To the editors of the Chicago Reader:
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I was underwhelmed by Frank Melcori’s rambling non-tribute to Allen Ginsberg [Our Town, April 18]. Maybe some conservatives would consider such a self-indulgent rap about his car repairman and his unwillingness to move in with his girlfriend an appropriate farewell to the free-spirited, anti-authoritarian, protest-leading, drug-loving, cock-sucking, butt-fucking, meditating, chanting peacenik, poet, and mystic, but I saw it as small-minded and shabby. Instead of eulogizing the great mind and open heart of the good gay poet, Melcori focused on himself. Is he so afraid we might suspect him of homosexual sympathies that he feels it necessary to describe going to bed with his girlfriend, whom he seems to blame for his own narrowness of soul? This is the best memorial we get? I’d much rather read this, from Ginsberg’s own introduction to The Annotated “Howl”:
Jeff Grygny
