We had asked Allen to come and read his poetic clarion call
Howl as one way of putting the new, very small, branch of the provincial university, long denied to the city, on the map. We would bring the world into it again.
I have a photograph of Allen standing together with Chanchi Mehta, my old teacher, trouper and Indian playwright, local poet Alden Nowlan, and I. Allen is telling us that the previous night he had picked up the Gideon Bible by his bedside and re-read
The Book of
Ecclesiastes. "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit." One long, bloody, bitter poem, was how Allen described it.