THE MADNESS OF ALLEN GINSBERG- for David Bahr [praised be man, he is existing in milk and living in lilies]

for David Bahr, in gratitude GC

http://mellonseminaremotions.wikispaces.com/file/detail/Bahr_From+Chap+2.pdf ('Unwounding the Bow: Aesthetic Autobiography and the Transmission of Pain', Chapter 2,  Mellon seminar on emotions, 2011)

http://libgen.info/view.php?id=538885 [Allen Ginsberg, Collected Poems 1947-1997, Harper Collins 2006]

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4389/the-art-of-poetry-no-8-allen-ginsberg [Tom Clark interview, 1966]

http://www.allenginsberg.org/ [Allen Ginsberg Project]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg

http://gconse.blogspot.it/2011/05/allen-ginsbergkaddish-city-lights-books.html

Jonah Raskin, American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation 2004
[http://lib.freescienceengineering.org/view.php?id=490876]

http://fuckyeahbeatgeneration.tumblr.com/post/3560239174/mendel-levy-eugene-ginsberg-beat-poet-allen 

the lines after the title are from Jack Kerouac

Praised be man, he is existing in milk
and living in lilies -
And his violin music takes place in milk
and creamy emptiness -
Praised be the unfolded inside petal
flesh of tend’rest thought -

(petrels on the follying
wave-valleys idly
sing themselves asleep) -
Praised be delusion, the ripple -
Praised be the Holy Ocean of Eternity -
Praised be I, writing, dead already and
dead again -
Dipped in acid inkl
the flamd
of Tim
the Anglo Oglo Saxon Maneuvers
Of Old Poet-o’s -

Praised be wood, it is milk -
Praised be Honey at the Source -
Praised be the embrace of soft sleep
- the valor of angels in valleys
of hell on earth below -
Praised be the Non ending -
Praised be the lights of earth-man -
Praised be the watchers -
Praised be my fellow man
For dwelling in milk”
– Jack Kerouac, mexico city blues 228th chorus
["Mexico City Blues", 1959]
(http://www.mandarinejava.com/2012/03/20/poem-of-the-day2-228th-chorus-mexico-city-blues-by-jack-kerouac/)

in Ferlinghetti's "Starting from San Francisco", there is a great tender poem about Ginsberg thinking, having visions about, writing DEATH- (one can read it thru Google Books)

This is 

W.C.Williams 1955 introduction to 'HOWL':

'When he was younger, and I was younger, I used to know Allen Ginsberg, a young poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, where he, son of a well-known poet, had been born and grew up.  He was physically slight of build and mentally much disturbed by the life which he had encountered about him during those first years after the first world war as it was exhibited to him in and about New York City.  He was always on the point of "going away," where it didn't seem to matter; he disturbed me, I never thought he'd live to grow up and write a book of poems.  His ability to survive, travel, and go on writing astonishes me.  That he has gone on developing and perfecting his art is no less amazing to me.

  Now he turns up fifteen or twenty years later with an arresting poem.  Literally he has, from all the evidence, been through hell.  On the way he met a man named Carl Solomon with whom he shared among the teeth and excrement of this life something that cannot be described but in the words he has used to describe it.  It is a howl of defeat.  Not defeat at all for he has gone through defeat as if it were an ordinary experience, a trivial experience.  Everyone in this life is defeated but a man, if he be a man, is not defeated.

  It is the poet, Allen Ginsberg, who has gone, in his own body, through the horrifying experiences described from life in these pages.  The wonder of the thing is not that he has survived but that he, from the very depths, has found a fellow whom he can love, a love he celebrates without looking aside in these poems.  Say what you will, he proves to us, in spite of the most debasing experiences that life can offer a man, the spirit of love survives to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith--and the art! to persist.

  It is the belief in the art of poetry that has gone hand in hand with this man into his Golgotha, from that charnel house, similar in every way, to that of the Jews in the past war.  But this is in our country, our own fondest purlieus.  We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness.  Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels.  This poet sees through and all around the horrors he partakes of in the very intimate details of his poem.  He avoids nothing but experiences it to the hilt.  He contains it.  Claims it as his own--and, we believe, laughs at it and has the time and effrontery to love a fellow of his choice and record that love in a well-made poem.

  Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.'

                                                        

louis and naomi ginsberg

(Mendel Levy, Eugene Ginsberg, Allen Ginsberg, Naomi Ginsberg and Louis Ginsberg,1936