Meeting with Allen Ginsberg, April 12, 1985, Boulder, Colorado

 A (lightly edited) journal entry of mine, covering a meeting with Allen Ginsberg, at the Boulder Bookstore in Boulder, Colorado, on April 12, 1985. 

Written on April 15, 1985 (Boulder, Colorado). Monday. Saturday (April 12), R. arrived. We stayed in the Trident Coffee House for a while, then sat out on the courthouse lawn and snapped pictures of each other. At 5:30, we went to the Boulder Bookstore and met (Allen) Ginsberg; talked to him around ten or 15 minutes, interrupted only by people who wanted their books signed. We told him a little about Oddities, our philosophies (?) and so on. In the books which he signed he stamped two Tibetan symbols, of which he explained the meanings. One, I believe, indicated a Boddhisatva. Ginsberg asked Roman what kind of camera he had; R. explained it was an 'idiot' camera. Upon which we saw that Allen had a similar one himself! He asked us to buy film for him; we agreed, but were unsure of a near location. Another guy bought the film in the end. 

G. snapped a picture of me, also one of a man holding a Blake/Dante book. I was grinning idiotically. We finally left through nervousness and because larger crowds were gathering about the poet. He seemed friendly and courteous as well as cryptic. Also I saw a reading he gave at the Naropa Institute on Wednesday. Quite an exuberant reader. Yesterday we saw The Wicker Man... 
-- JF 

Sketch of Boulder Book Store, April 1985

Here's a study I did; based on my recollection of a photograph (or based on an amalgam of several photos) captured of Allen Ginsberg, by Roman Scott, April, 1985; at the Boulder Book Store, Colorado. We spent twenty or thirty minutes conversing with the poet... The series of photographs vanished, alas, as I have mentioned elsewhere. Ginsberg also snapped a couple pictures of me, Roman, and others who were there. I have examined the images from that period in the Allen Ginsberg collection, in the Stanford University Library digital archives  -- but if the photos survived that he took at the signing, I was not able to locate them (there are a couple sheets of Ginsberg photos from April 12th and 13th, 1985, in Boulder -- the same visit).

Allen Ginsberg Dream Journal, 1988

A journal entry involving a dream about Henry Kissinger, from December 2, 1988, by Allen Ginsberg, from We magazine, issue 12, which appeared around 1990. Allen Ginsberg signed the page for me at Powell's Books in downtown Portland, August 30, 1991. Todd Mecklem and I also had a poem, Löwestrasse, in this issue.