Six Photographs of Allen Ginsberg /
a haiku /
and one drawing by the poet

By Tom Erikson
Copyright 1999 by Bill Erikson

These photographs of Allen Ginsberg were taken in 1993 at The Naropa Institute during the fourth and final week of the summer writing program of The Jack Keroac School of Disembodied Poetics. I had been invited, as an artist in residence, to document the week's activities which culminated in two benefit performances at The Boulder Theatre with Allen Ginsberg, dancer Melissa Finley, and musician Phillip Glass. Ginsberg read Howl in its entirity for the first time in seven years, as well as Kaddish and Plutonium Ode. (The latter accompanied by Phillip Glass on piano.)

Allen Ginsberg was the co-founder of The Jack Keroac School Of Disembodied Poetics, with poet Anne Waldman, and was extremely supportive of its growth. Not only did he work to make his two sold out readings extraordinary, but he participated in many of the other week's activities. He lead a workshop with Waldman and Tibetan scholar Gelek Rimpoche titled "Composed on the Tongue," and sat in on several panels and discussion groups, including the final student reading of the summer, at which he was accompanied by long-time companion Peter Orlovsky. He was present as both a standard of poetic accomplishment and a symbolic icon against which the students at Naropa could rebel. He was suffering from the onset of diabedes, among other ailments, and still he gave of himself wholeheartedly.

A hiaku for Allen, who allowed all of us to be poets when ever the spirit moved us to be poets, without apology, and with joy in the act of spitting something out honest and fresh: