GLR Review March-April 2019

D ANIEL A. B URR Intersectionally Yours I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé by Michael Arceneaux Atria/37 Ink. 256 pages, $17. M ICHAEL ARCENEAUX, born in Houston to a fam- ily originally from Louisiana, is a self-described country boy. He was raised Catholic but by his twen- ties had stopped attending church, much to the chagrin of his devout mother. Arceneaux, who now lives in Harlem, is black and gay. Since graduating from college more than twenty years ago, he has made his living as a writer of essays that have ap- peared in print publications, social media, and now in his first book, in which he writes, often quite humorously, about his per- sonal life. His take on what it means to be a gay, African-Amer- ican ex-Catholic from Texas often defies expectations and forces readers to confront their comfortable but misguided as- sumptions on any number of topics. I Can’t Date Jesus can be both funny and unsettling. I RENE J AVORS Planet Ginsberg Goes East Iron Curtain Journals: January–May 1965 by Allen Ginsberg Edited by Michael Schumacher Univ. of Minnesota Press. 400 pages, $29.95 I N THE EARLY 1990s, I attended an event at New York’s Madison Square Garden at which the Dalai Lama was of- fering teachings on Tibetan Buddhism. Among the specta- tors in the packed Garden was Allen Ginsberg. I noticed his presence while walking up the aisle to my seat a few rows be- hind him. As I passed by, I noticed that his prayer beads were out and that he was counting them as he recited some sort of mantra. I imagined that he was saying a Tibetan prayer, but as I got within hearing distance, I heard the following incantation: “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” I was not surprised that Ginsberg had substituted his own “mantra” for the Tibetan “ Om Mani Padme Hum ” (“Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus”). He was what used to be called “an orig- inal” who lived on his own Planet Ginsberg. Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1926, the author of Howl (1956) and Kaddish (1961) was friends with all of the Beats: Carl Solomon, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and his longtime partner Peter Orlovsky. Howl contained references to homosexuality and illegal drugs, and his publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested in 1957 for publishing the book. At the resulting ob- scenity trial, the judge ruled that the poem was permissible be- cause it had “redeeming social value.” Ginsberg’s major themes involved madness, homosexual- ity, drugs, his mother’s mental illness, and his critique of soci- ety’s repressive rules and roles. These ideas recur throughout his published works, including his journals. Iron Curtain Jour- nals: January–May 1965 , edited with an introduction by biog- rapher Michael Schumacher ( Dharma Lion, 2016), is the first volume in a trilogy that’s being published by the University of Minnesota Press. The second volume, South American Jour- nals , will be published in 2019, and the third volume, The Fall of America , in 2021. The first volume offers a glimpse into Ginsberg’s thought processes as he traveled to Cuba, Prague, Poland, Russia, and England at the height of the Cold War, long before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. From the journals we learn about his meetings with young people, literary colleagues, and govern- ment officials. His public questioning of repressive state poli- cies regarding homosexuality, drugs, and free speech eventually led to his expulsion from all of the Iron Curtain countries. Ginsberg wrote several moving journal entries when in Russia as he attempted to make contact with the remnants of his extended family (both of his parents came from Russia). We find him deeply moved when in Poland to visit the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz. He ended his journey in Lon- don, where he was involved in a mass cultural event—an inter- national poetry festival held in Prince Albert Hall. Seven thou- sand people attended this poetry “be-in.” From these journals, we get a picture of Ginsberg as a cul- tural provocateur who was willing to challenge repressive au- thority wherever he encountered “cultural commissars,” and he was willing to risk beatings, jail, and deportation to express what he believed in. Contained within the journals are first drafts of several well-known poems, including “Who Be Kind To” and “Kral Majales.” This collection is highly recommended for Ginsberg aficionados as well as those interested in the Beat generation and its message of individuality and freedom. _________________________________________________ Irene Javors, a frequent contributor to this magazine, lives in Queens, New York.         Ginsberg and poet Andrei Voznesensky, Moscow, 1965. Courtesy the Allen Ginsberg Estate.