Louis Ginsberg

Personal life

Louis Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey on October 1, 1895, to Pincus Ginsberg and Rebecca Schectman Ginsberg. His siblings included Abraham (Abe), Rose, Clara, and Hannah (Honey). Louis was stimulated to write poetry by Margaret Coult, a high school teacher who had him read Milton's L'Allegro or Il Penseroso, and write a poem like it. Louis published his first poem in the Barringer High School yearbook. Louis attended Rutgers University from 1914-1918, being excused from military service on physical grounds. Louis married Naomi Levy, his classmate from Barringer High School in 1919. Naomi taught at a Newark grammar school and Louis taught literature and composition in the English Department at Central High School. He retired from Central High School in 1961, although he began to teach grammar and composition at the Paterson, New Jersey extension of Rutgers University until 1976. Louis and Naomi had two sons, Eugene Brooks Ginsberg in 1921 and Allen Ginsberg in 1926, both of whom became poets. Their marriage ended in divorce due to Naomi's institutionalization for mental illness. Her illness was the focal point for Allen's poem Kaddish, in which he wrote: "and Louis needing a poor divorce, he wants to get married soon". Louis married Edith Ginsberg in 1950 with whom he spent the rest of his life. Louis died on July 6, 1976, and his son Allen, who learned to rhyme from his father, wrote the rhyming poem, Father Death Blues for him on July 8, 1976 over Lake Michigan. The last stanza of this poem appears on Allen Ginsberg's gravestone, which is between the gravestones for Louis and Edith.

Portraits of the Ginsberg family were taken by photographer Richard Avedon and exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery and the Israel Museum.

Poetry

Louis' poems appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, Munsey's Magazine, The Forum, Rutgers' Alumni Quarterly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Contemporary Verse, The Masses, the New York Evening Post, Argosy, the Newark Evening News and other periodicals, as well as in Modern American Poetry: A Critical Anthology, Third Revised Edition (1925) and Modern British Poetry, both edited by Louis Untermeyer. Louis' first book of poetry, The Attic of the Past and other Lyrics, was privately published. He subsidized the publishing of The Everlasting Minute in 1937. In 1970, William Morrow and Company published Morning in Spring, his third book and the first book that he did not have to subsidize. Allen Ginsberg wrote the introduction to this book. Louis' last book, Our Times, was never published on its own. Michael Fournier collected and edited his poems, including those that would have been in Our Times.

Microscope

A lost poem by Louis Ginsberg, entitled Microscope, was found in a copy of the seventeenth edition of Simon Henry Gage's book The Microscope in the Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University.

Puns

Louis Ginsberg published puns in the Newark Star Ledger under the heading "Keep an O'Pun Mind". He often asked and answered, "Is life worth living? It depends on the liver." His collection of puns was never published but they can be found in Box 2, Folder 9 in the Louis Ginsberg Papers at Stanford University. Louis Ginsberg, who died of liver and spleen cancer, told his son Allen Ginsberg, "I never thought my pun would come back to bite me."

Letters

The letters written between Louis Ginsberg and his son Allen Ginsberg were edited by Michael Schumacher and published as Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son.