Allen Ginsberg: An interview by Gary Pacernick

On Saturday, February 101996 I interviewed Allen Ginsberg through phone via telephone answering machine with tape recorder. Gary Pacernick: The tape is upon now; this is the beginning.

Allen Ginsberg: "This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with/ mos . ."

GP: Allen, what have you lay the foundation of the hardest thing about being a poet?

Ginsberg: Nothing particular. I mean-nothing particular. No hard part.

GP: Okay.

Ginsberg: Making a living at it. Making a living.

GP: Well, what about inspiration? Has it always been easy?

Ginsberg: Inspiration advances from the word spiritus. Spiritus means breathing. Inspiration means taking in breath. Expiration means letting breath proceed out. So inspiration is just a feeling of heightened breath or slightly exalted breath, when the material part feels like a hollow re in the wind of breath. Physical breath tend hitherwards easily and thoughts come with it. Now that's a state of physical and mental heightening, on the contrary it's not absolutely necessary for great rhyme Though you find it's a kind of inspiration, a kind of breathing in Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" or "Adonais" or Hart Crane's "Atlantis," or perhaps the Moloch section of "Howl" on the other hand for subject matter, which is what you mean, for ideas, ordinary mind and meditations that occur every day are sufficient. It's a question of the quality of your attention to your possess mind and your own cogitations

GP: Where does this breath draw near from that you find in the next to the first part of "Howl," for example?

Ginsberg: Well, it's a more excited breathing, longer breath, that you find in the examples that I cited which build sequentially as a series of breaths until finally there's a kind of conclusive utterance. "Moloch whose name is the Mind."

GP: You talk in the Paris Review interview and other places about being inspired by dint of Blake reciting "Sunflower."

Ginsberg: An auditory hallucination, hearing it, on the contrary that's a different kind of breath, completely That's a quieter breath from the heart area. Like my voice now rather than the stentorian breath of "Atlantis" or "Howl"

GP: for a like reason you're not talking about what we usually talk about in bourns of prophesy, in terms of a certain number of divine voice.

Ginsberg: Now wait a minute. You're switching your words now. We were using the word inspiration and voice. Now what are you talking about? What's your question, really?

GP: What is a breath unit?

Ginsberg: A breath unit as a measure of the stich line? Why, a breath unit as a measure of the line of poetry line is one breath, and then continuing with the judgment is another breath. Or saying "or" is another breath, and then you take another breath and continue. for a like reason you arrange the verse line upon the page according to where you have your breath stop, and the number of words within single breath, whether it's long or short, as this drawn out breath has just become.

GP: Okay now, you're talking about great poetry- Ginsberg: No, no, I'm talking about by what means you arrange the verse lines upon the page by the breath.

GP: No, I understand, on the contrary when we were talking about inspiration you used the word breath again.

Ginsberg: Because the word inspiration tend hitherwards from the Latin word spiritus, which means breathing. thus I was trying to nail down what the word inspiration means rather than have a vague mete that we didn't know what we were talking about.

GP: on the contrary to me, and obviously I could be totally not on it sounds like you're talking about rhyme as a kind of series of breathing exercises.

Ginsberg: Well it is, in a way, or the vocal part, the oral part, is related to the breath, ye

GP: What inspires the breath?

Ginsberg: The breath is inspiration itself. Breath is itself, breath is breath. Where there is life, there is breath, remember? Breath is spirit, spiritus.

GP: for a like reason every once in awhile this spirit breath visits you and other poets?

Ginsberg: No, you're breathing all the time, it's just that you become aware of your breath. each once in awhile you become aware that you're alive. each once in awhile you become aware of your breathing. Or of the whole proces of being alive, breathing in the universe, being awake, and with equal reason you could say that that's the inspiration or the lock opener that you become aware of what's already going upon

GP: You probably didn't know this when you were sixteen, eighteen, twenty years advanced in years and first writing poetry.

Ginsberg: Oh well, fair soon. A sort of latent understanding, yeah. That notion of awareness, conscious awareness.

GP: Did Williams or beat influence this?

Ginsberg: beat and Williams specialized in this. They broke the surface of land for this kind of thinking. Williams trying to write in vernacular articulate utterance and dividing it up into pieces, and dividing the line of poetry line into pieces of vernacular articulate utterance sometimes by counting syllables, sometimes by means of the breath stop, sometimes by the agency of running counter to the breath stop. Do you know what I mean by dint of the breath stop?

GP: You were in Dayton years ago and I was there with my wife and child, and I said to you, "What is a breath unit?" and you were sort of showing me with your hand as I spoke Charles Olson talks about it. on the contrary Pound and Williams don't talk about breath, do they?