WEBVTT

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Does everybody in here
knows who Allen Ginsberg is?

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Sometimes you have to ask.

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In fact, I read this poem
at a reading at a college,

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and after the reading
somebody came up to me

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and said they had
been in the elevator,

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and some of the kids going
in the elevator said,

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I really liked that
reading, but I especially

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liked that Alec Guinness poem.

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So sometimes you have to
give an introduction who

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Allen Ginsberg is.

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OK, I'll tell you.

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He was like the 60s guy
that did with Burroughs,

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and On The Road, that
Kerouac, and he was the poet.

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Well actually, he
was the one that

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began it all with the
publication of Howl that

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got-- the FBI confiscated
all the copies of Howl,

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remember that?

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And the New York Times
wrote it up the next day,

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that the FBI had confiscated
when Howl arrived on the docks.

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It had been printed
in England, and when

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it arrived on the
docks here, the FBI,

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because it had foul language
in it, and they confiscated it.

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And the New York Times put it
in the headlines the next day,

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and there went a million sales.

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Once again the FBI did
it, a great success story.

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And then he led
all the political--

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a lot of the political struggles
during the 60s, and the drugs,

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and all that.

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Well anyway, now Allen
Ginsberg wears a suit

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all the time, and a tie,
and he's, of course,

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one of our great living poets.

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And I wrote this poem
called "Allen Ginsberg."

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"Once Allen Ginsberg
stopped to pee

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at a bookstore in New Jersey.

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But he looked like a bum, not
like the miracle laden Christ

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with electric Adam juice.

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Not like the one whose
brain is a river in which

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was plunked the
stone of the world,

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the one bathing fluid to wash
away 25,000 year half lives.

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He was dressed as a bum.

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He had wobbled on a
pee-heavy bladder,

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in search of a gas station,
a dime store with a quarter

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booth, a Chinese restaurant,
when he came to that grocery

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store of dreams.

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Chunks of Baudelaire's
skin glittered in plastic.

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His eyes in sets, innocent
as the unhoused eyes

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of a butchered cow.

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In a dark corner Rimbaud's
genitals hung like jerky,

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and the milk of Whitman's
breasts drifted in a carton,

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dry as talcum.

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He wanted to pee and lay
his head on the cool stacks,

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but the clerk took
one look, and thought

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of the buttocks of
clean businessmen

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squatting during lunch hour,
the thin phalanx of pretty girls

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buying poetry for school.

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Behind her, faintly,
the deodorized bathroom.

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She was the one at the gate,
protecting civilization.

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He turned, walked to the gutter,
unzipped his pants, and peed.

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Do you know who that was?

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A man from the back came forth.

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And soon she was known as the
woman in the store on Main

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who said no to Allen Ginsberg.

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And she is proud, so proud
she told me this story

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pointing to the spot
outside, as if still flowed

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that holy stream."

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[APPLAUSE]

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