A Lifetime of Letters

The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, edited by Bill Morgan (Da Capo Press, 2008) I have a file titled “Noam Chomsky” that contains several letters from the linguist during the 1990s. I first began writing him…

An Israeli Poet

The following poem by Israeli  Aharon Shabtai is translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole. It appears in his aptly entitled collection from New Directions, J’Accuse. “War” I, too, have declared war: You’ll need to…

An Influential Neurotic Bodhisattva Bard

A few months after Mev died, I read all of Allen Ginsberg‘s poetry and several volumes of essays and journals. Somehow, his spirit cheered me. Recently, I’ve read several books about Ginsberg and what follows are…