I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation

What do Abraham Lincoln and Allen Ginsberg have in common?

In Slate, Robert Pinsky discusses Lincoln's poem "My Childhood-Home I See Again" and its references to Lincoln's childhood friend Matthew Gentry.

At 19, Matthew went violently insane and spent the rest of his life locked up. In his confinement, the crazy man sang, and Lincoln describes himself as drawn to the singing: He "stole away" at night to hear it, "all silently and still." The song, says the poem, seemed like "the funeral dirge … of reason dead and gone." Yet it was "sweet" as well as "distant" and "lone": adjectives that re-enforce the idea of fellow-feeling by Lincoln toward Matthew.

Allen Ginsberg was also moved to poetry by a friend who was institutionalized. Ginsberg's masterwork, "Howl" is dedicated to Carl Solomon whom he met during his own stay at the Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute, or "Rockland" as it is referred to in the poem.

"I'm with you in Rockland where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void."