Allen Ginsberg

First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels

First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels - context Summary

Ken Kesey's Party

This poem situates the reader at Ken Kesey's party with the Hell's Angels, rendering a late-night scene of music, dancing, drug use, and uneasy domestic details. Ginsberg records vivid sensory fragments—speakers, beer cans, a hanged-man sculpture, sleeping children—while police lights revolve outside. The poem compresses countercultural energy and surveillance into a single nocturnal snapshot, emphasizing atmosphere and social tension over narrative progression.

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Cool black night thru redwoods cars parked outside in shade behind the gate, stars dim above the ravine, a fire burning by the side porch and a few tired souls hunched over in black leather jackets. In the huge wooden house, a yellow chandelier at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths dancing to the vibration thru the floor, a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet tights, one muscular smooth skinned man sweating dancing for hours, beer cans bent littering the yard, a hanged man sculpture dangling from a high creek branch, children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks. And 4 police cars parked outside the painted gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

December 1965
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