Bob Rosenthal in conversation with John Bredin for Public Voice Salon continues from here – The Magic of Allen Ginsberg.
Bob takes John on a tour around Allen’s 13th Street office
JB: Ok now we can walk around this room? Let’s see what we got here.
BR The three fish – it is a design Allen saw when he lived in India. It is a tantric design called Buddha’s footprint. I will grab a Ginsberg book to show you how we used this image as a logo in books and even on checks.
JB: OK who is this gentlemen with the long beard?
BR: This is John Suiter’s photo of poet, Nanao Sakaki, Japanese poet, (actually Okinawan). He was a radar man in World War II, outside the city of Nagasaki – he traced the bombers that brought the atomic bomb! He renounced money and walked the entire length of Japan several times pennyless and picked up followers. He lived in the Japanese Hippie Communities in the mountains and was a good friend of the poet Gary Snyder. Allen knew Nano through Snyder. Nanao is a wonderful poet. I remember once he came up my stairs to my fifth floor walk up to get Allen’s keys and exclaimed, “New York Mountain!”
JB This wonderful picture of Allen with Erica Jong and James Baldwin
BR I really don’t know the provenance on that. Allen has no beard, so its mid ‘70’s. It around the time of the Rolling Thunder Revue where Allen shaved his beard off . Otherwise he really wasn’t without a beard. It looks like a party, a literary party, could be a party at the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Editorial note – the occasion was actually at The Kitchen, New York City, 1978, at a benefit held for the organization Poets and Writers)
JB: Look at the file cabinets over here full of archives what’s in them?
BR I going to show you one incredible thing. You asked earlier about whether we would make an Allen Ginsberg Museum, but on his death’s bed he clearly said, “Do not make a museum out of me.” But here it is:
When we moved out of 12th Street to move here, Allen had these tchotchkes around. I threw them in this empty tool box. I never touched them again but realized later that this is the Allen Ginsberg Museum!
JB: OK [laughs]
BR: These are things he picked up around the world. Here is a roach clip:
JB: A roach clip, ladies and gentlemen
BR: ‘60’s probably. Here is another one (roach clip) a little more medical:
JB: What is this rock?
BR: Someone gave it to Allen. It has writing – “The moon is a plate of snow laid on the.. something? – the table of night? – or something”. Allen wouldn’t know what to do with this.
Here is his gold tie in which he read “Punk Rock You Are My Crybaby” and wore when performing for several years.
JB: [unrolls it] the famous Allen Ginsberg gold tie!
BR: Remember skinny ties ?
JB: What is this image ? – something he found ?
BR: No these are his paternal grandparents.
BL: He grew up in Newark?
BR: Born in Newark and raised in Paterson.
JB: How old was he when he moved to Paterson?
BR: I am not sure but his adolescence was in Paterson. His Father taught at Paterson High
JB: Oh!
BR: He was an English teacher at Paterson High for decades. All of New Jersey knows Louis Ginsberg!
JB: I want to say a little serendipity about today because this is August and I am an English professor (and) I don’t have a gig for the Fall, so I am scrambling around looking to get a gig. Where do I go? I went to Rutgers University in Newark and I got a gig.
BR: Congratulations
JB: I got a gig in Newark, so thank you Allen Ginsberg, you know.
BR: Full-time or part-time?
JB: No it’s an adjunct (post). Actually, I will be working as a consultant to high school teachers on literature.
BR: Ah, curriculum.
JB: Right
BR I would love to talk to you more about that but here is an envelope I call “Coins of the Realm”
He traveled all over the world and threw his extra coins in a bag.
JB: Here it is folks the Allen Ginsberg Museum and exclusive of Public Voice Salon.
BR: Here is a medicine vial of rowan berries from Boris Pasternak’s grave in Allen’s hand writing at Peredelkino– 1985 – even signs it.
JB: (points up) Is that an Allen Ginberg game over there?
BR: It is a toy
JB: What is an Allen Ginsberg toy?
BR: OK let me close up the museum.
JB: Visiting hours are over
BR: The Japanese love Allen Ginsberg and these action figure are made by them – The Fall of America in his hand
JB: Oh, the Uncle Sam hat fell off, let’s put it back.
BR: And he has beads. It should be a mala string with 108 beads. I don’t think it’s accurate that way, but he has the coat and tie on (after Allen’s father died, Allen put on the coat and tie).
JB: Oh interesting Quick look into that corner over there – a writer who took many drugs
BR: Oh, this is picture a triptych of William by a friend, Kirt Markle.
(and) this is a painting by William Burroughs:
to be continued (tomorrow)