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Author:
Title: Ginsberg, Allen
Place Published: Typed Letter Signed by Allen Ginsberg to Lizzie Lehrman Rubens Gold Williams, Written in Calcutta, India, Dated September 29, 1962
Publisher:[Calcutta, India]
Date Published:
Description: Sept. 29, 1962

A single page, single-spaced typed letter, written on an American Express Aerogramme, including a handwritten post script written and signed in blue ink. Page measures 26.5x19 cm (10½x7½").

Lizzie Lehrman Rubens Gold Williams was a colorful bohemian character and girlfriend of Lucien Carr, a key member of the original New York City circle of the Beat generation in the 1940's, and she was an integral part of Ginsberg's New York "Subterranean" crowd. She was living in South Africa at the time of this letter. Later she was briefly involved with Charles Bukowski and is called Dee Dee Bronson in his novel Women.

The letter is dated at the top in blue pen: "Amer. Express Calcutta, Sept. 25, 1962."  Ginsberg begins by relaying that he thinks City Lights will be publishing a collection of Malcolm Lowry's poetry, and proceeds to type out a portion of one of his own unpublished poems from 1957 that mentions Lizzie Williams: "see his face in old photographs & bandaged naked wrist leaning/ melancholy contemplating the camera/ awkward face so calm, kind to me in cafeteria one sober morning looking/ for job at breakfast/ mostly smiled at roofedge midnight doom, 1920's elegance incarnate/ in black vomit bestriven suit/ screetch records Mahogany airplane crash, lushed young man of 40's/ hated fairy woe, came on Lizzie's belly or Ansens sock in desperate/ orgies of music canopener/ God but I loved his murdered face when he talked with a mouthful of/ rain in 14th st Subway etc etc." He goes on to mention receiving a letter from Bertrand Russell, telling of how he wept to hear Blake's Tiger Tiger as a child. The letter ends with a handwritten paragraph updating Williams on the current whereabouts of Lucien.

Original folds, some general wear, tattered a bit at the edges; very good.