Back in the waning halcyon days of the Dinkins administrations, back when a 15 year old suburban kid could buy Sam Adams at a bodgea and dudes stood outside restaurants in Little Italy, beckoning you in (and serving you Sam Adams even if you were 15), I had the pleasure of seeing a very-old Allen Ginsberg perform at NYU.

It was mostly a musical performance.  He sat on a stool, all typically-yogi-like, and had a dude playing acoustic guitar to his right.  Two songs I remember.  One, a very deviant sex song.

And the second, a very David Peel-ish song about marijuana.  Allen riffed on the stark data over a percussive jam: 36,300 deaths a year due to nicotine; zero for marijuana, etc.  Poignant stuff.  (Ahh if only that stupid, wet blanket David Brooks was in attendance.)

My point?

Oh, it’s just that we haven’t written about Allen in a while.  That and we just got some copies of Jack Kerouac/Allen Ginsberg: The Letters in stock, and whilst ordering it, we happened to stumble upon Allen’s suggested reading list!

Yes, it’s a list that was printed for his students at the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics, the writing department that Ginsberg founded with Anne Waldman at Naropa University in 1974.  (Fun fact: Anne performed here in October!)

Click the images below to read’em and thanks to Flavorpill!