[New-Poetry] Re: Happy Birthday Ginsberg

Tue Jun 6 21:00:49 EDT 2006

>Whoever wrote it had a beautiful satiric insight into po-biz -- <

Yeah, sad, isn't it? I don't know about anyone else but at least I might know about myself, maybe, but I don't think I ever got involved in poetry for an interest in po-biz or anything resembling it.

Best, sadly

Dave

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: opus40-01 at opus40.org 
  To: 'NewPoetry at smapp02.chicago.hostway.net : Contemporary Poetry News &Views' 
  Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 1:36 AM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Happy Birthday Ginsberg

  One of the great moments in the history of TV was the episode of LA Law where they take on the case of a guy who wants to promote a poetry festival, and he gets into a partnership with a rock festival promoter. Whoever wrote it had a beautiful satiric insight into po-biz -- but anyway, by the end of the show they patch up their differences, and the poetry festival goes on, including -- and this is the great moment -- Mamie Van Doren reading "Howl."

  On Tue Jun 6 15:47 , David Graham sent:

    I appreciate all the comments on my Ginsberg poem. I guess I have mixed feelings about Ginsberg, as the poem (I hope) makes sufficiently plain. And I hope my admiration for the best of his influence is also clear.

    There *was* a delicious irony in his becoming, by the end of his life, such an entrenched member of the establishment that he began his career by tweaking. And from all the evidence I've seen, such irony was not lost on Ginsberg himself. It wasn't AG who had to change in order to effect this change, of course. 

    I'll always remember fondly a reading he did at an MLA convention to celebrate the appearance of his big red Collected poems--he read "Howl" in its entirety, and then did some Blake songs with a guitar accompanist. The strangest sight I ever saw at an MLA--hundreds of tweedy professors swaying back and forth, singing Blake lyrics in a wonderfully off-key manner. No one more off-key, or more tweedy, than Ginsberg himself.

    But I'm not one of those who makes blanket statements about him being a poor poet. He was massively uneven, of course, even more than usual, I mean--but at his best I find him quite compelling. I think "Howl" and "Kaddish" and a respectable handful of others will live on, and that's a decent batting average for any poet.

    I've never found any reason to buy into the "first thought / best thought" aesthetic, which from the evidence of the work just isn't true, sadly enough. 

    On Jun 6, 2006, at 12:21 PM, David Bircumshaw wrote:

      yeah, I like David's poem too, rather more than I like Ginsberg's or the
      character that comes across as 'Ginsberg'.

      Best

      Dave

      ----- Original Message -----
      From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
      To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views"
      <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
      Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 1:36 AM
      Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Happy Birthday Ginsberg

          Wonderful, David!

        Yes, a good one. A Ginsberg better than any Ginsberg.

        --Bob G.

          On Jun 3, 2006, at 2:49 PM, David Graham wrote:

            Ginsberg born this day in 1926. Here's the poem I wrote after he
            died:

            Goodbye Allen Ginsberg

            Old truth-goof, garrulous
            and canny crow, finally
            you're at one with polluted skies,
            sidewalk grit, neon buzzing
            messages to the Absolute,

            all those clippings of your face
            candidly sweet, decently weary,
            all your archives and footnotes
            and tapes full of scat. . . .

            What use the FBI, CIA
            keeping tabs on your slant self?
            What did they ever learn
            you hadn't already published?

            You printed come cries, vanities
            and regrets, droopy-fleshed lust
            and despair hard as a curb.
            Farts of savvy delirium.

            Chanting your wet dreams
            as if they would dissolve
            the Pentagon, you bombed
            the White House with squads
            of paper airplanes, scribbled
            all over with holy jokes

            --to no avail, no avail,
            you big phony failure,
            you stand up comic singing off key
            in eternity's lounge, raking in
            prizes like Miss America, sprawling
            all over the anthologies at last.

            Yes, you were queer, start to finish
            in every way, jabbering stowaway
            on the flound'ring ship of State,
            crazy angel of the honorarium,
            philosopher goat.

            Goodbye to your smoldering ashes,
            goodbye to pages of yellow gibberish
            and their sudden shafts of pure sun
            warming the forest floor . . . .

    ==========================================

    David Graham

    grahamd at ripon.edu

    Home Page:

    http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html

    Poetry Library:

    http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html

    ==========================================

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