ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Assembling a collection of letters such as this calls for the cooperation of a legion of people. Friends, family, and scholars have all generously helped locate correspondence from Allen Ginsberg until nearly four thousand letters had been discovered, cataloged, and transcribed. From those, this final selection was compiled. The editor would like to thank everyone who helped along the way, whether their letters were selected for the final edition or not. Although it is impossible to list everyone due to space restrictions, the following should be acknowledged for their individual efforts.

First and foremost the trustees of the Allen Ginsberg Trust, Bob Rosenthal and Andrew Wylie. They must be thanked for their early interest in this project. They entrusted the project to my care, and I hope I have not disappointed them. Needless to say, without their support this book would not have been possible. Peter Hale, also of the Ginsberg Trust, single-handedly wrestled copies of hundreds of letters from bureaucratic libraries and archives. His labor was invaluable and essential to the work.

Ben Schafer and his staff at the Da Capo Press immediately sensed the importance of this book, and any success it will have is due to them. Jeff Posternak of the Andrew Wylie Agency worked tirelessly on contractual issues.

Above all, a heartfelt note of appreciation to all those who provided letters or gave information that led to the discovery of more correspondence. In particular: Simon Albury, David Amram, Alan Ansen, Antler, Karel Appel, John Ashbery, Richard Avedon, Gordon Ball, Amiri Baraka, Lois Beckwith, Jack Beeson, Bill Berkson, Paul Bertram, Steven Bornstein, Christian Bourgois, Dave Breithaupt, Anne Brooks, Andreas Brown, Eric Brown, William F. Buckley Jr., Lucien Carr, Paul Carroll, David Carter, Carolyn Cassady, Ann Charters, Andy Clausen, Steve Clay, Francesco Clemente, Jim Cohn, Kirby Congdon, Bruce Conner, David Cope, Gregory Corso, Robert Creeley, Kankabati Datta, Diane di Prima, Elsa Dorfman, George Dowden, Aidan Dun, Charlotte Durgin, Helen Elliott, Daniel Ellsberg, Istvan Eorsi, Jason Epstein, Ekbert Faas, Inge Feltrinelli, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Leslie Fiedler, Marcia Fields, Eric Fischl, Luca Formenton, Raymond Foye, Brenda Frazer, Len Freedman, Ed Friedman, Cliff Fyman, Chris Funkhouser, Gary Gach, Bill Gargan, Jacqueline Gens, Herb Gold, Mike Goldmark, Brad Gooch, Stan Grinstein, Arlo Guthrie, Jack W C. Hagstrom, Nat Hentoff, Terri Hinte, John Hollander, Anselm Hollo, Michael Horowitz, Andrew Hoyem, Hettie Jones, Richard Kaplan (MacArthur Foundation), Eliot Katz, Vincent Katz, Bill Keogan, R. B. Kitai, Karen Koch, Allan Kornblum, Jane Kramer, Joanne Kyger, Robert LaVigne, Sam Leff, Winston Leyland, Hannah Litzky Paula Litzky, Sterling Lord, Leila Hadley Luce, Lewis MacAdams, Michael McCleod, Michael McClure, Kaye McDonough, Peter McGill, Bill Mackay, Dave McReynolds, Gerard Malanga, Judith Malina, Greil Marcus, James Maris, John Martin, Judy Matz, Ralph Maud, Barry Miles, Arthur Miller, Shiv Mirabito, Abd Al-Hayy Moore, Dave Moore, Tim Moran, Ted Morgan, John Morthland, Marc Olmsted, Hank O’Neal, Peter Orlovsky, Ron Padgett, Helen Parker, Marjorie Perloff, Jim Perrizo, Tom Pickard, Fernanda Pivano, Norman Podhoretz, Janine Pommy Vega, Alice Quinn, Lee Ranaldo, Susan Rashkis, Jonah Raskin, Lou Reed, Hanon Reznikoff, Irvyne Richards, David Rome, Stephen Ronan, Ned Rorem, Jonathan Rose, Barney Rosset, Paul Roth, Malay Roychoudhury, Ed Sanders, Steve Sandy, George Schneeman, Michael Schumacher, Hersch Silverman, Louis Simpson, Vojo Sindolic, John Snow, Gary Snyder, Carl Solomon, Ettore Sottsass, Colin Still, John Suiter, Ron Sukenick, Robert Sutherland-Cohen, Miquel Tapies, Eliot Tokar, Happy Traum, Helen Tworkov, John Tytell, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Waldman, Barry Wallenstein, Shizuko Watari, Steven Watson, Helen Weaver, Regina Weinreich, Ed White, Les Whitten, Joan and Ted Wilentz, Bob Wilson, John Zervos, and Lionel Ziprin.

Many libraries generously made copies of the letters available from their own collections: American Academy of Arts and Letters, British Library, Brown University, Columbia University, Dartmouth University, Harvard University, Kent State University, Lilly Library, New York Public Library, New York University, Simon Fraser University, Stanford University, SUNY-Buffalo, Syracuse University, UCLA, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-Davis, University of Connecticut, University of Delaware, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina, University of Texas-Austin, University of Virginia, and Yale University.

And finally unqualified appreciation to Allen Ginsberg himself, who penned all these words in the first place, little dreaming that they’d find a home in such an attractive volume.