Georgian Court Q & A, 1995 – 10 continues (and concludes) from here
Video from the whole event (lecture and Q & A at Georgian Court University (then College) in Lakewood New Jersey, March 23, 1995 can be found here and here
The full transcription on The Allen Ginsberg Project begins – here
Student (11): Do you still correspond with any of the surviving Beats? Burroughs maybe?
AG: Well, we don’t write much. We talk to each other all the time. I visit Burroughs once a year and I call him up every month, gossip. Gregory Corso lives down across town from me and I see him, talked to him last week. (Lawrence) Ferlinghetti, I see when I go there or we talk on the phone, or we do write because he’s far away. Gary Snyder, I got a letter from him yesterday and our mutual Japanese new friend, Nanao Sakaki, a great poet, is coming to New York and was looking for places to read and needs $500 to read if anybody’s got a reading date open, a great Japanese poet. I visited Philip Whalen about a month ago in San Francisco. He’s now the abbot of the Zen center, Hartford Street and a Zen master now. (Michael) McClure I see all the time sometimes go out with and give readings with, but we had a Center, see, at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. And last year we had Ferlinghetti, all together, one time, Ferlinghetti, Snyder, Francesco Clemente the painter, Philip Glass the musician, McClure, myself, Anne Waldman, Anselm Hollo. What other poets? A whole bunch of poets. We see each other all the time. And the function of Naropa Institute is to have a place in the middle of the country where we can assemble and criss-cross with each other and actually pass on to younger generations what we learned ourselves, in (a) traditional Buddhist way. The lineage, sense of lineage, passing on in a lineage, or affiliation, and a place to connect, under Buddhist auspices, basically. So yeah, we see each other all the time.
Actually, you know most of the people that are called Beat generation writers are still alive and very active at this point, more than ever.[Editorial note, Allen speaking in 1995, nowadays, 2024, this is very much not the case!]. Jack Kerouac died and (Neal) Cassady died, and Lew Welch died. All three of them alcohol, (not drugs, but alcohol, amazingly – the drug alcohol, the official drug, the government drug, but nobody died from anything else). Herbert Huncke, you know, original Beat person, eighty years old now (sic) living at the Chelsea Hotel still strung out. Burroughs is eighty-one and just put, finished his last book, just came out, My Education, it’s called – and Gary Snyder is finishing his lifelong epic work, Mountains and Rivers Without End. He just concluded it this year and it’ll be published probably a year from now [Editorial note – Mountains and Rivers Without End was published by Counterpoint Press in 1997]. So, everybody’s at the peak of their activity at this point. It’s quite amazing.
Eric Wurmser [teacher]: I wanted to stand up here. This is a good chance for me to jump in. This two hours that we spent, or over two hours, has been quite amazing. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.
AG: I’d like to read a last poem.
Eric Wurmser: You can!
AG: This is a paraphrase of a Baul poetry. Poetry written by a sort of a Northern Bengali, wandering minstrel writers called B-A-U-L. They were a big influence on Rabindranath Tagore earlier in the century and they wear patchwork clothes and carry a one stringed instrument, ektara, and they sing devotional songs to Krishna, Buddha, Allah, Christ, their own feet, their own noses, their girlfriend, the bridge….
So, I read a book of poetry by Lalon Shah, and I made some imitations of the translation. I read the book, and I kept waking up at night with more ideas, and I’d like to read some poems like this one. This is a series of short (pieces).. – “After Lalon.” (“It’s true I got caught in the world..”…”Allen Ginsberg warns you/don’t follow my path to extinction”) .
[Allen reads “After Lalon” parts I-IV and half of V before video cuts off]
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