Poet Allen Ginsberg, who passed away on April 5, 1997, will be remembered as one of America's greatest literary figures and counterculture heroes. He leaves behind an incredibly inspirational body of work. The following is an excerpt of a speech Allen Ginsberg gave in Boston, in November, 1966, to a convocation of Unitarian ministers, entitled "Renaissance or Die" (excerpted from the CD-ROM Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties):
How can we Americans change theme? I will make a first proposal: that everybody who hears my voice... try the chemical LSD at least once, every man, woman and child over 14 in good health... then I prophecy we will all have seen some ray of glory or vastness beyond our conditioned social selves, beyond our government, beyond America even, that will unite us into a peaceful community... America's political need is orgies in the parks, on Boston Commons, with naked Bacchantes in the national forests... I am acknowledging what is already happening among the young in fact and fantasy... I am in effect setting up moral codes and standards which include drugs, orgy, music, and primitive magic as worship rituals... and I am proposing these standards to you respectable ministers... that you endorse publicly the private desire and knowledge of mankind in America, so to inspire the young.
The Prajna Paramita Sutra
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...
-- Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"
Jean-Paul Belmondo and-a Mary Quant got
Stoned to say the least
Ginsberg, he ended up-a dry and so
He a-took a trip out East.
-- Donovan, "Sunny South Kensington" (Donovan Leitch)
Kick junk
What else can a poor worker do?
-- Allen Ginsberg with the Clash, "Ghetto Defendant" (Allen Ginsberg and Joe Strummer)
America's political need is orgies in the parks...
-- Allen Ginsberg, 1966 speech to Unitarian ministers (see above)
You can be anyone this time around.
