1989, Ginsberg and Corso – The Conversation Continues – 10

Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg conversation continues – from here

AG: …Someone who loves the language.

GC: ..like Hart Crane did with the language, huh? – and say something too, on top of it..

AG: Oddly enough, the nearest to that is Andy Clausen, I think.

GC: The who? Andy Clausen?

AG: the nearest to that. I mean he has a gift of language and he has something to say.

GC: Good.

AG: I like Antler’s ideas and progression of ideas, and I like..

GC:  Yeah, Well, you know me, I jump on the person. (The) poetry just….

AG: And I like David Cope’s concision and photographic stuff.

GC:  David Cope …Me, I judge too much the poet not the poetry sometimes. Because I see this guy (Antler) is milking it and so, you know, I’d jump on him, I’d say he’s not strong enough…

AG: Yeah, but I knew him first through the poetry and not through person.

GC; I remember. You put it aside the first time. You thought it was crap, man. Then he wrote you this other letter saying why you don’t understand nothing, and then you cried..

AG:: What are you talking about?

GC: This guy Antler  [no? – Editorial note –  maybe Gregory’s thinking of Jonathan Robbins/Jacob Rabinowitz?]

AG: No, when I first saw it (Antler’s poetry), I saw that I liked it.

GC: How much do you wanna bet? –  because I saw the letter…

AG: I think the first time I saw it, first time I saw it was ..was (with) Ferlinghetti (at City Lights), way back in 1970..

GC: He wrote you a letter saying that you didn’t see this, that you didn’t look and understand it, or anything, and you cried when you realized he was a good poet.

AG:  I was angry. I don’t think so, I doubt it.  I might have reacted to begin with but I had a long long controversy with Ferlinghetti about publishing him. I wanted him to publish him.

GC: Did he publish him?

AG: He did.  He published Factory.

GC: But did he publish any good poetry these days?

AG: Well he’s publishing a little series of pamphlets.

GC:  Yeah, well that’s to get them off his back.

AG: No, but mostly he’s publishing his documents of Surrealism, prose, revivals. I wish he’d publish more poetry.

GC: He should, yeah, he’s one guy that could do it.

Yeah, another thing we did, I think. was make poetry more available, poets more available to be published.

AG: Yeah.

GC: It was very hard before that to get published, you remember?

AG: Yeah

GC: My god that guy that had power,  that  whats is name? Williams? – Oscar Williams – he was running this anthology, he had all this power.

AG: Yeah.

GC: He could put anybody in there and they’d make it so to speak,- those were  the poets, right? – they’d put them up there with Shakespeare, right?, and his wife even – huh?

AG: Yeah.

to be continued