Craft: Elise Cowen

Elise Cowen (1933-1962) was a Beat Generation poet and proto-second-wave feminist whose reputation and work has faded into obscurity if not oblivion. She had a brief romantic relationship with Allen Ginsberg in the spring and summer of 1953 prior to his meeting Peter Orlovsky, who became Ginsberg’s life partner, but Cowen should be recognized as a powerful writer as anyone among the Beats.

In the way Ginsberg attempted to bring Walt Whitman’s embracing style, long lines, and passionate syntax to the 20th century, Cowen’s poems attempt the same bringing-forward of Emily Dickinson into the 20th century. Dickinson was her primary influence, not only stylistically, but Cowen similarly kept her poems private and rarely shared them.

Cowen was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Washington Heights, in Upper Manhattan (roughly the area bordered on the south at West 155th Street and on the north by Dyckman Street, between the Hudson and East Rivers) and attended Barnard College. She bristled at the expectations and limitations confining women of her generation, and was drawn to the emerging Beat culture the same way Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs had.