Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night-Allen Ginsberg: An Elegy

DVD Review

Allen Ginsberg: An Elegy, Allen Ginsberg and assorted “beat” and non-“beat” modern poets and admirers, 2004

If a rough dictionary definition of an elegy is a poem of lament and praises for the dead then this little documentary tribute to the seemingly very inelegant Allen Ginsberg is the correct term here in celebration of his life that ended in 1997. I have discussed in other entries the central role that Ginsberg played in both the “beat” literary movement of the 1950s and the godfather of the “hippie” counterculture movement of the 1960s. I have also mentioned the influence that he had (and they over him as more material from this period, especially his “Journals” have come to publication) over his fellow literary figures from the earlier period, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady and too many others to list here properly.

I have also spoken about the influence and affect such classic Ginsberg poems as “Howl” and “Kaddish” had on me when I first read and then heard them. No, not at the time they were written and read, especially that famous (or infamous) reading of “Howl” in that ‘garage’ in San Francisco in 1956. What could a ten year old boy from the housing projects make of Whitmanesque plea to rethink the contours of modern American industrial society, especially of a pious Catholic boy in regard to a Jewish writer who swore and talked about homosexuality in a positive sense, to boot? Moreover, he did not “speak” to me even during the height of the “hippie” movement but rather a little latter when I actually heard his work read both by himself and others. The essential blues rhythm beat that I believe influenced and drove his work finally meshed with the blues beat in my own head.

And that last point from the last sentence is exactly the point the producers of this effect have tried to reach for by bringing many of the poets from Ginsberg’s time, most importantly Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder, and some of those who were influenced by him to read from his work and share their recollections. Additionally, as seems to be just right for a poet who whatever his vast literary abilities was very aware of the need to play the troubadour to get his work before the public there are plenty of segments of his reading himself, especially the lyrical “death” poem which ends the presentation. Kudos to all kinds of people here from the readers to those like Anne Charters who have spent their whole academic careers trying to get the word out about the “beats” to the modern American literary tradition. Yes, beat and blues that is the essential Ginsberg language. It might e underappreciated now, but we need it more than ever as we face the “monster’ of today’s version of the American post-industrial society.