Department of British and American Studies at the - Univerzita ...

activist protesting in original ways, such as in sit-in gatherings against militarism and
censorship of all kinds. But as his biographer, Bill Morgan, claims and those of us who knew
Allen could better confirm, basically he was a Good Man and a peacemaker rather than an
instigator of violence or conflict.
He was faithful to friends throughout his life. He did not part with Kerouac even after
their views on the Vietnam War differed considerably. And he helped to found the Naropa
Institute of Disembodied Poetics as a tribute to his friend.
He always defended Neal Cassady, the beatnik hero, when he was criticized for
―misbehaving‖ and quite a few failures that he was responsible for. He put a great deal of
effort to get Gregory Corso‘s poetry published and encouraged his life-long partner Peter
Orlovsky to try his hand at writing too. He reconciled with his father Louis, and even
organized a poetry reading for the two of them – the poetry being as different as heaven and
hell, but in the end it was enjoyed by both of them. And Allen composed a very beautiful song
when his father died, called ―Father Death Blues‖. Whenever Allen sang it, in his deep voice
to the accompaniment of his well-known little harmonium, it was very moving. When on
stage he impressed everyone by the power of his performance, which was surprising even at
the stage of his deteriorating health; when reading poetry or singing he must have tapped the
energy from a special poetic battery, as a few observers who worked with him must have
noticed.
And Allen was also generous, with books, with his time, and his wisdom that he was
always ready to share with anybody interested. But above all, he was a great American poet
with a global appeal.
Here is what Helen Vendler, the undisputable high court of judgment of American
poetry, thought of Allen Ginsberg in 1986 when he still had a decade to go on and work:
Allen Ginsberg‘s poetry requires an unstable moment of perception, passion, and
humor in the right proportions. In many ways, he came of age at a lucky moment. A
loosening of inhibition (at first enabled by drugs) let the long-breathed visionary
emerge from the good student who had imitated Donne and Crane. The ethnic chant of
the Hebrew palms came into fragile conjunction with Whitmanian enumeration; the
demotic speech-rhythms of Williams and his insistence on visibilia, gave the visionary
Ginsberg permission to notice‖ the real world. Pound had opened the door to lyric
history. Eliot, Tate, and Ransom offered handy targets for iconoclasm… Allen
Ginsberg is responsible for loosening the breath of American poetry at mid-century,
influencing other poets more formal than he… And having listed the attempts of the
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