 |
|
| |
|
|
On November 5, 1994 I interviewed legendary beat
poet Allen Ginsberg in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Ginsberg was appearing
as part of the annual Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, which was
showing the very compelling documentary "The Life and Times of
Allen Ginsberg." He also gave an enthusiastic and well received
live performance, which he allowed me to tape and broadcast, along with
the interview on Little Rock community radio station KABF.
But because of potential copyright conflicts, I'm only including sound
from the interview here.
At the time, in addition to an alternative rock show, I was hosting a weekly spoken word program on KABF. Joining me for the interview was Sam Caplan, who was host of "The Poetry Show" on KABF. He too had been interested in talking with Ginsberg and I thought it would be good to do the interview together because we both had different subjects we wanted to talk about and together would be able to hit on a broad range of topics. I also felt that since Sam knew more about formal poetry than I that he would be good to have with me. We recorded the interview in his room at the Arlington Hotel. He had just finished a poetry workshop that afternoon and talked with us before doing his performance that evening. |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
He was a rather intimidating guy to talk to. If any of us said the wrong thing he would quickly lash out. In fact my then-girlfriend Yukiyo Yoshida, who took these photos, turned away someone who had knocked on Ginsberg's hotel room door during the one hour interview. When she came back he asked who was there and when she said it was some fans he began screaming at her, "Well let them in. This is not some kind of secret." Still he was also a very gentle person in other ways and was definitely one of the most fascinating people I've spoken with.
|
|
|
 |
|
Two and a half years after
the interview, Allen Ginsberg died on April 5, 1997. I wrote a memorial
piece for the Little Rock Free Press about Ginsberg, reflecting on my
brief experience with him. You can read the entire piece by clicking
on the thumbnail to the left. I feel greatly privileged to have spent
a little time talking with someone of his caliber. I'm especially happy
to make these recordings available via MP3 to anyone interested in Ginsberg.
If you don't know a lot about him, I strongly recommend getting Jerry
Aronson's excellent documentary film "The Life and Times of Allen
Ginsberg." I ran into Jerry, who was also appearing at the Hot
Springs film festival in 1994, as we were coming down from Ginsberg's
room. I told it had been an intimidating interview. He tapped my tape
recorder and said the important thing was that I had an hour with a
legend and to cherish the recordings, which I do. |
|
|
|
Return to Beat Generation-Spoken Word
|
