Face the Nation Thru Hickman’s rolling earth hills icy winter gray sky bare trees lining the road South to Wichita you’re in the Pepsi Generation Signum enroute Aiken Republican on the radio 60,000 Northvietnamese troops now infiltrated but over 250,000 South Vietnamese armed men our Enemy— Not Hanoi our enemy Not China our enemy The Viet Cong! McNamara made a “bad guess” “Bad Guess?” chorused the Reporters. Yes, no more than a Bad Guess, in 1962 “8000 American Troops handle the Situation” Bad Guess in 1954, 80% of the Vietnamese people would’ve voted for Ho Chi Minh wrote Ike years later Mandate for Change A bad guess in the Pentagon And the Hawks were guessing all along Bomb China’s 200,000,000 cried Stennis from Mississippi I guess it was 3 weeks ago Holmes Alexander in Albuquerque Journal Provincial newsman said I guess we better begin to do that Now, his typewriter clacking in his aged office on a side street under Sandia Mountain? Half the world away from China Johnson got some bad advice Republican Aiken sang to the Newsmen over the radio The General guessed they’d stop infiltrating the South if they bombed the North— So I guess they bombed! Pale Indochinese boys came thronging thru the jungle in increased numbers …
FE Author: Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg on Everything
by Allen Ginsberg, Art Kunkin
Fifth Estate # 5, March 6-20, 1966
Copyright 1966 by the Los Angeles Free Press. Reprinted with permission. “All a man wants is a home like a castle, all a man wants is peace at his door, all a man wants is a tree by his window…” …
Ginsberg: The trees are our allies
by Allen Ginsberg, David Gaynes
Fifth Estate # 91, October 30-November 12, 1969
Editors’ Note: this interview with poet Allen Ginsberg took place at 10 a.m. on October 15 while driving from Detroit’s inner city to Macomb College, where he was reading. Ginsberg was in the area doing a series of readings for …
The Maharishi and Me
by Allen Ginsberg
Fifth Estate # 54, May 16-31, 1968
I saw Maharishi speak here January 21st and then went up to the Plaza Hotel that evening (I’d phoned for tickets to his organization and on return telephone call they invited me up, saying Maharishi wanted to see me)… so …
Conversations with Allen Ginsberg
by Allen Ginsberg, Fifth Estate Collective
Fifth Estate # 350, Fall, 1997
Two interviews with the poet on life, death, sex, poetry, Kerouac, and meditation—the first from 1991, published here for the first time; the second from the October 1969 issue of Fifth Estate.