What do you think?
Rate this book
Mind Breaths
Meditations, rhapsodies, elegies, confessions, and mindful chronicle writings filling inward and outward space thru mid-Seventies decade.
Mind Breaths: Australian songsticks measure oldest known poetics, broken-leg meditations march thru Six Worlds singing crazy Wisdom’s hopeless suffering, the First Noble Truth, inspiring quiet Sung sunlit greybeard soliloquies, English moonlit night-gleams, ambitious mid-life fantasies, Ah crossed-legged thoughts sitting straight-spine paying attention to empty breath flowing ‘round the globe;’ then Dharma elegy & sharp-eyed haiku. Pederast rhapsody, exorcism of mid-East battlegods, workaday sad dust glories, American ego confession & mugging downfall Lower East Side, hospital sickness moan, hydrogen Jukebox Prophecy, Sex come-all-ye, mountain cabin flashes, Buddhist country western chord changes, Rolling Thunder snowballs, a Jersey Shaman dream, Father Death in a graveyard near Newark, Poe bones, two hot hearted love poems: Here chronicled mid Seventies’ half decade inward & outward Mindfulness in many Poetries
- GenresPoetryQueerCollections
123 pages, paper
First published January 1, 1977
10 people are currently reading
355 people want to read
About the author
Allen Ginsberg
489 books4,090 followersAllen Ginsberg was a groundbreaking American poet and activist best known for his central role in the Beat Generation and for writing the landmark poem Howl. Born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish parents, Ginsberg grew up in a household shaped by both intellectualism and psychological struggle. His father, Louis Ginsberg, was a published poet and a schoolteacher, while his mother, Naomi, suffered from severe mental illness, which deeply affected Ginsberg and later influenced his writing—most notably in his poem Kaddish.
As a young man, Ginsberg attended Columbia University, where he befriended other future Beat luminaries such as Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. These relationships formed the core of what became known as the Beat Generation—a loose-knit group of writers and artists who rejected mainstream American values in favor of personal liberation, spontaneity, spiritual exploration, and radical politics.
Ginsberg rose to national prominence in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems, released by City Lights Books in San Francisco. Howl, an emotionally charged and stylistically experimental poem, offered an unfiltered vision of America’s underbelly. It included candid references to homosexuality, drug use, and mental illness—subjects considered taboo at the time. The poem led to an obscenity trial, which ultimately concluded in Ginsberg’s favor, setting a precedent for freedom of speech in literature.
His work consistently challenged social norms and addressed themes of personal freedom, sexual identity, spirituality, and political dissent. Ginsberg was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was still criminalized in much of the United States, and he became a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights throughout his life. His poetry often intertwined the personal with the political, blending confessional intimacy with a broader critique of American society.
Beyond his literary achievements, Ginsberg was also a dedicated activist. He protested against the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, and later, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. He was present at many pivotal cultural and political moments of the 1960s and 1970s, including the 1968 Democratic National Convention and various countercultural gatherings. His spiritual journey led him to Buddhism, which deeply influenced his writing and worldview. He studied under Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa and helped establish the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Ginsberg’s later years were marked by continued literary output and collaborations with musicians such as Bob Dylan and The Clash. His poetry collections, including Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, and The Fall of America, were widely read and respected. He received numerous honors for his work, including the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
He died of liver cancer in 1997 at the age of 70. Today, Allen Ginsberg is remembered not only as a pioneering poet, but also as a courageous voice for free expression, social justice, and spiritual inquiry. His influence on American literature and culture remains profound and enduring.
As a young man, Ginsberg attended Columbia University, where he befriended other future Beat luminaries such as Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. These relationships formed the core of what became known as the Beat Generation—a loose-knit group of writers and artists who rejected mainstream American values in favor of personal liberation, spontaneity, spiritual exploration, and radical politics.
Ginsberg rose to national prominence in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems, released by City Lights Books in San Francisco. Howl, an emotionally charged and stylistically experimental poem, offered an unfiltered vision of America’s underbelly. It included candid references to homosexuality, drug use, and mental illness—subjects considered taboo at the time. The poem led to an obscenity trial, which ultimately concluded in Ginsberg’s favor, setting a precedent for freedom of speech in literature.
His work consistently challenged social norms and addressed themes of personal freedom, sexual identity, spirituality, and political dissent. Ginsberg was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was still criminalized in much of the United States, and he became a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights throughout his life. His poetry often intertwined the personal with the political, blending confessional intimacy with a broader critique of American society.
Beyond his literary achievements, Ginsberg was also a dedicated activist. He protested against the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, and later, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. He was present at many pivotal cultural and political moments of the 1960s and 1970s, including the 1968 Democratic National Convention and various countercultural gatherings. His spiritual journey led him to Buddhism, which deeply influenced his writing and worldview. He studied under Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa and helped establish the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Ginsberg’s later years were marked by continued literary output and collaborations with musicians such as Bob Dylan and The Clash. His poetry collections, including Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, and The Fall of America, were widely read and respected. He received numerous honors for his work, including the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
He died of liver cancer in 1997 at the age of 70. Today, Allen Ginsberg is remembered not only as a pioneering poet, but also as a courageous voice for free expression, social justice, and spiritual inquiry. His influence on American literature and culture remains profound and enduring.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 2, 2020
Dantean, the cliffside whereon I walked
With volumes of Milton & the Tuscan Bard enarmed:
Highway prospecting th'ocean sludged transparent
lipped to asphalt built by Man under sky.
Far down below the factory I espied, and plunged
full clothed into the Acid Tide, heroic precipitous
Stupidly swam the noxious surface to my goal —
An oil platform at land's end, where Fellows watched
my bold approach to the Satanic World Trade Center.
Father dying tumored, Industry smog
o'erspreads dawn sky, gold beams descend
on Paterson thru subtle tar fumes, viewless
to wakened eye, transfused into family meat.
Capitalism's reckless industry cancers New Jersey.
Read
April 1, 2021I read this for my “reading Lana del Rey’s favourite books“ video!! Check it out if you want to know my full thoughts!
https://youtu.be/S4IfSeu_4zY
https://youtu.be/S4IfSeu_4zY
May 15, 2014
this volume forms a central tenet of Ginsberg's oeuvre: in both part and whole, it is a form of meditation as mediation with the Oversoul, a conversation in form of free verse playing light on dark, the collection which links Ginsberg back to Blake (judging from what little I have read of either, so do shake the salt from my cells as you please)
.
Bought a copy from the river and sold it to a different shop in hopes of passing on its wisdom. Hope it found a home or better still a new mind in which to breathe.
.
More substantial than Howl, in variations and content and depth. The sort of thing to be reread, to be savored as one enjoys a fine bar of chocolate or a long slow fuck—the mirrory sort which negates the need for an smoke after. The sort of thing which one can never quite reach the end of , that one almost feels the tacit need to not finish ,
not for years
not until one realizes what was lost.
.
Bought a copy from the river and sold it to a different shop in hopes of passing on its wisdom. Hope it found a home or better still a new mind in which to breathe.
.
More substantial than Howl, in variations and content and depth. The sort of thing to be reread, to be savored as one enjoys a fine bar of chocolate or a long slow fuck—the mirrory sort which negates the need for an smoke after. The sort of thing which one can never quite reach the end of , that one almost feels the tacit need to not finish ,
not for years
not until one realizes what was lost.
August 18, 2013
One poem that really struck me in this collection is "Yes And It's Hopeless," in which Ginsberg reflects on many of the problems in the world we live in (published in 1978, with poems written between 1972 and 1977) -- wars, drug problems, assassinations, etc. -- with a sense of despair. In many of these poems, Ginsberg anguishes over the state of affairs in the world (oil pollution, the assassination of JFK, the shootings at Kent State University in 1970), in others over his own lost youth and the deaths of friends Kerouac and Cassady: "In later times/I saw them little, not much difference they're dead./They live in books and memory, strong as on earth." To me, "Howl" is the best Ginsberg offers, though I also enjoyed collections such as "The Fall of America" and "Reality Sandwiches," and, to a lesser extent, "Kaddish." This, for me, was not a Ginsberg great -- it had some fine moments of writing, but just comes across as somewhat depressing, Ginsberg, in a sense, relieving himself of all the heavy burdens in the world: "I loose my bowels of Asia,/I move the U.S.A./I crap on Dharmakaya/And wipe the worlds away." This is not a work I would read again, though it does put me one step closer to reading the entirety of Ginsberg's poetry.
January 17, 2022
The poems of Mind Breaths show two distinctive sides of Ginsberg's poetics: the personal and the transcendental. In Ginsberg's previous collection, these two sides have co-existed harmoniously, articulated in separate poems or together in the same poem. In Mind Breaths, however, there is a disharmony evident in the divide of these two sides; indeed, they don't co-exist as harmoniously as they did in Ginsberg's early work, but rather seem to have retreated to opposing poles where they have developed (for better or worse) to such an extreme that one can't help but wonder how they ever co-existed. In some cases, the personal poems take on a blunt quality. Whereas the transcendental poems have lost their subtly; indeed, they have become more surface, more conspicuous, more forced (perhaps as Ginsberg's public identity became more prominent)...
This may be interpreted as progress, as a refinement of the poet's voice(s) to its most potent; it may reflect personal or creative growth/development, exploring the possibilities of poetry and expanding into new territory; or it may be symptomatic of the poet's fatigue in the wake of the 1960s (the death of the 1960s idealism), along with the deaths of his friends Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac. Perhaps "mourn" is the wrong word as it relates to Cassady and Kerouac. Ginsberg doesn't reflect on the death of his friends, he reflects on his reflection on the death of his friends - that is, the poems of The Fall of America , his previous collection, in which he pays tribute to his friends. Ginsberg's "reflections on his reflections" provides an insightful and revelatory conclusion to the relationships shared by the Beat icons...
The deaths of the 1960s idealism, Cassady, and Kerouac, along with the account of the mugging, combine to create a darker tone in Mind Breaths - another departure from Ginsberg's early work. There is a preoccupation with death that may have been present in Ginsberg's early work, but not as prominent as it is here, in poems like "Sad Dust Glories" (a poem that is, incidentally, dedicated To the Dead) that begin "You were here on earth, in cities - / where now? / Bones in the ground, / thoughts in my mind." But the list isn't complete without the poems that address the deaths of Pablo Neruda, William Carlos Williams (for whom Ginsberg already wrote a tribute in a poem from Planet News ), and the poet's father...
When the red pond fills fish appear
When the red pond dries fish disappear.
Everything built on the desert crumbles to dust.
Electric cable transmission wires swept down.
The lizard people came out of the rock.
The red Kangaroo people forgot their own song.
Only a man with four sticks can cross the Simpson Desert.
One rain turns red dust green with leaves.
One raindrop begins the universe.
When the raindrop dries, world come to their end.
- Ayers Rock / Uluru Song
a lot of mouths and cocks,
under the world there's a lot of come, and a lot of saliva dripping into brooks,
There's a lot of Shit under the world, flowing beneath cities into rivers,
a lot of urine floating under the world,
a lot of snot in the world's industrial nostrils, sweat under the world's iron arm, blood
gushing out of the world's breast
endless lakes of tears, seas of sick vomit rushing between hemispheres
floating toward Sargasso, old oily rags and brake fluids, human gasoline -
[...]
- Under the world there's a lot of ass, a lot of cunt
lemme kiss your face, lick your neck
touch your lips, tongue tickle tongue end
nose to nose, quiet questions
ever slept with a man before?
hand stroking you back slowly down to the cheeks' moist hair soft asshole
eyes to eyes blur, a tear strained from seeing 0
[...]
- Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass
[...]
- and as I looked at the crowd of kids on the stoop - a boy stepped up, put his arm around my neck
tenderly I thought for a moment, squeezed harder, his umbrella handle against my skull,
and his friends took my arm, a young brown companion tripped his foot 'gainst my ankle -
as I went down shouting Om Ah Hum to gangs of lovers on the stoop watching
[...]
- MuggingJaweh with Atom Bomb
Allah cuts throat of Infidels
Jaweh's armies beat down neighbouring tribes
Will Red Sea waters close & drown h'armies of Allah?
[...]
- Jaweh and Allah Battle
This may be interpreted as progress, as a refinement of the poet's voice(s) to its most potent; it may reflect personal or creative growth/development, exploring the possibilities of poetry and expanding into new territory; or it may be symptomatic of the poet's fatigue in the wake of the 1960s (the death of the 1960s idealism), along with the deaths of his friends Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac. Perhaps "mourn" is the wrong word as it relates to Cassady and Kerouac. Ginsberg doesn't reflect on the death of his friends, he reflects on his reflection on the death of his friends - that is, the poems of The Fall of America , his previous collection, in which he pays tribute to his friends. Ginsberg's "reflections on his reflections" provides an insightful and revelatory conclusion to the relationships shared by the Beat icons...
Annotations to Rabindranath Tagore's Sung Poetry
"In later days, remembering this I shall certainly go mad."
Reading Sung poems, I think of my poems to Neal
dead few years now, Jack underground
invisible - their faces rise in my mind.
Did I write truthfully of them? In later times
I saw them little, not much different they're dead.
They live in books and memory, strong as on earth.
[...]
- Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit
The deaths of the 1960s idealism, Cassady, and Kerouac, along with the account of the mugging, combine to create a darker tone in Mind Breaths - another departure from Ginsberg's early work. There is a preoccupation with death that may have been present in Ginsberg's early work, but not as prominent as it is here, in poems like "Sad Dust Glories" (a poem that is, incidentally, dedicated To the Dead) that begin "You were here on earth, in cities - / where now? / Bones in the ground, / thoughts in my mind." But the list isn't complete without the poems that address the deaths of Pablo Neruda, William Carlos Williams (for whom Ginsberg already wrote a tribute in a poem from Planet News ), and the poet's father...
Some breath breathes out Adonais & Canto General
Some breath breathes out Bombs and dog barks
Some breath breathes out silent over green snow mountains
Some breath breathes not at all
- On Neruda's Death
Dawn's orb orange-raw shining over Palisades
bare crowded banches bush up from marshes -
New Jersey with my father riding automobile
highway to Newmark Airport - Empire State's
spire, horned buildingtops, Manhattan
rising as in W. C. Williams' eyes between wire trestles -
trucks six wheeled steady rolling overpass
beside New York - I am here
tiny under sun rising in vast white sky,
staring thru skeleton new buildings,
with pen in hand awake . . .
- We Rise on Sun Beams and Fall in the Night
Walking at night on asphalt campus
road by the German Instructor with Glasses
W. C. Williams is dead he said in accent
under the tree in Benares; I stopped and asked
Williams is dead? Enthusiastic and wide-eyed
under the Big Dipper. Stood on the Porch
of the International House Annex bungalow
insects buzzing round the electric light
reading the Medical obituary in >Time.
"out among the sparrows behind the shutters"
Williams is in the Big Dipper. He isn't dead
as the many pages of words arranged thrill
with his intonations the mouths of meek kids
becoming subtle even in Bengal.
[...]
- Death News (from Planet News)
What's to be done about Death?
Nothing, nothing
Stop going to school No. 6 Patterson, N.J., in 1937?
Freeze time tonight, with a headache, at quarter to 2 A.M.?
Not go to my Father's funeral tomorrow morn?
Not go back to Naropa teach Buddhist poetics all summer?
Not be buried in the cemetery near Newark Airport some day?
- Don't Grow Old, VII
February 1, 2018
Ginsberg is one of the most thought-provoking writers I have come across. He encourages the mind to grow expansively beyond the conventional limitations of his day and our present day, as well. This collection of poems, written in the 70s after most of his dear friends had passed away, struck me as saddening. Everyone he loved and admired was long gone and all he had were their words and their memories. I thought to myself, "How heartbreaking," almost immediately realizing I myself am in the same boat. 90% of my inspirations are no longer here with us. Let the mind breathe and take in the wild words of good ole Allen G!
October 2, 2007
Um. I dunno. I had a hard time focusing on these poems. None of them really engaged me. Sadly, many seem very dated because of hot-topic references. I suppose they are historically relevant. I’ve never read Howl. Maybe I should have started there.
August 5, 2016
My head responded with an ocean of new things Allen, new things he could think, new things he could share, new things he could love.
June 28, 2022
I was not so much into 'Howl' and some of the more classic works from the beatnik era but I enjoy the "mature" hippie-era (by this point, almost post-hippie) Ginsberg much more. The writing is sometimes too dense and clunky though I feel that when it succeeds it captures the maddening, hectic, though often beautiful world he - and we, (un)fortunately - are (still) living in. Politically, spiritually, and emotionally moving - though often to disgust, either at his perverse sexual preferences (ie. for young boys) or at the perverse status quo he lambasts - he combines his eclectic and bizarre tastes, interests, and feelings into a ramshackle, but somehow operational, unit. The epic "Contest of Bards" blends Keats' fantasy with Whitman's romanticism as interpreted through Ginsberg's sense of modernism: it's unique, quite different from anything else of his I've read, and I'm surprised that it isn't more popular. This collection is full of life and bursting with intensity.
Favorite poems:
"Jaweh and Allah Battle"
"Hadda Be Playing On The Jukebox"
"Contest of Bards"
Favorite poems:
"Jaweh and Allah Battle"
"Hadda Be Playing On The Jukebox"
"Contest of Bards"
May 5, 2023
At some point in 2018 or 2019 I decided to read as much of Ginsberg as I could in chronological order. After the last few collections I was about to give up, but Mind Breaths, fortunately, might just be the best collection since Howl (though The Fall Of America might have come close if some of the less worthy poems on that had been replaced with "Iron Horse"). Much of his output thus far has seemed longwinded and pointless, but most of the poems in here reminiscent of that impetus do seem to have been put together with care and, often, even to have some kind of point.
It's also interesting watching Ginsberg's relationship to Buddhism, the world, and himself change as he ages (his more obviously Buddhist poems in here don't have the insight of "Sunflower Sutra" or "In the back of the real", in my opinion, but they do deal with realities of Buddhist practice in a way they never have before).
It's also interesting watching Ginsberg's relationship to Buddhism, the world, and himself change as he ages (his more obviously Buddhist poems in here don't have the insight of "Sunflower Sutra" or "In the back of the real", in my opinion, but they do deal with realities of Buddhist practice in a way they never have before).
January 11, 2021
There are some really brilliant poems in here, of course, but as a collection it’s kind of uneven, and the weird mystical play at the end was not my favorite and colored my experience of the whole book.
September 26, 2021
Mind Breaths
Allen Ginsperg
Might be the longest poetry collection from Allen Ginsberg Collected work;
I did not like it that much!
A bit convoluted he did not grab me with most lines;
Different poems and all over the place. Some are good but most :/
Allen Ginsperg
Might be the longest poetry collection from Allen Ginsberg Collected work;
I did not like it that much!
A bit convoluted he did not grab me with most lines;
Different poems and all over the place. Some are good but most :/
July 13, 2018
Eclectic, Buddhist inspired, observational, and, in the longer pieces, pretty Whitmanesque...You have to root through some of it, but there are quite a few excellent pieces in this book...
December 23, 2018
'Mind Breaths'
Go on a intimate reflective journey around the world
“… I breathed ... up thru Darwin Land ...”
Go on a intimate reflective journey around the world
“… I breathed ... up thru Darwin Land ...”
February 19, 2021
Not everything is great in this collection are great but the things that are including the title poem are wonderful. Worth reading again and again.
June 18, 2021
I loved parts of this book and hated others.
April 27, 2022
3.75 stars.
January 11, 2022
Several of these poems read like they were scribbled on scraps of paper, lost on the bottom of Ginsberg’s satchel, and published as is in this collection. Yet this mixed bag also contains “Night Gleam” and “Mugging,” which clearly demonstrate his poetic prowess, and these lines from “Contest of Bards”:
“There is no God or Beauty suffering on earth nor starred in nebulous blue heaven
but only Dream that floats vast as an Ocean under the moon—
The moon, the cold full moon, boy, fills the window—look at the sea
waving with lunar glitter like your eye—out there’s the moon
Mirror to give back cold pure cheer light on us, fade these Plutonian Images.”
Favorite Poems:
“Night Gleam”
“Mugging”
“There is no God or Beauty suffering on earth nor starred in nebulous blue heaven
but only Dream that floats vast as an Ocean under the moon—
The moon, the cold full moon, boy, fills the window—look at the sea
waving with lunar glitter like your eye—out there’s the moon
Mirror to give back cold pure cheer light on us, fade these Plutonian Images.”
Favorite Poems:
“Night Gleam”
“Mugging”
February 7, 2022
Peoms by Ginsberg, about Ginsberg. Very much of the time (early 70s), often with sophomoric sexual references. Doesn't work for me.
Little free library book.
Little free library book.
July 16, 2014
It seems like every collection of Ginsberg’s work has some pieces of stand-out poetry, and this one’s no different - Mind Breaths, the titular poem of the collection, is like an extension of Howl, and Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass is a triumphant celebration of the poet’s sexuality. Keep your eyes peeled, too, for Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox, a vicious indictment of the government and the wars that they carry out that was adapted by Rage Against the Machine.
Ginsberg’s work here is as sharp as ever, and it’s a pretty short collection – too short, in fact, for you not to read it.
Ginsberg’s work here is as sharp as ever, and it’s a pretty short collection – too short, in fact, for you not to read it.
November 1, 2014
The Beat Generation was comprised of wide-eyed, receptive individuals and Allen Ginsberg was a central figure. 'Gospel Nobel Truths' on page 71 is my favorite. It illustrates how important the present moment is for me. 'Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass' on page 34 was just a bit too much. I would like to dig deeper into some of his work.
November 20, 2013
As talented as ever, but I found this particular volume to be depressing, dark and full of unsettling imagery which I do not care to describe here.
I've enjoyed previous volumes of his work, but the only thing I liked about this one was the title.
I've enjoyed previous volumes of his work, but the only thing I liked about this one was the title.
April 30, 2008
I bought this last year and have read through it several times. I love his poetry, I don't know much about it but I know what I like. I do have to say that it is poetry not for the conservative.
Want to read
January 13, 2011Love him.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews