In a poem called “Ego Confession,” Ginsberg describes himself as someone:
who saw Blake and abandoned God.
His references to his Blake visions can get a bit tedious at times, and I like this take. It’s a refreshing change. Of course, given who Blake was it’s also an awfully interesting statement to make, and it also indicates how Ginsberg saw himself as heir to a Whitmanic tradition that holds (as Ginsberg says in his “Footnote to Howl”) that “Everybody’s holy.”
It’s also just a really, really good line, and there’s intrinsic merit in that.
Sometimes I think it’s embarrassing that seemingly the only subject on which I can speak with any knowledge is Ginsberg, but mostly I don’t mind. At least I know that, unlike most of the time I try to talk about lit, I’m not bullshitting.
Emily Rutherford 