Remembering Allen Ginsberg

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Alison Stewart: The iconic poet Allen Ginsberg would have turned 100 years old this month. He was part of the Beat movement, one of those early anti-establishment artists whose friend group included Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Ginsberg first book, Howl and Other Poems, was published in 1956, and it established him as a hugely influential voice for young Americans disillusioned by the middle-class fantasy that was being promoted after the Second World War. Ginsberg was one of those people who was starting to question authority, capitalism, American imperialism.

Part of the reason that poem, Howl, skyrocketed him to fame is because it became the subject of a landmark obscenity lawsuit. The verdict supported the First Amendment and marked a major win in the fight against creative censorship, but Ginsberg faced detractors for the groups he would support in terms of free speech. Allen Ginsberg was a gay man who came out more than a decade before the Stonewall uprising. Ira Silverberg is a literary agent and editor who's been a student of the Beat generation for a long time. He actually came to know Ginsberg personally in the 1980s. He has a piece in Rolling Stone called Allen Ginsberg: The Queer Poet Who Changed America. He's here with me now. It is nice to speak with you.

Ira Silverberg: Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: I think I misspoken there, but you get my drift.

Ira Silverberg: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, do you have a favorite line from Howl that you want to shout out? What about his work really spoke to you, and why do you think it has stood the test of time? We are taking your calls at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Ginsberg was born in 1926, and he grew up in Newark, New Jersey.

Ira Silverberg: Paterson.

Alison Stewart: Paterson, thank you. He was in his teens when World War II unfolded. How did witnessing the war over the course of his early teenage years inform his artistic sensibility?

Ira Silverberg: That's a really good question. I think for a lot of Jews who were here in the States, it was a very complicated time. The marginalization that took place was not healthy for a lot of people. They were other and continue to be other. I think Allen's family, being socialist-communist, also were othered in a capitalist environment. The war is viewed as specious, as an imperial or capitalistic endeavor. Allen was one of these people who did not think in the same terms that the rest of the people thought about. He wasn't thinking about boundaries.

He was born of a different spirit and thought of things in much broader terms. I think politics was really, really important to him, but he saw through politics.

Alison Stewart: Huh.

Ira Silverberg: If Allen were alive today, I think he would love what's going on because it's havoc, and from havoc, beauty is found. He was never really an anarchist, but there's a very anarchic spirit to his essence.

Alison Stewart: His mother dealt with mental health struggles. Do we see that in his work?

Ira Silverberg: Oh, Kaddish is all about Naomi, and Naomi's death, and Naomi's going to the sanitarium. In and out and in and out. Looking back, it's a landmark book in terms of talking about mental health, something that has been taboo, stigmatized for so long. Also, especially for Jews, it was like before Philip Roth, we had Allen Ginsberg talking about something that Jewish families did not want to talk about. He was beautifully blatant in terms of the portrayal of her pain and her insanity. It's a really poignant book. It happens to be poetic, but it's also a beautiful portrait of a family dealing with something that is not written about enough.

Alison Stewart: Ginsberg took issue with mainstream culture, post-World War II, and he became one of the early figures of the Beat movement. Tell me about that moment in cultural history. What were they pushing back against?

Ira Silverberg: We'll look at New York. People left the city, they left the boroughs to go to Nassau County. They eventually went to Suffolk County or they went from Westchester to Putnam. They had this idea that they could get out of this tight urban environment and find something. Freedom, land, work. It didn't quite work out that way exactly. The money is still concentrated in one place. The middle class didn't do so well. They got pushed out. Urban environments were really, really rough. This notion of an American dream, of a house in the suburbs with two kids,-

Alison Stewart: White picket fence.

Ira Silverberg: -white picket fence, white people, let's go there, it was a very racist setup. Just even zoning in those days, there was all kinds of redlining.

Alison Stewart: Yes, sure.

Ira Silverberg: Allen looked around and said, "What the hell is this?" because it was all about money, and it was not about spirit. I think what we saw was the marginalization of already marginalized groups. Everyone went to the fringes. There was a domestic core of an upper-middle-class Christian society that knew better than everyone else. It's the same as today, really. It's exactly the same as today. The work seems more prophetic than ever, because what you're looking at is Allen understood that power existed with a certain moral core. That doesn't cut it when you're living on the outside of that power.

He was really just, in his own way, somewhat of libertarian but a kind of-- How shall I rephrase this? His spirituality is something that was greater than politics. I think Allen had faith in humanity and that humanity could come together and solve problems. In 1968, at the Chicago Democratic Convention, he owned, which is brilliant because it's about bringing people together, it's about the vibration. We're getting back to that place again, that harmonic convergence that took place between then and now. It seems fairly relevant.

Alison Stewart: You said that he sort of operated outside of politics?

Ira Silverberg: Yes, he responded to things.

Alison Stewart: Responded. Okay.

Ira Silverberg: He was not actively political insofar as he was not getting involved in local-- Here, in New York, it's very easy to get involved in local politics. We've just had a very exciting time in the city. That wasn't his thing. He was more responsive and reactive, but he understood inherent issues. He understood who was being cut out and why. There were no boundaries for him. He didn't care what color someone was, what sexuality they were. He was a humanist and saw people for the value they had in terms of their souls and really cared about people and was a great guy.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Stephen, who's calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Stephen. Thank you so much for taking the time to call All Of It.

Stephen: Oh, thanks, Alison. Hi, Ira. This is Stephen Taylor.

Ira Silverberg: Oh, hi, Stephen.

Stephen: Hi. Good points. I agreed on all points. I worked with Allen for 20 years. Tonight, I will be presenting at Anthology Film Archives at Second Avenue and Second Street at 8:45 a video that Allen and I made in 1988, which is all shot in his tenement kitchen. The comings and goings of the high and mighty, and the famous, and the local poets, and the punk rockers, and just in and out. Sony had given out a bunch of video cameras, and he made a half-hour movie. He and I made a half-hour movie. That will be shown at Anthology Film Archives tonight at 8:45 along with Colin Still's BBC documentary, No More to Say & Nothing to Weep For, which is the final interviews, perhaps with Allen.

You'll see him on his deathbed. It's a striking, wonderful thing that Colin still produced for the BBC. My piece is a 35-minute Household Affairs. The Colin still docu is about 50 minutes. 8:45 Anthology Film Archives, Second Avenue, Second Street. You can go to anthologyfilmarchives.org for information.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for the shout-out. Let's talk to Mendel from West Hartford. Hi, Mendel. Thank you so much for calling All Of It.

Mendel: Hey, thank you, Alison. I'm so glad that you've recovered from whatever was going on.

Alison Stewart: My thing. Thank you so much.

Mendel: I was just really nervous about you the whole time.

Alison Stewart: I was, too.

Mendel: I'm glad that you made it back. I bet you were. In 1994, I was living in Boulder, Colorado, and my friend Kent Henricksen, who is a popular artist in New York and around the world, we bought him tickets to Fallen Angels. It was the Beat poets. Allen Ginsberg was there. Kent would sit there and play Allen Ginsberg forever, and had a little record there, where he scratched. He was painting, and it was magical and beautiful. What I told your screener was that the best line I ever heard Allen Ginsberg say was, "America, when can I go into a supermarket and buy groceries with my good looks alone?"

Alison Stewart: That's a great quote. Thank you so much for calling. Do you have a favorite Allen Ginsberg quote?

Ira Silverberg: Are you asking me?

Alison Stewart: I am asking you, Ira.

Ira Silverberg: Oh. When I was writing the piece for Rolling Stone, I was listening to some of the Philip Glass collaborations, and there was one with, I forget, Michael Brubaker, I think, did it with Allen. It's from Wichita Vortex Sutra. There's this moment when it seemed very appropriate, "I lift my voice aloud, make mantra of American language now. I here declare the end of the war, ancient days, illusion, and pronounce words beginning my own millennium." Rather than the centenary, I think, it becomes, for me, the Allen Ginsberg millennium.

Alison Stewart: I'm talking about the life and legacy of legendary American poet Allen Ginsberg, who would have turned 100 years old this month. My guest today is Ira Silverberg, a literary agent and editor who studied the Beat movement and actually knew Allen Ginsberg back in the '80s. Folks, do you have a favorite line that you want to shout out from Allen Ginsberg? What about his work really spoke to you? Our number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. After the break, we'll hear a little bit of Allen Ginsberg speaking Howl.

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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Ira Silverberg. He's a literary agent and editor who studied the Beat movement. We're talking about the life and legacy of American poet Allen Ginsberg, who would have turned 100 years old this month. Let's play a short clip of Ginsberg reading the very beginning of Howl. Here he is reading at Reed College in 1956.

Allen Ginsberg: Howl, for Carl Solomon. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. Starving, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix. Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo and the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high, sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold water flats, floating across the tops of cities, contemplating jazz.

Alison Stewart: The first line there says, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness." It's so famous at this point, but take us back before it became well-known. First of all, what's your reading of those lines?

Ira Silverberg: What? It's Allen's vision of the world. People's minds are being destroyed by just circumstance, by poverty, by the circumstances of drug addiction taking over, killing the pain for people by getting further and further away from themselves, and getting lost in systems that didn't support them. Allen really understood. He could look at someone and know that there was pain, that there was something of an outsider. I think he rallies the troops, he brings everyone together, and that's the beauty of the work. Before then, Allen, he grew up in Paterson, New Jersey.

His father was a poet. His mother was very challenged by mental illness. He thought he would be a labor lawyer as a good socialist would want to be. He wound up at Columbia following someone he had a crush on and went into the English department. It changed everything for him, and he became a writer. He met Kerouac there, he met Lucien Carr there. He eventually met Burroughs there. Up in Morningside Heights, this group of stoned and drunk guys-- Well, Bill was down in the Village at that point. He moved up later. They started thinking about what literature could do, the vision.

There was something really, really dreamy about them that holds up. It's the embrace of the outsider, which was not exactly popular in American literature. The embrace of non-formal work, the embrace of imagining a future that is other than what is prescribed by the powers that be. There is this beautiful movement in literature. That's why you see all the obscenity cases are there. It was them. It was Burroughs, Ginsberg, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov. Anything that was challenging societal norms was getting stopped for pornography. There were a lot of famous suits that were all won, and things went on. The chilling effect was very real. It was also a great sales effect, too.

Alison Stewart: Sure. He says the poem is for Carl Solomon. Who's Carl Solomon?

Ira Silverberg: Carl Solomon was a friend of Allen's. I don't have the whole history.

Alison Stewart: A friend?

Ira Silverberg: I'm not even going to go there because I'm not the historian.

Alison Stewart: That's fine.

Ira Silverberg: Carl was behind the scenes and very helpful in terms of getting Burroughs published his first book, Junkie. There's a lot of history there.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Tom from Upper Manhattan. Hey, Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to call All Of It. You're on the air.

Tom: Hi. You asked for my favorite part of Howl. This is the beginning of Part 2, where he turns his attention to the enemy that is what is crushing him and his generation. "What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch, the heavy judger of men!"

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. You actually came to know Ginsberg.

Ira Silverberg: Yes.

Alison Stewart: How did you meet?

Ira Silverberg: I was living with Burroughs' amanuensis manager. It's just all extended families. [unintelligible 00:16:00], as we would say in Yiddish. That was the other branch of the family. I lived out in Kansas for a couple years and would go out to Kansas regularly after I moved back for events when there were things going on. Allen would stay with William and I, so I got to know Allen here and there. I went to Naropa for a couple of summers when William would teach there. I saw him in action. I saw him in action at first, when I was 19, the first summer I was at Naropa.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Ira Silverberg: It was the 25th anniversary of the publication of On the Road. It was amazing. These people came out of the woodwork. People like Edie Kerouac, who was one of the early girlfriends of Jack, back in the '40s, uptown, surfaced. A lot of people surfaced. It. It was fascinating. Leary was there, and Ram Dass was there.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Ira Silverberg: It was a harmonic convergence in many ways. You saw that was Allen's power, was to bring people together to celebrate a moment in literature and make it bigger than just Jack Kerouac, because he brought in the women who had slept with and written about Kerouac, because Kerouac is seen as very macho, and Allen wanted to balance everything out. Yes, I saw him in action, which was great. He was shrewd and honest at once and available. I have friends who studied with him at Brooklyn College. He taught there for many years. Sapphire and Paul Beatty, both were with Allen Ginsberg when they were doing their MFAs.

Alison Stewart: I love Paul Beatty.

Ira Silverberg: At some point, I asked Sapphire, I'm like, "How is he?" She said, "No, he's great." The two, they're both really tough people in some ways. She's got her way of presenting. He has his. They were great. Paul had a good time with Allen. It was wonderful to know that he was available in a certain way, and it was great that he was teaching at a public university.

Alison Stewart: He lived life as a gay man before Stonewall. What was the shape of his life? What was his life like that he could live with such openness?

Ira Silverberg: It started that way. Allen was rubbing up against his father's leg, much to his father's discomfort, as a young man. He understood his body was attracted to other male bodies. He wasn't ashamed in quite the usual way. He just went with it and owned it. He didn't have sex, I think, until he was probably late teens. He knew who he was and just accepted that this is who I am. It was really a natural transition into, "I'm just Allen Ginsberg. It doesn't matter if I'm gay or I'm straight. This is who I am."

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Claudia, who's calling us from Putnam Valley. Hi, Claudia. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Claudia: Oh, hello. I love listening to your program. I was simply calling because I knew Allen briefly. My husband knew him better than I. Allen was utterly fascinating, and he was on the Rolling Thunder Revue with Bob Dylan. I had occasion to tell Allen that I would teach him how to do the jitterbug. There is a film of the Rolling Thunder Revue of Allen and myself very briefly beginning to try to figure out the jitterbug. He was not interested in that and decided instead to do interpretive dancing.

Ira Silverberg: That sounds very Allen Ginsberg. Right.

Alison Stewart: That's very interesting because we were listening to Howl, and there were certain parts which seem humorous. The subject matter is obviously heavy, but how do you think he used humor?

Ira Silverberg: Bluntly. I don't think Allen was a writer of satire the way Burroughs was. I think Allen just called it as he saw it. If something was funny or off, it was just there, I think. I don't see him as a humorist, but I just see him as a truth teller.

Alison Stewart: One of the more controversial parts of his legacy is he was associated with NAMBLA, and he said he was supporting the group's right to free speech. That association complicates his legacy for some people. What was the public response to it then or now?

Ira Silverberg: It's deep gay history. The whole NAMBLA thing is one of these things that needs to be just chucked out the window, period. NAMBLA was an organization that was founded, granted, they had a pedophile agenda, they wanted to get rid of consent laws, but founded when the Boston police took down a pedophile ring who were gay. Gay equals pedophilia was seized upon by Anita Bryant, who's one of the early anti-gay champions.

Alison Stewart: Oh, gosh. Yes.

Ira Silverberg: This is late '70s. Pat Califia, who's a major lesbian activist, and Harry Hay, who was really the founder of gay rights, Camille Paglia, all became members of NAMBLA to support the freedom of expression issues, because if you shut them down, you're shutting down a conversation about gay rights and homosexuality. The NAMBLA association becomes this bugaboo. Allen didn't like children. That's the thing. When I was 19, yes, he hit on me, but I was sleeping with men who were of age when I was 15 and 16, going out in New York. The whole thing is he wasn't a pedophile.

Alison Stewart: Right. That's why I said associations.

Ira Silverberg: Yes, exactly. His politics there got in the way, and I think he explained it to people. You can't take down a subsection without taking everyone down with it. I think he was very clean about that.

Alison Stewart: In our last moments, when you look at the literary work that's coming out today, where do we see his influence?

Ira Silverberg: Everywhere. There's a certain forthrightness in literature that is directly a result of what the Beat writers did. Literature is very buttoned up. Peyton Place, we can look back, there wasn't a lot of controversy. There wasn't a lot of representation of people living on the fringes. That was like an after-school special, but not a novel. Allen was able to open up the world. Allen, and William, and Kerouac, for whatever one may think of the work, individually, they opened up a conversation around otherness, around pain, around living a life that is not mainstream. I think it's felt each and every day.

Alison Stewart: Ira Silverberg has been my guest. We've been discussing the legendary American poet Allen Ginsberg, who would have turned 100 years old this month. Thank you for sharing your stories.

Ira Silverberg: Thank you for having asked.

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