To Allen Ginsberg<\/p>\n\n\n\n
San Francisco Aug. 23, 1956<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Allen-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your letter and poetry came today, today, a day before I set my mind on<\/p>\n\n\n\n
going away from this here San Francisco. Someone is driving to New Mexico, I<\/p>\n\n\n\n
put my hi-fi set and records and books and other things in her car, and they are<\/p>\n\n\n\n
still there. I will stay. If you say three weeks. I will stay. Reason for coming out<\/p>\n\n\n\n
here was to see you and to experience first plane ride; experienced plane ride,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
have yet to experience you. But I am not Sweetface Corso, but RATFACE Corso,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
really. Perhaps second canto will squeak that I am. I have finished second canto,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and have no carbon. Chris MacLaine has second canto, when he gives it back I<\/p>\n\n\n\n
will carbon it and send you. I met Peter and accept Peter and like Peter and<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lafcadio is or can be a Kirilov or a Barsorov \u2014 he has the face, and I preached to<\/p>\n\n\n\n
him, told him, “Don’t do anything \u2014 be sixteen fifteen kill yourselt, be always<\/p>\n\n\n\n
fifteen … ” He listened and maybe didn’t \u2014 his face looked like it heard at any<\/p>\n\n\n\n
rate. Two weeks ago Peter gave me five dollars. Haven’t seen him since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
June 1955, after leaving Harvard, I met a beautiful Shelley with a cunt<\/p>\n\n\n\n
with Anton and she dug me and gave me a place to live and has been with me<\/p>\n\n\n\n
up till a month ago when I decided that I wanted to go to California. She went<\/p>\n\n\n\n
back home and expects to join me soon. She sends me money and delightful<\/p>\n\n\n\n
letters and I love her very much. Was she, who taught me. She has fantastic<\/p>\n\n\n\n
memory, only nineteen, can recite and feel all of Shelley, yes all, Prometheus<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Unbound), Alastor, (The) Revolt of Islam<\/em>, and also fifty stanzas of Swinburne’s<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump of Time<\/em> \u2014 but more ! She is going to kill herself on her twentieth<\/p>\n\n\n\n year. She planned her death two years ago. The year that I lived with her was<\/p>\n\n\n\n all her … she\u2019d lock herself in a room and would walk up and down up and<\/p>\n\n\n\n down… spoke to no one but her Gregory\u2026 weep, shed weep and weep\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can’t really inform you about her, but I tell you she is the greatest person I\u2019ve<\/p>\n\n\n\n ever met, and if ever you meet her, I doubt if you’d disagree. Her name is Hope<\/p>\n\n\n\n Savage, I call her Sura. Write to her: Hope Savage, [ . . . ] Camden, South<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carolina. She, Allen, is our Rimbaud and more today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But haven’t you discovered Lucifer ? Why St. Francis ? Oh, I can see why<\/p>\n\n\n\n St. Francis, but why ? Is not Lucifer the first free thinker ? Is he not the emancipator<\/p>\n\n\n\n of worlds ? The eternal rebel ? Lucifer is love \u2014 St. Francis, gee-gaw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I will not wash Peter’s feet \u2014 no never! That is not saintly! I will, instead,<\/p>\n\n\n\n have him wash my feet and give me all he possesses in return for having me<\/p>\n\n\n\n stay a night or a year on his bed while he sleeps away from me far away on<\/p>\n\n\n\n the floor. And this he will do it he is a saint, but screw saints. One is almost<\/p>\n\n\n\n inclined to wash one’s own feet. Nor is the saint one who, old and peeling,<\/p>\n\n\n\n flashes his cancerous fingertips before the eyes of children squealing : “Cock<\/p>\n\n\n\n cock cock”. Children, almost invariably, would, like Rousseau, tease these old<\/p>\n\n\n\n men with a grand expose in some half dark, saints ain’t to be teased but<\/p>\n\n\n\n frankly I never knew what a saint had to be or could be for Gregory to say :<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ah, a saint,”\u2014or for someone to say: “Look, a saint.” And I reply : “Ah, yes\u201d,<\/p>\n\n\n\n because his hands were dwarf-clawed, his face gnarled, and his back weighed<\/p>\n\n\n\n down with apple carcass. Kierkegaard would have replied : “A midget, yes \u2014 a<\/p>\n\n\n\n saint, no\u201d. But fuck saints. I was once a saint and everybody said fuck me so<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m going to say fuck me too \u2014 besides when I do see a saint I do not say :<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Look a saint ?” I say nothing because I SAW A SAINT, and it I saw a saint,<\/p>\n\n\n\n and I am Gregory, why should someone else see that saint when his name is :<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyname.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marlowe, in my intensity, comes closest to knowing Lucifer. Beautiful<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marlowe \u2014 fuck Shakespeare, Burroughs’ immortal bard, fuck him ! Marlowe is<\/p>\n\n\n\n God. Only God can make a Lucifer. And he’s made one that I accept and live<\/p>\n\n\n\n for and with and I will tell you : He is 1954-55 Gregory. He’s sucked clean of<\/p>\n\n\n\n enthusiasm. He’s fucked Wagner and has accepted Bach Chopin Vivaldi \u2014 and<\/p>\n\n\n\n no longer is Les Miserables<\/em> his favorite prison book, but no book, or Unamuno<\/p>\n\n\n\n book or Turgenev book, in fact any book, all book . . . my favorite. He’s licked<\/p>\n\n\n\n off his “green armpit” of green and even arm, and writes with a clean tongue<\/p>\n\n\n\n but with a gut full of green arm, waiting to be excreted or puked. He is a dead<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory. A phony Gregory. But he was once a 1950-Gregory, a blind sick beautiful<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory. I’m up there with you Ginsberg, asshole dry, with my binoculars<\/p>\n\n\n\n … looking, and I don’t know what you’re looking for and I don’t know what<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m looking for… but it’s great looking because nobody anymore says a John<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holmes to me or a Lucien [Carr] or a [Robert] Merims or a fucken stupid<\/p>\n\n\n\n idiotic nowhere Helen Parker who I broke down and put down and laughed<\/p>\n\n\n\n at having an orgasm as my revenge ! I was greater than any fucking thing she<\/p>\n\n\n\n could ever copy to think or say. And Merims was always and is a bad breath<\/p>\n\n\n\n smelling distraction. And Lucien, all right. And Kerouac, he’ll never be tubercular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And [Alan] Ansen and Burroughs, I forgot their faces. And Keck I dreamed<\/p>\n\n\n\n I pounded his face over and over screaming: “You are the Moby Dick<\/p>\n\n\n\n in us all ! ” But Keck wasn’t worth that dream. He, like Anton and the rest, are<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christ scabs, long since picked, examined (like a monkey who examines his<\/p>\n\n\n\n own shit with its head tilted guttering: “Ohhhh ahhhh gooooop”-swallowing<\/p>\n\n\n\n It). Fuck them too. But there’s Dusty [Moreland], and Dusty has been the<\/p>\n\n\n\n only true sorrow I’ve know other than Sura, and I love Dusty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As soon as I hit San Francisco I met Ferling [Ferlinghetti] and he has twenty<\/p>\n\n\n\n of my books to sell and sold twelve, and I gave him copy of Way Out<\/em> and<\/p>\n\n\n\n he didn’t know what to say or I didn’t stay long enough to listen. I met Neal<\/p>\n\n\n\n [Cassady], and Neal turned me on and ran. And I don’t like North Beach. And<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1 told [Robert] LaVignel he is dead and he nodded his skull and agreed, but<\/p>\n\n\n\n for a dead man, like a dead Gregory, he can do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I once said in a poem: “I have eaten flowers \/ and every flower I ever told<\/p>\n\n\n\n was a lie.” My only true poems are the ones you saw piled high on ISth Street<\/p>\n\n\n\n three years ago… they are all gone… lost\u2026 I lost them in 1953… in a<\/p>\n\n\n\n Greyhound bus terminal in Florida. I even met Jane again… two months ago<\/p>\n\n\n\n in Cambridge. She took me to her pad, undressed, undressed me, but no hard-<\/p>\n\n\n\n on. I laughed and she wept, and I laughed, and she left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Siesta In Xbalba<\/em> is almost as phony as my Way Out<\/em> but not quite. You<\/p>\n\n\n\n believe your Siesta<\/em>. And I will not go to see [Philip] Whalen, [Locke]<\/p>\n\n\n\n McCorkle, etc., because I do not believe in my Way Out<\/em>, but I am nevertheless,<\/p>\n\n\n\n working on the third canto. And if I do see them I will tell them I am not<\/p>\n\n\n\n a phony and that I believe and that, please, they should believe in me. And they<\/p>\n\n\n\n will believe in me because I still have a young face and can smile just at the<\/p>\n\n\n\n right time. And DEAmont [Ruth Witt-Diamant] wants me to read, and I<\/p>\n\n\n\n can’t see myself getting up there assbare and reading. Poets should never<\/p>\n\n\n\n read, but shoot, fully clothed, Tommy gun in hand, and shoot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In The Morgue<\/em> like your Dream Record<\/em> was also dream. And why hasn’t my<\/p>\n\n\n\n name every appeared in any of your poems? You goofed. I was once alive, and<\/p>\n\n\n\n you didn’t even record me. You recorder of shit. Record your Neals and your<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kerouacs and they’ll record you and you’ll record them… la-la-la the merry-<\/p>\n\n\n\n go-round, the fucking horses will never run away. They’re always there to ride<\/p>\n\n\n\n and record. I got off the wheel and ran away, and now were you to go back to<\/p>\n\n\n\n that merry-go-round you’d find the little Italian olive wild haired horse gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is there to find out ? Has anyone record of his name, any bureau? I’m<\/p>\n\n\n\n laughing, so do not accept this bullshit, and I’m sure you aren’t, and I’m sure<\/p>\n\n\n\n you’re laughing. Good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Archibald MacLeish tells me I have created a world of my own and that is<\/p>\n\n\n\n good after he read my book. I told him the world created me; not me it. When<\/p>\n\n\n\n I see you I’ll show you his letter. He’s a great white father, nothing else. Fuck<\/p>\n\n\n\n him. And if Rexroth is anything like McClure, fuck him too. I don’t like<\/p>\n\n\n\n these wedded homespun poets who ain’t. And [Henry] Miller is a shit because<\/p>\n\n\n\n he put down Moricand, poor Moricand, closest thing to Rimbaud that Miller<\/p>\n\n\n\n will ever meet. He, Miller, in Time Of Assassins<\/em> bemoans the fact that he didn\u2019t<\/p>\n\n\n\n meet Rimbaud in his youth, and now in his Devil In Paradise<\/em>, retracts it. Just<\/p>\n\n\n\n like all them old fucks. Retractions retractions… who will you retract GINSBERG ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Solomon ? Neal ? Kerouac ? Who ? When will you present<\/p>\n\n\n\n your Wilhelm Meister<\/em> ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I only scream because I think you have it, and having it, will for the love<\/p>\n\n\n\n of the learned elders of Zion, throw it away, and assume a quiet tea-tinkling-<\/p>\n\n\n\n cup air. Maybe not. But I can say it anyway. Angered and drunk, I told La Vigne<\/p>\n\n\n\n I did not like his lips. I like him and want to be his friend. I pulled down my<\/p>\n\n\n\n pants and said “Okay LaVigne fuck me.” It couldn’t happen. Now we will be<\/p>\n\n\n\n good friends, that done with. After that we went to Dearmonts [Diamant]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth Witt. I fucked them all for two hours with beautiful lies. When I spoke<\/p>\n\n\n\n there was silence. I DEMANDED SILENCE, and got it. I was too drunk to<\/p>\n\n\n\n remember all. Perhaps Bob does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I will wait here until you arrive. I am staying with Nicole Sanzenbach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Write me as Gregory Sanzenbach for the love of an old landlady. Enjoy your<\/p>\n\n\n\n sunsets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To Allen Ginsberg San Francisco Aug. 23, 1956 Allen- Your letter and poetry came today, today, a day before I set my mind on going away from this here San Francisco. Someone is driving to New Mexico, I put my hi-fi set and records and books and other things in her car, and they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beatgeneration.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}