"Fortunately art is a community effort --a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh."Ginsberg, Allen

I met Allen Ginsberg. I spent a week attending lectures by him when I was 17. I was just beginning to become aware of my own ability to write. I had an inkling we were of the same kind. But I was a high school student and shy. Every day for a week, my English class went to see him lecture in the Rare Books room of the undergraduate library at the University of Buffalo. The room was packed and I sat with my friend Joe, only friend from high school I speak to.

I don't recall anything he said, just being there. I read last night he declined speaking fees for years,but if the institution insisted he told them to give it to the library for the purchase of poetry books. He gave my friend Joe $10 and told him to give it to our library to buy a replacement for the book of Ginsberg's Joe had taken from the school library and asked him to sign. Ginsberg knew Joe would never return it now that it was signed; hysterically- years later his mother gave it back to our high school library.

The last night of Ginsberg visit he gave a reading at the Albright Knox ( most amazing Art gallery for a small city). We arrived late and prepared to line the walls. An usher saw us and asked a high society lady to remove her fur from two front-row-center seats so that we could sit down.

If I am honest, I like to think our meeting was like the photo of Clinton meeting JFK.