Allen Ginsberg Books

Here is where Ginsberg's brilliance is perhaps best shown. In conversation, he revealed his passion and sharpness for all topics. His "poems" should probably not be called poems, but instead exercises in poetic freedom, which is ultimately a futile task, especially when approached for the mere sake of asserting more freedom. One is baffled at the mere badness of his poems, which are not in the Whitmanian vane at all, but in the vane of bloated mounds of words. Nonetheless, Ginsberg, the "excitable visionary Jewish Budhist," is beautifully and swiftly rendered in these interviews.

"Spontaneous mind," a collection of interviews, is an uncensored perspective of Allen Ginsberg's life, work and the events of his time. The poet felt the interview was an art form, an opportunity to discuss and teach about writing, music, spirituality and whatever topic may surface. Although some celebrities may shun the interview, Ginsberg clearly held a passion for the medium which is quite palpable throughout this collection. In fact, Ginsberg does not flinch at any of the questions, but instead attacks them with fervor and honesty.

The editor, David Carter, includes several vigorous and worthy spars. A conservative William Buckley begets a heated discussion about America in 1968 concerning drugs, censorship and the Vietnam War. A stoic Christian confronts the Buddhist devotee with God's Word. Ginsberg patiently reaches for truth and understanding with compassion in every interview. He is generous with his thoughts but at times the interviews are long-winded. This is the inherent danger of being spontaneous, the cliche of beatniks being free-spirits who spout non-sequiturs off the top of their heads seems eerily true at times. However, the text is a lucid portal for the reader to glimpse the beatnik world through the eyes of one of its gods. Ginsberg's history is an indelible part of beatnik culture. William Blake, Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac and numerous other notable influences are also discussed.

Bohdan Kot

Brilliant, transformative and mind expanding like Allen himself. The freedom he sought and found and shared is here. A most generous heart. I also recommend Beat Writers at Work, especially for the chapter on a semester in one of Ginsberg's classes.

This book is loaded with information and after almost 600 pages later; here I am with an overview. Most of the books I read tend to be around 200 to 300 pages, so this book is like two or three books put together, consisting of different interviews from the 1950's to the 1990's and a very mixed bag, packed with intriguing thoughts of poetry, prosody, prose, Ginsberg and the Beatific scene that emerged from the late 1940's that subsequently influenced the psychedelic generation of the 60's.

There is some real insightful information on poetry here, very educational and foundational to the beatnik poetic movement, and poetry in general. Ginsberg relates his influential poets that inspired him, molding his thought processes and way of life. From Ezra Pounds, Walt Whitman, the painter Cézanne, William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, Rimbaud and from 1948 a mystical experience with the words of William Blake, whose voice appeared to him after masturbating and subsequently experiencing some other mystical visions and awareness. Blake, although not a living person from our time era, became Ginsberg's guru upon the advise of an Indian teacher. In some cases of poetry and linguistic teaching of stanzas and crescendos, I was reminded of Peter Eckermann's, Conversations of Goethe and their discussions.

There are great explanations of the spontaneous style of poetry, the Buddhist flashes of thoughts that come from the spaces between thoughts, that spring up in the perception of the moment, the present flash to be written down in that precise way, the style of momentary thought speech converted into writing and there you have Kerouac and Ginsberg and Burroughs, except with Burroughs it is with flashes of mental pictures converted into words. This is not the conventional style of sitting down and organizing formal structures, nor a laid out novel or rhyming poetry, no, it is spontaneous and attempts to capture the sudden flash of idea - "first thought, best thought" as Ginsberg's later teacher the Tibetan Buddhist Lama, Chogyam Trungpa shared with him, or visa versa, and it was Trungpa's school that also endorsed the Kerouac School for Disembodied Poets. Even Shakespeare was the spontaneous poet, "every third thought will be my grave," unlike the mechanical, arid, conformity of what was taught in the Universities when Ginsberg attended in the 40's. So I say to this, hey, I guess Kerouac wasn't a babbling, rambling madman, but instead he was actual, solid, writing real bits of consciousness, at least according to Ginsberg. His words were like the jazz, the bebop of bits of everyday sudden speech, spontaneous.

Also are some great stories of the crew: Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac, Cassidy, Snyder, and Orlovsky. Some of this gets rather explicit. Ginsberg was gay and I don't think that should be censored from this amazon review. In this book he is explicit in describing the love acts of himself and Kerouac, Orlovsky, Cassidy and others, including his acknowledgment of Walt Whitman homosexuality. Interestingly, in one interview, Ginsberg relates the highest love as a nonsexual male relationship - this sounds like Socrates at the Symposium.

There are also interviews relating to the Chicago Seven and it's political opposition to the conformity of the masculine police state mentality. Great thoughts on censorship, sacredness, hippie flower power, LSD, Yage, peyote, prosody, Bob Dylan, the Teton Mountains, Buddhist conceptions, the Cabala's ultimate science of ZimZum, detachment, karma, Ezra Pound, Dionysian orgies, the Berkley Renaissance, explicit sex (censorship), belly breathing, anger control, Visions of Cody, Hinduism and Woodsworth.

Of course there's a lot said of Ginsberg's poems such as Howl, Kaddish, Wichita Vortex Sutra, Fall of America and their influences and styles. There are also scores of book references that would take years to read, but nevertheless, great leads to book buying and increasing comprehension and insight into poetry, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder, McClure, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Snyder, Burroughs, and the beatnik frame of no-mind.

This book teaches a lot and I am impressed at the amount of insight Ginsberg had, intellectually, emotionally, and poetically and if I can use the word "spiritually."

i am a ginsberg fan and so i am biased but this book of interviews is really an enjoyable read. sure some of the interviews are dated but they really show the great intuitive thinker and off the cuff debater the allen ginsberg really was.
especially fun is his debate with john lofton who attempts to bury ginsberg in his born-again brand of conservativism. also fun is allen's transcripts from the chicago seven trial. i actually found this a hoot.
also his discussion on poetics is quite enlightening.
we miss you allen; your shining mind, intelligent wit and your shaman boddisattvic spirit

great listening. every poem inspires a new poem to be written. could listen to this for hours and hours. beautifully packaged too, a testament. very inspiring.

A new years present to myself and I've listened through three times already. Inspiring, makes me want to write and move to California or New York or Europe. Well-packaged, though some typos, and great booklet, 60 pages, with interesting design. Recommended. It's creepy to hear Ginsberg's voice, knowing this was his last major reading of his works. Very good CDs.

Just picked up a copy of this from a publishing friend, topnotch CDs, great package as well. The CDs have drawings by Ginsberg printed onto them, and the cardboard sleeve has filmstills from the readings these are taken from at the Knitting Factory. The booklet is lengthy and detailed, with some short pieces by different writers, but they're rather short. One apparently read with Ginsberg these nights; would like to have read more, perhaps? But a great pleasure, to hear these poems in order, great sound quality. Listening to it right now.

A wonderful recording, with Ginsberg's voice loud and clear for all those who ever heard him, or missed his readings. A chronological recording of his major works, spread out across three CDs, which really works as a format: put one on, then the next, then the final, and get a tour of Ginsberg's poetic works over nearly half a century. The progression is noticeable. A great document of American literature, really pleasurable to hear. Comes with a massive booklet, 70 pages or so, with the poems all printed out so you can read along or just skim through it without the CD, including some musical notations. A nice little essay by Stephen Taylor explains the reading format, and another by Geoff Manaugh, who read with Ginsberg during these nights, gives a nice feel for the evenings these were recorded. Each worth reading; each adds to the intimacy of the recordings, I think, hearing from Ginsberg's friends. Could have used more of that, in fact, but that's a minor quibble. An introduction by Bob Rosenthal, as well, who works for the Allen Ginsberg Foundation. They apparently put this out.
Recommended. America's bard still lives...

William Blake is one of those soaring pioneers of the human imagination whose visions and their scope make you feel rather humble at times. His works are quite diverse and his output during his life very considerable. Blake's longer poems, such as 'Jerusalem' or the 'Four Zoas', would easily make large books of their own in any edition of his works.

This Norton's edition contains selections from several of Blake's major works, including his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, his visionary poems, as well as his political poems. The book also contains many scholarly aids including a chronology of Blake's life, critical essays by leading Blake scholars, and colour pages showing Blake's beautiful illustrations to some of his works (as well as being a great poet Blake was also a painter and engraver of very considerable ability). While critics never seem to really reach any consensus on what Blake's poems really 'mean' (Blake is read variously as a Gnostic by Harold Bloom, a revolutionary critic of England during the industrial revolution by Terry Eagleton, or as a disciple of Swedenborg and Boehme by others) Blake's poems contain incredible beauty and visionary power and polyvalent symbols energised with multiple meanings. I think if one consistent theme can be read from Blake and his poems, and I think this was his own intent, was that the power of the human imagination and what it produces in art transcends any attempt to 'bracket' or reduce it to a dead and static system of lifeless scientific symbols; I imagine Blake would class many critics of his work as agents of Urizen, trying to carve out of the fiery energized cosmos of the living human mind the perfect frozen archetype which orders all things perfectly but in doing so, misses the whole point.

Blake's poems then should be read not by trying to impose what you want to see in them but by trying to let them speak to you and perhaps, ignite your own spark of imagination, as Blake has done with many brilliant poets from Yeats to Allan Ginsberg and many others.

Nice book, but too bad its front picture cover is defaced by Norton's double-layer of big gold stickers with high-tack adhesive that makes them impossible to remove without adhesive remaining on the cover.

This is absolutely the best compendium of Blake's work which articualtes an outstanding range of his vision. This edition acknowledges the poetry and color paintings of a consumate craftsman of the imagination on high quality, acid free paper and is nylon stitched and bound in signatures to last a lifetime. Books are rarely made this way but the Norton edition is a beautiful rendering of the first, and perhaps, primary British Romantic poet.

This is a book is quite good as most Norton Critical Editions are. It has a lot of what is needed by students for a course on Blake or, more likely, a course that spends part of a term on Blake.

It has some biographical material and some maps of England and London at the time Blake lived. There are also a good helping of black and white as well as color plates of Blake's illuminated works. The color plates are only good - the color is not produced beautifully. The student will only get an impression of the true power of Blake's artistry. However, a good teacher will point the student to the Blake Archive at:... so the students can see the works more completely with variants and in better color (if you have good video cards and monitors).

One of the best parts of this book begins on page 176 where working drafts are shown and compared to the final versions. There is also a nice selection of critical writing on Blake - criticism from Blake's time through the present. There is also a useful bibliography.

In some ways this is "Erdman Lite", but it is much more portable than Erdman and for an introductory course on Blake it is probably sufficient. I am glad that I have it in my library.

But please don't stop here!

Perfectly perfect -- This catalogue of Clemente expects total satisfaction of the senses to achieve self-definition.
And it gets it, definitely.

Clemente quoted De Chirico once in an interview with Vanity Fair, "What Shall I love if not the enigma." Clemente's paintings, indeed, exhibit a mysterious charm that invites the viewers into the artist's inner world of Indian mysticism and physcial beauty. Juxtaposed with Robert Creeley's poetry, this volume of fantastic and sensual paintings clearly is a must for all Clemente fans. From Napoli to New York, Clemente has wooed the jet-setters on both sides of the Atlantic, establishments such as the Guggenheim in New York, and me, a Yale College student.

I was lucky enough to catch his show at the Guggenheim several years ago and have been desperately coveting this book since. Clemente works on a large scale, so capturing his imposing imagery can be tough (to be mild). However, in an endeavor to capture the man through his works, this large-scoped voluminous edition works wonders at the foot of the mountain. The best of the attempts, it's like a conversation with the man himself.

A must have for art lovers, a must have for romantics, a must have for any library or coffee table. It's a lovely book, full true color, and a ripe collection of his works. A good work, and well worth anyone's time.

This is a must have for anyone intersted in beautiful and thought provoking material. It is a thorough look at this imaginative artist's work. It will be a source of inspiration I will look to time and again!

...but you could say that for the Ginsberg nut, this is a must-have tho not always interesting all the way through. The essay on Whitman is particularly windy, but the above-mentioned line about beard cutting & district attorneys gives an example of Ginsberg at his loony lovegod best.

And there are some paranoid rants, as well as blurry recollections of bad trips & marches & armies of fairies fellating anyone who gets violent w/ war protesters. This book is both spankings & oral sex.

It's sad to think the state that America is in right now, with hardly a new voice of reason to combat it. Allen Ginsberg made sense when he wrote and he makes sense now. But has anything changed? In reading what Ginsberg wrote about then and even more recently it seems not so much so. Those who consider themselves in the know might benefit from a new (or renewed) look at this collection.

Yes, this is a peak into the mind of Ginsberg. It may be more of a peak into his persona at the time the work was written, whether poet,bluesman, hippie,scholar, political activist etc. What makes it worthwhile are little nuggets found throughout the work which probably were unnoticed by most of us when originally published. I do wish this book had a complete table of contents (pagination) rather than just page numbers listed for the major sections. But, maybe it nudges us to search "on our own."

The totality of this book results in a Ginsberg manifesto, delivered in his own unique prose style, and bursting forth with great honesty and impassioned integrity. Invaluable as a document of the times (roughly late 40s thru early 90s), as a sourcebook for things Beat, as a reference source to Ginsbergian Mind Speak, this book is a major addition to Ginsberg's published work. My only criticism is that it is presented topically, not chronologically as nearly all Ginsberg's published work is, but that is a minor point. This book stands with his best and is certainly his most important publication since 'The Fall of America' in 1972, maybe even since 'Kaddish' in the very early 60s.

There are now many biographies of Allen Ginsberg. Shumacher's Dharma Lion stands out as a particular favorite, and the book-length poem by Ed Sanders is not to be overlooked. Most take a bird's-eye view of this poet and his life. Because of his long personal relationship with Ginsberg as his archivist and bibliographer, Morgan stood closer to his subject, both personally and through his access to the prolific journals Ginsberg diligently kept from the age of eleven to the end of his life, than any previous biographer has, or any future biographer is likely to.

The result is a biography whose intimacy and authority are unparalleled. For or some at least, this will be a decidedly mixed blessing. Those with a strong aversion to sexual revelation and description will be distracted if not put off, for Ginsberg was possessed of a ruthless, at times self-defeating, candor in all matters sexual, as readers familiar with his poetry will know. But, as Morgan shows, he was equally candid in all other areas of his life and feeling.

He was also deeply flawed, persistently naive and hopeful about the numerous lifelong friends he made in his days at Columbia and shortly thereafter: Kerouac, a drunk Republican mama's-boy and anti-semite, whose friendship Ginsberg treasured and whose work he championed to long after Kerouac's death; Huncke, who mooched and stole from him repeatedly; Burroughs, who, for a time lusted after him, but at others was inaccessible and gratuitously mean to Ginsberg's life partner, Peter Orlovsky; Cassady, an insatiable womanizer and artful dodger, or worse; Corso, who embarrassed and abused him often; and Orlovsky himself, heterosexual, chronically unstable and addicted to alcohol and amphetamines, and not infrequently interpersonally and physically destructive. To all of these, and to scores if not hundreds of others, Ginsberg's loyalty, generosity, and his efforts to support them financially and promote their work and enhance their lives never wavered. In his close personal relationships, Ginsberg could be, and often was, a fool, but he was not a fair-weather friend. Among the flaws that Morgan addresses and clarifies was Ginsberg's peculiar and persistent blind spot for women, their strengths, virtues, and talents. Even those close to him, not rarely in love with him, could in important ways escape his notice.

In fairly documenting his flaws, however, Morgan's treatment does not throw Ginsberg's virtues into shadow. His intense interest in all things human, his passionate commitment to free speech and unfettered thought and social justice and, some will be surprised, his patriotism, all come through. But what comes through most powerfully is the loving pains he took to care for others, more often than not one-at-a-time. Undivided attention, a meal, a place to stay, the reading of a poet's work brought to him for comment, his personal responses to virtually all the letters sent to him, from friend and stranger alike; Ginsberg cared and gave.

Until the last very few years of his life, and despite the popularity of his books, readings, and recordings, Ginsberg was chronically close to poverty, on many occasions simply broke, and sometimes temporarily stranded. Even when his income was nominally adequate, he bought his clothing in second-hand stores, rescued his friends again and again and again, and made up the difference. As he supported his friends, sometimes over many years, he supported numerous younger poets and writers, as well as working tirelessly to benefit the many causes, programs, and institutions he cared about; he gave and gave and gave.

In the end, Morgan's biography, its chapters proceeding year by year, covers the life of a great poet who was not less a man of truly heroic love and candor, a flawed human being who can stand as a model and a beacon for that which is most tender and dear in each of us.

Bill Morgan's new book about the poet Allen Ginsberg, "I Celebrate Myself", rates at the top of my favorites list. I was immediately captivated when I read in the Introduction about an incident where Ginsberg saw a poor woman who was about to be attacked by an angry dog.Ginsberg went to her and asked,"Would you like a fig newton?" From then on I couldn't stop reading.
The book is full of many interesting facts about Ginsberg's life and poetry.His writings represent the turbulence of the cultural revolution of the time and this book is a wonderful testament to this eccentric and unique writer's talent. I applaud and congratulate Bill Morgan for his superb book.

Its obvious that Bill Morgan had access to alot of primary materials in writing this biography of Allen Ginsberg, which is clearly a labor of love for the author. And rightly so. Ginsberg's humanity shines thru on these pages - generosity, kindness, creativity, eccentricity, but mostly a dedication to live fully and richly without excuse.

I didnt know much of Ginsberg before I read the book; he seemed at best a minor talent in a discipline I knew little about, at worst a mentally ill crank. But Morgan's book drew me in deeper and deeper, and I soon saw the genius of Ginsberg, a genuis manifested in both his art and his life, which I assume Ginsberg would say were one and the same. In this age of greedy hucksters passing as 'artists', Ginsberg was the real deal. A fascinating human being in the best sense of the word.

Thank you Mr Morgan for such a labor of love.

I highly recommend Bill Morgan's "I Celebrate Myself", a biography of the late poet, Allen Ginsberg, a "Beat Generation" writer. Bill Morgan allows the reader to understand and appreciate, in such an interesting narrative, Ginsberg's unique style of poetry. I was truly captivated by this poet's life and work that the book seemed to be much shorter than it actually was. In addition to the title "I Celebrate Myself" from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," I especially enjoyed Bill Morgan's innovative approach of describing occurrences in Ginsberg's personal life that influenced his writing by placing in the margins of the book, the titles of the poems that Ginsberg was writing at the time. This creates for the reader an immediate interest and desire to read Ginsberg's poetry. "I Celebrate Myself" was a joy and adventure to read, and I learned so much about this sensitive, brilliant, and compassionate poet of the twentieth century. Fascinating Book!!

Ginsberg's long-form poem about his mother is a beautiful elegy in the form of an ancient Jewish prayer for the dead. It examines the poet's relationship with Naomi Ginsberg and her illness, as well as his own childhood and adolescence.

From the russian girl coming to America in the early 1920's, the socialist mom, to the mentally ill patient in her old age, Ginsberg reviews the life of a remarkable woman and the ways in which their relationship affected his life and work. And affected it did. Kaddish is also a therapeutic work for the poet, almost psychoanalitical at times, a courageous and loving exploration of the profound influence parents can have on a writer's life.

Kaddish is Ginsberg's second most important work. This edition contains all of Ginsberg's best pieces from the late Fifties: Kaddish, Poem Rocket, Death to Van Gogh's Ear!, and The Reply. Get this book and the Pocket Poets edition of Howl and you will be all set to enjoy Ginsberg.

"Kaddish" is Ginsberg's memorable and moving autobiographical poem about his mentally ill mother and his troubled relationship with her. This long poem is a sort of elegy written after his mother's death, and after recounting his feelings and incidents in her life, he gives his farewell. Another poem I really like in this collection is "At Apolinaire's Grave."

What is the true job of a poet and artist? As on answer on could says that his job is to linger the pain of suffering. The poet becomes a man who brings water to the one who suffers, brings understandment, and widens the picture of reality. This is on of the importent things Kaddish is about. Allen Ginsberg wrote this poem to his mother who became insane during his childhood. During her periods of sanity she brought and taught him importent values, things to live for, political point of vievs and understandmens, which gave him perspectives for the rest of his life. The poem is also a great political statement against the existensial order, normality conserned. It shows us the political implications of Naomis madnes. The poem makes clear that her madnes has a connection with the order of modernity in capitalist America. At the same time whe are shown the human experience of lolines that comes out from being left off with the label mad. The sad and unbearebel feelings of guilt and anger felt by Ginsberg himself. An over it all something more, something beautiful about the human relation of love between mother and child which is flaming strong trough all this horrible prospects of shame and suffering. At the end of the poem and in the begining, Ginsberg is dweling with the question of the death of his mother. For him it was in on sense a relief, but at the same time is was his greatest loss, and the ambivalence of this question goes trough the hole poem.

The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952 is edited by Bill Morgan and Juanita Lieberman-Plimpton and offers a rare view of the poet during his formative years rather than the more commonly covered later life works. As such, this will serve as a fitting and important introduction for both college-level and casual Ginsberg enthusiasts, surveying the contents of candid journals allowed to see publication only after his death, and including conversations with Jack Kerouac and other notable contemporaries. In packing in elements of his personal life and family relationships, succeeds in displaying many hitherto-unrevealed aspects of Ginsberg's life and personality - essential keys for a through, in-depth understanding of his writings.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Ginsberg was perhaps the defining person of the Beat Generation. Technically I suppose that to be a true member of the beat generation club you had to be a personal friend of Ginsberg (although he never claimed to be the leader). It's also possible that being friends of some other members of the cordon of friends around him might count as well. Or, who knows, perhaps it could be anyone who shares the philosophy.

Anyway, this book might be called the early years of a Beat Generation Poet. It consists of journal entries from his early years, along with about 100 poems, some 65 of which have never been published. The entries are varied in subject, they reflect his thinking at the time. They are also a look inside a persons head that we don't often get to see. They describe the time he spent in psychiatric hospitals, his earliest homosexual feelings, the mental illness of his mother, and the early seeking of a religious home.

This is not a biography, it is the writings of the man himself, intended for publication only after his death.

I wish I could have written like that when I was 11. I wish I could write like that now. Fascinating on many levels, from the literary to the prurient.

My copy is bound starting with the last page of the index, page five hundred and something, going backward. I tried to find some clue if that was the way it was intended, or if my copy is a rare (e-bay worthy) fluke. So far, I have found no answer within the book itself, although I am not by any means finished. Does anyone know? Is that the zen like pranksterish way its supposed to be, or did someone at DaCapo screw up?

NOTE: After much painstaking research, I have been able to discover that MY copy of the book was bound on the wrong side, and that ALL the OTHERS are bound the right way. So I'm going to shrink wrap it and sell it on e-bay in 50 years for millions of yuan.

Before starting, allow me to mention the fact that I am reviewing solely the poem "Howl" in Howl and Other Poems.

I read "Howl" this summer as a 16 year old and was absolutely stunned and amazed. As far as enjoying the poem I was entirely too confused by it the first time I read it to actually enjoy it; so let me start by giving the reader of this and prospective buyer of Howl and other Poems the advice to read "Howl" several times before forming a concrete opinion about it. To best describe it shortly, "Howl" is the story of a man that has been through and survived and recognized the horrors of the post war 1940's and the 1950's. "Howl" shows the oppression that people faced during this era and gives a ghastly description of the government and institutions in general at this time. The main strength of Ginsberg's poem is to expand the mind of the reader, even if that means confusing the reader. Take for example the stanza:
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue, amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
This is an absolutely mind boggling sentence. It attacks the areas of fashion and advertising and the powers of editors in newspapers. Stanzas like that are why I enjoy this poem, it is a critique of the time that Ginsberg lived in and allows one to see parallels in the current day and age.

Howl was written over the course of 1955-1956, and is truly a product of its time. This was the beginning of the beat generation, with other writers such as Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey. "Howl" reflects the post war era in which Ginsberg lived; an era of, as he believes, governmental oppression and assimilation. These thoughts are best conveyed in the stanzas discussing mental institutions and how they try to force a disease that may not actually be a disease out of you. Ginsberg also critiques the everlasting effects of a 1950's mental institution with lines such as "I'm with you in Rockland where 50 more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void" and "(who were) returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears, and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East". Along with Ginsberg's encounters with people in the post-war era and his personal experiences of mental institutionalization and the oppression he faced for being homosexual, drugs contributed much to Ginsberg's poem. Howl would not have come into existence without many of the drugs that started the new mindset of the beat generation such as Peyote, LSD, and DMT. Howl was a product of its own culture and it began and shaped much of the following beatnik era.

I do not consider "Howl" to have weaknesses as a peace of literature, but there are certain times where the reader is often confused by what Ginsberg is saying. Much of this is not so much because of the prosody of the poem but because so many of the ideas in an individual stanza are disconnected that it confuses the reader. For me, one of the stanzas that was so disconnected that it was confusing reads "who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed". The prospective reader must be prepared to allow the images that Ginsberg provides in "Howl" give them a new way of thinking rather than try and dissect its every stanza. I very much recommend reading "Howl"; it changed my outlook on the world.

It is a shame that this annotated edition of one of the great beat/modern poems is out of print. I strongly suggest you get this book while it is still available at the used bookshops.
Ginsberg claimed to have written this work spontaneously, but this work shows the poem was written over a period of time, and edited. Maybe he was only referring to the first draft! It really doesn't matter,but looking at the drafts does give one insight into how Ginsberg created the poem(s) and the development of a classic.

I reread this little book before attempting to review it. I remembered that it was a mad mantra of transcendent power from the heart of hell, but I didn't remember how nondated it was. This work is fresher and more relevant than 99% of what passes for poetry today. How can something last nearly 50 years without going stale or becoming trite? How can it be even more real now? Maybe it is because Ginsberg ripped it live, screaming, and bleeding from a place beyond time and beyond space. He tore it from the living bowels of MOLOCH itself and showed it to HIM. After all, what does divine madness know of time?

This poem is transcendence itself. It demonstrates that when you plunge into the deepest pit of hell it either kills you, or perhaps it burns out your insides so that you become a soulless zombie, OR you transcend it and rise howling to become a Mad Poet Saint who can truely encompass the Sacred in the Profane.

Read this poem, and the others like America, A Supermarket in California, Sunflower Sutra, Wild Orphan, and In Back of the Real. It's almost frightening how relevant to daily life it is. If you didn't know it, you would never guess that it was written in the 50's. Of course Ginsberg does invoke, holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space the fourth dimension, in the Footnote. Maybe that's why it's timeless. As Cassady used to say, we know time, yes, we know time....

I wish I would have been there for that first public reading in San Fran with Kerouac running around the audience passing the wine jug. On all the planes, the Gods themselves must have jumped back in shock as a flaming monkeywrench of living poetry was jammed through the spokes of the great quivering meat wheel of conception....

Investigative poetry at its most compelling..............Mr. Sanders portrayal of A.G. and his work left me mourning for such a great loss. I found a new friend, but lost him to the soup of time at the end of a too, too short a tour of A.G.'s life. Mr. Sanders work is as compelling as it is compassionate about the times, the art, the friendships and the glue that kept them all together....in the realm of Ginzap. Again, Mr. Sanders tells it like no other has........Read his other stuff!!!

Ed Sanders is the child of the Beat poets and visionaries. In this book he celebrates the greatest of them all - Allen Ginsberg. The genius of this book is that Sanders may have invented a totally new genre of writing - the poetic documentary. Poetry is not read but experienced, thus going through this book is like being immersed in the sights and sounds of Ginsberg's life from the 1920s to the 1990s. Therefore, this book comes off as more potent, more immediate and more intense than reading a "straight" biography, often coloured by the interpretive lens of the biographer. This is a book that returns Ginsberg to us once more - the rebel, the madman, the Good Samaritan and the poet.

Sanders has perfected a unique style of narrative poetry. This book tells the story of Ginsberg's life as a private citizen and as a public figure, but it also chronicles his development as a poet. For those daunted by the Collected or even the Selected Poems, Sanders usefully points out what he thinks are Ginsberg's best poems as he goes along. Although I did not intend to when I sat down with it, I ended up reading it straight through to the end. A very moving ending it was, too.