Rolling Thunder Revue on Netflix, and More: Allen Ginsberg Never Gets Old

Just before his death in 1997, Allen Ginsberg wrote to President Bill Clinton advising him that just in case he was going to name an American poet laureate, this would be a good time to honor him. As we know, that never happened. But look around: Allen, over 20 years after his death, is everywhere. In Martin Scorsese’s documentary of Bob Dylan’s tour, Rolling Thunder Revue on Netflix, the poet is named “The Oracle at Delphi,” giving him some classic, other-worldly stature. Seated Buddha-style he lends a religious benediction to a rock and roll tour that features Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, Anne Waldman, Ronnie Blakely, and others. Dylan’s great music is of course the star, but Allen exercises his chops. A highlight of the tour that starts in 1975 is a visit to fellow poet Jack Kerouac’s grave, near his birth home in Lowell, Massachusetts. Only recently dead since 1969, Kerouac may have enjoyed Ginsberg and Dylan cavorting and reciting from “Mexico City Blues” and otherwise paying homage to the dead beat.

An oracle tells the future, like it or not. But if you want to know the source, you might want to read Ginsberg-related books: a fresh favorite is Don’t Hide the Madness: William S. Burroughs in Conversation with Allen Ginsberg (Three Rooms Press, 2018), with its cover art of the writers by R. Crumb. Editor Steven Taylor lets the two beats speak for themselves on art, cutups, Tangier gossip, etc. etc. This is an important record of two friends reflecting upon an amazing history together. Another absorbing read is Bob Rosenthal’s Straight Around Allen: On the Business of Being Allen Ginsberg (Beatdom, 2019), replete with anecdotes such as the hilarious one about Allen losing his wallet in a sidewalk grate.

And just opening: at the Morgan Library’s fascinating tribute to Walt Whitman, Ginsberg’s City Lights edition of Howl is on display, open to his “A Supermarket in California,” a dramatic monologue addressed to Whitman, his courage-teacher. Yes, Whitman opened the door for the American expression of our democracy in poetry, and the music that leads straight to Dylan and beyond. At 200, Whitman doesn’t get old either.