[lbo-talk] New Year's Wish

[Dennis Perrin]

Was just thumbing through "The Beats: A Literary Reference" (Edited by Matt Theado, 2001, Carrol & Graf), a wonderful collection of just about everything you could find about the Beats, crammed with photos, illustrations, manuscript pages, jotted notes, reviews, analysis, even Kerouac's original notepads with poems in his handwriting, and I recalled an evening years ago when I was sitting on a couch next to Allen Ginsberg. Now, as many here know, I'm a huge fan of Ginsberg's poetry and I admired his public bravery, but this was not always so. Back on that couch in George Plimpton's apartment (an old girlfriend took me to this affair), I was at the height (or bottom) of my cynicism, and I scorned any genuine human expression of feeling as being soft or foolish or both. And when that great poet began to read some verse, I turned my head and rolled my eyes and thought, "Jesus, what an old bore!" I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Well, I was the bore, and the fool. How I wish I had that evening back, but know that I cannot for my cynical rejection of Ginsberg's feelings was a lesson. Kerouac, when he was still full of hope and spirituality, was fond of saying "Live your lives out? Naw. Love your lives out!" I suppose that's my New Year's wish to all of you. Reject the darkness, the cynical, the depraved, the nihilistic. We'll be exposed to much of that in the coming year, and it won't be easy holding on to the better part of ourselves. But we can at least try, right?

DP
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