Allen Ginsberg [Paterson, NJ] to John Clellon Holmes [Provincetown, MA] June 16, 1949

Dear John:

Thank you for investigating Partisan. The copy of the poem I sent you [“Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City”] is dog eared, so I enclose another copy. I hope I can get some poems published soon; I have spent the last two weeks working steadily on the manuscripts you saw, and have revised them where they needed it (except for some things that are so tangled I haven’t the character to untangle them) threw out a lot. There are about 50 poems left, on clean new paper (the same as this ) and I am ready to go into business. I will give the book first to as many people who will read it and suggest improvements. I feel (this a most urgent specter in my poetic process) that the book is value-less, without positive content, and cannot escape that final conclusion despite the fact that I continue to work on it.

I am in Paterson; and have been since I saw you. I had intended to settle here and get a job and learn to love my family anew, and this resolution, coupled with concomitant perception of the fact that I have been harboring an enormous weight of irrational wrath, gave me a few peaceful hopeful days, but when my wrath was tried in circumstances which demanded absolute humility to my father I could not swallow my pride, without raging up again, and had to close up the wound by withdrawing from “engagement” among the family – failure of wholeheartedness without which there is no understanding – as exemplified in all the best novels. Anyway, independent of this, my lawyer, and the official analyst I saw, who dealt with the D.A. made a deal, that if I were to be given psychiatric care, charges would be dropped. I am in a few days going as an in-patient to the Columbia Psychiatric Clinic, on 168 Street N.Y. This is an experimental mental hospital, where as my analyst says (his name is Dr. Fagan), I will be given “the works,” psychoanalytically. I do not know if I will be allowed out; I am to have a room, stay in the hospital, etc. Meanwhile I understand that the others have been indicted – the other day. I know nothing of what goes on since my lawyer has assumed all the burdens of activity – I had a sheltered life here. He is also following a program (in which I am grateful) of keeping from me what’s going on, except the few essentials like going to the hospital I will find out about the rest later; for the moment I am at ease. At any rate, the legal weight is off.

I have been reading, too – Blake, Mona Wilson’s commentaries, Dostoyevsky Diaries – his wife’s comments, The Possessed, Yeats’ autobiographies, essays, a book on E.A. Robinson by Van Doren, Racine’s Phedre, Greek plays, Thos. Hardy’s poems, Yeats’ plays (Wheels and Butterflies); Pound’s Cantos, Keats and a new book of Dr. Doolittle’s adventures by Hugh Lofting. I have nothing else to do, except see movies, 3 or 4 a week, and see old friends from high school. I think a great deal – about the nature of tragedy, and the meaning or significance of light. But all such conclusions are only intellectual constructions of things which to a disciplined mind should be not obvious but palpable.

Jack and I have corresponded fitfully – I do most of the writing. In his first letter he says that he has rented a house @75$ month near Denver: “My house is near the mountains. This is the wrath of sources – The Divide where Rain and Rivers are decided . . . I am Rubens . . . this place is full of God and yellow butterflies.” His second encloses a poem about a God with a Golden Nose, named Ling, one of the Giggling Lings.

“. . .And the Chinamen of the Night

from Old Green Jails did creep,

bearing the Rose that’s Really White

to the Lamb that’s really Gold. . .”

He is running around with Justin Brierley, an old Denver Gidean. A schoolteacher and lawyer of whom you may have heard. He is also (Jack, that is) partly running around miserably wondering, etc. His family is there. He rode in a rodeo bareback. He doesn’t believe in society. “It’s all wrong and I denounce it and it can all go to Hell.” “So roll your own bones, I say.” He reads Racine and Malherbe and Blake.

Do you remember the jingle: “I love the lord on high / I wish He’d pull my daisy?” Jack contributed another fragment to it: “Pull my daisy, / Tip my cup, / All my doors are open.” This has grown into a great monster paean. His stanza begins (my hand at that) “This token mug I tup / Runneth over broken, / Pull my daisy,” etc. Other stanzas added since: one he based on a recent poem of mine that has a refrain, “Take them, said the skeleton, / But leave my bones alone.” And on the navy captain of another myth: “The time I went to China / To lead the boyscout troops, / They sand my ocean line, / And all I said was oops.”

So: “Tip my cup, / Roll my bones, / All my oops are doopsing.”

Also there are fragments that go: “In the east they live in huts, / But they love where I am lolling; / Cut my thoughts / For coconuts, / All my figs are falling.” And another begins: “I’m a pot and God’s a potter / And my head’s a piece of putty . . .” When it is all complete, we will have a great archetypical jingle, “Pull my daisy / Tip my cup, / cut my thoughts / For coconuts; / Tip my cup, / Roll my bones, / All I said was oops.” And will sell it to Charlie Chaplin for his next picture or Groucho Marx. I can see it making a million dollars. Also associated, “I ask the Lady’s what’s a Rose, / She kicked me outa bed; / I ask a man, and so it goes, / He hit me on the head. / Nobody knows, / Nobody knows, / At least, nobody’s said.” Well, enough of this. Is [Ed] Stringham there? What does he do, and see? Are there artists there? I hope sometime this summer to be able to get out to visit Provincetown for I have never been there, and it would be wonderful to see you all there in that atmosphere. Marion [Holmes]? Boo! When you next write [Alan] Ansen, give him my regards and tell him what I am doing.

Now as to your request, I am glad to be able to give you any information that I have. You may not take seriously the values that I ascribe to certain experiences but since essentially I am actually involved with what I am talking of I will not bother to enervate the substance of what I say by pacifying irony.

I have attempted to put into language what I mean, events and interpretations, in letters to several people, in notebooks and miscellaneous writings, in conversation, and poems. I have not made a unified coherent or cohering statement because I am not yet ready; I do not object to a system or systematization, because that can be helpful, if properly understood; but approach through a strict rational process is not the most communicative way of transferring thoughts, or attaining rapport. Furthermore, my own use for systematization is limited because it is not system I seek (I have that, almost complete, in skeleton) but depth, value. Approach through reason, however, is one of the many ways; for some people, since it is their tool (as images are mine) it is the necessary way. We each have our own road to perfection. Also, as to your doubts in asking me, it is difficult to supply them satisfactorily (a whole history) because that is a whole mass of detailed explanations of hundreds of significant events, reasonings concerned with them, etc. There are perhaps certain “magic” formulae – recipes, religious apothegms, etc. – but what you are asking for is not so much the say abstract summary of relations between things, but elaborations of the ones I have already affirmed, explanations and details which would perhaps bridge the seemingly ungraspable theoretical abyss between theory and reality; quantity and quality, etc., all the logical polarities. Remember that I write under the paradoxical burdens, now, of not being on the other side of the trick wall, and that what I say is the result of theory made in time about the experience – which has for me been momentary – of eternity. I have been out of time, but I am now back into its illusory world; so that anything I write has no absolute value, but is just abstract imagery based on recollection of what an absolute value is like; and the modifications of what I say can go on infinitely without true timeless value, unless at some point the Paradox of Infinity is understood by an altogether different mode of consciousness. The problem of communication, here, is related and similar to the problem of accurately stating exactly the difference of thought and sensation, between the world of dreams, and the world of day. Fortunately, we have all dreamed, we all have idealistic leanings, a sensation of the supernatural, aesthetic or religious, if vague, emotions, a sense of value – deficiency, fear that is overpowering, etc. These are the experiences of the world of day, the so called real world, which I would use to suggest the underlying motif of all our lives; that these feelings are all disguised forms of another unconscious world of reality. This as you see is actually the same as the new psychological formulation, and I think that in proper hands (perhaps only Freud himself was deep enuf) it is a sufficient key; that is why I trust analysis for myself, where as most do not, really. (Jack, Ansen, etc.)

Now, to your questions. I will overlook, temporarily, the clinical details which my above paragraph might suggest, and return to a more literary, or aesthetic, or visionary vocabulary. I may say, in confession, that I do so because my experience of analysis before visions was not what I now take the possibilities of analysis to be; and I believe that most psychoanalysis is an intellectual game empty of emotional value, and is interminable, not absolute, has not understood the practice, Infinite Paradox, and is conducted on a single leveled self-enclosed world. But here, I almost end my letter, and any theoretical difference that has existed between us, by saying that my experience of analysis will change with the new analysis in the hospital and render invalid or unnecessary all the confusing mystical vocabulary that I have used. So be it, I hope so; in that case I can only say that 1. other people almost without exception never have had an inkling of what a world there is possible, or 2. I have never had an inkling of what a world other people have always been living in. In moments of actual vision, I see clearly that other people don’t know; in moments at the edge of vision, where I am faced with problems of understanding people (as I described on page one) I feel that the deficiency in value is my own; that I am the madman in an illusory world, trying to make my abstract mechanical notions and systems stick. And I say it would be quite a miraculous and wonderful surprise if one day as the result of analysis I should have my eyes open and see that I am what is troubling me in the world at large, and in other people’s conduct, ideas, etc. That, like Oedipus, I am the criminal that has been bringing on all the plague; and this is actually the experience I have had in analysis, I wake up and see that it is all my own spiteful doing. But that would not account for the psychological and sociological problems of others, which, I understand are at this point in the outside world so deep as to involve practically everyone, in extremities of wrath and physical destruction. It would, however, account for my own wrath and discomfiture of being. So there it is all wrapped up and sufficient in a system, and an accepted one at that. In fact as I write, I think it is undoubtedly true. The reason it has taken me so long to see this is because I had been so much out of contact with the world of flesh, and wrapped in my wrath and pride of intellect, that I could not comprehend, after those outbursts of the reality principle, that all along my usual unquestioned neurotic illusion world, was really a bad dream of my own, even though most others shared it in their own way, and all that I was seeing was the natural world of the organized and free senses. It was so removed from what I had known that it amounted to a miraculous change, altogether different sensations, values, even process of thought. So, seeing a light, I thought it was God. The point is, too, that that is, what everybody who had known about it before the 19th century, called god-era, had to give it a name. And those who never broke through but were still superstitious because their bound minds couldn’t explain the source of being, and its irrational nature, paid homage to an idol which they invested all their reality principles in. Magic is just a subconscious expression of the sense of the real world which is in its true appearance, compared to the untrue sense of it that we have, full of vaster emotions even than the puny shadow that is summoned up by the myths of magic.

It is this very enormity, this incomprehensible difference, between the neurotic world of time and the free world of eternity, that makes me use visionary language; and it may be that I am one of a few people that has had contact with a real world, and so my language is not superfluous; if it should be the other way around I should be much chagrined, to the point of feeling it, in my pride, to be the very gate of wrath that I was always speaking about. And I feel that that is one of the keys to a final understanding of the Visionary. He only wants to be like everybody else, in the flesh, but he is afraid of love, so he makes a system which makes him prophet, confuses everybody (they all have their own systems) and forces his misdirected will into making them think the same abstractions as he.

Now I had had this construction, this system of analysis, with anthropological and sociological areas, all worked out before the visions, and I used Yeats’ Unity of Being to express the psychological perfection of personality that I reasoned was possible; and I figured out rationally, schemed, even, to imitate the theoretical attitudes and activities of the happy warrior. This is, I suppose (I almost hope) what everybody does; the basis of all masks that people wear after figuring out their ideas; look to take a homely example, at Jack, with his imitation of the happy god with the golden nose; or you, with your search for a system of responsibilities, or a value in life (I am not making a joke; essentially we are looking for a value, all.) Or the New Yorker, with its concern for what it thinks is an attitude that has value; how it imitates its theoretical ideal, even to the point of absurdly forcing certain emotions and responses (mostly defensive and negative) on itself. What in all our phases we are searching for in ideas, is actually what cannot be found in a world of ideas; and that is the health of a unity of being. I and analysis (basically) and religionists and mystics, say that that health is a possible thing, and will solve all problems (or that once healthy, we will be free to solve problems that are insoluble now because we are afraid to see, act, be, clearly) I had never, before the “Vision,” realized what I was saying; when I had a few momentary experiences of it (so take them to be; my doctor thinks they were hallucinations) I was so overwhelmed by the absolute wonder of the possibilities of what life was like, I suddenly realized that my thoughts, as it were, had meant much more than I thought they meant. I was quite surprised; and I felt at first that I had been wrong all along, because this attained, “ideal” was so different from what, in my frenzied dream of life, I had bargained on; I had unleashed a dragon of a reality. So in the sense that I have outlined, all I had done before, had been to make up out of my unconscious systems and images which, when they finally became substantial, at once proved them “theoretically,” for all along this was what I had dreamed of – but disproved them for what they were, a reshuffled pack of cards, mere thoughts with no reality. So I abandoned making up systems and set about attempting to seek into myself for the springs of that energy, or life force, or reality, or supernaturality, that had been momentarily released – and this was no more a matter of making beautifully appealing verses, or rearranging thoughts like the furniture in a room.

Now to speak directly of the visions themselves. I told you all I could: that I saw nothing new in form, no angels, no smoke. I was in the bookstore and the bookstore was the same as ever, but with the addition of a new sense of reality, or supernatural existence, indwelling in all the forms. The sense of prescience, fullness, absolutions, and total significance of detail were all that they are in the most other-worldly of night dreams, and all that I previously might ascribe to the mystical or religious sense of the presence of the Holy Ghost. Wherever I moved I seemed to see so deeply into things that they appeared under the aspect of eternity which had been talked about for centuries, and see so deeply that I saw all there is to see, and was satisfied and peaceful. It is you might say, and I affirm, a subjective matter. “Cleanse the doors of perception,” etc. Blake’s phrase about eternity in a grain of sand is a literal truth. We are living in eternity. And one of the most astounding things that I saw was the souls of the men and women in the room, on their faces, in their attitudes and gestures; and what their souls were doing was hiding themselves from admitting their awareness of the all inclusive peaceful prescience, and restraining themselves from acting in accordance with the glad total community of mind and being which existed. They were all perfectly aware, as I was; their souls were opened; but they were locked in some mechanical, [coil?], withdrawal, they did not step into eternity, they refused. Inanimate objects, very substance, all partook of the prescience. The religious phrase is “God is Love.” This means that substance, all, is love. And love is the stuff of substance. That I also saw, but am unable to explain, except to say that a consciousness, or awareness, or intelligence, seemed to be drifting through all things, the same in lack thing, almost animal in nature, or, as well, living. The world seemed to be alive, as a tree might be alive in a dream.

The sensation of other experiences at other times was quite similar essentially, at one time I also sensed, further, that the great beast of the universe was sick or sickening, slowly being self consumed. (See Blake’s sick rose) and that human evil was part of that sickness. As if God were mad. The horror! The unspeakable horror! As if Being itself were, like the sick human mind, being destroyed. I look at your letter, the “Flesh will be the language etc.” Perhaps is clear – substance is spirit. The body and mind are separated in men (theory, as in me, from meaning and reality.)

My Reichian analyst? Theoretically he ought to know the answers. In Reichian analysis, my “breakthroughs” were similar in sensation. But he says my visions are hallucination. I trust them.

My father? I have been wounding him. Perhaps he has been wounding me. Both are unconscious, but purposeful. I do not accept him as a real entity. I must then perhaps vice-versa.

The police? The same as everybody else, including my father. To enter a world of reality, its existence must be accepted. The acceptance of the existence of another thing involves love (substance is love). Not “Love me, Lord,” but “I love you, Lord.” To the universe. It requires a freeing of a bloc of feeling and perception and releasing energy which is itself love. The worry about releasing evil energies is a bogey man of the nightmares of a society founded on the repression of energy and love, which might possibly be changed or abandoned in its ways when love rules. Antisocial emotions are feared because “Society” is, I believe, hostile to emotion in the first place. I feared the police because I felt guilty about the reality of my negative activity which I should have known concerned others as well of myself. I was wrong and “tried” to accept that guilt, despite my inclination of contempt, horror, ego, etc. as far as the cruel police were concerned.

Now most important is that point where I believe we have a channel of understanding. “Did the symbolisms in my poetry become, after the visions, less symbological and more actual to you? In other words, did the symbol cease to be a denotive arrow referring to something below the surface, and become, in terms of your poetry, and your thinking, an object?” This is what I mean by the word value, and my previous attempt to explain the difference between theoretical and actual reality, which share forms, but not emotion. I am greatly interested in this question because it is the key to all problems of art. I must admit I am surprised that you should be able to formulate the key question so clearly. But perhaps, as I say, I am the one who has no sense of reality, and the outside world is there all the time. Of course there is no knowing what you mean by the question. But not only in the poems, but in sensation is this process of transformation to absolute value operant. It is the same process in art as in experience, a shifting, from one level of flat valuelessness, mere symbolism, to absolute, “eternal” concreteness and substantial fullness. This has been the burden of all my poems, an attempt to use language which is pure fact, not airy poetry, to suggest to the mind of the reader that substantial actuality of Being or reality or fact, etc. that he dreams of, and to affirm it, though it may seem like madness to him (for truly our world considers it madness; and people are afraid of reality.) The difference between what I was writing a year ago and what I now attempt to write (as yet not successfully) was that before I was mouthing dreams, and now I am more aware of the meaning of the words; or better, aware that the words have meaning, and therefore, a possible effect on the reader. If I can find the true meaning, the value, the effect on the reader will be absolute. So it is in certain of Blake’s poems, and they are capable of summoning up in me, the sensation of eternity. There is only one person that I know really that understands. I spoke of him, Richard Weitzner, and he is far more advanced than me. He says my poetry has little content – however he has pointed to certain specific phrases in it which are total – these are few and far between –

O pass this passage in delight.

Blind spectacle

All through our land of wrath

Dead eyes see, and dead eyes weep

Shadow changes into bone

The mind’s forgotten meadow

Sometime I lay down my wrath

Etc. To him it is a matter of voice, deep voice, prophetic voice; that’s his sensual approach. The phrase “Shadow changes into bone” sums up the whole business. My poetry is not yet literal because I am not yet literal in thought, and the more literal the mind, language become, the more prophetic or true it will be. I was surprised when I realized that Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dante, etc. were in greater or leaser senses literal. Who takes them literally? Who takes the core of the Bible literally? Who even takes Freud literally? Who takes the world literally?

Now as to people. I love Neal, Huncke, etc. etc. etc., in varying degrees. They returned love, even physically. I was posed by them originally with the problem of expressing love, and what was love, etc. So they are basically instrumental in freeing me, and leading me in life. It’s not presumptive to ask but I have a fear of detailed letters since my accident and so I leave that to conversation; particularly as there is too much detail, events, etc. and etc. Essentially our relations change as we grow, “L’affaire Auto,” as you call it, will change things, too, welcomely. Neal, I haven’t been in touch with, nor Huncke; nor Lucien, except in a few conversations by phone; Bill Burroughs I haven’t written, either.

Knock and the door opens.

As ever,
Allen