New York Beats

In Ginsberg's first year at Columbia he met fellow undergraduate Lucien Carr, who introduced him to a
number of future Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and John Clellon
Holmes. They bonded, because they saw in one another an excitement about the potential of American
youth, a potential that existed outside the strict conformist confines of post–World War II, McCarthy-
era America.[46] Ginsberg and Carr talked excitedly about a "New Vision" (a phrase adapted from
Yeats' "A Vision"), for literature and America. Carr also introduced Ginsberg to Neal Cassady, for
whom Ginsberg had a long infatuation.[47] In the first chapter of his 1957 novel On the Road Kerouac
described the meeting between Ginsberg and Cassady.[38] Kerouac saw them as the dark (Ginsberg) and
light (Cassady) side of their "New Vision", a perception stemming partly from Ginsberg's association
with communism, of which Kerouac had become increasingly distrustful. Though Ginsberg was never
a member of the Communist Party, Kerouac named him "Carlo Marx" in On the Road. This was a
source of strain in their relationship.[22]

Also, in New York, Ginsberg met Gregory Corso in the Pony Stable Bar. Corso, recently released from
prison, was supported by the Pony Stable patrons and was writing poetry there the night of their
meeting. Ginsberg claims he was immediately attracted to Corso, who was straight, but understood
homosexuality after three years in prison. Ginsberg was even more struck by reading Corso's poems,
realizing Corso was "spiritually gifted." Ginsberg introduced Corso to the rest of his inner circle. In
their first meeting at the Pony Stable, Corso showed Ginsberg a poem about a woman who lived across
the street from him and sunbathed naked in the window. Amazingly, the woman happened to be
Ginsberg's girlfriend that he was living with during one of his forays into heterosexuality. Ginsberg
took Corso over to their apartment. There the woman proposed sex with Corso, who was still very
young and fled in fear. Ginsberg introduced Corso to Kerouac and Burroughs and they began to travel
together. Ginsberg and Corso remained lifelong friends and collaborators.[22]

Shortly after this period in Ginsberg's life, he became romantically involved with Elise Nada Cowen
after meeting her through Alex Greer, a philosophy professor at Barnard College whom she had dated
for a while during the burgeoning Beat generation's period of development. As a Barnard student, Elise
Cowen extensively read the poetry of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, when she met Joyce Johnson and Leo
Skir, among other Beat players. As Cowen had felt a strong attraction to darker poetry most of the time,
Beat poetry seemed to provide an allure to what suggests a shadowy side of her persona. While at
Barnard, Cowen earned the nickname "Beat Alice" as she had joined a small group of anti-
establishment artists and visionaries known to outsiders as beatniks, and one of her first acquaintances
at the college was the beat poet Joyce Johnson who later portrayed Cowen in her books, including
"Minor Characters" and Come and Join the Dance, which expressed the two women's experiences in
the Barnard and Columbia Beat community. Through his association with Elise Cowen, Ginsberg
discovered that they shared a mutual friend, Carl Solomon, to whom he later dedicated his most famous
poem "Howl." This poem is considered an autobiography of Ginsberg up to 1955, and a brief history of
the Beat Generation through its references to his relationship to other Beat artists of that time.