Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg in conversation continues from here
GC: Oh, speaking of the Living Theater. They’ve got a theater (1987), I (just) found out (in New York City)..
AG: They’ve got a theater down in…
GC: …in the heat of the Alphabet City (between Avenues A & D, Lower East Side)
AG: Yeah, isn’t that great? It’s a storefront here on 4th Street between…
GC: If they’d only put on a good play. If they’d only put on a good play.
AG: Apparenly, they’ve got something good with this alphabet thing.. I don’t know what it is… Schwerner.. (Armand) Schwerner – The Tablets)
GC: (Oh, I can’t believe it!) – Armand Schwerner? – Yucky! yuck! . Come on!.. if they’d only get something good. Alright, lets see, what else …
AG: Write them a play.
GC: I could do a play. Allen, lets see, what else now? – Speaking of writing a play, you ever think of doing one?
AG: Ah, nah, too much trouble I had the opportunity with Robert Wilson
GC: They say.. they say a poet, you know, is not as sharp as writing a play. I mean to develop characters and all that
AG: Kaddish I couldn’t work on anymore. I don’t have the sitzfleisch.
GC; Well look at you in life, you’re a successful man and all that.
AG : Successful?
GC: Do you think it’s inverse snobbery that you would live amongst the bretheren of the poor, suffering bretheren, and not get a nice place where I could visit you now? Lets say you got a place around Central Park South, or something like that? then I can come and visit you..
AG: I have a real neat apartment, it’s real clean, it’s spacious and it\s quiet
GC: It’s all Puerto-Ricans and everything down there, selling crack down there
AG: No, no, no, it’s a building full of poets.
GC: You live in a building full of poets? Oh yeah the worst poets, that boot me (out)..
AG: No, nice poets.
GC: Which ones? Which ones? Don’t tell me that guy Larry Fagin?
AG: John Godfrey’s upstairs
GC Oh he’s alright. He’s younger..some of the young guys like that
AG Richard Hell is upstairs.
GC: .. yeah, like Richard Hell, those people..
AG: Michael Scholnick is around
GC: And what is this other one, gay guy that I like, Rene?
AG: Rene Ricard, he doesn’t live there anymore but he’s a good poet.
Let’s see, who else is in there…
GC: The Hanuman Books, that this guy Raymond Foye, he comes out with these new poets doesn’t he?
AG: Yeah,
GC: That’s good, alright
AG: A lot of younger poets are here
GC: So they are being represented..
AG: David Trinidad, among others
GC: David Trinidad, right
AG: He’s in my class (at Brooklyn College)
GC: What happened to our.. Alright, (speaking of your class and that), what happened to those black poets we knew and the Puerto-Rican ones, the New York Puerto-Rican ones?
AG: Oh, they’re great. The black poets we used to know in the ‘Sixties are..
GC: ..are good, are..
AG: Ishmael Reed
GC: Ishmael Reed
AG: David Henderson
GC: David Henderson
AG: Umm…… who was it out there? – definitely the prose guys..
GC: Oh Jeez, I don’t remember, I should know. ..Calvin Hernton…
AG: The Umbra Group have come to be, historically, very important. The guy we were in touch with way back in the past in Chicago is now teaching at.. (Tom Weatherly is a poet who works around.. ) but the guy who we knew in.. who was it we used to correspond with in Chicago?
GC: …A black guy, you’re right.
AG He’s a poet… Clarence Major, is now a major anthologist historian poet teacher
GC: What happened to Jerome Rothenberg?
AG: Jerome Rothenberg is a pillar of power in San Diego State, he was in Binghampton last year in 1988, and is very good actually, a real scholar
GC: I would like to know really the poet comes along and they’ve really got to be special and unique, don’t you think?
AG:Yes
GC: Don’t you think, Al? that all the poets that have been written about, everybody that really lets their heart bare, you know, the really let bare their heart , their soul, so there can be nobody coming to shock anybody anymore with their words, you know
AG: Only with the brilliance of language
GC: That’s what’s going to win, that’s what’s going to be the guy to come. I think something where he..
AG: Someone who loves the language