Posted on 06/16/2013 5:02:16 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It can be easy to be jaded about the Beat writers in San Francisco, but even the most indifferent literary snob would be hard-pressed to walk away from "Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum without feeling fuzzy inside.
Organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and running through September, "Beat Memories" is a collection of about 80 photos taken by Ginsberg and his friends in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s.
Nearly every image is notated with the wobbly handwriting of Ginsberg, who added paragraph-length captions to the images in the 1980s at the prompting of his archivist Bill Morgan and photographers Robert Frank and Berenice Abbott.
The photos are taken in bedrooms, on rooftops, in exotic countries, in photo booths and in Parisian attics. All of the usual suspects are there: Ginsberg's lover Peter Orlovsky, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Gary Snyder, Herbert E. Huncke, Lucien Carr and a fantastically rumpled, dogged Bob Dylan.
Although he rocketed to fame with the publication of his poem "Howl" in 1956 and bounced around the globe, Ginsberg kept his friends close. The photos are often casual and domestic, a testament to the impassioned camaraderie and intimacy the Beats shared.
Under a shot of Burroughs supine on a bed, naked but for his white underwear, Ginsberg wrote: "Bill Burroughs in back bedroom waiting for company ..."
Ginsberg's scrawled notes are charmingly detailed and frank. On an image of Burroughs pontificating to a pensive Kerouac — Burroughs' palm is face up at the end of a languid wrist — Ginsberg quotes Burroughs: "Now, Jack, as I warned you far back as 1945, if you keep going home to live with your 'Mémère' you'll find yourself wound tighter and tighter in her apron strings till you're an old man and can't escape ..."
The static snapshot transforms into prophetic cinema: Kerouac's relationship with his mother was fraught, co-dependent and lasted a lifetime.
One famous image of Kerouac is in the show — Jack howling at the camera, with New York a blur behind him — circa 1953. Ginsberg also caught Kerouac ravaged 11 years later, slumped in a chair, a "red-faced corpulent W.C. Fields shuddering with mortal horror and grimacing on O.M.T. I'd brought back from visiting Timothy Leary."
Reading Ginsberg's priceless captions is an homage to memory and a puzzling, mysterious mix of things human brains remember: raindrops on laundry, rent prices, addresses, routines, friends and passing philosophies.
In "Beat Memories," the images and his recollections are a glimpse into Ginsberg's tenderness, and into a world of collective minds that fueled each other.
Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg Where: ContemporaryJewish Museum, 736 Mission St., S.F.
When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays-Tuesdays, 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, closed Wednesdays; show closes Sept. 8
Admission: $5 to $12
Contact: (415) 655-7800, www.thecjm.org
Not all of Ginsberg’s chemically corrupted associates were happy to have been sexually used by Mr. Ginsberg.
Read wider. That is the cure...
I’ve read and written a lot of poetry. I lived around columbia U and went to school there and read poetry at the west end.
My friends from the period who knew nothing of poetry thought ginsberg was great. I though ginsberg was a babbling idiot. In prose I thought mailer was a babbling idiot too.
But that’s just me.
None of the “fans” have picked up on my allusion to Capote’s put down of Kerouac in an earlier post...makes me think that the fans are the ones who are not so well read..
And your point with this ad hominem is?
Once again, my previous comment about judging the quality of his work, rather than his regrettable lifestyle choices and personal opinions. I’m fully aware of his NAMBLA statements, and I have never agreed with them in any way, shape or form.
Nevertheless, once again, if we’re going to play the game of allowing the personal lives of artists to invalidate their art, there’s not going to be a whole lot of material left, I’m afraid.
I’ve written some research work on Ginsberg, and while I find Howl to be a really incredible poem
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I just tried to read(and failed to finish) Howl. Without success. Way too much buggery. A normal person just doesn’t want that sh-t going through his head.
That was the finisher.
Howl starts out with a pretty crip open but then it becomes wordy. Ginsburg chants but the words don’t mean anything. its just noise and ginsburg enjoying the sound of his own voice. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo
Man have you left yourself open for a broadside with this statement..let it go friend...
Yeah, it does sound like a bunch of crappy spoken word but without getting too technical the whole poem is religious:
The first section mimics the Lotus Sutra
The second mimics the Old Testament
The third the Koran.
It’s a very deep poem - believe it or not - and I thought it was pretty shallow until I put a lot of research into it. It’s almost like a 50’s “Wasteland.” It’s also very reminiscent of Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”
If you want the Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, try Gary Snyder, lol.
Well I didn’t mean to soil your love of the man’s career, I just thought that since some of it consisted of promoting homosexual rape of little boys and describing his love of little boys for sex and being a member and supporter and national speaker for NAMBLA should be mentioned, somewhere.
Was it brought up too early?
“...allowing the personal lives of artists to invalidate their art...”
So be it.
For example, Frank Sinatra was a world class jerk. It taints his music, bottom line.
I’m not a fan of Snyder either.
The second mimics the Old Testament.
‘’’’’’’’’’’
There is no chance that Ginsberg had even the slightest understanding of the OT. Nor does his work (or his life for that matter)reflect any understanding at all of the OT.
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That said I recognize the pole star (the guiding light) in your discussion would naturally come out of most undergraduate literary programs at American universities.
>>There is no chance that Ginsberg had even the slightest understanding of the OT. Nor does his work (or his life for that matter)reflect any understanding at all of the OT.
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>>That said I recognize the pole star (the guiding light) in your discussion would naturally come out of most undergraduate literary programs at American universities.
Are you kidding? He’s Jewish! His father was literary as well, which simply makes your argument seem naive. Yeah, he may have been a pot smoking hippie through most of the 60s and a guy that really pissed off Kerouac, but “Howl” is still pretty damn good.
Furthermore, the research and paper I did on him was at a master’s level program at a BAPTIST university.
He’s Jewish! His father was literary as well, which simply makes your argument seem naive.
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yeah I know he’s jewish.
There’s an old lenny bruce joke. (he was a jewish comic from the 1960’s.) anywhere outside of new york in the USA whether you’re christian or jewish—your christian. However, in new york—no matter whether you’re christian or jewish—its just the reverse-— you’re jewish. (lenny died with his head in the toilet and a syringe on his arm)
I lived in Manhattan/morningside heights for almost 20 years. so I know jewish. and yeah ginsberg was ethnically—ie lox and bagel—but probably only bagels— jewish— but that’s really really it..
Since I left Manhattan/morningside heights 20 years ago I’ve spent some time in study of the Old Testament.
Ginsberg’s writing shows that he didn’t get anything more than a superficial understanding of the old testatment from his father. Certainly columbia college didn’t give him anything more than a superficial understanding of the old testatment.
This is the way that DH Lawrence talks of Walt Whitman. I think the same applies to Ginsberg.
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Walt was really too superhuman. The danger of the superman is that he is mechanical.
They talk of his ‘splendid animality’. Well, he’d got it on the brain, if that’s the place for animality.
I am he that aches with amorous love:
Does the earth gravitate, does not all matter, aching, attract all matter ?
So the body of me to all I meet or know.
What can be more mechanical ? The difference between life and matter is that life, living things, living creatures, have the instinct of turning right away from some matter, and of bliss- fully ignoring the bulk of most matter, and of turning towards only some certain bits of specially selected matter. As for living creatures all helplessly hurtling together into one great snowball, why, most very living creatures spend the greater part of their time getting out of the sight, smell or sound of the rest of living creatures. Even bees only cluster on their own queen. And that is sickening enough. Fancy all white humanity clustering on one another like a lump of bees.
No, Walt, you give yourself away. Matter does gravitate helplessly. But men are tricky-tricksy, and they shy all sorts of ways.
Matter gravitates because it is helpless and mechanical.
And if you gravitate the same, if the body of you gravitates to all you meet or know, why, something must have gone . seriously wrong with you. You must have broken your main- spring.
You must have fallen also into mechanization.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/lawrence/dhlch12.htm
More DH Lawrence on Whitman—that I think is apropos of Ginsberg
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http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/lawrence/dhlch12.htm
You must have fallen also into mechanization.
Your Moby Dick must be really dead. That lonely phallic monster of the individual you. Dead mentalized.
I only know that my body doesn’t by any means gravitate to all I meet or know, I find I can shake hands with a few people. But most I wouldn’t touch with a long prop.
Your mainspring is broken, Walt Whitman. The mainspring of your own individuality. And so you run down with a great whirr, merging with everything.
You have killed your isolate Moby Dick. You have mentalized your deep sensual body, and that’s the death of it.
I am everything and everything is me and so we’re all One in One Identity, like the Mundane Egg, which has been addled quite a while.
>>Ginsberg’s writing shows that he didn’t get anything more than a superficial understanding of the old testatment from his father. Certainly columbia college didn’t give him anything more than a superficial understanding of the old testatment.
He knew enough to know what Moloch was, Moloch’s relation to the Jews, and Moloch’s meaning as a worshiped idol. It wasn’t like he stumbled upon it.
Yeah, I have a lot of students ask me if Whitman was gay. I tell them he was omnisexual, and that modern gays wouldn’t understand what that means.
Fine, roger that, Chief.
Regrettable personal life choices absolutely taint and invalidates an artist’s art, so obviously it follows that unless I utterly reject the validity of someone’s art, then that must mean that I agree with every single thing they do and say in their personal life.
So, in my own case, because I’ve been called a useless, whiny Gen X loser, absolutely nothing I have ever written has any value whatsoever.
Yeah, I have a lot of students ask me if Whitman was gay. I tell them he was omnisexual, and that modern gays wouldn’t understand what that means.
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hell I don’t even know what omnisexual is.
He knew enough to know what Moloch was, Moloch’s relation to the Jews, and Moloch’s meaning as a worshiped idol. It wasn’t like he stumbled upon it.
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True, but he submitted to Moloch.
The twin abominations of the caananites that drew God’s wrath were human (child) sacrifice and homosexuality. Even still the Jews from time to time stepped over the line and took up the abominations of the caananites. when they did — they drew God’s wrath.
and justly.
Heck even the Romans were grossed out by the caananite colony of carthage.
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