Talk:Allen Ginsberg/Archive 1

Let's settle this NAMBLA thing
The problem I've found with Ginsberg scholarship is most things you read about him are either "He was a druggie child molester who didn't know what the word 'poetry' meant" or "He's more important to history than Jesus" -- I'm of the opinion that he's a very important poet, and when I bring him up too often the response is, "Yeah, but he was in NAMBLA." So my opinion's always been: How important is NAMBLA to Ginsberg, really? Ezra Pound was a Fascist sympathizer, but how important is Fascism to Ezra Pound? Considerably more important than NAMBLA to Ginsberg, but still: Does that diminish Pound's greatness? More importantly, what impact does it have on the poetry and understanding the poetry? I teach English and we spend about two weeks on Ginsberg -- inevitably I'll get papers that characterized him as a child molester. That's really what inspired me to work on this page in the first place: All my students use Wikipedia, many of them were characterizing Ginsberg as a druggie child molester. Finally I looked at Wikipedia and I realized: No wonder they think that.

So I've cut the NAMBLA stuff out of this page before -- not because it's PC, but because I don't think it really matters. But it keeps creeping back onto the page. So I didn't cut it out this time, but I've tried my darndest to put it into context. It was a controversial political move, but when has Ginsberg ever shied away from saying something controversial. So it may sound like it has a pro-Ginsberg bias. I think it sounds neutral, but I have a very strong pro-Ginsberg bias so I may be blind to it. So please edit it to make it more neutral. But please don't swing the other way. Ginsberg has far more importance in the literary world than doing drugs, molesting children, and cussing.

NAMBLA
Was Ginsberg really a vocal supporter of NAMBLA? Seems questionable to me, and the statement seems to have got in without comment. Greenman 5 Dec 2003

For information on Ginsberg's support of NAMBLA, see DELIBERATE PROSE, a collection of Ginsberg's essays. He certainly supported them, but he may not have been a member. His support probably qualifies him as an "unofficial" member. [Dave & Ted]


 * Inserted without comment by an IP user; I've taken it out. Thanks for catching that. - Hephaestos 15:24, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * Actually, I'm pretty sure it's true (but I don't think I have a source for it to hand). --Camembert


 * Once there's a source, I'm all for putting it back of course, that would make for good ratings. *smirk* - Hephaestos 15:47, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * The link (http://www.nambla1.de/ginsberg.htm) mentioned in the history is no longer active, but can be viewed here: http://web.archive.org/web/20030614085536/http://www.nambla1.de/ginsberg.htm

I worked with Allen Ginsberg from 1979 until his death in 1997 (www.randyroark.com). One of the things we did together was to work on a reply to a notice in "New York" magazine (June 1996 or so) that he was a member of NAMBLA. The background to the story is as follows: NAMBLA at one point in the early nineties wanted to march in the Gay Rights Parade in NYC, and were prevented from doing so by the organizers. Allen wrote a letter in support of NAMBLA's ability to march in the parade as a free speech issue. His points were that the hysteria surrounding NAMBLA reminded him of the hysteria surrounding gayness itself when he was growing up, that there were laws currently in place protecting underage children from sexual predators, and that this was a scholarly pursuit of a subject that went back at least as far as the ancient Greeks. He also pointed out that NAMBLA was not a "dating service" but an educational forum. In response, NAMBLA sent him a membership card and subscribed him to their newsletter, but Allen never joined the organization or participated in any of their activities. The difficulties began with a radio report aired by Focus on the Family (a conservative Christian group out of Colorado Springs) at the time of his death, making the claim that he was a member and vocal supporter of NAMBLA. This got picked up by the wire services, etc. and has become a divisive issue that Allen would have never tolerated. "Good ratings" is great, but if Allen were alive I'm certain he would object to this as a statemnt of fact, so I'm taking it out (again).

BTW, I've never heard of "Hadda be Lickin Weiner' on a Jukebox" and assume this is someone's attempt to be funny. He did write a poem called "Hadda be Playin' on the Jukebox" and that may or may not be the poem described (it's hard to say). I have also never heard of his "Penisarific Poems," although I can't say for certain that Bob Dylan (or someone) didn't describe them as such (if I read this entry correctly). But I find it hard to understand why someone would even bother to include this in such a short bio of Ginsberg. - User:Randyroark

I deleted the statement of Ginsberg being a member of NAMBLA and the last quote saying he was a member as I have not seen a citation for it to authenticate it. Just because its on a webpage doesn't make it true. - 70.32.165.218


 * There is a documentary called "Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys," released in 1994, which features a short video of Ginsberg talking on stage at a NAMBLA meeting. His part begins with him on a street holding a cardboard mask, with the eyes cut out, of a boy, like a boy from an 50 TV show. We then see a video of Ginsberg reading a story at a 1989 NAMBLA conference, with a NAMBLA banner behind him. All this amount to about 3 or 4 minutes. This doesn't really offer anything new to the discussion, just that it shows that he was a supporter of NAMBLA, or at least sympathetic to them.


 * Made an addition at bottom of page before I discovered this section, there is an actual quote in the LA Times that counts AG as a member of NAMBLA - the entries above by some would seem to be original research, verbotten under Wikipedia rules if an edit were to be based on it (although perfectly acceptable for a discussion page), it anyone has a valid source that publicly expands on his non membership and reasonably demonstrates that he was not a member, then that would justify deleting the statement I added to the article.

Shouldn't this NAMBLA thing at least be mentioned? It's mentioned in the NAMBLA article, and then you get over here and it's all hush-hush. The story told above (if verifyable) should be included in some form.

some changes
Contextualized his LSD use and his relationship with Cassady and Orlovsky in regards to his work. Cut out some stuff on his lust for older teenagers, esp. since I don't find a source in Schumacher for his having actual sex with anyone other than adults. And there's some indication -- for example, his aborted tryst with Genet -- that many of his affairs were not even particularly or necessarily sexual (although I'm sure many of them were). I'm willing to be corrected if someone finds a source in a biography (and if so, let me know so I can read the original source). --Peccavimus 07:16, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

CITATION?
I want to see where Ginsberg said that about being in NAMBLA, and in what context.

I happen to be a literary scholar who specializes in Ginsberg; it seems odd that I'd have missed it. Not impossible, mind you, but odd.

Unless this is just an attempt to slander the man.

still not good enough
That first quote still isn't cited.

Also, simply questioning the idea of pedophilia doesn't make one a pedophile. He nowhere in either quote says "I am a pedophile."

--Peccavimus 21:55, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Revised Unsourcable Statements
--Modemx 15:45, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) I could not source several statements supposedly from Ginsberg about the NAMBLA controversy. The text in question appears to have been a distortion of a 1988 New York times article. Though the statement may exist elswehere, I could not source it. The similair wording of the New York Times article lead me to believe the quote was a distortion, incorporating several recognizible Ginsberg statements out of context from different sources. I removed these statements until the provenance of them can be substantiated.

Revised the section to frame the controversy as being one of Ginsberg against his critics and drew parallels to the larger themes of free expression versus "common decency" and put it in context of his contemporary Noam Chomsky.

--Modemx 15:57, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) Removed disputed staus as all disupted statements have been removed. I think what is remaining is nominally factual and fully supported by the New York Times article that seems to have been the original source.

Criticisms and corrections welcome and encouraged.

--Modemx 17:20, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) Added back a statement by Ginsburg supported by the 1988 New York times article, reflecting long held opinions by Ginsburg that are absolutely not in dispute. Added back disputed tag as one author who has failed to provide an exact reference for his statements. Hopefully, he will display some intellectual honesty and provide an exact citation for his controversial assertions. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Further, how Alan Ginsburg felt about censorship is not in dispute. Whether you agree with him or not, one of his motivations was that free speech was of greater value than common notions of decency. If you disagree with him, it is intellectually dishonest and factually inaccurate to simply edit out his opinons and insert your own as fact. If you disagree, write about what one of his prominent critics thought of his opinons, that is a factual statement of opposition by one of his peers. Editing out facts to suit your one's own point of view is a gross act of intellectual dishonesty.
 * I agree, Please stop.--Xed 18:24, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

--Modemx 18:56, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) Well, Xed, you're the one who wrote this "clarification": "He felt standing for the principals of free expression as being of greater value than the rights of children. "Somebody's got to stand up to those idiots," Ginsberg is reported to have said, referring the citizens and politicians who seek to limit obscenity."

Which is wholly your opinion.


 * Not really. The original article this quote is from - - says, '"Behind the efforts of ordinary citizens and politicians to limit  obscenity, he said, is "a perverted  preoccupation with homosexuality. No  normal heterosexual man would be that interested in homosexuality." ..."Somebody's got to stand up to those idiots!" Mr. Ginsberg said with a flourish as he began digging  into some honey bread and potato soup."'--Xed 19:10, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) --Modemx 20:22, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) Right, you just demonstrated my point, he felt the real concern behind those outwardly concerned about obscenity was just offense to personal sensibilities, which he felt free speech rights should trump, and that someone should stand up to them. You took the original quote out of context to bolster your point. I really appreciate you being able to cite a source, however, so we can have a discussion about it. See how well that works?

One can certainly argue that Ginsburg was deluded in his thinking he was defending the rights of free speech over common sensibilities and that he failed to consider the dangers to children, but you can't ascribe your own opinion to his motivations. He also wasn't referring to "citizens and politicians who seek to limit obscenity," he was referring to those who attempt to limit free speech. One can argue that he was ultimately promoting obscenity, but that doesn't change who he thought he was talking about.

Ginsburg, right or wrong, felt what he felt regardless of what Xed thinks.

As much as I might agree with you, there is a certain responsibility in how one must present one's opinions, especially when dealing with historically significant people.


 * I don't understand this. Historically significant people shouldn't have a different moral code applied to them.--Xed 19:10, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) --Modemx 20:22, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) The same intellectual rigor should be applied to any object of historical interest. I don't see you applying that rigor.

I might despise the man who wrote the poem Howl, but that doesn't mean one can't acknowledge its significance, and that doesn't change an intellectually honest person's responsibility to be careful with the facts. If Ginsburg said what he said I'm as outraged as you are, but I don't believe your source actually exists. I can't find it, and I'll certainly verify it. Don't bother sending a URL, I'll contact the publisher directly once I get the name of the publisher, the date, volume number, and issue number.


 * Don't bother sending a URL? I see.--Xed 19:10, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) --Modemx 20:22, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) Right, I can't trust you won't make something up, I don't trust sources of incredible claims off the Internet, send a publisher, volume number, publication date, and issue number instead.

Why can't you just cite your sources exactly and find some op-ed pieces out of some major newspapers from the time to backup your assertions? I can't tell if you are a person who really cares about people understanding your point of view or if you are merely a troll. It can't be that hard. If you can do that, you'll have my support 100%, I'll even help you edit the article for their inclusion.

In fact, I myself disagree with Ginsburg on the controversy with NAMBLA, completely. I think he was dead wrong. However, my feelings don't change what his motivations are and how he felt about censorship.


 * Your original POV edit on this issue indicates that you did support him in this issue. In fact, it amounted to cheerleading for his position.--Xed 19:10, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) --Modemx 20:22, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC) So, anyone who disagrees with you is a cheerleader for pedophiles? Also, it now seems you are telling me what I think. This may be surprising to you, but I have a first hand source for what I think, and its fairly authoritative.

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disputed tag
I've removed the disputed tag. It's been here in excess of six months and I'm not even sure what the original dispute was, probably the NAMBLA stuff which isn't even in the article anymore. So I took the tag off as they weren't intended to be attached to articles indefinately. If anyone wants to dispute the article as it stands now, please state your case here on the talk page before adding any tag, even if the dispute has already been discussed. Gamaliel 02:17, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Great, I was going to come by and remove it myself this week. Now maybe the article could be expanded to gice some serious consideration to his writing career, impact and reputation. Filiocht 09:27, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)


 * Excellent, I'm all about that. Should we coordinate or just one of us take a stab at it and let the others carve the changes up in turn? --Modemx 16:48, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * If anyone wants to make a start, I'll chip in as and when I can. Filiocht 10:07, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

expelled
I seem to remember that Ginsberg was once kicked out of school for writing something anti-semetic on a window. That might be worked into here (as an example of his rambunctiousness, not his anti-semitism.)

Ginsberg anti semitic? You are forgetting that he is Jewish himself. - Wikologist

What he wrote that got him expelled was that the head of the school had no balls.

He did write (in dust on his windowpane) that the university president had no balls, but what the anonymous query was referring to was that he also wrote 'Fuck the Jews', with a skull and crossbones, beneath that. Apparently this was to draw attention to the dirt on his windowpane, in an ongoing battle with his cleaning lady, who he also suspected of being anti-semitic (from Barry Miles's biography of Ginsberg). He was suspended shortly after, but this was only one of a number of reasons (such as entertaining Jack Kerouac in his residence bed). Greenman 22:32, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

In 1945, he was suspended for writing "Butler has no balls" on his dorm window reffering to Nicholas Murray Butler who was president of Columbia at the time and for sharing that room with Jack Kerouac, who left Columbia in 1942. The source I own with this information does not mention any anti-semetic comments also being written on the window; however, the story does sound familiar. He returned to campus after living in a communal appartment. He did not graduate from Columbia, because he was sent to New York Psychiatric Inatitute instead of going to jail. He was found moving stolen goods fron a stolen car. I got my information from Journals Early Fifties Early Sixties by Ginsberg and edited by Gordon Ball. Paperdoll66

Blake was gay??
He considered himself to have inherited the visionary and homoerotic poetic mantle handed from the English poet and artist William Blake on to Walt Whitman. This sentence makes it seem as tho William Blake had the same homoerotic tendancies as Whitman. I don't know much about Blake, but I've never heard of this. Is this true or just a poorly-phrased sentence? Singlewordedpoem 04:35, 2 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree, I've never heard anything like that at all. Unless someone can come up with a source (which I'd guess it doubtful, considering the time period), I say it ought to be removed. Atrivedi

While I agree with the comments above that no source is provided for the assertion that Blake was gay, the text of this article on Ginsberg does not actually state that Blake was (or wasn't). Any poet who extolls masculine beauty or the so-called masculine virtues could be deemed to have written "homoerotic" poetry, regardless of the poet's sexual orientation. On those grounds, Ginsberg, Whitman, and Blake all would qualify as homoerotic poets although only Ginsberg and Whitman are known to have been homosexual. 64.124.183.195 19:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

quotes
In the quotes section - can someone attribute dates/context? thegirlinwhite 09:30, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Intellectual/literary merit.
It seems a tad remiss that we don't have a section offering an overview of his writings. I am going to post this somewhere - we need assistance. thegirlinwhite 12:44, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Life
So, it seems that Ginsberg didn't do anything after 1965 except appear on a clash album? I think the Context of his life are very lacking. He won the national book award in 1973 for "The Fall of America." He started the Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics. He was a leader in the anti Nuclear proliferation movement...There are points of interest to be touched on there...

On another note, I think trying to sum up Howl by saying it is “about consumer societies’s negative human values” demeans the poem. This needs to be fixed.

bumdhar

Married a Hells Angel? What?
"It is rumoured that Ginsberg eventually married one of the Hell's Angels and then ran away to Vietnam."

That, in the last paragraph, seriously needs citing. Did Ginsberg ever even go to Vietnam, or marry anyone? I wouldn't be surprised if he had some sort of ceremony with Orlovsky, but Orlovsky wasn't a Hells Angel.

I'm removing it.

North American Men/Boy Lovers Association
Turns out Ginsberg was actually a member of the organization, far more than just supporting its right to state its viewpoint. More research should be done to determine whether Ginsberg was or was not a paedephillie.63.205.151.68 21:11, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


 * This item needs to be removed completely, it duplicates an existing discussion. Kerojack, Argenta 02:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, plus he can't spell. What in God's name is a paedephillie? 82.27.205.126 22:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

This Article Needs a Thorough Revamping
I don't know the ins and outs of wiki-organization, so I cannot do it, but this article is weak and disorganized. The fact that Rage Against the machine mentions him shouldn't be under the 'life' heading. Same with the Clash factoid. I'm taking out the schmaltzy details of his death too.

Re: This Article Needs a Thorough Revamping
I agree. I also don't know the ins and outs of Wiki, but in honor of Ginsberg, I'm willing to try reworking this article. You in?


 * You should start signing and dating your comments (four ~), but whoever you are, I am also very much in on reworking this article. Here's to Ginsberg! Singlewordedpoem 07:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Howl
The quotes are taken from a Tripod personal web site holding a copy of Howl as a text file. This is unprofessional. The quotes should be cited from "Howl and Other Poems" from 1956. There is also a new hardback out that discusses the court case over the poem. This has not been mentioned either (the new book I mean). I checked on fair use and it is permissible I understand to quote a couple of lines of apoem from a published anthology or collection, but no doubt people more versed in copyright than me can comment. (As an aside, I have access to the book Deliberate Prose in its First Edition (2000), which is a collection of Ginsberg's essays between 1952 - 1995. I am also interested in helping, as I have more than a passing interest in beat poets and writers. I have been editing bits of Mr. Kerouac's entry recently)

Ginsberg/Chickenhawk
In this documentary, Ginsberg was at a NAMBLA meeting reading one of his poems

"Young Boy give me your ass"

I believe Ginsberg's association/active participation with NAMBLA's meeting is enough to warrant it being part of a Wiki-Entry.

Or is Wikipedia supposed to 'kindly omit' certain facts for PC reasons?

NAMBLA, again
Hey. To me it's absurd that NAMBLA isn't mentioned here. We can write it to be evenhanded but he definitely had some association and all indications are that he was a pedophile (like all those poems about boys). There seems to be a lot of windy obfuscation about why it's not here; the bottomline, it seems to be, is just his champions whitewashing history. I loved Ginsberg's stuff but omitting details of his biography doesn't do anyone any favors.


 * There is no evidence anywhere suggesting that Ginsberg ran after little boys, though a number of sources have had fun with the term "pedophilia." If you read his poetry and if you study his life you will see that he was a homosexual poet who delighted in loving relations with older teenage boys. You can call that pederasty, if you like, but you cannot call it pedophilia except in the slang American sense which attaches that tag to all sex with minors, even hirsute and muscular seventeen year old youths who happen to be above the age of consent (though I grant you that Allen might have taken a seventeen year old to bed even where he would have been below the age of consent). Haiduc 11:41, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Uh huh. I think your compromise works pretty well for now.  However, I'm pretty sure in that Literary Outlaw biography of Burroughs, more specific instances are discussed.  Not having it handy, I'm not revising anything--but the discussion deserves its own section if that's the case.

I just put up a NPOV tag in the NAMBLA section because, for one thing, the section reads like an advocacy of Ginsberg, not as an encyclopedia. Also, could we please have a link to another site that says he joined NAMBLA, and could we have a link to the defense of NAMBLA piece? This is an extremely controversial topic (can't think of a more controversial topic, actually) and I think the least we should ask for is verification. Thanks. Andrew Parodi 09:33, 13 October 2006 (UTC)


 * The defense of NAMBLA piece, and his membership, are adequately cited, not everything is on the web. Can you be more specific about what you are challenging? Haiduc 11:55, 13 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm a fan of Ginsberg and I met him in Boulder in 1996 on the campus of Naropa Institute. I asked him specifically about the NAMBLA issue.  He made me follow him into the bathroom and he peed while he told me that he wasn't supportive of no age consent laws, but for lowering them to what he considered a reasoanble level.  He felt a 15, 16 year old is old enough to make sexual decisions (as many state marriage laws do, as well).  More germane to this discussion, I think, is that Ginsberg had a history of controversial political activism, and this deserves to be placed under that section.  Referring to the first paragraph above, Ginsberg's Vietnam protests were not central to his core, as one event, nor were his nuclear protests and his tactics.  He was unabashed about his views, and this was a controversial one, and I think it bears mention under the controversial political activism section.  With proper citation.  --DavidShankBone 15:00, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Check the NAMBLA section now (10/16/06): Is it more neutral? Not advocacy? On a side note, I'm interested in doing a study of "Editing Truth" I'd guess you'd call it, and I think Ginsberg's membership in NAMBLA is a fascinating thing to focus on. I'll have more specific questions later, but feel free to post any more thoughts about it here. These are all great and I may ask permission later to use them (if the study ever actually comes to fruition). F. Simon Grant 15:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

NAMBLA needs to be changed
While I support the inclusion of NAMBLA being mentioned in this article, it certainly does not belong under a "Gay Rights" heading. NAMBLA is not part of the gay rights movement, and there is no mainstream gay rights organizations that support NAMBLA's goals, or are affiliated with them. Yeah, yeah - people can drag up whatever mistakes were made in the past with gay rights when it was first starting out. But NAMBLA, in today's world, and its objectives, are firmly rejected by the vast majority of gays and the gay rights movements. So, I'm going to change it. --DavidShankBone 01:07, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Photo
Is the picture in the airport really of Ginsberg? It looks nothing like any other photo I have seen of him. It seems he always kept his beard on throughout the 70s.


 * I also seriously doubt that Ginsberg is in that photo. The german article has the same plus another one where "Ginsberg" is shown more clearly (close-up).

That's definitely Ginsberg in the photo. He shaved off his beard in 1971, in response to a challenge from his Buddhist teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The beard came and went periodically after that. It's certainly not the best photo of Orlovsky, but that's Ginsberg. Digaman 15:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Enoch Penn Yobright
Can someone with more Wiki experience than I have please figure out who keeps inserting the name "Enoch Penn Yobright" into the section of this entry dealing with the New York poets?

The name is fake, Yobright didn't exist -- it appears to be some kind of sophomoric Net prank -- and I'm getting bloody tired of having to edit the name out of this entry every few weeks. If someone could look into this and ban ban ban the Yobright idiot, I'd appreciate it.


 * I contributed the Enoch Penn Yobright information. It’s not a prank at all.  “Ban ban ban” me if you want, but hear me out first (and please, anyone else feel free to verify my claims).  What I find sophomoric is your passionate insistence in Yobright’s non-existence.  Your assumptions are based neither on logic nor fact.  On what are you basing your assumption that he’s not real?  It’s your attitude – an apparently exclusionary view of the literary canon – that keeps unjustifiably “forgotten” poets forgotten.  Just like Bob Kaufman, Enoch Penn Yobright never wrote down his poetry.  Just as Bob Kaufman was an influential local figure in San Francisco, Yobright was an influential figure in the Black Mountain area of North Carolina (Are you familiar with Jonathan Williams?  Robert Creeley?)  But two major differences between Yobright and Kaufman delayed Yobright’s full appreciation by many decades: Bob Kaufman had Eileen to write his poetry down; Yobright only had his fans (the poems were copied and distributed, much like Kaufman’s early stuff).  Furthermore Yobright was insistent about never having his poems published, and he was insistent about always maintaining anonymity (hence the pseudonym – by most accounts his real name is Nicholas Butler – feel free to look that up, but I doubt you’ll find that either).  He took this anonymity to extremes: Jonathan Williams wanted to publish “I’ve Been Looking” (a response to Ferlinghetti) in Jargon but Yobright refused to give his permission.  Now, after his death, those who believe he’s worth studying have a chance to bring his name the appreciation it deserves.  I’ve been working hard to do that, but closed mindedness has made that difficult.  I and other scholars interested in Yobright studies have met with resistance firstly by those traditionalists in academia (especially here in the South) who believe the Beats and those associated with the Beats are not worthy of consideration, and, secondly, by Beat scholars who neglect writers outside of the core (the neglect of “minor” Black Mountain poets is especially prevalent).  Furthermore, the fact that he was never published poses an even greater obstacle.  But that’s no reason to assume he doesn’t exist.  Did John Kennedy Toole not exist before he was published?  Did Emily Dickinson not exist before she was published?  Is publication the sole criterion for existence?  Dickinson and Toole were lucky enough to have loving family so that they could finally “exist” for you.  So feel free to continue this injustice by insisting it’s a “prank” (What would that prank even mean?  Would that by funny?  Is there some kind of pun I’m missing?)  And feel free to “ban ban ban” this “idiot” and while your’e at it – if you think Enoch Penn Yobright is based on false information – cut out every other contribution I’ve made to the Allen Ginsberg page.  That must be a “prank” too, right?  Feel free to check all my contributions (if you need help figuring out how to do that: just find my name and click on “contrib”).  That’s a lot of “pranking” I suppose.  But if you “ban ban ban” me, do it for the right reason.  The inclusion of the name Enoch Penn Yobright is based on personal research (personal interviews of first hand accounts – the only real resources available to us).  I would’ve created a stub for him but for that reason (and that reason alone – verifiable research by others is far from being finished).  I put his name in the page twice (only twice – not “every other week”) for this reason: I’m having my students do a research project on “forgotten” writers (Bob Kaufman, Zora Neale Hurston, etc.) and some of my students chose Enoch Penn Yobright.  The research on that, of course, would be very difficult.  I told them to perhaps focus on those who knew Yobright.  They’d be able to find connections with the “search within a page” function.  Granted it’s a violation of the no personal research rule, but I thought including it in a list of names would only be a benign violation.  I posted it once with a red link with the intention of one day when the research came out creating a stub.  It was deleted, and I assumed it was for that reason.  I posted it a second time with out the red link, and it was deleted.  That was all I did.  Any other time may have been someone else.  Sorry you had to put forth such an immense amount of effort to delete one name twice.  I put it on the Ginsberg page because I was working on the page at the time and I have several accounts that Yobright lived in New York for several years in the mid to late sixties and was introduced to Ginsberg via Robert Creeley.  It’s not clear how much contact they had (as much as Rod McKuen, certainly [incidentally, I tried to verify the McKuen connection in Ginsberg sources but couldn’t find it – could somebody double check that please]).  I had the intention of putting it on other pages (Jonathan Williams, for example) but never got around to it.  So I included personal research in a list of names.  Punish me as much as I deserve.  Frankly I find your gross over-reaction surprising.  Someone posts a name you’ve never heard of and you call for a “ban ban ban” – yet repeated gay bashing pranks garner no reaction.  Very interesting choice there.

F. Simon Grant 03:03, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

You know, this exactly the kind of Fascist, elitist BS that Enoch would've railed against. (and your beloved Ginsberg for that matter) Open your mind little wiki editor! There are people out there you never heard of! Anyone worth their salt living in NC knows about Yobright. He's a genius, first rate. I say more Enoch! He deserves his own page! This F. Simon guy is right on- the canon is not the last word in writing. 134.224.43.151 14:21, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Try looking up Nicholas Butler III, actually. Supposedly he was the grandson of the Columbia president through his daughter, changed his name to Nicholas Butler III either to use that connection or ironically. But that's not %100 reliable, so good luck. I was always told he was born and raised in NC. Seems like there would be some other kind of Ginsberg connection if he actually was related to Butler. Anyway Digaman, no offense, but I do know how to look contribution info on Wikipedia and I noticed you also cut out Jack Micheline and John Wieners. Was there a good reason? I was just wondering b/c Micheline used a pen name and Wieners' name kinda sounds like a prank name. The whole sentence was about people who were aquaintances of Ginsberg. Micheline and Wieners weren't his aquaintances? Don't get it, man. Can anybody back me up here? Micheline and Wieners knew Ginsberg, right? 134.224.220.1 14:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm a writer from the Pickens county area in South Carolina and I can definitely confirm that Enoch Penn Yobright is a very real poet and a highly influential one around here. He was one of the only southern poets I know of that engaged in the kind of spontaneous work that other beat poets were committed to in more urban areas at the time. I also know a number of older writers in the area who were not only familiar with Yobright's work but had met him and seen performances. (Unfortunately you are not likely to find these writers on Wikipedia or even the internet anytime soon). Nonetheless, Grant has a point. Just because Yobright is not a traditionally published poet is not a legitimate reason to deny him a place in Wikipedia. Troped 1:10, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

That would all be a fine point, but I knew Ginsberg very well for 25 years, and was his teaching assistant at Naropa Institute, and to put it frankly and succintly, I never heard or read Ginsberg mention Yobright in either print or speech. So sure, some poet with this name might have existed -- I'm still not convinced -- but he was neither a significant influence on Ginsberg nor a significant friend of the poet's. So why are we having this lengthy discussion about an unrelated poet? (And yes, of course I know of Jonathan Williams and Creeley and their significance to Ginsberg's life.) Feel free to restore the references to Micheline and Weiners.

Sorry, that last comment was added by me before I noticed I wasn't signed in. "Yobright" seems to have a MySpace page. If those really are "Yobright's" poems, he is not worthy of mention in this entry and is clearly a minor poet at best.

The main point is this: whether or not Yobright appears in this entry has very little to do with his inherent worth as a poet, or how many writers he may have influenced by word-of-mouth in Pickens, South Carolina. The salient issue is how well Ginsberg knew him (hard cites beyond secondhand anecdotes, please) and whether or not Yobright's work had an effect on Ginsberg's -- as, say Kerouac's or Creeley's or anyone else mentioned in this entry. Making this a question of canonical versus non-canonical poets is beside the point. Did Ginsberg know Yobright? Was Ginsberg influenced by him in some way that Ginsberg himself considered important or lasting? I can't answer the first question, but I can answer the second, and that answer is no. Digaman 15:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I beg to differ. The issue here isn't even his influence on Ginsberg.  If you think it's valid to restore Micheline and Wieners, you must think they have valid reasons to be on the page -- How much did they influence Ginsberg?  On the level of Kerouac and Creeley?  No, of course not.  Whether or not you like his poetry is irrelevant (many people thought Ginsberg was not a worthwhile poet).  Whether or not you believe in him is irrelevant (he will not cease to exist simply because you're "not convinced").  The issue here is that you deleted something simply because you'd never heard of it, you assumed it was a prank, and you impolitely called for the "idiot" who did it to be "ban ban ban" -ed.  That's poor Wikipedia politics.  Please don't make assumptions about things you can't prove.  Please don't insult people without justification (or at all really).


 * And I think considerations of canonical vs. noncanonical is entirely relevant because you're demonstrating an exclusionary philosophy which I believe is damaging to Beat studies specifically and literature in general. It's especially damaging to Beat studies because it's a contradiction to the philosophy most basic to Beat writers.  How would Ginsberg feel about you saying, "If those really are 'Yobright's' poems, he is not worthy of mention in this entry and is clearly a minor poet at best."  On what are you basing your standards?  On what do you base your standards for poetry in general?  And please tell me, since you obviously know him so well (and will the fact that I'm not convinced you're telling the truth about that change whether or not it's true?), what was Ginsberg's basis for good poetry, for whether or not someone should be a "minor" poet?  Remember: "The madman is holy as you my soul are holy!"  Should any of your contributions be trusted since you espouse this patently un-Beat view of things?  You think certain facts aren't "good enough" for Wikipedia therefore you cut them out.  This is a dangerous attitude.  I’m guessing it’s this same attitude that lead you to delete Micheline and Wieners in the first place with no given reason (Yes, please, enlighten us: Why were Micheline and Wieners not worthy?  Was that based on actual cites?).  This elitist attitude is especially evident in your references to the South.  Yobright lived and worked in Black Mountain, North Carolina.  Pickens is in South Carolina.  I live in Augusta, Georgia.  Are all places in the south the same to you?  The south has too long been neglected as a significant place in Beat studies, and it's this variety of elitism that keeps it this way.  So, no, the inclusion of a non-canonical writer is not relevant.  But I believe elitism is entirely relevant.


 * That myspace page, by the way, is a fan page. I don't know who did it, but I know Yobright would've never allowed something like that while he was alive (not because of elitism, but because of privacy concerns).

F. Simon Grant 16:52, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Please provide a single citation other than your own hearsay that this alleged person Yobright -- whose name does not appear in the Lexis-Nexis database of public records, including the federal Social Security database, by the way -- had anything to do with the subject of this article, Allen Ginsberg. Thank you, Mr. Grant.

Digaman 22:08, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

By the way, Mr. Grant, my claims of having known Ginsberg well are easily proven with a single search. Perform a "search inside this book" in Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958-1996 for my name, Steve Silberman. On page 543, Ginsberg says, "Steve Silberman and I are old friends, going back a decade or longer." Thanks.

Digaman 22:23, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that Emily Dickinson didn't exist either because she didn't publish traditionally or have a social security number. And how exactly are we defining hearsay? If it isn't in a journal or Lexis Nexis, it's hearsay?74.242.66.177 23:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

No, Mr. Grant -- if that's you too -- it's "hearsay" if the only source of an alleged fact is you. Look just below the window you're typing into -- Wikipedia tells you "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable," linking to a page that specifies:

'''The policy:
 * 1) Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources.
 * 2) Editors adding new material to an article should cite a reliable source, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor.
 * 3) The obligation to provide a reliable source lies with the editors wishing to include the material, not on those seeking to remove it.

Quite clear, really. There's the main issue of adequately demonstrating that this poet Yobright -- who I do believe at least may have been a friend of yours and an important figure in the local mythology  -- is crucial to understanding the work and biography of Allen Ginsberg, when there is, as far as I know, no documentation to support it in the poet's own work and materials. Ginsberg was nothing if not a compulsive hoarder of his own ephemera; a beard cut off in 1971 or so resides in the Ginsberg collection at Stanford. Citations within the complete works of the man we are discussing in this entry -- including his voluminous correspondence, journals, and memoranda -- are welcome.

Ginsberg was friends with hundreds of poets. Why Yobright, whether he exists or not? That's what this is about. For the record, one of the unfairly dismissed Black Mountain poets -- Hilda Morley, one of the most sublime and virtually unknown poets of the 20th century -- lived in my house for a week. I know the deal. You couldn't be righter about that.

Digaman 00:28, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

You're evidently not a fan of reading carefully. Yobright is a pen name. Is the name Jack Micheline in the Social Security database? He's in Lexis Nexis because he's published. You didn't read my own response very carefully. Try Nick Butler (as I said, but apparently you don't read very carefully). Nick Butler is likely his real name, but there's not yet final proof. Also in my response had you read carefully, you would've seen that I apologized for including information from personal research. I was defending his actual existence from your rude suppositions that he doesn't exist and your assumption that I was an "idiot" for including the name. I was not defending his right to be on this page. I am not an "idiot" for including his name. I didn't follow Wikipedia guidelines. You didn't follow Wikipedia guidelines in calling me an idiot (though, I must point out, who's functioning here out of ignorance?). You also didn't read the original entry very carefully. It has nothing to do with influence. It has to do with Ginsberg's friendship pulling together a wide variety of writers from across the country. It has nothing to do with influence, great impact on his life, etc. It has to do with A) friendship and B) drawing a wide variety of people together from around the country. Yobright doesn't need to be on this page because the connection is based on personal research. I said that already. Had you read carefully, maybe you would understand that. But can you conclusively prove that Yobright/Butler, Jack Micheline, and John Wieners do not belong in this sentence (maybe not for an ecyclopedic entry, true, but for the sake of truth):

"Ginsberg never claimed to be the leader. He did, however, claim many of the writers with whom he had become friends in this period shared many of the same intentions and themes. Some of these friends include: Bob Kaufman; LeRoi Jones before he became Amiri Baraka, who, after reading "Howl", wrote a letter to Ginsberg on a sheet of toilet paper; Diane DiPrima; poets associated with the Black Mountain College such as Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov; poets associated with the New York School such as Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch."

The Beat spirit I mentioned before is not about what's worthy but what's true. Yobright/Butler may not be worthy according to your exclusionary academic standards -- therefore, feel free to leave him off the page; that's not what I'm arguing for at all. I'm arguing for Yobright's truth. And I beg you, in the future, don't deny something's truth simply because you don't deem it worthy.

F. Simon Grant 13:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, your declaration that the poet's true name was Nicholas Butler only added to my skepticism, as Nicholas Butler was the president of Columbia University when Allen Ginsberg was expelled from there, and their dislike for one another is well-known among Beat scholars. The idea that Yobright/Butler was Butler's grandson is interesting, but doesn't prove the relevance of Butler's pseudonym -- if that's indeed what's true -- in this entry.

I'm sorry, Mr. Grant, while I appreciate your devotion to the work of Yobright/Butler, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and this entry is about Allen Ginsberg. I'm surprised that you didn't just create an entry for Mr. Yobright/Butler, rather than investing all this time trying to argue that he should be wedged into an entry in which even you cannot demonstrate his relevance, other than a rumor that Ginsberg and Yobright/Butler may have met one another at some point. Ginsberg knew thousands of people. If I started listing all the poets who Ginsberg knew and was in fact influenced by, this entry would be the length of a phone book. So please put your considerable energy into creating a new entry for Mr. Yobright/Butler, and stop trying to insert that information here. Thank you.

Digaman 19:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I keep repeating myself and you keep repeating yourself. The only difference is I'm reading what you're saying carefully and not just jumping to conclusions.  Let me replay a few things just so you get it clear, because hopefully, though I've repeated myself maybe you'll get it the hundredth time.


 * This is what I said earlier: "Granted it’s a violation of the no personal research rule, but I thought including it in a list of names would only be a benign violation. I posted it once with a red link with the intention of one day when the research came out creating a stub.  It was deleted, and I assumed it was for that reason.  I posted it a second time with out the red link, and it was deleted.  That was all I did.  Any other time may have been someone else.  Sorry you had to put forth such an immense amount of effort to delete one name twice.  I put it on the Ginsberg page because I was working on the page at the time and I have several accounts that Yobright lived in New York for several years in the mid to late sixties and was introduced to Ginsberg via Robert Creeley.  It’s not clear how much contact they had (as much as Rod McKuen, certainly [incidentally, I tried to verify the McKuen connection in Ginsberg sources but couldn’t find it – could somebody double check that please]).  I had the intention of putting it on other pages (Jonathan Williams, for example) but never got around to it.  So I included personal research in a list of names.  Punish me as much as I deserve.  Frankly I find your gross over-reaction surprising.  Someone posts a name you’ve never heard of and you call for a “ban ban ban” – yet repeated gay bashing pranks garner no reaction.  Very interesting choice there."


 * Did I ever say you must must must put Enoch's name on this page? No.  Yet your response is still: "rather than investing all this time trying to argue that he should be wedged into an entry in which even you cannot demonstrate his relevance, other than a rumor that Ginsberg and Yobright/Butler may have met one another at some point. Ginsberg knew thousands of people.  If I started listing all the poets who Ginsberg knew and was in fact influenced by, this entry would be the length of a phone book.  So please put your considerable energy into creating a new entry for Mr. Yobright/Butler, and stop trying to insert that information here.  Thank you."


 * I have NEVER argued that he should be inserted. I inserted him twice; you deleted him twice.  Did I say this was wrong of you at any point?  No.  What's wrong of you is calling me an idiot and assuming it's a prank for no reason.  And your continual insistence that I'm making this all up is an even further insult.  That's what I'm defending.  You're being continuously rude in trying to point out (for no GOOD reason, by the way) that the person to whom I've dedicated much of my time is not real (the person to whom many people have dedicated their time).  You stand nothing to gain; I was not going to put his name back on the page.  It's simply rude -- just repeated rude behavior to prove you're right, that you're superior somehow.  And I don't appreciate it.  I’d ask for an apology but I know I won’t get it.  I’ll simply get repeated irrelevant “proof” that I’ve been wasting my time.


 * And your continual insistence that if we put one friend we must put all is pointless: As I said (and had you read carefully you would've seen this) if Rod McKuen's name is up there, why aren't other names up there? Go ahead and take Rod McKuen's name off too.  I was defending Micheline and Wieners' right to be there even more so than Enoch.  Did I say you should put them back up?  No.  I said they had a right to be there.  Did I say every friend should be there?  No.  I was simply defending their RIGHT to be there.  I'm defending rights, I'm defending truth -- I'm not arguing Wikipedia policy.  And the Nicholas Butler thing -- did you simply skim over that entry too?  Here it is again in case you missed it: "Supposedly he was the grandson of the Columbia president through his daughter, changed his name to Nicholas Butler III either to use that connection or ironically.  But that's not %100 reliable, so good luck.  I was always told he was born and raised in NC."  (I didn't write that one either, by the way.  Check the IP address -- though I'm sure you're going to make your rude assumptions anyway).  Did you try looking up Nicholas Butler III in the Social Security database.  While you're at it, go ahead and look up O. Henry, see if he's real too.  See if you can find out if George Orwell and Lewis Carroll are real while you're at it.


 * My point is I can't "Invest all this time arguing" that he should have his own entry because it's based on personal research (that's Wikipedia policy -- along with not being rude to people, might I remind you for the hundredth time). Why don't you spend all that time you're investing in trying to prove that somebody wasn't born with their pen name in trying to look up information about people who post certain things before you lazily revert to assumptions of malfeasance and start calling people names.  Feel free to look at all the contributions I’ve made to this page.  Click on “history” – it’s very simple.  A large amount of the editing in the past few months has been done by me.  If I spent so much time on this page, why would I prank it?  I’ve been trying to elevate this page from a B to an A.  There are huge gaping holes in this page: There needs to be a lot more about Neal Cassady.  There needs to be a lot more about Naomi.  And I was planning to soon expand both sections (along with a lot of other revisions this page needs) and resubmit the page for evaluation so maybe it would be an A level page or maybe (with even more work) a featured page.  I’m going to go ahead and “ban ban ban” myself from this page, because if it’s being regulated by self-important, rude, incautious readers (and I think the worst thing is that you’re an incautious reader and apparently, judging by your efforts to look up pen names in the Social Security database, an ineffective researcher) my efforts are hopeless.  I can predict your response so let me go ahead and preempt you: “How do you expect the page to get an A if you keep insisting on inserting the name of a person who doesn’t exist.”  I repeat (hopefully for the last time) I never insisted on reinserting the name – just defended myself against an uniformed accusation.  And I’m sure you’re thinking that banning myself from the page is not much of a threat.  I don’t mean it to be a threat; I’m simply saying I’ve lost hope for this page.  I think your affect on this page will be far more damaging than my absence.


 * One last thing that bears repeating: Next time you think about calling somebody an idiot or sophomoric, take a few seconds. I’m sure you won’t cease, but at least next time please put some forethought into it.

F. Simon Grant 16:02, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Mr. Grant, I was rude to you. My apologies.

Digaman 18:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

YouTube links
This article is one of thousands on Wikipedia that have a link to YouTube in it. Based on the External links policy, most of these should probably be removed. I'm putting this message here, on this talk page, to request the regular editors take a look at the link and make sure it doesn't violate policy. In short: 1. 99% of the time YouTube should not be used as a source. 2. We must not link to material that violates someones copyright. If you are not sure if the link on this article should be removed, feel free to ask me on my talk page and I'll review it personally. Thanks. ---J.S (t|c) 04:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Ginsberg's Homosexuality
This article fails to actually confirm Ginsberg's sexuality, one way or the other. While the article makes reference to Ginsberg's homosexuality many times, these references are often just mentioning that he had a love relationship with one famous poet or entertained another in his bed, or that he had a brief foray into heterosexuality. In order for this article to be informative to asomeone truly attemping to learn about Ginsberg, there needs to be actual confirmation or denial about his homosexuality. Unless this is added, the article is incomplete. --138.74.11.24 22:23, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

== regarding: (It is incumbent upon you to demonstrate how NAMBLA is a part of the gay rights movement - which organization do they belong to? Does the UN recognize them? ANY gay rights organization? No) ==

Who cares about this propaganda? This article is not about gay rights, it is about AG and his resistance to government control. Stop trying to make political points by trying to paint his life in a format that fits your 2007 notions of what he should have done. He didn't give a shit about gay rights vs pederast rights - he thought that people should be free to love each other. Haiduc 03:49, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You are way off here. There is nothing about political points, it's about accuracy.  NAMBLA doesn't belong under a section about "gay rights" - it sounds like this is more a political crusade of yours than trying to accurately reflect the sections in the article.  I changed no wording; I simply created a new subsection, as I did in October, where it was merited.  Frankly, it sounds more like you have an agenda than I do.  --DavidShankBone 03:53, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Why do you have to force the issue with the "gay rights"? It is more a matter of human rights. That's why I tried to frame it in terms of "Freedom of speech and same-sex love." Maybe we should simply say "Freedom of speech and love", it would be a lot more faithful to what he was about, rather than slavish to what we are about. Haiduc 05:07, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really understand your issue. First "gay rights" is the common phrase used both in the gay community and in society at large. Second, I don't want, nor do the vast majority of gays, to have NAMBLA paired with the gay rights movement. They aren't a part of it. You may have have some desire to have the organization thrown in with it, but it simply is not. They do not belong to any international or national gay rights movement or organization, but want to see age consent laws eroded. Whatever, your issue or personal agenda is, and judging by your contributions, I take it you have one, it simply is inaccurate to put NAMBLA under gay rights. They are separate issues. Period. Whether these are my 2007 notions vs. your Ancient Greece notions (or whatever time period you allude to by making flippant and supercilious remarks, another hallmark of your edits) is irrelevant. NAMBLA simply is not in the gay rights movement and, in fact, is eschewed by it. --DavidShankBone 13:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with DavidShankBone--it is not accurate to put NAMBLA under any type of gay rights header because all major gay rights organizations have condemned NAMBLA. Likewise, it is not appropriate to place NAMBLA under a header called "Freedom of speech and love" because that is POV. It also seems slightly POV to state that Ginsberg's support of NAMBLA was because of "resistance to government control" (UNLESS, of course, you can find a referenced quote from him stating that's why he supported the group). In short, the current head "Controversial political activism" seems NPOV and should be retained. --Alabamaboy 14:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You guys are missing the point. I have no intention of forcing nambla and gay rights together. I could not care less about that argument, and I frankly am not too amused by the nambla people so I have no desire whatsoever to defend their idiocy. But I do not want to see AG posthumously harnessed to the gay rights agenda. It is false and inappropriate. Why can't we depoliticize this article? Why can't we keep the gay rights agenda out of this? My objection is that David's edits project a modern prurient fixation with nambla onto a personage who did not define himself in those terms. AG was about liberation, liberation of thought, liberation of pleasure, liberation of love, liberation of sexuality, liberation from war. So let's find npov terms for his activities, rather than perpetuating here modern political conflicts that do not belong. Haiduc 15:24, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I have several issues with your comments, Haiduc. First, how Ginsberg sees the world, and how the world sees Ginsberg, are two different things. Ginsberg does not posthumously control the presentation of his encyclopedia entry to reflect how he would like it, nor do you in his stead.  Second, I made a pretty simple edit to a long-standing section in the article, simply separating NAMBLA from the "Gay rights" section.  The terms and presentation used in this article are pretty standard; however, your "same sex love" terminology is more pushing the envelope of common usage, and is cumbersome and awkward.  Unrelated to my arguments here, I personally think it has a creepy feel, especially when it seems to equate adult consensual sex with pedastry, all of which could fall under "Same Sex Love" but both of which don't fall under "Gay rights."  And Ginsberg *was* a proponent of gay rights.  And he *was* a proponent of lowering age consent.  And he *was* against Rocky Flats.  And he *was* a proponent of drug demystification.  All of which are separate issues, but following your reasoning they should all fall under one big general category.  Third, you have continued to make charges of an "agenda" and allusions to modern concepts of thinking, but have not once supplied how my separating his NAMBLA advocacy and his gay rights advocacy implies any such nonsense.  I think you've done yourself a disservice here with your arguments, which remain unexplained though you clearly have some unspoken references in your thinking. --DavidShankBone 16:32, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There is only one unspoken reference here - the splitting up of his work towards freedom of love into "gay rights / nambla" is a political act. It is something you persist on doing with every post as if it was a clear and self-existing dichotomy. But that is a political stance. It is as if we divided his efforts into "freedom for women" and "freedom for men." Gratuitous. As for your gratuitous kick at pederasty (if I may correct your spelling), you have let your veil slip ever so slightly, since there is nothing inherently illegal in a pederastic relationship as long as it is with a youth above the age of consent. And legal pederasty does very much fall under gay rights, as anyone living beyond the borders of the USA will tell you. Which, by the way, is a lot closer to the way AG saw it - he was not into children. Perhaps it is time that you set aside for your moment your repetitious insinuations about my putative "agenda" and see where you are coming from. Having said that, I would like to put aside the bickering and try to work with you on depoliticizing this article, which means removing from it either arguments favoring nambla or arguments favoring gay rights. Haiduc 17:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

This is your agenda, and you are the one equating NAMBLA with gay rights, under the moniker "Freedom of love." I think your position speaks for itself. You are the one with the agenda here. Wikipedia is not a place to try and advance thinking. I won't take the infantile approach of correcting your grammar and verbosity, as you did with correcting typos (the last refuge of those without meritorious arguments). I think your agenda of trying to meld pederasty with gay rights speaks for itself. But they are different issues, and should remain separate sections. --DavidShankBone 17:06, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Next step
Well, if we can roll things back a bit, I was concerned about your original contribution because it appeared to me to be a possible pc edit. I am sure you would not want that any more than me. And it is easy to look at the other guy saying "agenda, agenda" but we all have a point of view here, which is why it takes more than one person to write a good article. Leaving all polemic aside, I just want to make sure no-one co-opts Allen for any political purpose. It seems to me that he was a member of nambla even when that organization was still part of ilga. If so (and I need to find a verification for it but I am pretty sure that is the case) then his membership would fall under the rubric of gay rights. How do we deal with that? Can we skip the whole gay thing altogether and talk about homosexual liberation? Let's see if we can find common ground here. Neither of us likes child molesters, but I smell a rat, you smell a rat, maybe we can get rid of the rat and agree on something. Haiduc 22:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Under no circumstances will I support NAMBLA membership under gay righs. They are separate issues.  Again, Ginsberg (who I spoke with about NAMBLA on the campus of Naropa Institute) and his views, feelings, sentiments, etc. are irrelevant to an indepenent analysis and accounting of his life.  NAMBLA advocacy does not fall under the gay rights movement.  If you wish to put under the NAMBLA section that Ginsberg equated it with "homosexual liberation" then you are welcome to do so (with proper citation).  --DavidShankBone 02:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, it might be helpful to eliminate the drama of agendas and beating each other up from the discussion. It's really not that dramatic and it is better to remove emotion from these discussions.  --DavidShankBone 03:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If you ran into him at Naropa, then it must have been when nambla was still part of the gay movement. Why don't we keep it separate but mention that, to nuance things a bit? Things are never black and white. I used to see quite a bit of him on E13th and at the Dharmadhatu, and we also discussed nambla (upon his bringing it up I told him I was not familiar with it, in response to which he dragged out his collection of nambla bulletins to instruct me). That was in '90 - '91. So I know from that he had been in it quite some time already, and also, from our talks, that he was not into young boys, which is why I am wary of making too much of a distinction between his pro-nambla and pro-other homosexuality agitating. Though I agree with you that nambla (or any group that advocates eliminating aoc laws) no longer has anything to do with the gay movement, and I would add that it does not really have much to do with pederasty either. Haiduc 06:08, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * NAMBLA was never part of the gay rights movement, they were associated with one gay organization, an ineffectual umbrella group that takes about any group, the ILGA. As our Wikipedia article on NAMBLA points out, when the association came to light, "NAMBLA's association with ILGA drew heavy criticism, and many gay organizations called for the ILGA to dissolve ties with NAMBLA."  NAMBLA wasn't out there at Stonewall.  NAMBLA wasn't organizing voter drives for anti-discrimination laws.  They weren't volunteering at the AIDS hospices.  NAMBLA's stated purpose was to lower age-of-consent laws, and many of its members were pursuing their own agendaa.  Age-of-consent is not a gay rights issue, and it never was.  Regardless, one affiliation does not make a group part of a movement.  And that movement has rejected any association.  Since Ginsberg's controversial activism is broken down by issue, the issues need no blending.  They are unrelated.  Your edits on this site are very one-dimensional, and mostly seems centered about man-boy love and homosexuality.  I would be careful; you wouldn't want people to accuse you of pushing an agenda.  Thanks for working so diligently!  I'm done.  --DavidShankBone 06:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and it was 1996, but that's irrelevant. --DavidShankBone 06:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You sound very impassioned, but this is not about nambla, it is about AG. And I thought we weren't spozed to talk about each other's agenda any more. But after all this, it seems clear where everyone is coming from here. I am carrying AG's flag and you seem to be carrying the gay rights flag. Which is ok, as long as we can still remain somewhat objective. As I mentioned before, I have little truck with nambla and its descent into lunacy. But the disassociation between any form of pederasty and gay rights is the great lie of the homosexual movement, which only those willfully ignorant of history and present-day reality AND law believe. We do not have to perpetuate it here. I think I have come up with a compromise solution, you'll let me know what you think, I am sure. Haiduc 14:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Two editors have stated the issues need to remain separate. I'm not going to repeat all the same arguments above. Like I said, it's not a "gay rights" flag or an "allen ginsberg" flag. It's that age-of-consent never was a gay rights issue, and it's the only issue NAMBLA actively sought. I'm impassioned only in that you continue to conflate the two. So, no blending. The debate is over, unless you have new arguments to raise, or want to post on the Talk page suggested re-wording. Happy editing. --DavidShankBone 15:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * David, leave me out of your vendetta against nambla, it has nothing to do with me. I left the distiction between nambla and the gay movement as you requested, but AG obviously was about a lot more than either of those two, so please do not force the issue into artificial terms. Haiduc 15:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, it needs to be spelled out here: age-of-consent and pederasty were never gay rights issues, gays were never emancipated, and NAMBLA was never part of the gay rights movement. Your continued attempts to put the two under the same umbrella are flawed and unmerited. Can you even produce a citation where Ginsberg himself saw his gay rights activism as the same issue as his desire to see age-of-consent laws lowered? Probably not. Age-of-consent affects everybody. Discrimination against individuals who want to be partnered with someone of the same gender affects only a certain class. There is a separate issue of having different age-of-consent laws for gays and for straights, but this is not what this issue is about. Again, pederasty, whatever it's place in history, is irrelevant in the modern gay rights movement. --DavidShankBone 16:20, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

POV to combine NAMBLA and Gay Rights sections
The use of the section head "Homosexual emancipation and free speech" is POV and misleading. As stated before, no major gay rights organization supports NAMBLA and to combine NAMBLA with gay rights issues as Haiduc did in his/her recent edit is POV. The previous separation of gay rights and NAMBLA in their own sections, under the overall head of "Controversial political activism" is the most NPOV way to approach this issue (this also places each of these distinct issues within the larger frame of Ginsberg's controversial political views). In addition, there is no consensus to make the change Haiduc is proposing, so I strongly suggest leaving the article as is.--Alabamaboy 19:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it is time for everybody to drop the polemics here and remember that this is not about nambla, not about gay rights, it is about AG's efforts to liberate sexual expression and in particular homosexual expression. The argument that there is now no overlap between nambla and gay rights is clear and I do not dispute that. David has been very insistent that the two not be mixed and he has won that argument. I have no intention of forcing those two issues together. But I will not have AG shoved into the nambla sack.
 * To assert that nambla is not a homosexual organization is simply false. A quick search has just revealed that glbtq has an article on them, and I am sure there is a mass of stuff out there, even if one discounts the rabid nonsense of the far right groups that try to shove gays and nambla together. So given that nambla is part of homosexual history, as is the gay rights movement, and given that AG worked for freedom of homosexual expression, NOT to present his biography in that light is what really is POV and revisionistic. Haiduc 23:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to remind both Haiduc and User:DavidShankBone that the changing back and forth of each other's edits is about to go into 3RR land. Doing so could result in temporary blocks on both of you. Because of the contentious nature of these subjects, why not simply keep the gay rights and NAMBLA info in separate sections, as David wants. That said, why not also add in Haiduc's info about gay rights to the gay rights section (namely, "Ginsberg was an early proponents of freedom for men who loved other men, having already in 1943 discovered within himself "mountains of homosexuality." He expressed this desire openly and graphically in his poetry. He also struck a note for gay marriage by listing Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong companion, as his spouse in his Who’s Who entry. Later homosexual writers saw his frank talk about homosexuality as an opening to speak more openly and honestly about something often before only hinted at or spoken of in metaphor." As I've said before, there are so many POV issues that can come up from mixing these two sections that the most NPOV way to address this is to keep the gay rights and NAMBLA info in separate sections. --Alabamaboy 00:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

3RR territory noted, Alabamaboy. 1. The article's organization does not take into account how Allen Ginsberg would organize it. He is not writing it, and he would not be allowed to do so, regardless. 2. "Homosexual emancipation" "Homosexual liberation" nor "Gay Rights" does not include pederasty, and your edits fail because you continue to create a new awkward category so that you can somehow conflate these issues together, gay rights and pederasty. They are separate. They are separate articles throughout Wikipedia for them, and there is no discussion of pederasty on the gay rights page, or Homosexual social movements - why aren't you trying to do your work there before attempting to break ground on the Allen Ginsberg page? 3. I welcome a Request for Comment - currently you have no consensus in your favor. You are alone. And I have no problem in asking other editors to chime in on their Talk pages, including those who have edited the gay rights pages, and whether pederasty/NAMBLA/pedophilia or what have you belongs. If, so then we should take this to the gay rights page first, for consistency. 4. Interesting article on how pedophiles are trying to use online encyclopedias, and specifically Wikipedia, to advance their agendas:  http://www.poe-news.com/features.php?feat=55118 --DavidShankBone 00:33, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * NPOV is one thing, and deception and political correctness are another. I confess it has taken me a bit to understand the problem here, but it is clear now that:
 * 1. The article is being "groomed" so as to falsely suggest a schism in AG's political work that does not exist, and
 * 2. The NAMBLA section is being loaded down with extraneous biographical material that does not belong there.
 * There are two further falsehoods to deal with. One is that I am trying to conflate gay rights and NAMBLA. Initially I was, but David's arguments convinced me it was a mistake. I am however placing both under the umbrella of his homosexual activism, because they both are aspects of homosexuality, which I have properly documented.
 * The second falsehood is the persistent insinuation of dark, pedophilic motives to my edits. First of all, in this article the pederasty we are discussing, AG's pederasty, involved youths of legal age. And it is AG's biography I am interested in, and its accuracy, not some defense of NAMBLA which I would not undertake out of principle - it is indefensible lunacy. So I object to these accusations, I find them inappropriate and aggressive. But I guess we do not have consensus on that either.
 * Having said that, I would suggest that we try do resolve these issues in a fair and civil fashion, which is eminently feasible if people focus on the issue. Haiduc 03:14, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You haven't provided any evidence that Ginsberg saw pederasty and gay rights as under the same unbrella. You're the one who is doing that, professing to speak for Ginsberg.  Regardless, as I oft-wrote above, we aren't writing this encyclopedia as Ginsberg would like to see it.  We aren't here to espouse his worldview.  Explain it, yes.  You are welcome to change the "controversial issue" section for NAMBLA to one entitled "pedastry", but you don't seem to want to do that.  You want to put it under gay rights/lib/emancipation.  And "Homosexual liberation" refers to a certain time period, as the gay rights page illustrates.  Perhaps you should file the RfC, since we are in reptition mode here.  --DavidShankBone 04:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Poetry and journals material does not belong under NAMBLA
I have opted for a minimalist solution - I am taking the paragraph relating to his poetry and his journals as they reflect on his pederasty and taking it out of the NAMBLA section since one has nothing to do with the other. As for the rest I am leaving things alone for the moment, the debate so far hinges on a subtle point that may not be obvious to all comers. Haiduc 13:53, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The present arrangement is not perfect, but perhaps we better leave it for future generations to disentangle it. Haiduc 16:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Since you are leaving the pederasty section, then pederasty references belong there. Or were you agreeing because you noticed I had overlooked the one reference? --DavidShankBone 17:14, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Relationships with youths above the age of consent belong in both sections, and segregation is a politically correct maneuver. Haiduc 17:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Reference removed
Inappropriate reference removed regarding Ginsburg being labelled a pederast. The attribution incorporates a reference that is not itself attributed. APA indicates that a reference should be cited directly, not by indirect reference, and never when the source of an attribution cannot itself be referenced. The article in question is from a publication from an anti-semitic organization, which brings into question the NPOV of the person labelling Allen Ginsberg, who was of Jewish descent. Editorializing about a person of cultural or historic significance is not appropriate for an encyclopedia entry. Modemx 09:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Howl and The Six Gallery Reading
Respectfully, I would like to bring the following to your attention:

Wally Hedrick – a painter and veteran of the Korean War – approached Ginsberg in the summer of 1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery…At first, Ginsberg refused…But once he’d written a rough draft of Howl, he changed his “fucking mind,” as he put it. Reference: Jonah Raskin, American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and the Making of the Beat Generation.

Thank you...--Art4em 16:11, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Influences/Influenced by
It seems to me that the lists of people who influenced Ginsberg, and the list of those who were, in turn, influenced by Ginsberg have become unwieldy. There is no reason to mention every single author, singer, artist, whathaveyou, in the author box. Some of those named---e.g., Bono---seem like a stretch. The author box should be reserved for important information and it should be brief, not overloaded as is currently the case. Let's cut that down to those of real import. --- Theoldanarchist  Comhrá  15:38, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Slam as genre
On two related points: I don't think the list of influences is unwieldy, though I do wonder if some really need to be there. Who says slam isn't a genre? What really defines genre? I bring these both up together because the purpose of the names in the box, I think, is to show the scope of Ginsberg's influence, to place Ginsberg in interconnected tapestry, to point the curious reader to some significant connections. So firstly, if slam is not a genre, how do you define genre? The type of performance requires certain similarities from poem to poem, for example the fixed base (where would they get the idea of the fixed base in an orally performed poem, I wonder) or the repetition of the last line. Sure, not every slam poem has a fixed base or a repeated last line, but the poems themselves have far more similarities than saying its simply a kind of performance. More importantly in the context of this rant, Ginsberg had a lot of influence on a lot of slam poets, and I think slam is on the verge of becoming a very important genre/kind of performance, so I think that's a valid one to keep in the "influenced" box.

Here's how I'd break down the rest (and I would like to know how everyone else feels):

Most important influences: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, William Blake, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams

Fairly important influences Percy Shelley, John Keats, Ezra Pound, Christopher Smart, Arthur Rimbaud, Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hart Crane

And where's Andre Breton? I thought he was up there. He should be based on Ginsberg's claim that the structure of Kaddish was based on Breton's Free Union. And where's Appolinaire and Baudilaire?

Slightly less importnat: Franz Kafka, Herman Melville

Questionable: William Shakespeare (of course he was influenced by Shakespeare, but who wasn't? and is Shakespeare really a significant direct influence? for Kerouac I'd say yes, but I don't know if it was for Ginsberg), James Joyce (of course a very influential person, but I don't remember reading anywhere that Joyce was a direct influence on Ginsberg, Proust maybe, but not Joyce)

Most important people influenced by him: Bob Dylan, LeRoi Jones

Amount of influence in question: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Saul Williams, Jim Morrison, Robert Lowell, I think we should definitely keep these because the movements, tendencies, genres (or kinds of performances I suppose in Saul's case) they represent make for interesting comparisons. Ginsberg was certainly an influence on all of them, but I'm not sure how much of one.

How important are these?: Bono, Andrei Codrescu, I like them both, but could be cut.

Never heard of them: Michael Savage, Beau Sia, Jacob Ehrlich, I'll willingly admit I don't know who these three people are. Michael Savage I'm guessing is the guy I hear sometimes on NPR, but there's no disambiguation for me to be sure. Beau Sia is apparently a slam person, and I'd vote to keep him(?) for the reasons mentioned above.

Overall, I'd prefer if they were simply reorganized with the most important being first. And I think slam should be put back in. That's my vote, at least.

F. Simon Grant 20:18, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

meditation master of the Vajrayana school?
Shouldnt it say 'Kagyu meditation master' since 'Vajrayana school' seems simply incorrect; perhaps one could say Vajrayana tradition or maybe Vajrayana branch (or more typically simply Vajrayana buddhism, since the 'yana' part, meaning 'vehicle' serves this role already) but theres certainly no overarching school. Sounds like saying 'of the protestant school' or 'of the protestant church'. Even meditation master seems a strange formulation, hes a tulku ? --78.3.21.243 02:49, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Naomi
One problem I had with that unending nambla debate is that nambla is among the least important things in Ginsberg's life. One thing that was very important in his life and in his work was Naomi. The info here is scrimpy. In order to understand Ginsberg, Howl, and Kaddish (his two most important poems) a clear understanding of Naomi is essential. Does the info on the page so far really help us understand Howl and Kaddish? A little bit. If we beef up that, the nambla stuff -- which is essentially trivia if you ask me -- will seem less like the page is full of trivia. If somebody asked me, "What are the top ten things I would have to know about Ginsberg in order to better understand him and his work?" somewhere in the top two or three would be "A full understanding of his relationship with Naomi." I would also include his love for Neal, his respect from Jack, his lessons from Williams, his study of Blake and Whitman, his relationship with the other "best minds", -- all of these can and should be beefed up. But I'd say the one that needs the most beefing is the info about Naomi.

What we have so far is this:


 * Ginsberg's mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg (who was affected by epileptic seizures and mental illnesses such as paranoia was an active member of the Communist Party and often took Ginsberg and his brother Eugene to party meetings. Ginsberg later said that his mother "Made up bedtime stories that all went something like: 'The good king rode forth from his castle, saw the suffering workers and healed them.'"

And this:


 * When he was in junior high school, he accompanied his mother by bus to her therapist. The trip disturbed Ginsberg - he mentioned it and other moments from his childhood in his long autobiographical poem "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894-1956)."

The fact that she suffered from paranoia should not just be a parenthetical comment. The disturbing (and what specifically was disturbing about it?) instances like the bus trip are essential formative aspects of his life: the way he treats loved ones, his sympathy for outcasts, his views on politics and religion, etc. Naomi herself was in the background of Howl and the foreground of Kaddish and integral to a lot of his poetry. But what do we know about her from this statement? Paranoia, communism, bedtime story (more trivia if you ask me), and vague weird bus trip. How do all those fit together and how do they inform our understanding of Ginsberg. Many important enlightening narrative details are missing: Naomi's time in institutions, the extent of her paranoia, the lobodomy, her death, her last letter (the whole "key is in the light" thing), Allen's attempted Kaddish, that sort of thing. All of that is about a million times more significant to the understanding of who Ginsberg is than a brief stint in nambla.

F. Simon Grant 21:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Getting rid of popular culture
Im proposing getting rid of the popular culture section, and replacing it with this. Although primarily known for his written works, Allen Ginsberg has made many other appearances in both recorded music and film. “Howl and other poems” was first recorded and released in 1959, and was kept in print “until the late 80’s”. Also a live recording was released of Kaddish in 1964. This was taken from a reading at Brandeis University. Ginsberg has made several other recordings including "Lion For Real," and "First Blues." In film Ginsberg had had many appearances, most notably of which were with friend Bob Dylan. These include non-speaking parts in “Don’t Look Back”, and a small role in the film “Renaldo and Clara.” One notable appearance in film took place in the form of an interview in the 2005 Martin Scorsese  Documentary “No direction Home: Bob Dylan ”. His role was his reaction to Bob Dylan in saying that “Charlie Plymell… played me a record of the this new young folk singer” and while listening to “Hard Rain (“A Hard Rain’s A- Gonna Fall”) and wept, cause it seemed that the torch had been passed to a new generation, from early bohemian or beat.” The interview itself was taken in 1997, and would be one if his last, before his death. '''Comments. ''' If you have any comments please share them. Laugh-O-Gram 21:28, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Marxism
When I first saw the recent additions to the communism section I thought it was one of the regular anti-Ginsberg activists (the fact that the poster had no name and only has that one post gave credence to that assumption)-- It's common for anti-Ginsbergians to call him a communist pedophile, essentially taking little pieces of evidence and blowing them out of proportion. But then I couldn't find solid proof that he wasn't a marxist and didn't admire Castro. I found plenty of evidence of him criticizing the totalitarianism of many communist countries, but I know he read and liked Marx. He talks more about religious belief than specific political ideology -- certainly he's very political, and certainly it's inspired in part by the politics of his mother and father, but rarely does he ever give his politics a name. Anyway, I'll keep looking, but I thought I'd put that question out there in case somebody knows for sure one way or the other to save me some unnecessary researching.F. Simon Grant (talk) 12:56, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Photo
Is there any chance of getting a picture of a bearded Ginsberg - as this is how most people will think of him. He wore a beard for most of his life. --Totorotroll (talk) 14:24, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Popular culture
Thought it'd be a good idea to go ahead and pull it out of the text, so as to remove the temptation to add more. Seen it done a few different times. I'm eager to rework some of this stuff, hopefully some of the rest of y'all are too. --Leodmacleod (talk) 22:30, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I second the idea. For a related suggestion, see Getting rid of Popular Culture. Allreet (talk) 04:09, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * James Franco is to portray a young Ginsberg in the forthcoming Gus Van Sant-produced biopic, Howl, which is set for release in 2009.
 * Ginsberg was portrayed by David Cross in the 2007 Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There.
 * Ginsberg read for the last time on stage in the UK at Heaven nightclub London on October 19 1995, at megatripolis, the underground club-night, captured in the Steve Teers film Allen Ginsberg Live in London.
 * The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg on DVD features the 84-minute documentary, plus six hours of extra interviews and features.
 * "Give Peace A Chance" by John Lennon makes a reference to Ginsberg.
 * In 1981, Ginsberg recorded his poem "Birdbrain" with the Denver punk band, The Gluons.
 * In 1982, he was featured on "Ghetto Defendant", a song by The Clash from their album Combat Rock.
 * In a June 1981 concert by The Clash at Bond's Casino in New York City, Ginsberg sang his poem "Capital Air" set to music.
 * Rage Against the Machine performed "Hadda be Playin' on a Jukebox", a poem of Ginsberg's, at a live concert. The song is available on their Live & Rare album, released in 1998 and as the B-side' on both their "Bulls on Parade" CD single released in 1996 and People of the Sun (EP) released in 1997.
 * Sonic Youth dedicated their song "Hits of Sunshine" from their CD A Thousand Leaves to Ginsberg.
 * The 1994 song "I should be allowed to think" by They Might Be Giants uses the opening line of "Howl".
 * Ginsberg recites "When the Light Appears Boy", on the 1997 Cornershop album When I Was Born for the 7th Time.
 * In 1996, Ginsberg played a leading role as an actor in the John Moran opera, "Mathew in the School of Life", and went on to record a song on Moran's 2nd album, Meet the Locusts.
 * In his song "Enchanted Thoughtfist", Jello Biafra relates an undated incident when he met and hung out with Ginsberg in the latter's apartment, where he "confessed" to Ginsberg that his own literary background was "mostly songs and cartoons" (an admission that Ginsberg had no problem with, according to Biafra's lyrics).
 * Ginsberg appears in the background throughout the film clip for the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Dont Look Back of Bob Dylan's first tour of England in 1965.
 * He released an album on Folkways Records in 1981, entitled First Blues: Rags Ballads and Harmonium Songs, on which he sings and plays harmonium. This was his second project with Folkways. He had recorded on an earlier album Poems for Peace: A Benefit Reading for the New York Workshop in Nonviolence in 1967. He also released a single called "Ballad of the Skeletons" with music by Philip Glass and Paul McCartney playing guitar.
 * On the Leonard Cohen album Death of a Ladies' Man, Ginsberg and Bob Dylan sing back-up on the song "Don't Go Home with Your Hard-on".
 * The book Illuminated Poems is a collaboration between Ginsberg and painter Eric Drooker.
 * Folk-rock group The Mammals performed his poem "Lay Down Yr Mountain" on their CD Rock That Babe.
 * Ginsberg thrilled hundreds of young Czechs and ex-pats during his reading at the Cafe Nouveau in the Obecni dum in 1994 shortly after the break-up of Czechoslovakia.
 * Ginsberg inspired the opening of The Beat Book Shop in Boulder, Colorado, in 1990. Whenever he was in Boulder, he visited the shop, which was owned by poet Thomas R. Peters, Jr.
 * Ginsberg played harmonium and sang on "Hare Khrishna" for the Fugs' album Tenderness Junction, which has a picture of him nude among various photos of the band.
 * Ginsberg is referenced as one of the world's intellectuals in the song "Pee, Po, Belly, Bum, Drawers" by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann.
 * On the bonus disc of U2's remastered The Joshua Tree, Ginsberg is heard reading from his poem "America."
 * Patti Smith used footnote to "Howl" in her 1997 song "Spell".
 * Paul McCartney's duo The Fireman borrowed the album title "Electric Arguments" from Ginsberg's poem "Kansas City to St. Louis."

Ginsberg Jewish?
I can't believe there is even a debate on this topic. Of course Ginsberg was Jewish. One might as well ask if Golda Meir was Jewish. Terry1944 (talk) 12:43, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Exactly, I got a good belly laugh out of that too. But, as you will see, there's a particular individual who has been feuding with me on Wikipedia regarding the issue of homosexuality and religion lately, and they took it a bit too far this time.  I've simply been trying to say that there definitely are gay Jewish people, and gay Hare Krishnas, and gay Buddhists, and Allen Ginsberg was really ALL of these things at once because he was open and practiced all of these types of philosophies and spiritualities in his own way. Geneisner (talk) 13:20, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The question comes up for several reasons:
 * First, Ginsberg is now in six categories that label him as Jewish. Please read WP:OVERCAT.
 * Second, does it matter? Did Ginsberg's Buddhism play a part in his writing? Is it even mentioned anywhere?
 * Third, he's now in the categories relating to three different religions. As someone who practices a multitude of faiths myself, that's not a big deal.  But as far as the category system in this encyclopedia goes, WP:CAT is pretty clear - the categories should be "defining characteristics" of the subject of the article.  Since Geneisner had to add in all the information, these religions may not have been "defining characteristics".
 * Fourth, it's specious at best to say that Ginsberg is a Hare Krishna because he was asked to perform the chant on Buckley's show. If I sing "O Canada", does that make me Canadian?
 * So this spate of seven categories needs to be examined more clearly and only the ones that actually are important in the life of Ginsberg should be kept. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 12:58, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * First of all, Ginsberg did WAY MORE than just chant the Hare Krishna mantra on Television. He helped promote and fund the group during its earliest stages.  He helped introduce Swami Prabhupada to lots of people around the United States at concerts and events on college campuses.  He practiced the spirituality openly, and much information is available and out there on this topic.  There are a number of discussions with the Swami and Allen Ginsberg online, like this one, and this one.  Ginsberg even chanted the mantra in court during the Chicago Seven trial.  If you read the first two discussions with the Swami, it seems that Ginsberg took the material rather seriously.  They both discussed the chant as being recitations of the name of God.  I think I have shown enough material that indicates that Allen Ginsberg took this spirituality seriously enough to be included in the article.  I don't think you have shown otherwise, and it seems to me that you might just be bothering here. Geneisner (talk) 13:20, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You're right - I'm bothering to make the article better, just as you are :) Thank you for bringing up those points, and if the article accurately reports on how Ginsberg participated in the Hare Krishna movement, that's great.  Now - what about the six Jewish categories? -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 13:52, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, point well made and point well taken. We are bothering to make the article better.  As has been tried with articles such as Talk:Boy_George and Talk:Kirtanananda_Swami.  After awhile, we might be bothering to make a lot of articles better it seems. :-) Geneisner (talk) 19:19, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It is a matter of record that Ginsberg was affiliated with both Buddhism and Hare Krishna. I cannot question that he was Jewish. As for Buddhism having an influence on his writing, I believe the poem, “Sunflower Sutra” is one example.


 * When I was in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention, Allen seemed to be practicing Buddhism or Hare Krishna when he was chanting during the ensuing mayhem. Ginsberg's association with Chögyam Trungpa at Naropa University and his co founding of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics lends credence to his association with Buddhism. When one says that he is a Buddhist or follows Hare Krishna, and appears to be practicing it in one way or another, we must take him at his word. A fundamentalist Baptist may believe that he is a Christian and that a Catholic is not, but the rest of the world will consider both the Catholic and the Baptist Christians.
 * Terry1944 (talk) 13:59, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe I'm not explaining myself clearly. I'm not questioning his beliefs.  This is an encyclopedia, and the category system was set up with a specific purpose.  It was *not* set up to label every possible adjective that could be used.  It *was* set up for defining characteristics.  So if Ginsberg had a significant impact on the Hare Krishna movement, as seems to be indicated above, then the cat should be used.  On the other hand, the article mentions his Jewish background a few times, but it doesn't seem to be a "defining characteristic".  So is it necessary?  My biggest concern is that there are six or seven religious categories on this article, which totally dilutes the way categories are supposed to work, and makes Ginsberg look like a comparative religion scholar rather than the writer that he was. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 14:18, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Ginsberg wrote poems exploring his Jewish background. For example, Kaddish, as well as "Yiddishe Kopf" and "Why I'm Jewish."  He was always interested in exploring his Jewish roots and in other concepts of spiritual transcendence.  These spiritual matters were VERY IMPORTANT to Allen Ginsberg.  I would say that his spirituality was definitely among his defining characteristics.  Ginsberg helped expose many in the West to Eastern philosophy and religion.  He performed mantras and chants at his live performances, and the quest for enlightenment and spiritual knowledge was a big part of his life. Geneisner (talk) 19:19, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me what's lying under this issue of categories is what I see as a more significant issue: The significance of religion to Ginsberg is poorly represented. It shouldn't even be question how important his Jewishness was to him. It was hugely important. Likewise with his Buddhism. He may not have been a practicing Jew or a conventional Buddhist, but as much as Kerouac defined the Beat Generation as a religious generation and he was defined as a Catholic and a Buddhist, you have to understand Ginsberg's intense fascination with his own heritage (Jewish), his fascination with the concept of God, his searching for his own belief, and his ultimate relationship with Buddhism. It's such a huge part of his poetry, his activism, his personality, and his life that the present content on the page just doesn't do it justice. Anyone unfamiliar with Ginsberg should be able to read the article and the presence of all those religions in the categories should make perfect sense because that's who he is. I think that particular weakness in the article should also be discussed here so that it can be improved.F. Simon Grant (talk) 05:40, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Style and Technique
The whole Style and Technique section is unsourced and therefor as it stands constitutes Point of View and/or Original Research. I think it should be either properly documented or removed. Strawberryjampot (talk) 16:22, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Corso as influence
Someone seems to have the impression that there's a consipiracy against Corso on this page. But this is not the Corso page. As far as Corso in the "influences" box, you might as well put every other beat poet up there. Why not Gary Snyder too? Kerouac was Ginsberg's biggest influence, Burroughs influenced everybody with his force of personality and his intillectual challenges, Cassady influenced Ginsberg because Ginsberg was madly in love with him, but I'd say practically every other Beat poet influenced one another at a near-equal level. The influence doesn't flow as heavily the other direction in the case of the above three (Kerouac, for example, wasn't as heavily influenced by Ginsberg as the other way round). So how many of his friends could/should we put in the "influences" box? You could put all of them or you could put none of them. This goes back to a question asked above. I think it should still be discussed. F. Simon Grant 20:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Bono/Beck
Speaking of the dropped discussion about influnces/influenced by, the Bono/Beck back and forth indicates to me that this issue should be more thoroughly discussed. I could find more sources about Beck than Bono (interestingly most of the sources that come to mind are Ginsberg saying how much Beck was influenced by the Beats). We could also put Johnny Depp up there since he said Ginsberg was a huge influence ... but is that relevant? I'm still adamant that Slam needs to be put back up there because it is a genre and was heavily influenced by the Beats (live performance poetry) and specifically by Ginsberg (fixed base repitition). F. Simon Grant 14:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Corso's view on homosexuality
Is there any particular reason for writing: "Ginsberg claims he was immediately attracted to Corso, who was straight but understanding of homosexuality after three years in prison."? This is a minor issue, but does spending three years in prison equate with understanding homosexuality? The part should read "Ginsberg claims he was immediately attracted to Corso, who was straight but understanding of homosexuality[citation needed]. Lzdreamer (talk) 23:07, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The latter part ("who was straight but understanding of homosexuality after three years in prison") is a quote from a biography of Ginsberg entitled, I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. My opinion is that it's a valid quote but taken out of context when used on this page as the biography provided backup information on Corso. HaydenDerk —Preceding undated comment added 02:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC).

Biographical references in "Howl"
This section, quoted below, needs to be rewritten:


 * Ginsberg claimed at one point that all of his work was an extended biography (like Kerouac's Duluoz Legend). "Howl" is not only a biography of Ginsberg's experiences before 1955 but also a history of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg also later claimed that at the core of "Howl" were his unresolved emotions about his schizophrenic mother. Though "Kaddish" deals more explicitly with his mother (so explicitly that a line-by-line analysis would be simultaneously overly-exhaustive and relatively unrevealing), "Howl" in many ways is driven by the same emotions. Though references in most of his poetry reveal much about his biography, his relationship to other members of the Beat Generation, and his own political views, "Howl", his most famous poem, is still perhaps the best place to start. See "Howl".

I don't know what the parenthetical comment about "Kaddish" is supposed to mean, and nothing in here recommends having a section just for this--especially as none of the biographical references are actually explained. 145.116.9.201 (talk) 22:03, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, good call, I think I wrote that paragraph a long time ago. It's confusing and not well written.  I think I inserted that because I had inserted so much Ginsberg biographical information in the "Howl" page that was simply missing in the Ginsberg page proper that the quick and easy (and lazy) thing to do was just link it to the Howl page.  But it's one of those quick off rambly blurbs I wrote and forgot about almost immediately.  Feel free to do whatever with it.  However, I worked about ten times as much on the biographical references in "Howl" and there is a lot of biographical information in that section (much of it trivia, admittedly).  Whether or not it's necessary to link directly to that from the Ginsberg page might be something worth talking about, even if the phrasing above is scrapped (as I vote it should be).  P.s. I think some of the confusion might be because this link used to be on the Ginsberg page but died at some point: Biographical references in "Howl"F. Simon Grant (talk) 21:23, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Ginsberg's damaging influence on youth should be noted
Quote from PBS site www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ginsbe... - 35k - where they credit Alan Ginsburg with being a HUGE influence (maybe the largest single influence?) on the 1950's 1960s youth counterculture.

Drug usage was popularized and surely some of the damaged and yes the dead from 1960's on-- are part of the Ginsburg cultural legacy. I remember.

Ginsberg, and his fellow travelers also made "rebellion" a rite of passage for many youth...which included so called "free love". I remember.

"... For much of the youth of the day, Ginsberg’s embrace of illegal drugs and unrestrained sexuality made him a central figure in the rebelling movements of the time..." These behaviors were always around, but Ginsburg and co. encouraged more unrestraint. And thus damaged the following generations to this day!

Ginsberg was a gifted poet but a corrupt teacher. Your article will deny historical reality if it fails to add the long-term destructiveness of much of his brilliant but incredibly self indulgent words.

He might be a fashionable Marxist -railing against the Capitalists oppressing the workers...but what of the oppression suffered by the persons burned, damaged, mutilated and even killed in the process of such intense well-marketed and widely popularized popularized self indulgence?

The effects of promoting such quasi-righteous self indulgence are still with us. Nothing says "Ginsburg & co. " like a baby born on drugs--who must go thru painful withdrawal...Many such beautiful children suffer for their parents' selfish indulgences. Anyone in foster care (like I was) has seen them! I have more foster care horror stories...many come from parents who live the 60's self indulgence lifestyle to the fullest.

This article is only a Ginsburg press release or puff piece if it does not teach students the BAD of Ginsburg along with the good.Victorianezine (talk) 03:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Ginsberg was an icon to many who knew but smattering about him. For example, how many hippies actually read "Howl!" or even heard of Gregory Corso? But in the scheme of things (that is, the context of his life and art), Ginsberg's bad influence is no more notable than that of many other figures of similar stature, for example, Byron, Poe, Kerouac or Lennon. We all know ways in which these artists may not have been fitting role models, but none of them, including Ginsberg, can be held responsible for the evils of the world that preceded and followed them. As for this being a puff piece, the article mentions all the specific "sins" to which you refer. Since Ginsberg's chief notability is as a poet and not a sinner or a saint, little more needs to be made of them. Besides, it strikes me that teaching personal responsibility would be much more productive in curing the ills you point to than looking for someone to blame. Allreet (talk) 07:19, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Allreet. Victorianezine's suggestions are about as encyclopedic as an article on why Rock and Roll is from the devil and dancing leads to sex.  The article may have some pro-Ginsberg pov problems, but they are mild.  Adding the extreme pov you suggest is as logical as calling Fox News "fair and balanced".  If you have any ratoinal suggestions for how to make the article more neutral within the bounds of Wikipedia's actual function, please make them.  They will be welcomed.  Otherwise, talk pages are not a complaint blog for personal issues, and posts along that line will not be taken seriously.F. Simon Grant (talk) 16:19, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Victorianezine is not alone. Michael Savage has publicly called Ginsburg one of the three most inimical influences to emerge from the 1960s. The other two men who damaged their country were Timothy Leary and William Kunstler. This is obvious to some people, ludicrous to others.Lestrade (talk) 13:39, 21 September 2009 (UTC)Lestrade


 * And I wouldn't trust Michael Savage to write a neutral, informative article on Ginsberg. Perhaps an encyclopedic way to address this issue is to have a "criticism" section.  I've seen criticism sections get way out of control -- see earlier versions of "Postmodernism" for example -- because people with an agenda come along and drown the page.  Just to go back to the Postmodernism example, there was no "Why Postmodernism is Great" section, as well there shouldn't have been, so there ended up being more criticism than actual neutral encyclopedic information.  Likewise, on this page I wouldn't want a "Praise" section.  Also, look at the whole Nambla nonsense all over the discussion page.  I can't point out how inaccurate it is because suddenly I'm being biased, but overexaggerating his Nambla connections is not being biased ...?  Anyway, I think a criticism section might work as long as we make sure it's neutral and encyclopedic.  And Michael Savage is not really a serious source just as Keith Olberman (or however you spell his name) would not be a serious source.F. Simon Grant (talk) 16:23, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Additions to lead section
I have added more detail as requested. I will probably refine this section more as I conduct more research. Bwark (talk) 00:53, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I like it, for what that's worth. Should we add something about Kerouac & Burroughs in the intro ... or even Orlovsky?  Or maybe something about Naropa? A lot of basic intros like this list accomplishments, so the JKSDP is probably worth mentioning.  Also, why not mention the Pulitzer for Cospopolitan Greetings and the NBA for Fall of America.  It would conform (ironically) to the tendency in other intros of this sort. (By the way, thanks for working on the intro.  I just got frustrated with so many of the little problems in the body I totally neglected the intro and pretty much forgot about this page for a long time.  I still have the intention of one day -- maybe in the distant future -- filling out the info on Naomi.  You seem to have a good head on your shoulders and the right intentions, so please feel free to take a crack at adding more about Naomi, one of the biggest defecits of this page in my opinion.)F. Simon Grant (talk) 13:39, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for these suggestions. I agree a mention of Kerouac and Burroughs might be fitting in the intro. I have a couple of biographies of Ginsberg at hand --- by Barry Miles and Jane Kramer --- plus some essays on "Howl" "Fifty Years Later" as well as a study by Thomas F. Merrill, so I'll go through them to see what I can find. Plus, of course, I've got Ginsberg's collected essays. Lots of materials to work with. Thanks again, Bwark (talk) 23:07, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've found the Miles biography very useful, though I'm not familiar with the Kramer. "Howl: Fifty Years Later" was interesting, but I didn't find much truly useful informaiton in it.  Deliberate Prose, of course, is quite useful.  Good luck!F. Simon Grant (talk) 17:46, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

"Howl made Ginsberg famous because of a 1957 obscenity trial"
Is this true? Perhaps he became (or would have become) famous because of the merit of his work. How about: A 1957 obscenity trial saw Ginsberg getting mainstream attention...

Even saying that "Ginsberg got notoriety due to a 1957 obscenity trial" is better.

I for one like Ginsberg with or without any obscenity trial. 115.242.176.17 (talk) 11:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Not me, I only like people who have trials. --71.205.219.29 (talk) 06:17, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I have modified the entry to make it clearer that Ginsberg did not owe his immense fame to one infamous obscenity trial. Bwark (talk) 12:15, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Finally Fixing the Naomilack
I have longterm plans to work on adding more about Ginsberg's relationship with his mother. I'm going to give it a separate section. Please do not revert my changes. My plan is to fill this out as soon as I get time. If you have some problem with what I'm doing, please bring it up here before you revert the changes. If you have a valid complaint, we can work it out. I want to give Naomi a separate section because the early experiences with her schizophrenia and institutionalization, her death, the letter he got after she received "Howl" (the "key is in the light" letter) after she died, the kaddish stuff -- that's interwoven throughout a lot of the bio details in a way that I'd have to just keep going back to her. I think it would work a lot better as a separate section. I will cite things. I have the Miles bio I'm working with and the I Celebrate Myself bio. It's a matter of narrowing it down b/c so much of it is devoted to this relationship because Naomi is one of the top most important things in understanding who Ginsberg is. If you really listed, the top three things would be Naomi, his inspiration from/relationship with Kerouac and his other friends/the beats, his inspiration from Whitman/Williams/Blake, his poetic experimentation, his political activity (and if we listed this in order of priority, first would be freedom of speech and sexuality, demystification of drug use, etc. and down at about 8,000 on this list would be nambla -- just saying). Clearly, the biggest, most significant lack on this page is Naomi. I've been meaning to get around to this for years (but the nambla crap just pisses me off and I waste so much time on it). Please don't resist me on this. Please work with me. Thank you.F. Simon Grant (talk) 14:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You won't get "resisted" if you make sense and give good sources. What does Naomi died in 1956, and Ginsberg was unable to perform a kaddish ceremony for him. mean? Rumiton (talk) 13:53, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * My b. That's what happens when you rush these things (don't have time to do what I need to do here, same old story). Feel free to call me on blatant mistakes like the wrong gender on the pronoun; the kind of resistence I had in mind was just reverting my edits when I had good reason to make those edits. If you have good reasons to revert, please share them. I think the irrational reversions made me give up when I first had the intention of doing this years ago. Or maybe it was just laziness. Either one. Just letting everyone know, I have the intention of making the Naomi section a good section w/ citations and everything.F. Simon Grant (talk) 17:40, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Page Archive
This page has been archived at: | Archive Oct 2003-Feb 2007. Rmj12345 04:42, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

F. Simon Grant (talk) 14:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problem
This article has been reverted by a bot to as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) This has been done to remove User:Accotink2's contributions as they have a history of extensive copyright violation and so it is assumed that all of their major contributions are copyright violations. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. VWBot (talk) 15:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Presumptive is a big word. I think we need a human here to show us where copyright has been violated. Rumiton (talk) 16:20, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Trying to clean up citations a little
I'm trying to clean up some of the citations a little. What does the eighth and thirteenth citation refer to? It just says "Ginsberg" which doesn't narrow down the source, considering the page. That may be one of my own careless citations, but if anybody knows, please help me clear that up.F. Simon Grant (talk) 04:56, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I have added information to citations eight and 13. Bwark (talk) 16:58, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Tompkins Square Park Riots
I've yet to find any credible source, academic or otherwise, that suggests the alleged "fracas" between Pike and Ginsberg actually took place. There's almost no trace of this Pike man on the internet outside of some questionably attributed youtube videos, and a variety of other websites who copied this site's information exactly. The article tagged as a source for these lines contains no mentions of Pike or Ginsberg, and was likely inserted to promote what remains of the obscure and mysterious mentofreeist movement. There is no mention of of Ginsberg getting punched, or of this scuffle in any biography or academic database, and I made a decent search of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.19.87.250 (talk) 11:37, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Family information
Hello all. This is a fantastic and extremely in-depth portrait of such a great and original American artist. He was my second cousin by marriage (my mother's first cousin.) After the tragic death of Naomi, his father Louis married my great aunt, one of my role models and a fascinating, brilliant, amazing woman in her own right, named Edith. They were married around 1950 and Louis died in 1976. Allen passed away in 1997, and Edith, the older of the two, passed in 2000. The two of them developed what can only be described as an amazing friendship and kinship during that time. She had always been supportive and loving to both him and his brother Albert (Brooks) but during those 24 years the two came to depend on each other and rely on each other for love, support, and the kind of understanding and acceptance and admiration that comes from long-term friendship. It was a beautiful and warm and loving thing to witness and be a part of; tangible, enveloping, welcome to all that came into contact with them. The New York Times wrote a great obituary for her and I believe she should be mentioned in more detail as well as his relationship with his father, and his family in general, because (in my humble opinion) they impact even those poems that don't directly deal with his family. My great-aunt Edith's obituary can be found on the NYT website search or just a google search (Dg3677 (talk) 13:36, 22 July 2010 (UTC))
 * I emphatically agree. I've been saying for a long time that the most significant thing lacking in this page is more info about Naomi (which I've been planning to add as soon as I reach that vague imagined space called "When I get around to it" or "when I have more free time") but I also agree that more about Louis and Eugene would be great. Naomi is probably the single biggest influence on his early poetry, but Louis is up there and has a huge place in his later poetry especially.  I didn't know that much about Edith really, but I would certainly support more info about her being added.  I think family is the most important thing that needs attention on this page; I plan to contribute ... you know ... one of these days ... but I strongly encourage everyone to take Dg's post as a call for something we need to improve.F. Simon Grant (talk) 20:07, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this note. I would like to see some mention of Edith put into the main article, but I am not going to do it myself because I am not able to quote any source other than my own personal memory. Anyone who has met Edith will remember her warmth. I only met her once, but my parents (deceased) knew her better. (My father, like Louis, was a high school teacher in Paterson.) Allen gave classes in poetry for several years at Naropa Institute (now Naropa University). He taught a class in which he read English poetry, and his readings were excellent and made a range of poets from Donne to Blake come alive, so he had many more voices than just Howl. His father was a poet, and Allen was certainly inspired by Louis. Allen attended many programs of his teacher, Chogyam Turngpa, and one time at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center (now Shambhala Mountain Center) he told me that he loved Edith as his mother. I hope that someone finds other references to Edith to put her into the main article. Michael Levin108 (talk) 01:06, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Jewish background and Hare Krishna affiliation
From everything that I've ever read, Ginsberg came from a Jewish background. In almost EVERY biography that can be found on him online and elsewhere, this has been stated and restated, so I can't see why someone would have removed all the Jewish category tags from the article! Well, I put them back in because it was just ludicrous that someone would do that. Even if Ginsberg wasn't always a "practicing religious Jew", he still came from a Jewish cultural and ethnic background and never denied that. I found an Allen Ginsberg interview with Gary Pacernick from February 10, 1996, which appeared in the The American Poetry Review, Jul/Aug 1997 here :

"GP: Have you ever considered yourself a Jewish poet?

Ginsberg: Yeah, I am a Jewish poet. I'm Jewish.

GP: You are? You surprise me.

Ginsberg: I'm Jewish. My name is Ginsboig. I wrote a book called Kaddish.

GP: No, that's great!

Ginsberg: My last book has a long poem called "Why I'm Jewish."

GP: I'll have to take a look. I've got it.

Ginsberg: It's called "Yiddishe Kopf."

GP: Cosmopolitan Greetings?

Ginsberg: Yeah. "Yiddishe Kopf."

GP: I'll have to look it up. So you're a Jewish poet."

If that's not enough, then look up biographical information on Ginsberg from just about every page with a biography of him on the net and elsewhere. Like here: "Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, to Russian-Jewish parents.", "Ginsberg is buried in his family plot in Gomel Chesed Cemetery, one of a cluster of Jewish cemeteries at the corner of McClellan Street and Mt. Olivet Avenue near the city lines of Elizabeth and Newark, New Jersey. {9}", "Moloch is mentioned a few times in the Torah and references to Ginsberg's Jewish background are not infrequent in his work.", "Ginsberg claimed he developed such a long line because he had long breaths (saying perhaps it was because he talked fast, or he did yoga, or he was Jewish)." And here: "Louis Ginsberg, the moderate Jewish Socialist and his wife Naomi, who was a radical Communist and irrepressible nudist are the parents of Irwin Allen Ginsberg, the poet and man of many other things...", "The man who would become one of the most famous and influential American poets of the second half of the 20th Century was born Irwin Allen Ginsberg on June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, to a Jewish family." And so on and so on. So, please, don't remove things from Wikipedia articles that are well known and documented so many places.

As for Ginsberg's affiliation with the Hare Krishna movement, this is also well known and documented. Allen Ginsberg basically helped get the Hare Krishna movement off-the-ground in New York City. Behind A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Allen Ginsberg is probably the most important person who helped get that movement started in the United States. He chanted Hare Krishna on the Firing Line TV show in 1968, and he chanted Hare Krishna outside the Pentagon to try and stop the war (Turn Off Your Mind by Gary Valentine Lachman, 2001, page 301, Knocking on Heaven's Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture by Mark Oppenheimer, 2003, page 219, Postmodern Supernaturalism: Ginsberg and the Search for a Supernatural Language by Amy Hungerford, The Yale Journal of Criticism - Volume 18, Number 2, Fall 2005, pp. 269-298). The Hare Krishna mantra is in praise of Krishna. When Ginsberg was on Firing Line, he asked if he could sing a song in praise of Lord Krishna. There's information about Ginsberg's affiliation with Prabhupada and his pre-ISKCON group here. Also, there's an interview with Peter Barry Chowka which appeared in the New Age Journal, April 1976:

"PBC: You knew Swami Bhaktivedanta (leader of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness) as well.

AG: Since '66 I had known Swami Bhaktivedanta and was somewhat guided by him, although not formally -- spiritual friend. I practiced the hare krishna chant, practiced it with him, sometimes in mass auditoriums and parks in the Lower East Side of New York.

PBC: You really did a lot to popularize that chant. Probably the first place I heard it was when I saw you read in '68.

AG: Actually, I'd been chanting it since '63, after coming back from India. I began chanting it, in Vancouver at a great poetry conference, for the first time in '63, with Duncan and Olson and everybody around, and then continued. When Bhaktivedanta arrived on the Lower East Side in '66 it was reinforcement for me, like "the reinforcements had arrived" from India."

From different comments on such matters over time, it seems that Ginsberg's views on spirituality and religion can be described as a type of Universalism, with reasonable acceptance for all as well as some healthy skepticism and rational thought, and based on the evidence it seems that his Universalistic spirituality also included respect and praise of Krishna as well. Geneisner (talk) 10:59, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * See - this is where I get a bit concerned. If he's a Universalist, then he's not a Hare Krishna, and he's not Jewish, and he's not Buddhist.  While his brand of spirituality (and mine, truth be told) may incorporate elements of those particular religions (and more), would he himself have said "I'm Buddhist"?  And would other Buddhists have recognized his practice as "Buddhism" as they saw it?  If not, can we truly put him in those categories?  If he wouldn't call himself a member of a particular religion, or if others of a particular religion wouldn't recognize him as a member, then is that a "defining characteristic" of the person?  Because that's rather strongly the guideline of WP:CAT.  -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 20:38, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, see that's where I think you're wrong. He's a Universalist, as well as a Jew, a Hare Krishna, and a Buddhist.  A Universalist is all of those things, and I have shown through sources where he was involved in all of those particular forms of spirituality as well.  He even said so himself.  From the above mentioned interview with Gary Pacernick, he said:


 * "Ginsberg: I'm also a gay poet.


 * GP: I know that.


 * Ginsberg: I'm also a New Jersey poet.


 * GP: You're a Buddhist poet.


 * Ginsberg: And I'm a Buddhist poet. And also I'm an academic poet, and also I'm a beatnik poet, I'm an international poet,


 * GP: What was the Jewish influence? Your mother, essentially?


 * Ginsberg: No. My mother, my father, my grandparents were all Jewish. My whole family is Jewish and that's just the whole thing in my bones."


 * Terry1944 previously said, "A fundamentalist Baptist may believe that he is a Christian and that a Catholic is not, but the rest of the world will consider both the Catholic and the Baptist Christians." I would like to add that if someone considers themselves something, and/or praises God/Krishna in their own way, then that is for them to decide how to go about it and not really any organized "church" to decide who is "pure" or whatever.  Allen Ginsberg was involved with the forms of spirituality previously mentioned, and this is documented and has been shown.  As with nearly everything else about Ginsberg, he did it his own way, and he did what he did.


 * As I've said before, and I'll say it again, these spiritual matters were VERY IMPORTANT to Allen Ginsberg. I would say that his spirituality was definitely among his defining characteristics. Ginsberg helped expose many in the West to Eastern philosophy and religion. He performed mantras and chants at his live performances, and the quest for enlightenment and spiritual knowledge was a big part of his life. Geneisner (talk) 23:07, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Might I suggest, please, that you review the fact that there are *SIX* categories relating to his Jewishness and perhaps, just maybe, remove one or two of them?
 * While you're at it, review the *SIX* categories about where he's from and perhaps, maybe, trim those?
 * I'm honestly trying to help out here, and I realize that I'm wrong and have nothing to add and am just annoying you, but could you WP:AGF and consider for a moment that I'm trying to help out?
 * Thanks - I'm gone. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 00:02, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I believe you have good intentions. I have nothing against you.  I try and get along with everybody as best as I can.  I'm sorry if I did not assume good enough faith with you because of all of our past arguments.  No harm, no foul.  You are all right with me.  You are a very good arguer too.  I would rather be on your side in an argument for a change, and hopefully that will happen at some point if we ever cross paths on Wikipedia again.  We are all supposed to be on the same side here (the side of making Wikipedia better.)  I am sorry to have argued with you so much, but I believe in certain things strongly enough to speak out about them.  You are good at what you do too, and hopefully we all can try and make Wikipedia better.  Peace! Geneisner (talk) 00:21, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Allen was very much a Buddhist (as well as a Jew), and his poetry reflects this beyond any doubt. He was a student of Chogyam Trunga from the time he met him, and references to Trungpa and Trungpa's teaching are all over Allen's poetry. Looking just in "White Shroud, Poems 1980-1985)" for example: "Homage Vajracharya (p. 8). Vajracharya is a title for Trungpa. "Why I meditate" (p. 9) is his musing on Trungpa's meditation instruction. A more elaborate working of Trunpa's meditation instruction is found in "Do the Meditation Rock" (p. 21). "221 Syllables at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center" (p. 41)refers to the shrine room (meditation hall) practice of having meals in Japanese Zen style called Oryoki. Allen was a formally committed Buddhist student of Trungpa until his death. Michael Levin108 (talk) 01:37, 22 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The article now fully reflects this. Did you have comment about the content of the current article? Span (talk) 12:49, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Acid Test poster with Allen Ginsberg" in Section 1.4 of the present article is a known fake
Acid Test poster with Allen Ginsberg" in Section 1.4 of the present article is a known fake

According to the section "Posters & Ads" on the Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters website , the poster with caption "Acid Test poster with Allen Ginsberg", reproduced in section 1.4 "San Francisco Renaissance" of this article (Allen Ginsberg) is a fake.

The above referred to page (KEN KESEY & THE MERRY PRANKSTERS) states the following regarding the poster: "This poster with Allen Ginsberg, supposedly promoting day 2 (the Acid Test) of the Trips Festival, is fake and recently manufactured."

Perhaps the poster could be replaced with a reproduction of an original. In any case, the present poster ought to be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hadan (talk • contribs) 13:18, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

No discography of his albums?
Is there an agreed reason why his albums are not listed out as "Discography"? From what I can tell, even his album "First Blues" is listed as the book related to the album rather than the album itself. I'm thinking to make an article of Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg, but I'm not sure if we've overlooked his albums as a musician and/or spoken-word performer, or if that's deliberate and consensus. Thoughts? MatthewVanitas (talk) 22:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Sexual orientation
There was a statement in the lead about Ginsberg's "bisexuality." This was unsupported in the article (the lead is, after all, a summary of the article), so I removed it. I would point to his lifelong relationship with Peter Orlovsky, his own comments about his homosexuality, and numerous biographies which talk about these facts. I realize that there may be sources who speak of his bisexuality, but I think that the proponderance of evidence is to the contrary. Sunray (talk) 21:05, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Please read the section New York Beats, which refers authoritatively to at least two girlfriends. His bisexuality is well supported by the article. It is a generally bad idea to remove text that has stood for many months from this (or any) article without prior discussion. Rumiton (talk) 04:53, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The section you refer to describes a time before Ginsberg embraced his homosexuality. This is a fairly familiar pattern that is consistent with coming out. I cannot find a reference that refers to his "bisexuality." He often referred to his homosexuality and listed Peter Orlovsky, his partner of 40 years, as his spouse. Most biographies I've seen refer to his homosexuality:, . He declared his orientation when he wrote Howl. As biographer, Bill Morgan states, in the poem "Allen finally accepted his homosexuality and stopped trying to become 'straight'".. If you have references that refer to him as "bisexual," please present them here and quote the passage that uses that term. WP:V states: "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed." I have done so. Please do not put the term back into the article until you have presented reliable sources that support it. Sunray (talk) 08:01, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I just posted a longish reply and it disappeared. That hasn't happened to me for some years now. Anyway, the upshot is I Googled "ginsberg bisexual" and got thousands of hits, so the appellation is well-known. However, after spending 2 hours reading through a couple of dozen of them, I am inclined to agree with your opinion, though not with the unsourced psychological assessment (the "fairly familiar pattern" and so forth) that went with it. I have lost the list of refs I gathered and have no time to find them again, but to sum up: the issue is clearly complex. Some biographers class Ginsberg's writings as "bisexual poetry", and speak of his (Whitmanesque) "bisexual ideals" while suggesting he was not able to personally meet them. One biographer called him a "bisexual beatnik." Another queried whether his heterosexual liaisons, which certainly happened, left any lasting emotional impressions on him. These sources needs to be acknowledged in the article, without our attempting to decide which are the most valid and ignoring the rest. I am happy to help with this. Rumiton (talk) 14:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your reasonable approach. As Ginsberg made several statements about his homosexuality, and most (though as you point out, not all) sources conclude that such was his sexual orientation, we should probably avoid labeling him otherwise. I'm not sure whether we need to include the fact that some sources refer to "a bisexual poetics" in connection with his writings. In an essay in The Bisexual Imaginary: representation, identity and desire, Nick Selby refers to Whitman and Ginsberg as "gay poets" and discusses their homosexuality. He argues, nevertheless, that there is a bisexual poetics in relation to the reader. This is an interesting theory, but may be beyond the scope of an encyclopedia article on Ginsberg. Sunray (talk) 23:16, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Although disqualified as original research, at the time of his passing, I knew a young woman who told me that Ginsberg hit on her when she met him a few years prior. Although she did not accept his advances, I think that preponderance of evidence for the purpose of labeling his sexual orientation is moot. Since Sunray and Rumiton both present sourced evidence, both sides should be presented so that the reader, not the editors, can make their own interpretation. MMetro (talk) 05:39, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciation guide
Was just reading this page and noticed that the "z" sound in the pronunciation guide for his name is labelled as "Zion". Not entirely sure why this is the case, as surely a more 'neutral' word like "zebra" would be more appropriate? No idea how to go about changing that though. 144.173.184.26 (talk) 11:52, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Helped dispose of a murdered man's body?
http://www.austinchronicle.com/books/2000-10-13/78886/

According to Jacques Barzun (as trusted a person as you can find), Ginsberg at 17 or 18 was in legal trouble after helping dispose of a body of someone an older man who had seduced him had murdered.

Lionel Trilling and Jacques Barzun had to intervene on his behalf to get him out of legal trouble.

How is something that cool and random not anywhere on the page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.227.77.90 (talk) 03:36, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Edit war
I'm going to request that this article be placed under protection due to edit warring. Lionel (talk) 22:53, 16 September 2010 (UTC) If you stop re-adding disputed content there wouldn't be an issue. In the section above sources have been cited and there is no consensus to re-add a lengthy pedophile section. Cat clean (talk) 23:13, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not edit warring. My most recent edits were on 9/15 and 8/27. Lionel (talk) 23:42, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I second your decision, Cat clean. Lionel may not have been individually edit warring, but this is clearly a problem, multiple editors going back and forth -- not just recently but for the past three years. I tried to submit this issue for arbitration a couple of weeks ago, but I'm mostly an idiot and I don't think I did it right, so thanks.F. Simon Grant (talk) 14:43, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The thing to do is restore the consensus paragraph and then discuss any additional changes or deletions. Please refer to earlier discussion on NAMBLA (above) for the consensus paragraph on NAMBLA, changes should be discussed there, in the context of previous edits to the section, rather than implemented without discussion. Mrdthree (talk) 04:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Splicing bits of phrases together to paint Ginsberg as a pedophile is completely unacceptable. If he were living this would be thrown out immediately. Instead we have to look at what the consensus of sources state. The majority of sources don't address this issue at all and those that do state it's an extension of his free speech ethos. If Ginsberg was well known for this it would be widely covered not a scrap from here and there. Cat clean (talk) 21:22, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I was WP:BOLD and applied Controversial and restored the sourced nambla section to the pre-edit war version. The tag requires consensus for substantial changes, e.g. the removal of a section. The pre-edit war version is the stable version because a nambla section has been in the article since 6/26/05 per consensus. This was done hopefully to avert further edit warring. This is not saying that the section is permanent: a new consensus could very well decide to delete it. Lionel (talk) 18:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC) Slapping on a controversial tag so you can enforce your preferred version is not concensus, the burden is on those who want to restore the content to show it is presented not only reliably sourced but also with the same weight that all reliable sources give this subject in relation to his life. That is the point, that a fringe want to try to label Ginsberg as a pervert in some way does not make anything more than a sentence needed when the most reliable sources dispute the connection was anything more than a free speech issue. Cat clean (talk) 19:15, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
 * If you are going to editorially exclude half the content of a reference it is WP:OR. Please find a reference that backs up your opinion-- that Ginsberg's association with NAMBLA was wholly an exercise in free speech. The cited reference states otherwise, multiple quotes from Ginsberg show otherwise. There is a consensus paragraph and its very deferential to Ginsberg in terms of what it states, relative to its references. I restored it. Mrdthree (talk) 16:24, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

There is absolutely no consensus to support a whole NAMBLA section and it sounds like it was a source of frustration back when the compromised version was allowed. Also it seems it has been regularly removed even after the compromise of some time ago. You don't pick the ten sources that suit your needs and pick just the phrases you like. You look at the hundreds of sources available, judge which are the most reliable and see what weight they put on the material. In this case nearly none. I could just as easily hand pick ten phrases     to prove anything but that doesn't make it true, just bias. Cat clean (talk) 21:02, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It has not been regularly removed. It has been in place for 3 years. Provide a citation that backs up your opinion or stop editting it. Mrdthree (talk) 13:37, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Looking at the section on NAMBLA, I suggest that if a phrase like "to label pedophilia as criminal is ridiculous" be included, that the sentence be given in its entirety, to avoid confusion and misunderstanding. Totorotroll (talk) 21:39, 6 November 2012 (UTC)