Poetry!
I went to my big (and expensive bookstore) and I went like "omfg, where is everything?" There is soooooooooo much stuff in the English literature corner of the shop! I was like a kid in a candy store, but with a very small budget. I ended up buying a poetry book by Edward Sanders, where he has (very succesfully, I might add) prosed "the poetry and life of Allen Ginsberg" in "beat verse". Basically, it's a biography of Ginsberg, written by Sanders, in beat prose.
Let me, once more, introduce you to the first line of Ginsberg's most famous poem, Howl:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness
An excerpt from the book, page 18 :
He was very depressed
Then one day Ginsberg was standing in the hallway
wacthing a guy being wheeled into the ward
swollen from insulin shocks
and began one of the more famous of
20th century literary conversations
He traced through his visionary experiences
(the voice of Blake in Harlem '48 for instance)
The man listened exceptionally unimpressed, then said,
"Well, you're new here. Wait awhile and you'll meet
some of the other repentant mystics."
The man asked who Ginsberg was. "I'm Myshkin,"
Allen replied, referring to the rather crazy prince in
Dostoevsky's The Idiot
The bloat-faced man then said, "I'm Kirilov," referring
to a character in The Possessed
The shock patient was Carl Solomon, to whom The Bard was to
dedicate "Howl" five years later.
A talented writer, Solomon was living proof to Ginsberg
that the best minds of his generation were
destroyed by madness.
Let me, once more, introduce you to the first line of Ginsberg's most famous poem, Howl:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness
An excerpt from the book, page 18 :
He was very depressed
Then one day Ginsberg was standing in the hallway
wacthing a guy being wheeled into the ward
swollen from insulin shocks
and began one of the more famous of
20th century literary conversations
He traced through his visionary experiences
(the voice of Blake in Harlem '48 for instance)
The man listened exceptionally unimpressed, then said,
"Well, you're new here. Wait awhile and you'll meet
some of the other repentant mystics."
The man asked who Ginsberg was. "I'm Myshkin,"
Allen replied, referring to the rather crazy prince in
Dostoevsky's The Idiot
The bloat-faced man then said, "I'm Kirilov," referring
to a character in The Possessed
The shock patient was Carl Solomon, to whom The Bard was to
dedicate "Howl" five years later.
A talented writer, Solomon was living proof to Ginsberg
that the best minds of his generation were
destroyed by madness.