David Bergman argues that New York is “a place of and for the imagination” (The Queer Writer in New York 1) that is central to what Bergman calls the American “Queer Imaginarium” (3), and because of … [Read more...]
Resisting the Thought Police: The Untold Story of Allen Ginsberg’s Stand Against College Censorship
Last year, entirely by accident, I stumbled upon a censorship scandal that had been buried for the past fifty years. The discovery happened at Saint Peter’s University, a small Jesuit school in … [Read more...]
Moving Towards the Light: The Triumph of Spirituality in the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg
Note: Chapter three was previously published in Beatdom. ∘∘∘ Pre-emptive of 1960s counter-culture, in which exploded artistic self-expression and a freer way of relating to … [Read more...]
Visions, Symbols and Intertextuality: An Overview of William Blake’s Influence on Allen Ginsberg
In a compilation of his personal journals, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice,1 Allen Ginsberg recalled a particular event, which had a strong impact on his career and on his spiritual approach to … [Read more...]
An excerpt from World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller by David S. Wills
The following passage is an excerpt from World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller. The events below took place in 1947, during Ginsberg’s first trip to a foreign country. Leaving America In late … [Read more...]
Allen Ginsberg’s Iron Curtain Journals, reviewed by Marc Olmsted
Iron Curtain Journals (January-May 1965) by Allen Ginsberg, edited by Michael Schumacher / University of Minnesota Press / Iron Curtain Journals covers a particularly interesting slice of … [Read more...]
Being Michael Brownstein – Thomas Locicero
Being Michael Brownstein We exit the underground at Penn Station, determined to walk, if only to breathe out the stench of urine from our Long Island lungs. She suggests we stop at Gotham Book … [Read more...]
Now What’s Wrong? Reflections on Allen Ginsberg’s Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992
After the accomplishments of late nineteenth and early twentieth century experimentalists Whitman, Dickinson, Rimbaud, and the Modernist poets Apollinaire, Cendrars, Mayakovsky, Stevens, Williams, … [Read more...]
Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg: A Story of Influences
The well-known link between Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman comes from both Ginsberg's readers and Ginsberg himself. One of the first explicit mentions of Walt Whitman in Ginsberg's published poetry … [Read more...]
Passing Through: Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky in Copenhagen, January 1983
As part of their reading tour through a dozen European countries, poets Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, and their musical accompanist Steven Taylor, arrive by train in Copenhagen in the chill dark … [Read more...]
The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation
The 1950s in America was not a period known for its religious diversity. The spiritual consumerism that we know today had yet to be established and the post-War era was defined by adherence to … [Read more...]
Book Review — First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg
First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg edited by Michael Schumacher / University of Minnesota Press / March 17, 2017 / 978-0816699179 Michael Schumacher is one of the major scholars of … [Read more...]
(Part I) Alison Winfield-Burns memoir
This is the first excerpt of six. Here are all of the installments: Part I · Part II · Part III · Part IV · Part V · Part VI (Part I) The School(girl) of … [Read more...]
Allen Ginsberg’s Typewriter and 2 more poems by Jim Bennett
Allen Ginsberg's typewriter I bought Allen Ginsberg's portable Olivetti typewriter from a pawnshop in Liverpool where he had left it on an Autumn day in 1965 (I had to pay a bit extra for … [Read more...]
Five poems on the Beat Generation
Jan Kerouac Baby Driver "Looking for adventure in whatever comes my way I was a true nature's child Born to be wild-----" Steppenwolf Dreams of Hawaiian island paradise home ends up in a … [Read more...]
Book Review — Wait Til I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg
Wait Till I'm Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg (Bill Morgan, ed.) / Grove Press / hardcover When I first heard about this book of uncollected poems by Allen Ginsberg, I imagined a slim … [Read more...]
Book Review — Ivy League Bohemians
Note: Ivy League Bohemians is no longer available. However, Alison's new book on the same topic, The Jack Kerouac School(girl) of Disembodied Poetics, has been serialized in Empty Mirror. It is an … [Read more...]
The Howl Hat
My friend Sylvain went to San Francisco recently and brought us back some souvenirs as gifts. One of the places he'd visited on his trip had been City Lights Books. He brought me a t-shirt from there. … [Read more...]
Aural Dialectics: On Allen Ginsberg’s Musical Rendition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789) is a collection of illuminated poems separated into two groupings, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, that engage with their … [Read more...]
Movie Review – Kill Your Darlings
Long before Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs would be celebrated as the poetical and political figureheads of a 'beat generation,' there was a murder. In the new film, Kill … [Read more...]
