Allen Ginsberg

When I was a sophomore or junior in high school, probably in 1964 or 1965, I found myself in Los Angeles in Papa Bach’s Bookstore. I remember every minute of the hours I spent looking through all the very unfamiliar books. When I discovered Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, it was like finding the key to a secret room where all the good stuff had been hidden. The world seemed to stand still as I read and reread the beginning pages of “Howl.” I remember thinking: So this is what honesty reads like. So this is what poetry is.

My faith in The Times has been restored (once again) by your decision to mark Ginsberg’s death on the front page (April 6). “Remembrance” by Robert Scheer was a joy, especially this paragraph: “For more than 40 years, he has been a shadow on our conscience, reminding us of the potential for harm by even the best intentioned. His was the anarchist’s independent spirit, but one obsessively nonviolent and always governed by the temperament of the lover.”

JIM MAMER

Modjeska Canyon

* Slowly, slowly, slowly . . . the cancer in our country that was the counterculture is dying off. The passing of Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia and others who led the narrow-minded social movements in the ‘50s and ‘60s gives hope to us that our children may someday live in a society of positive influences.

DAVID COFFIN

Los Angeles