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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (April 19, 1993)
Arts ^Entertainment s>a^ The Beat goes on Ginsberg’s experiences, interests commonly linked by poetry Robin Trimarchi/DN Allen Ginsberg: poet, beatnik, visionary — read to an appreciative audience in Kimball Hall, Saturday. By Matthew Grant Staff Reporter Dressed in a navy blue suit with a lapel pin and a red shirt with matching handkerchief, Allen Ginsberg sat bolt uptight on his seal. Ginsberg travelled to Lincoln by plane this lime, instead of drifting up through the country in a beat-up Volkswagen, as he did the only other time he visited in February 1966. In those days, he was a scruffy guru/beat poet with hair clouding his face — who turned on some of the 3,500 people at his reading with his ideas of liberation and exploration .. . and offended others with the “ob scenity” of his work. Now, the half-bald Ginsberg is dedicated to the daily observance of a Buddhist sitting practice of medita tion. Ginsberg, 66, who has written a p>em about receiving a senior citizen discount on the bus, paused to think before answering a question. Throughout nis life, Ginsberg’s many experiences and interests have had the common link of poetry — what he has called the “skeleton” of his fragmented body. In the 1940s he embarked on a “prolonged, reasoned derangement of the senses,” that lasted more than two decades. Alongside Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady, Ginsberg created what has come to be known as the Beat Generation. -44 Do you know what Kerouac predicted would come? A * found generation. That might be now. —Ginsberg Poet -ft - Today, Ginsberg defines his ap proach to writing as “first-thought, best-thought.” His advice to writers is to catch the thought intact in its origi nal state and write it down. Not to edit on paper, but to edit the mind. “Kerouac and Burroughs taught me to trust my own mind and not to try and be so smart and make up some thing that I didn’t really think, but write what I did think in the order that I thought,” he said during an informal talk with University of Nebraska-Lin coin students in Andrews Hall Friday. When Ginsberg talks about hisown writing, he almost always mentions Kerouac and the other writers of the Beat Generation. Like some of his most famous po etry , his sentences pi le up as he speaks. They include seemingly unrelated facts, opinions, thoughts, experiences, and a multitude of literary references. They appear to lose track, then turn back and tie up logically. In almost two hours he answers only about 10 questions. The answers, both serious and funny: “On social issues I follow more or less (Walt) Whitman’s proposal, that we should follow candidness and frankness as an antidote to cheating, competitiveness, in the business world and media. Otherwise we’re drowned in manipulations. “I voted for Clinton. I didn’t think he could do much for the ditch the planet is in, but he sure is a lot more cheerful to have around than Bush was. At least he had the guts to try a little grass. Even if he had to lie about it — at least he had the inquisitive ness.” On Saturday afternoon, Ginsberg had the chance to explain more of his on-going search for spiritual libera tion and his often infamous past at the §ee GINSBERG on 11 Poet’s ‘reading’ unique Reading is too small a word for the unique performance given by Allen Ginsberg in Kimball Hall Saturday. For there was also song, chant ing and conversation during the two and a half hour celebration of words and sounds billed as a read ing. Ginsberg began his performance by singing “An Invitation” from William Blake’s “Songs of Inno cence and of Experience.” He pro vided musical accompaniment with a hand-held pump organ pushing air with every beat. Ginsberg’s bodily movements transformed when he started to sing. His shoulders shuddered, his head shook. He remained seated in a large, ornately carved chair, but from his small frame emerged a presence that filled the auditorium. “The Meditation Rock,” which contained the line “I fought the dharma and the dharma won,” fol lowed. Next, he read: “Wichita Vortex Sulra.”Ginsbcrg composed the first section of “Wichita” speaking into a dictaphone in the back seat of a car when he came to Lincoln in 1966 from Wichita. The poem is a journal of impressions and frag ments of consciousness. The first section ends with his arrival in Lincoln: “There’s anice whitedoor over there/ for me O dear! on Zero Street.” In 1966, Ginsberg mad the first section publicly in Lincoln while it was only hours old. On the way back he added the second section. Ginsberg read a selection of his work in chronological order, going all the way up to 1992. It was a mixture of meditations, observa tions, hallucinations, consecrations and recommendations. Allen Ginsberg came to Ne braska at the request of his teacher Gelek Rinpoche, who is the spiri tual director of Jewel Heart, a group formed to preserve Tibetan Bud dhism andraise funds for Tibetan Buddhist monks living in India.* Midway through the perfor mance, Ginsberg invited Rinpoche — whose name translates as “pre cious” — to come on stage with him. In front of the audience, Ginsberg and Rinpoche discussed the “pain of desire,” accounting for feelings and transforming sexual energy into awareness. At the end of the reading, Ginsberg received a standing ova tion in the full auditorium. He had read “Don ’ t Grow Old,” a poem he wrote for his father, “Written in my Dreams by W.C. Williams,” “Fa ther Death Blues,” which he de scribed as “a non-smoking com mercial — my contribution to the war on drugs,” and a number of shorter poems. The performance ended with a series of haikus and the “Just Say Yes Calypso.” Finishing as he had begun, Ginsberg then picked up his pump organ and sang Blake’s “My Pretty Rose Tree.” — Matthew Grant Robin Trim archt/DN Holy Man Gelek Rinpoche was recognized at the age of four as the incarnation Khenpo TaahfNamgyal, the Abbot of Gyuto Monastery. In 1959 he fled Tibet — with many monks — In the wake of Communist Chinese persecution. He is the S)iritual director of Jewel Heart, which sponsored Allen insberg’s reading Saturday.
