Queer Places:
891 Academy Rd, Woodmere, NY 11598
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Jewish Cemetery
Athens, Regional unit of Athens, Attica, Greece
Alan Ansen (January 23, 1922 – November 12, 2006) was an American poet, playwright, and associate of Beat Generation writers.[1][2]
Ansen was a widely read scholar who knew many languages.
W.H. Auden's secretary and close friend, he is buried in the same cemetery that
the last partner of Auden, Chester Kallman. As late as 1962, in such a
supposedly accepting, cosmopolitan city as Venice,
Peggy Guggenheim, who in
1948 had bought and renovated the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, once
Luisa
Casati’s home, lost some of her expatriate gay friends when the Venice police
decided to rid the city of such types. Those who went included the Beat writer
Alan Ansen, the painter Robert Brady and the art dealer
Arthur Jeffress.
Alan Joseph Aisenstein was born in New York City, 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,[3] 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. William Gaddis, who spent time in the early
1950s on Long Island with Kerouac and Ansen, wrote that Ansen had never quite received the credit he deserved for being "the mentor he was for this whole Beat group," staying up with Jack until dawn drinking and talking.[4]
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 flowers—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.[5]
My published books:
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