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In recent poems such as ‘Sphincter’ and ‘After Lalon’,
Ginsberg details the ageing process with undiluted
candour whilst in his more directly political poems he
is still on a mission to report the unreported.
“I’ve always been preoccupied with the intersection
of repressive dope laws, dope dealing by French
intelligence and American CIA, the expansion of killer
drugs like tobacco and alcohol and political manipulation
by cigarette and alcohol interests, the corruption
of governments, police departments and so on. We are
ruled by fantastic hypocrisy.
“In America the theo-political right – the FCC and
Jesse Helms – has seized control of the main market
place of ideas: radio and television. So we don’t have
a free market in ideas now. So the censorship that
normally applied to books and print and film is now
being applied to the electronic media and may be applied
to internet before it’s all over. My own poetry
has literally been ripped off the air during the day. My
poems are studied in high schools and colleges, but in
October 1988, Senator Helms – who is subsidised by
huge tobacco interests – rushed through a law signed
by Reagan which effectively means that ‘obscene
BUY Allen Ginsberg books online from and
language’ can only be broadcast between the hours of
midnight and six am. This being to protect school kids
who are reading my poems in class anyway.”
A vivid conversationalist, the elder statesman of the
counter culture is at his most animated when recalling
the routines he used to improvise in his apartment with
Burroughs and Kerouac in the 1950s.
“After dinner, drinking coffee, smoking grass, we’d
act this stuff out. We all had different characteristic
roles: the well groomed Hungarian – that was me. The
naive American in Paris with a straw hat – Kerouac.
Bill dressed up as a shifty vicious governess. Bill would
end up creased up laughing on the floor. I think the key
to the Beat Generation was spiritual liberation. Then
media liberation of the word; the battle with censorship,
sexual liberation. It ricochets out, but it started
with a spiritual liberation. I always thought that ‘Howl’
was a very exuberant and positive and funny poem. But
at the time it was taken to be the ravings of this angry,
rebellious jerk.” These days things are a little different.
“I’ve got a really good job. It’s called Distinguished
Professor of English, which means I only have to go in
one day a week.” �
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