Allen Ginsberg Books

What a delicious treat. Allen Ginsberg took it upon himself to be the Beat historian, which has in turn given the world this treasure in hardback. His scrawling notations serve as stream-of-consciousness captions. His early pics of Corso eating grapes and huddling for warmth at the Beat Hotel in Paris are simply beautiful. Much silliness is supplied here as well. And who looks better in black and white than Jack Kerouac? This is not only a great coffee table book, but a must for any fan of the Beat Generation.

It was a nice gift...all the pictures were black and white, mostly of his family and friends. Good for a Ginsberg fanatic.

first off, these are two excellent essays concerning photography, one by gregory corso and one by ginsberg himself, and these writings are almost worth the price of the book itself (which you should consider buying used, it can be found even in the used section of amazon for cheap - and they are limited printings from what i understand). as for the photos, this is like van gogh's 'bedroom in arles'. there is a sense of history in these pictures, and as ginsberg says, he knew. here is kerouac, burroughs, cassady, allen, and on top of that, this was early post-world war 2 america. you can see it in the people, the apartments, the streets - i could go on and on, but a truly valuable book.

From the close up photo of aging King Junkie Burroughs to the bathroom snap of naked, youthful Ginsberg and Corso, this massive collection of black and whites, circa Beat Generation, is quite amazing. Each photo is captioned in Ginsberg's own hand and his descriptions/musings tell the story of the Horsemen of Apocalyptic Literature as they roamed through their own private world. I highly recommend this photo essay to fans of that special genre of writing and living.

Personal and Beat history were captured by Ginsberg with his simple camera. Other books have called them snapshots, but Ginsberg could not help but create art, as well. The paper used by the printer could have been better. Yet this book is well worth the price.

This book to me is the best Ko'an ever composed by Ginsberg
since 1997, 'tis been cliffhanging on my bosom

I must admit it, when I was quite younger I was amazed by Allen Ginsberg's work--in fact, it was if Ginsberg stretched his hand to me and welcomed into poetry. In the years that followed, my professors warned me that my taste would "mature" out of such 'pop poets', and into 'higher' forms of poetry.

I must also admit that this particular book has confirmed my belief that Ginsberg was a poet that may have received his share of attention, but perhaps his share of literary credit is long overdue.

In "Cosmo Greetings", Ginsberg's second last volume of poetry (the last would be the equally-excellent but posthumous "Death and Fame") sees Ginsberg growing older, looking at the world as one small, global community and with more humour than I have read in his work since the early years of "Howl" and "Kaddish".

Give this one a try, and re-establish your love for this man's work.

"Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992," by Allen Ginsberg, contains a number of recurring topic: literature and writing, gay love and sex, Buddhism, etc. Many poems reflect a political radicalism exemplified by a hatred of censorship and a distrust of governments. But I found the most striking recurring theme to be that of aging. Ginsburg writes very movingly of the physical and emotional ramifications of growing older. Mentioned a number of times in the book is Walt Whitman, whom Ginsberg acknowledges as his poetic forefather: "I write poetry because Walt Whitman gave world permission to speak with candor." Also cited are Blake and Pound.

Some of my favorites in this collection: "Improvisation in Beijing," a Whitmanesque chant on why Ginsberg is a poet; "Sphincter," both a bawdy ode to the poet's title orifice and a celebration of gay sex; the title poem, "Cosmopolitan Greetings," a rather Blakean series of mystical declarations (example, "Inside skull vast as outside skull"); "Personals Ad," a poem in the form of a personals ad by an older poet seeking a young male lover; "Yiddishe Kopf," a celebration of the speaker's Jewishness; "Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (Dont Smoke)," an anti-smoking piece that attacks big tobacco companies and their politician allies; and "Everyday," a haiku-like poem about a lama.

Throughout the book Ginsberg uses a nember of different poetic forms, some of which I have already mentioned. Other forms include songs (complete with musical notation), a letter, and even a comic strip. The book is often outrageous, often tender, and sometimes quite funny.

Allen Ginsberg was a nonconformist, a beat generation leader, and a phenominal poet. One of his last books, Cosmopolitan Greetings, was just one of many masterpieces given to the mass public by this prolific writer. The spokesman of a lost generation, Ginsberg howl's again in the 90's, not with the dark, brooding "best minds of my generation..." esque odes, but in a shortened, clear revolution of though patterns that defined his later writings. Cosmopolitan Greetings is a magnificant book to add to any intellectual collection, a real historical statement. May he rest in peace

I met with Allen Ginsberg on his 1994 book tour for Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992 (HarperCollins). I was accompanied by George Scrivani who was an editor, who created Hanuman Books with Raymond Foye and Francesco Clemente. I didn't get along so much with Allen Ginsberg as is evident in the following. I interrupted him every time he launched into a soundbite about the importance of the Beats. He often questioned me about my questions. In the interview, I stressed the importance of obscure Beats and none beats including Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Bob Kaufman, Ray Bremser, and Irving Rosenthal. In fact, my mention of Sheeper being the best work of the Beat Generation, seemed to annoy Ginsberg. Later that day, Ginsberg read "Hum Bom!" at Candlestick Park and was booed by the apolitical and conservative baseball fans.

Alexander Laurence: Cosmopolitan Greetings is your new book of poems which collects your most recent work: 1986-1992. Your poetry seems to have changed stylistically, especially in your delicate attention to language; I think of your earliest poems, such as Howl, possessing a complex use of language, utilizing many adjectives, and being influenced by Surrealism, yet the new writing is much more transparent, direct and simplified.

Allen Ginsberg: More or less, with the occasional touches of a surreal sequence of images. There are a number of poems in here and in White Shroud which are examples of complicated language or complicated dream situations. Within some simple poems are some surreal word chains, particularly "I Went To The Movie of Life," "Grandma Earth's Song," and in the Jacob Rabinowitz poem: "Put me down now for not hearing your teenage heartbeat, / think back were you serious offering to kidnap me / to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore, Miami, God / knows, rescued from boring fame & Academic fortune, / Rimbaud Verlaine lovers starved together in boondocks houseflat / stockyard furnished rooms eating pea soup reading E. A. Poe?" I want to have lucid clear pictures in my poetry rather than jump-cut, cut-up, chaotic flashes. I want my poetry to be like a cinematic movie. The magic comes not from the speed up of the words, but the magic comes from the fact that it's an imaginary dream vision. The prototype of that is Shelley's "Triumph of Life."

More at (www.freewilliamsburg.com)

This is a well-written, well-researched biography of one of the most influential popular cultural heros of our time. The author really digs below the surface to treat the reader to an intimate profile of the great Beat poet. It's often as if you were right there with Alan, experiencing life to the full.

Regrettably the book is published by the very commercially-oriented Virgin Publishing. Together with cheap paper and pale ink, there are numerous spelling errors and word repetitions which detract from the tantalizing narrative. However, it should be noted too that the author is also not very precise. Early in the book he refers to the Moazrt Clarinet Quintet as a trio--although he does correct himself a couple of pages later (or was it the other way around?)--and even misspells Dwight Goddard's name, the editor of the Buddhist Bible (Mr. Miles spells it with two d's rather than three).

Otherwise, fascinating reading. Hard to put down, once you've started. I'll definitely read it again.

Barry Miles writes very well. I totally became absorbed in this book and found it easy and enjoyable reading. Its 600+ pages and there's allot of info. Worth every page read.

From Ginsberg's family, childhood, early days, trips and more trips - Europe, Mexico,- the whole world, and the later acid trips other fine psychedelic conscious expanding moments, the Blake vision, the beats, the poets, the artists, the boys (the woman too), the drugs, the openness, the left leaning compassion and understandings, Kerouac, Bouroughs, Hunke, Whalen, Corso, McClure, Orlovsky, Carl Solomon, Williams, Pound - the list goes on and on. The 50's beats and the 60's spiritual flower children, political thoughts, the 1967 Human Be-In, the Chicago Democratic Convention. I'll stop here.

I also recommend "Spontaneous Mind," 600+ pages of interviews of Allen. I Love the man.

Although the writer focuses on Ginsberg, his life chronicles the history of the Beats, how they came to be, and their seminal contribution to the spawning of the radical 60's in America. Must reading for anyone interested in this era and the effect of the Beat movement on American culture and mindset.

I especially enjoyed the intimate perspective from which it is written, honing in on Ginsberg's persona in every day settings. It brings Ginsberg and his cronies, Burroughs, Kerouac, Cassady, etc., alive in a profoundly personal way.

this book may not be the best biography on ginsberg but it is the only one i know of that tackles the later years. i have the original hardcover version of this book but i knew nothing of mr. ginsberg's later years. this new edition fills in the blanks. allen's later years were just as interesting as the former. it also shows the depth of character that allen possessed even to the end.he was indeed a 20th century boddhisattva. i miss him.

This is the ultimate Allen Ginsberg biography. It goes into detail about all aspects of Allen's life from his childhood with emotionally disturbed mother Naomi (for which Kaddish was written) to his death from liver cancer in 1997. All his crazy times with fellow beats (Kerouac, Burroughs, Corso, etc.) are well documented and events which are eluded to in his poetry and journals are brought to light. If you have any interest in Ginsberg this is the book to read.

Next to Jay Stevens' classic "Storming Heaven" and Don Snyder's wonderful photographic essay "Aquarian Odyssey," make room on your bookshelf for Peter O. Whitmer's seven-dimensional biography "Aquarius Revisited." Combining well-written history and targeted recent interviews, we meet seven of the elemental forces who shaped the counter-culture of the Sixties as the outrageous, facinating, and above all intelligent souls that laid the groundwork for the last great movement our century will see. William S. Burroughs; Allen Ginsberg; Key Kesey; Timothy Leary; Norman Mailer; Tom Robbins; Hunter S. Thompson: some are gone, some are still with us, but all come together here to make a biography not only of seven people, but of a way of life, thought and hope.

A great collection of tales from "the greater generation"

Peter O. Whitmer is a writer and clinical psychologist and Bruce Van Wyngarden a magazine editor, both "children of the sixties." First published in 1987, "Aquarius Revisited" offers readers a penetrating look at some of the iconic figures of what the authors describe as the "Acid Generation," reflecting the degree to which drug use fueled at least some of the creativity the era spawned.

In AR, we meet seven of the personalities who gave shape and color to the counterculture of the 1960's: unconventional, intriguing, and, for the most part, profoundly wise souls that built the philosophic, spiritual, literary and aesthetic foundations one of the most significant movements that the twentieth century has produced.

AR is well-written history with penetrating interviews of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Key Kesey, Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, Tom Robbins and Hunter S. Thompson. Illustrative background information is offered with chapters on the Esalen Institute, UC Berkeley and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's Rajneeshpuram commune.

These seven fathers (they are, for some reason, all male) are all avatars who in a large sense created a movement that changed America, hopefully for good. As a group they are the aesthetic of evolution, the wellsprings of revolution, and, in the author's words, "they peer into the future, saying `there is always more.' They are the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night."

This is a delicious book, a treat for the soul, that realistically portrays some of the reasons for "the way we were."

Happened upon this nifty book in the counterculture section of my local bookstore and bought two copies.

The author takes us on a spirited, insightful sojourn through the backalleys of America's true icons and offers up zillions of interesting sidetracks along the way.

He doesn't mince too many words when disclosing the nitty gritty opinions that each of the protagonists has of one another - this makes for a more interesting read than many works which simply glorify all their subjects.

Additionally, somehow the author has an uncanny finger on the pulse of what we really want to hear about on the way, such as the piece on James Dean - his significance and his death. The section on Hunter S. Thompson is a riot!!!

This is a nice addition to your psychedelic editions.

This is an excellent, well-written book. It provides a probing first-person look at some of the great acid heroes of the sixties; Leary, Kesey, Ginsberg, Thompson, etc. My only criticism is that even though the author has a somewhat critical eye towards the foibles of these Great Men, and gets in a few zingers at their expense, theres nonetheless a slightly fawning tone, partiularly towards Timothy Leary, surely one of the most dispicable figures to rise from the dregs of the 60s. If you're curious about reading more about these guys you might wanna check out my manuscript-in-progress simply titled "ACID" which I'm writing on-line on my website, www.geocities.com/acebackwords2002

Ginsberg has always been an enigma to me. He certainly has sparks of genius; the justly famous "Howl" and the in some ways even better "Footnote to Howl" are excellent poems, and he has quite a few other poems of near-equal calibre (I find they tend to centre around "Howl").

Nonetheless, he falls short of being a first-rate poet. He is well worth reading, because he is an important figure and a better poet than most, but he falls short of the greatness of other 20th century American poets like Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, Eliot, etc., and well short of the greatness of a Yeats. [I will admit I am a bit old-fashioned in my poetic tastes, and this may shine through here, so perhaps some may appreciate the avante garde, rather risque poetry of Ginsberg a bit more than I!]

That said, there is a lot of schlock here too, a lot of poems that are just downright bad. Overall, unfortunately, the bad-to-mediocre poems outweigh the good-to-great ones, which is why I weight this volume lower. Perhaps a "Selected Poems" would be a better choice, one well-edited to sift out the good from the bad; I know volumes like this exist, but I haven't looked through any of them enough to recommend a particular edition.

Some have tried to name Ginsberg the inheritor of Blake's legacy, but this hardly seems appropriate. Ginsberg was a fan of Blake, and, if I'm not mistaken, claimed to have seen Blake in visions, but he just lacks the visionary and linguistic power of a Blake. Others claim him the just inheritor of Whitman; in this, he is lacking too.

Such comparisons are faulty, and should not be made. Ginsberg is a strong poet, but he doesn't hold up to the Whitmans and Blakes of the world, and it is truly unfair to try to compare the two in such a way.

Americans who can't name five poets will name Allen Ginsberg. In this case, that is good since he was one of America's Greatest Poets. This book attest to this.
I write this review to show disappointment in the publisher who continues to publish the collected works on the cheapest paper next to newsprint.
For the next edition, I would like to see, at least in limited edition, a volume printed on quality paper which could last more than a few years before turning yellow.
Ginsbergs deserves better treatment.

I just finished reading Ginsberg's collected poems, 1947-1997 -- fifty years and over a thousand pages of poetry. My overall impression is that he was probably the kindest, most moral member of the beat generation. When the other beats were penniless & borrowing money, Ginsberg was the one they borrowed money from. Corso would steal Ginsberg's manuscripts and sell them to used book dealers to score heroin, and each time Ginsberg would walk down to the book dealer and buy back his priceless words. Where Kerouac preached his own version of buddhism and gave it up a few years later for alcoholic catholicism, Ginsberg remained a dedicated student of buddhist compassion to the end of his days.

And that's what shines thru in many of these poems -- compassion, attention to the present, and the courage to be so honest about his life and his feelings. Many of these poems are raw, experimental, informal, and spontaneous, almost like journal entries. He wrote numerous classics -- Pull My Daisy (written with Kerouac & Cassady in 1949), Howl, America, Kaddish, Mescaline, Lysergic Acid, Wichita Vortex Sutra, Wales Visitation, Elegy for Neal Cassady, and Memory Gardens (elegy for Jack Kerouac), among others.

Some of the most common themes are world travel, nature, daily events, progressive politics, the US invasion of Vietnam, the peace movement, road trips, drug use, the beats, gay sex, hinduism, buddhism, death, and love. In other words, Ginsberg wrote about his life. He talks about his friends dying, his father dying, his mother's insanity and death, his loves, his joys, and whatever is pressing and interesting to him at the moment. Some of the poems are better than others, but I can't imagine there's a more honest poet out there.

Casual readers of the beats will likely want to skip around and read a poem here, a poem there, just checking out the highlights. But even for casual readers, there's no sense in buying Ginsberg's small City Lights books -- just buy this big book so you can have it all.

"A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things." (R. H. Blyth)

In this small book, Hiroaki Sato has put together more than 100 translations of the most famous haiku by the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho (1644-94). He has added a ten-page introduction to the work of Matsuo Basho and his most famous poem "Old Pond" which, in one of the most literal translations, reads as follows:

Fu-ru (old) i-ke (pond) ya, ka-wa-zu (frog) to-bi-ko-mu (jumping into) mi-zu (water) no o-to (sound) [transl. Fumiko Saisho]

"One Hundred Frogs" illustrates how many riches can be mined from a single poem, and how much fun it can be to try to capture the essence of a poem in another language. It also teaches a lesson in humility: It is just as impossible to translate poetry unchanged from one language to another as it is impossible to translate anything unchanged from "reality" into language. Ironically, a haiku tries just that. The art of writing haikus is strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism. The mind of a Zen master, it is said, is like a mirror: it reflects reality "as it is" and remains unmoved. A haiku, ideally, reflects reality like a mirror. This is an impossible task, of course. The haiku does not reflect reality, it reflects the poet's interpretation of reality. In this sense, the translations in this book are interpretations of interpretations of reality.

The translators approach the poem "Old Pond" with quite different attitudes. Some take a serious approach and, for example, try to retain the 5-7-5-syllables structure of the haiku: "The old pond, yes, and / A frog is jumping into / The water, and splash." [G.S. Fraser], or "The silent old pond / a mirror of ancient calm, / a frog-leaps-in splash" [Dion O'Donnol]. The latter translation also tries to highlight the tension between silence/calm and sound/movement that is built into the poem. In this context, it is interesting to know that Zen Buddhism does not interpret silence and sound as opposites but as extreme expressions of a unique, indivisible reality - like the north pole and south pole of a magnetized stick: opposites, yet parts of one object. There is no sound without silence. There is no silence without sound. My favorite "serious" translation is the version by Cid Corman, a contemporary American poet: "old pond / frog leaping / splash". After thinking so much about how to translate the poem, this is a refreshingly simple solution. In my opinion, it comes closest to the Zen spirit of the poem. And "splash" appears to be the most reasonable way to solve the question of what is "the water's sound"?

Other translators take a more light-hearted look. Bernard Lionel Einbond translates: "Antic pond - / frantic frog jumps in - / gigantic sound." Antic-frantic-gigantic is a quite amusing caricature of the seriousness of other translations. Then there is a sonnet version and a limerick version. The limerick goes: "There once was a curious frog / who sat by a pond on a log / And to see what resulted, / In the pond catapulted / With a water-noise heard around the bog."

And others again are even more playful. One George M. Young, Jr., contributed what he claimed was a yellowed newspaper clipping from his file: "MAFIA HIT MAN POET: NOTE FOUND PINNED TO LAPEL OF DROWNED VICTIM'S DOUBLE-BREASTED SUIT!!! 'Dere wasa dis frogg / Gone jumpa offa da logg / Now he inna bogg.' - Anonymous." It is one of my favorites because of its irreverence for the importance of Zen. An attitude, by the way, that is very much in the spirit of Zen.

The most playful translation of the poem, however, is the one that the reader can compose himself by flipping the pages of the book with his thumb: what emerges is the visual image of an ink-painted frog jumping into a pool. Without a sound. Ironic. Funny. Apt.

Regardless of the title, Ginsberg features minorly in this- other poets got more translations in.
And most of this book is a lengthy study of Renga, not haiku or the difficulties of translation (go read "After babel" or "Le Ton De Beau Marot" for real books on that subject.)
And one review got it entirely wrong- Zen has no role in the author's review, he specifically inveighing and excorciating the blind assumption of Zen influence in haikus.

One hundred frogs is a terrific look at just how differently poets can make a work their own. By writing a hundred different versions of "Frog Jumps / Into pond / sound of water" these poets demonstrate the diversity versions of the same poem can yield.

Bring on the "Another Hundred Frogs" sequel - I can't get enough of these!

Beautiful and paranoiac in the same time this epic journey of Allen Ginsberg w/ Peter Orlowsky in India shows written bits as diary writing, journals, magnificent poems along the way with wonderful photographs inserted. This books is a collage of ideas, sentiments, emotions captured by Allen's ink along his trip throught Calcutta, beautiful instants, praise for the police state, words that fall on the text, announced with a cold voice. This book begin as a diary and classic Allen Ginsberg poems comes at some moments, lenghty experimental poetry classic from the Beat instant. A really nice book with nice paper and typographs.

This collection of diary entries, pieces of poems, personal reflections, and other notations written by Allen Ginsberg (poet + prophet) reveals a lot not only about Ginsberg, but about India itself. The conditions on the streets of Calcutta, Bombay, and other Indian cities are presented in stark clarity; many of the images he invokes are startling (like the burning ghats, or burial mounds), and sometimes even disturbing, but they are always described in a way that is at once personal and human. Ginsberg frequently writes about different Hindu gods and goddesses, reflecting his deep interest in and knowledge of Indian culture. There are a series of photographs that compliment the written words very well; as opposed to the original printing of this book, there are several new photographs included. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Allen Ginsberg, the Beats, Poetry, India, or the human spirit and it's compassionate nature....

"A school day's remaining minutes would always sleepwalk toward their finale."

"A breeze runs finger down her back
On which sweat drops sleep
Like eggs of ex-lovers"

In this stunning collection, James Mirarchi, a San Francisco based poet, constructs a reality of images such as these - images that reach out of the page and animate themselves before the reader's astonished eyes. Images of our everyday lives, seen through the eyes of someone who is one of us, but who has an acute sense of the everyday - and how extraordinary it can be.

A masterpiece of description, "Venison" is a sensory - and often sensual - journey through a kaleidoscope of themes, from a talking vending machine to a voyeuristic account of a sexy Sunday afternoon with a dead-ringer for Bridget Fonda to "a gory poem" about a seven year old child with a nosebleed.

Mirarchi uses description as a singer uses his voice: as an instrument to create nuance and vision, texture and emotion.

"Venison" is a collection worthy of attention. Its intelligent, witty and often sharp-tongued prose is the mark of a poet who knows his way around the human condition.

I'm an avid reader, though not much on poetry. But when I picked up this little red book, I was pleasantly surprised. The cover is pretty eye catching. Mr. Mirarchi delivers a cornucopia of poems from 'in your face' sexual innuendos to subtle, delightfully funny pieces. He has a way of grotesquely describing his characters. This book is not for the fainthearted, but if you have an open mind, this is not one to be missed.

This might be the first life-changing book I encountered (Warhol, Borges and Nabokov would come later) - I actually (astonishingly, in retrospect) stumbled across both Ginsberg - this collection - and Ferlinghetti in the library of a North Carolina high school in 1986. I kept this book checked out for most of the school year, gradually committing vast chunks of it to memory.

Ginsberg was raw, real, more than willing to be a mess in life and in literature, which is exceptionally humanizing, and the poems are, and always will be this vast something from the depths of the collective American unconscious - "Howl" and "Kaddish" most famously, but in less well-known, but no less wonderful pieces like "Wichita Vortex Sutra" as well.

Fans of Ginsberg (or of the beat movement in general) will already know much of this, but this collection is much more than that - some of the most vital American writing of the 20th century.

-David Alston

pros: This compilation is amazing. It covers almost all of his work, includes artwork found in the compilations, and has an awsome refrence section that explains era specific phrases/notes about the poems and an alphabetical directory of proper names.

Con: Its not a very preaty book tho, and is quite intimidating to hold in the hand at times if you wanted to read to people or something.

I just finished reading Ginsberg's complete poems, 1947-1997 -- Collected Poems, White Shroud, Cosmopolitan Greetings, and Death and Fame -- fifty years and over a thousand pages of poetry. My overall impression is that he was probably the kindest, most moral member of the beat generation. When the other beats were penniless & borrowing money, Ginsberg was the one they borrowed money from. Corso would steal Ginsberg's manuscripts and sell them to used book dealers to score heroin, and each time Ginsberg would walk down to the book dealer and buy back his priceless words. Where Kerouac preached his own version of buddhism and gave it up a few years later for catholic alcoholism, Ginsberg remained a dedicated student of buddhist compassion to the end of his days.

And that's what shines thru in many of these poems -- compassion, attention to the present, and the courage to be so honest about his life and his feelings. Many of these poems are raw, experimental, informal, and spontaneous, almost like journal entries. This book contains numerous classics -- Pull My Daisy (written with Kerouac & Cassady in 1949), Howl, America, Kaddish, Mescaline, Lysergic Acid, Wichita Vortex Sutra, Wales Visitation, Elegy for Neal Cassady, Memory Gardens (elegy for Jack Kerouac), and Ode to Failure, among others.

Some of the most common themes are world travel, nature, daily events, progressive politics, the US invasion of Vietnam, the peace movement, road trips, drug use, the beats, gay sex, hinduism, buddhism, death, and love. In other words, Ginsberg wrote about his life. He talks about his friends dying, his father dying, his mother's insanity and death, his loves, his joys, and whatever is pressing and interesting to him at the moment. Some of the poems are better than others, but I can't imagine there's a more honest poet out there.

Casual readers of the beats will likely want to skip around and read a poem here, a poem there, just checking out the highlights. But even for casual readers, there's no sense in buying Ginsberg's small City Lights books -- just buy this big red book so you can have it all. And don't stop here. Ginsberg's later books -- White Shroud, Cosmopolitan Greetings, and Death and Fame -- prove that Ginsy just got better with age, confronting man's inevitable decline into disease and death.

Hello, Good Lookers.

This collection of Allen Ginsberg's poetry is indeed quite electric. He was the art-form's left to the complacent's right. His writing is at times grudgingly painful, and at others, descriptively beautiful. He was a soul with a connection to his art.

Ginsberg set the course of change for a whole movement (Beat) as well as for an entire society. He was a voice when many had none. He took chances, and paid for them. In this book one can truly see him bearing his soul, his humanity.

His writing is so profound at times, that the beauty lies, not in the words, but in the life and lifestyle he led. Ginsberg was so proficient at transcending the human condition and finding something almost prophetic about it, that his poetry is a must-read for any serious student of poetry.

While some may be turned-off by Ginsberg's stuff, his art lies, again, not so much in the words, but, in himself; for Ginsberg was the art-form, and he lived a life to prove it!

Thanks for thaking the time to read my review.

Rock On, Kids,
Dr. Of Style

This just in: William S. Burroughs was the only beat writer with any talent at all and, ironically, if you were to ask your average college type for the names of beat writers Burroughs wouldn't even come to their pot-headed mind. Allan Disgustingberg, alias Allan No-talent, was a very successful literary fraud. He was even able to blindside Burroughs, who was a literary genius, into thinking he was a real hairway to steven, er, stairway to heaven. And this is most astonishing since, if you've ever seen a picture of Allan Disgustingberg, you know that he was about as sexy as my uncle Abe.

Years after Carolyn divorced Neal Cassady she writes a book that criticizes Neal ad nauseum. There's not a thing written about Neal by Carolyn that indicates why she married him. According to Carolyn, Neal didn't have anything going for him. I read one of the books that contains Neal's letters from jail to Carolyn and he sounded like a man with wit, humor and a great attitude considering what he went through during his early years. Carolyn pathetically drones on about what a terrible husband, lover, whatever he was to her. It is poorly written, down right boring, and a completely useless waste of time - hers for writing this. What was her point exactly? It almost seems as if she is jealous that her ex-husband was so popular. Is she trying to bash him to lower him in the eyes of his fans, or just trying to make money off his name? There's a lot of erroneous facts in the book. She couldn't even be bothered to check the proper name of Neal's mother. If you want to read about Neal's life, this book is not where you want to start. Try "The First Third." By pass this one completely.

I enjoyed this book immensely. A behind the scenes view of what life was really like for your favorite Beat personas. The book was easy to read and hard to put down.

As great as the Beat fiction is, and life-changing as On the Road is, we get too caught up with the fictitive personas of the Beats. It's nice to see the side of Kerouac, Cassady, and Ginsberg that didn't make it into the novels. I'm sure Carolyn's viewpoint is skewed a little, but so is what we read in On the Road. Between her work and their work we can get a picture of what they were like, not as legends, but as men.

There are times when Carolyn bogs down with too much detail, or too much whining, or patches that just aren't great writing, but all in all it is a good biography, autobiography, and novel.

If you want to know more, here is a good place to start, along with these books, though you probably have read them by now: Kerouac's On the Road and The Dharma Bums; Cassady's The First Third; Perry and Babb's On the Bus; Ginsberg's Howl

It was interesting hearing about Kerouac & Cassady
from a woman's point of view, especially a woman who
was so intimately connected to the dynamic duo. She
dwelt on the negative ramifications a bit too much for
my taste, but then again, these have never been really
examined in much detail prior to this books release.
For those of you who have at least a passing interest
in the beats, I would recommend this book.

This book is all right, I must say that I enjoy the fact that Carolyn owns up to her own faults, such as her jealousy and such. I think that it is easy to judge her from 50 years down the line because so much has changed socially. She fell in love with Cassady at a time where women didn't just get up and leave their men if they were cheated on. Divorce was not as common as it is now. The women of the beat generation lived life on the edge of suburbanism. Most of them found themselves in the unusual and yet somehow liberating situation of being the primary breadwinner. I found Carolyn Cassady's biography to be an interesting account of an intelligent and talented woman who walked the line between her own more old fashioned sense of morality and the life Neal Cassady introduced her to. She mostly seemed to want his friends to go away. I think that he still would have been as wild if they did go away, he would have just found new friends. I don't blame her bitter attitude toward a lot of his friends though. It is a frustrating experience when someone's friends see only the party side of them and don't see what it does to the person's family.

Carolyn did, unfortunately, hang tight for a while to her belief that she could hold onto her husband. Hard to say if her version of their relationship is accurate or not. I do believe her account of what happened, but I also believe that he was a smooth talking guy who probably had similar conversations with his other two wives as well as all those other women. This obviously has to be a biased book, it involves the woman's marriage, I should not expect her to be able to look at things too objectively.

I guess the reason I call this book only "all right" is in part for selfish reasons (I like Neal Cassady, I like Allen Ginsberg, I like the Grateful Dead, I like Ken Kesey), the same things I appreciate about the book, such as her bitterness and jealousy, are the same things that kept me from fully enjoying it. The other reason I call this book merely "all right" is because Carolyn is not a writer. Joyce Johnson's memoir "Minor Characters" blows Cassady out of the water. While Cassady's life seems to have revolved around her husband, Johnson's somewhat brief affair with Kerouac is not her only claim to fame. She is an author in her own right and quite a good one. So Cassady's book reads more like a biography and Johnson's more like a novel. Which is all right. But still kept the book from being the sort of thing I would reread over and over.

And for the record, to respond to someone's questions about the author's facts - I don't believe Carolyn states that Kerouac died on Oct. 31, but rather that is when she found out about it. Also, he did not die on the 20th, but rather the 21st.