Present Books In Pursuance Of Collected Poems, 1947-1980
| Original Title: | Collected Poems 1947-80 |
| ISBN: | 0060914947 (ISBN13: 9780060914943) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Allen Ginsberg
paper | Pages: 864 pages Rating: 4.19 | 6954 Users | 62 Reviews
List Epithetical Books Collected Poems, 1947-1980
| Title | : | Collected Poems, 1947-1980 |
| Author | : | Allen Ginsberg |
| Book Format | : | paper |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 864 pages |
| Published | : | June 7th 1988 by Harper Perennial (first published 1984) |
| Categories | : | Poetry. Classics. Literature. American |
Description To Books Collected Poems, 1947-1980
This is the dawn of a new age......in my reading life.I finally finished this f%&$in' book!
I remember the moment I purchased this book - it was New Year's Eve 2007 (about to be 2008 and the GFC changed the vibe everywhere that next year I remember) in downtown Brisbane at Borders Bookstore which is long gone due to most people buying online these days.
It was a really great time in my life after being burnt out and lost for the first six months of 2007, I ended up finding a new career, a new place to live (in the countryside of Japan) and a new lease on life having recently discovered Kerouac's exciting and exuberant prose only 2 years earlier.
Sometimes you walk into a bookshop and a book just YEARNS for you to pick it up, like it is almost glowing. That's the best way I can describe it. I had just heard about Ginsberg and read about him in Kerouac's books, often as 'Irwin Garden', and was fascinated by this modern-day bard, who was also a close friend of Bob Dylan's.
Well, I must admit - my initial thoughts were upon reading that...."this is not poetry." But I had been brought up with very conventional notions of what poetry is and what a poem can be. When I heard Ginsberg read his own poems or when I read them out aloud, there was a certain roll and rhythm to them, of course atypical of traditional poetry, but with an unmistakably catchy beat.
To be perfectly honest, I like Ginsberg more as an important figure in late 20th Century American popular culture history and as one of the key members if not THE MOST IMPORTANT member of the counterculture of the 50s and 60s. Ginsberg was the PR man of the Beat Movement and if it wasn't for him, Kerouac's MS and Burroughs' MS may have never seen the light of day and the world would have been robbed of two incredibly important writers. He would put up with Kerouac's bitchin' and moaning' and heckling him about his Jewish faith and heritage until one day Ginsberg finally realised that Kerouac was just playing with him, testing out his sense of humour, so he returned with a "oh go fuck your mother" which shut Kerouac up pretty damn smart, as he loved his mother more than anybody in the world.
Posthumously, he comes across as an almost mythical figure - someone who sowed the seeds and sparked the fireworks of a movement which first rocked America and then later the world.
Fast forward to the 70s and here he is co-founding the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and lecturing to keen young hungry minds about the beat writers, Buddhism, meditations and other related topics. If you haven't listened to Ginsberg's lectures at Naropa, you are really missing out. He is just an amazing speaker - almost hypnotising. He is extremely articulate, precise, eloquent and insightful. He comes across as extremely well-read and learned, too, and.....for the most part, sympathetic (an important part of the Beat ethos) but more on that later.
Then when I think about his sexually graphic language in his poems and how he would sometimes strip naked before an audience, I thought what an incredibly brave man - to be open about your homosexuality, especially at THAT time in American history was incredibly brave, bordering on foolish, if not downright stupid. That's something I admire about him enormously. More people should embrace that spirit through life in my opinion and that's one of Ginsberg's most admirable qualities along with his untiring efforts to help his friends with money, heart-to-heart talks or helping them get published.
Okay, now that I have gotten the praise out of the way (I'm trying to be completely honest about my feeling towards Ginsberg, even though I might receive hate/death mail from his most devoted fans), I would now like to move on to what I don't especially like about him.
First of all, I have heard about how he treated Ira Cohen - another incredibly talented American poet. Never heard of him? No. Don't be surprised. Most people haven't. But Ira Cohen was an unbelievably talented poet - one of the best of his time in my opinion and Ginsberg refused to help him, when he needed it and did not allow Gregory Corso to even meet with him (something I heard from a reliable source). Apparently he once said to Ira something to the effect of "not enough room in NYC for two bearded Jewish poets". Gregory Corso, another brilliant and close friend of Ginsberg's once said that Allen was nice but he was a "tyrant". Finally, the thing that makes me the maddest is how he betrayed Jan Kerouac, Jack Kerouac's only daughter, in her legal fight to save her father's work from all the greedy bidding and selling of his manuscripts and other ephemera and regalia by the Sampas family (who it turned out forged a fake will and claimed it was written in Gabrielle's, Kerouac's mother's, hand) and instead have it placed into a major library, where it could be studied and read by fans and scholars alike. It's sad that Jan died before litigation could take place. Ginsberg had initially been kind to her and supportive of her but as soon as she brought up the lawsuit, Ginsberg quickly turned against her and sided with the already well-established Sampas estate, where, to put it bluntly, he could see all the royalty dollars collecting and starting to pile sky-high.
Now to Ginsberg as a poet......
I would classify the poems in this book (a very large, heavy and important volume of work) very loosely and broadly into three categories - 1) brilliant, iconoclastic poems; 2) interesting poems which give you an insight into his mind at the time and what he was preoccupied with but are not extremely well crafted; and 3) pretty shit/instantly forgettable poems. I would say that about 50% of the poems fall into category 2 (not bad but not great poems), 25% fall into category 1 (these are the ones I will keep with me and re-read; and 3) 25% fall into category 3 (these I will just forget ever existed until proven wrong that they have something worthwhile to share with other people other than Ginsberg himself). Is this assessment too harsh? I can't tell. I think the reason he sometimes writes some pretty ordinary poems comes down to two factors - 1) deadlines/pressure from publishers and 2) big ego, which usually comes to anyone who becomes famous, or in his case incredibly famous.
So, in closing, I would like to share with you the poems I really loved from this volume - the poems which belong to Category 1 - which I will write down and keep somewhere important for they deserved to be read and re-read. I will list them in the order as they appear in the book.
The Green Automobile (p. 83)
Sakyamuni Coming Out from the Mountain (p.90) - one of his earliest Buddhist poems
Howl (p.126) - nothing more need be said on this classic
Footnote to Howl (p. 134)
A Supermarket in California (p. 136)
Sunflower Sutra (p. 138)
Death to Van Gogh's Ear (p. 167)
Europe! Europe! (p. 171)
At Apollinaire's Grave (p.180)
Kaddish (p. 209) - absolutely brilliant. A masterpiece. IMO the second-best thing he ever wrote.
Lysergic Acid (p. 231) - Ginsberg's take on LSD
Aether (p. 242)
Magic Psalm (p. 255)
The Reply (p. 257)
The End (p. 259)
Television Was Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber (p. 272) - Another brilliant poem but rather complex and Orwellian.
Angkor Wat (p. 306) - Beautiful.
Waking in New York (p. 339) - Features amazing metropolitan imagery.
Kral Majales (p. 353) - about his experience being crowned the "King of May" in Prague before being kicked out of the country and having his notebooks stolen.
Hiway Poesy: L.A. - Albuquerque - Texas - Wichita (p. 382) - references to other beat writers from Kansas such as McClure and Plymell.
Wichita Vortex Sutra (p. 394) - a seminal poem.
Iron Horse (p. 432)
Wales Visitation (p. 480) - breathtakingly beautiful. The best poem Ginsberg ever wrote in my opinion.
Bixby Canyon (p. 497)
To Poe: Over the Planet, Air Albany-Baltimore (p. 514)
Reflections in Sleepy Eye (p. 524)
Memory Gardens (p. 531) - his reflections on Kerouac's sudden and early death.
Friday the Thirteenth (p. 538)
Ecologue (p. 542)
Guru Om (p. 553)
Bixby Canyon Ocean Path Word Breeze (p. 559)
Contest of Bards (p. 665) - another amazing poem in which Ginsberg attempts to write in the style of William Blake. As Ginbserg himself puts it "a Blakean Punk Epic with nirvanic Rune music"
"Don't Grow Old" (p. 710)
Love Forgiven (p. 729)
Verses Written for Student Antidraft Registration Rally (p. 730)
Ode to Failure (p. 737)
Birdbrain! (p. 738)
Finally, the notes section at the back of the book was of immense help in decoding the sometimes obscure or esoteric allusions in Ginsberg's work.
I have to ask myself this? Was it worth spending 9 years of my life slowing reading this book? The answer is probably 'yes' because even though there were a lot of poems which didn't tickle my fancy particularly, the above poems show that Ginsberg, when his muse was around, (and I don't just mean Peter Orlovsky) could really pull out some magic from his bardic beard.
Highly recommended to all fans of modern poetry and if you are a Ginsberg fan, then it goes without saying that you must read this!
This book, once I have finished taking down all the notes, will find a happy home chez M. Whitewolf - one of the most important and relevant writers today. Perhaps some of these pages will inspire him to continue writing great poems. It deserves to be in his hands rather than to lie forgotten and dust-embedded up upon my bookshelves.
Rating Epithetical Books Collected Poems, 1947-1980
Ratings: 4.19 From 6954 Users | 62 ReviewsEvaluate Epithetical Books Collected Poems, 1947-1980
My copy still retains two book marks, commemorating the era in which I read this...1. A postcard from Skagit Valley Bulb Farm, with the message, "How about a balloon ride? I think it would be fun!"2. A note that was left on my car that reads, "Hey baby, I think you're really cute. E-mail me at natasha@____.com and we can get to know each other."The postcard was written to me by a girl who thought that Bush's "Glycerine" was beautiful poetry; and the note was a joke from my friend, Rich, who hadI am FINALLY finished with this monster. The worst poetry I've ever read, but I finished it. I can mark it off the list of 1001 books to read before I die. And trust me, it almost killed me to read it. His poetry is vulgar to the point of perversion, and I have a pretty perverted mind myself. Most of them just make no sense at all. I'm not a political person by any means, and so that's partially why they are over my head, and I didn't grow up in his era I guess, but I just didn't get them.
Warning. This book is full of poems by Allen Ginsberg.
I am still re-reading and savoring the book that when found in my locker in military boot camp (1965), got me called before the base commander and almost tossed out of the service. The questions: My past use of drugs and leanings toward communism. They kept the book :-( and simply gave me a stiff warning about what was American and what was not ... :-) I still love Ginsberg - I don't know what that says about my patriotism. :-)
I wish I could give this 10 stars. This has been my "go to" book for poetic enjoyment since my teen years. Side note: I am fortunate to now have an autographed copy as my ex-husband met him when he visited Loyola.
There's a lot of crap that pads out Ginsberg's oeuvre but the crap gives a human trajectory to the man, and as Peter Golub says, don't think of poetry like a capitalist; poetry doesn't have to do anything. Otherwise, it's nice to have America, Howl, Kaddish -- the 3 masterpieces -- in one volume.And the 2nd rate poems are nice.
This is the dawn of a new age......in my reading life.I finally finished this f%&$in' book! I remember the moment I purchased this book - it was New Year's Eve 2007 (about to be 2008 and the GFC changed the vibe everywhere that next year I remember) in downtown Brisbane at Borders Bookstore which is long gone due to most people buying online these days.It was a really great time in my life after being burnt out and lost for the first six months of 2007, I ended up finding a new career, a new
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