306
ALLEN GINSBERG
GINSBERG: Well, it's a
natural
flow together. It would be
if
all the
minority groups, put together, would form a majority.
If
they realized
it, you know. I haven't cause I'm. . .. See, what I feel, more and
more, I just disperse a lot of my energy in running around the
country; poetry readings, benefits, research on drugs and drug politics,
and research on police peddling drugs and research on CIA involve–
ment with opium traffic in Indochina and the Mediterranean, with
farming, with music, with tape work, legal matters like Chicago,
Sinclair, or other things involving the repression of underground
media, with war tax resistance - so that actually I'm finding I'm less
and less effective in any single one area - cause I'm spread too
thin, and less and less effective as a poet. And any usefulness that I
might have to other people is probably through poetry and music,
ultimately, rather than through smart clerical research on the fact
that two chief narcotics officers in New York in a row,
the
two chief
narcotics officers in New York, were forced to resign from their spot
or were busted for peddling, and other ... matters. And I'm probably
better off as a poet, rather than going into that, so what I would
like to do is get myself back, get my energy focused there, on lan–
guage and on poetry, rather than tromping around in the streets,
which I've been doing a lot of recently.
INT: Well, actually, when I think about it, a poem like "Howl" .. .
GINSBERG: Has more actual political effect than my getting up and
making a speech or coming out to appear at a benefit for the
Liberated Guardian
or Liberation News Service. You see, I've done
things like that, but, as more time goes on, I see that I'm losing the
Muse's attention.
(Laughs)
In other words, to write a good long
poem with good rhythm, enough to penetrate consciousness, requires
sitting at a table without a telephone for a week, at least, writing
ten hours or so, because you don't really get hot until the eighth or
ninth hour. It's like meditation - you don't really get hot in an
hour, you don't really get into your body until maybe the last fifteen
minutes, sometimes - it takes all that time for the mind to settle,
and for the sensitization to actual internal body impulses to come
through. I'm a little trapped and degrader! by my own egotistical
gregariousness, and I've got to figure some way of resolving that and
balancing like the immediate crisis demands of the streets with the
longer range needs to create an
art,
which will be powerful ... and
holy and socially revolutionary. Partly that's one of the reasons I
learned music, to maybe project language farther, in time, also, be–
cause there's a possibility that all the machines'll break down, and all
the printing presses'll break down, and the only thing that any-
