The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder

by Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Bill Morgan (Editor)

One of the central relationships in the Beat scene was the long-lasting friendship of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ginsberg introduced Snyder to the East Coast Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, while Snyder himself became the model for the serious poet that Ginsberg so wanted to become. Snyder encouraged Ginsberg to explore the beauty of the West Coast and, even more lastingly, introduced Ginsberg to Buddhism, the subject of so many long letter exchanges between them.

Beginning in 1956 and continuing through 1995, the two men exchanged more than 850 letters. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's biographer and an important editor of his papers, has selected the most significant correspondence from this long friendship. The letters themselves paint the biographical and poetic portraits of two of America's most important — and most fascinating — poets.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Autobiography

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Allen Ginsberg was a groundbreaking American poet and activist best known for his central role in the Beat Generation and for writing the landmark poem Howl. Born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish parents, Ginsberg grew up in a household shaped by both intellectualism and psychological struggle. His father, Louis Ginsberg, was a published poet and a schoolteacher, while his mother, Naomi, suffered from severe mental illness, which deeply affected Ginsberg and later influenced his writing—most notably in his poem Kaddish.
As a young man, Ginsberg attended Columbia University, where he befriended other future Beat luminaries such as Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. These relationships formed the core of what became known as the Beat Generation—a loose-knit group of writers and artists who rejected mainstream American values in favor of personal liberation, spontaneity, spiritual exploration, and radical politics.
Ginsberg rose to national prominence in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems, released by City Lights Books in San Francisco. Howl, an emotionally charged and stylistically experimental poem, offered an unfiltered vision of America’s underbelly. It included candid references to homosexuality, drug use, and mental illness—subjects considered taboo at the time. The poem led to an obscenity trial, which ultimately concluded in Ginsberg’s favor, setting a precedent for freedom of speech in literature.
His work consistently challenged social norms and addressed themes of personal freedom, sexual identity, spirituality, and political dissent. Ginsberg was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was still criminalized in much of the United States, and he became a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights throughout his life. His poetry often intertwined the personal with the political, blending confessional intimacy with a broader critique of American society.
Beyond his literary achievements, Ginsberg was also a dedicated activist. He protested against the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, and later, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. He was present at many pivotal cultural and political moments of the 1960s and 1970s, including the 1968 Democratic National Convention and various countercultural gatherings. His spiritual journey led him to Buddhism, which deeply influenced his writing and worldview. He studied under Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa and helped establish the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Ginsberg’s later years were marked by continued literary output and collaborations with musicians such as Bob Dylan and The Clash. His poetry collections, including Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, and The Fall of America, were widely read and respected. He received numerous honors for his work, including the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
He died of liver cancer in 1997 at the age of 70. Today, Allen Ginsberg is remembered not only as a pioneering poet, but also as a courageous voice for free expression, social justice, and spiritual inquiry. His influence on American literature and culture remains profound and enduring.

Reviews

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

What do Beat Poets discuss in their private correspondence? Judging from these letters, that stretch over four decades, they make plans to meet up that more often than not don't work out; they talk about the property they own jointly and its expenses; they talk about which Zen master they are currently working with; and, in the case of Ginsburg, they describe their hellacious schedule of readings, workshops, and teaching engagements. And at no point, that I can remember, does either of these men show any particular sense of humor or the ability to casually gossip about the circles they move in. (Snyder doesn't exactly "move in a circle." He stays put in the foothills of the Sierras and lets the circles come to him.)

I am not saying that I think Snyder and Ginsburg should write like Truman Capote or Tennessee Williams, but I was struck after the first 100 pages or so by just how mundane their correspondence was. The project to get a deck built on Ginsburg's cabin in California stretches over several years. And while they mention what is going on with family and friends -- whether Peter Orlovsky is in or out of rehab, how much is Gregory Corso drinking -- they never seem to be opening up to one another.

This book has almost no annotations, and it should be read alongside a Ginsburg biography, which is something I haven't read. And if the correspondence is short of personal revelations, you do get a sense of how their respective careers develop. Early on, Ginsburg mentions that another 10,000 copies of Howl have sold and he is expecting a $200 check that will more or less fund his stay in India. Throughout the 1970's they have building expenses under a couple of hundred dollars per project.t. But towards then end, Snyder mentions that his teaching position at UC Davis will bring in $70,000 per annum, and Ginsburg has sold papers to Stanford for a million.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry is by its nature elevated language. No matter how we try to drag it down to earth with flarf or cutups, Dada Bestiality or computer-generated randomness, by framing it with a page we exalt, indeed capture the choices we've made.
And this is what I love about the vanishing art of letter writing. The same choices are made but it's casual and personal--at least in a close relationship. Out of all the beat poets, Ginsberg and Snyder were perhaps the best known and the most politically active. Indeed, these concerns are often expressed in their epistles.
Snyder book the Back Country was the first book of poems I dived into, and I consider Howl as perhaps the greatest single poem of the post-war years, so I have my biases, but most of all I just enjoy the personal touch, the directness and groundedness of these letters.

[Sarah Phoenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great way to take a look into the relationship between these two men during and after the heyday of the beat generation. It is easy to see the unselfish love between these two men and how fluid and easy a true friendship can be.

[Meg]

There's not really a way to fairly rate or review a collection of letters like this, as entirely too much is dependent on the amount of prior knowledge and overall context of the reader coming into it. I've been geeking out on learning about Snyder's life for a few years now, so was happy to ferret through for things like details on how the project of living on the land at Kitkitdizze was shaping up in a given year. Others are likely to approach this with less interest in such an endeavor. But there are really interesting and surprising facts to discover here -- like Snyder's resignation from the Tricycle> advisory board because of a (hopefully changed in the decades since) basically racist outlook and failure to recognize Asian-American contributions to American Buddhist practice.

And I'll add, it's never a bad thing to learn that even your literary heroes probably spent most of their time just trying to figure out how to pay their bills.

[Audra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I find the older I get, the less patience I have for dudes (even revered dudes, even dudes I have previously revered myself!) and their casual misogyny, othering, and professed insights into spiritual systems they "discover" from "exotic" lands. I know I'm being overly harsh with these two right now, but this rubbed me in an unpleasant way that was quite different from Snyder's letters with Wendell Berry.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing look into the intimate friendship between two of the most influential poets and thinkers of the American 20th century. The correspondence covers nearly four decades and touches on countless topics that demonstrate the depth and the evolution of both men’s visions for poetry, America, their lives and our natural world.

[Dwayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I suddenly realize sex is repressed in kids from infancy on. One baby girl two years laughing grabbed my naked cock, I got a hard on, she held on tight awhile and then giggled and toddle off." - Ginsberg

Yeah, maybe why Snyder stayed in his little zone out in Nevada...

[Alan Davies]

The letters have been selected and edited by Bill Morgan / eminent Ginsbergologist. Names of people referred to in the letters are sometimes footnoted / sometimes not – so we’re frequently deprived of that knowledge. We have to assume / as always with such matters / that the editor has been fair and representative in his choice of letters.

The letters begin when the poets were about thirty / when they are each briefly in California / go on to chart their sometimes separate sometimes ensemble travels through Japan and India / often in company of Joanne Kyger and/or Peter Orlovsky / partners of Snyder and Ginsberg. At the time they were both gaining recognition as singularly significant poets / each in his own right.

Together with Richard Baker / Snyder and Ginsberg purchase property in Nevada City CA / 60 miles northeast of Sacramento and a 150 mile drive from San Francisco. Snyder builds a hermitage there / and later oversees the building of Ginsberg’s cabin. As it happens / Ginsberg very rarely visits his property / and by the end of the letters in 1995 Snyder has purchased it from him.

Snyder travels occasionally to give readings or attend conferences. By the of the book he is teaching college full time in order to support his family. Meanwhile / Ginsberg purchases a farm in Cherry Valley upstate NY / and starts with Anne Waldman the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Chögyam Trungpa’s Naropa Institute in Boulder CO. He travels extensively to countries around the world to give readings. He teaches at Naropa and for a while at Brooklyn College.

It is clear from the tone and persistence of their correspondence / as well as from what they write to each other / that the two men really liked and loved one another. There are frequent expressions of Gary missing Allen / and vice versa / and it’s clear from tone and context that was not just a rhetorical formulation. Both of them studied Buddhism and practiced meditation / which must have been bonding / along with their being poets.

Ginsberg has a tendency to boast about his achievements / especially the number of books he has had published / the number of languages into which they’ve been translated / the number of places where he gives readings / the great number of people who attend those readings / and the famous people with whom he’s performed or otherwise been in touch. He becomes famous / in part via the hippy movement’s adoption of him and his poems / in part because of his anti-Vietnam War and gay rights activism / in part because of his involvement with Buddhist practices / and in part because he was a hell of a good poet / and a mostly likeable fellow.

Snyder is more modest about what he reports of his life. He also gains recognition for his rather stolid poems / and for his vigorous environmental activism / and by some for the Buddhist and Asian experiences that inform both his poetic and meditation practices. He is more reserved than Ginsberg. From time to time he responds to Ginsberg’s news of far and many travels with information about his mostly peaceful and successful coexistence with the wild country in which he and his family / as well as neighbors and friends / are inhabitants.

For Ginsberg life was to be lived large / with brief periods of retreat and meditation. For Snyder life was to be cherished / in an almost meticulous way.

This from Snyder’s brief note at the book’s beginning –

We argued a lot and were not easy on each other. I made him walk more, and he made me talk more. It was good for both of us.
+
Allen was remarkable for his transgressive sanity. I swung between extremes of Buddhist scholar and hermit nerdiness and tanker-seaman craziness at bars and parties. I sense, reading these letters again, that our mutual respect continued to grow.

/ Copyright © Alan Davies 2021

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

These letters are pretty boring: mostly discussions of travel plans and book tours and reading series. If they had lived a few decades later, this would all have been emails and faxes and phone calls, but back in the day long distance phone calls were expensive so people wrote letters. It is really mostly businesslike stuff about can I crash at your place when I'm in town and you owe me $50 and here are those books you said you wanted me to send.

There is a very real sense of affection between the two poets.
In fact, I heard Snyder read a few months after Ginsberg passed away, and his comments then on Ginsberg death were profound and personal and moving.

But in these letters, Ginsberg comes across as a much nicer guy than Snyder, who seems to be always giving instructions.

Also, the editing is not the most helpful. There are inserts to tell you that "WCW" is shorthand for William Carlos Williams, but complex Buddhist concepts fly by unglossed. And although the letters are "selected" and there are some marked elisions, there is little explanation about editorial criteria for inclusion or exclusion. Many of the letters originally included poems which were then discussed, but this collection excludes the poems on the grounds that they are available in the poets' other published collections. Well, of course they are, but it would have been so much more convenient to have them included and since the book is an approved publication with full cooperation of interested parties, I can't imagine the permissions would have been such a problem for a handful of poems. If it was interests of space, the poems would have been better than yet another letter saying "I still don't know what my travel plans are blah blah blah."

If I was not reading this for an academic project, I would not have finished it.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warm portrait of a personal and poetic friendship as it unfolds over the course of forty years. The correspondence goes through several phases: an early stage during which both Snyder and Ginsberg are traveling the world, figuring out their spiritual and literary vocations; a middle phase set against the backdrop of the sixties, which, not surprisingly, circles around politics; and a final phase during which much of their time is spent working out details involving travel schedules and the upkeep of the homestead they bought together in the California mountains. (Snyder lived there; Ginsberg visited only rarely, despite his oft-stated desire to use it as a retirement retreat.)

I love both poets and there were times when their discussions felt like an internal dialog between the part of me which loves Ginsberg's New York (especially the pre-gentrification east village, where he lived) and the part of me which shares Snyder's love for the mountains. Snyder had a much clearer notion of what he was doing; Ginsberg knew that he often lost focus as he held together a large and chaotic community. (Probably the best definition of the "Beat Generation" is "people who knew Allen Ginsberg.") But both were serious in their pursuit of the dharma and their dedication to clarity of poetic perception.

This is a book for insiders. People coming to the writers for the first time should start with "Howl," "Kaddish," "Wichita Vortex Sutra," "Iron Horse" (Ginsberg) and either Turtle Island or The Real Work (poetry and essays/interviews respectively by Snyder.)

[Lianne]

It was informative to track this correspondence between these two poets of the Beat generation, both of whom became practicing Buddhists. I was impressed by how hard they have both worked in their craft indefatigable in their constant travel, giving readings, teaching, maintaining their meditation practice, building community. They truly supported each other throughout their lives, emotionally, financially, and in their professional growth. They critiqued each other's poetry and commiserated over each other's personal wounds. A great testimony to friendship and the perseverance of what it takes to keep on growing all one's life.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knocked off a star just because reading of travel arrangements and other pragmatic details got pretty tedious here and there. But such is the nature of letter-writing, so who the hell cares? The good stuff was in Snyder and Ginsberg's exchanges regarding Buddhism, poetics, ecology, hallucinogens, sustainable living, and politics. It's clear that both poets maintained a friendship founded on mutual respect, loving kindness, good humour, and a strong dedication to the world of poetry and community activism, both in Buddhist and secular ways. Can only tell you that it was refreshing to read, and somehow gave greater human insight into the lives of both men.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning was interesting, their friendship was new, and the sharing of ideas was prevalent in their letters. As time went on though the correspondence was more business like, concerning land, property, taxes, and general goings on. I know much about Ginsberg already but this opened up more details about his daily life. I learned a lot about Gary Snyder's character from these letters too. There is not much value here for students of literature, but for students of biography, and personality, I think this book will server quite well.

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

So amazing to read four decades of thoughtful, intelligent, inquisitive, creative, adventurous, soul-spelunking letters between two of the brightest minds of the 20th century. I like to read what they thought of their own and each other's work, as well as to follow their journeys to other countries and cultures around the planet. These missives reveal a very tender, protective and supportive friendship that lasted most of their lives.

[Cherie]

B+ I never read too much Gary Snyder before, but this book gave me insight to both Ginsberg and Snyder. I've read various books of letters and journals of Ginsy's, but this gives additional info abt his life…esp into the spiritual side. You really see how he overextended himself into his life. For the hardcore Ginsy and Snyder fans.

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

My dear bookminded friends of old and new standing, even those I've never met, or never will, of bookish minds, please dig my lttle plug right here:

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-83...

[Jared]

Letter writing is a lost art, and I expect these letters to be artful. But what I'm really waiting for is the LOVE TEXT MESSAGES OF SO AND SO.

[Had Walmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

How very important close friendship and communication is in supporting our pursuits and directions in life!

[Gerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

yea I liked it. a long time friendship shared ...special insight into both.