Alan Ansen (January 23, 1922 â€" November 12, 2006) was an American poet, playwright, and associate of Beat Generation writers. He was a widely read scholar who knew many languages. Ansen grew up on Long Island and was educated at Harvard. He worked as W. H. Auden's secretary and research assistant in 1948-49; he was the main author of the chronological tables in Auden's The Portable Greek Reader and Poets of the English Language.
He became a close friend of various Beat writers, and was the model for flamboyant characters in their fiction, including Rollo Greb in Jack Kerouac's On the Road, AJ in William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, and Dad Deform in Gregory Corso's American Express. Ansen spent time in Tangiers with Paul Bowles and was a close associate of Allen Ginsberg.
Ansen lived mostly in Athens after the early 1960s, where he was part of a circle of writers that included James Merrill and Chester Kallman. Rachel Hadas, who also lived in Athens and met Ansen in 1969, described his life in "the tall old house on Alopekis Street":
Alan's apartment was notable for innumerable books and vases full of tall flowersâ€"gladiolas, in particular.... There were two sofas in the flower- and book-filled living room, hard and covered with grubby tapestries, but very comfortable.... He had a sensible policy of not lending anything from his library, but the contents of many of his books, in any case, seemed to be in his head; he recited, declaimed and burst (in the case of opera) into song. Alan lived books, in a way that was rare even then.
His works
- The Old Religion. Tibor de Nagy Gallery Editions, New York 1959; 300 copies. (poems)
- Disorderly Houses: A Book of Poems. Wesleyan University Series, Middletown, CT 1961. Wesleyan Poetry Series.
- William Burroughs: An Essay. Water Row Press, Sudbury 1986. (combines three previously published essays)
- The Vigilantes: A Fragment. Water Row Press, Sudbury 1987. (from an unpublished novel)
- Contact Highs: Selected Poems. Dalkey Archive Press, Elmwood Park, IL 1989. Introduction by Steven Moore.
- The Table Talk of W.H. Auden. Sea Cliff Press, New York 1989. Ed. by Nicholas Jenkins, introduction by Richard Howard; excerpts from conversation diaries. (reprinted with two other publishers)
References
Further reading
Archival resources
- Alan Ansen collection of papers, 1942-1953 (72 items) are housed at the New York Public Library.
- Allen Ginsberg Papers, 1937-1994 (circa 1,000 linear feet) are housed at the Stanford University Department of Special Collections.
External links
- Beat Generation Biographies
- Disorderly Houses by Alan Ansen