I won't claim to have been Allen Ginsberg's friend, or to have really known him. However, our lives did intersect on a few occasions. Over the years, I interviewed Ginsberg twice, and hosted what is thought to be his last ever poetry reading a few months before his death. My second interview with the poet, on the subject of photography, has been excerpted¹ on-line and even reprinted in two books. This webpage details my encounters with one of the great poets of the 20th Century.

The first time I interviewed Allen Ginsberg was in 1985. I was in college and on the staff of the Michigan State University student newspaper, The State News. Ginsberg's Collected Poems 1947-1980 (Harper & Row, 1984) had recently been published, and the poet was to give a reading in not-so-far-away Detroit. I decided to write an article about the book ahead of the event.

I was an English major in college, and one of my teachers was the well known poet Diane Wakoski. She was friendly with Ginsberg, and gave me his phone number. I telephoned him out of the blue and he reluctantly agreed (most likely because I mentioned I had gotten his number from Diane) to a short interview - provided I call back the next day. I did, and it didn't go well. I was an inexperienced student journalist, and I felt at the time Ginsberg was frustrated with my asking rather stupid questions. (Looking back, it was something of a juvenile effort. And I wonder now how many times Ginsberg must have been asked similar questions.) Nevertheless, I got through it.

This August, 1991 issue of Photo Metro featured Allen Ginsberg on the cover. My interview with the poet was featured inside, as were many images taken by Ginsberg

My article, "Beat generation poet talks about his work," appeared in The State News on February 14, 1984 - the same day as his reading at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The article featured a few quotes from our telephone conversation. Later, the full 7-page interview, "Catching Up a 'Bitter Buddhist': an Interview with Allen Ginsberg," appeared along with a portrait of the poet by Robert Turney in the Spring, 1985 issue of the Red Cedar Review, the campus literary magazine.

The next time I interviewed Ginsberg was in 1991. By that time, I had moved to San Francisco and had been working as an arts journalist for a few years. I was also much more practiced at interviewing writers and artists.

The occasion for my second interview was the publication of Allen Ginsberg Photographs (Twelvetrees, 1991) and a forthcoming exhibit of his work at the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco. This second interview was also conducted over the phone. I thought it went well, and the poet seemed an eager explainer of his art and craft. I felt we engaged in a good dialogue.

"Interview with Allen Ginsberg" appeared in the August, 1991 issue of Photo Metro, a now defunct West Coast photography journal based in San Francisco. Ginsberg appeared on the cover, and my lengthy interview along with numerous images by the poet filled the issue. I was proud of this piece - and worked hard to capture the poet's mode of thought and pattern of speech. When I met-up with Ginsberg at a booksigning at the Koch Gallery on August 29th of that year, the poet told me it was a good interview.² That pleased me. In conversation, I felt Ginsberg was himself a little proud at how this issue showcased his work as a serious photographer.

Perhaps it was a good interview. Almost ten years later, I received an email from writer David Carter. He was editing a collection of Ginsberg's interviews and selected my piece from among the hundreds of interviews the poet had done in his lifetime to be included in a new book. "Interview with Allen Ginsberg" appeared in Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958-1996 (HarperCollins, 2001). The book featured an introduction by Edmund White and a preface by Vaclav Havel along with a number of other interviews conducted with Ginsberg over the years, including one by my longtime friend Steve Silberman.³

Nearly a decade after Spontaneous Mind, I received another email asking to reprint my interview. The email was from Sarah Greenough, the acclaimed curator and head of the department of photography at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. She is the author of numerous monographs, and was putting together an exhibit and accompanying catalog. "Interview with Allen Ginsberg" was reprinted in Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg (Prestel, 2010). Via email, Greenough told me that my interview was the best Ginsberg had given on the subject of his photographic work.

  All the while I was working as an arts journalist and free-lance writer, I had also been working in a bookstore to help pay the bills. And for about ten years, I was the events coordinator at the old Booksmith in San Francisco. I put on many readings there, including a number with Beat associated writers like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Diane DiPrima, Anne Waldman, Joyce Johnson, etc.... On December 16, 1996 I put on (set up, promoted, and hosted) an event with Allen Ginsberg. That event took place just a few months before the poet's death, and is thought to be the last poetry reading Ginsberg ever gave.

A snapshot of what is thought to be Allen Ginsberg's last ever reading, on December 16, 1996. I put on (set up, promoted, and hosted) the event. The "other Tom" and old pal Tom McIntyre sits ready with camera in hand in the front row.

At the time, Ginsberg was doing a few appearances around the country to promote his just published Selected Poems: 1947–1995 (HarperCollins, 1996). These appearances were more promotional events and booksignings, not readings. At this point in his career and life, Ginsberg didn't give bookstore readings any more. Thus, it was agreed ahead of time that he would speak for a few minutes and then sign books. Nevertheless, I promoted the event heavily.⁴

Hundreds turned out. This was San Francisco - and we were in the Haight Ashbury, ground zero for the Sixties counter culture. I could tell that there was great anticpation in the air. The many who had gathered were excited to both see and hear the poet.

I solemnly introduced Allen Ginsberg. The poet spoke and read a poem, and then another. And then something happened without many noticing. The 70 year old Ginsberg, responding to the energy in the air read and recited and read. He spoke for more then 40 minutes - far longer than what had been agreed upon. It was an electric and powerful and moving reading. At one point, Ginsberg turned on a boom box which he had brought and chanted and sang his song-poems. I sat on the floor just a few feet away in the crowded store.

It was a very long event, and tiring on Ginsberg. We were there for nearly three hours. Hundreds lined-up to get a book signed. Ginsberg gave of himself in a most generous way. He spoke with everyone, and signed books for the long line of fans. Afterword, the owners of the store and myself took Allen Ginsberg to dinner. We ate at the St. Francis hotel (Ginsberg's suggestion) - the same hotel envisioned as the multi-eyed Moloch in Ginsberg's 1956 poem, Howl. "Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscraper stand in the long streets . . . . "

In the car on the way to dinner and at the St. Francis, we talked. It was mostly banal stuff - old movies, the weather, memories of San Francisco, people he had known, thoughts about the future, what to order for dinner. If I remember correctly, Ginsberg ordered chicken soup. He slurped his meal. Allen was an old man. In the course of our conversations, he told us he had congestive heart failure, as well as other ailments which were wearing. I could tell that the event and the evening had been hard on him. By this time, Allen was tired, and wanted to go back to his hotel. After dinner, we drove him back to where he was staying. We said our good-byes in the car, and I remember as we drove away turning to look back toward the poet to be sure Allen got into his hotel. Allen was standing on the sidewalk. He was looking toward us, perhaps looking to see that we were headed safely on our way. Allen was all alone. That was the last time I ever saw him.

  Since Ginsberg's death in April, 1997 my interest in the poet and his work has continued.

Introducing Ginsberg biographer Bill Morgan

Since Ginsberg's death, I have put on events with a handful of individuals associated with the poet. Among others, I've hosted a couple of events with the noted Beat scholar Ann Charters, one with Ginsberg's British-born biographer Barry Miles, and one with local professor Jonah Raskin, author of American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation (University of California, 2004). I also hosted an evening with Ginsberg archivist Bill Morgan at the time his Letters of Allen Ginsberg (Da Capo Press, 2008) was published. Morgan is not only Ginsberg's archivist and biographer, but the editor of a handful of his posthumous volumes as well as his bibliographer. When Morgan signed my copy of his Ginsberg bibliography, he humorously inscribed it to "entry number J3926, 3873, and 5172-3."

My event with Morgan was recorded for broadcast over the internet by Fora.TV. Click on the video link to watch this 45 minute program. I introduce the author at what proved to be a memorable evening.

I once interviewed the Pulitzer Prize winning poet William Stafford. It was at a centennial conference at San Jose State University devoted to Robinson Jeffers. One thing Stafford said that has always stuck with me was regarding the idea of bearing witness. It is a Quaker notion, I think. During the course of our conversation, Stafford told me about the time he met Jeffers many years ago. It was at an author reading - a rare thing during the Depression, and the young Stafford nervously approached Jeffers to sign a book. Jeffers did not have a pen, so Stafford handed him his. Jeffers signed the book, but unthinkingly kept the pen. It was a banal moment but something Stafford never forgot. And something he relayed to me. I guess the notion of bearing witness has always been part of me, even before I became aware of it. Perhaps that is why I have written this little remembrance.

Allen Ginsberg was the very first writer I ever met. It was in the early 1980's (perhaps around 1981, I will have to try and track down the exact date) when I attended my very first book signing. At the time, I was away at college in East Lansing and had heard that Ginsberg was going to be signing books at the Eastland Shopping Center in Harper Woods, Michigan - the very same Detroit suburb where I had grown up. I was thrilled. And I was thrilled to actually meet a writer. A living writer. An important writer. A famous writer. It sounds silly now, but that encounter made a big impression. What impressed me was that a writer could be someone I could meet. They were'nt all dead and from long ago. Such a notion can be startingly to a kid from the suburbs. Today, I still have those autographed City Lights softcover editions of Howl and Kaddish.

The next time I encountered Allen Ginsberg was the reading that occasioned my first interview with the poet. A bunch of college friends and I drove to a very snowy Detroit on Febuary 14, 1985 to see Ginsberg read at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It was one of the first readings I had ever been to, aside from those that had taken place on campus. Also reading in Detroit that day was the post-modern novelist Kathy Acker (whom I got to know some ten years later in San Francisco), and the poet and perfoamce artist Jayne Cortez. I remember finding each provocative - sensibility expanding.

I took this snapshot of Steve Silberman, Allen Ginsberg and Michael McClure back in 1987. It was at a booksigning I helped promote. And it was a (re)union of friends.

Over the years, I heard Ginsberg read whenever I had the chance. I have seen him perhaps half-a-dozen times here in the Bay Area, including once at a group reading at the University of San Francisco when he read along with the poet Philip Whalen, an important Beat associate. The jazz cornetist Don Cherry accompanied Ginsberg at that event! I also remember seeing Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti at the time the "Beat Culture and the New America 1950-1965" exhibit was on display at the de Young Museum here in The City.

Attending these events - along with my journalist efforts - have been my act of witness. Its a small thing. Its a story I want to tell.

For more about the poet, visit the excellent Allen Ginsberg website at www.allenginsberg.org. Or, visit the "Our Allen" page on Facebook. There is some cool stuff there too.

¹ For a piece of somewhat ephemeral journalism, my second interview with Ginsberg has had an unusually long shelf-life. It has been quoted, referenced, and excerpted in term papers, handouts, study guides and on a handful of websites including the Academy of American Poets, a page about Camden, New Jersey, and the American Sentences program on Global Voices Radio. It also shows up on Google books. Why has it been referenced so often? Perhaps because it took place at the dawn of the internet, when information and text is easily reproduced. Certainly that is the case with an earlier biographical essay about Ginsberg which I put together in 1987. It has been copied and pasted onto websites around the world including this page in China and this page at the University of Illinois English Department.

² A slightly revised version of my "Interview with Allen Ginsberg," sans images, also appeared in an early issue of Shots, a photography 'zine published in the Pacific Northwest.

³ Steve Silberman is an acclaimed San Francisco-based journalist and author. He was Ginsberg's student and teaching assistant at Naropa, and his friend. Silberman interviewed and wrote about the poet on a number of occasions, and edited the American edition of one of the Ginsberg's earlier books, Snapshot Poetics (Chronicle Books, 1993). Visit his website at www.stevesilberman.com

⁴ At the time, the bookstore used to issue author trading cards to help promote each of its events. They did so for this Ginsberg event. He is card number ###. I wrote the text on the back.