Allen
Ginsberg: The Challenge of Compassionate
Awareness
by David Cope
Young,
I never dreamed I'd one day eulogize my friend Allen Ginsberg, the poet whose Howl and Other Poems outraged censors,
shattered a literary establishment grown self-righteous with neoclassical
nepotism, and turned up in the back pockets of generations of young kids setting
out to discover America and a new life.
I was one of those kids, as I was one of those jammed into Hill
Auditorium, Ann Arbor, waiting for him to move us in the bleak final days of
1969—both Martin King and Robert Kennedy already killed, part of my generation
slaughtering and being slaughtered in Vietnam, another part confused, enraged
and horrified, in tears over dead friends.
The
healing of these two groups, still unfinished, is only part of this story. That
day, Allen sang that America, the world, and each of us should "be kind to
yourself, it is only one," bringing a huge audience to tears by reminding
us of love and our common humanity.
Allen could break your heart with a clarity not seen in America since
those giants of our literature, William Carlos Williams and Walt Whitman before
him, were among us. As they had sung, so he sang that "the weight of the
world / is love" and that we must learn to
. . . give
for no reason
as thought
is given
in
solitude
in all the excellence
of
its excess.
This
generosity was Allen's personal hallmark:
it was in everything he did, nourishing the lives and livelihoods of
hundreds of talented young poets and seekers with readings, gatherings where
they could test their own perceptions and meet each other as peers. He promoted the work of gifted writers for
five decades, raised money for those in need, encouraged spiritual exploration
and sexual honesty, and stood up for political prisoners, social outcasts, and
the downtrodden.
Indeed,
he is revered as a liberator in nations where political repression has been a
given; throughout the cold war, he was
as feared by Eastern bloc nations as he was by the American government. From Romania to the U.S.S.R. and points
beyond, where his poems have had to be smuggled in and read aloud in secret
meetings, he stood and continues to stand for liberation in its most profound
sense: freedom not only from governments
that starve the poor and survive on the hostility of pitting citizens against
each other, but also freedom from all forms of shame, which make the heart
judgmental, the mind ill with self-righteousness or self-loathing.
In
this mood he was the prophet, scourging governments, challenging bigots and
insisting on justice—and his name became a by-word for public dissent. After the students of Prague crowned him the
King of May, a middle-European honor accorded one poet each century, Allen was
expelled from then-communist Czechoslovakia—and after the Velvet Revolution and
the democratic election of Vaclav Havel, the poet returned in triumph, to sing
of their freedom.
He
played his part in American politics as well.
His choruses and litanies naming defense industries as merchants of
death were an integral part of peace protests across the nation, yet in 1968,
he and Dick Gregory led protestors away from Grant Park to avoid confrontation
at the disastrous Democratic National Convention. Allen participated in the exorcism of the
Pentagon and later led demonstrations against the Rocky Flats Nuclear Trigger
Factory, which was finally closed down as an ecological threat.
Yet
he had his quiet moments too, insisting that in death "we return, where all
Beauties rest" and that "Righteous honest / Heart's forgiveness /
Drives woes away" even as he turned to those labors that are the poet's
deepest responsibility:
Well,
while I'm here I'll
do the work—
and what's the Work?
To
ease the pain of living.
Everything
else, drunken
dumbshow.
So
there's a lesson in Allen's life and death.
The heart of any art is to see and celebrate the world one has
inherited—its hopes, dreams, ecstasies, madnesses,
horrors and humor—and to do it with an open generosity of spirit, as Walt
Whitman was open, inquisitive, caring and yet insistent upon artistic and
personal discipline. Allen had that—but
he also challenged us to find the inward gaze whose calm is absolute.
His
questions are many: will you find your
hidden America? Will you see its people,
wise and foolish, raging, self-righteous, sorrowful and serene, with equal good
humor and compassion? Can you confront
the foolishness of your own people with their need for kindness and
openness, even when they are divided, as
my generation was divided? Will you
nourish your art and love your peers?
Will you see beyond yourself and open your eyes to those in need?
His
truest legacy may be found in Allen's last public gesture: he had numerous close friends over the years
and, knowing he was dying, he spent his last days calling them to say
good-bye. This man led a conscious life,
a fearless life of clarity and decorum, meticulously calm, kind and thoughtful even
to the end: the challenge is to learn
through his example.
Note:
"Allen Ginsberg: The
Challenge of Compassionate Awareness"
appeared in The Grand Rapids Press
April 20,
1997. E1.