MEMORY GARDENS: Celebrating Allen Ginsberg
Sunday, March 3, 2024 at 4 pm
Hoboken Historical Museum
1301 Hudson Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030
Four poets, Lee Ann Brown, Eliot Katz, Sharon Mesmer, and Bob Rosenthal, who are among the living people who knew him best will share memories as well as their own work. This event is Live and Livestreamed and FREE!
It’s near impossible to condense Allen Ginsberg’s life into a single paragraph. Then again, most everyone knows who he was. He was born in Newark, raised in Paterson, and his ashes are interred in the family plot in Newark. Though, like Sinatra he may have wanted to escape his New Jersey past, he was definitely of, and from our state. Here are the first 2 paragraphs of his bio written by Michael Schumacher on the Allen Ginsberg official website. To get a more complete picture of his remarkable life, visit here: https://allenginsberg.org/biography/
Renowned poet, world traveler, spiritual seeker, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human and civil rights, photographer and songwriter, political gadfly, teacher and co-founder of a poetics school, Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) defied simple classification.
Poets are commonly known only within their circles of readerships but like Walt Whitman, Ginsberg’s name was recognizable to millions who had never read so much as a single word of his poetry. Like Whitman, the foundation of Ginsberg’s work was the notion that one’s individual thoughts and experiences resonated among the masses. “It occurs to me that I am America”, Ginsberg wrote, and while the statement was intended to be humorous, it also illustrated his idea that democracy begins with the raising of a single voice. At the height of his celebrity, Allen Ginsberg was, arguably, as symbolic of America — or at least a large segment of the country — as anyone.
The current exhibition at the Hoboken Historical Museum features the photographs of Benedict Fernandez, who chronicled the Hoboken Shipyards, the Civil Rights Movement, 60s anti-war protests, as well as the iconic Allen Ginsberg Pot is Fun picture
Hoboken Historical Museum
1301 Hudson Street Hoboken NJ
https://www.hobokenmuseum.org/
Join us for two programs in honor of Earth Day. From 4-5:30pm, Edward Abbey’s Hoboken, a celebration of the legendary writer and environmentalist by four notable writers: Robert Sullivan, Lynne Shapiro, David Crews, and Basia Wilson.
From 6 to 7pm, Jane Steuerwald, Thomas Edison Film Festival Director, will screen a program of Earth Day films with international perspectives. Filmmakers from Vancouver, Toronto, and Cardiff, Wales are featured. Admission to both events is free, and refreshments will be served.
Edward Abbey (1927-1989) is best known as an essayist, novelist, and defender of western wilderness, but he was also deeply attached to two eastern places – the woods and hills of western Pennsylvania, where he was born, and Hoboken, where he lived on and off from 1956 to 1963. His best-known works include Desert Solitaire, a non-fiction autobiographical account of his time as a park ranger at Arches National Park considered to be an iconic work of nature writing, The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been extremely influential to environmentalists; and his essay collections Down the River (1982) and One Life at a Time, Please (1988).
Also worth noting, Robert Sullivan happens to be one of my very favorite non-fiction writers who I am constantly (probably incorrectly) quoting. Hope to see you at the Museum.