Improvisation in Beijing

Allen Ginsberg (1926 - 1997)

I write poetry because the English word Inspiration comes from Latin Spiritus, breath, I want to breathe freely.

I write poetry because Walt Whitman gave world permission to speak with candor.

I write poetry because Walt Whitman opened up poetry's verse-line for unobstructed breath.

I write poetry because Ezra Pound saw an ivory tower, bet on one wrong horse, gave poets permission to write spoken vernacular idiom.

I write poetry because Pound pointed young Western poets to look at Chinese writing word pictures.

I write poetry because W. C. Williams living in Rutherford wrote New Jerseyesque "I kick yuh eye," asking, how measure that in iambic pentameter?

I write poetry because my father was poet my mother from Russia spoke Communist, died in a mad house.

I write poetry because young friend Gary Snyder sat to look at his thoughts as part of external phenomenal world just like a 1984 conference table.

I write poetry because I suffer, born to die, kidneystones and high blood pressure, everybody suffers.

I write poetry because I suffer confusion not knowing what other people think.

I write because poetry can reveal my thoughts, cure my paranoia also other people's paranoia.

I write poetry because my mind wanders subject to sex politics Budhadharma meditation.

I write poetry to make accurate picture my own mind.

I write poetry because I took Bodhisattva's Four Vows:

Sentient creatures to liberate are numberless in the universe, my own greed ignorance to cut thru's infinite, situations I find myself in are countless as the sky okay, while awakened mind path's endless.

I write poetry because this morning I woke trembling with fear what could I say in China?

I write poetry because Russian poets Mayakovsky and Yesenin committed suicide, somebody else has to talk.

I write poetry because my father reciting Shelley English poet & Vachel Lindsay American poet out loud gave example–big wind inspiration breath.

I write poetry because writing sexual matters was censored in United States.

I write poetry because millionaires East and West ride Rolls-Royce limousines, poor people don't have enough money to fix their teeth.

I write poetry because my genes and chromosomes fall in love with young men not young women.

I write poetry because I have no dogmatic responsibility one day to the next.

I write poetry because I want to be alone and want to talk to people.

I write poetry to talk back to Whitman, young people in ten years, talk to old aunts and uncles still living near Newark, New Jersey.

I write poetry because I listened to black Blues on 1939 radio, Leadbelly and Ma Rainey.

I write poetry inspired by youthful cheerful Beatles' songs grown old.

I write poetry because Chuang-tzu couldn't tell whether he was butterfly or man, Lao-tzu said water flows downhill, Confucius said honor elders, I wanted to honor Whitman.

I write poetry because overgrazing sheep and cattle Mongolia to U.S. Wild West destroys new grass & erosion creates deserts.

I write poetry wearing animal shoes.

I write poetry "First thought, best thought" always.

I write poetry because no ideas are comprehensible except as manifested in minute particulars: "No ideas but in things."

I write poetry because the Tibetan Lama guru says, "Things are symbols of themselves."

I write poetry because newspapers headline a black hole at our galaxy-center, we're free to notice it.

I write poetry because World War I, World War II, nuclear bomb, and World War III if we want it, I don't need it.

I write poetry because first poem Howl not meant to be published was prosecuted by the police.

I write poetry because my second long poem Kaddish honored my mother's parinirvana in a mental hospital.

I write poetry because Hitler killed six million Jews, I'm Jewish.

I write poetry because Moscow said Stalin exiled 20 million Jews and intellectuals to Siberia, 15 million never came back to the Stray Dog Café, St. Petersburg.

I write poetry because I sing when I'm lonesome.

I write poetry because Walt Whitman said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

I write poetry because my mind contradicts itself, one minute in New York, next minute the Dinaric Alps.

I write poetry because my head contains 10,000 thoughts.

I write poetry because no reason no because.

I write poetry because it's the best way to say everything in mind within 6 minutes or a lifetime.