Regarding Our Contribution to Stony Brook U’s Allen Ginsberg Archive

Literate Lollygaggers,

We found this by accident today. It was posted by the Stony Brook University Special Collections & University Archives Department on January 14, 2014.
We treasured our correspondence from Ginsberg but rather than sell it posthumously, we decided to donate it to the archive there. Stanford University also has Ginsberg’s correspondence, which they paid him a million dollars for, and we also have some items over there.

If you have Beat items and no one to leave them to in case of untimely death, we can suggest a few nice archives, just send us a note!

Thanks for looking.
We appreciate it as always.

Allen Ginsberg Collection
Manuscript Collection 437

Description

1 postcard (4″ x 6″), two sides, correspondence and poem written by Allen Ginsberg to Mike Hendrick, ca. 1973. 

Donated by Michael Hendrick, 2010.

Processed by Kristen J. Nyitray, Head, Special Collections and University Archives, September 2010. 

Introduction</p>

Acclaimed poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was born in Newark, N.J. and was raised in Paterson, N.J., where his father, Louis Ginsberg, himself a poet, taught high school English. Allen Ginsberg’s mother was confined for years in a mental hospital. He mourned for her in his long poem titled Kaddish (1961). In 1943, while attending Columbia University, Ginsberg befriended Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, who later established themselves as significant contributors to the Beat Movement. After leaving Columbia in 1948, Mr. Ginsberg traveled widely and worked at a number of jobs, including cafeteria floor mopper to market researcher.

In 1956, Allen Ginsberg’s first published book of poetry, Howl and Other Poems, lamented what he believed to have been the destruction by insanity of the “best minds of [his] generation.” Expressive and raw with honesty, the poem revealed Ginsberg’s opinions on homosexuality, drug addiction, Buddhism, and his revulsion from what he saw as the materialism and insensitivity of post-World War II America.

Ginsberg began a life of ceaseless travel, reading his poetry at campuses and coffee bars, traveling abroad, and engaging in left-wing political activities. Empty Mirror, Kaddish and Other Poems and Reality Sandwiches were all published in the early 1960s. He became an influential guru of the American youth counterculture in the late 1960s. He acquired a deeper knowledge of Buddhism, and increasingly a religious element of love for all sentient beings entered his work.

His later volumes of poetry included Planet News (1968); The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965-1971 (1972), which won the National Book Award and White Shroud: Poems 1980-1985 (1986).

Allen Ginsberg died of a heart attack while suffering from liver cancer on April 5, 1997 in New York City.

Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica Online and the Gale Literary Database Contemporary Authors.


Transcript of Poem 

“Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit” 

Old-one the dog stretches stiff-legged,
Soon he’ll be underground.  Spring’s first fat bee
Buzzes yellow over new grass and dead leaves.
What’s this little brown insect walking zigzag
Over the sunny white page of Su Tung-P’O’s poem?
Fly away, tiny mite, even your life is tender – 
I lift the book and blow you into the dazzling void.

Allen Ginsberg   4/20/73