prisoners for informacion, which I believe are also rrue, as far as I can ascertain.

I don't however chink rhe enclosed clipping will prove an argument char rhe Iscaelis under pressure were or will be less barbaric chan any ocher cace rhere is norhing abour rhe Jewish cace char makes ir superior co ocher caces in rhese marrers, or inferior, as ocher caces occasionally claim. Basically I am anti-cacisr & anti-narionalisr in every direcrion where I can be coherent -

The main problem is how co avoid nationalism wirhour sacrificing rhe joy of particularism, localism, "'narionalism·· and provincial folklore - oddly ir is Scare Nationalism (as in Cuba, Russia, & U.S.A. ere) which suppresses folkloric ways & minoriry culrures. So how co balance healrhy particularism, or Narionalism (earth-folk-ways) againsr armed egoisric nationalism char seems co be insoluble problem.

JAWEH & ALLAH BATTLE! 1
is rhe ride of a new poem I'm finishing ryping. Ir"s only by abandonment of narionalisric allegiances char people can end rhe war which is genecally manipulared by Scares above rhe folk. There are pacifisr groups srill in lscael and rhe Arab countries char cling co some nor ion of brorherhood car her chan unsoluble conflicr. Ir is an idealisric posicion bur under present hysrerical circumstances I see no ocher road - all ocher roads of armed conflicr lead ro mass murder as in rhe clipping you send. As I myself would nor physically fight for eirher side if I could help ir, so I can"r advise ochers who have chosen co support fighrs or fighr rhemselves. I wouldn't advise ochers co do whar I wouldn'r do - which as I said was a flaw in my own pro-war posicion 1938-9-42 age 1 2-16. See you in a few days.

Love, son

Allen

Allen and Louis Ginsberg's debate rwer the crisis in the Middle East reached a new level after Allen's essay "Thoughts and Recurrent Musings on Israeli Arguments"

appeared in the March I I, I 9 74, issue o/ Libecarion. A furious Louis Ginsberg responded with a letter to the magazine's editor.

I . See ""Jaweh and Allah Banle;· AG. CP. pp. 61�16.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

361

Louis Ginsberg to the Editors of Liberation

March 1 6, 1974

The Editors

LIBERATION

New York, NY

Gentlemen:

I read, with great �nhappiness, rhe article by my son, Allen, re: Berrigan and Israel in your February 1 97 4 issue.

I am enclosing an answer to his anicle, called "A Letter to My Son, Allen Ginsberg."

I hope you will like to print this letter in your fonhcoming issue.

I shall thank you for your counesy in the matter.

Sincerely yours

Louis Ginsberg

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

{March 1 6, 1 9 74}

Dear Allen:

I read, with commingled disappointment and distress, your article on the Arab-Israeli Conflict in the February, 1974 issue of Liberation.

You falsely accuse Israel of "military and nationalistic chauvinism."

What would you' Would you have rhe Israeli waving aloft prayer-shawls and Bibles to meet the oncharging cannon and ranks rhar charged forth to annihilate the country of Israel?

When, in 1 949, the U.N. sanctioned the country of Israel, its Arab enemies, surrounding, bayed about irs imprecation and fell upon Israel to wipe it our.

Israel was forced by abominable events to set up a stare for survivors who crawled away from Hider's unspeakable butchery of Jews and others. When the smoke of Jewish bodies burning in Nazi crematoriums rose in questionmarks to Heaven, hardly a nation heeded. So, as I say, rhe Jews were forced to flee to their own hospitable nation.

Israel is the legitimate expression of the historic separation of the Jewish people for the national liberation.

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Who helped Israel defend herself from being destroyed or wiped our) All nations sat on their hands. Only America aided Israel with arms. Did you want Israel to accept graciously the Arab invitations to suicide) Thus, as I main, it was "Victory or Buchenwald."

Allen, you (and your New Left cronies) are ready to help liberate all oppressed groups - except your own.

Your single example of mistreatment of an Arab is in violent contradiction of rhe general benevolent treatment of Arabs in Israel. The Arabs who chose to stay in Israel (after being urged by Arab nations to flee and then return after Arab vicrory) - these Arabs are well treated. Their lives are enhanced by better housing, sanitation, jobs and education.

Contrast this with the brutalization of such Jews as lived in Arab countries. These Jews were harried out cruelly, expelled with only the clothes on their backs (that is, if they were nor imprisoned).

Israel, contrary to what you aver, does nor wish to humiliate anyone. As Golda Meir said, "We victors are suing for peace, while rhe vanquished are threatening war to wipe us our."

It pains me rhar you, a Jew, bend so far back while you think you are standing straight.

Another thing: I suggest that, instead of panting after strange gods, you should search more for the long roots of your very being - roots rhar reach down to immemorial ancient rimes and are fed by the rich heritage of the illustrious history of rhe Jewish race with Justice for all - a history that harvests a resonant and luminous glory.

Allen, your lofty and aloof disdain has been bruised by the facts.

Your unrealistic, above-the-clouds viewpoint has been ransacked by events.

With love,

Your father,

Louis Ginsberg

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

363

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

St. Louis Airport

April 22, 1 974

Dear Louis & Edith -

Here reverse page is the speech I wrote for Peter to deliver - I knew he would be able to make it heard clearly in the polite atmosphere of N Book Assn. 1 and be able to answer Press questions in line with our common opinions & information as on his war-statistics T-shirt, which he made & wore to the ceremony (mentioned is this week's Ti11U!) - also he was participant in the Beat "prophecies" mentioned - Also knew he'd be funny

& enjoy it with Ed Sanders - & Denise & Anne Waldman who went -

Flying around, writing a few new poems roo, enjoying reading & singing

& getting some publishing business done like this speech, & a letrer to Internal Revenue denying them war taxes April 1 5 (I withheld the l /3 of taxes = 100 billion military to 300 billion budget) - a lot is simple & clear

- right action right speech right labor right energy right mindfulness right meditation right clarity & peace -

Love to you

Allen

Allen spent most of the summer and early fall in the Sierra Nevada range, working with Gary Snyckr, Peter Orlovsky, and a group of local laborers on a cabin, which Allen hoped would serve as a West Coast retreat similar to his farm in Cherry Valley. Snyckr had already built a cabin nearby, in a beautifully rustic area about twenty miles from Nevada City, California, and Allen looked forward to having a place nearby. The physical labor, Allen quickly discovered, was more than he had bargained for, but he found that he enjoyed it.

l . Allen had recently won the NacionaJ Book Award for poetry for The Fall of America. Since Allen was out of town at the time of rhe awards ceremony, Peter Orlovsky delivered his acceptance speech, in which Allen used the occasion co launch an anack on United Scares foreign policy, from the Viecnam War to U.S. involvement in the recent overthrow of the Allende government in Chile. The speech was eventually published as a small booklet, "The Fall of America" Wim a Prize, and was later reprinted in Dehherate Prose (pp. 1 9-20).

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AUen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Nevada City, California}

June I , 1974

Dear Louis:

This town is bigger than Cherry Valley, but I am 20 miles away in woods.

Snyder has a beautiful tile roofed Jap style farm style house here, & in another part of the woods is a complete tiny Zen temple with sitting hall.

I'm building 3 room hermitage. Been holing & axing stumps & clearing the site all week. Leaving now for Sacramento airport to pick up Peter. Good healthy outdoor life working all summer. I'll get rid of half my potbelly I hope - Love Allen

Louis Ginsberg to AUen Ginsberg

June 13, 1 974

Dear Allen,

Enclosed find the letter to you re Berrigan, which appears in the current

May-June 74 - Liberation.

Did you get the Zenger'J recording of our dialogue in San Fran. hotel room? 1 To my surprise and delight, on Father's Day, June 16, The N. Y.

TimeJ in its op.ed. page in the editorial section, reprinted a big excerpt! Did you hear about it? Would you like me to send you a copy of this?

How are you doing in your woodland clearing building your Zen Meditative center?

We are all OK.

Mail me letters about what you are doing.

Love,

Your father,

Louis

1 . Stephen M. H. Braitman, " 'Slice of Reality Life' Interview with Allen & Louis Ginsberg," Zenger's, May 22, 1974; repri.med as "Violets Are Blue: On Father's Day, the Ginsbergs 2," New York Time, June 16, 1974.

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

365

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

{Nevada City, California}

June 1 8, 1 974

Dear Louis -

No I didn't see the N. Y. TimeJ so if you have a spare copy please send ir ro me here - I hope they edited it nearly.

Glad Liberation published your letter, but I think it is more rhetorical than factual, point by point, particularly "general benevolent treatment of Arabs by Israel,"' yr phrase. That wasn't my experience a decade ago there, and isn't anything like the version you hear from Palestinian Arabs, even as reported in the TimeJ.

Work here's gotten ro stage of foundation of cabin dug & ready for concrete, rocks are drilled for peg-holes on which to rest pillars made of pine which we felled and stripped a hundred yards away.

I am camping out in a beautiful circle of ponderosa pine, sleep at night under stars. I don't have writing paper or envelopes at moment - It's hard to do paperwork which is why I depend on postcards.

Peter labors all day long digging & skinning trees and has astonished everyone here with his endurance and solidity - there is a frontier-like cult of work here bur the local woodsman carpenter Buddhist hippies never saw anyone so fanatically working as Orlovsky. I don't think the place would get done if he weren't around to open the earth & move rocks.

Most of the money for building was already set aside when I came up here but probably I'll need more $ so I'll sell some papers ro Columbia this summer - some of Kerouac's letters probably.

I sent you back the Zenger'J interview? I don't have a copy so keep it safe, which I know you do.

Meanwhile I'm learning about axes, draw knives, hammers & nails, drills and wheelbarrows - There's no electriciry so everything on spot must be done by hand. Fortunately Gary Snyder helped cut a truck path thru the brush and so we can deliver lumber, rocks, cement & plumbing, Planning nice outhouse and outdoor summer kitchen.

And Summer solstice, several nites ago, we all put on a play by McClure

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Family BuJinm: 1974
in the starlight on the meadow between Gary's house and the site I'm working on -

Love

Allen

Best ro Edith.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

June 27, 1 974

Dear Allen,

Enclosed find the excerpt, which appeared in the N. Y. TimeJ op. ed. page 2 1
o f June 16, '74.

I had sent a Xerox copy of this ro Ferlinghetti, asking him to forward it ro you. I sent him also some poems of mine for possible use in his forthcoming City LightJ Journal.

I'll send you an article on our poetry reading when I get Xerox copies soon - it's from an underground paper, called The Phoenix.

San Fran. certainly gave us plenty of notice, producing about seven stories. I'm saving them all in my folder.

All's quiet here. I'm reading much but liking less. Had a couple of new poems published in minor places.

I feel well except that, as before, I can't walk much. No improvement there. I'm taking, with the approval of my doctor, vitamin E and C pills ro see if they will help.

Edith sends her love. She is busy scurrying around with friends on odds and ends.

Peter certainly must be a great helper with his physical prowess. Give him and Gary Snyder my regards.

Write soon.

Shall I send you paper and envelopes?

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

367

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Nevada City, California}

july 1 0, 1 974

Dear Louis

Hard work for me potbellied city-lax,
pushing wheelbarrows empty up hill, shoveling red din into a sieve, shaking out fine Mexican-red dust,
lifring iron spoons full w/clay into flat-bed jeep,
mixing gravel from old gold mines with measures of grey concrete with red clay dust, to color kitchen floor, rhen
watering hardened concrete with hose so it won't crack And logs, draw knives strip bark, chisels smooth out branch holes, tumbling round posts over each over a bed of rwo pine laid parallel, helping dig foot deep holes for porch srone foundation All work done in a month - then unseasonable rain -
days under apanment-high ponderosa's dripping water
onto lean-to roofed wirh black and white plastic rolls, sleepingbags muddy wet ar dawn, squirrels scampering away from our apples,
deer at Gary Snyder's pond-edge in garden -

Unexpected rain ending sweaty labor, a few days
sheltered indoors, reading Zen koans or Lu Yu's
eleventh century laughter about his drunken white hair -

Now sun's our, Wednesday sky's blue,

Cool wind in pines dries housetops and grass fields -

Trial ro re-srack wer lumber ro dry in sunlight,

Load rhe truck wirh second hand windows ro rake ro Marysville ro dip in vars of chemical paint remover, and on ro Frisco ro Poetry reading this Friday w/McClure & Snyder, Benefit small Island attacked by Yamaha Industries Tourism

Small sample of Grear natural world eaten by human cancer -

I read your friend Bluefarb's lerrer bur could nor make head or rail of ir -

Yes he reasons well, bur poems my stepmother likes he thinks are off track,
he doesn't believe in Jahweh bur he wants me ro believe, He doesn't practice religion bur wants me ro practice what he

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Family BuJinm: 1 974
rejected -

He doesn't respect my learning but wants me to respect his bookishness -

He takes things personally and denounces my vanity -

It's too confusing to argue when neither of us know what we're discussing
and meanwhile pseudo-peace in mid-east makes all previous reasons vain -
assenions of sovereignty yesteryear today are bargained away today -

Meanwhile lumber must be piled properly or it'll warp And what I'm learning is not history or Kabbalah but bruises on my hands and knees, splinters from rough cut wood
and how difficult it is to master the "primitive"

the old stoty, how I lost track of shelter and food, given them in cities,
and how hard and beautiful both seem when worked for by hand.

I'll write in a few days when returned from the white-hilled city -

Meanwhile we have each other's love while still alive -

Son,

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

July 15, 1974

Dear Allen,

Received your letter of July 10.

It was interesting as a lavish and exuberant outpouring of concrete details

- a rich flood as from a big cornucopia of details, pouring out in unrestrained specific details of your physical labors: "the red clay dust, chisels, deep holes for porch stones," ere. lr all reads like a litany or prose poem of concrete edge - appealing, rouch-sensarion anifacrs. My muscles got tired from those labors almost Herculean. Nothing like youth!

When will you finish rhis miniature temple'

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

369

[ . . .

]

I am lying fallow poetically. Wrote a few poems recently.

Am reading the N. Y. Times as usual. Glad Ehrlichman was found guilty.

(What an arrogant, self-serving, unctuous, bloated toad he is.) I ponder imponderables & try to touch intangibles, etc. etc.

I posture my mind on majestic passages of memorable lines. I like this one: "The greatest mystery is not that we are thrown up, by chance, between a profusion of matter and of stars, bur, that, in that prison we should be able to get our of ourselves images sufficiently powerful to deny our insignificance." Malraux

I miss you and look forward to your letters.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

P .S. Scatological Dept

Nixon once sacked Cox, the lawyer, now an auto sticker reads as follows

"Nixon is a Cox-sacker'"

L.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

{Nevada City, California}

July 22, 1 974

Dear Louis:

Floor down now about complete - next step frame of cottage including log beams we cur skimmed & chiseled cleaner.

I shouldn't have been so condescending "your friend Bluefarb" as he's my friend too so forgive me that rhetoric, a flaw.

Glad Allen Jr's [sic] got a girl & car license. I'll go to Boulder, CO July 28-Aug l l to teach in Buddhist Academy - Poetics.

Today Sunday sat down with all the mail. I'm losing weight & getting a few minor new muscles & am browner. Love Allen

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Family BusineJJ: 1974

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

August 12, 1974

Dear Allen,

Was glad co hear your voice from Boulder, Col. and co hear you were O.K.

These days are traumatic for rhe nation. Tricky Dicky, caught in the coils of his own machinations, proved co be victim of his own inner depredations.

Character is destiny -'

A great sigh of relief went over the nation - and me. It proved that, in our democracy, defective as it is, the Constitution is alive and well. I felt glad co be an American.

Also there is a difference between the "good" Germans and "good Americans." In Nazi Germany, perhaps rhe Nazis, at gunpoint, cowed the Germans so that they could nor overthrow Hitler. Bur here in America, twice they overthrew a president, once when the anti-war protests forced Johnson co resign, and now, when the judicial process, plus the hostility of the Americans co Tricky Dicky's illegalities, forced him from office.

I do think there is hope for America.

As I cold you, a crew, under the auspices of the Board of Education, rook videotapes of an interview with me and will show it in the public schools as an example of Parersonians in successful careers. They want co do one with you when you come home.

I am enclosing a letter from my epistolary friend who still wants us to come to Marquette, Michigan, in rhe fall. The terms he agreed on are $ 1000.00 plus $500 for expenses. He says he is in couch with your agent.

Thoughts to posture one's mood on:

Schools aren't what they used to be and never were.

"The purpose of life is perpetual astonishment."

"Life is rhe force in nature rhar strives to attain a greater power of contemplating itself." Shaw.

"Man's intelligence is the universe of becoming aware of itself. " Asimov

"It is a wonder that those who are against the establishment don't insist on reinventing rhe wheel, which came our of a bolurgeois society." Sol Alinsky

Allen and LouiJ Gimberg

371

Well, Allen, I'm still hanging on! Oct 1, in two months or less, I'll be 79. Intend to make 80. Meanwhile, when I get up in the morning, I try to explore the surprise and wonder of finding myself enjoying the astonishment of being alive; so that, in poems, I celebrate the amazement of life.

Write me long letters because I miss you very much.

Love from

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

Allen Gimberg

Allegheny Star Route, Box 963

Nevada City, California 95950

AuguJt 13, 1 974

Dear Louis -

Enclosed Phoenix clipping. Back in Sierras roof being put on today by carpenters & Peter & Denise - I'll spend day answering mail.

Chogyam Trungpa asked me to help found an am school community in Boulder as adjunct to meditation center 1 - he was interested in the Buddhist meditators also becoming poets. So I'll probably spend more time in Boulder & around Rocky Mountains in far future, running a poetry school from a distance & in residence a few months of the year. There were 2000 students at last session of this ''Naropa Institute," I just left to come back here & finish cottage. Work should be done within a month - as far as the solid body of the house - after that, beds & shelves & details have to be carpented up . . . . Finished FirJt Book of B/ueJ & gave that to Anne Waldman to publish.2

All fine here.

Love

Allen

I . The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Pot"rics, ar Nampa Instiruu: in Boulder, Colorado.

2. Firii 8/uu. (New York: Full Court Press, 197'5).

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Family Businm: 1 974

Received advance copy of Allen Verbatim, 1 Gordon Ball's editing of my mouth-spouting 1 97 1 . They'll send you one.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Nevada City, California}

September 8, 1974

Dear Lou -

Sorry long 2 week silence I've not been able to get to desk writing, getting more involved with building side porch out of oak poles, and notching & sawing & creosoting wood lintels, and cutting tarpaper and insulation to block chinks in the frieze between log rafters under the roof. House now has roof asphalt shingles and siding on outside, next put in inside sugar pine walls and windows, doors, a stairway, shelves & closets -

It's so beautiful that I hope you'll be able to come out here next spring and stay awhile - house is on nice level ground in the woods near a flat meadow so you won't have trouble getting around - surrounded by blue oak trees, tall ponderosa pine like a thinner Muir woods, and manganita red-branched brush, with mossy rocks all around like in the Forest of Arden

- and in front of the cottage there's a large platform of bedrock which has a dozen mortar holes for grinding acorns & grass seeds - the spot was domesticated hundreds of years ago, so it's an auspicious sire.

I'll be working here rill Ocr 1 and then 2 weeks in San Francisco and on way home around Ocr 1 5 . I have a Dharma Festival reading date in S.F. Ocr 7 - so can't go to Marquette with you then, bur could meet you on the way back & see you home around Oct 1 5 - I'll write a note to Rothschild about that. Enclosed your copy of Livingston's letter.

I liked the poem about leaky lifeboat you sent - swift & to the point. I'm sending it on to Gregory Corso since the inspiration was his. The poem has no excess & says what you think fast.

I don't think Nixon's passing & pardon will make much difference to essential pwblems & guilts in America, as I said in the National Book Award speech half year ago - Ford & Laird were always chief hawks on the war, in fact 10 years ago it'd been unthinkable that those nuts & creeps allied w/milirary-indusrry would be in Complete Control. Johnson & Nixon I. Allen Verbatim, eel. Gordon Ball (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974).

A /len and LouiJ G imberg

3 7 3
passed bur rhe Milicary-induscrial-Police nerwork is more powerful & secure chan ever. Rockefeller was always bad, wirh his family & himself, an awful exploicarive capiralisr Ludlow-massacre Arrica-massacre record. One grear polirical-economic-rechnical quesrion is Energy and how ro ger off rhe perrochemical addicrion which is burning down rhe world's veins -

Rockefeller as Governor desrroyed mass rransir, hiked up rhe subway fare, build gianr highway sysrem. He has menral & physical addicrion ro gasoline & rhus is a rerrible choice.

Ford has been a mass murderer also re Viernam. Nixon was gor on perry burglary, nor on rhe war crime much vasrer scale, secrer illegal bombing of Cambodia. The press, public & poliricos refused ro face rhe deeper problem & faces. So I don'r chink much has been gained ar all, Johnson

& Nixon gone - I prayed for Johnson remember. Ir's rhe scares rhemselves

& rhe people char are guilry nor jusr Nixon, because rhey elecred him knowingly, and accepr Ford knowingly. There's been no reversal of basic energy and milirary desrrucriveness, and rhe war in Viernam cominues as big as ever as far as killing and U.S. funding of rhe killing. I'm sorry you srill "feel glad ro be an American," in addirion, because such narionalisric vaniries are nor essenrial ro local roared well being - as you remember from earlier Socialise days, NationaliJm is a curse & generally an excuse for businessmen & real esrarers ro kill Indians, wage wars on foresrs, &

"civilize" rhe world for rheir own selfish cenrralizarion of power. Large narions as Solzhenirsyn poinred our are a curse & one had bener idenrify wirh one's own narure, one's own local icy, one's own waterJhed - rhe source of one's own delighrs.

I like provincialism, localism, folklore, individualiry, as did rhe founders of rhe "narion" and chink char rhe American Cenrury has been a piece of egorism and violence equal ro any in world's hisrory. The egorism is rhe worse. Inrernarional energy monopolies fronred by Ford & Rockefeller now run America and Nixon's obvious disgrace hasn'r changed char manifesr egorism of leaders & people in America ar all. The problem in U.S. finally is really rhe people, rheir bourgeois hypocrisy - living fady off narure while destroying ir everywhere for rheir far - and calling char "normal" &

"Progress." Narure's revenge will be slow and awe-ful.

Very inreresring group of young woodsmen & women here all hard working. Carpenrers living off rhe land improving ir, selecrive rimber curring, building ponds & gardens enriching rhe locale, and all of rhem

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know personally exactly where their water comes from & where & how their shit is disposed, not like mechanized middle class which is enslaved to robot dreams, ignorant of its own waste. See, the idea that 7,000,000 people in N.Y. knowingly or unknowingly dispose of their shit into the ocean is enough to undo the foundations of the entire nation. It's a piece of arrogance

& stupidity you could find in science fiction, about a bunch of slobs who tore down their own planet and died -

Love,

Allen

I'll send photo of house when I make one soon.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

September 12, 1974

Dear Allen,

I was relieved to get your lener and w know you are well.

Your idyllic description of your dwelling is interesting and has marvelous therapeutic value. The elemental forces of nature, seeping into your system, must have a salutary effect on your psyche.

(Still, I don't think that you are any more superior or benefitted by knowing where your excrement goes, if I do nm. That is a specious argument of yours.)

I agree that the industrial military complex is a danger but what shall we do with the growing armaments of the Soviets' I know your head is up in the clouds of pushing for an ideal peace assented to by the Commies, but I never trusted nor trust the Commies, say what you will. Peaceful coexistence and slow, mutual agreemenr might in time bring a peaceful convergence.

The judicial process is faulty, but it is the best we have. I am proud to be an American, though I perceive its faults. The worst form of government is a democracy - with the exception of all the others.

[ . . .

]

When will you come to these parts'

Love from your Father,

Who is hanging on,

Louis

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

375

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Nevada City, California}

September 30, 1 974

Dear Lou -

This will reach you !are bur happy birthday anyway, and enclosed some traditional birthday geet for present, as I haven't been our of woods shopping for 2 weeks - also a phoro - I'll try ro call you Oct firsr if I can ger a ride our ro the highway -

Packing up ro leave for S.F. the morning of Ocr 3 Wednesday & be ar Ciry Lights for abour 10 days before leaving for easr - may do some readings on the way, haven't heard definitely yer -

House inside & outside siding now on, & windows & doors being hung right now, woods rove cleaned for installation & closers & sink pur in after I leave during rhe nexr week - Expert carpenter friend of Snyder be sraying in ir all winter making ir wind & rain proof in cracks in exchange for rhe rent - so all's well & I'm in healthy shape - you roo'

Love

Allen

Maybe we come our here nexr summer visit.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

October 5, 1 974

Dear Allen,

Glad ro get your letter dared Sept 30.

Thanks for your generous birthday check. I banked the major part of it rill I ponder what ro get.

Those phoros were fine. You certainly engaged in salutary labors. Edith pounced on the pictures to exhibit to her friends. (Incidentally, Edith is your most loving, loyal and fierce devotee, who will nor brook any criticism of you.)

Eugene gave me a birthday parry with Harold's family and with cake and candles and all fanfare, as did our friend Ruth Lipser.

3 76

Family Business: 1 97 4

Once upon a rime, the precipirous height or promontory of 80 seemed our of reach; now, at 79, I am gradually near the rop of rhe rarefied plateau, which I think I soon clamber upon, and from which I'll, no doubt, look with benign demeanor on the landscape below, viewing ir wirh a philosophic mien and, I hope, a quiet and sarisfacrory tranquility, believing char I did what I wanted ro do rhe most wirh what innate, modest talents I had. (I am happy and fortunate, I chink in having two such fine sons who enhance my old age.)

I am feeling O.K. except, as you saw in San Fran. , my legs with arthritis make it hard for me ro walk much.

Enclosed find an article re Bernstein's forthcoming project, in which you are mentioned.

I am also enclosing small clippings of puns. Show these laresr spasms of my punning to Ferlingherri and his secretary, if you will.

Meanwhile, now and chen, I keep my aesthetic antennae alert for vibrations of inspiration. I guess we search for beaury ro exalt our lives.

From rhe perishable, I try ro snatch rhe imperishable, and ro snare rhe vibrations of rhe momentous behind rhe vibrations of rhe moment.

It's like kindling a spark from rhe strange and unfathomable mystery of life ro illuminate rhe mystery of rhe self. So, I chink - or at least, I hope (as I wrote in one of my poems in my third book) - ro leave some bright remnant of myself behind.

Come soon.

Love from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

1 9 7 5

Allen continued hiJ active involvement in the poeticJ Jchool at Naropa I mtitute, and he waJ now Jpending moJt of hiJ JummerJ on campuJ. The viJiting faculty during the Jummer of 1 975 waJ eJpecially imprmive, with Allen and codirector Anne Waldman heing joined by William S. BurroughJ, Gregory CorJo, Diane di Prima, Ed SanderJ, Ted Berrigan, john AJhbery, Peter OrlovJky, and Philip Whalen. The campuJ had the feel of a Beat Generation reunion.

A few monthJ later, Allen heard from another old friend. Bob Dylan waJ
organizing a group of wandering muJiciam - the Rolling Thunder Revue - which would be traveling from Jtate to Jtate, playing unannounced concertJ in the mimtrel tradition, and Dylan wondered if Allen might be intereJted in joining the troupe.

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

AuguJt 9, 197 5

Dear Allen,

How are you these days, "rhe most August rime of the year?"

How is your health?

Are you being besieged by an avalanche of trivia'

I received the three books you sent. I am deep in Meditation in Action by Chogyam Trungpa. I'll try to transfer rhe heart of his message to the deeps

[Jic] of my heart and blend the rwo there. Give him my regards when you next see him.

The Paterson Library has invited us - father and rwo sons - to give a poetry reading. Mr. Leo Lichleberg spoke of renting a school auditorium.

The dare may be pinned down, if you will, when you come home ar the end of August.

I asked Dr. Sam Berg about the Levys, who spoke with me on the phone.

I am enclosing his answer. Return it soon.

378

Family BuJiness: 1 9 75

I am working on a blank verse poem abour our trip from Boulder co Sanca Fe. Some felicities are wandering inco the poem.

We miss you. Hope your health is improving.

Now and chen I cry co conjure wonders herecoformed by the dancing letters of the alphabet. Felicicous combinations kindle sencences co luminescence co make light co be shed on objects about me, luminous and numtnous.

Regards co Trungpa, Anne Waldman and her boyfriend, Peter and Denise and Gregory (if he is behaving).

I look forward co seeing you soon.

Write when you are in the mood.

Love and kisses from Edith and

Your father,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg co Louis Ginsberg

P.O.B. 382

StuyveJant Station

{New York City}

October 27, 1975

Dear Lou -

I received money from sale of Kerouac letters so here's che $500 I borrowed from you a couple monchs ago. Seems co be definite char I'll be leaving Monday with Bob Dylan and troupe of musicians & singers - I don't know what my role will be - wander around stage in Merlin cosrume or velvet Uncle Sam hac or sic on side on medication cushion, I'll see. I'll bring yr poem along & analyze ic -

Love

Allen

"Thanks for the Loan" - see you in shore rime and I'll write & call.

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

379

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

(Newport, Rhode Island}

November 4, 1 975

Dear Louis -

Beautiful day with Dylan in Lowell Mass, beginning early afternoon visiting Kerouac's grave plot & reading the scone "He honored the world" 1

- We stood in the November sun brown leaves flying in wind & read poems from Mexico City Blues, chen we sat down, Dylan played my harmonium, Peter beside him, & we traded lines improvising a song to Kerouac underground beneath grass & stone. Then Dylan played Blues chords on his guitar, while I improvised a ten stanza song about Jack looking down with empty eyes from clouds - Dylan stopped guitar to scuff a brown leaf in his breast pocket while I continued solo voice, & he picked up his guitar to pluck it on rhe bear perfect to the end of my stanza - little celestial inspired dicey on Kerouac's grave - all recorded for movie then shoe many ocher scenes in Catholic statue grotto Jack wrote about, near an orphanage -

Dylan conversing w/statue of Christ -2

Staying here a few days, chen to Stockbridge -

Dylan wanes to do some scene related to Sacco & Vanzecci when we get to Boston - Thoreau near Walden - A Bicentennial picture - we shoe some scenes on Mayflower replica, & at Pilgrim Plymouth Rock.

Stay well, hang on, more work to do to come -

Love

Allen

Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg

November 7, 1 975

Dear Allen,

Glad to get your letter.

It was interesting, to say the lease, to hear of your adventures with the I. The headstone actually reads. "He honored life."

2. Some of che besr of these scenes were presemed in Rmaldc and Clara, the lengthy film documenrary of rhe Rolling Thunder Revue tour.

,.

380

Family Businm: 1 97 5

Bob Dylan rroupe. Thar was an inreresring scenario ar rhe grave of Kerouac.

Will rhe movie be shown?

All is quier here. I am busy ar my desk, reading, wriring and rrying ro lasso rhe elusive and unfound, rhe unimponderable.

Am working on my fourrh book of poems, Our Times, and hope ro send ir on ro seek irs forrunes soon.

(If you know of a publisher who is [looking] for a book of lyric poems, sarurared wirh philosophic implicarions, ler me know.

Wrire me a lerrer soon.

Regards ro Perer, Denise, and also Bob Dylan.

Love from Edirh and

Your farher,

Louis

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis and Edirh Ginsberg

York Harbor, Maine

November 10, 1975

Dear Louis & Edirh -

Traveling wlrhearrical-musical rroupe seems ro be rhe narure of whar I'm doing - jusr like in old 1930's movies, wirh people crying, mensrruaring, drinking, mediraring, singing rill 7 AM & sleeping all day before gerring on rhe bus. Srill looking for my "big chance" ro do an acr onsrage.

Meanwhile busy conceiving scenes & shooring improvised charades w/

Dylan & Joan Baez - Perer hauling luggage, Denise preparing dressing rooms - rhe concerrs are beauriful - Love Allen

Allen Ginsberg ro Louis Ginsberg

(In air}

N()Vember 18, 1975

Dear Lou -

On way ro Urah somewhere over midwesr, farms squared below under clouds - Sudden deparrure from rhe Rolling Thunder company for side rrip

Allen and Louis Ginsberg

381
to read poetry - one problem with this tour is that musicians are so preoccupied with their rock style I haven't had a chance to perform before audiences except in the movie we're improvising - In Massachusetts I read pan of "Kaddish" in a resort motel before a convention of Maj jong playing grandmothers - odd, half-real half messy-ear'd ladies - cameras rolling & Dylan & Peter 0. listening -

What is amazing about the theater is the enunciation of vowels & syllables in rhythmic progression by Dylan who seems to me to be epitomizing all the Americana poetics from Poe thru Vachel Lindsay thru the poetry-jazz experimenters of a decade ago - He's able to stand up & chant/recite/sing intricately regularly rhymed irregular-lined narrative poems to continuous downbeat & instrumental background, making a combination of music & poetry, with emphasis on the words, that maybe hasn't been performed as theater since the Greeks. His very mouth seems to keep rhythmic tune, as well as his stomping feet. Real poetic genius transcending anything I've seen invented for utterance - tho maybe I've heard better words from Kerouac, but the combination of Terpsichore, Clio (narrative poems), Thalia, Erato, & Calliope among Muses is rare - Dance, history, theater, poetics & music. So the tour has been a poetic vision - I hope before the run is out you get a chance to see the show - maybe we'll get it to some theater in N.Y., there's talk.

Meanwhile cloud cover below hides the landscape, & my mind is in the sky anyway - perhaps am too detached from earth this month - See you soon. [ . . . ]

Love

Allen

1 9 7 6

Allen' I full-time involvement with the Rolling Thunder Revue came to an end in December 1 9 75, when hiJ father became ill and waJ diagnoJed with cancer. LouiJ
had grown very weak, and Allen felt a Jtrong urge to Ipend aJ much time with him aJ
hiJ crowded Jchedule would allow. Neverthelm, in late January, he left for Europe, where he had buJinm to attend to in BruJJeiJ and PariJ. Allen had alwayJ loved Europe, but with hiJ father' I illnm weighing heavily on hiJ mind, the old, familiar placer Jeemed gloomy. "PariJ iJ a mirage, poetry iJ a mirage, I am a mirage, " he wrote in hiJ journal on February 1 , the Jame day that he wrote a more cheerful letter to hiJ
father. To LouiJ, he mentioned that he had Jtayed up all night and watched the Jun riJe, with all itJ romantic implicatiom; in hiJ journal, he waJ much more blunt:

"Dawn iJ white and empty. "

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(BruJJeiJ}

January 28, 1 976

Dear Louis & Edith:

Flew all nice & landed 9AM Brussels - staying at Mayfair Hotel, antiseptic modern. I don't have much to do here except use up free chits for taxis and restaurants given by the Pocket Theater that invited me - they put on KaddiJh in 1 969. Going to museums to see Breughel paintings I saw with Peter [and] Gregory in 1957. I'll spend a week in Paris with Gregory & Jocelyn, and correct proofs at my publishers, new and old translations need work. Nothing is new but old Europe. Sitting in Common Market building to write this card. See you in a couple weeks - Love Allen

384

Family BusineJJ: 1 976

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Paris}

February 1, 1 976

Dear Louis & Edith:

Paris still mirage, snowy streets grey skies & I'm here so short a time with nostalgia for your company & Peter's which I had here long ago - prices high in restaurants - $ 1 5 meal - Gregory & Jocelyn own a 2 room w/
kitchenette apartment 9th floor w/balcony & elevator in ritzy building on Right Bank. George Whitman of Seine bookshop sends his love as do Gregory &Jocelyn. Stayed up all nite & watched dawn on the Seine. There's the Deux Magots Cafe on postcard, passed these last nite, a male gigolo offered services - same tolerant Paris. Be home to go to Washington this Thursday - Love Allen

Although his health continued to duline, Louis Ginsberg hung on. He n!JW needed assistance in bathing and getting dressed, and Peter Orlovsky helped Allen with such tasks. Allen wanted to be with Louis in his final days, but there was no way of kn!JU!ing when those days might be, so Allen divided his time between his father's home in Paterson and his work and obligations elsewhere. In late March, he flew to Colorado to teach a brief course on Charles Reznikoff, one of his favorite Russian poets. In May, after returning home for a visit, he rejoined the Rolling Thunder Revue for several performances. He stayed in constant contact with Louis, either by telephone or through a series of postcards that he mailed while he was on the road.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

[Boulder, Colorado]

Sunday Noon

April 4, 1976

Dear Louis & Edith -

I'm staying in this hotel 1 890's style near Anne Waldman & Michael Brownstein, making curricula plans & writing up gram application papers for next year. Anne & Mike send you their love & hellos. I am teaching Reznikoff to poetry class - I get more and more moved by his simplicity -

The short life-stories he tells are just like Abe & Anna, Abe and Arthur, & your laundry horse stories, in detail. I must read you a dozen pages when I

Allen and LouiJ Ginsberg

385
get back, I think you'll like it - Ic's a simple form you could use now - just to tell simple anecdotes covering a whole life-span - one-half page biography tales of Sam Freiman, like.

I am busy on phone with lawyers and PEN club still crying to gee Leary out, & been talking to him on phone.

Champa Champa Lama returned here with one of his old teachers & is giving lectures next week on rhe feminine principle and all sorts of ideas about che arising of consciousness our of the "womb" of empty space. If he manages to describe how the universe began, I'll let you know.

Peter wrote, said he'd phoned you. If you need any strong arm call him, while I'm away.

W.S. Burroughs III, Bill's Jon, also a writer, will reach his father's prosepoetry in my class tomorrow.

There are no jobs for lirde Alan here - work is hard to find everyone says

- I'll be willing co support him here, with help, chis summer, if necessary for the trip.

O.K. Love to you

Allen

Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg

EJteJ Park, Colorado

May 21, 1 976

Dear Louis:

Busy Days - Dylan asked me co phone Gov Brown's office & give him congratulations on winning in Maryland . . . . Policies raising irs head -

Rain over Rockies, so I've been indoors all day making Buddhist guest-lists for the concert near Boulder - Dylan asked me (drunk) to recite during Intermission - & I've been practicing with musician for my next recording dare June fi rsc - Love as ever Allen

Hang on!

386

Family BusineJJ: 1 976

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Denver, Colorado}

May 23, 1 976 (next stop Salt Lake}

Dear Louis & Edith:

Spent all day in misry rain in giant sporrs stadium, grass wet & muddy; 27,000
youths & maids came out to concen, which built energy & passion in the music till everyone was dancing & cheering. At intermission Dylan casually said to me over his shoulder, why don't you go out & read some poetry during intermission? So I went out with a microphone before the cunain & read an 8
line poem "On Neal Cassady's Ashes" (we were outside of Denver Colo.).

That's the biggest audience I ever had. I'll be home soon - Allen With the arrival of the summer sessions at Naropa, Allen found himself back in Colorado, teaching poetics classes. He had instructed Louis to call him if he neetkd him. When he left for Boulder. he kissed his father good-bye for the last time.

Allen Ginsberg to Louis and Edith Ginsberg

(Boulder, Colorado}

June 14, 1 976

Dear Louis & Edith -

Here's rhe New Jersey Bell $38 check, sorry I'm so !are, I forgot, roo much paperwork to keep track.

It's Sunday, I'm raking it easy looking at rhe mountains from my balcony, seeing students, reading mail.

I miss you and wish you were here or I was there - I'll be back for a week Uuly] 10 unless you call for me sooner.

[ . . .

]

The students this year are smarter, better read more "serious."

Dana, rhe girl who liked you so much, got married yesterday here, and I went in my tuxedo ro her wedding pany for an hour last nite. She said to send you her kisses Louis.

I'll phone & write in the next instant -

Love

Allen

POSTS CR I P T

Louis Ginsberg died in the early-morning hours of july 8, 1 976. Allen was still in Boulder, teaching his customary summer session at Naropa, when he received the news.

He immediately boarded a flight to New York, and while in transit, as his plane crossed over lAke Michigan, he crnnposed a slow blues piece to crmzmemorate his father's passing. "Father Death Blues" became his most moving piece of music, as well as the centerpiece of a sequence of poems he had been writing over the recent months.

Don't Grow Old

I

Old Poet, Poetry's final subject glimmers months ahead Tender mornings, Paterson roofs snowcovered

Vasr

Sky over Ciry Hall rower, Eastside Park's grass rerraces & rennis courrs beside Passaic River

Parrs of ourselves gone, sisrer Rose's apartments, brown corridor'd high schools -

Too rired ro go our for a walk, roo rired ro end rhe War Too rired ro save body
roo rired ro be heroic

The real close ar hand as rhe sromach
liver pancreas rib

Coughing up gasrric saliva

Marriages vanished in a cough

Hard ro ger up from rhe easy chair

Hands whire feer speckled a blue roe sromach big breasrs hanging rhin
hair whire on rhe chesr
roo rired ro rake off shoes and black sox

Paterson, January 12, 1 976

388

Postscript

II

He'll see no more Times Square
honkytonk movie marquees, bus stations at midnight Nor the orange sun ball
rising thru treetops east toward New York's skyline His velvet armchair facing the window will be empry He won't see the moon over house roofs
or sky over Paterson's streets.

New York, February 26, 1 976

III

Wasted arms, feeble knees

80 years old, hair thin and white
cheek bonier than I'd remembered -
head bowed on his neck, eyes opened
now and then, he listened -

I read my father Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality

. trailing clouds of glory do we come
from God, who is our home . . .

"

"That's beautiful," he said, "bur it's not true."

"When I was a boy, we had a house
on Boyd Street, Newark - the backyard
was a big empty lor full of bushes and tall grass, I always wondered what was behind those rrees.

When I grew older, I walked around the block,
and found out what was back there -
it was a glue factory. "

May 18, 1 976

IV

Will that happen to me?

Of course, it'll happen to thee.

Will my arms wither away'

Yes yr arm hair will turn gray.

Postscript

389

Will my knees grow weak & collapse?

Your knees will need crurches perhaps.

Will my chesr ger rhin?

Your breasrs will be hanging skin.

Where will go - my reerh?

You'll keep rhe ones benearh.

Whar'll happen ro my bones'

They'll ger mixed up wirh scones.

June 1 976
v

Farher Dearh Blues

Hey Farher Dearh, I'm flying home

Hey poor man, you're all alone

Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going

Farher Dearh, Don'r cry anymore

Mama's rhere, undernearh rhe floor

Brorher Dearh, please mind rhe score

Old Aunry Dearh Don'r hide your bones

Old Uncle Dearh, I hear your groans

0 Sisrer Dearh how sweer your moans

0 Children Dearhs go brearhe your breach

Sobbing breasrs'll ease your Dearhs

Pain is gone, rears rake rhe resr

Genius Dearh your an is done

Lover Dearh your body's gone

Farher Dearh I'm coming home

Guru Dearh your words are rrue

Teacher Dearh I do rhank you

For inspiring me ro sing rhis Blues

390

Postscript

Buddha Death, I wake with you

Dharma Death, your mind is new

Sangha Death, we'll work it through

Suffering is what was born

Ignorance made me forlorn

Tearful truths I cannot scorn

Father Breath once more farewell

Birth you gave was no thing ill

My hean is still, as time will tell.

July 8, 1 976 (Over Lake Michigan)

VI

Near the Scrap Yard my Father'll be Buried

Near Newark Airport my father'll be

Under a Winston Cigarette sign buried

On Exit 14 Turnpike NJ South

Through the tollgate Service Road I my father buried Past Merchants Refrigerating concrete on the cattailed marshes past the Budweiser Anheuser-Busch brick brewery
in B'Nai Israel Cemetery behind a green painted iron fence where there used to be a paint factory and farms where Pennick makes chemicals now
under the Penn Central power Station
transformers & wires, at the borderline
between Elizabeth and Newark, next to Aunt Rose

Gaidemack, near Uncle Harry Meltzer
one grave over from Abe's wife Anna my father'll be buried.

july 9, 1 9 76

VII

What's to be done about Death?

Nothing, nothing

Stop going to school No. 6 Paterson, N.J., in 1937?

Freeze time tcnight, with a headache, at quaner to 2 A.M.?

Not go to Father's funeral tomorrow morn'

Not go back to Na�opa teach Buddhist poetics all summer?

Not be buried in the cemetery near Newark Airpon some day?

Paterson, july 1 1, 1 9 76

PoJtJcript

391

Allen'J devotion to hiJ father continued long after LouiJ Gimberg'J death. With Mich,ul Fournier at the Nrmhern LightJ Prm, he Jaw LouiJ'J Collected Poems into print. It waJ a beautiful book, containing all three of LouiJ GinJberg'I previouJiy publiJhed volumeJ of poetry, aJ well aJ the unpubliJhed Our Times and a large Jelection of previoUJiy uncollected poerm. Eugene Brooks wrote the book'I introduction, while Allen reprinted hiJ way on hiJ father'J poerm, originally publiJhed in Morning in Spring. The "family buJinm" went on.

Allen wrote other publiJhed and unpubliJhed poemJ about hiJ father, including a Jecond "Don't Grow Old'' poem, which waJ included in hiJ Pluronian Ode collection of poemJ.

"Don't Grow Old"

I

Twenry-eight years before on the living room couch he'd stared at me, I'd said

"I want ro see a psychiatrist - I have sexual difficulties -
homosexualiry."

I'd come home from troubled years as a student. This was the weekend I would talk with him.

A look startled his face, "You mean you like ro take men's penises in your Mouth'"

Equally startled, "No, no," I lied, "that isn't what it means. "

Now h e lay naked in the bath, hot water draining beneath his shanks.

Strong shouldered Peter, once an ambulance attendant, raised him up

In the tiled room. We toweled him dry, arms under his, bathrobe over his shoulder -
he tottered thru the door ro his carpeted bedroom sat on the soft mattress edge, exhausted, and coughed up watery phlegm.

We lifted his swollen feet talcum'd white, put them thru pajama legs,

Tied the chord round his waist, and held the nightshirt sleeve open for his hand, slow.

Mouth drawn in, his false teeth in a dish, he turned his head round

Looking up at Peter to smile ruefully, "Don't ever grow old."

392

PoJtJcript

II

Ac my urging, my eldesr nephew came

To keep his grandfather company, maybe sleep overnight in rhe apartment.

He had no job, and was homeless anyway.

All afternoon he read rhe papers and looked ar old movies.

Lacer dusk, television silent, we sar on a son-pillowed couch, Louis sar in his easy-chair rhar swiveled and could lean back -

"So whar kind of job are you looking for'"

"Dishwashing, bur someone rold me ic makes your hands' skin scaly red."

"And whac abouc office boy?" His grandson finished high school wi rh marks roo poor for college.

"[c's unhealrhy inside aircondicioned buildings under fluorescent lighc."

The dying man looked ac him, nodding ac rhe specimen.

He began his advice. "You mighc be a raxidriver, bur whac if a car crashed into you' They say you can gee mugged coo.

Or you could gee a job as a sailor, bur che ship could sink, you could gee drowned.

Maybe you should cry a career in che grocery business, bur a box of bananas Could slip from rhe shelf,
you could hurt your head. Or if you were a waicer, you could slip and fall down wirh a loaded cray, & have ro pay for rhe broken glasses.

Maybe you should be a carpenter, bur your rhumb mighc ger hir by a hammer.

Or a lifeguard - bur rhe undertow ar Belmar beach is dangerous, and you could cacch a cold.

Or a docror, bur somecimes you could cur your hand wirh a scalpel rhac had germs, you could ger sick & die."

Lacer, in bed afrer rwilighr, glasses off, he said ro his wife

"Why doesn'c he comb his hair' Ir falls all over his eyes, how can he see'

Tell him ro go home soon, I'm roo rired."

Amhmt, October 5. 1978

PoJtJcript

393

III

Resigned

A year before visiting a handsome poet and my Tibetan guru, Guests after supper on the mountainside
we admired the lights of Boulder spread glittering below through a giant glass window -

After coffee, my father bantered wearily

"Is life wonh living? Depends on the liver -"

The Lama smiled to his secretary -

It was an old pun I'd heard in childhood.

Then he fell silent, looking at the floor
and sighed, head bent heavy
talking to no one -

"What can you do . . '"

Buffalo, October 5, 1 978

In 1 995, Allen published a limited-edition poster/poem of '"Visiting Father & Friends, " a dream poem not unlike his "White Shroud" dream poem. which dealt with the resolution of his relationship with his mother.

Visiting Father & Friends

I climbed the hillside to the lady's house

There was Gregory, dressed as a velvet ape,
japing and laughing, elegant handed, tumbling
somersaults and consulting with the hostess
girls and wives familiar, feeding him like a baby, He looked healthy, remarkable energy, up all night talking jewelry, winding his watches, hair over his eyes, jumping from one apanment to another.

Neal Cassady rosy faced indifferent and affectionate entertaining himself in company far from China
back in the USA old 1 950's- 1980s still kicking
his way through the city, up Riverside Drive without a car He hugged me & turned attention to the night ladies appearing disappearing in the bar, in apartments
and the street, his continued jacknapes is wasting rime &

394

Postscript
everyone else's bur mysterious, maybe up ro something Good - keep us all from committing more crimes,
political wars, or peace protests angrier rhan wars"

cannonball noises. He needed peace ro sleep.

Then my father appeared, lone forlorn & healthy still living by himself in an apartment a block up rhe hill from Peter's ancient habitual pad, I hadn't noticed where Louis lived rhese days, somehow obliterated his home condition from my mind, rook ir for granted rho never'd been curious enough ro visit - bur as I'd no place ro go ronighr, & wonder'd why I'd nor visited him recently, I asked him could I spend rhe night & bed down
with him, his place had bedroom and bath
a giant Jewish residence apartment on Riverside Drive refugees inhabited, driven away from Europe by Hider where my farher lived, now - I entered, showed me his couch

& rold me ro ger comfortable, I slept rhe night, bur woke when he shifted his sleeping pad closer ro mine I gor up

- he'd slept badly on a green inch-thick dusty
foam rubber plastic mattress I'd thrown our years ago, poor cold mar upon rhe concrete cellar warehouse floor -
so rhar was ir! He'd given his bed for my comfort!

No no I said, rake back your bed, sleep comfortable Weary you deserve ir, amazing you srill ger around, I'm sorry I hadn't visited you before, jusr didn't know where you lived, here you are a block upsrreer
from Peter, hospitable ro me Neal & Gregory & girlfriends of rhe night, old sweet Bohemian heart don't sleep in rhe floor like rhar I'll rake your place on the mar & pass rhe night ok.

I went upstairs, happy ro see
he had a place ro lay his head for good, and woke in China.

Peter alive, rhoughr drinking a problem, Neal was dead more years rhan my father Louis no longer
smiling alive, no wonder I'd nor visited rhis place

PostJcript

395
he'd retired to a decade ago, How good to see him home, and take his fatherly hospitality for granted among the living and dead. Now to wash my face, dress in my suit
on time for teaching classroom poetry at 8 am Beijing, far round the world away from Louis' grave in Jersey.

Nwember 1 6, 1 984

6:52 A.M.

Baoding, P.R.C.

On Apri/ 5, 1 997, foll=ing a brief illness, Allen Ginsberg died of cancer - the same illness that had claimed his father two d«ades earlier. Some of his cremated remains were buried in Louis Ginsberg's grave.

I N D E X

NOTE: AG's works appear directly under tide;
works by others under author's name

Adams, ).Donald, 1 10, 1 14
atom bomb: used against Japan,

Adenauer, Konrad, 164, 1 94
xxviii, 8, 1 89, 2 1 2; see also nuclear

Algeria, 9 1 , 93, 100, 1 1 3
warfare

Algiers, 64

Auden, W.H., 69-70, 1 10, 345

Alinsky, Sal, 370

Auerhahn Press, I 31-4

Allen, Don (ed.): The New American

Australia: AG visits, 321, 329-33

Poetry, 1 30, 1 33, 1 3 5
ayahuasca (or yage; hallucinogen),

Allm Gimberg Reads H=l and Other

1 29, 1 36, 1 38

Poems (record), 86n

Allm Verbatim (AG; ed. Gordon Ball),

Bacon, Francis, 60

372 & n

Baez, Joan, 380

Allende, Salvador, 363n

Baker, Richard, 329

Alpert, Richard (Baba Ram Dass),

Baldwin, James, 145

34 1 & n

Ball, Gordon, 3 1 9 & n, 321, 372

'America' (AG), 37

Bangladesh, 324 & n

Amsterdam, 72, 74, 343

Baraka, Amiri see Jones, LeRoi

An goff, Charles, 1 5 5

Barker, George, I I 0

Annunzio, Gabriele d', 2 3 7

Barzun, Jacques, 24

Ansen, Alan: i n Venice, 59--60, 63,

Baudelaire, Charles, 303

66; manner and opinions, 69; LG

Bay of Pigs, xxviii, 152 & n
visits in Greece, 322

Beat Generation: AG and father
anti-Semitism: AG on, 22;
discuss, xxvii; begins, 73n; in

W.C.Williams and, 76; and Israel,

Paris, 74; anthologies of writings,

338; see also Judaism

80; reputation, 83, 1 23; social

Apollinaire, Guillaume, 244
values, 100, 102; writings on, 108,

Arabs: and Israel, 306-8, 3 1 0, 337-

1 1 2 , 1 30- 1 , 1 60n

9, 352, 359, 362, 365

Belgium: and Congo, 1 45-7

Archer, David, 1 10

Benares, 1 97 , 203-4, 207, 209

Ark (magazine), 57, 63

Benet, Stephen Vincent, 1 3

Artaud, Antonio, 1 10

Berg, Dr Sam, 377

Ashbery, John, 377

Beria, Lavrenti, 2 3 3

Asimov, Isaac, 370

Berkeley, California, 36, 38, 40, 44,

Athens, 1 61-3

239. 24 1 , 292

398

Index

Bernsrein, Leonard, 376
on Long Island, 3 1 , 53; LG visits,

Berrigan, Rev. Dan, 35 1-3, 359,

36; children, 45--6, 64, 67, 195,

361 , 364

202; and Naomi's funeral, 52;

Berrigan, Ted, 297, 335, 377
visirs LG, 54-5, 1 68; LG reporrs

Bhagavad Gita, 207
on, 1 3 1 , 1 57--S, 1 7 1 , 1 78; holiday

Bierce, Ambrose, 2 1 8
wirh LG, 232

Big Sur, California, 238-9

Brooks, Eugene (AG's brorher):

Big Table (magazine), l l4n
poetry, xxi , 55, 1 26, 1 95, 202,

Birmingham, Alabama, 209

283; born, xxiii; on farher's

Bishop, Gordon, 276
concern over AG's behaviour, xxv;

'Bixby Canyon Ocean Parh Word
on AG's political differences wirh

Breeze' (AG), 323n
farher, xxvii; sees AG's lerrers ro

Black Mountain Review. 38, 4 1
farher, JCCX; photographs of, 7 ;

Black Panthers, 306-l l ; Jee abo
rakes play-writing course ar

Negroes

Columbia, 12; visits ro father, 1 2,

'Black Shroud' (AG), 44

14, 24, 32, 54-5, 1 68, 260, 320;

Blake, William: AG's visions of, xxv,

AG enquires abour, 1 6, 1 60, 1 8 1 ,

19, 94n, 2 1 5 ; Bertrand Russell

228; writes ro AG, 1 7 , 2 2 , 5 1 ,
admires, 185; as AG's guru, 199,

209; passes bar exams, 18; lerrers

20 1 ; influence on AG, 257-8,
from AG, 28, 44, 107, 1 1 8, 1 32,

296; AG writes musical charts for

1 37, 23 1 , 235; relations wirh AG,

SongJ of lnnO<"enu and SongJ of

29; builds house on Long Island,

Experience. 278, 288, 292, 3 2 1

3 1 , 36, 39-40, 49, 5 3 ; LG visits,

Bobbs-Merrill Co. (US publishers),

36, 1 95; children, 45--6, 64, 67;

272
reports on morher' s funeral ro AG,

Bodenheim, Maxwell, xxiii, 79, 259

50-3; visirs mother, 50; buys

Bombay, 163, 17 3, 175, 1 78
copies of AG' s book, 57; moves

Bormann, Marrin, 359
inro Long Island home, 57; holiday

Boulder, Colorado, 370, 384-7; Jee
rrip, 60; manages AG's money, 6 1 ;
abo Jack Kerouac School of

AG hopes ro borrow from, 66, 7 I ;

Disembodied Poerics; Naropa
finances, 77, 1 1 2; family life, 78,

Institute

122; sends money ro AG, 80; reads

Bourguiba, Habib, 89

AG's 'Kaddish', 123; LG reportS

Bowles, Paul: in Tangier, 60, 1 5 1 ; in
on, 1 3 1 , 1 5 7-8, 1 7 1 , 1 78, 229;

Ceylon, 1 67 ; AG wrires ro, 170
and Max Frohman's dearh, 1 55;

Boyle, Kay, 331
and AG's rax demamd, 1 65; AG

Brairman, Stephen M.H., 364n
sends presenrs ro from India, 1 76,

Braun, Eva, 358

1 8 1 , 183, 2 10; defends Kerouac in

·Brazil, 148, 324
lawsuit, 1 78; interest in astronomy,

Brodsky, Joseph, 229 & n

1 95 , 1 97, 240; LG suggests AG

Bronowski, Jacob: Science and Human
dedicate book ro, 2 16; parry for

Value<. 260

LG's 70rh birthday, 237; meers

Brooks, Alan Eugene (Eugene's son):

LG on rerum from Europe, 269;
babyhood, 45--6, 52, 54-5, 67;
broadcasts on Space Law, 275; as
youth, 369; seeks work in Boulder,
lawyer for Commirree on Poerry,

385

285; AG disagrees wirh, 309; AG

Brooks, Connie (Eugene's wife): house
repays money ro, 350; gives

Index

399
birthday party for farher, 375;

Camus, Albert, 2 1 8
wrires Imroducrion ro LG's Our

Carmichael, Scokely, 307, 309

TimeJ, 391

Carr, Lucien: imprisoned for

Brooks, Perer (Eugene's son), born, 67
manslaughrer, xxiv-xxv, 2-4; AG

Brownsrein, Michael, 384
meers ar Columbia, I ; in AG's

Brussels, 383
ficrion, 5; leccers from AG, 26; in

Buber, Martin, 169

San Francisco, 2 1 7 ; and

Buddhism: Kerouac reads, 29-30;
syndicalism, 250

AG embraces, 339n

Carroll, Paul, 1 14n, 1 58, 290n

Buming, Basil, 235

Casa de las Americas, 226 & n

Burdick, Eugene, 108n, 1 89

Cassady, Carolyn, 19, 30

Burning BuJh II, The, 224

Cassady, Neal: AG meers, xxv, 10-1 1 ;

Burroughs, William Seward: influence
relarions wirh AG, I I , 1 7-18, 26--
on AG, xxi; implicared in

7, 30, 2 1 7; marriage and family,

Kammerer murder case, x:xiv-xxv,

1 9; lerrers from AG, 26, 227;

2; discards AG's lerrers, xxx; AG
wrires co Kerouac, 26; religion, 30;
meets, 1 ; LG criticises, 7; in Texas
in ami-Viernam proresrs, 241;
wirh Joan Vollmer, 1 1 ; moves co
correspondence published, 334n; in

Lousiana, 19; accidemally kills

AG poem, 393

Joan Vollmer, 26; srays wirh AG

Casrro, Fidel, xxviii, 143-4, 147-8,
in Nw York, 26; humanisric

1 5 2-3, ! 56, 1 90, 1 92-4, 21 1-12,
conversion, 30; in Tangier, 30,

226, 231

59--60, 149, 1 5 1 ; in California,

C.:line, Louis-Ferdinand, 106

4 1 ; in London, 62, 344;

Cerf, Bennecc, 278
amhologised, 80; visirs Paris, 84--

Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1 67

5; undergoes psychoanalysis, 86,

'Change, The: Kyoro-Tokyo Express'

I l l ; Chicago Review offers co

(AG), 2 1 5
publish, 1 14; befriends Huneke,

Chaplin, Charles, 7 7

1 27n; recommends drug ayahuaJca,

Cherry Valley, New York, 275, 277,

1 29; Leary rakes co Harvard, 1 5 7;

288, 293, 306, 3 1 2 , 314, .'\ 18,
rravels co London wirh AG, 160;

3 19n, 336, 349
advocares mixing newspapers, 189;

Chiang Kai-shek, 89, 92-4
giant extra-terrestrial insect

Chicago Conspiracy Trial ( 1969),
meraphor, 307; financial problems,

305, 308n

344; ar Naropa Insricure, 377;

Chicago Review, 80, 85, 1 1 4

Naked Lunch, 59, 1 14n, 2 2 1 ; The

Chile, 1 29, 363n

Soft Machine, 1 5 1 ; The Yage Letten

China: AG's views on, 8 1 , 88, 90,

(wirh AG), 1 36n

93-4, 1 48, 1 94--6; macks India,

Burroughs, William Seward III, 385

198; A W proposes recognirion of,

Byner, Jean Wiccer, 32

208; and Viernam war, 245, 246,

249, 263; LG on, 246; Nixon

Calas, Nicholas, 61
seeks rapprochemenr wirh, .'\25

Calcucca, 180, 183-4, 1 88, 192 , 206,

Champa Champa Lama, 385

209, 2 1 0

ChriJtian Science Monitor. _)22

Cambodia, 2 14--1 5 , 342

CIA (Cenrral Inrelligence Agency),

Camp Nichrgedeiger, New York, 166

1 5 2-3, 1 56, 3 1 6, 324n, .'\25 ,

& n

344--5 , 3 5 4

400
lmkx

Ciardi, John, 220

Congo, 145-7, 149, 2 1 2

Ciradel Press, 80

Corso, Gregory: i n Paris, 59, 62, 65,

Ciry Lighrs Books, 3 1 , 40- 1 , 43,

74-7, 84, 1 1 1 , 1 14, 1 49, 236,

45n, 6 1 , 7 1 , 73, 75--Q, 1 29, 1 64,

383-4; in Amsterdam, 72-3;

183, 1 99-200
poetry, 76, 80, 85, 1 04-5, 1 1 1 '

City Lights Journal, 366

297; prospective marriage, 78;

Civil Liberties Union, 39
accompanies AG ro England, 1 04,

Clark, Ramsey, 305, 3 1 2, 3 1 6

15 7, 160; poetry readings, 1 20n;

Clark, Thomas, 257n
anrhologised, 1 33; wrires lerrer for

Clearing House, The (school magazine),

AG, 1 50-1 ; travels wirh AG,

1 58

1 5 1 ; collecrs manuscripts from

Cleaver, Eldridge, 306--7, 309-1 1 ,

LG, 1 76; meers AG's family, 286;

324

Village Voice article on, 3 18; AG

Cohen, Edirh see Ginsberg, Edirh
sends LG poem co, 3 7 2; ar Naropa

Cohen, Harold (Edirh's son), xxiv, 54,
lnsrirure, 377-8; in AG poem,

86, 99, 1 3 1 , 1 77-8, 207, 2 2 1 ,

393; Gasoline, 73 & n, 76, 84,

269, _H5

1 03-5 ; Happy Birthday of Death,

Cohen, Olive, 1 77-8, 1 95, 202

1 33n

Cohen, Sheila (Edith's daughter),

Coulr, Margaret, xxii

KXiv, 30, 32, 54, 195, 237

Counter Measures (magazine), 328

Cold War: effecr on AG and far her,

Cousins, Norman, 188
xxviii, 194, 198, 201 , 2 1 2

Cowley, Malcolm, 38

Collected Poems (AG), XKXii

Crane, Hart, 8, 70, 261

Columbia Universiry: AG arrends,

Creeley, Robert, 41, 133, 1 85, 2 1 5,
xxiv, I , 5, 1 3, 1 5 , 17, 23; AG

238
expelled from, xxv; Eugene rakes

Crum, Bartley, 63-4
play-wriring course ar, 1 2

Cuba: revolution in, xxviii, 1 43-5,

'Coming ro Terms wirh rhe Hell's

147-9, 1 5 2-4, 1 56, 1 87 , 1 98,

Angels' (AG), 245n

2 1 0- 1 1 ; USA calls for invasion of,

Commirree on Poerry, Incorporated,

185, 1 90; USSR and, 1 87-8, 1 90;

275, 285

Soviet missile bases in, 1 90- 1 ,

Communism: AG and farher differ

1 96, 263; hosriliry wirh USA,
over, KXix, 74, 98, 147-8, 1 56,

1 92-3, 198, 2 1 1 - 1 2 , 227, 2 3 1 ;

1 9 1 , 193-4, 1 96, 1 98, 2 1 1-12,

A G visits, 2 1 2 , 225--Q; AG

222, 245-8, 251, 254-5, 374; and
expelled from ( 1 965), 227-30,
political change in USSR, 4 1 ; US

337
hosriliry ro, 87-8; in Central and

Czechoslovakia, 225, 227-9, 2 3 1 --Q,

Sourh America, 1 30, 143; and

255, 337

Cuban revolution, 144; US
denigration of, 147; Parry banned

Daily News, 1 4 7
in USA, 1 53; in India, 200; and

Daily Worker (newspaper), 43, 223

Nazism, 357

Dakar, Wesr Africa, 1 6

Concepcion, University of (Chile),

Dalai Lama, 1 79

1 29

Davis, Rennie, 308n

Concerning Poetry (magazine), 289

Dayan, Moshe, 1 50, 352

'Confromarion wirh Louis Ginsberg's

'Dearh ro Van Gogh's Ear' (AG), 1 26

Poems' (AG), 295

& n

Index

401

Debs, Eugene V., xxii-xxiii, 262

Empty Mirror (AG), 1 5 7-8, 160, 165,

Deliberate Prose (AG), xxxii, 145n,

!68n, 201

1 50, 363n

Encounter (magazine), 1 20, 1 8 1 , 208

Dellinger, David, 308, 3 1 5

England, 88, 1 04, I I 0; see also

'Demonstration or Spectacle as

London

Example' (AG), 245n

Esquire (magazine), 78, 85, 199, 202

Denver, Colorado, xxv, 10-1 1 , 1 3,

'Europe! Europe!' (AG), 97n, 1 24n

1 5 , 333, 386

Evans, Rowland, 309, 336

Detroit, 2 1 9, 237-8, 261 , 281 , 289,

Evergreen Review, 60- 1 , 63, 72, 75-7,

309

84-5, 107, 1 58, 208

Dickey, James, 160 & n

Dickinson, Emily, 55, 1 8 1 , 296, 299

Fabian family, I I

Diem set Ngo Dinh Diem

Fainlighr, Harry, 346
di Prima, Diane, 345

Fair Play committee, 1 47-8

Djilas, Milovan, 1 56

Fall of America, The (AG), 253, 263n

'Don't Grow Old' (AG; two poems),

Fantasy Records (company), 38, 86

387, 391

Farrar, John, 144

Dorfman, Elsa (Ellie), 1 30 & n, 1 3 1-

Farrar, Miss Qohn F's daughter), 144

2, 1 34

Farrell, Barry, 9, 2 56n

Dorsey, Dean, 2 1 9

'Father Death Blues' (AG), 387, 389

Dos Passos, John, xxiii

Feldman, Gene and Max Gartenberg

Douglas, William 0., 3 1 5

(eds): The Beat Generation and the

Doyle, Kirby, 1 3 5

Angry Young Men, SOn
drugs: A G rakes, 1 1 9, 1 2 3 , 1 36-8,

Felrrinelli, Inge, 270

1 57n, 1 92 , 207, 2 1 3 , 239-4 1

Ferlingherti, Lawrence: publishes

Dulles, John Foster, 87-8, 93, 98,

"Howl', 3 1 ; and recording of "Howl',

1 0 1 , 1 95 . 207, 2 1 2, 249

61, 73; sends money to AG, 76 &

Duncan, Robert, 28-9, 3 1 , 2 1 5 , 239,
n; sends copies of books to AG to

3 3 1
sell, 77; reviews trial of "Howl', 107;

Duplessis, Yves: Surrealism, 2 1 8

LG greets, 1 24, 2 1 6, 320; AG sends

Dylan, Bob, 238, 239n, 2 5 3 , 297,
poems to for publication, 186; holds

377-8 1 , 385-6

LG's poems, 2 1 7; at Berkeley reachin, 239; sends Planet News to LG, East Germany, 187, 1 94

278; AG stays at office, 3 1 1 , 342;

Eastman, Max, 1 5 I
visits Australia, 329 & n, 332;

Eban, Abba, 350, 353
poetry reading with AG, 331; LG

Eberhart, Richard, 38-9, 42, 55n
sends puns to, 3 76; see also Ciry

Ehrenburg, Ilya, 194

Lights Books

Ehrlichman, John, 369

First Book of Blues (AG), 37 1

Eichmann, Adolf, 358-9

Florence, Italy, 62, 64-6

Einstein, Albert, 9, 1 6 1 , 2 1 9, 256

Florida, 288

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 77, 92, 1 0 1 ,

Ford, Gerald, 372-3

130

Fournier, Michael, 391

Eker, Stanley, 270-4

France: overseas interests and

Eliot, T.S., 70, 1 14, 247, 297, 330
conflicts, 89-91 , 1 00, 1 1 3;

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 70, 269
hostility to US power, 154; AG on

Empson (Sir) William, 20
politics in, 1 63

402

Index

Francis of Assisi, S<, 65

14- 16, 26, 59, 74; fa<her fails <o

Franco, General Francisco, 143
keep all leners fwm, xxx; spelling,

Frank, Rober<, 2 1 7, 2 2 1
xxxi; and Carr's convinion for

Frankfur<, 84

Kammerer killing, 2-3; reading, 3,

F reepor<, Texas, 16

18, 60, 85, 201 ; early wri<ing, 5;

Freiman, Fanny, 5 1-2
wri<es on Carr and Kammerer

Freiman, Sam, 63, 1 66, 385
killing, 5-6; delays <aking degree,

Freud, Sigmund, 9, 1 2

1 5 , 1 7- 1 8; psychoanalysis, 1 5 , 18;

Frohman, Ed, 5 2
works on ship, 17; fails w graduace

Frohman (Levy), Elanor, 1 6, 5 1 , 1 50,
a< Columbia, 19; on imperfections

245
of society, 2 1-2; wrires unfinished

Frohman, Max, 6, 50-2, 1 50, 1 5 5
novel, 2 1-2 & n; fa<her sends

Froines, Johnny, 308n
money <o, 23--4; moves ro San

Fros<, Rober<, 108, 286, 297

Francisco, 30-1 ; poe<ry readings,

35, 38, 1 20n, 1 79, 23� 240, 3 1 �

Gaidemack, Joel, 27, 79-80, 1 57,

34 1 , 350, 380; works for

271 & n

Greyhound, 36-8, 40, 42;

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 200

<eaching, 37, 384, 387; and

Garrigue, Jean, 78
mothers dearh, 49, 5 1-2, 284;

Gascoyne, David, 1 10
leaves for work in Are<ic Circle,

Gates of Wrath. The (AG), xxvi

50n; rhiniech birthday, 53;

Gaulle, Charles de, 1 1 3
reviewed, 55, 57, 79, 1 58n, 160 &

Geldman, Louis, 76
n, 168, 1 83, 195; licerary and

Gene<, Jean, 39, 1 1 2- 1 3 , 355
performance earnings, 61-2, 7 1 ,

Genovese, Eugene Dominick, 147

80, 86, 1 04, 1 14, 1 18, 1 76;

Ginsberg, Abraham, 52, 54, 1 33--4,
borrows from family, 66, 7 1 , 80;

177-8, 1 80, 384
repurarion and celebrity, 83, 85,

Ginsberg, (Irwin) Allen: rela<ions

1 30-1 , 256, 277; Indonesian
wi<h mo<her, xxi, 44; childhood
girlfriend, 86; experimems wi<h
relations wirh father, xxiii-xxiv�

LSD, 1 2 1-3; repma<ion in
birch, xxiii; anends Columbia

Moscow, 1 23; illness, 1 27; drug

Universi<y, xxiv, 1-2, 5, 1 3 , 23;

<aking, 1 29, 136-8, 1 57n, 1 92,
childhood and upbringing, xxiv;

207, 2 1 3, 239--4 1 ; arremprs <o
arresced and commined w
give up smoking, 162, 341-2;
psychiacric ins<im<e, xxv, 24-5,
senles income rax, 165, 175, 1 78;

127n; expelled from Columbia,
sells manuscripts, 201; lis<s
xxv; experiences visions, xxv, 1 9,

Orlovsky as spouse in Who's Who

94-5; homosexuali<y, xxv, 6, 1 1 ,
en<ry, 209 & n; imeres< in girls,

19, 39 1 ; rela<ions wi<h Cassady,

2 1 5; spiri<ual experience, 2 1 5;
xxv, 1 0-1 1 ; early poe<ry, xxvi;
arrends wricer's conference in Cuba,
poli<ical differences wi<h LG, xxvii225-7; expelled from Cuba, 227-xxx, 143-9; joim poe<ry readings

30, 337; receives Guggenheim
wi<h fa<her ('Banle of <he Bards'),

Award, 23 1-2, 234; expelled from
xxvii, 25 3-5, 258-60, 264, 270,

Czechoslovakia and journals s<olen,

272, 286-7. 3 1 1 , 3 1 6, 344, 346,

234-6, 337; on ami-Viemam

370, 377; animde <o Judaism,
demons<ra<ions, 239--42; <ravelling
xxviii-xxix; travels abroad, xxviii,
and rape-recording in USA, 253;

Index

403
tours Europe with father, 267,

Israel and Greece, 322, 324;

271 n, 272; arrested in Rome, 2 7 1
defends AG from criticism, 3 7 5

& n ; profile in NeU' Yorker, 2 7 6 &

Ginsberg, Eugene (AG's brother) set
n; LG considers selling letters

Brooks, Eugene
from, 277; injured in road

Ginsberg, Louis (AG's father): poetry,
accidenc, 278, 281 ; musical
xxi-xxiii, xxvii, 1 2, 14, 1 7, 20, 27,
writings, 278, 288, 292, 3 2 1 ;

32, 46, 55-7, 71, 81, 1 02, 104,
father's anicle on, 282-7;

1 1 1-12, 1 22-3, 125, 1 3 1 , 1 33.

generosiry, 284--5; on meue and

1 39, 1 56, 1 58, 1 65 , 167, 170,
lytic, 295-8; writes Jncroduction to

1 74, 1 77-8, 184, 1 87 , 189, 202,

LG's Morning in Spring. 295-303,

204--5 , 2 1 1 , 2 1 7 , 223, 237, 259-

391 ; withholds tax for war efforc,

6 1 , 265, 26S-9, 28 1 , 289-94,

308 & n, 363; embraces

320--2, 325, 327-8, 348; birch

Buddhism, 339n; diet, 341-2;
and background, xxii; and AG's
elecced co Nacional Institute of
childhood, xxiii-xxiv; teaching,

Ans and Leners, 34 1 ; breaks leg,
xxiii, 56, 67, 1 0 1 , 103, 109, 1 1 3,

342 & n, 345, 349; on meditation

1 3 1 , 1 44, 1 58, 168, 170, 178,
retreat, 345, 347, 349-50; builds

196, 229, 237, 270, 276, 303,
mouncain cabin in California, 363-

3 1 8, 320; first marriage (co

9, 3 7 1 -2, 375; wins National

Naomi), xxiii, xxix, 99; divorce

Book Award, 363n; travels with
and remarriage (to Edith), xxiv, 1 9,

Dylan's Rolling Thunder revue,

185; and AG's homosexuality, xxv,

377-81 , 383-4; death, 395

6, 1 1 , 19, 391; concern over AG's

Ginsberg, Anna, 52, 54, 384
behaviour, xxv, 2� commen£s on

Ginsberg, Edith Cformerly Cohen;

AG's poetry, xxvi-xxvii, 7, 9, 20,

Louis's second wife): marriage,

35, 55-6, 1 19, 1 2 1-2, 1 26, 2 16,
xxiv, 19, 285 ; on W.C.

325-6, 329-30; joinc poetry

Williams's patronage of AG, xxvi;
readings with AG ('Banle of the
sees AG's letters co father, xxvii;

Bards'), xxvii, 253-5, 258-60,
on AG's differences with father,

264, 270, 272, 286-7, 3 1 1 , 3 1 6,
xxx; cooking, 24; letters from AG,

344, 346, 370, 377; political

28, 83, 3 19, 333, 342, 344, 350,
differences with AG, xxvii-xxx,

362, 383, 385-6; and AG's letters

143-9, 281; attitude to Judaism,
from Mexico, 29; working, 54, 56,
xxviii-xxix, 1 6 1 , 224; AG saves

1 3 1 , 229, 320; keeps copy of
leners from, xxx; disapproves of
review of AG's poetry, 56; travels,

AG's friends, 1-2, 4, 25-6;

63; proposed visit to Europe, 79;
questions AG's moral values, 5-6,

AG greets, 1 37; 228; LG repom

10, 32-3; reading, 8, I I , 14, 20;
on, 1 58; AG sends Indian presencs
sends money co AG, 23-4, 80, 86,
for, 1 7 S-9, 201 , 203;

1 1 2, 1 6 1 ; and AG's committal to
grandchildren, 1 95 , 237; in
psychiatric institute, 24; and

Detroit with LG, 220, 238n, 28 1 ,
parakeet, 29; invited co serve on

289; incerviewed with LG for

Poetry Sociery of America board,
newspaper, 236n; in Europe with

32, 109; on AG's Hou·l and Other

LG and AG, 267, 269, 2 7 1 n, 272;

POI!71lJ, 45-6; at Naomi's funeral,
bladder trouble, 294; gives parcy

52; and Jewish ceremonies, 53;
for LG's book launch, 3 1 1 ; visits
proposed visit co Europe, 79; and

404

Index

AG's fame and reputation, 83;
committed, xxv, 43-4; and AG's
anti-Beat values, 1 02-3; reads and
absence in Texas, 1 6; AG visits,
commems on AG's 'Kaddish', 1 1 8,

22; AG plans family care for, 44;

1 23, 1 40-1 ; AG addresses in
undergoes prefontal lobotomy, 44;
poetry, 1 24-5; takes sabbatical,
death and final letter to AG, 50;

1 35 ; on religion, 1 6 1 , 256; and
funeral, 50-2, 56-7; in LG poem,
mother's death, 179, 18 1-2; AG

289; LG writes poem on, 328
repays money to, 1 86-7, 378;

Ginsberg, Pinkus (AG's grandfather),
lectures and reads in Detroit, 2 1 9-
xxii-xxiii, 160

20, 237-8, 261 , 281 , 289;

Ginsberg, Rebecca Schectman (AG's
political principles, 2 1 9;
grandmother): background, xxii;
imerviewed on radio, 222;

Naomi's relations with, xxiii;
interviewed with Edith for
breaks hip, 4 5-6; in nursing and
newspaper, 236 & n; 70th
old people's homes, 54-6, 79, 1 33;
birthday, 23 7, 240; poetry
death and funeral, I 79-82
readings and broadcasts, 26 1 , 320;

Glaser, Alice, 1 99n
tours Europe with AG, 267-8,

Glass, Simon, I I

271 n, 272; considers selling letters

Gleason, Madeline, 1 3 5
from AG, 277; kidney trouble,

G ood Housekeeping (magazine), 20

28 1 ; writes article on AG, 282;

Goodman, Paul, 61

AG writes lmroduction to Morning

Greece, 1 50-1 , 1 61-4, 322, 324
in Spring collection, 295-303;

Greene, Abe, 254
defends US sysrem against AG's

Greyhound (bus company), 36-8, 40,
criticisms, 305 , 3 1 3-17; visits

42

Israel and Greece, 322-4;

Grove Press, 6 1 , 75, 80, 104
newspaper article on, 329; writes

Guggenheim Foundation, 66 & n,
to Editors of Liberation, 364-5;

86, 98, 23 1-2, 234

79th birthday, 37 1 , 375-6; health

Guggenheim, Peggy, 61 & n
decline, 383-4; AG's memorial

Guidlen, Nicholas, 226
poems for, 387-95; death, 387;

'Guru on Primrose Hill' (AG), 293

The Attic of the Past, xxiii; Colleaed

Guttman, Professor, 1 7

Poems. xxv, 3 9 1 ; The Everlasting

Minute. xxiii, 1 5 1 ; Morning in

Haifa, Israel, 165-6

Spring. xxvii, 1 3 1 , 270, 295n, 298,

Halberstam, Dan, 250

302, 3 1 1 , _'1 1 3, 320, 3 9 1 ; 'My Son

Hall, Donald, 38, 1 14
the Poet', 282-8, 292; Our Timfi,

Hammarskjold, Dag, 146

_'148, 380, 391

Hannah see Litzky, Hannah

Ginsberg, Naomi (nit Levy; AG's

Harcourt Brace (publishers), 1 58
mother): AG's 'Kaddish'

Harrison, Henry, 259
memorialises, xxi, 44, 1 39, 329;

Haselwood, Dave, 1 3 1-2, 1 34

AG's relations with, xxi, 43-4;

Havana, 225
background, xxii-xxiii;

Hayden, Tom, 308n
communism, xxii, xxix, 143, 1 96.

Hazel, Robert, 168n

24 5, 262-3; marriage, xxiii, xxix,

Hearst, William Randolph, 1 94

19, 99; memal instability, xxiii

Hecht, Ben, 79
xxiv, 25, 283-4, 289, 33 1 ;

Heights, Celeste, 320
divorce, xxiv; permanently

Heisenberg, Werner, 86, 98

Index

405

Hell's Angels, 238-9, 241-5, 248,

'In the Baggage Room at Greyhound'

250

(AG), 36n, 57

Hemingway, Ernest, 106

India: AG visits, 149, 162, 1 70,

Herzberg, Max, 57

175-84, 188, 192, 197-206, 2 10,

Hess, Rudolf, 359

2 1 5 , 324-5; Chinese attack on,

Hiroshima, 2 1 2-13

198; caste in, 202, 204, 2 1 0-1 1 ;

Hitler, Adolf, 308, 335, 357-9, 370
peace marchers in, 204, 208

Ho Chi Minh, 248-9, 254

Inferno (magazine), 29

Hoffman, Abbie, 308n

Israel: AG and father differ over,

Hofmann, Dr Albert, 1 57n
xxviii-xxix, 1 70, 306-8, 3 1 0-l l ,

Holiday (magazine), 1 18

337-9, 348, 35 1-4, 360-2, 365;

Hollander, John, 60, 61 n, 63

AG's prospective trip to, 67, 72,

Hollerer, Walter, 84

161-2; AG visits, 1 65-9, 1 7 1 ,

Holocaust: effect on LG, xxix, 3 38

1 7 3 , 2 1 5 ; LG visits with Edith,

Holy Soul jelly Roll (AG; recording),

322-3; offers compensation ro

321n

Palestinians, 350; atrocities in, 360

Honey see Litzky, Hannah

Italy, 61--6, 68-7 1 , 267, 270-1

Hoover, ). Edgar, 305 , 3 1 2

Hope, A.D., 332

Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied

Housman, A.E, 297

Poetics, Boulder, Colorado, 3 7 1 n

Houston, Texas, 14, 1 6

Jackson, Henry, 353-4

Howard, Roy, 194, 250

Jacoby, Grover, 4 1 , 57

'Howl' (AG): praised, xxvii; dedicated

James, Henry, 1 8
to Carl Solomon, 25; establishes

Japan: atom bombs dropped on,

AG's reputation, 3 1 ; AG sends
xxviii, 8, 1 89, 2 1 2; AG visits,
first parr ro father, 35; W.C.

2 10n, 2 1 3-15

Williams writes Introductions ro,

Jarrell, Randall, 61 & n

37, 39, 45, 49; AG reads from,

'Jaweh and Allah Battle' (AG), 360

38; revised for publication, 39;

Jerusalem, 322-3, 3 5 1
recordings of, 6 1 , 73, 75, 80, 86;

Jewish Defense League, 338
anthologised, 80, 85, 1 35; quoted

Joel see Gaidemack, Joel
in Mademoiselle, 85; rhythm in,

Joelson, Chuck, 1 86, 222

1 1 8; first edition sold, 201
john Blair (ship), 17

Howl and Other Poems (AG):

Johnson, Lyndon B., 239, 242, 262,
publication and reception, xxvi,

3 1 7, 335, 370, 372-3

45-6, 53, 60 & n, 6 l n, 7 1 , 8 1 ,

Jones, LeRoi (later Amici Baraka),

84; legal case against, 6 1 & n, 63,

SOn, 145, 1 64, 166, 1 98, 203,

73, 75--6, 83, 107; translations, 84

243, 246, 2 50, 259, 328

Huff, Robert, 275

Judaism: AG and father differ over,

Humphrey, Hubert, 244
xxviii-xxix, 1 6 1 , 224; in

Huneke, Herbert, xxv, 24, 1 27 & n,

Czechoslovakia, 228, 230; Nazi

284-5
repression of, 358; see also anti

Hungary: Soviet repression of, 64, 82,

Semitism; Israel

90, 92-3, 100, 196, 1 98, 205,

Jung, Carl Gustav, 1 23, 1 38

208, 246-7, 249, 255, 263

Huxley, Aldous: Doors of Perception,

Kaddish (Jewish prayer for dead), 5 1 ,

1 2 1

5 3-4 & n

406

Index

' Kaddish' (AG): homage ro AG's

1 23; anthologised, 1 3 3 ; admits
mother in, xxi, 44, 1 39, 284;
parerniry in lawsuit, 1 78; meers
praised, xxvii; AG sends to father,

AG's family, 286; prosody, 297;

1 18; AG reads, 1 20, 381 ; Eugene

AG sells letters, 365, 378; AG
reads, 1 23; translated, 1 30, 1 54,
visits grave, 3 79-80; On the Road,

1 76; anthologised, 1 35; writing of,
xxv, 10, 38n, 73 & n, 80--1 , 83,

1 39; LG's comments on, 1 40--1 ;

106; 'The Railroad Earrh', 6 1 n;
proposed film of, 2 1 7 , 2 2 1 ; and

The Subtemmeans. 1 03; The Town
agnostic compassion, 301 ;
and the City, 19, 1 06; Visions of
dramarised, 329, 383

Cody, 333-4 & n

Kaddish and Other Poems (AG), 1 58n,

Kesey, Ken, 241

160n, 168, 1 83n, 195

Khrushchev, Nikita S.: AG reads

Kafka, Franz, 8, 228-9, 23 1-2, 348
speeches, 87; LG attacks, 1 0 1 ; and

Kammerer, David: murdered, xxv, 2-

Soviet thaw, 1 87 ; AG compares

4
with Kennedy, 190, 1 99; and

Kasavubu, Joseph, 145-6

Cuban missile crisis, 1 9 1 ; represses

Kaufman, Bob, 145
poets, 202-4, 207; western

Keats, John, 269
attitude to, 2 1 2

Kennan, George, 93

King, Marrin Luther, Jr, 1 4 5 , 305,

Kennedy, John F.: elected President,

3 1 2

143; and Cuban revolution, 148,

King in New Y OYk, A (film), 7 7

1 54, 1 56, 185, 1 87 ; AG criticises,

Kissinger, Henry, 353

1 64, 199; on nuclear resting, 1 89;

Kline, Anhur, 2 1 0
and Cuban missile crisis ( 1 962),

Koestler, Anhur: The Act of Creation,

1 90- 1 ; assassinated, 220

25 7, 260; The God That Failed,

Kennedy, Robert, 263

263

Kennedy, X.J., 328

Korea, 92-3, 98, 2 1 2

Kenton, Stan, 3 8

'Kral Majales' (AG), 234

Kenya, 1 7 1 , 1 7 3-4

Kramer, Jane, 276n

Kenyarra, Jomo, 1 74

Krass, Belle, 255, 264

Kerouac, Jack: influence on AG, xxi,

Kuch, Joseph Warren: 'The Canceling
xxvi; implicated in David

Out', 1 3

Kammerer murder case, xxiv-xxv,

Kunitz, Stanley, 63

2-3; AG meets, 1 ; literary

Ky see Nguyen Cao Ky
ambitions, 1 ; marriage to Edie

Kyger, Joanne (Mrs Gary Snyder),

Parker, 4n; correspondence with

1 7 5 & n

AG, 26, 29; lerrer from Cassady,

Kyoto, 2 1 3

26; works on railway, 28; interest
in Buddhism, 29-30; in California,

Ladies Home Journal, 174

37; in Tangier, 59; moves to

Laird, Melvin, 372

Mexico, 6 1 , 66; repays money ro

Landis, James, 303, 3 2 1

AG, 7 1 & n, 84; success and

Laos, 2 1 1-12
reputation, 77-8, 80--1 , 83, 85;

LaVigne, Bob, 38
finances, 78; Joel Gaidemack

Lawrence, D.H., 201
meets, 79; literary style, 103, 105-

Leary, Timothy: AG meets, 1 57 & n;

6, 108-10, 381 ; collaborates with
on army control of LSD, 240;

AG, 1 1 8; repucation in Moscow,
charged and imprisoned for drugs

Index

407
offences, 305, 3 1 3 & n, 3 14-1 5 ,
revolution, 152, 2 1 2; AG greets,

34 1 , 3 8 5 ; A G visits in prison, 343

1 77; and nuclear warfare, 1 86

Lennon, John, 3 10n

Liverpool, 236

Leopold II, King of the Belgians, 2 1 2

Living Theatre, 324 & n

Lerner, Max, 1 54

London: AG visits, 86--7, 1 10, 1 57,

Levertov, Denise, 2 1 5

234-6, 344-6

Levy family, 5 7

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 297

Levy, Annie, 233

Lorca, Frederico Garcia, 257, 260

Levy, Joe, 232-3

'Lover's Garden, A' (AG), 1 3

Levy, Max, 238

Lowell, Robert, 178, 297

Levy, Tillie, 238

LSD (lysergic acid), 1 2 1-3, 1 38,

Liberation (magazine), 1 50, 1 52, 359-

1 57n, 239--40

6 1 , 364-5

Luce, Henry R., 194, 207

Lichleberg, Leo, 3 77

Lumumba, Patrice, 145�

Life (magazine), 7 1 , 256

Lima, Peru, 1 32, 1 35�

McCall's (magazine), 178

Lin Yutang, 207

McCarthy, Eugene, 328

Lindbergh, Charles, 1 56

McCarthy, Joseph, 154

Lindsay, Vachel, 1 1 5 , 2 1 2, 381

McClure, Mike, 201 , 239, 342, 365,

'Lion for Real, The' (AG), 1 20 & n

367

Lippmann, Walter, 195, 244, 250

MacDiarmid, Hugh, 345

Lipset, Ruth, 3 75

McGuire, Barry, 239n

Litterair Paspoort (Dutch magazine),

McKnight, Nicholas M., 6 & n

7 5

MacLeish, Archibald, 2 1 6, 220

Little Rock, 7 7

Macleod, Norman, 28

Litzky, Hannah (nie Ginsberg; AG's

McNamara, Robert, 242-3
aunt; 'Honey'): amd LG's interest

McReynolds, David, 305-6, 308;
in writing poetry, xxii; on AG's

'Memo on Vietnam' (with A.J.

childhood, xxiv; on AG's

Muste), 222
differences with father, xxv; on

Madison, Wisconsin, 333
family's adherence to Judaism,

Malraux, Andre, 1 38, 369
xxix; letters from LG, 4, 259; LG

Mao Zedong, 87, 248
withholds AG letter from, 8;

Marrakesh, 1 57
seaside holiday, 1 2; financial

Marx, Karl, 9
problems, 1 3; LG reports on, 54;

Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 85, 87, 207
and AG's Russian relatives, 5 5 ;

Measure (magazine), 60, 63, 7 1 , 1 1 5 ,
letters from AG, 56, 1 50, 1 60,

1 18, 1 22

164; buys copies of AG's book, 57;

Meir, Golda, 336, 337, 352, 362
address, 78; AG greets, 1 33, 177,

Mescaline, 207

1 80; and atomic bomb, 186;

Mexico, 26, 148
article on Vietnam, 244; gives

Middle East, 89
party for LG's book launch, 3 1 1

Miles, Jerry, 321 & n

Litzky, Leo (Hannah's husband): on

Miller, Henry, 1 1 2, 1 70, 2 3 1 ; Tropic

AG's childhood, xxiv; on LG's
of Cancer, 39
equanimiry in handling AG, xxv;

Mills, Wright, 145
sees AG's letters to father, xxvii,

Millstein, Gilbert, 73n, 81
xxx; LG reportS on, 54; on Cuban

Mobucu sese S.:ko, 145, 147

408

Index

Mombasa, I 7 3

North Africa, 89

Mones, Dr, 1 55

North ATTUrican Review, 292

Monrale, Eugenio, 273

Northern Lights Press, 391

Moore, Marianne, x:xiii, 64, 70

Novak, Robert, 309, 336

Morgan, Bill, 75n
nuclear warfare: Bertrand Russell on,

Morganrhau, Hans, 250

1 85-6, 1 89; AG discusses with

Morocco, 90- 1 , 1 70
father, 1 86, 1 88-90, 1 94

Morrow, William & Co. (publishers),

Nugget (magazine), 1 78

293-4, 320

Moscow: AG plans to visit, 228; AG

Oberfirst Associates, 1 78
in, 230, 232-3

ObJerver (newspaper), 84, 1 10

Mulligan, Gerry, 30

Ochs, Phil, 239n, 3 1 0n

Muste, A.J.: 'Memo on Vietnam'

Olson, Charles, 21 5, 297

(with D. McReynolds), 222

Olympia Magazine, 1 59

'On Neal Cassady's Ashes' (AG), 386

Naples, 68

Ono, Yoko, 3 10n

Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado,

Orlovsky, Julius, 77n

377, 386

Orlovsky, Katherine, 44

Nashville, Tennessee, 307

Orlovsky, Lafcadio, 77n

Nation, The (journal), 169

Orlovsky, Peter: AG meets, 3 1 , 44-

National Book Award, 363n, 372

5; travels with AG, 59-63, 65-6,

National Institute of Arts and Letters,

7 1 , 77, 149, 1 5 1 , 1 73-6; finances,

341

7 1 & n, 75-6, 1 86; in Paris, 74-

Nazism, 335, 357, 370

5; returns to USA, 84; poetry, 85;

Negroes: in USA, 1 45, 209, 243,
collaborates with AG and Kerouac,

246-7, 259, 306-9, 328

1 18; poetry readings, 1 20n; visits

Nehru, Jawaharlal, 200, 237, 265

Istanbul, 160; AG meets in Israel,

Neruda, Pablo, 129

173; in India, 1 99, 207, 209; AG

Nevada City, California, 3 2 1 n, 364-
cires as spouse in Who'J Who enrry,

5, 369, 37 1-2, 375

209 & n; AG asks to conract LG,

New DirntionJ (magazine), 61 & n,

227, 229; rransfers AG's

63, 66
belongings ro new address, 228;

New Republic (journal), 1 9 1
letter from AG, 235; ar Cherry

New York Tirne.r Book Review, 56,

Valley, 275; builds mountain cabin

160n, 1 78, 260
with AG, 363-6, 37 1 ; delivers

New Yorker (magazine), 276

AG's speech for National Book

Newman, Jerry, 61

Award, 363 & n; a< Naropa

NewJweek (magazine), 1 93-4, 253,

Institure, 377-8; travels with

27 1

Dylan and AG, 379--8 1 ; helps

Newton, Huey, 328
with ailing LG, 384

Ngo Dinh Diem, 244

OutJitkr, The (magazine), I 7 4

Nguyen Cao Ky, 262

Niebuhr, Reinhold, 1 39

Palesrinians, 338, 350-2, 354-5, 365

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3 1 7

Paris, 59-60, 62, 68, 7 1-4, 78, 80,

Nixon, Richard M . , 148, 1 64, 3 1 7,

83-6, 1 0 1 , 1 10-1 3, 149, 236,

325, 342, 345 , 359, 369-70,

383-4

372-3

P ariJ Review, 1 14, 2 57

Index

409

Parker, Edie (later Kerouac), 4
religion: LG's views on, xxix, 161 ,

Parkinson, Professor, 84, 86, 1 20

224; Jee aiJo Buddhism; Judaism

Parra, Nicanor, 1 29

Renaldo and Clara (film documencary),

PartiJan Review, 60-1, 63, 67, 80,

379n

85, 1 14, 1 2 1-2

Reporter (journal), 84 & n, I 08

P aJJaic Valley Examiner, I 3

Resron, James, 244

Pacchen, Kennech, 28

Rexroch, Kennech, 28-9, 3 1 , 37-8,

Patermn Morning Call, 236 & n

4 1 , 43, 1 78, 3 1 1 , 343

Penguin Books, 1 76, 183

Reznikoff, Charles, 384

Pencagon Papers, 335, 342

Rhee, Syngman, 89, 92

Perlman, David, 83n

Richards, I.A., 179

Perry, Bernard, 1 2 1

Rimbaud, Arthur, 4, 10, 21, 84, 216

Peru, 1 32, 1 35-6, 1 37

Rivers, Larry, 259

Pivana, Fernanda, 270 & n

Robinson, Edwin Arlingron, xxiii

Planet NewJ (AG), 234, 278n, 293

Rockefeller, Nelson D., 373

Playboy (magazine), 166, 290

Rokha, Pablo de, 1 29

Plutonian Ode (AG), 391

Rolland, Romain, 1 39

Poe, Edgar Allan, 381

Rolling Thunder Revue, 377, 379n,

Poet and Critic (magazine), I 78

380, 383-4

Poetry (magazine), 60, 183

Rome, 62, 64-5; AG arresced in, 27 1

Poecry Sociecy of America, 32, 109,

& n

144, 1 78, 286

Romney, George, 342

Pogo (cartoon strip), 1 14

Roosevelc, Eleanor, 196

Pound, Ezra, 70, 76, 108, 1 14, 247,

Roosevelc, Franklin D., 127, 1 5 3

270n, 296-7

Rosensrein, Judge, 24

Prague, 227-33, 235-6, 337

Rosenchal, Irving, 1 14n, 198

Prima, Diane, di, 377

Rosenchal, M.L., 260n

Prouse, Marcel, 106, 1 08

Rosicrucians, 30
psilocybin (drug), 157n

Ross, Syare, 292

Roscen, Norman, 266

Quasi modo, Salvarore, 27 3

Rubin, Jerry, 238, 308n

Rusk, Dean, 359

Rahv, Philip, 61-2

Russell, Bertrand, 164, 183, 185-6,

Ramakrishna, Swami, 201

189, 263

Rank, Ocro: Art and ArtiJt, 1 2-13;

Will Therapy, 12

Sagan, Fran�oise, 14 5

Ransom, John Crowe, 297

Saigon, 359

Rapp & Carroll (publishers), 270,

Sainre-Marie, Buffy, 239n

27 3-4

Salinger, J.D., 201

Rapp, George, 270-2, 278, 282, 289

San Francisco, 30- 1 , 36, 1 19-2 1 ,

Reader'1 DigeJt. 1 30, 1 33

2 1 7 , 238, 248, 3 2 1 , 329, 3 3 1 ,

Reagan, Ronald, 3 1 7

341-2, 366, 375-6

Reality SandwicheJ (AG), 183, 186-7,

San FranciJco PoetJ (recording), 61 n

189, 216

San Francisco Scare College, 3 7-8

Reese, Lizene Woodworth, 303

San Jose, California, 27-9

Reich, Wilhelm: The Function of the

Sanders, Ed, 3 10n, 363, 377

OrgaJm, 1 1- 1 3

Sancamarfa, Haydee, 226

4 1 0
lmkx

Santiago, Chile, 1 29

8, 1 90-1 , 193--6, 204--5, 245--6,

Sartre, Jean-Paul, 64, 75, 9 1 , 1 45

248, 263, 328, 374; AG plans ro

Scheer, Robert: H()UJ the US Got
visir, 4 1 , 82, 1 85, 195, 203--4,

Involved in Vietnam, 250-1

228; launches Spurniks, 77 & n,

Schleiffer, Marc, 145, 198

8 1 ; AG hopes for publicarion in,

Schumacher, Michael: Dharma Lion,

84--5; increasing democrarisarion
xxi, XJ:xi
in, 90; rivalry with USA, 90-3,

Schweirzer, Albert, 182

98; mass opinion in, 92, 94; AG's

Seale, Bobby, 308n
repuration in, 1 23; and Congo,

Se£ond Coming Magazine, 1 5 0 & n,

145-7; and Cuban revolution,

1 5 5, 1 59

1 87-8, 1 90; sers up missile bases

Seeger, Pere, 239n
in Cuba, 1 90-1 , 1 96, 263;

Seger, Bob, 3 10n
represses poets, 201 ; AG in, 230-

Selected Poems (AG ), xxxii

3; Iee also Hungary

'Seprember on Jessore Road' (AG),

Spender, (Sir) Stephen, 1 20, 1 7 8

325n

Spolero, Italy, 267

Shapiro, Karl, 9, 42-3

SpontaneouJ Mind (AG), xxxii, 257n,

Shaw, George Bernard, 162, 265,

290n

291 , 370

Sputnik, 77, 8 1

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 2 57, 269, 297,

Sraay, A. Van der, 343

299

Stalin, Josef, 43, 1 87, 2 1 2, 232, 245,

Shenker, Israel, 329 & n

263, 359

Sholem, Gershom, 1 69

Srallman, Robert, 20

Sholokhov, Mikhail, 203, 207

Stein, Gertrude, 1 87

'Siesra in Xbalba' (AG), 26, 55, 72n,

Stevenson, Adlai, 146, 148, 196, 243

107 , 2 1 6

Stone, J.F., 1 48-9, 1 52, 1 95, 223,

Simon & Schusrer (publishers), 260

250

Simpson, Louis, 63, 239

'Strange New Corrage in Berkeley, A'

Sinclair, John, 238, 305, 309-10 & n

(AG), 36n

Sirwell, Dame Edirh, 1 10, 1 33

Sullivan, A.M., 259

Smaridge, Regina, 236n

'Sunflower Surra' (AG), 32, 37, 1 14

Snow, Edgar, 1 94

'Supermarket in California, A' (AG),

Snyder, Gary: rravels wirh AG, 35,

37n

41; in Ceylon, 1 67; in India wirh

'Swallow' (AG), I I

AG, 175, 179; in Japan, 209, 2 14; Symbolists, 2 1 8
on Berkeley anti-war marches, 239;
reaches yoga ro AG, 3 19; AG

Tagore, Rabindranarh, 268
visirs in California, 3 2 1 , 329, 343,

Taj Mahal, 1 97

345; builds cabin wirh AG, 364,

Tallman, Warren, 209

366, 375

Tallmer, Jerry, 329 & n

Solomon, Carl, 25, 32, 80, 286

Tangier, 59, 149-52, 1 57, 1 59

Solzhenirsyn, Alexander, 3 7 3

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 297

'Song' (AG), 57

Teton Village, Wyoming, 347, 350

Sourh America, 129-30, 1 3 2-3,

Thomas, Dylan, 32-3, 1 05, 1 10

L \ 5-7, 1 90, 243

Thomas, Norman, 3 1 7

Sovier Union: AG and farher differ

'Thoughts and Recurrent Musings on
over, xxviii, 43, 74, 85, 88, 187-

Israeli Argumenrs' (AG; essay), 360

Index

4 1 1

Thurber, James, 1 70

Vekselman, Israel, 176 & n, 323

Tibet, 195, 2 1 3

Venice, 59-60, 62-4, 66, 68, 7 1

Time magazine, 40--1 , 68, 7 1 , 73, 77,

Vienna, 68

81, 185, 1 90, 201

Vietnam: AG wishes to visit, 206,

TimeJ Literary Supplement, 71, 1 26

209; AG visits, 2 1 4

'To My Father in Poetry' (AG), 1 24-

Vietnam War: A G and father differ

5
over, xxix-xxx, 2 2 1 -3, 238, 242-6,

Togliatti, Palmiro, 207

248-5 1 , 2 5 3-5, 262-4, 286, 3 14-

Toynbee, Arnold, 1 54, 194

1 7, 335, 342; escalates, 2 1 7 ; AG's

Traubel, Horace, 297
preoccupation with, 2 2 1 ; protests

Trident Press, 260
and demonstrations against, 238-9,

Trilling, Diana, 1 2 1-2 & n

241-2, 245, 250, 274, 303, 3 1 3,

Trilling, Lionel: leners from LG, 5 ,

333

25; and Burroughs, 7 ; supports

Village Voice (magazine), 3 1 8

AG over Huneke arrest case, 24-5;

Villiers (printers), 39
and AG's 'Howl', 53; and AG's

Visions of the Great Rememberer, The

'Lion for Real', 1 20

(AG), 334n

Truman, Harry S., 1 89

'Visiting Farher and Friends' (AG),

Trungpa Rinpoche, Chiigyam, 339n,

393

3 7 1 ; Meditation in Action, 3 77

Vollmer, Joan: relations with

Tunisia, 90--1

Burroughs, 1 1 ; killed by

T. V. Baby Poems (AG), 272 & n

Burroughs, 26

Twain, Mark, 2 1 2

Voznesensky, Andrei, 204, 208, 332-

3

United Nations: and French Norrh

Africa, 91-2; and Congo, 145-6

Wain, John, 84 & n, 1 1 0

United States of America: AG's

Waldman, Anne, 363, 3 7 1 , 377-8,
critical views on, 77--8, 8 1 , 87-92,

384

94, 1 49, 1 5 3 , 163-4, 1 90, 208,

Waldman, Denise, 363, 3 7 1 , 378

2 1 2-13, 2 5 1 , 273, 305 , 3 1 3- 1 5 ,

'Wales Visitarion' (AG), 278n

335--Q, 35 3-4, 372-3; and Congo,

Wallace, George, 244, 3 1 7

145-7; and Cuban revolution, 149,

Warhol, Andy, 221

152-4; and Cuban missile crisis,

Warsaw, 233

190-1; and Vietnam War, 238,

Watergate, 342, 353

242, 249-5 1 , 253; and Israel,

Waugh, Evelyn, 1 2 3

353-4; energy sources, 355, 372

Weaver, Raymond, 7

Untermeyer, Louis, 1 50, 287; (ed.)

Weiner, Lee, 308n

Modern American ar�d Modern British

Wesr Berlin, 1 87

Poetry, xxiii, 276, 295

Western Review, 20

U Thant, 195

Wesrmoreland, General William C.,

359

Van Doren, Mark: and Burroughs, 7 ;

Whalen, Phil, 4 1 , 63, 1 1 8, 3 3 1 ,
supporrs A G over Huneke arrest,

345, 377

24; and AG's views on Hungary,

'When rhe Mode of rhe Music

100; lectures in Detroit, 220

Changes' (AG), 1 50n, 159

Vancouver, 2 1 5

Whirman, George, 384

Variegation (magazine), 3 2 , 4 1 , 43

Whitman, Walr, 37, 39, 69-70, 78,

4 1 2

Index

8 1 , 87, 297; Democratic Vistas, 70,

Wonder, Srevie, 3 1 0n

72, 94

Wood, Clemenr, 259

Who's Who, 209 & n, 245, 251

Wordsworrh, William, 184, 259,

'Wichira Vorrex Surra' (AG), 253

269, 299

Wieners, John, 60, 71, 85, 1 1 8, 123

Wilenrz, Elias (ed.): The Beat Scene,
yage see ayahuasca

1 30 & n, 1 3 1-2

Yage Letters. The (AG: wirh W.S.

Williams, William Carlos: befriends

Burroughs), 1 36n
and advises AG, xxvi, 25-6; new

Years, William Burler, 296, 325
book published, 30; and LG, 32;

Yessenin, Sergei, 85, 87
wrires lnrroducrions ro 'Howl', 37,

Yevrushenko, Yevgeny, 183 & n,

39, 45, 49; appreciares 'Howl', 53;

1 93-4, 202-4, 207' 233. 328,
rhyrhms in, 6.'1; AG praises, 70;

3 3 1
antisemitism questioned, 76; poetic

Young, Celine, 3-4; Guigr10/'s Band.

aesrheric, 109, I l l , 295-8; AG's

28
vision of, 1 37; AG sends poem ro
farher, 164; on new world, 359

Zroger's (magazine), 364-5

Wirr-Diamanr, Rurh, 28, 37

Zimmel, Jos., 254

A N O T E O N T H E A U T H O R

Michael Schumacher wrore Dharma Lion, rhe acclaimed
biography of Allen Ginsberg, and is also rhe
aurhor of biographies of Eric Clapron, Phil Ochs, and Francis Ford Coppola. He began researching Family

Businm in 1 994, when Allen Ginsberg firsr agreed co rhe projecr.

Document Outline

- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- CONTENTS
- Books by Allen and Louis Ginsberg
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Editor's Note
- Early Correspondence
- 1956
- 1957
- 1958
- 1959
- 1960
- 1961
- 1962
- 1963
- 1964
- 1965
- 1966
- 1967
- 1968
- 1969
- 1970
- 1971
- 1972
- 1973
- 1974
- 1975
- 1976
- Postscript
- Index

Table of Contents

- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- CONTENTS
- Books by Allen and Louis Ginsberg
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Editor's Note
- Early Correspondence
- 1956
- 1957
- 1958
- 1959
- 1960
- 1961
- 1962
- 1963
- 1964
- 1965
- 1966
- 1967
- 1968
- 1969
- 1970
- 1971
- 1972
- 1973
- 1974
- 1975
- 1976
- Postscript
- Index