Posted on 06/16/2013 5:02:16 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It can be easy to be jaded about the Beat writers in San Francisco, but even the most indifferent literary snob would be hard-pressed to walk away from "Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum without feeling fuzzy inside.
Organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and running through September, "Beat Memories" is a collection of about 80 photos taken by Ginsberg and his friends in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s.
Nearly every image is notated with the wobbly handwriting of Ginsberg, who added paragraph-length captions to the images in the 1980s at the prompting of his archivist Bill Morgan and photographers Robert Frank and Berenice Abbott.
The photos are taken in bedrooms, on rooftops, in exotic countries, in photo booths and in Parisian attics. All of the usual suspects are there: Ginsberg's lover Peter Orlovsky, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Gary Snyder, Herbert E. Huncke, Lucien Carr and a fantastically rumpled, dogged Bob Dylan.
Although he rocketed to fame with the publication of his poem "Howl" in 1956 and bounced around the globe, Ginsberg kept his friends close. The photos are often casual and domestic, a testament to the impassioned camaraderie and intimacy the Beats shared.
Under a shot of Burroughs supine on a bed, naked but for his white underwear, Ginsberg wrote: "Bill Burroughs in back bedroom waiting for company ..."
Ginsberg's scrawled notes are charmingly detailed and frank. On an image of Burroughs pontificating to a pensive Kerouac — Burroughs' palm is face up at the end of a languid wrist — Ginsberg quotes Burroughs: "Now, Jack, as I warned you far back as 1945, if you keep going home to live with your 'Mémère' you'll find yourself wound tighter and tighter in her apron strings till you're an old man and can't escape ..."
The static snapshot transforms into prophetic cinema: Kerouac's relationship with his mother was fraught, co-dependent and lasted a lifetime.
One famous image of Kerouac is in the show — Jack howling at the camera, with New York a blur behind him — circa 1953. Ginsberg also caught Kerouac ravaged 11 years later, slumped in a chair, a "red-faced corpulent W.C. Fields shuddering with mortal horror and grimacing on O.M.T. I'd brought back from visiting Timothy Leary."
Reading Ginsberg's priceless captions is an homage to memory and a puzzling, mysterious mix of things human brains remember: raindrops on laundry, rent prices, addresses, routines, friends and passing philosophies.
In "Beat Memories," the images and his recollections are a glimpse into Ginsberg's tenderness, and into a world of collective minds that fueled each other.
Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg Where: ContemporaryJewish Museum, 736 Mission St., S.F.
When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays-Tuesdays, 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, closed Wednesdays; show closes Sept. 8
Admission: $5 to $12
Contact: (415) 655-7800, www.thecjm.org
>> hell I don’t even know what omnisexual is.
The guy describes blades of grass sensually.
>>He knew enough to know what Moloch was, Moloch’s relation to the Jews, and Moloch’s meaning as a worshiped idol. It wasn’t like he stumbled upon it.
Well the vast majority of lit. crit. says that Moloch is a symbol for the anti-otherness in 50’s American society. I wrote that Moloch was more like the refining fire seen in Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” and present in many other poems by minority poets, etc. It’s almost a Jungian symbol for poets.
>> hell I don’t even know what omnisexual is.
The guy describes blades of grass sensually.
/////////////
doesn’t sound like you’re disagreeing with DH Lawrence’s analysis.
I meant the Moloch in “Howl”.
lit. crit. says that Moloch is a symbol for the anti-otherness in 50’s American society.
..........
Presumably today our rulers are anti-otherness people.
Certainly I’ve seen the culture of the Columbia and the upper west side of Manhattan and the village—of the 70’s and 80’s become mainstream in the USA in the 2010’s
When I was in my last year in Manhattan back in 1990, I read a book —just translated from the original spanish. The book was written by Hernando Cortez’s lieutenant. a guy by the name of Bernal Diaz. He was known as Cortez’s oldest lieutenant. His book was “The Conquest of New Spain”. He recounted the stories of Cortez’s conquest. They were fairly familiar stories. But there was one twist. Something you don’t read about at all anywhere else but with Diaz. He relates that the Aztec priests were homosexuals. That they would “act up” right in front of Cortez. This would offend Cortez greatly. (If you want to read the book, there is a free copy here. http://ebookbrowse.com/bernal-diaz-the-conquest-of-new-spain-pdf-d293703560
I suddenly realized that Cortez’s reaction and that of his men was much the same as that of Moses and Joshua when confronted with similar behavior by the Canaanites.
Further that the culture that supports homosexuality also supports abortion. The two are morally related in that they are both immense vanities. Further that since these two peoples the Aztecs and the Caanites had no knowledge of each other—that people left to their own devices—are naturally bad to bone. Or as Romans 3:23 puts it “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
A man who's career partly consisted of promoting and legalizing and encouraging homosexual seduction and rape of little boys and to promote NAMBLA?
Some career there chief, a "regrettable personal life choice" so to speak about your beloved artist.
In this case, this isn't some horrible deeply buried secret discovered after his death, this was a large part of his life's work, his career, his art, as his customers and fans empowered him, he used that wealth and power and his place in the public eye to promote crimes against boys and humanity.
Right,
So now you feel the need to attack me personally.
I do hope that makes you feel better.
How is calling him your "beloved artist", a personal attack?
I thought your whole point is that he was your beloved artist, and that his political and social activism and writing and speaking for and promoting of the little boy rape thing shouldn't influence our appreciation of his great art?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.