Yesterday, we directed you to the Memorial/Tributes section of our blog [2018 update – this feature of the blog no longer available – Memorial/Tributes section incorporated elsewhere] . First-hand encounters. We know there are zillions of them. Allen definitely left an impression on everyone he met. We’ll be adding to this and featuring more in the months to come. Steve Silberman’s Our Allen Facebook page, some years back, set up a forum for recollection and memoir that includes some sweet personal accounts and is well worth re-visiting. Contributions by David Cope, Chris Funkhauser, Eliot Greenspan, Marc Olmsted and Steve himself, as well as notes, links, and a whole, whole, lot more.
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(There is also another Allen Ginsberg Facebook page, with which we are not affiliated, but take time out to salute for generously “spreading the dharma“).
And here‘s Canadian journalist, Matthew Hays (a hand on the cheek from the master).
Sometimes the encounters are not quite so invigorating. Here’s Alexander Laurence‘s less-than-successful 1992 interview (“I didn’t get along so well with Allen Ginsberg as is evident in the following..”).
Instances like this, tho’, are atypical. Far far more typical are heartfelt “shout-outs” like this one from Chris Scholl (on his quaintly-named Love, Art and Fear blog):
Cheers Allen.”