Is Allen Ginsberg taught on any Canadian high-school English course? The most daring poet I remember readings at that time was T.S. Eliot, some Dylan Thomas (more about them later.) Then the rock bomb went off with Bob Dylan, Paul Simon & the like. My first exposure to Ginsburg was via pop music. Only at the time I didn’t know it.
It wasn’t until years later when I picked up the City Lights edition of Howl that I realized where Bob Dylan had sprung from. Reviewers mentioned the Kerouac influence but not the Ginsburg. Was it to avoid tainting the new rock God with Ginsburg’s deviant sexuality? No that couldn’t be there was no homophobia is that scene.
I have the massive Collected Poems, Barry Miles’s biography, “Howl” Fifty Years Later, edited by Jason Shinder, plus cds of Ginsberg performing his work. I have read Ginsberg’s direct influence as well: Walt Whitman (more about him later). I am a fan.
I was lead to him via the beatnik connection & reading a Kerouac biography. I knew the famous opening ‘I have seen the best minds’ but was unfamiliar with anything else of his poetry. The Collected Works is a challenging read solely for the quantity but it is worth working through. Not that everything he wrote is a work of genius but it is compelling, emotionally real & his imagery is frequently stunning.
What inspires me about him is that he was only queer though the hippie era at a time when ‘free love’ merely meant men getting as much sex from women as they could. Where there any gay people at Woodstock? At the love-ins? Much of his work is of the moment & about himself in a gentle yet revealing way, frequently very conversational. Some of it is also timeless & reflects things in today’s world that remain true – I have seen the best minds of our times lost to drugs, street violence & cultural genocide.
end song
the float of cups and spoons
moons and leaves
wet midnights broken by laugher
left to reflect on the puddles
red sticky slicks that caress the stage
invite the applause of over-hanging gaspers
soon to be disgraced with apologies
wondering not aloud
what if this isn’t the moment
to leap up once and for all
get it over with
no beginnings only ends
only a bar counter to wipe ready
for weary prisoners to stop rest gripe
about the fairness of their sentence
how they deserve what they want
and they want it now
piping hot
heaped dishes of freshly chopped
branches of moon strung stings
to replace the end of things
we all know that end is looming
bigger than
a pole-dancer’s ass
that hovers over
your out-stretched glass
another drop pretty pretty please
please squeeze harder
we know you can do it
before the song changes
it has to be on that note
the universal choir
chasing clouds of chords around
looking for the car keys put down in a hurry
your car running in the garage
who is in the back seat drifting
as the red slick sends
reflection of spoons to the moon
each prisoner barely turning
in their stools asking
are we up to guessing what comes next
every Tuesday
October 5/6/7 – Gratitude Round-Up
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September or October but to be confirmed – feature – The Art Bar, Free Times Cafe
June – Capturing Fire 2019 – Washington D.C. 
capfireslam.org
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