Allen Ginsberg, Great American Poet-Buffoon

"Could be the weather, could be the news, could be the state of my digestion,but right now I'm in the mood for a proper American poet-buffoon. A poet-buffoon, that is, on the American scale: a figure of swashbuckling vulnerability, ridiculous and unstoppable, friend to the dispossessed, personal frequenter of the edge of things, orating and chanting and moaning in ecstasy and getting himself arrested. I'm in the mood for an Allen Ginsberg."

"The essay, according to the Ginsberg biographer Michael Schumacher, "was well conceived, argued, and documented, and its appearance in one of the country's most highly respected magazines gave it a further sense of credibility among the 'squares.'" (It still sounds like Ginsberg, though: "I therefore do know the subjective possibilities of marijuana and therein take evidence of my own senses between my own awareness of the mysterious ghastly universe of joy, pain, discovery, birth & death.")"

Allen Ginsberg is portrayed as a quintessential American poet-buffoon: swashbucklingly vulnerable, ridiculous yet unstoppable, allied with the dispossessed and drawn to the edge of experience. He performs through oration, chanting, and ecstatic moaning, and has sometimes been arrested for his public conduct. Notable pieces include a 1986 poem titled "I Love Old Whitman So" and a 1966 pro-weed piece titled "The Great Marijuana Hoax." Michael Schumacher described the pro-weed piece as well conceived, argued, and documented, and noted its credibility among conservative readers. Ginsberg linked marijuana to subjective discovery, joy, pain, birth, and death, and influenced Beat-related movements abroad, including in Calcutta.

Read at The Atlantic