Allen Ginsberg is a Mensch, by M. Brooke Wiese

Poetry, chapbook, 20 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

In this, Wiese’s third book, she writes of her relationship and experiences with the old poet, the standard-bearer of the Beat Generation of poets and authors who came to prominence in the 1950s and 60s, and whose work influenced the culture of the post-World War II era. Ginsberg himself was a guru or guide of the radical changes in poetry that began in the late 19th century with Walt Whitman, continued with Pound and Eliot, and continues to be the dominant poetic form today. Ginsberg used free verse to express countercultural ideals, often with a sense of humor and play.

In this short work, Wiese creates a picture (real and imagined) of the “ageing, famous, bearded Buddhist bard” who instructs her and her fellow student poets at night at Brooklyn College, and she takes delight at the upbraiding of a particularly self-absorbed student. She creates a vivid scene of a party at Ginsberg’s apartment, where Ginsberg’s friends – other ageing Beats of notoriety – seem to be brought in as special exhibits for the young poets. And she returns at the end, with quiet contemplation, to end-of-life scenarios – his mother, hers, the old poet himself. Her respect for and love of Ginsberg is a translucent wash across every poem.

In the same way that the imagists, the modernists, and then the Beats broke with the earlier traditions of strictly metered and end-rhymed poetry, Wiese breaks from the free verse of her teacher/tutor/mentor Allen Ginsberg, and writes her homage to him using the strict forms of rhymed and metered quatrains, sonnets, terza rima and, with a nod to the importance of Eastern influences on Ginsberg, even a Renga chain of poems.

M. Brooke Wiese’s work has appeared most recently in Gyroscope Review, The Road Not Taken, Sparks of Calliope, The Chained Muse, Impossible Archetype, Poets for Science, The Orchards, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Her second chapbook is now out from Finishing Line Press, and poet Billy Collins has taught her sonnets. After a very long hiatus she has been writing furiously again. She writes mostly in traditional forms, in a modern voice on timeless and contemporary topics. Brooke lives with her wife and sons in New York City and currently teaches at a special education school to high school students of all abilities.