“New Democracy Wish List” was written at the request of Long Island Newsday. Allen polled his friends and collected advice on various subjects. The poem was sent to the White House and politely received. Allen’s diabetes led to a state of dysesthesia below the waist. Allen transformed any shame of incontinence to a celebration of aging and life, as in “Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush.” It was Allen’s habit to write poetry in his journals in the late night or the early morning. He would often write at dawn and then go back to sleep until late morning. His waking routine took several hours. There is a good sample of that routine in “Tuesday Morn.” When Allen had collected several pages of poetry in his journals, he would photocopy them and hand them to his office to perform a first typing. Peter Hale typed them and returned them promptly. Allen would make alterations by hand and return them. Sometimes this process went on through ten drafts. We kept every draft in a file folder labeled with the title of the poem. Often slight rhythmic corrections to poems would come in after Allen returned from giving poetry readings. Allen Ginsberg was one of very few poets who had the opportunity to refine the exact cadence of his lines through his frequent public readings.

One of Allen’s most beautiful song lyrics was “New Stanzas for Amazing Grace.” Allen never ignored the homeless or beggars. He was generous to a fault and could not pass an outstretched hand without leaving a coin and looking deeply into the face beyond the hand. Allen lived comfortably within his modest fame. As he walked the streets of Lower Manhattan, people would nod to him in recognition or simply say “Hi Allen!” as they passed. If they stopped to recall when they last met him or ask a question, he was patient and conversed with them. If someone came up and said, “Are you Allen Ginsberg?” he might answer, “No, but that is what I am called.” Allen was always supportive of the writers he admired and who were his friends. Notice in “City Lights City” which was written for the naming ceremony of Via Ferlinghetti, Allen used the occasion to create new literary renamings of streets for all the worthy writers of his circle.

“Pastel Sentences” were written in Allen’s form of American Haiku (seventeen syllables with the common haiku associational enjambment of senses but carried through on a single strophe each). These sentences were composed to accompany a set of water colors by his friend, Francesco Clemente. There was a conciliation in Allen’s poems; he was commingling his worldview with its detail of causes into Buddhist mindfulness and ego urges. He continued a flirtation with children’s poetry in “The Ballad of the Skeletons” which was turned into a rock ’n’ roll song with Paul McCartney, Philip Glass, and Lenny Kaye collaborating musically. Gus Van Sant made a music video. Memories from East Side High, Paterson, are explored in “You know what I’m saying?” Allen remembered the songs of his childhood (“Popular Tunes”). One day he walked around the loft trying to find his scarf. He sang a little ditty about the lost scarf, which became “Gone Gone Gone”: a poem about loss, which was read at a Buddhist service the day after Allen’s death.

Allen was unsteady on his feet, hesitant in his step, and exhausted in his frame. He had to fly the shuttle to Boston to see his cardiologist. I sensed that, for the first time, he didn’t have the energy to fly by himself. “Allen, I’ll go with you,” I reassured him in the early twilight of a late February afternoon. He protested that it was not necessary. I insisted and he gave in happily.

I carried my bag and his. He shuffled with me. In the taxi to LaGuardia Airport, Allen asked for his book bag. The taxi was dark, only lit by the street lamps whisking by in an alternating stream. As the vehicle sped between lanes, I felt my stomach rise up to my throat and stick there. Allen said, “Listen to this. I started it last night!” He was laughing and cracking up. He searched in his journal and found the scrawled poem. It started:

When I die

I don’t care what happens to my body

throw ashes in the air, scatter ’em in the East River

bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B’nai Israel Cemetery

But I want a big funeral

I wanted the cab ride to be over. I didn’t want to hear the poem, but it got funnier and funnier. He was almost in hysterics as he listed what all his myriad boyfriends would say at his funeral. He wanted to know if I could add any lines. I suggested that women would all say, “He never did remember my name.”

On the shuttle, Allen fell into a deep sleep. I stared at the deep lines in his face. He seemed so far away. I thought he might be dead. But at the beginning of our descent, he jerked awake, grabbed his notebook, scribbled for about two minutes, and read me this American sentence: “My father dying of Cancer, head drooping, ‘Oy kindelach.’”

Allen’s health continued to deteriorate. Poems were being written so fast that we could not keep up with them. Weeks after the trip to Boston, Allen entered Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. One of the doctors in the Emergency Room handed Allen a poem he had written seeking Allen’s improvements. Allen obliged and was pleased as he confided in me that it was “a much stronger poem now.” In the hospital, Allen asked for a copy of Mother Goose. I brought my children’s Rackham edition. “Starry Rhymes” injected pure beauty into the simple rhymes. The poetry of late March 1997 reflected Allen’s lively mind balancing the primary hospital bodily events and his childhood innocence so long overridden in the need to grow up fast in a dysfunctional family.

Although we are unsure that Allen had finished with the rhymes dated March 24, 1997, we include them as exemplar of the pure, supple child Allen slipped in and out of in the late stages of liver cancer. “Dream” resolves contradictions inherent in his long love affair with Peter Orlovsky and remained the last poem written before the fatal diagnosis of liver cancer. After being told of the massive metastasized cancer within him, Allen Ginsberg only completed one poem in his final week of life. “Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgias)” is the only poem that Allen did not have a chance to proof and amend before his death. The poem is a compendium of farewells, with honest regrets and true Buddhist ability to let go. Allen was sad to leave the world, but he was also exhilarated.

Besides calling friends to take leave, and extract a few promises, he wrote a final political letter to President Clinton. He prefaces his note with, “Enclosed some recent political poems.” Allen lapsed into his death coma before he could select the poems.

In preparing Death & Fame, Peter Hale, Bill Morgan, and myself have honored Allen’s insistence on chronology and notes. We have included each poem as Allen fashioned it. We suspect that some of the short verse would be further revised and combined. These are the final poetry breaths—no more Allen Ginsberg. When Allen died many people felt as if a large hole gaped in their lives. Allen left many writings and songs to fill that hole. With Death & Fame, we find the circle will be unbroken.

Bob Rosenthal

July 7, 1998

Notes