1994, NAROPA INSTITUTE,
TRIBUTE TO GINSBERG.
A woman in the audience asks:
Why are there so few women on this panel? Why are there so few women in this whole week’s program? Why were there so few women among the beat writers? And Gregory Corso, suddenly utterly serious, leans forward and says: “there were women. They were there. I knew them. Their families put them into institutions, they were given electric chock. In the 50es, if you were a man you could be a rebel, but if you were female you families had locked you up. They were cases, I knew them, someday someone will write about them”.
(source: Stephen Scobie’s account on the Naropa Institute tribute to Ginsberg, 1994)
This is believed to be the last poem Elise Cowen ever wrote:
No love
No compassion
No intelligence
No beauty
No humility
Twenty-seven years is enough
Mother-too late-years of meanness-I’m sorry
Father-What happened?
Allen-I’m sorry
Peter-Holy Rose Youth
Betty-Such womanly bravery
Keith-Thank you
Joyce-So girl beautiful
Howard-Baby take care
Leo-Open the windows and Shalom
Carol-Let it happen
Let me out now please-
-Please let me in
Elise Cowen
Her remaining poems and journals were destroyed by her family after her death.
83 poems survived because she had left them with friend and fellow writer, Leo Skir.
Meanwhile, Kerouac shoots pool for everyone’s distraction.
invitation à tourner le dos à la société du spectacle. Elise is “Barbara Lipp” in Kerouac’s “Desolation Angels” – Mental health, random thoughts, Allen Ginsberg, Beat Generation, Beat poetry, fantasy, free verse, imagination, insomnia