Photo via Michael Schumacher
Allen Ginsberg, America’s prophetic poet from the second half of the last century, was also a tireless conversationalist and an avid journal-keeper.
After writing Dharma Lion, his outstanding 1992 biography of Ginsberg, Kenosha author Michael Schumacher became a gatekeeper of the poet’s memory. In the years since, Schumacher edited a book of conversations with Ginsberg as well as journals of his adventures behind the Iron Curtain and in South America. Schumacher’s latest project, The Fall of America Journals 1965-1971 (University of Minnesota Press), is drawn from Ginsberg’s stream of consciousness during the period when he composed his National Book Award-winning opus, The Fall of America.
Ginsberg was concerned with the spiritual sickness manifested in the Vietnam War and expressed in American politics. He called the U.S. posture as defender of the Free World “an aggressive hypocrisy” in his National Book Award acceptance speech (included as an appendix to The Fall of America Journals). He might have been horrified by the last four years had he lived to experience them.
Ginsberg transcribed much of America Journals from audio recordings made while on the road in deliberate acts of spontaneous composition. He also recorded his dreams, his encounters and outlines for poems pursued or abandoned. I asked Schumacher about his work in compiling The Fall of America Journals:
You’ve become one of the great gatekeepers of Ginsberg’s work and legacy. Can you describe how that happened? You must have really hit it off with him and with the people responsible for his archives!
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I think the key was trust. My first interview with Ginsberg was in Milwaukee. He was reading at UWM, and I interviewed him before the appearance. I’d written a biographical piece about him for the Express, and he’d seen that, plus he was happy that I was interviewing him about his music for a magazine (He didn’t get to talk about his music that often.) That interview came out well, and things kind of built from there.
How would you describe the relation between the verse contained in the new book and The Fall of America as published in the ‘70s?
The materials in the new book are the raw materials for what was published in the poetry book. There’s also a lot of unpublished work—poetry and prose—in the new book. In mid-1965, Bob Dylan had gifted him with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, with the hope that Allen would record his thoughts as he traveled around the United States. Allen began later in 1965, when he and Gary Snyder were in the Pacific Northwest. He transcribed his tapes and worked them into poetry. Some of it wound up in the book, The Fall of America, and some remained unpublished in his journals and notebooks. In fact, one of the highlights of the book is a long, previously unpublished piece of what he called his autopoesy, “Denver to Montana,” which made its debut earlier this year in The Paris Review.
But there was so much more in the journals. He wrote extensively about the deaths of Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac. He wrote extensively about the Vietnam War and his opposition to it. He took notes about the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He recorded long entries about his talks with Ezra Pound in Italy. He seemed to be everywhere, and his thoughts were recorded in the journals.
You apparently didn’t include every transcription and journal entry relevant to The Fall of America. How did you decide what to omit?
Some of the decisions came easily; others did not. I tried to include the first drafts of all the historically important poems. Some of the work was repetitious, so I included the best. Sometimes his handwriting was so sloppy that it couldn’t be read by myself or those that I consulted. I knew, going in, that space limitations were going to make for some tough decisions, so I just muddled on through the best I could. So far, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, and I’m very happy about that.
Do you think Ginsberg hoped the material you compiled would eventually be published?
I know he wanted The Iron Curtain Journals and The South American journals (the first two books of this trilogy of books) published. He told me as much many years ago, when I was working on my biography. He was especially fond of what he’d written in South America. We never discussed this most recent one, but he won the National Book Award for The Fall of America, so I’d guess he was have approved it.
