[New-Poetry] Remembering one Prague Spring

[jforjames at aol.com]

http://www.praguepost.com/articles/2008/05/07/when-poetry-was-king.php
When poetry was king
May Day was never the same after Allen Ginsberg's 1965 visit to Prague 

By Darrell Jónsson 
For The Prague Post
May 7th, 2008 issue 
Ginsberg, shown with an admirer top right and wearing the King of May crown above and below, added a new dynamic to traditional May 1 celebrations. 

May Day may have been relatively quiet in Prague this year, but during the Cold War it was a political flash point. In 1947, the U.S. Congress decreed May 1 Loyalty Day, hoping to stave off its growing international communist overtones. This did nothing to stop the celebration of the Marxist revolution in communist countries, where over the next couple of decades the date threatened to become as big as Christmas.This set the stage for one of the most memorable May Days ever in Prague. 

In 1965, when American beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg was crowned King of May and paraded through the streets, it was clear to the Czechoslovak secret police that the celebration had drifted way off-message and far out of state control.
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