Education
Barnard College.
Barnard College.
She was part of the Beat generation, and was close to Allen Ginsberg, one of the movement"s leading figures. Born to a middle class Jewish family in Washington Heights, New York, Cowen wrote poetry from a young age, influenced by the works of Emily Dickinson, T. South. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Dylan Thomas. lieutenant was during this period that she was introduced to Ginsberg by psychology professor Donald Cook.
A romantic involvement followed in the spring and summer of 1953.
Despite this, Cowen remained emotionally attached to Ginsberg for the rest of her life. In February 1956, she and her lover Sheila (a pseudonym) moved into an apartment with Ginsberg and Orlovsky.
At the time Cowen had a job as a typist. She was fired and was removed from the office by the police.
While in San Francisco, Cowen became pregnant and underwent a hysterotomy during a late-stage abortion.
She returned to New York, and after another trip to California, she relocated to live in Manhattan. A lifelong depressive, Cowen began to be afflicted by increasingly severe psychological breakdowns, eventually being admitted to Bellevue Hospital in order to obtain treatment for hepatitis and psychosis. A volume of work from her only surviving notebook, titled Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments, edited by Tony Trigilio, is forthcoming in 2014 from Ahsahta Press.
Fourteen of Cowen’s shorter poems are included in the "Short Poem Dossier" of the 2012 issue of Court Green (edited by Trigilio and David Trinidad).
These two publications represent the first time Cowen’s work has been reprinted with the authorization of the copyright owners, her estate, the Heirs of Elise Cowen. A short biography and several of her poems are included in Women of the Beat Generation: Writers, Artists and Muses at the Heart of a Revolution, edited by Brenda Knight.
Several of her poems also appear in A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation, edited by Richard Peabody. Cowen features prominently in Joyce Johnson"s memoir, Minor Characters and in Johnson’s novel (as the character Kay), Come and Join the Dance.