6 May (1951): Allen Ginsberg to Ezra Pound

In 1951, Ezra Pound was confined to the psych ward of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C.. Years earlier, Pound had been arrested for treason, but was commuted on the grounds that he was insane. He spent over twelve years at St. Elizabeth’s. The young Allen Ginsberg, taking advantage of the older poet’s immobility, wrote numerous letters pleading for advice and guidance on his poetry. Pound didn’t respond to Ginsberg during his time at the hospital.

May 1951

Dear Pound,

Don’t know if it’s any good writing you, but am seizing chance I thought about before. Am now almost 25 wrote a lot in college (won prizes too, Columbia) and since, but never was a scholar, guess not genius enough, atrophied mostly since, lethargy and 8 months in N.Y. bughouse.

Am occupied adjusting, trying to find place in society, work; not much ambition yet, etc. more woe.

Poetry I have written I don’t know value of or not, say it is little. Started wild and full of Manhattan horns and worked down to small lyrics as good and inwardly woven as I could make them: but all concerned (pre bughouse) with externally vague schizoid mystical light. Best example is last, written as farewell to that, last of a series of similar poems, using old stock bones, blood, skeletons, etc. But believe there is some physical command of iambic 4 beat line, and some intensity.:

Ode to the Setting Sun

(Written on way back home, on Susquehanna RR,
over Jersey Marshes, in Archer season,
November December, on rainy day.)

…

The wrathful cast of smoke and iron
Crowded in a broken crown;
The Archer of the Jersey mire
Naked in a rusty gown;
Railroad creeping toward the fire
Where the carnal sun goes down

…

Apollo’s shining chariot’s shadow
Shudders in the mortal bourn;
Amber shores upon the meadow
Where Phaeton falls forlorn
Fade in somber chiaroscuro,
Phantoms of the burning morn.

…

Westward to the world’s blind gaze
In funeral of raining cloud
The motionless cold heavens blaze,
Born out of a dying crowd:
Daybreak in the end of days,
Bloody light beneath the shroud.

…

In vault dominion of the night
The hosts prophetical convene,
Till, empire of the lark alight,
Their bodies waken as we dream,
And put on all our raiment bright
And crown still haloed through unseen.

…

Under the earth there is an eye
Open in a slight less cave,
And the skull in eternity
Bares indifference to the grave:
Earth turns, and the day must die,
And the sea accepts the wave.

…

My bones are carried on the train
Westward where the sun has gone;
Night, has darkened in the rain,
And the rainbow day is done;
Cities age upon the plain
And smoke rolls upward out of stone.

Admittedly the whole vague reference of imagery to my own subjective experience; plus inversions and dependence on classic cadences of thought (the sea accepts the wave and raiment bright) and whole stock of post 1910 development (or whenever the magic date is) shows this up as useless as it is, except maybe the Yeatsian yoking of bare contradictory abstractions as in bloody light beneath the shroud; etc.

One other poem I give you, a song from a long projected unwritten epic in my imagination about the boogie man, a peculiar American type here, the Bowery bum, or idiot crowned with straw from Melville (Pleasure Party): called here the Shrouded Stranger of the Night. The name doesn’t matter, you know the archetype. There is more machinery and habitat here: his song:

Bare skin is my wrinkled sack
When summer climbs up my back;
When winter racks me in these rags
I heap my lap with burlap bags.
My flesh is cinder, my face is snow,
I walk the railroad to and fro;
When city streets are black and dead
The Railroad embankment is my bed.

…

I suck my soup from old tin cans,
And take my sweets fro little hands;
Where tigers in the alley wail
I steal away from the garbage pail.
In darkest night where none can see
In the rusting bowels of the factory
I sneak barefoot upon stone:
Come and hear the old man groan.

…

I hide and wait like a naked child,
Under the bridge my heart goes wild
Shadow and bone are shriek and shiver,
I dream that I have burning hair,
Arms raised up body in the air,
The torso of an iron king
And on my back’s broken wing.

…

Who’ll go out whoring into the night?
I’ll bare my soul for thy delight.
Youth and maid and athlete proud
May wanton with me in the shroud.
Who’ll come lay down in the dark with me
Belly to belly and knee to knee?
Who’ll look into my hooded eye?
Who’ll lay down under my darkened thigh?

Now theirs is the sum of my achievement (plus 30 other similar poems, no better, some worse).

I been reading [William Carlos] Williams and talked to him—interest there is inspiration of old W.C. Fields talking about substances and things; also some in rhythm. But he doesn’t seem to me to have no system of measure (he talks about) and his poetry just isn’t gone, wild, weird, whatever romantic enough—best seems to me parts of Paterson and last 20 lines of the pure products of America. He did everything he could to sacrifice longing for irrelevant metaphysics and imaginative splendor in language to get at truth, but that’s one phase, step, for |him|, and the local scene is covered. And he has no bounce, no beat (I’m not talking about iambi). Maybe I’m asking too much (not of him but next year’s poetry). Further, him and you seem to have developed up to the point of narrative. True Story plot which can also stand as myth grand and final for America. But not to it—that seems next year’s work—making of long (ish) narrative poem in new meter which can be final summing up of metrical or measurical progress, applied to clear narrative line full of deep intense American imagery—not Buffalo Bill maybe, but (what is my own image, the shrouded stranger, post Wolfean Tom) apocalyptic, but dying of cancer in Times Square, tragic story of illusion, maybe you yourself, personally, not poetically, but certainly my own spiritual autobiog.; or Hart Crane at last moments of knowledge before he hit water. This generation (mine) had seen enough really wild personalities immolated in the subways to understand. But that’s enough on that line. (I meant I knew a great shining cat who jumped out of a subway last year).

I’m chaotic here: to get to the point. What, in measure, has been done since 1910? What’ve you got now, as a system, if any? Just want to know, so that I won’t have painfully to search aimlessly long while. Not saying if you got anything I’m capable of using it etc. as I’m half beat already mentally, and hard to learn for me.

What I want to know, what system of sane poetic conversation have you to replace washed out beat of quantity. Ear alone? That’s OK too, I just want to get an angle on where to look and work in next year(s). I understand you have some kind of worked out system (from a guy name of J. Grady, but he’s full of vain bs.) Nor I’m asking you to present your system, but indicate where you’ve written about t, and where specifically it’s best applied. I know Cantos, not all way down (references, etc.) but can use them for study, but it’s such a huge mass, and can find no guiding principle of measure but shifts according to sense. That’s all maybe, and enough.

Also difficult to write out questions specific enough to give you something to talk to, but would be glad to make trip to Washington to see you for an hour if you have tie and want to take trouble on what seems possibly aimless brain beating. Perhaps I’ll write again more directed key if you don’t think this is clear enough. La boring at moment under shyness of writing at all, awareness of respective learnings, demands, etc., so rushing through.

Sincerely,
Allen Ginsberg

PS been taking infrequently to Williams and was beginning to find the point but now he’s sick and out of circulation; also he has no system but ear.