The Impersonality of Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg died 25 years ago today in the East Village of New York City. Marking the date seems essential. But the fact of his death so many years ago seems trivial—except that it indicates how long ago it was. The facts of the date and place of his death seem trivial to me because I don’t think of him as being dead.

Allen Ginsberg

That may be because the scant few times I encountered the poet in the flesh were so impersonal. The first time I saw him was at Northwestern University in the late 1960s, performing his poems on the stage of a packed lecture hall, sitting cross-legged and accompanying himself with finger cymbals. I remember the bright colors of psychedelic decorations festooning the stage. Timothy Leary may have been performing along with him. I was there in my capacity as a journalism student covering the event. I don’t remember what I wrote about it, but I do remember that I focused on a few of the poet’s lines in my piece—and that my dawning sense of myself as a poet expanded exponentially.

A few years later, I heard him read at the City College of New York. My memory of that time is in black and white rather than color. Now I was knee-deep in Allen’s work, rather than in the sense of him as a liberating cultural figure. I remember the humor and cris-de-coeur nature of the daring poems he was performing then. I recall the openness with which he read “Please Master,” that amazingly explicit account of gay sex, his eyes flashing up at the ceiling as if on high, laughing, chanting the poem. Hearing it now, I am struck by the force of the poem’s controlled rhythm, sustained from its relentless beginning to its religiously ecstatic end. Another poem that I remember from those times, one that I’ve taken more to heart, is “Who Be Kind To,” which memorably opens, “Be kind to your self, it is only one/and perishable/of many on the planet [.]”

Intimate and tender though the voice in many of his poems is, however, it remains impersonal—as perhaps, the voice of all great poetry must. In my City College days, I lived on 9th Street and Avenue D, a few blocks from where he lived and not far from where I lived right after I was born. I would sometimes see him walking in the neighborhood, loose-limbed and shambling and seemingly approachable. But I never approached him. I had long thought that the reason was my youthful shyness and timidity. Now, however, I think that I really did want my relationship to be exclusively—and impersonally—with his poetry, rather than with the man striding along the avenue.

So it has remained, and so I find it hard to think that he is dead—and dead for 25 years at that. Not too long ago, I wrote a villanelle that was first published under the title of “Where’s Allen Now?” in The Cortland Review and later under the title “Elegy for A.G.” in my book In Praise of Manhattan. At first glance, the choice of an eminently traditional form to elegize a reputedly non-formal poet like Ginsberg might seem peculiar. (As is true of any poet of substance, Ginsberg was in fact obsessed with form.) But I feel the demands of the form have moved me to focus on the bare essentials of where, precisely, this no-longer-living poet is, now, for me.

He is, I imagine, in the afterlife, bidding me (and therefore, us) to write in terms of his famous dictum, “first thought best thought.” I prefer not to take him literally. He is not, I hope, merely instructing us to spill out whatever thought comes first to our minds. Instead (in my poem, at least), I would rather think he’s directing us to work toward the deepest expression of each of our own unique natures. Here’s my poem, in memory of the 25th anniversary of the death of Allen Ginsberg.

Where’s Allen Now?

by David M. Katz

First thought best thought, the master said,
Cross-legged by a roaring fire.
Where's Allen now? Among the dead.

Spit out each thought that's in your head.
Beware the censor and the liar.
First thought best thought, the master said,

Wearing a body and looking well fed,
Touching the lute and plucking the lyre.
Where's Allen now? Among the dead.

He cuts a slice of thick brown bread,
Yet speaks of silencing desire.
First thought best thought, the master said,

Nodding to me to go ahead
Without the members of the choir.
Where's Allen now? Among the dead,

Where every thought must go unsaid.
It's time to say what I require.
First thought best thought, the master said.
Where's Allen now? Among the dead.