Like so many young wandering Jews with poetic yearnings, we followed the dying strains of Beat Culture to San Francisco with high hopes of hanging out with Ferlinghetti and friends in North Beach (or at the very least, serving them coffee.) Unfortunately, the closest we got to our favorite Beat icon Allen Ginsberg was his memorial service at Temple Emanu-El after he passed in 1997.
While Ginsberg declared himself to to be more gay, Buddhist, angry and dysfunctional than Jewish, Jay Schwartz of j. weekly explains why this poet may be the patron saint of those of us Jews who may not be so young or mobile anymore, but will always yearn for meaning in the words.