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Allen Ginsberg
University of Oregon, 1980s
I started reading at age five and wrote my first poem at age six. At age nine I started my first foreign language, two years later French, and then Latin. I had English for nine years, French for seven, and Latin for five years. I also studied Russian at the community college and picked up some Ivrit (modern Hebrew) later when I live in Israel.
I read poetry in all of those languages and also wrote some in almost all of them. I love languages. I love words.
Before I came to the United States the second time, as a graduate exchange student in English, I had already read Kerouac’s On The Road and had fallen in love with the wide open roads in America before I even got here.
Since then, I have crisscrossed the States several times, sometimes fairly comfortably in my own car, sometime less so — three days and four nights on a Greyhound bus.
Once arrived in Eugene and enrolled as a student, I took a class, “Dylan and others,” where we also discussed the beat poets, particularly Ginsberg.
I was excited then to hear that Allen Ginsberg would come to speak at the University of Oregon EMU (Erb Memorial Union) and decided to attend.
The newspaper clipping from the early 80s is all I have about this event.
