Howling with a not-so-lone wolf
Q-Notes T September 6,1997 T PAGE 9
by Stacey Robbins
Special to Q-Notes
Visionary author. Father of the Beats. Coun
terculture guru. Rascal poet. The eternal flower
child. Icon of the hippies. Laureate of alien
ation and protest.
It’s hard to peg Allen Ginsberg, who brought
the’ arid the visceral “Howl” and the poignant
“Kaddish.” But during the five decades that he
played upon the American consciousness like a
benevolent Pied Piper, the critics tried. In The
Life and TimeTdf Allen Ginsberg, M American
Masters special premiering later this month on
PBS, acquaintances such as WjUiim Burroughs,
Amiri Baraka, Norman Mailer, Joan Baez, Ken
Kesey, Tirnothy Leary and Abbie Hoffinan toss
aside the labels and get to the heart and mind
of the infainous |X)et. f
Allen Ginsberg has gone on to that great'
poetry slam in the sky. Williams Burroughs,
Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassaday, Timothy Teary
and Abbie Hofl&nan are there, too. Remember
ing their friendship, in an interview taped be
fore his death, Burroughs talked not about die
hip, iconoclastic poet who spoke to the collecT
tive conscience of a generation, but about the
young neophyte he had gotten to know 40 years
earlier, still-more or less a conformist,”:
“I was in the Army fot about six rnonths,
discharged. In 1944,1 met Jack Kerouac and
also Allen Ginsberg,” Burroughs recalled. “His
father, Louie Ginsberg, disapproved of me.
Thought of me as sort of a decadent million
aire or something like that, corrupting his son
with sort of subversive ideas.”
But Allen Ginsberg already had a few radi
cal ideas of his own. The seeds had been sown
long before by his communist mother Naomi,
for whom he would write “Kaddish.” And soon
those seeds would flower into the boldly qnique
voice that would let fpar its “Howl? upon a
buttoned-dovm public. But imiriediately,
Ginsberg fpund an audience. ’ *
“I think [“Howl”] was closer to my owp
experience and had a kind of contemporary
tone that I like, and it had that anger in it that
attracted me even before I knew I was angry
myself,” said poet Amiri Baraka. “I think that’s
what tuned a lot of people into that voice be
cause it was a voice of young people protesting
the kind ofdisgusdng, anti-humane culmre that
we were growing to adulthood in.”
“I do recall that the poem had an Immense
effect on me and I felt immediately that
Ginsberg was at the least a major poet, and
maybe a genius,” said Norman Mailer. “I’d
never read any poetry that was that charged,
that intense and that extraordinary, and I knew
he was going to make a revolution in the con
sciousness of his time.”
Ginsberg, the Beat poet of the 50s, slipped
comfortably into the 60s like a funky new pair
of shoes, custom made just for him. Writer Ken
Editorial
Continued from page 6
about the threat James Dobson and other reli
gious extremists pose to the American tradi
tion of tolerance, inclusivity and the separation
of church and state.
And I apologize to my fellow Christian
Americans, many of whom have been misled
by a man I once loved and trusted. I hope you
will not make the same mistake I made in let
ting my personal loyalty to an old friend blind
me to the unchristian and un-American words
and actions of James Dobson and so many of
his Focus on the Family guests.
I apologize to any American who has felt
the sung of James Dobson and the Christian
Right wagging their holier-than-thou fingers in
your face, shrieking that because your views
differ from theirs, you are ungodly, evil and
unworthy of the rights of full citizenship.
Please don’t let these extremists confuse you
about the life and teachings of Jesus. He spoke
in love. I regret that Jim and Focus have not.
Second: I have come to Colorado Springs
to call on James Dobson to step down as a po
litical activist and return Focus on the Family
to its original mission.
When we began Focus, in 1977, the seven
founders had only two objectives: 1) To help
Americans raise their children and 2) to help
us maintain our marriages. Millions of Ameri
cans would say that James Dobson has made a
tremendous contribution in those two areas.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said regard
ing his harmful foray into big-time politics.
Kesey sees it as a natural progression of the
times, with Ginsberg helping to turn the tides.
“It seemed like it was part of the same drama
and we had been accepted into it by the old
gunfighters, the real heavies in our mytholo
gies — Kerouac, Cassaday, Ginsberg. And it
was an honor,” he said.
Timothy Leary considered himself “a rather
straight Harvard professor” before he met
Ginsberg, who wrote to him inquiring about
his drug research. An invitation was immedi
ately dispatched to Ginsberg and his lover Pe
ter Orlovsky.
“I’d never met anyone like Allen and Peter,”
Leary said. “They were true bohemians in the
classic sense of the word. And just to know Allen
and spend an hour with him just changed my
life right then. I knew that I was never going to
be [a] part of the system after being exposed to
the power of a liberated, bohemian, artistic
■:-mind.”
Singer Joan Baez remembers Ginsberg as a
sort of court jester with a social conscience,
holding court during a volatile era. “Allen could
behave like a nut but he was serious about some
thing,” she said. “He was serious about other
people’s lives and Allen took risks and was seri
ous, and at the same time was very colorful and
very crazy. And we need that.”
Remembering the 1968 Democratic Na
tional Convention in Chicago, activist Abbie
Hoffman called Ginsberg “a peacemaker.” In
the midst of violent confrontation, the poet
chanted a mantra over the address system.
“Allen was a figure of calm during the con
vention,” Norman Mailer said. “What I’ve al
ways loved about Allen is precisely his bravery.
He’s the perfect example, in my mind, of cour
age transcending fear.” Transcending even
death, it seems, in the words of Mailer during
a recent memorial service: “How can you mea
sure courage? I remember once 20 years ago, I
wrote a kind of tribute to Allen. It went more
or less like this: ‘Sometimes I think Allen
Ginsberg is the bravest man in America.’ What
did it mean? I suppose I was saying that if I had
had his life, if I had been a Jewish homosexual
with an insane mother, I would not have been
as brave as Allen, I would not have broken
through, I would not have become the greatest
poet in America and have done it uphill all the
way. No, Allen had the stuff out of which Paul
Bunyans are made, and with it all, he cared so
much about so many people that he gave life
and honor to the most inconceivable contra
diction of them all: he was wild; he was respon
sible. Of such incompatibles is compounded
the mortar of his artwork. May some of them
prove immortal.” T
[The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg will
premiere Wednesday, September 17 at 10pm on
PBS. Check your local listing for the PBS affili
ate in your areal\
I believe Dobson-style politics have been
inept, simplistic, exclusionary, divisive and
alarmingly sectarian. Mr. Dobson has shown
little respect for our pluralistic system, for dif
fering views or for the core skill of compromise
and consensus building. That is un-Ainerican.
James Dobson’s political style has been one
of relentlessly demonizing his adversaries. And
he has created the impression that the pathway
to national moral reform leads through the leg
islative machinery of Washington. That is un
christian.
1 ask Mr. Dobson:
• To cancel his political radio series Family
News in Focus and his political magazine Citi
zen
• To get out of the business of organizing
and training grassroots political organizations
around the country
• To break off his powerful alliance with lob
byist Gary Bauer and the Family Research
Council
• To discontinue meeting with politicians
in an effort to leverage his influence to shape
public policy and to pledge never again to de
vote a Focus radio broadcast to politics.
I call on James Dobson to return to the
kinder, gentler Focus on the Family we seven
founded in 1977; to support America in those
noble human endeavors of building strong
marriages and raising strong children. ▼
— Gil Alexander-Moegerle
When Buying or Selling
a Used House, Call
Joe O^Connor
"I Sell Charlotte!^^
(704) 375-7130
Cirolinii RciHy
Greensboro Video & News
725 W* Lee St*
Greensboro, NC 27403
(910) 275-8366
Bachlors Video
3411 S* Wilminston St«
Raleish, NC 27603
(919) 779-0995
• Adult Theatre at Bachlors Video
I • Videos, Novelties, Masazines
> • Now Hirins Responsible Clerks !
To contact Mr. AlexaiKler-Moegerle,
email GMoegerle®aol.com
4-hour
Gay Videos
$ I 2^
Buy 1 Get 1 free
* WITH COUPON *
EXPIRES S/30/97
ALL PURCHASES
EXCEPT VIDEO
* WITH COUPON ♦
EXPIRES 9/30/97