Harry Fainlight
Encyclopedia
Harry Fainlight was a British/American poet associated with the Beats movement.
He was the younger brother of Ruth Fainlight
(b 1931), also a poet, who edited a posthumous volume of his work, Selected Poems, published in 1986.
, Fainlight was a precocious youth who admired the Beat poets and published in English magazines like Encounter from his early twenties. Dual citizenship gave him the opportunity to travel freely to the US and view heroes such as Allen Ginsberg
at first-hand. He stayed in New York for three years from 1962. During his sojourn there, Ginsberg called him, “the most gifted English poet of his generation”, and Fainlight contributed to Fuck You, a radical arts magazine published by Ed Sanders (see also The Fugs
).
Like Ginsberg, Fainlight was Jewish and a keen experimenter with drugs. While in America his work included a poem, Mescaline Notes and a disturbing epic about a bad LSD trip, The Spider.
Fainlight returned to London in the spring of 1965; there, small imprint, Turret Books, issued the only volume published in England in his lifetime, Sussicran, a slim 12-page pamphlet. The title is “Narcissus” reversed.
Fainlight never sustained a significant relationship, never lived with anyone and was, according to his sister, “in and out of mental hospitals all his adult life." In 1982 whilst suffering from pneumonia, he went for an evening walk in light clothing. He was found later lying in a field dead from hypothermia.
suggested a larger event, incorporating fellow beat writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti
and Gregory Corso who were due in the city. Ginsberg’s girlfriend of the time, Barbara Rubin, asked which was the largest venue in London. Miles’s wife mentioned the Royal Albert Hall. Rubin spontaneously booked the 5000-seat venue for 10 days later.
Incredibly, for a modern poetry reading, the International Poetry Incarnation
was more than sold out. It was, says Miles - in Stephen Gammond’s film, A Technicolour Dream (2008) – “like a poetry rave,” the first sign of many like-minds being interested in “underground’ art.
Harry Fainlight was one of 17 poets booked to appear alongside Ginsberg. His sublime performance can be seen in Peter Whitehead’s film of the event, Wholly Communion (1965). The packed hall takes against the young poet as he begins to read 'The Spider' and is interrupted by Dutch writer Simon Vinkenoog
, high on mescalin, who chants “Love, love!” when the crowd becomes restless. It was hard for Fainlight to continue reading after this. The occasion upset him deeply, though was typical of various crises and outrages in a troubled life.
(IT), a countercultural newspaper launched in October 1966 from the basement of the Indica Bookshop. Tales From The Embassy, a trilogy of stories by Dave Tomlin (another guiding spirit behind IT) features Fainlight as poet Harry Flame. The narrator recalls smiling at Flame on a beautiful morning, the latter replying with a grimace: “I’ll get you for that!”,
When, at the suggestion of Ted Hughes
, Faber & Faber offered to publish Fainlight’s work, he lit a petrol-soaked rag and posted it through the publisher’s letterbox.
But he also joined in with the antic spirit of the time. In late summer 1967 John "Hoppy" Hopkins organised a parade, “The Death and Resurrection of IT”. Fainlight appeared in this piece of improvised street theatre as the human personification of the magazine. He was carried in a coffin on a ‘rebirth journey’ from the Cenotaph
in Whitehall to Notting Hill Gate
(including a ride on the Circle Line), where the procession wound through Portobello Market and IT (Fainlight) was symbolically resurrected at the Tavistock Road junction.
However, when Michael Horovitz
's anthology, Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain
was published by Penguin in 1967, Fainlight, amongst a few other underground poets of the time, was not included.
“underwhelming”, noting that pastoral works far outnumbered the poems inspired by his years in New York and asked “where were the gay-sex-in-toilets poems or the out-of-it-on-drugs poems?” Ruth Fainlight responded with a letter she received from her brother in 1981. Harry Fainlight wrote: “Your particular duty now is to help preserve the poetry that I wrote before I went to America (& since) & which belongs to your own literary area but which has been cut off & isolated from it by those three intervening years. Politically, it is only the work of those three years which they wish to exploit. And the formulae of exploitation are very profitable & so they keep on repeating them. But they have become more & more irrelevant to the whole of my work; those years exist in it only as a body of water, a lake in a far greater surrounding land mass. Certainly they are not where I live. I am saying all this because there is still no one who really cares enough to be responsible for my work; to protect it from the inroads of philistinism. If you do not, it encourages the philistine movement.”
He was the younger brother of Ruth Fainlight
Ruth Fainlight
Ruth Fainlight , is a poet, short story writer, translator and librettist.-Life and career:Fainlight was born in New York, but has mainly lived in England since she was fifteen, having also spent some years living in France and Spain. She studied for two years at the Birmingham and Brighton...
(b 1931), also a poet, who edited a posthumous volume of his work, Selected Poems, published in 1986.
Personal life
Educated at English grammar schools and Cambridge University, where he was contemporary with Ted HughesTed Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
, Fainlight was a precocious youth who admired the Beat poets and published in English magazines like Encounter from his early twenties. Dual citizenship gave him the opportunity to travel freely to the US and view heroes such as Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
at first-hand. He stayed in New York for three years from 1962. During his sojourn there, Ginsberg called him, “the most gifted English poet of his generation”, and Fainlight contributed to Fuck You, a radical arts magazine published by Ed Sanders (see also The Fugs
The Fugs
The Fugs are a band formed in New York in late 1964 by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of the Holy Modal Rounders...
).
Like Ginsberg, Fainlight was Jewish and a keen experimenter with drugs. While in America his work included a poem, Mescaline Notes and a disturbing epic about a bad LSD trip, The Spider.
Fainlight returned to London in the spring of 1965; there, small imprint, Turret Books, issued the only volume published in England in his lifetime, Sussicran, a slim 12-page pamphlet. The title is “Narcissus” reversed.
Fainlight never sustained a significant relationship, never lived with anyone and was, according to his sister, “in and out of mental hospitals all his adult life." In 1982 whilst suffering from pneumonia, he went for an evening walk in light clothing. He was found later lying in a field dead from hypothermia.
The International Poetry Incarnation, June 11, 1965
When Ginsberg visited London in June 1965 he gave a reading at Better Books in Charing Cross Road which proved extremely popular. The shop's manager Barry MilesBarry Miles
Barry Miles is an English author known for his participation in and writing on the subject of the 1960s London underground. He has written numerous books and his work has also regularly appeared in left-wing papers such as The Guardian...
suggested a larger event, incorporating fellow beat writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
and Gregory Corso who were due in the city. Ginsberg’s girlfriend of the time, Barbara Rubin, asked which was the largest venue in London. Miles’s wife mentioned the Royal Albert Hall. Rubin spontaneously booked the 5000-seat venue for 10 days later.
Incredibly, for a modern poetry reading, the International Poetry Incarnation
International Poetry Incarnation
The International Poetry Incarnation was an event at the Royal Albert Hall in Londonon June 11, 1965.In May, 1965, Allen Ginsberg arrived at Better Books, London, and offered to read anywhere for free....
was more than sold out. It was, says Miles - in Stephen Gammond’s film, A Technicolour Dream (2008) – “like a poetry rave,” the first sign of many like-minds being interested in “underground’ art.
Harry Fainlight was one of 17 poets booked to appear alongside Ginsberg. His sublime performance can be seen in Peter Whitehead’s film of the event, Wholly Communion (1965). The packed hall takes against the young poet as he begins to read 'The Spider' and is interrupted by Dutch writer Simon Vinkenoog
Simon Vinkenoog
Simon Vinkenoog was a Dutch poet and writer. He was the editor of the anthology Atonaal , which launched the Dutch "Fifties Movement"....
, high on mescalin, who chants “Love, love!” when the crowd becomes restless. It was hard for Fainlight to continue reading after this. The occasion upset him deeply, though was typical of various crises and outrages in a troubled life.
International Times
Fainlight became a founding contributor of International TimesInternational Times
International Times was an underground newspaper founded in London in 1966. Editors included Hoppy, David Mairowitz, Pete Stansill, Barry Miles, Jim Haynes and playwright Tom McGrath...
(IT), a countercultural newspaper launched in October 1966 from the basement of the Indica Bookshop. Tales From The Embassy, a trilogy of stories by Dave Tomlin (another guiding spirit behind IT) features Fainlight as poet Harry Flame. The narrator recalls smiling at Flame on a beautiful morning, the latter replying with a grimace: “I’ll get you for that!”,
When, at the suggestion of Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
, Faber & Faber offered to publish Fainlight’s work, he lit a petrol-soaked rag and posted it through the publisher’s letterbox.
But he also joined in with the antic spirit of the time. In late summer 1967 John "Hoppy" Hopkins organised a parade, “The Death and Resurrection of IT”. Fainlight appeared in this piece of improvised street theatre as the human personification of the magazine. He was carried in a coffin on a ‘rebirth journey’ from the Cenotaph
Cenotaph
A cenotaph is an "empty tomb" or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere. The word derives from the Greek κενοτάφιον = kenotaphion...
in Whitehall to Notting Hill Gate
Notting Hill Gate
Notting Hill Gate is one of the main thoroughfares of Notting Hill, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically the street was a location for toll gates, from which it derives its modern name.- Location :...
(including a ride on the Circle Line), where the procession wound through Portobello Market and IT (Fainlight) was symbolically resurrected at the Tavistock Road junction.
However, when Michael Horovitz
Michael Horovitz
Michael Horovitz is an English poet, artist and translator.-Life and career:Michael Horovitz was the youngest of ten children who were brought to England from Nazi Germany by their parents, both of whom were part of a network of European-rabbinical families...
's anthology, Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain
Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain
Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, an anthology of poetry, was edited by Michael Horovitz and published by Penguin Books in 1969...
was published by Penguin in 1967, Fainlight, amongst a few other underground poets of the time, was not included.
Selected Poems
In his review of From The Notebooks, a book transcribed by Dave Tomlin from a lecture Fainlight gave at the Cambodian Embassy in the ‘70s, Nall McDevitt called the 78-page Selected Poems (Turret, London, 1986), edited by Ruth FainlightRuth Fainlight
Ruth Fainlight , is a poet, short story writer, translator and librettist.-Life and career:Fainlight was born in New York, but has mainly lived in England since she was fifteen, having also spent some years living in France and Spain. She studied for two years at the Birmingham and Brighton...
“underwhelming”, noting that pastoral works far outnumbered the poems inspired by his years in New York and asked “where were the gay-sex-in-toilets poems or the out-of-it-on-drugs poems?” Ruth Fainlight responded with a letter she received from her brother in 1981. Harry Fainlight wrote: “Your particular duty now is to help preserve the poetry that I wrote before I went to America (& since) & which belongs to your own literary area but which has been cut off & isolated from it by those three intervening years. Politically, it is only the work of those three years which they wish to exploit. And the formulae of exploitation are very profitable & so they keep on repeating them. But they have become more & more irrelevant to the whole of my work; those years exist in it only as a body of water, a lake in a far greater surrounding land mass. Certainly they are not where I live. I am saying all this because there is still no one who really cares enough to be responsible for my work; to protect it from the inroads of philistinism. If you do not, it encourages the philistine movement.”