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HOWL

I have avoided reading HOWL, by Allen Ginsberg, ever since it was published. I remember picking it up a couple of times, but was disgusted at its negative attitude. As far as I know I never met Ginsberg, although I know people from that time period who did know him and were probably influenced by him. Back in 1961 I hung out in a hole-in-the-wall cafe on Telegraph Avenue, in Berkeley, California, called Robbie’s Cafeteria. My friends at that time were Marty Schwartz, Julia Vinograd, Marty Horowitz, and some motorcycle guys, whose names I don’t remember. It was Horowitz who was the outstanding member of our little group. He was the ultimate incarnation of the mad scientist, and you can get a feel for his style by watching the TV series Futurama. Professor Farnsworth appears to be based on Horowitz, although it’s unlikely because he died long ago and probably before Matt Groening was actively writing. Horowitz was convicted of being an accessory to murder, shortly before the time I knew him, which of course added to his already bizarre patina. He  loaned a gun to a guy who then went and murdered an estranged girlfriend at the UC Berkeley library. That library where I met my spouse of 29 years. Julia wrote a long poem about Horowitz, but even her writing skills didn’t come close to the real Marty, he was just too bizarre for words.

In reading the article on Robbie’s Cafeteria there was a reference to the Caffe Mediterraneum which is where I hung out the greater part of the optional time in my life. Several hours per day for fifty years or so. I enjoyed every minute of it, even the nasty ones. It is claimed that HOWL was written in the Med, but I don’t know personally if that’s true, but both Marty and Julia probably know. When reading the poem most of the places mentioned were personally familiar to me, but HOWL is no travel log of the places and times I lived. I was happy there and Allen was miserable.

Most of those people thought of me as conservative, because I didn’t condemn society in general, and American society in particular. My personality trait was always trying to find better ways of seeing and improving society, and not just complaining about the obvious problems and nastiness of the lowlife world around us. It is strange that I find myself writing those thoughts, because the few poems I did write were about as negative as it is possible to get, for example:

You vile and slimy piece of death-filled dirt,
Placed high by God to live a life sublime,
Now killing those who help and never hurt,
Is this the way one lives who is divine?

Are not you the one who so long ago,
Saw order in the way things flowed through time,
And learned that you would reap where you did sow.
And where you sowed foul lust there’d soon be crime.

Aren’t you the one who always seeks the good,
Yet when you find it quickly turn to bad?
Your heart lives in the present, as it should,
But futures ruled by presents may be sad.

What feels best now is always what we do,
So feel ahead and limit future rue.

That isn’t great poetry, written in part in the Med as were Ginsberg’s poems, but it does illustrate how I was feeling at that time in my life, and perhaps it isn’t so different in tone from what Ginsberg did so much better in HOWL. Still there is one thing about my thoughts that I believe was and is redeeming. I always try to offer a workable solution at the conclusion of things I’ve explored. What most people do, as does Ginsberg, is simply to whine out their outrage and let it go unresolved onto other people’s minds, and leave it to them to find a workable cure. What I would request is:

Poets of the world show us the way to a better life.