April 5, 2017
On this date in 1997 Allen Ginsberg died in New York at age 70. Here’s what Seymour Krim said about a young Ginsberg in the crazy Beatnik days of the 1950s, from The Beats, published in 1960.
“Allen Ginsberg, chanter of the scorchingly present-tense ‘Howl,’ is one of the true lunar voices rising about the skyscrapers; he has the courage of his imagination, and is keening a mighty song for his generation. Ginsberg is both an exciting and highly readable human poet. His fever is that of thousands: but nobody of his age and time threw the sick-room back at life as he did, and thus redeemed us all as well as himself. Society’s fangs await his beautiful phantasmgorical songs, if only to insure their validity; but he who would be an atom-age Shelley must have a price on his head. The stakes demand it. Ginsberg is really a bit of a miracle.”
Seymour Krim printed Ginsberg’s famous “Death to Van Gogh’s Ear” in The Beats.
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