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Wait Till I'm Dead: Poems Uncollected
Rainy night on Union Square, full moon. Want more poems? Wait till I'm dead.
Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1990, 3:30 A.M.
Allen Ginsberg wrote incessantly for more than fifty years, and many of the poems collected for the first time in this volume were scribbled in letters or sent off to obscure publications and unjustly forgotten. Containing more than a hundred previously unpublished poems, accompanied by original photographs, and spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s, Wait Till I'm Dead is the final major contribution to Ginsberg's sprawling oeuvre, a must have for Ginsberg neophytes and long-time fans alike.
Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1990, 3:30 A.M.
Allen Ginsberg wrote incessantly for more than fifty years, and many of the poems collected for the first time in this volume were scribbled in letters or sent off to obscure publications and unjustly forgotten. Containing more than a hundred previously unpublished poems, accompanied by original photographs, and spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s, Wait Till I'm Dead is the final major contribution to Ginsberg's sprawling oeuvre, a must have for Ginsberg neophytes and long-time fans alike.
242 pages, Paperback
First published February 2, 2016
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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.
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November 7, 2018
If the date is accurate (1942), Allen Ginsberg wrote the following poem to "Mine Own Dear Congressman" when he was 16 years old:
"Canfield votes like a
Typical politician,
Guided strictly by
November Intuition.
For Canfield is
But half a man -
The other half
Republican."
Can't help thinking that he deserved fame for those lines only! But the rest of his uncollected poems are pretty amazing as well - and don't ask for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for us.
"Canfield votes like a
Typical politician,
Guided strictly by
November Intuition.
For Canfield is
But half a man -
The other half
Republican."
Can't help thinking that he deserved fame for those lines only! But the rest of his uncollected poems are pretty amazing as well - and don't ask for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for us.
February 10, 2017
English review at the bottom
Allen Ginsberg es un autor que podía escribir sobre todo y ser reflexivo al respecto. No sólo escribió sobre eso, él hizo poesía, el tipo de poesía que uno desea que alguien recite y te haga sentir esas palabras en todos tus sentidos.
Esta colección no es sólo una antología de la obra de Ginsberg, es una manera de ver su filosofía y saber cómo vivió su vida, porque esto es en orden cronológico e, incluso cuando no es una obra biográfica, encaja perfectamente en esa categoría para cada fan de Ginsberg.
Sin embargo, puedo decir que se trata de una obra maestra, porque sus mejores poemas son bien conocidos, pero incluso se pueden encontrar escritos que son simplemente increíble, parte porque algunos eran completamente biográficos y parte porque son sólo una pizca de su prolífica creación.
A digital copy of this book was provided by NetGalley
_________________________________________
Allen Ginsberg is one of this author who could write about everything and made you be reflexive about it. Not only did he write about it, he made poetry, the kind of poetry that you wish that someone recites and made you feel that words with all your senses.
This collection is not just an anthology of Ginsberg's work, it is a way to see his philosophy and know how he lives his life, 'cause this is at chronological order and, even when it isn't a biographic work, fix perfectly in that category for every Ginsberg fan. However, I can say that this is a master piece, 'cause your best poems are well know, but even you can find writes that are just amazing, part because some were completely biographical and part 'cause they're just a pinch of the prolific oeuvre that he created.
A digital copy of this book was provided by NetGalle
Allen Ginsberg es un autor que podía escribir sobre todo y ser reflexivo al respecto. No sólo escribió sobre eso, él hizo poesía, el tipo de poesía que uno desea que alguien recite y te haga sentir esas palabras en todos tus sentidos.
Esta colección no es sólo una antología de la obra de Ginsberg, es una manera de ver su filosofía y saber cómo vivió su vida, porque esto es en orden cronológico e, incluso cuando no es una obra biográfica, encaja perfectamente en esa categoría para cada fan de Ginsberg.
Sin embargo, puedo decir que se trata de una obra maestra, porque sus mejores poemas son bien conocidos, pero incluso se pueden encontrar escritos que son simplemente increíble, parte porque algunos eran completamente biográficos y parte porque son sólo una pizca de su prolífica creación.
A digital copy of this book was provided by NetGalley
_________________________________________
Allen Ginsberg is one of this author who could write about everything and made you be reflexive about it. Not only did he write about it, he made poetry, the kind of poetry that you wish that someone recites and made you feel that words with all your senses.
This collection is not just an anthology of Ginsberg's work, it is a way to see his philosophy and know how he lives his life, 'cause this is at chronological order and, even when it isn't a biographic work, fix perfectly in that category for every Ginsberg fan. However, I can say that this is a master piece, 'cause your best poems are well know, but even you can find writes that are just amazing, part because some were completely biographical and part 'cause they're just a pinch of the prolific oeuvre that he created.
A digital copy of this book was provided by NetGalle
May 17, 2023
perhaps some of these could have just remained uncollected
August 29, 2025
Face to Face
with silent grace
Take your place
in the old rat race
This is a collection of uncollected poems, and this is just one paradox. Some of these were previously unpublished, others were published here and there and the editor dug them back up.
Spiritual, earthy, intimate and sweeping — Ginsberg's poetry is spontaneous, not laboured or over-worked; sometimes with this uncollected collection one feels that "first thought best thought" won out over "polishing."
The moon in the dewdrop is the real moon
The moon in the sky's an illusion
Which Madhyamaka school does that represent?
{Note provided: "Madhyamaka refers to the Mahayana school of Buddhist philosophy."}
Yes, there were helpful notes to provide context, references, and identify people mentioned.
with silent grace
Take your place
in the old rat race
This is a collection of uncollected poems, and this is just one paradox. Some of these were previously unpublished, others were published here and there and the editor dug them back up.
Spiritual, earthy, intimate and sweeping — Ginsberg's poetry is spontaneous, not laboured or over-worked; sometimes with this uncollected collection one feels that "first thought best thought" won out over "polishing."
The moon in the dewdrop is the real moon
The moon in the sky's an illusion
Which Madhyamaka school does that represent?
{Note provided: "Madhyamaka refers to the Mahayana school of Buddhist philosophy."}
Yes, there were helpful notes to provide context, references, and identify people mentioned.
September 2, 2024
I used to live in gay sad Paris!
Decades in taxi-honk New York!
Smelly London, watery Venice,
Bright Tanger, and dark Benares!
Now I meditate in the mountains.
Allen Ginsberg finds poetry in the gutters, the smell of wet cigarette butts, the piss running down the streets, and the smoggy sky. Ginsberg's poetry is where city dwellers find themselves, where the filthy, strange dystopia of everyday life can seem kind of...beautiful. And almost-almost-human.
Decades in taxi-honk New York!
Smelly London, watery Venice,
Bright Tanger, and dark Benares!
Now I meditate in the mountains.
Allen Ginsberg finds poetry in the gutters, the smell of wet cigarette butts, the piss running down the streets, and the smoggy sky. Ginsberg's poetry is where city dwellers find themselves, where the filthy, strange dystopia of everyday life can seem kind of...beautiful. And almost-almost-human.
August 14, 2020
I am a little biased with my rating. I am a big Ginsberg fan and of the Beat Generation movement in general. It was nice to (ironically) have a collection of his previously uncollected work with some pieces previously unpublished altogether.
Read
October 15, 2022no thoughts on this one i think I'm just too dumb to understand it
December 27, 2020
I really like Allen Ginsberg and his poetry, so this collection was a great one to read!
The collection is ordered chronologically and has interesting and extensive notes in the back, both illuminating the poem itself and the context in which it was written which was very interesting!
At the same time, these are 'uncollected poems' as the title points out and at times I must say I did understand why they were not collected otherwise. They weren't bad, but at times they just lacked that little something that makes a poem extraordinary. That's also why I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who has read some of Ginsberg other poems (like 'Howl', of course). For those who have never read anything by him, I would suggest to first pick up a copy of collected poems/Howl!
The collection is ordered chronologically and has interesting and extensive notes in the back, both illuminating the poem itself and the context in which it was written which was very interesting!
At the same time, these are 'uncollected poems' as the title points out and at times I must say I did understand why they were not collected otherwise. They weren't bad, but at times they just lacked that little something that makes a poem extraordinary. That's also why I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who has read some of Ginsberg other poems (like 'Howl', of course). For those who have never read anything by him, I would suggest to first pick up a copy of collected poems/Howl!
Read
August 19, 2021Most poets ruin their poems with grand, oracular, “spiritual” closing lines, like:
Then we danced into the Light
– though the poem began about touch football in East Islip, Long Island.
Ginsberg had a different device, a tendency towards (rather predictable) prophetic denunciation:
O America, cry for your Momma in the vast dusty listless desert!
Bill Morgan, I suspect, is a great editor. These aren’t ALL the uncollected poems by Allen: only about half of them. They are sweet, – though sometimes quite long – unambitious, works full of affections, as Allen was a man of limitless friendships. Some are collaborations: two with my poetry master, Ted Berrigan. One is a tribute to Anne Waldman. One’s in the style of Michael Brownstein. Ginsberg was a poet to the world, while also ministering to his flock in the East Village.
He was an intellectual pretending to be a raving lunatic, and suddenly I notice his suave wordplay. Ginsberg was so smart, he could expertly hide his smartness!
I bought this book at a stoop sale and started reading it like a novel, because Ginsberg really was keeping, in poetry, a journal of his life. (The pieces are basically chronological.)
One is “Listening to Susan Sontag,” a great poem that I published, during my brief tenure as editor of City magazine, journal of the graduate writing program at City College (1984):
All the Centuries are the same.
Up to date, fashionably dressed in
skin, hair, worm mucus,
bark & feather
Fire burns continuously in the
hearth pit…
[That’s just the beginning. To read the rest, locate this obscure book!]
Then we danced into the Light
– though the poem began about touch football in East Islip, Long Island.
Ginsberg had a different device, a tendency towards (rather predictable) prophetic denunciation:
O America, cry for your Momma in the vast dusty listless desert!
Bill Morgan, I suspect, is a great editor. These aren’t ALL the uncollected poems by Allen: only about half of them. They are sweet, – though sometimes quite long – unambitious, works full of affections, as Allen was a man of limitless friendships. Some are collaborations: two with my poetry master, Ted Berrigan. One is a tribute to Anne Waldman. One’s in the style of Michael Brownstein. Ginsberg was a poet to the world, while also ministering to his flock in the East Village.
He was an intellectual pretending to be a raving lunatic, and suddenly I notice his suave wordplay. Ginsberg was so smart, he could expertly hide his smartness!
I bought this book at a stoop sale and started reading it like a novel, because Ginsberg really was keeping, in poetry, a journal of his life. (The pieces are basically chronological.)
One is “Listening to Susan Sontag,” a great poem that I published, during my brief tenure as editor of City magazine, journal of the graduate writing program at City College (1984):
All the Centuries are the same.
Up to date, fashionably dressed in
skin, hair, worm mucus,
bark & feather
Fire burns continuously in the
hearth pit…
[That’s just the beginning. To read the rest, locate this obscure book!]
June 3, 2024
"Enter, drink, and dream a lie,
Escape the street's reality,
Drink gin and immortality. "
Escape the street's reality,
Drink gin and immortality. "
December 29, 2017
A good collection of poems. Ginsberg is prolific, but definitely not my favorite poet.
April 3, 2019
"Want more poems? Wait till I'm dead."
The range, the charisma, the audacity, the poetics. Father was a genius at 21, the years only made him kinder.
The range, the charisma, the audacity, the poetics. Father was a genius at 21, the years only made him kinder.
December 16, 2019
This book, edited by Bill Morgan for Grove Press, collects some (sorry folks, not all) of Allen Ginsberg's stray poems and, as some of the reviewers said, adds significant material to the nearly 1,200 pages of collected poetry penned by Ginsberg prior to his death in 1997. Titles ranging from the early 1940's to the early 1990's, some of which capture the feeling of tragedy and disruption the author of Howl, and Kaddish is deservedly famous for —and some impromptus or ephemerals I'm not so sure the author had intended to see printed in book form.
All in all, my most valuable advice to all potential readers (either if you have been exposed to previous work by the author or not) is to grab a copy of this book, and enjoy the ride with one of the most influential poets in American literature in the 20th century.
All in all, my most valuable advice to all potential readers (either if you have been exposed to previous work by the author or not) is to grab a copy of this book, and enjoy the ride with one of the most influential poets in American literature in the 20th century.
January 7, 2024
some of the poems are good
some are boring
gay sex is cool
i look at the photos of him and think about how he looks like tobias fünke
and scene
some are boring
gay sex is cool
i look at the photos of him and think about how he looks like tobias fünke
and scene
January 3, 2023
crazy how he always serves
July 15, 2017
Most of these poems are good, but the poems from the 40's are overly earnest, and his output in the later half of the 60's can be a bit trying.
All together, it makes for a poor introduction to Ginsberg, but if you're already a fan you'll enjoy this volume.
All together, it makes for a poor introduction to Ginsberg, but if you're already a fan you'll enjoy this volume.
November 21, 2024
"Obtuse, rubber goose, green moose, guave juice, giant snake, birthday cake, large fries, chocolate shake" ahh poetry
July 29, 2019
Increíble la colección de poemas de este grandísimo, y mejor aún la gran oportunidad de leerlo directamente en inglés, sin compararlo con las traducciones tan diversas que hay de su obra.
Me gustó especialmente que no son poemas tan conocidos, y también poder ir viendo las transformaciones de su obra a lo largo del tiempo y de los acontecimientos, desde muy joven hasta el año de su muerte: ver cómo van apareciendo sucesos, personajes, y cómo también cada uno va desapareciendo y reapareciendo en homenaje.
Un gran regalo de mi amigo Mota.
Me gustó especialmente que no son poemas tan conocidos, y también poder ir viendo las transformaciones de su obra a lo largo del tiempo y de los acontecimientos, desde muy joven hasta el año de su muerte: ver cómo van apareciendo sucesos, personajes, y cómo también cada uno va desapareciendo y reapareciendo en homenaje.
Un gran regalo de mi amigo Mota.
January 26, 2016
Find this review at Forever Lost in Literature!
**I received a copy of Wait Till I'm Dead courtesy of Grove Press and NetGalley. Huge thanks to them!**
Allen Ginsberg has become one of the greatest influence in American poetry and has helped to define what we now call the Beat Generation. Bill Morgan, a distinguished scholar of Allen Ginsberg, has edited this new collection of poems written by Allen Ginsberg, the first publication of Ginsberg work in over fifteen years. When I first read Ginsberg, I found his work to be harrowing, compelling, uniquely perfect, and that description has stuck with me as I continue to enjoy his work. Thus, when I saw this collection on NetGalley, I knew I would be requesting it, and fortunately I was lucky enough to receive a copy.
This particular collection is a rather sporadic and eclectic array of poems, including a variety of poems from the 1940s to 1990s that were "scribbled in letters or sent off to obscure publications and unjustly forgotten." Many of these poems were written spur of the moment or from memories and recollections of meeting certain people are random events he encountered. For instance, "The Real Distinguished Thing" is partly inspired from anesthesia laughing gas or nitrous oxide given to him during dentist visits.
This "uncollected" group of poems is sure to be a welcome addition to any fan of Ginsberg, and I felt right at home delving into this unprecedented work. I didn't particular connect with every single poem, but each held a very special meaning and conveys Ginsberg's strong, distinct tone. Some are brief and subtle, yet have a powerful, clear statement, while others are much longer and convey the wonderful style of Ginsberg in its full glory with writing reminiscent of his greatest works.
A few that stood out to me in particular were "A Night in the Village," "Thus on a Long Bus Ride," "Leave the Bones Behind," "War is Black Magic," "Busted," which reflects his drug use, and "After Wales Visitacione July," written under the effects of LSD. There are also a variety of notes at the back of the book which provide some context and background for many of the poems, which was extremely helpful and interesting.
For those wondering if these poems are worth the read since they never made it into any collected works, they are definitely worth it. Overall, I can't help but give this book a full five stars for its wonderful collection of works and reintroduction into the life and work of Allen Ginsberg.
**I received a copy of Wait Till I'm Dead courtesy of Grove Press and NetGalley. Huge thanks to them!**
Allen Ginsberg has become one of the greatest influence in American poetry and has helped to define what we now call the Beat Generation. Bill Morgan, a distinguished scholar of Allen Ginsberg, has edited this new collection of poems written by Allen Ginsberg, the first publication of Ginsberg work in over fifteen years. When I first read Ginsberg, I found his work to be harrowing, compelling, uniquely perfect, and that description has stuck with me as I continue to enjoy his work. Thus, when I saw this collection on NetGalley, I knew I would be requesting it, and fortunately I was lucky enough to receive a copy.
This particular collection is a rather sporadic and eclectic array of poems, including a variety of poems from the 1940s to 1990s that were "scribbled in letters or sent off to obscure publications and unjustly forgotten." Many of these poems were written spur of the moment or from memories and recollections of meeting certain people are random events he encountered. For instance, "The Real Distinguished Thing" is partly inspired from anesthesia laughing gas or nitrous oxide given to him during dentist visits.
This "uncollected" group of poems is sure to be a welcome addition to any fan of Ginsberg, and I felt right at home delving into this unprecedented work. I didn't particular connect with every single poem, but each held a very special meaning and conveys Ginsberg's strong, distinct tone. Some are brief and subtle, yet have a powerful, clear statement, while others are much longer and convey the wonderful style of Ginsberg in its full glory with writing reminiscent of his greatest works.
A few that stood out to me in particular were "A Night in the Village," "Thus on a Long Bus Ride," "Leave the Bones Behind," "War is Black Magic," "Busted," which reflects his drug use, and "After Wales Visitacione July," written under the effects of LSD. There are also a variety of notes at the back of the book which provide some context and background for many of the poems, which was extremely helpful and interesting.
For those wondering if these poems are worth the read since they never made it into any collected works, they are definitely worth it. Overall, I can't help but give this book a full five stars for its wonderful collection of works and reintroduction into the life and work of Allen Ginsberg.
October 12, 2021
Allen Ginsberg / Wait Till I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems / Grove Press / 2016
Peter Schjeldahl / “Insurance Man: The Life and Art of Wallace Stevens” [reviewing Paul Mariani / The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens / Simon & Schuster / 2016] / The New Yorker / May 2 2016
Why did the sight of a new book by Allen Ginsberg on a table at The Strand fill me with an eager happiness / something approaching joy? It is because his poems are not the product of life – they give life. His poems are not about life – they are life. His poems are nutrition / a lyrical meal that people will consume over and over for many years to come.
Let’s give some attention / ie let’s get some life from / these of Ginsberg’s poems that had otherwise fallen through the cracks. What does it mean that these of his poems had been for some time lost to view? Poetry is itself something of a cultural crack / at least in this cracked-out society in which we find ourselves living / in which poetry when it is not being actively devalued is at a minimum not valued.
Chronology is important to Ginsberg’s poetry / at least as a way of organizing it / because that is the order in which life is lived. The poems in this book are so ordered. Some might say that the earliest poems here date back to the 40s / but that is not correct – the earliest poems collected here come from the 40s / forward / to us.
Ginsberg’s form of address is direct – in a sense that’s all that needs to be said about it. Even in the earliest poems / where he might bend a line’s order in order to fetch a rhyme / it is clear that he is speaking directly at us / the eventual readers. It is in this sense that the notes to the poems / although concise and undoubtedly accurate / are completely unnecessary. These poems do not speak as themselves – these poems speak themselves.
His poems (most of them) are feisty / rather gregarious / often as if they themselves are grasping the world as themselves (that is not a philosophical statement – it is a statement of the mechanics of how a Ginsberg poem works). His poems are flung out at the world as challenges – Wake up! Be as alive to yourself as I am to you! Of course these challenges are extended to the people to whom he addresses the poems / as in one To Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch in which he writes to them in simple declarative sentences / saying / in effect / that statements of factual perception are the world as poem / not merely as poem to the world.
Ginsberg’s poems are not products – they produce.
A poem addressed is almost always a love poem of a sort – an act of generosity / of compassion / or largesse. These poems are gifts.
These poems are made of substance.
These poems are made out of breath not brain / and proof that the two are not twain. They are not the byproduct of a life / lived – they are that life lived. They proceed a breath at a time / a muscle twitch at a time / a nerve leap at a time / a belly growl at a time / an erection at a time / a laugh at a time / a heart beat at a time / a thought (the world is a thought) at a time – a word pleasure at a time. One emotive breach of distance / at a time.
Each line added to a Ginsberg poem is an added surprise. He had a quick mind / visual and verbal – and he could perform magic with it. Each line seems pushed / quickly / into place after the one that preceded it. This is the same method of composition that the natural world uses. One word / one line / one phrase / instanter than another. The words come to us / stripped of all artifice / by artifice – a new / momentary / momentous / monument / skillfully made.
The world is made out of words – the world (as we know it) is made out of words.
Ginsberg processed (himself through) the world as that kind of life-driven force consisting of vision and voice. His two main subjects were the world observable around him / and himself in that. His entire oeuvre constitutes an autobiography (everything written was dated) – but at the same time the entire work was out in the world / very much a part of it / an actor in it / for it / to it / at it. He like his beloved Whitman was entire of himself / but very much as a social being among social beings / and very much (in Ginsberg’s case at least) a political force among political forces. He was and is / as they say / a force to be reckoned with – and he demanded that of himself in his writings / and he broadcast that demand to his readers and listeners.
Vigorous. Vibrant. Quick. Angular. Zestful. Open. Questing. Questioning. Succinct. Tuneful. Toneful. Dynamic. Challenging. Compact. Impactful. Awe-ful. Inspiring. Communal. Political. Companionable. Inviting. Substantial (substance-ful). Measured. Scrutable. Inscrutable. Elegaic. Worldly. Personal. Lustful. Vivacious. Life-ful. Insightful. Committed. Compelling. Compassionate. Documentary. Fragile. Powerful. Tragic. Hopeful. Taut. Grand. Self-aware. Evocative.
And all this can be said about a poem / not minor / but not one of Ginsberg’s longer and magisterial creations. All this can be said about how he wrote.
And the whole thing organized out of breath / made out of breath / that most human of human actions – it is we who are made out of breath. Inspiration we speak of. And it is breath unites us / something we share with all humans / all other animals / and plants / and whatever kind of beings – shared down through history / up until now / now / and (as far as we know) ongoing and going on from there. The cadence that sets us moving gives voice to Ginsberg’s poems. What else?
Ginsberg unites more than any other poet of recent times the two senses of vision – to see / to see far. To see / to envision. Many of his poems are tight evocations of things seen / and apprehended via the other senses / forming nature poems (urban and otherwise) in the Chinese tradition / or more brief haiku of found sense. Others see ably over the vastness / uniting visions through time and over space / through times and over spaces / to bring us compelling and useful news about ourselves in the present / in the future / our families / our friendships / our neighbors / those of our polis / the nation / the continent / the earth / and (through time) even beyond.
Compression is of the essence of his poems. It would be more broadly accurate to say that compression is of material necessity to the existence of these poems / as it is what is material / as it is what forms the existent substance of these poem. For these poems have more to do with what exists and is actual than with what anyone might think essential. The poems are made of words – thoughts infuse them and give them shape – but the mind comes back to the words / the words and their natural spoken music / to apprehend them. Ginsberg might have heard someone say – Don’t waste words. Compression is respect for language. Compressed language is compressed thought / bearing more gift per gram. Ginsberg’s poems participate in the human and / for that matter / in the worldwide natural ecology – they do so respectfully / without waste. They are artifacts of the world. Compressed language is respect for thought / respect for the world of which thought is its coloring.
Everything Ginsberg wrote he wrote from a sense of wonder. When he read aloud it was always with wonderment / and sometimes a tinge of self-satisfaction / in his voice. That wonder he carried from the world to us – wonder via wonder to wonder. That sense of wonder is the aesthetic experience / can explain it. It’s what we wonder at that lifts us up. That ever curious – Wha?! It’s what we don’t-know that we wonder at / and that sensuous surprise is wonderful all by itself – it’s the absence of weighty thought that keeps it aloft. Once that openness to wonderment has been experienced / has been felt / no amount of explaining can bring it back down.
Ginsberg wrote always out of the actual. He wrote about physical objects / those there in front of him / those ensconced in memory. He wrote about human actions and the experience of them – those done to and by others and himself – they were people he was knowing as he wrote. The present / in the space-time sense.
It was as if these things / these people / these events / accumulated in him (sometimes very quickly / sometimes more slowly) – and then where there was a surfeit / slight or strong / a poem would be produced. But the poem was itself one such thing of course / its production one such event / its writer and readers such as those other people. In these ways / there is no end to his poetry.
Ginsberg’s poems were often addressed to specific friends / a form of greeting / poem as missive / to friends otherwise absent. They are almost always written in the context of a circle of friends / and acquaintances / who are themselves addressed / although perhaps in a less obvious way / in and by the poems.
In the present volume – one of the poems recounts a conversation between the poet and Carl Solomon – one quoted above was written to three NYC poet colleagues – there are also poems addressed to Ron Padgett & Marianne Moore & D [Bob Dylan] & George Whitman & Michael Brownstein & Philip Lamantia & Gregory Corso – and there are collaborations with Gregory Corso & Jack Kerouac & Gary Snyder & Kenneth Koch & Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett.
He was a poet among people / and a poet among the people. He had a lot of friends / for whom he clearly cared dearly – and he cared equally about the people at large / the populace / the inhabitants of planet Earth. His poems are / beginning to end / redolent with that care.
He cared for himself. He cared for himself so that he could care for others. Those mutual / and mutual-making / bonds / were held together by the stuff of his poems. Those poems / so clearly – a breath out / to others / and a breath in / to oneself – another of those circles that seem to so inhabit the worlds in which we live / in which we live together / in which we write / in which we read.
*
The question / Who is the best poet? is one of those questions which will always remain unanswerable. No one can answer such a question because no one has the facility to learn multiple languages and to read the works of centuries. It is also not answerable because we are replete with not only judgments / but also with temperaments and with likes and dislikes. Even if we limit the question to one language / or to one culture / or to one stretch of time – the question will always remain beyond those parameters / and any answer of necessity beyond us.
The question / Who is your favorite poet? can be answered.
*
Schjeldahl calls Stevens the quintessential poet of the twentieth century. He writes that Stevens had a mind like a solar system, with abstract ideas orbiting a radiant lyricism. Leaving aside for a moment the question of what such a metaphor might actually mean / and the larger question of what it would mean about Stevens’s mind / it is without doubt meant as quintessential praise.
In accord with Mariani he persuasively numbers Stevens among the twentieth-century poets who are both most powerful and most refined in their eloquence, along with Rilke, Yeats, and Neruda.
Schjeldahl refers to Stevens’s seraphic art / elsewhere the masterpiece “Sunday Morning” / and says he had a voice like none other, in its knitted playfulness and in its majesty.
Schjeldahl writes that after Stevens’s first two books / His subsequent work, which abounded until his death, in 1955, is less familiar, because most of it is gruellingly difficult; the great mind finally spiraled in on itself, like a ruminative Narcissus. That says rather a lot – it says that all but his first two book are gruellingly difficult / and it acknowledges that almost all of Stevens’s writing is ruminatively narcissistic. We would want to ask ourselves why most of his writing is gruellingly difficult / why such work was written in the first place / whether such work is worth reading / and whether or not the mind of a pondering narcissist is where we want to spend our time / and what effect it might have in a world not inhabited entirely by ruminative Narcissuses. Do we want to spend our time reading works by someone whose reputation has stood as a windswept monument, tended by professors? Work inviting endless elucidation is a sinecure for the profs / but what is it doing for those readers who need to get something out of what they read? who read because their minds / their lives / depend on it? who have a desire or a need to read what is legible?
Note that Stevens started writing late / his first book was published when he was past forty – when thinking about his subsequent work / we are referring to the last twenty-five or so years of writing.
We are not in the habit of judging an author’s work by his life / but the two are inextricably entwined / to varying extents depending upon the author and the work. If we imagine the writer writing the work / this indissociability becomes apparent – after all / there is a who doing a what. Let’s bring Stevens back to life for a moment / in the words of a reviewer (Schjeldahl) writing about a writer’s (Mariani’s) biography.
Stevens – relied, for stability, on the routine demands of his office job / commonly drank to excess / had a precarious sense of identity / became obsessed with tracing his family genealogies / was “a Hoover Republican” / an admirer of Mussolini for rather longer than is comfortably excused as a myopia of the time / was no better than most white men of his class in point of casual racism and anti-Semitism / took to sitting for spells of restorative peace in St. Patrick’s Cathedral–unbelieving, but savoring the aura of sanctity / admitted to his companions that he dreaded what awaited him at home [ie his wife] / when they moved to a new house, in 1932, Stevens occupied the master bedroom and Elsie a former servant’s quarters / had shyly used a pseudonym, Peter Parasol / drunkenly insulted Robert Frost, disparaging his poetry / called his daughter’s fiancé a “Polack” and a Communist.
A couple of anecdotes from the review –
When his father vehemently opposed the match [with his fiancé], Stevens stormed out of the house and never spoke to him again. (He generally avoided all his relatives except, by way of genealogical research, the dead.)
At another party in Key West, in 1936, a swaggering Stevens loudly impugned the manhood of Ernest Hemingway. When Hemingway showed up, Stevens took a swing at him, and Hemingway knocked him down. Stevens got up and landed a solid punch to Hemingway’s jaw, which broke his hand in two places. Hemingway then battered him, but later cheerfully accepted his meek apology. They agreed to a cover story: Stevens had been injured falling down stairs.
We are dealing with a writer who simply could not get along with the world / who seems to have despised the fact that to be fully alive we have to be in it.
It is not difficult to understand at least some of Stevens’ earlier poems. We all know who The Emperor of Ice-Cream is / or at least what he stands for – he is described in the first line as the roller of big cigars – although even here / what the rest of the poem is about / and how it relates to the title and that first line / is ambiguous as best. Empson has suggested that ambiguity is the very stuff of poetry / and perhaps by his lengthy account it somehow is. But it is certainly not the only way poetry can be made. Chinese and Japanese poems do otherwise / as do eg William Carlos Williams and George Oppen / and as has (for that matter) most of English poetry.
We know that Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird makes indirect reference to Hokusai / possibly also to cubism – that it says something about how we see things / the possibilities that things offer to our sight / about phenomena and phenomenology / and about their relation to language and the writing of it. Perhaps it was his effort to write in the way of the Imagist poets / his proximate peers. It works.
The Idea of Order at Key West / from his second book / is based on an only slightly extended conceit – a woman is singing by the sea / various aspects of this event and this relationship are hazarded / in lovely lyrical verse – clearly this is a mediation of a sort on the processes of artistic creation. The woman stands for the artist / and the sea for reality / real experiences / or possibly for the language from with the singer draws her words. Most of the rest of the language of the poem is elusive – it would be impossible to say for certain that it means this or that it means that / although the fact that throughout it intimates some things having to do with the relationship described above / that remains clear.
[ this is two-thirds of the review as written / idonot@mail.com ]
Peter Schjeldahl / “Insurance Man: The Life and Art of Wallace Stevens” [reviewing Paul Mariani / The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens / Simon & Schuster / 2016] / The New Yorker / May 2 2016
Why did the sight of a new book by Allen Ginsberg on a table at The Strand fill me with an eager happiness / something approaching joy? It is because his poems are not the product of life – they give life. His poems are not about life – they are life. His poems are nutrition / a lyrical meal that people will consume over and over for many years to come.
Let’s give some attention / ie let’s get some life from / these of Ginsberg’s poems that had otherwise fallen through the cracks. What does it mean that these of his poems had been for some time lost to view? Poetry is itself something of a cultural crack / at least in this cracked-out society in which we find ourselves living / in which poetry when it is not being actively devalued is at a minimum not valued.
Chronology is important to Ginsberg’s poetry / at least as a way of organizing it / because that is the order in which life is lived. The poems in this book are so ordered. Some might say that the earliest poems here date back to the 40s / but that is not correct – the earliest poems collected here come from the 40s / forward / to us.
Ginsberg’s form of address is direct – in a sense that’s all that needs to be said about it. Even in the earliest poems / where he might bend a line’s order in order to fetch a rhyme / it is clear that he is speaking directly at us / the eventual readers. It is in this sense that the notes to the poems / although concise and undoubtedly accurate / are completely unnecessary. These poems do not speak as themselves – these poems speak themselves.
His poems (most of them) are feisty / rather gregarious / often as if they themselves are grasping the world as themselves (that is not a philosophical statement – it is a statement of the mechanics of how a Ginsberg poem works). His poems are flung out at the world as challenges – Wake up! Be as alive to yourself as I am to you! Of course these challenges are extended to the people to whom he addresses the poems / as in one To Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch in which he writes to them in simple declarative sentences / saying / in effect / that statements of factual perception are the world as poem / not merely as poem to the world.
from To Frank O’Hara & John Ashbery & Kenneth Koch
How real is Bolivia
With its snowy Andes lifting over the modern city
Now that one is in La Paz
Which means the peace in Spanish
Tho the natives speak their native tongue
Especially the women in brown bowler hats
Sitting in the mud with their hands over their noses
Selling black potatoes and blue onions
In the marketplace which covers the hillside
Over which one can see electrical towers
And airplanes landing from Santiago and Lima Caracas
It is strange how real Bolivia is
Ginsberg’s poems are not products – they produce.
A poem addressed is almost always a love poem of a sort – an act of generosity / of compassion / or largesse. These poems are gifts.
These poems are made of substance.
These poems are made out of breath not brain / and proof that the two are not twain. They are not the byproduct of a life / lived – they are that life lived. They proceed a breath at a time / a muscle twitch at a time / a nerve leap at a time / a belly growl at a time / an erection at a time / a laugh at a time / a heart beat at a time / a thought (the world is a thought) at a time – a word pleasure at a time. One emotive breach of distance / at a time.
Each line added to a Ginsberg poem is an added surprise. He had a quick mind / visual and verbal – and he could perform magic with it. Each line seems pushed / quickly / into place after the one that preceded it. This is the same method of composition that the natural world uses. One word / one line / one phrase / instanter than another. The words come to us / stripped of all artifice / by artifice – a new / momentary / momentous / monument / skillfully made.
The world is made out of words – the world (as we know it) is made out of words.
Ginsberg processed (himself through) the world as that kind of life-driven force consisting of vision and voice. His two main subjects were the world observable around him / and himself in that. His entire oeuvre constitutes an autobiography (everything written was dated) – but at the same time the entire work was out in the world / very much a part of it / an actor in it / for it / to it / at it. He like his beloved Whitman was entire of himself / but very much as a social being among social beings / and very much (in Ginsberg’s case at least) a political force among political forces. He was and is / as they say / a force to be reckoned with – and he demanded that of himself in his writings / and he broadcast that demand to his readers and listeners.
Nashville April 8
Crescent faces row-tiered hanging
balconied face the great red
Striped flag podium microphone reverberation
from one body outward
breathed painfully from rich suited abdomen
– mouth opening circle of white teeth – bells
clanging
Taillights along the Nashville city edge –
In the leather car, acrid perfume
sucked in the lung.
Majesty of Speech and Chant, on the lawn
Under the streetlight
dry grass crowded with sweating college shirted blond
& forehead-starred’ Semite singing –
In the far cities riot under the Spring
moonless midnite Black Power.
– April 8, 1967
Vigorous. Vibrant. Quick. Angular. Zestful. Open. Questing. Questioning. Succinct. Tuneful. Toneful. Dynamic. Challenging. Compact. Impactful. Awe-ful. Inspiring. Communal. Political. Companionable. Inviting. Substantial (substance-ful). Measured. Scrutable. Inscrutable. Elegaic. Worldly. Personal. Lustful. Vivacious. Life-ful. Insightful. Committed. Compelling. Compassionate. Documentary. Fragile. Powerful. Tragic. Hopeful. Taut. Grand. Self-aware. Evocative.
And all this can be said about a poem / not minor / but not one of Ginsberg’s longer and magisterial creations. All this can be said about how he wrote.
And the whole thing organized out of breath / made out of breath / that most human of human actions – it is we who are made out of breath. Inspiration we speak of. And it is breath unites us / something we share with all humans / all other animals / and plants / and whatever kind of beings – shared down through history / up until now / now / and (as far as we know) ongoing and going on from there. The cadence that sets us moving gives voice to Ginsberg’s poems. What else?
Ginsberg unites more than any other poet of recent times the two senses of vision – to see / to see far. To see / to envision. Many of his poems are tight evocations of things seen / and apprehended via the other senses / forming nature poems (urban and otherwise) in the Chinese tradition / or more brief haiku of found sense. Others see ably over the vastness / uniting visions through time and over space / through times and over spaces / to bring us compelling and useful news about ourselves in the present / in the future / our families / our friendships / our neighbors / those of our polis / the nation / the continent / the earth / and (through time) even beyond.
Compression is of the essence of his poems. It would be more broadly accurate to say that compression is of material necessity to the existence of these poems / as it is what is material / as it is what forms the existent substance of these poem. For these poems have more to do with what exists and is actual than with what anyone might think essential. The poems are made of words – thoughts infuse them and give them shape – but the mind comes back to the words / the words and their natural spoken music / to apprehend them. Ginsberg might have heard someone say – Don’t waste words. Compression is respect for language. Compressed language is compressed thought / bearing more gift per gram. Ginsberg’s poems participate in the human and / for that matter / in the worldwide natural ecology – they do so respectfully / without waste. They are artifacts of the world. Compressed language is respect for thought / respect for the world of which thought is its coloring.
Everything Ginsberg wrote he wrote from a sense of wonder. When he read aloud it was always with wonderment / and sometimes a tinge of self-satisfaction / in his voice. That wonder he carried from the world to us – wonder via wonder to wonder. That sense of wonder is the aesthetic experience / can explain it. It’s what we wonder at that lifts us up. That ever curious – Wha?! It’s what we don’t-know that we wonder at / and that sensuous surprise is wonderful all by itself – it’s the absence of weighty thought that keeps it aloft. Once that openness to wonderment has been experienced / has been felt / no amount of explaining can bring it back down.
Ginsberg wrote always out of the actual. He wrote about physical objects / those there in front of him / those ensconced in memory. He wrote about human actions and the experience of them – those done to and by others and himself – they were people he was knowing as he wrote. The present / in the space-time sense.
It was as if these things / these people / these events / accumulated in him (sometimes very quickly / sometimes more slowly) – and then where there was a surfeit / slight or strong / a poem would be produced. But the poem was itself one such thing of course / its production one such event / its writer and readers such as those other people. In these ways / there is no end to his poetry.
Ginsberg’s poems were often addressed to specific friends / a form of greeting / poem as missive / to friends otherwise absent. They are almost always written in the context of a circle of friends / and acquaintances / who are themselves addressed / although perhaps in a less obvious way / in and by the poems.
In the present volume – one of the poems recounts a conversation between the poet and Carl Solomon – one quoted above was written to three NYC poet colleagues – there are also poems addressed to Ron Padgett & Marianne Moore & D [Bob Dylan] & George Whitman & Michael Brownstein & Philip Lamantia & Gregory Corso – and there are collaborations with Gregory Corso & Jack Kerouac & Gary Snyder & Kenneth Koch & Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett.
He was a poet among people / and a poet among the people. He had a lot of friends / for whom he clearly cared dearly – and he cared equally about the people at large / the populace / the inhabitants of planet Earth. His poems are / beginning to end / redolent with that care.
He cared for himself. He cared for himself so that he could care for others. Those mutual / and mutual-making / bonds / were held together by the stuff of his poems. Those poems / so clearly – a breath out / to others / and a breath in / to oneself – another of those circles that seem to so inhabit the worlds in which we live / in which we live together / in which we write / in which we read.
*
The question / Who is the best poet? is one of those questions which will always remain unanswerable. No one can answer such a question because no one has the facility to learn multiple languages and to read the works of centuries. It is also not answerable because we are replete with not only judgments / but also with temperaments and with likes and dislikes. Even if we limit the question to one language / or to one culture / or to one stretch of time – the question will always remain beyond those parameters / and any answer of necessity beyond us.
The question / Who is your favorite poet? can be answered.
*
Schjeldahl calls Stevens the quintessential poet of the twentieth century. He writes that Stevens had a mind like a solar system, with abstract ideas orbiting a radiant lyricism. Leaving aside for a moment the question of what such a metaphor might actually mean / and the larger question of what it would mean about Stevens’s mind / it is without doubt meant as quintessential praise.
In accord with Mariani he persuasively numbers Stevens among the twentieth-century poets who are both most powerful and most refined in their eloquence, along with Rilke, Yeats, and Neruda.
Schjeldahl refers to Stevens’s seraphic art / elsewhere the masterpiece “Sunday Morning” / and says he had a voice like none other, in its knitted playfulness and in its majesty.
Schjeldahl writes that after Stevens’s first two books / His subsequent work, which abounded until his death, in 1955, is less familiar, because most of it is gruellingly difficult; the great mind finally spiraled in on itself, like a ruminative Narcissus. That says rather a lot – it says that all but his first two book are gruellingly difficult / and it acknowledges that almost all of Stevens’s writing is ruminatively narcissistic. We would want to ask ourselves why most of his writing is gruellingly difficult / why such work was written in the first place / whether such work is worth reading / and whether or not the mind of a pondering narcissist is where we want to spend our time / and what effect it might have in a world not inhabited entirely by ruminative Narcissuses. Do we want to spend our time reading works by someone whose reputation has stood as a windswept monument, tended by professors? Work inviting endless elucidation is a sinecure for the profs / but what is it doing for those readers who need to get something out of what they read? who read because their minds / their lives / depend on it? who have a desire or a need to read what is legible?
Note that Stevens started writing late / his first book was published when he was past forty – when thinking about his subsequent work / we are referring to the last twenty-five or so years of writing.
We are not in the habit of judging an author’s work by his life / but the two are inextricably entwined / to varying extents depending upon the author and the work. If we imagine the writer writing the work / this indissociability becomes apparent – after all / there is a who doing a what. Let’s bring Stevens back to life for a moment / in the words of a reviewer (Schjeldahl) writing about a writer’s (Mariani’s) biography.
Stevens – relied, for stability, on the routine demands of his office job / commonly drank to excess / had a precarious sense of identity / became obsessed with tracing his family genealogies / was “a Hoover Republican” / an admirer of Mussolini for rather longer than is comfortably excused as a myopia of the time / was no better than most white men of his class in point of casual racism and anti-Semitism / took to sitting for spells of restorative peace in St. Patrick’s Cathedral–unbelieving, but savoring the aura of sanctity / admitted to his companions that he dreaded what awaited him at home [ie his wife] / when they moved to a new house, in 1932, Stevens occupied the master bedroom and Elsie a former servant’s quarters / had shyly used a pseudonym, Peter Parasol / drunkenly insulted Robert Frost, disparaging his poetry / called his daughter’s fiancé a “Polack” and a Communist.
A couple of anecdotes from the review –
When his father vehemently opposed the match [with his fiancé], Stevens stormed out of the house and never spoke to him again. (He generally avoided all his relatives except, by way of genealogical research, the dead.)
At another party in Key West, in 1936, a swaggering Stevens loudly impugned the manhood of Ernest Hemingway. When Hemingway showed up, Stevens took a swing at him, and Hemingway knocked him down. Stevens got up and landed a solid punch to Hemingway’s jaw, which broke his hand in two places. Hemingway then battered him, but later cheerfully accepted his meek apology. They agreed to a cover story: Stevens had been injured falling down stairs.
We are dealing with a writer who simply could not get along with the world / who seems to have despised the fact that to be fully alive we have to be in it.
It is not difficult to understand at least some of Stevens’ earlier poems. We all know who The Emperor of Ice-Cream is / or at least what he stands for – he is described in the first line as the roller of big cigars – although even here / what the rest of the poem is about / and how it relates to the title and that first line / is ambiguous as best. Empson has suggested that ambiguity is the very stuff of poetry / and perhaps by his lengthy account it somehow is. But it is certainly not the only way poetry can be made. Chinese and Japanese poems do otherwise / as do eg William Carlos Williams and George Oppen / and as has (for that matter) most of English poetry.
We know that Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird makes indirect reference to Hokusai / possibly also to cubism – that it says something about how we see things / the possibilities that things offer to our sight / about phenomena and phenomenology / and about their relation to language and the writing of it. Perhaps it was his effort to write in the way of the Imagist poets / his proximate peers. It works.
The Idea of Order at Key West / from his second book / is based on an only slightly extended conceit – a woman is singing by the sea / various aspects of this event and this relationship are hazarded / in lovely lyrical verse – clearly this is a mediation of a sort on the processes of artistic creation. The woman stands for the artist / and the sea for reality / real experiences / or possibly for the language from with the singer draws her words. Most of the rest of the language of the poem is elusive – it would be impossible to say for certain that it means this or that it means that / although the fact that throughout it intimates some things having to do with the relationship described above / that remains clear.
[ this is two-thirds of the review as written / idonot@mail.com ]
February 17, 2016
I really enjoy Allen Ginsberg's poems. They're eerie and have a distinguished feeling to them, something that makes them really Ginsberg-like. Wait Till I'm Dead is a wonderful mixture of his uncollected and even unpublished poems. The fact that they are sectioned into decades works well and creates this mythical feeling alongside the political atmosphere that's very keenly attached to the poems. The poems are very different and at the same time it's evident that they come from the one and same pen - that's the beauty of Ginsberg, really. He makes poetry seem so easy even when the structures he uses are complicated and full of secret meanings. He is black and white and alive and dead at the same time.
My favorite poems were the personal ones about his life, friends and family. I enjoy them the most for they are purely Ginsberg and reveal things about him he himself perhaps wasn't even aware of. His political insight is wonderful and his shamefulness drenches the poems with hot cum that you can actually taste. Ginsberg doesn't apologize, but makes us come into terms with what he writes. Even these uncollected poems show such an amazing persona that you have to think to yourself, was this person actually a genius? Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. He would laugh at that, I think.
My favorite poems were the personal ones about his life, friends and family. I enjoy them the most for they are purely Ginsberg and reveal things about him he himself perhaps wasn't even aware of. His political insight is wonderful and his shamefulness drenches the poems with hot cum that you can actually taste. Ginsberg doesn't apologize, but makes us come into terms with what he writes. Even these uncollected poems show such an amazing persona that you have to think to yourself, was this person actually a genius? Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. He would laugh at that, I think.
July 1, 2022
I struggled with a lot of the disjointed and "absurdist" poems which read like a shopping list of ideas and concepts not linked together in any way. And I wasn't partial to the poems written by Ginsberg and another person or people. But I did enjoy the short poems a lot and the feeling from the tone and message if I happened to grab hold of one. I don't think this was really my thing, but I admire his work. Be warned, he is graphically sexual in a few poems. Ginsberg was a master at taking pop culture and current events and stripping them down into a compact package where everything seems so different and yet it all males sense.
July 3, 2016
When I first read Allen Ginsberg's published poems back in high school, it set fire to my brain. He provided the introduction (for me) to a completely alien type of poetry. Reading his previously unpublished poems after not reading him for ages reminds me of how I searched for his poems and eagerly took them in so long ago. This was an unexpected gift.
I love how this collection is spread out over all of his decades, and features such a variety of subjects and forms.
**eARC netgalley**
I love how this collection is spread out over all of his decades, and features such a variety of subjects and forms.
**eARC netgalley**
June 21, 2016
Ginsberg is incredible like damn was destined to love from seeing that title
October 8, 2020
Wait Till I'm Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg edited by Bill Morgan is the latest and possibly the last update to the complete works of Allen Ginsberg which already number at over 1,200 pages. Ginsberg needs little introduction even to the most secluded or unread person -- The standout poet from the Beat era who continued to write poetry until his death in 1997.
Wait Til I’m Dead is a collection that spans Ginsberg entire career and from a variety of publications. Included are Marrahwannah Quarterly, High Times, Shambhala, Fag Rag, City Lights Journal, and from a live impromptu performance at Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Many of these were pieces done at the spur of the moment like "Cleveland Airport." Others are memories like his last conversation with Carl Solomon as Solomon lie dying in a hospital.
The introduction is provided by Rachel Zucker who first read Ginsberg in college and want more poetry in her education. She calls Ginsberg her gateway drug to poetry. The English chair was happy to comply with Bishop, Moore, and Plath but nothing moved Zucker like Ginsberg. In what is probably the best quote on poetry I have read, Zucker says, “Allen was a good mother to me. He invited me into the kitchen of poetry and made me a sandwich.”
This is a great collection of Ginsberg’s work that has not made it in his complete collection. Because these poems were not included in the complete collection of his work one may wonder if they are worthy of reading or just poems rejected by previous editors. The work here is well worth the read. It is Ginsberg, and as far as the quality of the work, it is like a bootleg Bob Dylan concert. It is the artist in perhaps in his truest form. There is a visible evolution in the work as it covers half a century of writing that is more recognizable in a shorter collection, yet it is always, without a doubt, Ginsberg.
Death spoke out of the singer’s throat; While, staring through a drunkard’s eyes, Fate confounded drinker’s lies:
For all the drinks that they had tried, Death still sat there at their side.
And death peered with contemptuous calm. From the barman’s open palm.
“A Night in the Village”, 1944
Where can he go with alcohol and the landlord’s
eviction notice comes to us all?
gentrification will oust us from our nest
where to put books and file cabinets heavy with paper gold? Wake, smoke,
another cigarette with aching back and the last breath though cancered
throat…..
Bob Dylan Touring with Grateful Dead, 1986
I meet Carl Solomon.
What is it like in the afterworld?
“It’s just like the mental hospital. You get along if you follow the rules.”
Dream of Carl Solomon, 1996
Wait Till I'm Dead: Uncollected Poems is a worthwhile addition to any Ginsberg or Beat book collection. Grab a sandwich for poetry’s kitchen and enjoy.
Wait Til I’m Dead is a collection that spans Ginsberg entire career and from a variety of publications. Included are Marrahwannah Quarterly, High Times, Shambhala, Fag Rag, City Lights Journal, and from a live impromptu performance at Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Many of these were pieces done at the spur of the moment like "Cleveland Airport." Others are memories like his last conversation with Carl Solomon as Solomon lie dying in a hospital.
The introduction is provided by Rachel Zucker who first read Ginsberg in college and want more poetry in her education. She calls Ginsberg her gateway drug to poetry. The English chair was happy to comply with Bishop, Moore, and Plath but nothing moved Zucker like Ginsberg. In what is probably the best quote on poetry I have read, Zucker says, “Allen was a good mother to me. He invited me into the kitchen of poetry and made me a sandwich.”
This is a great collection of Ginsberg’s work that has not made it in his complete collection. Because these poems were not included in the complete collection of his work one may wonder if they are worthy of reading or just poems rejected by previous editors. The work here is well worth the read. It is Ginsberg, and as far as the quality of the work, it is like a bootleg Bob Dylan concert. It is the artist in perhaps in his truest form. There is a visible evolution in the work as it covers half a century of writing that is more recognizable in a shorter collection, yet it is always, without a doubt, Ginsberg.
Death spoke out of the singer’s throat; While, staring through a drunkard’s eyes, Fate confounded drinker’s lies:
For all the drinks that they had tried, Death still sat there at their side.
And death peered with contemptuous calm. From the barman’s open palm.
“A Night in the Village”, 1944
Where can he go with alcohol and the landlord’s
eviction notice comes to us all?
gentrification will oust us from our nest
where to put books and file cabinets heavy with paper gold? Wake, smoke,
another cigarette with aching back and the last breath though cancered
throat…..
Bob Dylan Touring with Grateful Dead, 1986
I meet Carl Solomon.
What is it like in the afterworld?
“It’s just like the mental hospital. You get along if you follow the rules.”
Dream of Carl Solomon, 1996
Wait Till I'm Dead: Uncollected Poems is a worthwhile addition to any Ginsberg or Beat book collection. Grab a sandwich for poetry’s kitchen and enjoy.
May 30, 2019
In high school I became fascinated with beatniks. I knew only what I had read in newspapers or had seen featured in TV news stories. In the sit-com The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis Bob Denver played the role of Maynard G. Crebbs. He was Dobie’s sidekick. He was a beatnik with a cut-off sweat shirt, shaggy hair and a goatee. He was so cool. It wasn’t until college that I got easy access to beat literature. I’ve read a lot of it. Allen Ginsberg is one of my favorite Beat writers.
Wait Until I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems is the first new Ginsberg collection of poetry in over fifteen years. It was edited by Ginsberg scholar Bill Morgan with an introduction by poet Rachel Zucker. The volume contains 104 previously uncollected poems grouped into the decades in which they were written from the 1940’s to the 1990’s. Each section begins with an original photograph. Some were previously printed in obscure publications. Others were found in letters or on scraps of paper. Some are untitled printed in this volume as ”[Poem].” Most are short, some even haiku-like. Many are observational.
The subject matter is wide ranging including high school musings, political activism, current events, travel, spiritual seeking and yoga. There is a fair amount of some rather acrid satire and a great deal of humor. Frequently referenced are many of his pals and contemporaries: Robert Creely, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Ted Berrigan, Gary Snyder and Kenneth Koch, among others. Morgan has provided extensive notes.
The Beats are Miles Davis cool.
Wait Until I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems is the first new Ginsberg collection of poetry in over fifteen years. It was edited by Ginsberg scholar Bill Morgan with an introduction by poet Rachel Zucker. The volume contains 104 previously uncollected poems grouped into the decades in which they were written from the 1940’s to the 1990’s. Each section begins with an original photograph. Some were previously printed in obscure publications. Others were found in letters or on scraps of paper. Some are untitled printed in this volume as ”[Poem].” Most are short, some even haiku-like. Many are observational.
The subject matter is wide ranging including high school musings, political activism, current events, travel, spiritual seeking and yoga. There is a fair amount of some rather acrid satire and a great deal of humor. Frequently referenced are many of his pals and contemporaries: Robert Creely, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Ted Berrigan, Gary Snyder and Kenneth Koch, among others. Morgan has provided extensive notes.
The Beats are Miles Davis cool.
July 14, 2017
Interesting and insightful...it'd been a few years since I last read anything by Ginsberg, but it's funny how a poet's personality can come back to you after so long. The poetry itself is somewhere between 4.5 and 5 stars from a b-sides/rarities/compilations perspective; what drags this down (and is addressed in the preface by the editor) are the notes and their placement. After each poem, he notes where it may have appeared (or if it was unpublished), but for more information you need to constantly flip to the section at the end...which to me interrupts the flow and continuity of the book. In my opinion it makes more sense to include this stuff right after the poem itself; none of the notes are intrusive enough to cause a dramatic shift in how the book is read, and if they were important enough to be included at all (mainly they just provide a little context and/or an explanation of a word, place, or person) it makes more sense to keep everything together rather than having to hold one place in the book while reading another.
Overall though, a thoroughly satisfying read for Ginsberg completists, but it can also serve the dual purpose as a worthy introduction to his work as well. The chronological arrangement serves almost as a highlight of some of his hidden gems arranged by decade, and the editor has taken great care of this work (again, save for placing the notes at the end). Enjoyable to novices, experts, and everyone in between.
Overall though, a thoroughly satisfying read for Ginsberg completists, but it can also serve the dual purpose as a worthy introduction to his work as well. The chronological arrangement serves almost as a highlight of some of his hidden gems arranged by decade, and the editor has taken great care of this work (again, save for placing the notes at the end). Enjoyable to novices, experts, and everyone in between.
March 10, 2021
When I first read about the existence of this book, I thought Bill Morgan (the editor of this volume and Allen's personal archivist) might have just squeezed some obscure poems from Ginsberg's personal papers and published them. This is not the case. This book contains many poems that show another side of Allen, especially due to the book's focus on the 1960s and 1970s--which contains some of Allen's more socially conscious and modest work.
The book consists of long lyrical reflections and short fragments. To be honest, the short poems are not that interesting to me. Ginsberg can create wonderful epigrammatic imagery, but, in my opinion, they work best as small gems within a larger poem. On their own, they fall flat. I prefer the long lines of "New York to San Francisco" and "No Way Back to the Past."
In the 1960s and 70s Allen started including a lot of lyrics into his 'collected' poetry books, which don't work well on the page (I much prefer his musical performances of these songs). In these Uncollected Poems, we get a lot of poems from this era that are actually meant to be read. Allen plays with form and is attune to where the words appear on the page--where the lines should break, etc. As such, this book is an indispensable addition to the collected works and even exceeds it on some levels.
The book consists of long lyrical reflections and short fragments. To be honest, the short poems are not that interesting to me. Ginsberg can create wonderful epigrammatic imagery, but, in my opinion, they work best as small gems within a larger poem. On their own, they fall flat. I prefer the long lines of "New York to San Francisco" and "No Way Back to the Past."
In the 1960s and 70s Allen started including a lot of lyrics into his 'collected' poetry books, which don't work well on the page (I much prefer his musical performances of these songs). In these Uncollected Poems, we get a lot of poems from this era that are actually meant to be read. Allen plays with form and is attune to where the words appear on the page--where the lines should break, etc. As such, this book is an indispensable addition to the collected works and even exceeds it on some levels.
August 11, 2023
Wait Till I’m Dead (Poems Uncollected) by Allen Ginsberg
Duh, ini kayak mimpi dapet first editionnya. Buku puisi ini semacam mitos karena isinya puisi-puisi #AllenGinsberg yang rata-rata belum dipublish. Sejak lima tahun lalu kayaknya aku menggali Howl dan menikmatinya secara religius.
Tidak akan ada review buruk soal #AllenGinsberg sebab aku suka sekali beliau. Cuma buku ini akan membawamu mengenal Ginsberg sejak awal, maksudnya ketia dia menulis puisi awal trus ketika dia ketemu gengnya dan “queering” Amerika. Lantas dia menua dengan abstrak tapi kritis tetang segalanya kapitalisme, politik, perang hingga kemiskinan. Ginsberg membuktikan bahwa menjadi homoseksual bukan berarti menjadi abai dengan kemanusiaan, malah membuatnya semakin peka melihat dunia.
Dalam bagian terakhir aku merinding sih bacanya, ketika dia sudah merasa kesepian karena banyak temannya meninggal. Dia juga tidak mungkin menikah dan persaudaraan komunal yang mengidupinya. Dalam titik ini dia menyebutkan puisi benar-benar menemaninya. Fase ini aku juga sepakat sih, aku merasa jadi punya banyak cinta dan kasih karena aku terus membaca, bacaanku selalu menyelamatkan aku dari keterpurukan.
Terima kasih ya Ginsberg dan mimasa buat koleksi ciamiknya ❤️✨
#WhatSekarReads2023 #WhatSekarReads
Duh, ini kayak mimpi dapet first editionnya. Buku puisi ini semacam mitos karena isinya puisi-puisi #AllenGinsberg yang rata-rata belum dipublish. Sejak lima tahun lalu kayaknya aku menggali Howl dan menikmatinya secara religius.
Tidak akan ada review buruk soal #AllenGinsberg sebab aku suka sekali beliau. Cuma buku ini akan membawamu mengenal Ginsberg sejak awal, maksudnya ketia dia menulis puisi awal trus ketika dia ketemu gengnya dan “queering” Amerika. Lantas dia menua dengan abstrak tapi kritis tetang segalanya kapitalisme, politik, perang hingga kemiskinan. Ginsberg membuktikan bahwa menjadi homoseksual bukan berarti menjadi abai dengan kemanusiaan, malah membuatnya semakin peka melihat dunia.
Dalam bagian terakhir aku merinding sih bacanya, ketika dia sudah merasa kesepian karena banyak temannya meninggal. Dia juga tidak mungkin menikah dan persaudaraan komunal yang mengidupinya. Dalam titik ini dia menyebutkan puisi benar-benar menemaninya. Fase ini aku juga sepakat sih, aku merasa jadi punya banyak cinta dan kasih karena aku terus membaca, bacaanku selalu menyelamatkan aku dari keterpurukan.
Terima kasih ya Ginsberg dan mimasa buat koleksi ciamiknya ❤️✨
#WhatSekarReads2023 #WhatSekarReads
February 28, 2018
Of course I was going to give Ginsberg's poetry five stars - we all knew that.
Wait Til I'm Dead is an incredible collection of Ginsberg's loose and unpublished poems spanning from the 1940s-1990s. Bill Morgan arranges the poems in chronological order and it brilliantly displays Ginsberg's change in writing style and his poems becoming more mature with age.
Some of these poems, like 'New York to San Fran', would fit perfectly in Planet News and reminds me of 'Wichita Vortex Sutra'.
As the poems hit the late 1980s and the 1990s, it is clear that death is on Ginsberg's mind. 'Who's Gone?' lists many greats of the art world as well as his personal friends and family who have passed away. The final poem in the collection, 'Dream of Carl Solomon', made me cry.
Honestly this collection was brilliant and I will return to these poems again and again.
Wait Til I'm Dead is an incredible collection of Ginsberg's loose and unpublished poems spanning from the 1940s-1990s. Bill Morgan arranges the poems in chronological order and it brilliantly displays Ginsberg's change in writing style and his poems becoming more mature with age.
Some of these poems, like 'New York to San Fran', would fit perfectly in Planet News and reminds me of 'Wichita Vortex Sutra'.
As the poems hit the late 1980s and the 1990s, it is clear that death is on Ginsberg's mind. 'Who's Gone?' lists many greats of the art world as well as his personal friends and family who have passed away. The final poem in the collection, 'Dream of Carl Solomon', made me cry.
Honestly this collection was brilliant and I will return to these poems again and again.
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