Alan Ansen

Alan Ansen (January 23, 1922 – November 12, 2006) was an American poet, playwright, and associate of Beat Generation writers.^[1][2] He was a widely-read scholar who knew many languages. Ansen 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, 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 lived mostly in Athens after the early 1960s, where he was part of a circle of writers that included James Merrill and Chester Kallman.

His works

• The Old Religion. Tibor de Nagy Gallery Editions, New York 1959; 300 copies. (poems)
• Disorderly Houses: A Book of Poems. Wesleyan University Series, Middletown, CT 1961. Wesleyan Poetry Series.
• William Burroughs: An Essay. Water Row Press, Sudbury 1986. (fragments from a novel)
• The Vigilantes: A Fragment. Water Row Press, Sudbury 1987; (from an unpublished novel)
• Contact Highs: Selected Poems. Dalkey Archive Press, New York 1989. Introduction by Steven Moore.
• The Table Talk of W.H. Auden. Sea Cliff Press, New York 1989. Ed. by Nicholas Jenkins, introduction by Richard Howard; excerpts from conversation diaries. (reprinted with two other publishers)

References

External links

• Beat Generation Biographies
• Disorderly Houses by Alan Ansen

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