31 July (1945): Allen Ginsberg addresses his close friend Jack Kerouac, whom he met while attending Columbia University. They wrote frequently to each other throughout their careers, a correspondence initially fueled by Ginsberg’s romantic attraction to Kerouac. Kerouac once told Lawrence Ferlinghetti (poet and co-founder of City Light Books): “Someday ‘The Letters of Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac’ will make America cry.” At the time of this letter’s writing, Kerouac was looking for work and Ginsberg was enrolled at the Maritime Service Training Station in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. You know, (I will digress) that is what I admired in him, our savage animal Lucien. He was the inheritor of nature; he was gifted by the earth with all the goodness of her form, physical and spiritual. His soul and body were consonant with each other, and mirrored each other. In much the same way, you are his brother. To categorize according to your own terms, though intermixed, you are romantic visionaries. Introspective yes, and eclectic, yes. [...] I am neither romantic nor a visionary, and that is my weakness and perhaps my power; at any rate it is one difference. In less romantic and visionary terms. I am a Jew, (with powers of introspection and eclecticism attendant, perhaps.) But I am alien to your natural grace, to the spirit which you would know as a participator in America. Keep reading here: theamericanreader/31-july-1945-allen-ginsberg-to-jack-kerouac/
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 13:21:41 +0000
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