No More Pretty PoemsThe Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College Paterson, NJ, 6/8/97 Allen Ginsberg rejected the choice of creating "fine art"—the object of beauty crafted into being for the bemusement of a privileged art-viewing public. His message was too urgent to pretty up in pretensions of an assumed authority, with all the appearances of an acceptable museum piece. The importance of the Beat movement was its choice to speak in excited but accessible language, to be the art of the common and working class person who experiences the same exultations and sufferings as anyone else but who hadn't yet been the subject of art. Allen set himself up as the newscaster of the local and personal news to broadcast messages not available in mainstream media. I can still remember how exhilarating it was to discover his work in the late 60s when I was in Passaic High School and to suddenly feel a voice that spoke to me from a place of respect and empathy. Its passion revealed a human presence and tone I hadn't encountered yet in books. It was a jagged celebratory music—part Jewish vaudeville, part 20th century anxious—that I immediately connected to. It seemed an antidote from the antiseptic authoritarian voices who hid true values behind an urge to sell something, whether it was a product or credibility. That Howl penetrated into the suburbs attests to the simple truth that it was needed. It showed the ugly, it spoke for the marginalized, invisibilized voices denied access to the networks or movie screens, it spoke of what America had deemed unspeakable. As America campaigned to sell itself as prosperous and immaculate, Allen poked through the facade to reveal and expose the underside. Most important, these poems accepted and respected the self. They weren't straining to deny the core human presence beneath the skin, which was the message I was being sold from everywhere else. His poems spoke of feelings that didn't fit control categories. They were complicated. We could leave the simple definitions of allegory behind. It was modern times. It wasn't a case of good versus evil anymore. He was willing to be vulnerable enough to confess that he wasn't an authority, he refused to speak from a position of power. I loved living in the same building on East 12th Street as him for 20 years. I loved running into him in the hallway of our building or shopping for groceries on First Avenue, or coming in from the airport on one of his constant excursions. I loved that he was a local presence in the East Village poetry community centered at the Poetry Project. As a board member of the Poetry Project, I'm grateful to him for all the benefits he participated in, how he very willingly allowed us to use him. And he provided this service to local poetry communities all over the planet. He was a jet age troubador, constantly promoting poetry and the personal and communal poetic experience. There was no one like Allen. He was involved in so many fronts: political expose, sexual liberation, integration of influences from all over the planet, acceptance of personal psychologic truths. He honored the personality by publicly exposing the core of his being. He taught us so much, collected skull cracking data, voyaging geographically and into the innermost being, and always chronicling his discoveries, shaping his experience and response into poems, songs, or journal so as to constantly and chronically celebrate every breath, every aspect of living on earth. (published in Paterson Literary Review #27, 1998) |