Louis Ginsberg, Allen’s father, a school-teacher and himself an accomplished poet.
From Allen’s notes following the 1992 gathering of Louis’ Collected Poems:
“Confronting my father’s poems at the end of his life, I weep at his meekness and his reasons, at his wise entrance into his own mortality and his silent recognition of that pitiful Immensity he records of his own life’s Time, his father’s life time, & the same Mercy his art accords to my own person.
I won’t quarrel with his forms here anymore: by faithful love he’s made them his own, and by many years practice arrived at sufficient condensation of idea, freedom of fancy, phrase modernity, depth of death-vision, & clarity of particular contemporary attention to transform the old “lyric” form from an inverted fantasy to the deepest actualization of his peaceful mortal voice…”
“Would that all sons’ fathers were poets! for the poem and the world are the same. Place imagined by Consciousness, and the squared exact forms of these poems are tiny models of Hebrew-Buddhist Universes rhyming together in Imagination, as if Art were the one activity in the flux of Time, wherein Place becomes completely self-conscious, Terse..identical with itself Aeon to Aeon, climaxed Immortal..”
Selected audio recordings of Louis from The Allen Ginsberg Archives at Stanford:
Louis interviewed, 1972
and again (with Allen) in an undated radio broadcast
Louis reading poems, 1965
Louis reading 1976
from Naropa (1975) – Louis sits in on Allen’s class here and here
Here’s a vintage recording, courtesy Pacifica – (the second half of a two-part reading in Newark, New Jersey, from 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War)
(the first part, Allen’s solo reading can be heard – here)
A short description on-line – “41-year-old Allen Ginsberg introduces his 72-year-old father, Louis, who wryly comments on current affairs of the day and reads his own poetry. The segment ends with audience questions, and both Ginsbergs venture from poetry into politics with growing contempt and hostility until the house shuts them down”.
Father-and-son dual appearances were an important component of Louis’ later life. Despite significant differences, they were not always cantankerous, there was a deep love, a mutual respect between them, but still…
From Stephen M H Braitman’s 1974 interview with the both of them (included in Michael Schumacher’s First Thought-Conversations with Allen Ginsberg):
“SMHB: How do you feel about presenting two worlds in these father and son readings? Do you think about it as making a statement of poetry’s possibilities rather than your own particular ideas?
AG: It’s just the inevitable mess of reality-glory. Whatever happens is real anyway. Whatever harmony there is, is real, whatever difference there is, is real, and it’s typical of the culture. It’s sort of inevitable. That we can stand it is the miracle. Or that the audience can stand it. Or that America can stand it. Any split between us just very much (reflects) reality in America, psychologically anyway. In other words, it’s just like a slice of reality life, rather than a manifesto in one direction or another. Unless you can consider it being able to co-exist.
LG: That’s what I say that we practice peaceful poetic coexistence.
SMHB: Complementarity, as it were
LG: Complementarity, yes. Not really in opposition, but each one presenting a viewpoint which, put together, gives a more rounded view of life.
Braitman goes on:
SMHB: What sort of response have you had to these readings?
LG: In general, I’d say the young cluster around Allen, while the “mature” cluster around me. Finally there’s an intermingling, some of the young see something in men, and some of the matter see that Allen has a great deal to say that is relevant
AG: Besides, they’re generally overwhelmed by the closeness of death.
Braitman concludes the interview:
“SMHB: I want to ask one final question . What do you feel when you read each other’ s poetry?
AG: When I read my father’s poetry, very often there is a tremendous melancholy awareness of how much he is aware, an almost tearful realization that I should have been kinder when we were around together
LG: Well, I feel, first of all, who I read his poetry,I am stimulated by recognizing more than I’m aware the injustices of the world, because he lashes and excoriates the world with its injustices and blackness and greed. But I realize that’s a part of its nature and it stimulates me to that. And I’m proud of course that he’s fulfilling his nature, that he’s successful and has fame and fortune. A father’s natural pleasure of seeing him soar high. But in the end it’s sort of complimentary – he sees things, I see things a different way, according to our inner compulsions and inner natures. But who’s to say only this can rewritten, only this is written…the world is too infinite for the finite mind to make absolutes.”
Michael Schumacher’s book of their correspondence (a true don’t-miss) is the definitive document
As is Alan Ziegler’s account (from 1976, originally for the Village Voice) of his visit with Allen while he was attending to his dying father
(see also here, Louis’ New York Times obituary)
Allen (as he did with his mother) immortalized his father: