ALLEN GINSBERG / VARIOUS ARTISTS – Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall Of America II – LP – AGR-006

Various artists musically interpret poems from The Fall of America: Poems of these States 1965-1971 on this second volume – to benefit Pen America. Fall of America Poems, published by City Lights Books in San Francisco, covers the years 1965- 1971 when Allen is crisscrossing the country, exploring a system of composition by narrating into the portable reel to reel Uher that Bob Dylan had gifted him. Musical interpretations of Ginbergs poems are performed by Ai Weiwei, Philip Glass, Thurston Moore With Saul Williams, Anne Waldman, Miho Hatori, Jack Dangers, Devendra Banhart, Kai Campos & Cj Mirra, and more. “In 1965, Ginsberg began planning an ambitious project, a book of thematically connected poems, a collection that “discovered” America in poetry similar to the way Kerouac’s On the Road had explored the country in prose. The Vietnam War would be a constant presence overhanging Ginsberg’s travel writings like a darkening shadow affecting daily life in the country. It would be a study of contrasts: natural beauty slammed up against an ugliness that rose out of the tensions of violence. The public’s polarized dialogue over Vietnam and, earlier in the decade, the civil rights movement, convinced Ginsberg that America was teetering on the precipice of a fall.” – Michael Schumacher, from introduction to The Fall of America Journals 1965-1971.

Rough Trade