A poet speaks

For decades, critics scolded Allen Ginsberg because he promoted himself and his work. Nowadays, there isn’t a self-respecting poet who doesn’t publicize and promote shamelessly. Ginsberg led the way.

“First Thought,” a collection of articles about him, along with interviews, shows that Ginsberg rarely declined an invitation to talk with a journalist, college professor or admirer. Michael Schumacher, the editor of this book, includes an interview he conducted with Ginsberg in 1986 when he was writing “Dharma Lion,” his lively biography of the New Jersey-born poet who wrote “Howl” in San Francisco and changed the face of American poetry.

Schumacher also provides an introduction to “First Thought” that ought to make Ginsberg fans scream with joy. Then, too, Schumacher introduces each of the 18 selections that he has made from newspapers, magazines and journals dating back to 1960. That year a young reporter named Al Aronowitz wrote a story about Ginsberg that he called “Portrait of a Beat.” More than half a century later, it’s still one of the best pieces ever written about him, and loads of fun to read. “I sleep with men and with women,” Ginsberg told Aronowitz. “I am neither queer, nor am I bisexual. My name is Allen Ginsberg and I sleep with whoever I want.”

Organized chronologically, “First Thought” allows readers to follow the evolution of Ginsberg’s thinking about sex, poetry, consciousness, politics, drugs and his Beat pals Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. Kathleen O’Toole, the only woman represented in a volume that might be called testosterone-rich, writes about Ginsberg and censorship, a topic that’s always timely.

“You are going to see in the immediate future on the platforms of poetry houses, slam clubs, and coffee houses an enormous renaissance of poetry,” he predicted in 1995. Always prescient, Ginsberg might have had the present moment in mind.