Allen Ginsberg’s Family Album

I found this via the Smithsonian Mag in an article by 2008 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Mark Feeney. A collection of Allen Ginsberg’s portraits entitled “Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg,” will be at the National Gallery of Art till 8 September (333 Constitution Ave, Washington, DC 20001-2802, United States if you’re in town). The collection (I accidentally keep typing “coolection”…), features images of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert La Vigne, and Ginsberg’s longtime lover, Peter Orlovsky.

I’m not going to attempt to paraphrase Feeney’s beautifully crafted article – you can read the full thing here. What struck me, apart from the candour of the earlier work and the slabs of memoir Ginsberg attached to many of the frames (really long sentence here), was the notion of “family”. I spent this last rainy saturday reading Patti Smith’s memoir “Just Kids” – a recollection and ultimately an elegy to a man who was one the great loves and muses of her life – Robert Mapplethorpe. Ginsberg’s collection and Patti Smith’s memoirs are inspiring and heartbreaking in turn.  Both offer us a portrait of the family we make as we emerge into adulthood, sometimes leaving behind and sometimes augmenting the family we inherited.

Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso - Tangiers

Jack Kerouac wandering along East 7th street after visiting Burroughs at our pad, passing statue of Congressman Samuel "Sunset" Cot, "The Letter – Carrier's Friend" in Tompkins Square toward corner of Avenue A, Lower East Side; he's making a Dostoyevsky mad-face or Russian basso be-bop Om, first walking around the neighborhood, then involved with The Subterraneans, pencils & notebook in wool shirt-pockets, Fall 1953, Manhattan."

Peter Orlovsky at James Joyce's grave, Zurich Switzerland December 1980, we climbed up the cemetery and found Joyce's statue snowcovered, brushed it off his head.