Here comes another axiom. Every poem has a story and there is a story behind the poem of my previous poem. It has to do with something that's been germinating in my heart for quite some time.
That being said, I walked into a book store this week and as usual migrated over to the poetry and literature section and picked up a copy of Allen Ginsberg's collected poems.
I went to the index and looked for his poem Howl and sat
down in the floor to read it. The poem opens with these lines:
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness,
Starving hysterical naked,
Dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn looking
For an angry fix,..."
Powerful words written by a beat poet in 1955. In 1956 he was invited to a coffee shop in San Francisco, along with a few other beat poets to do a reading. When Ginsberg shared Howl he pretty much blew the lid off American poetry and helped set a direction for decades to come.
Sitting in the floor of the bookstore this week,
I read those opening lines and thought, wow! My next thought was, "He
was homosexual.” Then I wondered, "Where did that come from?" I was filtering the value of his
work through a lens of sexual orientation. Starving hysterical naked,
Dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn looking
For an angry fix,..."
Powerful words written by a beat poet in 1955. In 1956 he was invited to a coffee shop in San Francisco, along with a few other beat poets to do a reading. When Ginsberg shared Howl he pretty much blew the lid off American poetry and helped set a direction for decades to come.
Something about it, didn’t feel right. So, I asked myself—does his orientation diminish the power of his opening lines. The obvious answer being, no.
He was also into drugs, Buddhism and a radical liberal. I rolled all those labels over in my mind and remembered one more thing that he was—a human being. It left me feeling self-righteous, guilty and ashamed.
Then I remembered how Jesus looked beyond labels and embraced people in their deepest need and darkest hour. I mean after all, He did not call the Samaritan lady, The Woman at the Well, we do that. He was not repulsed by Mary Magdalene’s demonic procession. He embraced her, loved her and set her free. I thought of a New Testament story about a blind man named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus.
I remembered how it was not Jesus who gave him the label, Blind Bartimaeus. We have done that over the last two thousand years as we have told his story. I was thankful for the fact that the Gospel put the handicap in the proper context when and reminded us that Bartimaeus was not only blind, but he was also someone’s son.
I have often thought about misplaced identity and how often it gets wrapped and packaged in sickness, handicaps, bad choices and poverty. It also gets placed in other unhealthy areas like, profession, one’s financial net worth, and social standing. It happens to people on both ends of the social cast system.
Some of my friends are going to read the previous post, I Want to Write a Poem, and this post and wonder if I have lost my salvation, or perhaps morphed into something of an unhealthy and unacceptable social liberal.
And to that, I would respond, no. I have not jumped ship, and I have never been more convinced of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But, something in my heart has changed as I am trying to look beyond people’s personal issues, and special needs. Beyond their label and into their heart.
At the end of the day, we are all broken and in need of a serious fix. The church has the answer, but we have so often, missed it up. I wrote I want toWrite a Poem, as a personal confession and heartfelt convection.
Sixty-Five years ago, during the midst of the counter culture movement, Ginsberg wrote a poem so controversial and extreme, for it's time, it was argued in the court system. This week I picked it up while browsing a book store and was moved to write a few lines of my own.
Poetry will do that. It will look through the chaos and speak metaphorically to the deeper things. The world is better for it.
