I made another escape to the National Gallery today, a special trip to see "Beat Memories," an exhibition of photography by Allen Ginsberg. Beat poetry was the first poetry movement I ever identified with -- my first creative writing teacher, a slightly crazy-eyed fiction and poetry writer who included his actual detention slips in his coming-of-age novel, turned me on to the Beats -- and seeing Ginsberg's photographs of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Ferlinghetti and their hangers-on was like getting a voyeur's view into the banality of their lives. Here is the apartment Ginsberg kept in San Francisco, here is Burroughs on the roof of their building in New York, here is the view from the kitchen window Ginsberg sat and stared from for years, in winter, spring and summer.He rediscovered photography as a medium in his later years, and began adding extensive captions to his photos, sometimes rambling bits of poetic thoughts, sometimes details about the subjects and what they were doing.
This self-portrait, taken on Ginsberg's 70th birthday, included details about what he was wearing. Who would have thought that all of our indulgent sartorialist posts had such a noble beginning?
Note: his ensemble includes high-end (Oleg Cassini) and thrift (Goodwill). Truly, a man after my own heart.
Love the Beats, especially Ferlinghetti. I got to see Ginsberg perform @ MICA the fall before he died. My fav Ferlinghetti poem:
ReplyDelete(Constantly Risking Absurdity)
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence