Wild Orphan Comments

The young man in the poem could be Ginsberg himself, seeing 'the imaginary automobiles/ and dead souls of Tarrytown.'The father-homeless- could be surprised by a visit from his son, 'the unexpected/youthful stranger'. Allen's father, Louis Ginsberg, was a good lyric poet and teacher, not the type to be in a flophouse.

to create out of his own imagination the beauty of his wild forebears-a mythology he cannot inherit. great poem. tony