White Hand Society by Peter Conners

Author:Peter Conners
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 2011-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

The King of May

Throughout 1964 and 1965, Allen Ginsberg was deeply involved in the newest countercultural movements in New York City. The mid-Sixties saw an influx of avant-garde filmmakers in New York, with Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol, among others, generating much of the activity and publicity. Allen was no stranger to avant-garde film, having “starred” in Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s 1959 short film Pull My Daisy which was adapted from Jack Kerouac’s play, Beat Generation. The film also featured, among others, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, David Amram, and Larry Rivers, with Jack Kerouac providing spontaneous narration. Over the years, Allen would appear in numerous films, ranging from the avant-garde to straightforward documentaries and low-budget indie films.

Of course, Allen was always a poet first. When the city began cracking down on coffeehouses that hosted poetry readings without a cabaret license, he formed the Committee on Poetry, or COP, to organize efforts to defend the establishments. After numerous appeals from COP and benefit poetry readings to support the establishments, the License Department of New York City agreed to stop issuing the summonses. Perhaps taking a page from Leary regarding the power of naming to gain power for an organization, Ginsberg continued to use COP to defend everyone from the Living Theatre and the Pocket Theatre to comedian Lenny Bruce. In a classic piece of Ginsberg poetic protest theater, he cut off his hair and beard and mailed it to Assistant District Attorney Richard H. Kuh, who was prosecuting these cases. He wrote to Kuh, “Please accept, the enclosed offering of my shorn locks as a sort of spiritual bribe that you look with friendlier kindlier heart on the earnest strivings of the artists of N.Y. to communicate with all men including myself and yourself. . . . There is a definite social value I think you are going to be happily surprised to find. Meanwhile accept and guard this part of my head which I have cut off in your honor, as a devotional offering to the God in you.”

Along the way, Ginsberg also got to know the circle of writers, artists, and activists who were using Ed Sanders’ Peace Eye Bookstore as their meeting grounds. Sanders was a Classics scholar who edited a magazine called Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts. Eventually, Peace Eye became a second home for Ginsberg, who was only too happy to support this new wave of irreverent New York literary activity. Everywhere he looked, Ginsberg saw explosions of artistic energy rife with roiling undercurrents of political and social activism. These were the children of Howl, and Allen Ginsberg was their presiding spirit.

Allen had been to Cuba once, briefly, in 1953, prior to Castro’s revolution. Following the revolution, the country had taken on an idealistic glow in the eyes of many U.S. political activists who saw communism as a solution to minority oppression and the consuming drive inherent in capitalism. Among his poet friends, LeRoi Jones was one of the most fervent and outspoken about the positive model the revolution served.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.