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Elise Cowen

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Poet

The Resume

    (1933-February 1, 1962)
    Born in Long Island, New York
    Poems include 'Words,' 'The Lady,' 'Emily,' 'A Skin' and 'Sitting'

Why she might be annoying:

    She dated Allen Ginsberg and looked like him at the time.
    After breaking up with him, she and her lover Shelia shared an apartment with Ginsberg and his lover Peter.
    Ginsberg called her 'an intellectual madwoman.'
    She stole books from libraries and bookstores, saying it was 'the only moral way' to acquire them.
    She suffered depression and had several nervous breakdowns.
    She checked herself out of Bellevue Hospital against her doctors' advice.
    She committed suicide by jumping through a locked window in her parents' seventh-floor apartment.
    After her death, her parents destroyed most of her writings.

Why she might not be annoying:

    Her favorite poets included T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Dylan Thomas, and she could recite their works from memory.
    Beat chronicler Joyce Johnson said of her relation with Ginsberg, 'Elise was a moment in Allen's life. In Elise's life, Allen was an eternity.'
    Her friend Leo Skir possessed 83 of her poems when she died and arranged for their publication.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 6 Votes: 83.33% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 10 Votes: 90.0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 17 Votes: 47.06% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 9 Votes: 55.56% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 42 Votes: 80.95% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 14 Votes: 78.57% Annoying
    In 2010, Out of 21 Votes: 71.43% Annoying
    In 2009, Out of 36 Votes: 52.78% Annoying
    In 2008, Out of 23 Votes: 73.91% Annoying