Winner of the Penguin Employee Poetry Contest

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In celebration of National Poetry Month, Penguin Group's Diversity Committee held a poetry contest. The winner by unanimous vote is "ALLEN GINSBERG SIGHTING, 1988" by Jeffrey Freiert, Copywriter in Berkeley's editorial department.

ALLEN GINSBERG SIGHTING, 1988

One of the best minds of an older generation
sat in the Kiev, that East Village diner

not starving, hysterical, or naked
but clothed, calm, and eating babka.

From the street we peered through the glass
to watch the bald, bearded poet nosh.

His focused mastication reminded us
of Zen meditation, savored and unrushed.

My friend Flaster turned to me and asked
if I'd heard that song he did with the Clash.

"Starved in Metropolis," I chanted,
as we moved from where we were standing.

Seeking not jazz or sex but soup,
for a friend on Avenue B with the flu,

we entered the diner and walked to the counter.
And he was only several tables over.

The total animal soup of time? No,
we got chicken soup with challah to go.

Too cool to gawk while we ordered,
we heard him gently ask for more water.

The waitress seemed not to hear as she passed.
The poet, embarrassed, looked down at his glass.

Jeffrey had this to say about writing "ALLEN GINSBERG SIGHTING, 1988": Seeing Ginsberg sitting by himself in the Kiev was a thrill for me, but at the same time it had this understated feeling of being oddly ordinary. That's what I wanted to capture. Then the fun was to take such a wild, unrestrained poem like "Howl" and contrast that language with very ordered and comically prosaic couplets.

Posted by: Christina Castro, Online Marketing Assistant

Poetry, Allen Ginsberg, National Poetry Month, Penguin Bloggers, Christina Castro