The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg
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1 The Poetry and life of Allen Ginsberg Allen’s Harmonium 1997 Edward Sanders 2 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 1 THE POETRY & LIFE OF ALLENALLEN GINSBERGGINSBERG Part 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 2 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) 3 & 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. 4 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 5 “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” 6 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 7 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. Part II ’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 8 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 Another life-long friend A.G. met his first year in College 9 was Lucien Carr, a polished & confident youth from St. Louis whom Allen first saw in Lionel Trilling’s Great Books Seminar ’44 Naomi had been released from Greystone & Allen often went with her to the opera Louis & Naomi broke up that year Her paranoia & all the fights were finally too much for both to endure Naomi moved to NYC where she had a love affair with a doctor for the National Maritime Union & lived with him for a while.