Allen Ginsberg, the World's Social Bandit is Gone

By Tony P. Fernandez


Allen Ginsberg, the poet laureate of the beat generation and known around the world as the master of the outrageous, passed away in New York, last April 5, 1997 at the ripe age of 70. Ginsberg, whom I admired as a student, became the counterculture guru of the 1950s. I admired him a lot because long before others did, Ginsberg stood for openness and freedom of
expression and a lifelong model of candor.

Ginsberg's prose was, in some related way, music to me while I was a foreign student in the 60s taking up communication courses at an American university. I kept reading and reading his works and was greatly influenced by his avant-garde writing. I was enthusiastic about his prose, about his lyricism and about the honor of writing which came straight from his heart.

His extraordinary list of works ran the gamut of themes under the sun, sex, homosexuality, obscenity, religion, politics, drugs, hedonism, or any other ones that eventually generated his worldwide fame because of the indignation that he inspired.

Indeed, it was during the rebellious 60s that Ginsberg wrote Howl-a profane, graphic and outrageous poem that shocked the American literary establishment. Critics called it an obscene work, but for Ginsberg it generated enormous publicity which later on catapulted him to fame.

As for us, Howl established Ginsberg as the voice of our generation- the rebellious youth and Flower Children that marched against the Vietnam war and promoted love -ins and censored Society's hypocrisy.

But as for me, my admiration for Ginsberg was his candor. He was once interviewed by a magazine editor on the fear of censorship. Asked if there had been a time that he found it difficult to expose his own expression when he wrote, Ginsberg's answer struck me as typical of what set him apart as a writer.

Ginsberg stood for freedom of expression and for saying anything, regardless: "The problem is to break down that distinction: when you approach your Muse to talk as frankly, as you would talk with yourself or your friends..."

His candor had a profound impression in me as a student, and we talked a lot about it in the coffeehouses in the Seattle University district during the 60s.

Ginsberg's death is indeed a great loss to the literary world, and for me personally because of my profound admiration for what he stood for as one of America's greatest literary figures.

As the critic John Leonard observed in a 1988 appreciation: He is, of course, "a social bandit but a non-violent social bandit". For students like me in the 60's, Ginsberg was no doubt our social bandit.