The Poetry And Life Of Allen Ginsberg
by Edward Sanders
The Overlook Press
252 pages

Review by Adrien Begrand

In the afterword to his long, narrative poem The Poetry And Life Of Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders makes it clear that he didn't set out to write a definitive, comprehensive biography of his good friend Allen Ginsberg. Instead, the book is a tribute, an elegy to the most important American poet in the past fifty years. Sanders describes his poem as a "walkway through the Forest Ginsberg", a quick-paced look at Ginsberg's life that pauses every so often to take in the important moments (and some trivial moments as well) in the great poet's life and work.

Sanders could have very easily written a tribute poem that over-worships Ginsberg the Poet, but he includes enough material on the personal life of Ginsberg the Regular Guy to keep the long poem grounded. That doesn't stop Sanders from referring to Ginsberg as the Bard, which is justifiable. Conversely, Sanders evokes Ginsberg the Regular Guy just as many times; when he's not calling Ginsberg The Bard, he uses his old nickname 'Ginzap', or 'Zap', when describing the adventures of his buddy. It's Sanders' simultaneous recognition of Ginsberg's outstanding merits as a poetic craftsman and as his devotion to his family and friends that gives the book its charm.

Ginsberg's early years are given a token glance, which is a bit of a relief, since those most familiar with the Ginsberg, Kerouac, and
Burroughs triumvirate know the early story by heart. In fact, one hundred pages are devoted to Ginsberg's first forty-three years, with one hundred and forty-three pages taking up his last twenty-seven years.

While covering Ginsberg's formative years as a poet, Sanders notes Allen's early preoccupation with death; the word 'threnepody' surfaces throughout the book. Also, Sanders notes in his own poetic stylings, the evolution of Ginsberg's poetic development followed his life-changing vision of William Blake in 1948:

"After the Vision of Blake, the Elegant, Pulsing Question became one of his most powerful poetic devices"

Sanders sublimely describes Ginsberg's tumultuous years immediately following his time at Columbia University as living "In the Milieu of Aimless Frenzy." Though Ginsberg's life and work would become much more focused, that sense of frenzy would remain, most visible to those caught within his vortex. Ginsberg was always eager to learn, with Sanders noting he "asked more questions than anyone I've ever met", and along with being an accomplished scholar, he truly loved the great poets of the past:

"Decades later, when reading from Whitman to his students, he would weep during 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.'"

It's in the last half of the book where The Poetry And Life Of Allen Ginsberg really begins to shine. By the early seventies, Ginsberg was more active than he'd ever been, doing reading after reading, helping form the Kerouac School in Boulder, writing and editing new books of poetry, writing essays, devoting himself to Buddhism, and becoming a nuclear activist as well as helping out countless political causes--all the while collecting anything and everything that came his way, building up a massive archive that would later help provide Ginsberg with a comfortable home in his final years. All through this period, Sanders weaves his own poetry around the life of Ginsberg, sometimes offering a quick glimpse of an incident, other times stopping along the way to provide more detail into more notable and even infamous events, such as the Snowmass scandal involving Ginsberg's Buddhist mentor Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

Despite the brilliant poetry Ginsberg created over his lifetime, he was never acknowledged widely enough by the mainstream. "Candor prevents paranoia", he wrote in Cosmopolitan Greetings, and Ginsberg's candor and his outspoken remarks regarding LSD use, homosexuality (not to mention his notorious supporting of NAMBLA, which, according to him, was more about free speech than pedophilia), and political criticism ultimately prevented him from receiving notable awards like the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. Sanders writes eloquently:

"[Ginsberg] still beams mightily
                         o'er what used to be called squaresville--

               There were too many hard cocks
               trails of semen
                         & attacks on the military-
               industrial surrealists

               to win corporate sponsorship"

The high point of the book is Sanders' lengthy account of Ginsberg's final days. Until this point, Sanders describes Ginsberg's gradually deteriorating health during the early 1990's, something that many readers probably didn't notice about Ginsberg, with all the things he was doing to keep himself busy. Ginsberg's vitality was amazing, but his health suddenly took a turn for the worse in early 1997, and Sanders brilliantly paints a poetic picture of The Bard's final minutes:

"the Lion faced one
             in the long Egyptian boat
                              no doubt getting
                      as close to Osiris
                                   & the sun disk
                                   as he can

Buddha singing one
           on a blue Tara raft

Kaddish chanting one
                    on a boat made of stone

Fun shouting one
             on a boat made of froth

Pain relieving one
          on a boat made of sighs"

Sanders' own poetry is wonderful to read, written economically and precisely, creating a smooth narrative that has all the warmth of a been-there-done-that oldtimer telling stories by a fire. His poetic virtuosity isn't just limited to the final pages of the book; along the
biographical path he creates are little nuggets of his own which enhance Ginsberg's story instead of overshadow it. He mentions Ginsberg's trip to Tangiers and Eastern Asia, and how his testy meeting in Tangier with a then-cutup-crazed Burroughs in 1961 led to Allen's own identity crisis:

"Perhaps Burroughs' cut-up method, in part,
had pared away the power, word & image
& flung the Bard into a place
           of frantic futility & galactic mush-gush"

Later on, Sanders brings up another controversial side of Ginsberg, one that to this day has Beat readers split: Allen's singing. His singing wasn't great by any means, but it was genuinely heartfelt and delivered with gusto, and Sanders stands by his friend, saying Ginsberg, in his singing, evoked the poets and minstrels of old:

"some felt it detracted from his writing
           but it came from a long tradition
           going back to Archilochus
                     & the choice of a bard
                     to sing, to chant, to recite
                     & to do all three
                               in freely chosen combinations"

The Poetry And Life Of Allen Ginsberg, as I mentioned, isn't the be-all-end-all of Ginsberg biographies (Sanders goes on to heartily
recommend both Barry Miles' Ginsberg and Michael Schumacher's Dharma Lion as superior books), but his own book is one of the first biographies to cover Ginsberg's life all the way to the end. Many of the stories will be familiar to Ginsberg's readers. There are some humorous anecdotes Sanders writes that only a good friend can know, and there are even some interesting tidbits that I personally hadn't known before. For instance, I knew Ginsberg was planning an MTV Unplugged with Patti Smith, Beck, and Paul McCartney, but I had no idea how close they were to taping the program before Allen's sudden death, and that Ginsberg's most noteworthy disciple, Bob Dylan, was slated to perform with him. Another curious anecdote mentions briefly that Ginsberg came up with the idea for the conclusion to Jack Kerouac's Doctor Sax, something I'm positive I had not read before.

Sanders' book was written with the anecdotal help of many people inside Ginsberg's vast circle of friends combined with his own memories, but unfortunately there are no end notes to provide the sources of all the information (although there is an outstanding appendix of film appearances and audio readings that is indispensable), so the reader is left to wonder if the Doctor Sax story is true, if Ginsberg actually said it and if not, who did, or if it is either rumor or foggy memory. Despite that small flaw, Sanders, who has taught courses on 'investigative poetry' in the past, has chronicled the Beats enough to justify the reader taking his biographical poem at face value.

In the end, The Poetry And Life Of Allen Ginsberg is a fun, quick book, one to revisit from time to time, reveling not only in the busy,
prodigious life of Allen Ginsberg, but Sanders' accomplished poetry as well. In his Afterword, he writes, "I have written a temporary path, with log bridges over streams and ropes down cliff sides, through the Forest Ginsberg, for your study and enjoyment." And enjoy it, the reader will. The stroll through the Forest Ginsberg with Sanders as the guide is a wholly pleasant experience; it'll be a pleasant walk through familiar territory for people familiar with Ginsberg's poetry and an illuminating experience for those new to the poet's work. The terrain is a little bumpy, and you'll get your feet wet and muddy (hey, the path in this Forest ain't paved), and as you step into the sunlight at the end of the journey, you will have a great appreciation for an excellent neo-Beat poet, and great awe for the Bard, or Ginzap himself, whatever you want to call him.