That Time Allen Ginsberg Wrote a Socialist Poem -- About Bernie Sanders

"Last June, while digging through 50 boxes of archival material about Bernie Sanders’s four terms as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a reporter for the British newspaper the Guardian found a poem

(Illustration: Anya Ulinich/Forward)

by Allen Ginsberg. Written by hand on a 1986 visit to the city, 'Burlington Snow' didn’t name Sanders, but he was clearly the populist muse that inspired it.

"Ginsberg wrote, 'Socialist snow on the streets / Socialist talk in the Maverick Bookstore / Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops.' Then he turned outward, questioning with almost Elizabethan wit: '--aren’t the birds frozen socialists? / Aren’t the snowclouds blocking the airfield Social Democratic appearances?'

"After Ginsberg shares the city’s governing idea, the poem itself is shared: 'Isn’t this poem socialist? It doesn’t belong to me anymore.'”

That Time Allen Ginsberg Wrote a Socialist Poem -- About Bernie Sanders by Allan M. Jalon (Forward)