 |  |  |  |  |
the
current
Monday
Report
below!
This week's report by Wred Fright, ULA
GINSBERG'S KENT STATE INTERVIEW
On 7 November 1994, Allen Ginsberg came to Kent, Ohio
USA to give a reading at Kent State University. He had
some free time that afternoon before the evening
performance, and I was fortunate enough to interview
him. The interview was originally published by tab, an
Akron-based zine (for which fellow Underground Literary
Alliance member Lisa Falour also wrote, among other
things, a cooking column), over two issues in 1995. In
the light of recent attempts to co-opt the now-deceased
Ginsberg into mainstream literary culture, it’s good to
remember how independent and radical the man always
was. Many of the comments from this now more than a
decade-old interview still resonate today as we face
the war in Iraq, the loss of civil liberties, and the
growing power of corporations and the rich at the
expense of the rest of the American public, among other
issues. What follows are some of the more pertinent
excerpts from the interview.
***CLICK THIS LINK TO LISTEN TO THE
GINSBERG KENT STATE INTERVIEW***
On the Kent State shootings of 4 May 1970:
“It always struck me that the trauma of Kent State was
one of the unconscious traumas that the United States
experienced signifying that the government was willing
to take blood to carry on its policies, the war
policies. Of course by then, you know 1968, February,
52% of the American people thought that the war was
always a mistake. When were the killings? 70? So two
years later practically, the government was still
carrying on the war, and those students had courage
enough to oppose it. And there was this anger on the
part of the governor, [James] Rhodes, and there was a
sort of general ugliness on the part of the government
in Washington, and they took blood. At the same time
[Vice-President Spiro] Agnew had denounced the press
and there was a general depression in the press too
because the press had been against the war and quite
independent, and the press has never been as
independent since then. Since then the press has been
more of a vehicle for government. So I think it was a
significant moment historically.”
On political conservatism in America:
“The same religious fanatics and demagogic
superpatriots who forced the war on drugs, the war in
Vietnam, and censorship on us are really trying to
exercise mind control and thought control, and take
over now, and they say so themselves. [Pat] Buchanan
says it’s a spiritual war for the soul of America. The
neopolitical televangelist moneychangers have invaded
politics by abandoning their spiritual prayers to take
worldly power, and impose their Stalinite mind control
on everybody. I don’t know what this election will
bring but I hope people won’t fall for that right wing
blather. And it is, although they say balance the
budget and attack Democrats for spending, the four
trillion dollar national debt was built up under the
Republicans, and the expansion of the government was
more Republican than anyone else.”
On censorship:
“Ulysses [by James Joyce] was the twenties and the
charge was pornography. But pornography as defined by
law meant anything that could sexually excite a person
of average nature. So the judge handed out Ulysses to
his friends and they said they didn’t get an erection.
Therefore technically he said it was not sexually
exciting therefore it was not pornography. And that’s
why later on the ‘Howl’ decision and subsequently the
[William] Burroughs, D. H. Lawrence, and others were
then under a new basis which was not admissible in the
Ulysses trial in the twenties, or thirties, and that
was that literary merit and social commentary were
constitutionally protected against any charge of
obscenity. So in order to trick the public and the
courts [U.S. Senator Jesse] Helms changed the words
from ‘obscenity’ to ‘indecency’, which is a lot harder
to define. . . . So even today the arts are under
attack by people who want to control people’s minds.
The artist and individual are anti-police state, anti-
government, just exactly what the libertarians like.
The artist is empowered and outside the control of
government.”
On poetry’s resurgence in popular culture in the
1990s such as the popularity of poetry slams,
spoken word, poetry/music collaborations, etc.:
“I think it was built up from the Beat times on,
through Dylan and the Beatles, and rap and popular
music. And there’s a lot of other groups in the world
with good lyrics. But what I think brings it to the
forefront now is that during the Reagan years the music
became very dehumanized and mechanical, and now with a
more liberal government it’s becoming more emotional
and personal. And we’ve seen that the government is
full of liars and has been all along, and the media are
just following the plastic dictates of the government.
Basically as I was saying about say Oliver North or
Jesse Helms, to really get the impact of that stuff so
that these people need an individual voice of their own
because the government and the media are plastic at
this point. And everybody knows this. Television.
Radio. On the most simple level there’s censorship. So
people need an uncensored place to express themselves,
where they can’t be told by a corporation or a sponsor
what they can say. And do it live, to a live audience,
organically without the intermediary of a lot of
electronic equipment that are expensive or
dehumanizing. People want a human voice in a human
situation on a human scale, and a poetry reading is one
of the windows for that.”
………………………………………………………………………
Wred Fright can be found in Cleveland or at www.wredfright.com
Save your nickels to purchase his novel, The Flabbergasted
Pornographic Emus, coming this year from ULA Press!
………………………………………………………………………
CLICK HERE FOR THE ULA'S HOWL PROTEST PAGE!
GO HERE TO ENTER THE MONDAY REPORT BOX.
