Allen Ginsberg 1979 County College, Morris, New Jersey Reading (including sections of Kaddish)

New Jersey poet Allen Ginsberg reading to students in New Jersey. Back in the Fall, we featured video from just such an occasion, here’s more video – Allen at The County College of Morrishere

Steven Taylor and Allen Ginsberg

The reading took place on April 20, 1979, in Randolph, New Jersey.  Allen was accompanied by his guitarist, Steven Taylor.  CCM professor and poet Sander Zulauf introduces the event.

SZ: Good evening. It is rare that we have an opportunity to witness and listen to an American legend. Allen Ginsberg entered our national literature with “Howl” in 1956 and the echoes have never stopped. |In the nearly quarter of a century since then we have watched his growth as a poet from the angst of The Beat Generation to the serenity of the Buddhist. He was born in Doctor Williams immortal Paterson, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, a Russian emigre and Louis Ginsberg, a fine lyric poet who enjoyed fame with his famous son in the final years of his life. The recent poems of Allen Ginsberg reflect his harmonious view of the universe. The echoes of “Howl” are now becoming the shanti of the Upanishads. Mind Breaths, his new book of poems, songs and chants, was assembled at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute, Boulder Colorado.  There, Black Mountain poets and San Francisco poets visit and teach regularly. Another recent book is entitled Mostly Sitting Haiku and was published in Paterson. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, last month he received the gold medal for distinction in literature from the National Arts Club. Accompanying Allen Ginsberg this evening is a poet-musician from Denville (sic), Steven Taylor, who will be playing guitar.
It gives me great pleasure to welcome one of our national literary treasures to the County College of Morris,  Allen Ginsberg.

AG: We’ll begin, Steven Taylor and I, with homage to two poets who’ve influenced me. One, William Blake. So I’ll sing music that we set for a poem called Spring” from “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”. Blake sang his songs and scholar-professors of his day failed to notate the tunes.. (in the)

“Spring”, William Blake (Allen on harmonium and Steven on guitar perform Blake’s  “Spring”- “Sound the flute!/ Now it’s mute..”…”Merrily merrily welcome in the Year”)

“A Supermarket in California’ – (Allen is concerned with the sound system) – Can you hear me clearly out in the back? No? (pointing to mic) – Is this on? – no, it’s not on. It’s still not on! – OM-AH-OM – Was it on when we were singing?..ok, well is it. straight now do you think?yeah. was it on while we were singing?  could you hear in the back anyway? Okay, Raise your hand if you could not?. Okay.. “A Supermarket in California”.  So what I’ll do is start with early poems.  This is 1956, (19)55 – “A Supermarket in California” (“What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman…”.”what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?”)

Ten years later, (19)63, to William Carlos Williams, on hearing of his death, the poem called Death News”.  I was in India and a student showed me a copy of Time magazine which said that that Williams had died, and I remembered a visit that I had made with Jack Kerouac and Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso to 9 Ridge Road, Rutherford, where Williams had his physicians practice, (baby doctor), and he received us. He knew my poetry (he knew “Howl” and had written a preface for (it) and for an earlier book that I’d written in Paterson on (19)51, six years before) and he liked Gregory Corso’s poetry, and he loved Kerouac. And his mother (sic – error!) ..  his wife, who was there, took Kerouac in the kitchen and sipped a lot of wine and talked about the time when Florence Williams and her husband had been young in Vienna with beer gardens and medical students.
So this is an account of that time. We all sat in a sofa in the living room and inquired wise words from him. Williams had had a stroke and was stricken by then. He looked at us young kids and pointed out through the window, through the curtains, onto the main street, and said “there’s a lot of bastards out there” – {Allen reads “Death News” -(“Walking at night on asphalt campus/ road by the German instructor…”…”..What you wanted to be among the bastards out there”)

I went with Mr and Mrs Taylor and Steven to pass by the Greystone State Park on the way here because I had visited often in the “Thirties when my mother was a patient at Greystone mental hospital and my recollections of that are of flashes from when I was ten, twelve, thirteen years old. So I thought that it would be interesting since I’m reading old and new poetry (because I’ll be reading work from the ‘Sixties, having begun in the “‘Fifties, and up to this last year) to read portions of  “Kaddish”, which is a long poem, a funeral ode (“Kaddish” is a Hebrew word for a mass for the dead) – “Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg, my mother (1894-1956), written in New York City” –  So I’ll read portions from that.  For those of you who are younger, who haven’t read it, this is a particularly curious poem, because it’s outburst emotion recollection. My mother, having been mad, and I, having rejected her, or, left her in the hospital,  and had to.. ((the) last visit, she didn’t recognize me).. so that several years after her death I began recollecting what actual love existed. The poem is interesting because it turned on Bob Dylan to poetry (for those of you who are not familiar with my poetry or this particular text). This.. , So he included reading a part of this in his long movie, Renaldo and Clara, of the last few years.  I think what he liked was just the fresh direct American speech rhythms – (Allen then begins reading from Kaddish – “Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg,(1894-1956 – Strange now to think of you….”…  “Death stay thy phantoms’…””12 riding the bus at nite the New Jersey..”..”..”No, you’re crazy Mama,- Trust the Drs.'” – ” – and a further section,  (I) wanted to finish with..I wanted to finish several sections of this.. several years later – “Your last night I the (darkness of the Bronx)” – “Two years after a trip to Mexico…”…”nor Louis retire from this High School” – “O mother/what have I left out..”..”..with your Death full of Flowers”. –

Related to that, related to that, from the last year, a kind of summary of the sentiments in a way, put in the form of a song called “The Rune” – like, after-thoughts on disillusionment –
[Allen and Steven perform “The Rune” From “Contest of Bards” – (“Where the years have gone..”…”where all Beauties rest”)

We’ll now do a..    I’ll read about New Jersey mostly, actually (or New York) while we (Steven and I) are playing together

(The reading continues and concludes with three blues performances and a final poem):

“New York Blues” –  (“I live in an apartment.. cops kill all the bed bugs, speed-freaks land on Mars”)
“Broken Bone Blues” – “I practice as a Buddhist practitioner, that is to say, sitting mediation, in the lineage of teaching, there’s an old teacher called Tilopa who told his student Naropa, “Naropa, your clay pitcher of a body, believing to be an “I’ deserves to be broken”
(“Broken bone bone bone…”…”and I’ll come back and bless you again”)
and to cover the one territory we haven’t mentioned yet – “Dope Fiend Blues” –  Dope Fiend Blues, dedicated to all the meditating high Buddhists of New Jersey- (“Yes, I’m a dope fiend, I don’t believe your laws..””..they’re gonna legalize existence, everybody ride a big white horse”)

Allen concludes reading from “Mugging” –  Up to New York City in the late ‘Seventies (or mid-‘Seventies) the difficult condition of living in a world so over-militarized and imaged with destruction and macho aggression and stupefaction for petrochemicals and nuclear greed and harshness, rationalistic aggression worldwide, at a so nasty a level, from the President’s office down to the streets, the  violence and inhumanity are.. comical – (“Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street..”….”Om Ah Hum, I continued chanting..’ )  (tape cuts out before the end of the poem)

For more on this reading (and the context of this reading) – see here 

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