an abandoned chest of roistering literature for the drunk and rampant reader.
You say Hello and part of what you spend to say it goes to God.
There is a tax on all our simplest thoughts and common acts.
It will come to pass that a friend greets friend and there is not a sound.
Thus God subtracts bit by little bit till in the end there is nothing at all. Intend. Intend.
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –
On April 5, 1997, Allen Ginsberg, esteemed American poet who spanned influence over multiple generations, died from a combination of liver cancer and hepatitis. At the eve of his death, close friends, family and old lovers spent the night with him at his apartment in the East Village in New York City. Once he passed, Buddhist chants filled the air for hours until his they believed his spirit fully left his body.
“Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.” – Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg was paramount to the Beat movement as a voice against militarism and political oppression. He was part of the counterculture publicly speaking out for the sexually and politically oppressed.
He is most known for exercising his freedom of speech in his poem “Howl” that spoke on homosexual relationships and the times of the American generation.
He studied at Colombia University where he made friends that shared his “new vision” and embarked on the epic journey of the poetic, beatific, buddhist life that still influences generations of artists today.
Favorite Quotes:
“I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I’ll never be sane.”
“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.”
Incomplete list of suggested reading:
*National Book Award for Poetry Winner
Interesting Fact:
Ginsberg and Anne Waldman helped found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, which was started by Ginsberg’s biggest spiritual mentor, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
I’ll tell you how the sun rose, —
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”
* * *
But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while
Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars,
And led the flock away.
There are so many pianos still left
In the fields of the village
Where you insist that we continue
To live, so many pianos
Though only a few have remained faithful
To the serious chords of the wind.
For example, the camel-colored Steinway
Beneath the arbor of lavender wisteria
& drooping bougainvillea has barely
A dozen keys left working, their thin felt
Hammers long grown soggy as dawn mist,
Soft as the pillowing fog.
Still, you say, who cares? as you turn from me,
Stepping calmly onto the narrow stone terrace
Overlooking these perpetual fields—
Just as every young woman in this
Village stands each morning, every one of them,
& exactly at this moment of the day, satisfied by
The first ripple of light as it sketches
The body’s languid harmony. If I am lucky, I know
I will live forever in this ancient, lost village
Of pianos & a late pagan petulance.
– from The Red Leaves of Night
Let’s imagine I’m translating something to you–
you, asleep, or sleepless and naming
that third place–between–
with the tips of your tapering fingers–
I don’t know the language.
It bends.
In the mind–in that strangely shared chamber–
that is, I mean, in your hands,
where you show me those scenes of confusion and flight
with such intimacy, and don’t know it–
even sans color, sans liquor, sans shape,
we are twins. Fraternal. Unknown.
The moon, invasive, huge,
lunging in through the windows,
makes no exceptions–
It’s true: it will never happen / you’d be surprised.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing father, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing ins’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
“Poets don’t finish poems, they abandon them.”
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.
“A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here”:
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
drunken library 