The Poetry and life of Allen Ginsberg

244 Pages·2014·0.79 MB·English

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The Poetr y
a n d l i f e o f
A l l e n
G i n s b e rg
Allen’s Harmonium 1997
Edward Sanders
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Dedicated to the building of
the civilization envisioned by
Allen Ginsberg in such poems as “America”:
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need
with my good looks?
and “Death to Van Gogh’s Ear!”:
Now is the time for prophecy without death as a consequence
and “Memory Gardens”:
Well, while I’m here I’ll
do the work—
and what’s the Work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow.
The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg
Copyright © 1999, 2014 Edward Sanders
Edward Sanders Box 729
Woodstock, NY 12498
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TTHHEE PPOOEETTRRYY && LLIIFFEE OOFF
AALLLLEENN GGIINNSSBBEERRGG
P a r t I
1926-1943
In a way Allen Ginsberg’s life was
shaped by pogroms and the surge of
revolution
in the Jewish Pale of Settlement
first in the 1880s
and then in the pogrom-evil years of ’03–’05
which caused his grandparents on both sides
to flee to the freedom of the USA
THE PALE
The Pale was the legal zone in western Russia
set up through the centuries
where almost 5 million Jews
were forced to reside
The Pale extended from the Baltic Sea in the north
to the Black Sea in the south.
In the 19th Century it included Lithuania,
Belorussia (White Russia), the Crimea
Bessarabia & much of the Ukraine.
GRANDPARENTS IN THE PALE
Allen Ginsberg’s grandfather, Pincus, was born in a town called
Kamenetz-Podolskiy on the upper Dniester River
He was orphaned early,
then moved to Pinsk further north in the Pale
There were ghastly new restrictions on Jews in 1881
in the repression after the assassination of Tzar Alexander II
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and many instances of government-sanctioned pogroms.
The Tzar even banned the Yiddish Theater;
and restrictions were increased on where Jews
could live in the Pale.
There were quotas set up on the number of Jews
to be let into the universities,
and to legal, medical and government jobs.
It was in this context that Pincus Ginsberg fled to the USA
in the 1880s
to settle with relatives in Newark, where he met his future bride
Rebecca Schechtman--
Louis Ginsberg, Allen’s father, was born in ’95
HIS MATERNAL GRANDFATHER & GRANDMOTHER
Mendel Livergant
was Naomi’s father
(changed to Morris Levy at Ellis Island)
& lived in a village named Nevel
south of St. Petersburg, west of Moscow
& north of Vitebsk
in the middle of the Jewish Pale
where he sold Singer sewing machines to the peasants
Mendel married a woman named Judith
they had four children,
all of whom wound up in Allen’s poems–
Eleanor, Max, Sam & Naomi
who was born in 1894
Naomi grew up speaking Yiddish
She played the mandolin
Her parents were sympathetic
to the revolutionaries.
In the Russo-Japanese war of 1904
Mendel Livergant and his bro’ Isser
went to the U.S.
to avoid getting drafted
(& underwent the name-change
from Livergant to Levy)
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& Judith & the kids
moved to Vitebsk
a city of radical ferment
(where Marc Chagall
had lived when young)
–Vitebsk was later destroyed by the Nazis.
Then there was
what they called the Revolution of 1905
when the Tzar’s soldiers opened fire
on 300,000 marchers petitioning for
the 8-hour workday, more money, the
right to vote & a parliament
& 100 protesters,
some praying and carrying ikons
fell dead in the snow
by the Winter Palace
after which
there were massive strikes in cities
all over Russia,
and then massive repression
including ghastly pogroms
in the Northern Pale
–pogrom is the Russian word for “devastation”
This was the year that
Naomi, age 10, & her mother and sisters
escaped to New York
to Orchard Street
(Isser’s family went to Winnipeg)
& her father Morris opened a candy store
in the Lower East Side
Then the family moved to Newark
Naomi went to Barringer High
in 1912
where, both age 17, she met Louis Ginsberg.
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ONE SOCIALIST, ONE COMMUNIST
Allen’s mother was a communist
Louis was a socialist like his parents
& thus was established a
classic pull-&-shove
in the family
’tween the two sets of politics
NAOMI’S FIRST BREAKDOWN
Naomi had gone to Normal School
& become a teacher
in Woodbine, NJ
She suffered her first breakdown in 1919
light was painful to her
she lay in a dark room 3 weeks
She was not yet married
but later that year, with the opposition of
her future mother-in-law
she and Louis were hitched
The first son, Eugene, was born 1921
and named after the great American Socialist
Eugene Debs
THE BARD
The bard named Irwin Allen Ginsberg
was born at 2 a.m. on June 3, 1926
in Newark, NJ
They named him after
his great-grandfather
S’rul Avrum Ginsberg
Louis was an English teacher
at Central High in Paterson
He was a well known poet
with three volumes published during his lifetime
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“Would that all sons’ fathers were poets!”
A.G. later exclaimed, in his “Confrontation with Louis
Ginsberg’s Poems” in Louis Ginsberg’s
Collected Poems.
An early family apartment was
on Fair Street in Paterson
(now torn down
& not far from the Great Falls
in the Passaic River)
where Louis sat
in the evenings
at a modest wooden desk
’neath a gooseneck lamp
writing poetry
–a desk that Allen later acquired
after his father’s passing in ’76
and brought to his apartment
in the Lower East Side
Allen wrote a poem when he was nine or ten
which was published in the Paterson Evening News
He could still recall it 60 years later:
“Once upon my window sill
A sparrow hopped but then stood still
I asked him why he did the latter
He said to me, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Men kill a cow for mutton pie
So should I confide in you my woe?”
Allen, his brother and mother spent
two summers at Camp Nicht-Gedeiget
which means “No Worry”
near Monroe Lake
in Orange County
about 60 miles north of
New York City (Louis wd visit on weekends)
Allen’s first songs were
learned at his mom’s communist meetings:
“On the Line” &
“The Red Flag”
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Around 1929
after Naomi had pancreas surgery
she flipped again–
Light and sound hurt her
She was sent to Bloomingdale Sanatorium
not far from Tarrytown
Around 6 months later
she was let out
and joined the family in Paterson--
1930
’35
1935, Naomi another session with flip
again light gave her great pain
After two months she came out of it
Then a few months later,
either late ’35 or early ’36,
she went under again
and was sent to Greystone and
given shock treatments
Naomi returned home in ’36
Naomi more paranoid
Was sent back to sanatorium on June 24
She was there three years (Greystone)
and let out in 1939
1940
He was an early “Jack the Clipper”
an attribute that remained
throughout his life
as he amassed many many many news clippings
on Hitler and Mussolini, and the Spanish Civil War.
in the late ’30s into 1940
He learned of his gayness apparently by high school time
but kept many locks on the door
He wrote his class Graduation Poem
& wondered which college to attend
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He leaned toward Columbia
to follow a friend from Paterson High
He kept getting crushes on fellow students
One student, Paul Roth, went to Columbia
later became a doctor
Allen kept his crush in secrecy
’42
Naomi was again hospitalized at Greystone
in ’42 and ’43.
P a r t I I
’43
The Vow to Help the Working Class
The slender & nervous sixteen year old
took the ferry from Hoboken to Manhattan
on the way to the university entrance examination
and made a solemn vow
that if he got into Columbia
he would devote his life
to helping the working class
(Ginsberg was prone to vows--
see his later vows with Neal Cassady
and Peter Orlovsky)
He enrolled at Columbia in ’43, age 16
an Ivy league school-– hardly a citadel of sentiment
for the workers
even with exradicals like Lionel Trilling
and Marxist art-genius Meyer Schapiro
as his mentors
That was the school year
he’d meet young Republican Jack Kerouac
and continued his fierce training in rhyming
(He forged beautiful skills at rhyme
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to which he returned toward the end of his life.
He was famous throughout his career for his
spontaneous rhymes)
Among his faves were Thomas Wyatt &
Christopher Smart (1722-1771)
whose “Jubilate Agno”
was written while Smart was crazed.
Ginsberg
with a crazy mother
was very very sensitive
to
craziness
Crazy Wisdom
Crazy Times
& Vision
Another big influence, of course, was
Walt Whitman, Ginsberg’s life long “unwobbling pivot”
described by him in a letter to one of his college professors as
a “Mountain too vast to be seen.”
Decades later, when reading from Whitman to his students,
he would weep during “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.”
And so Irwin Allen Ginsberg began
a polite, Cold War liberal Columbia upbringing--
In December o’ ’43 he met one William S. Burroughs
who was working as a bartender in the Village
His parents, who operated a gift shop and
garden supply shop in Fla., sent him $200 a month--
Ginsberg & Kerouac
learned much from Burroughs’ library
Ginsberg first experienced Blake there,
and Baudelaire
Big impact on future Beats:
Burroughs’ Book Hoard