Allen Ginsberg in Lowell

By Leo Racicot

     A sad irony — the first time Allen Ginsberg came to Lowell, it was to help bury his beloved friend, Jack Kerouac. The two met in 1944 at Columbia University when they were students there. They hit it off instantly, traveled America and the world together, shared now-mythic adventures and misadventures. But Jack never brought Allen to see his hometown. As soon as news of Jack’s death  reached him, Allen boarded a plane to New Haven, along with his partner, Peter Orlovsky, and fellow poet, Gregory Corso. The three were met there by the writer, John Clellon Holmes who drove the four of them to Lowell for Jack’s wake at Archambault Funeral Home then to Saint-Jean de Baptiste Church for the funeral. Allen, along with five other pallbearers: Kerouac cousins, Armand and Herve, Bill Koumantzelis, Joe Chaput and Tony Sampas, carried Jack’s casket.

Allen returned again to Lowell in 1975 as a member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. Prior to the concert, Dylan, an admirer of Kerouac’s work, wanted to see some of the sights Jack wrote about in his books, especially Dr. Sax. Allen and he visited the Franco American School on Pawtucket Street, the sculpture of Christ Crucified and Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto. They mingled with some Franco students then headed out to Edson Cemetery, to Jack’s grave where they sang songs, chanted poems, meditated in reverent silence.

In the 1980s, Lowell instituted Oktoberfest/Regatta Festivals, to celebrate the city and its accomplishments. A regular event  of these festivals — the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac events, in honor of the city’s native son. Allen came to participate every year he was free to do so. His first appearance was in 1986, followed by appearances in ’88, ’91, ’92. Over the years, other poets and literary and music notables would join him. Gregory Corso came, Michael McClure, Ray Manzarek, Diane Di Prima, John Updike, David Amram (who still visits annually). One special memory is of an exhibit of Allen’s photographs at James McNeill Whistler House on Saturday, 25 June 1988. The exhibit (of Beat Generation writers and artists) was a delight. Allen’s handwritten descriptions  under each photograph lent a personalized intimacy and charm.

Allen’s appearances were surefire crowd pleasers; he would read poetry, improvise songs on his harmonium and after, mingle with the crowd, chatting and remembering Jack with those who had known him, those who wished they had. Allen once told me that in Lowell, he felt Jack’s spirit more strongly than he did anywhere else on earth.

My first encounter with Allen was when he wrote OM on a poster I brought him to sign. At the time, I didn’t know what OM meant. Joe said, “Go back and ask him!”  When I did, Allen closed his eyes, paused for a holy moment and began chanting the sacred “ohm…ohm…” Instantly, others in the room became mesmerized. As this gentle man filled the room with a resonance, a nearly galactic peace. He created, within the space of a few moments, a harmony and a magic out of nowhere. That was  Allen. The power of him was instant. One of the truly great mystics.  Another time, a group of us were with Gregory Corso in Saint Joseph’s School Hall. Out-of-nowhere, Greg stood up and began to move slowly, snaking around, as if in search of something – a “Holy Grail” move?? An uncertain but mighty ‘something’?? He was so stealthy about it, so focused. We all began to follow him believing  he was on the verge of speaking in tongues, of uttering some undeniable truth. Finally, alighting on the bench of a rickety, worn out upright, he stopped, raised his hands directly into the air, like Toscanini, brought them down just as dramatically onto the keys and — played and sang in a loud, uninhibited vaudeville bass — Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine. So — epiphanies could come courtesy of the Beats, in the most unexpected forms and ways. That was the whole point of the Movement. Life is a joke. A serious moment turns silly; a silly moment turns somber.

I look back on why Allen took a liking to me. It may be he was so used to having people say yes to him, the fact I said “no” took him by surprise. It didn’t hurt that I, like Jack, was a French-Canadian native of Lowell. I got to know him  as well as you can know someone with that degree of fame. Allen’s work was medicine  for an ailing America. Together with his fellow Beats,  he did his best to stomp out conventionalism, throw open the doors against stuffy, repressive thinking, shine a light on new ways of seeing, of being.   I was living in Las Vegas, walking on Charleston Boulevard, when I happened to look down at the headline in a newspaper vending machine. It read: POET ALLEN GINSBERG DIES, AGE 70. I was sad for days, then grateful, filled with thanksgiving that he had graced our world and the city of Lowell, where his dear friend, Jack, and The Beat Generation were born.