Planet News

by Allen Ginsberg

Planet News collecting seven years’ Poesy scribed to 1967 begins with electronic politics disassociation & messianic rhapsody TV Baby in New York, continues picaresque around the globe, elan perceptions notated at Mediterranean, Galilee & Ganges till next breakthrough, comedown Poem at heart & soul last days in Asia The Change 1963; tenement doldrums & police-state paranoia in Manhattan then half year behind Socialist Curtain climaxed as Kral Majales May King Prague 1965, same years’ erotic gregariousness writ as Who Be Kind To for International Poetry Incarnation Albert Hall London; next trip West Coast thru center America Midwest Wichita Vortex Sutra . . . at last across Atlantic Wales Visitation promethian text recollected in emotion revised in tranquility continuing tradition of ancient Nature Language mediates between psychedelic inspiration and humane ecology & integrated acid classic Unitive Vision with democratic eyeball particulars-book closes on politics to exorcise Pentagon phantoms who cover Earth with dung-colored gas. " Planet News is a great book of poems. It encourages the reader to release their pre-conceived notions of poetry, and allow themselves to dance disturbingly through a picture that Ginsberg paints. . . . Planet News is a beautiful read. If it’s not something you’re immediately interested in, the read is worth it for the mere significance Allen Ginsberg has had on the art of poetry."—Ned Tobin, Chronicles of Time "In this collection, the shorter poems, with their impressive grip on exact description, are the best, and remind us of how Ginsberg sees everything-railroads, cloverleafs, Dino Sinclair signs, 'tiny human trees' in the plains, newspaper stories and their reduction of the real to the ("continued from page one") verbal, football fields, J. Edgar Hoover, and above all himself. For his contemporaries, he is the biographer of his time-its high schools, its streets, its telephones, its monsters ('television was a baby crawling toward that deathchamber"), its bland head counts, its drugs, its cops, its cities, its freeways, and most of all its short-cut language."—Helen Vendler, New York Times

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, American, Queer, Literature, Collections

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Allen 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.

Reviews

[Kirk]

There is some poetry in here so abstract, so stream of consciousness, that it borders on the insane. It is disorienting and frustrating, and I almost put the book down for good early in the reading.

Then I started picking shorter poems to dig into, and I found something to latch onto. I’ll probably share “I am a Victim of Telephone” with my class next year.

Even if you don’t appreciate Ginsberg’s work (I do. I’m selective about what I like, but I do find his high watermarks here admirable) it can still be appreciated as an example of what poetry can mean when a society holds poetry at its center. Octavio Paz hypothesized that poetry has lost its space at the center of American society, and I think to a degree he was on to something. Poets today have to prove themselves to the world. They have to fight for an audience. Poetry has in many ways become insulated in a bubble of synthesized importance that general culture doesn’t buy into.

And it shows.

But Ginsberg-or perhaps poetry itself-was big enough so that Ginsberg didn’t have to give a fuck about carving out his niche. This collection strikes me as one written by someone who knew his place in society, and it was a place where poetry was held in high regard. The poems where he drops the names of other beats, these poems show that these authors were infused with enough social importance to feel like when they got together it wasn’t just a hangout. This was history. I feel like Ginsberg in these poems was the historical equivalent of DJ Khaled. You can hear him in the background of these poems composed of the thoughts and experiences of those around him shouting “DJ Ginsberg! We make the best poetry!”

I know that is corny as hell, but fuck you.

And there is something very endearing and sentimental about society holding the written word in such high regard that authors could swell with that sense of pride. That an author could be revolutionary, fill their bellies with the fat of their words, and see poetry in everything they lived and thought. That they could push out a poem like “a good, hot beer shit” (Bukowski) or craft something carefully and eloquently.

Poetry and the printed word resting at the center of society allowed art to be bold. It allowed authors not only to write history, but to be history. You can see that history alive in the poems like “First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels.” This motherfucker was living and breathing poetry. The people around him were as well, and when he was around, I bet it elevated the dynamic. People could feel the pride of experience becoming word before it even became word.

But today many authors write with the same controlled abandon Ginsberg does, and there is a certain luxury in being invisible as well, a luxury I know well.

That doesn’t mean I don’t envy these authors their place in history though.

I live vicariously through them, longing for a time when being an author seemed an altogether different beast.

So perhaps these poems mean something different to me as a relatively invisible author. I want to believe there is work here that is objectively good, and I can point out key devices that justify that disposition.

But I can’t separate myself, the experience of being an author, from the experience of reading this work.

And I kind of like that. I swell with some degree of pride knowing that in some way, I descend from this legacy. These are my ancestors in practice and spirit. These are my people, and in some way, I am flesh made word and word made flesh, as they were. As we are.

[Dani]

Always a privilege to pick the mind of Ginsberg.

[Jerry Oliver]

Of course there are some brilliant poems here, especially Waking In New York, Who To Be Kind To, I Am A Victim Of The Telephone, Wichita Vortex Sutra, Uptown and City Midnight Junk Strains. Emotionally riveting works. There are a myriad of historical references from Ezra Pound and Whitman to The Beatles and Captain Kangaroo to Vietnam. Compared to most others this would be a five star collection. Weighed against his own books I give it four.

[J.C.]

A wonderful compilation of Ginsberg’s poems in the 60’s. There isn’t a Howl or Kaddish this time around but this collection of poems still includes some nice gems. “Who be Kind To”, “Victim of Telephone”, and “Wales Visitation” among some of my favorites. Allen says that the poems here are “picaresque” and they certainly do feel that way, not that that’s a bad thing. Really, such a wild mix fits the 60’s perfectly.

[Kathy]

I read it quickly and will probably read it again soon. Amazing stuff in here. A poem about seeing the Beatles in Portland (I didn't even know they played in Portland). A poem of being at Ken Kesey's place w/Hells Angels. Many astounding and wonderful long poems. This is all dated 1961-1968. The cultural, social, political poems could have been written last week. In the war poems, replace "Vietnam" with "Syria" and they are just as stunning, shocking, damning, and real.

[Pablo Andrés]

Cruzando la entrada de Shakespeare & Company en París está la sección de los Beats. Quise comprar un poemario de Allen Ginsberg y lo que me terminó de convencer fue encontrar en el índice el poema “Why Is God Love, Jack?” — Yo también quería saber. El primer libro de Ginsberg me hizo querer ser poeta y este es el segundo suyo que he leído. Estuvo acompañándome en mi bolsillo trasero por una semana en trenes, tranvías, camiones, puentes, museos, avenidas, con tal de poder sacarlo en cualquier lugar y momento. En estos poemas quedan patentados sus viajes por el mundo, en su momento más político y psicodélico. Entre todos los versos hay haces, Ginsberg es un mago de las palabras y cuando es descriptivo se luce, dispara imágenes instantáneas en breves frases y sensaciones poderosas, asquerosas. Me quedo con el poema que mencioné, “Who Be Kind To” y “Wichita Vortex Sutra”, donde implora a todos los santos y dioses el fin de la guerra desde la soledad del hombre en los pueblos perdidos en medio de la tierra.

[Greisa Rozīte]

Nedaudz vīlusies.

[māris šteinbergs]

pārlieku moderna dzeja

[mwpm]

Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs are remembered as the core members of the Beat Generation. Their friendship and their influence on each others' works is well documented. Likewise well documented is the falling out between Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Apparently, Kerouac publicly denounced his old friend and hurled anti-Semitic insults in his direction. Ginsberg, however, remained intensely loyal. Although he was critical of Kerouac's abandonment (choosing instead to get married, regress into Catholicism/Conservatism, and slowly drinking himself to death), Ginsberg's criticism took on a more constructive form, as in the poem "Why is God Love, Jack?"...

Because I lay my
 head on pillows,
Because I weep in the
 tombed studio
Because my heart
 sinks below my navel
because I have an
 old airy belly
 filled with soft
 sighing, and
 remembered breast
 sobs - or
 a hand's touch makes
 tender -
Because I get scared -
Because I raise my 
 voice singing to
 my beloved self -
Because I do love thee
 my darling, my
 other, my living
 bride
my friend, my old lord
 of soft tender eyes -
Because I am in the
 Power of life & can
 do no more than
 submit to the feeling
 that I am the One
 Lost
Seeking still seeking the
 thrill - delicious
 bliss in the
 heart abdomen loins
 & thighs
Not refusing this
 38 yr. 145 lb. head
 arms & feet of meat
Nor one single Whitman
 toenail contemn
nor hair prophetic banish
 to remorseless Hell,
Because wrapped with machinery
I confess my ashamed desire.
 - Why is God Love, Jack?

In Planet News, Ginsberg mourns the deaths of two poets: William Carlos Williams (1883 - 1963) and Frank O'Hara (1926 - 1966). William Carlos Williams, who influenced a generation of poets, who wrote the introduction to Ginsberg's Howl (as if passing the torch). Frank O'Hara, a queer poet of New York (like Ginsberg), who wrote in/about a similar state of ecstasy/excitement as Ginsberg...

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

Switch on lights yellow as the sun
 in the bedroom
The gaudy poet dead Frank O'Hara's bones
 under cemetery grass
An emptiness at 8 P.M. in the Cedar Bar
 Throngs of Drunken
 guys talking about paint
 & lofts, and Pennsylvania youth.
 Kline attacked by his heart
& chattering Frank
 stopped forever -
 - City Midnight Junk Strains for Frank O'Hara

In contrast to these deaths, there is a feeling of rebirth as the reader witnesses the gradual emergence of 1960s counter-culture, a counter-culture that emerged from the Beatnik rejection of social norms and values...

When I listen to radio presidents roaring on the convention floor
the phone also chimes in "Rush up to Harlem with us and see the riots"
Always the telephone linked to all the hearts of the world beating at once
crying my husband's gone my boyfriend's busted forever my poetry was rejected
won't you come over for money and please won't you write me a piece of bullshit
How are you dear can you come to Easthampton we're all here bathing in the ocean we're all so lonely
and I lie back on my pallet contemplating $50 phone bill, broke, drowsy, anxious, my heart fearful of the fingers dealing, the deaths, the singing of telephone bells
ringing at dawn ringing all afternoon ringing up midnight ringing now forever.
- I Am a Victim of Telephone

Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.
- First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels

Truth breaks through!
 How big is the prick of the President?
 How big is Cardinal Vietnam?
 How little the prince of the FBI, unmarried all these years!
 How big are all the Public Figures?
 What kind of flesh hangs, hidden behind their images?
 - Wichita Vortex Sutra, 1

Ginsberg's perspective on the emerging counterculture ranges from the personal to the international. Most notably in "Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber", which harks back to the obscenity trial of "Howl" by addressing the censorship of Lady Chatterly's Lover and other texts. The name itself ("Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber") is a reference to the media coverage surrounding the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (an event that made profound cultural impact)...

Ah what a cold monster OneEye he must’ve saw thru the Star Spangled Banner & Hollywood with ugly smile forbidden movie & old heartless Ike in the White House officially allowing Chatterly attacked by Fed Lawyers —
vast Customs agencies searching books — who Advises what book where — who invented what’s dirty? The Pope? Baruch? — tender Genet burned by middleaged vice Officers
sent out by The Automatic Sourface mongers whatever bad news he can high up from imaginary Empires name Scripps-Howard — just more drear opinions — Damn that World Telegram was Glad Henry Miller’s depression Cancerbook not read to sad eyeglass Joe messenger to Grocer
in Manhattan, or candystore emperor Hersh Silverman in Bayonne, dreaming of telling the Truth, but his Karma is selling jellybeans & being kind,
The Customs police denyd him his Burroughs they defecated on de Sade, they jack’d off, and tortured his copy of Sodom with Nitric Acid in a backroom furnace house at Treasury Bureau, pouring Fire on the soul of Rochester
- Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber

that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg smelled bad & shd die, he sent to kill them with personal electricity, his power station is the spirit of generation leaving him thru his asshole by Error, that very electric entered Ethel’s eye
and his tongue is the prick of a devil he don’t even know, a magic capitalist ghosting it on the lam after the Everett Massacre — fucks a Newscaster in the mouth every time he gets on the Microphone —
and those ghost jizzums started my stomach trouble with capital punishment, Ike chose to make an Artificial Death for them poor spies—if they were spying on me? who cares? — Ike disturbed the balance of the cosmos by his stroke-head deathshake, “NO”
It was a big electrocution in every paper and mass medium, Television was a baby crawling toward that deathchamber
- Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber

Ginsberg's spirituality finds voice throughout the poems Planet News.
Specifically in his frequent references to Buddhism and the Bardo Thodol ( Tibetan Book of the Dead )
Poetry, too, is elevated to the spiritual, as Ginsberg embraces his role as the poet-prophet. Following the example of William Blake, who incidentally makes frequent appearances in Ginsberg's poems...

William Randolph Hearst's bones circled in mystic ring on third toe & breast hung
with newspaper shining with Earl Browder's cancer the 1964 Elections flapping in her left
nostril if you sneeze you'll destroy the western hemisphere right Vajra hand
playing mah-jongg with her astrolabes it keeps her mind occupied especially with rhythmic
breathing exercises & interpretive dancing one foot goddesslike on the corpse of Uncle Sam
- Stotras to Kali Destroyer of Illusions

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. Thus
there's a life moving out of the pages; Blake
also "alive" thru experienced machines.
- Death News

Allen Ginsberg says this: I am
a mass of sores and worms
& baldness & belly & smell
I am false Name the prey
of Yamanpaka Devourer of
Strange dreams, the prey of
radiation & Police Hells of Law
- The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express

Chinese American Bardo Thodols
all the seventy hundred hells from
Orleans to Algeria tremble
with tender soldiers weeping
- The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express

and the King of May is a middleeuropean honor, mine in the XX century
despite space ships and the Time Machine, because I have heard the voice of Blake in a vision...
- Kral Majales

Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale of Albion,
of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
the wisdom of earthly relations,
of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies' pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs -
- Wales Visitation

One of my favourite poems in the collection (illustration by Robert LaVigne)...

And the Communists have nothing to offer but fat cheeks and eyeglasses and lying policemen
and the Capitalists proffer Napalm and money in green suitcases to the Naked,
and the Communists create heavy industry but the heart is also heavy
and the beautiful engineers are all dead, the secret technicians conspire for their own glamour
in the Future, in the Future, but now drink vodka and lament the Security Forces,
and the Capitalists drink gin and whiskey on airplanes but let Indian brown millions starve
and when Communist and Capitalist assholes tangle the Just man is arrested or robbed or has his head cut off,
but not like Kabir, and the cigarette cough of the Just man above the clouds
in the bright sunshine is a salute to the health of the blue sky.
For I was arrested thrice in Prague, once for singing drunk on Narodni street,
once knocked down on the midnight pavement by a mustached agent who screamed out BOUZERANT,
once for losing my notebooks of unusual sex politics dream opinions,
and I was sent from Havana by planes by detectives in green uniform,
and I was sent from Prague by plane by detectives in Czechoslovakian business suits,
Cardplayers out of Cezanne, the two strange dolls that entered Joseph K's room at morn
also entered mine and ate at my table, and examined my scribbles,
and followed me night and morn from the houses of the lovers to the cafes of Centrum -
And I am the King of May, which is the power of sexual youth,
and I am the King of May, which is long hair of Adam and Beard of my own body
and I am the King of May, which is Kral Majales in the Czechoslovakian tongue,
and I am the King of May, which is old Human poesy, and 100,000 people chose my name,
and I am the King of May, and in a few minutes I will land at London Airport,
and I am the King of May, naturally, for I am of Slavic parentage and a Buddhist Jew
who worships the Sacred Heart of Christ the blue body of Krishna the straight back of Ram
the beads of Chango the Nigerian singing Shiva Shiva in a manner whichI have invented,
and the King of May is a middleeuropean honor, mine in the XX century
despite space ships and the Time Machine, because I have heard the voice of Blake in a vision,
and repeat that voice. And I am the King of May that sleeps with teenagers laughing.
And I am the King of May, that I may be expelled from my Kingdom with Honor, as of old,
To show the difference between Caesar's Kingdom and the Kingdom of the May of Man -
and I am the King of May because I touched my finger to my forehead saluting
a luminous heavy girl trembling hands who said 'one moment Mr. Ginsberg'
before a fat young Plainclothesman stepped between our bodies - I was going to England -
and I am the King of May, in a giant jetplane touching Albion's airfield trembling in fear
as the plane roars to a landing on the gray concrete, shakes & expels air,
and rolls slowly to a stop under the clouds with part of blue heaven still visible.
And tho' I am the King of May, the Marxists have beat me upon the street, kept me up all night in Police Station, followed me thru Springtime Prague, detained me in secret and deported me from our kingdom by airplane.
Thus I have written this poem on a jet seat in mid Heaven.

[grn blanestorm]

allen ginsberg just like me fr (loves the em dash and the word cock, hates the government)

[R.K. Cowles]

4 1/2 stars

[Meghan]

Beat poetry at its best

[Greg]

Ginsberg, 1965, from "Who to Be Kind":
"Prayers to the ghosts and demons, the lackloves of Capitals and Congresses who make sadistic noises on the radio-"
Timeless, frightening, a must-read writer.

[Gary Leising]

There are some absolutely brilliant poems in here and some completely forgettable ones. Those in the lyric mode are best, as are those in elegiac tones.

[Garrett Lee]

Wrote a whole review then the app crashed so let’s try again.

Always a pleasure reading anything by Ginsberg. This particular collection is not my favorite of his that I’ve read, but still very enjoyable and thoughtful. It seems through the period he was writing these, he was much more loose with his style and not necessarily trying to “say something” (aside from some fantastic political poetry, “Wichita Vortex Sutra” specifically is a wonderful one). He was incredibly cerebral and authentic in every word. I think this is why I gravitate towards Ginsberg’s writing so much. He was simply writing his experience of life, and I don’t think he necessarily cared what people got out of his work. He wasn’t too preoccupied with giving people life advice or comfort or whatever (and maybe this is coming from a bias I have against a lot of modern poetry I hear/read), just writing shit down, genuinely and wholeheartedly himself.

“I am not all not

but a universe of skin and bath
& changing tonight and
burning hand & softened
heart in the old bed of
my skin From this single
birth reborn that I am
to be so - …”

Long live Allen Ginsberg

[Matt Sautman]

Overall Planet News is an excellent collection of poetry, comparable in many ways to the far more popular Howl in quality but with a more precise emphasis on the politics of temporality. There are two reasons why I don’t give this a five star rating. One: there are moments that suggests Ginsburg engaged in pedophilia. Ginsburg’s last collection Death and Fame includes poems about coercing young men into sleeping with him as well in far less eloquent language, so the similar references here interferes with my ability to fully enjoy everything here. Two: Ginsburg’s portrayal of Black people feels largely stereotypical, evocative of a white liberalism that does not pay a critical eye to how Black people are presented in a text. Consequently the Black people Ginsburg references come across as objects and not subjects.

TLDR: excellent leftist queer poetry, but it’s problematic elements become more apparent as time passes onward.

[Dane Cobain]

Perhaps I’m just getting old, but unfortunately Ginsberg just doesn’t really seem to do it for me anymore. I do think he has a bunch of great poems, but I also think that he has quite a lot of filler, and this collection felt like it had more filler than genius.

Still, I did think it was worth reading, and it’s perhaps notable because it contains the poem Television was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber, which I’ve seen referenced in a bunch of different places and which I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Ginsberg himself doing a reading of.

Would I recommend it? I mean, only if you’re an Allen Ginsberg fan and you’ve already read Howl and most of Ginsberg’s other stuff. It was ai’ght.

[H.C. Myers]

It was in these years that our dear Ginsberg was obsessed with the fact that he would not have children... and pregnant women in general. He held a considerable threat of emotion throughout the collection, but the difference between his good collections and this collection was that this one lacked a sense of diversity in both subject matter and form.

[M. Ashraf]

Planet News
To Europe & Asia
1961 - 1963
Allen Ginsberg

Part of the collected work of Allen Ginsberg, the collection after Kaddish;
A collection of different points on: thoughts, travels, different ways of life;
I did not like it that much, the previous two were more remarkable;
Next King Of May

[Vince]

Some of this is good. With Ginsberg there's always something good. But a lot of it fell flat for me. Of course, I'm reading this at the wrong time - 1960s white hippy warped moderation-of-nothing takes on Buddhism were fresh as a sunflower once upon a time, and new to me more recently than that. If I'd read this in time for either I'm sure I would have thought it was revolutionary.

[Bec Daniels]

wasn’t a big fan of this one :-/ it feels like Ginsberg stuffed this one with all his drug-addled political rants and lonely self important trips to foreign countries

these were the standouts:
First Party At Ken Kesey’s With Hell’s Angels
Carmel Valley
Cafe in Warsaw
Wales Visitation

[Tuhin Bhowal]

"Sat down near the cigarette stand and surveyed his new scene, just arrived in the Holy City of Benaras."

-from Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat

[Matt JL]

wichita vortex sutra? c'mon you know it's a masterpiece, luv

[Rhiley Jade]

I too hate the US government and think women are superior to men
<3

[Gabriel Marotto]

You can see the influence of Kesey and the hippie thing appearing in this set of poems.

[Nicole]

He really does have a way with words!

[Bill]

I must admit to having passed thorough 40 years of life and not having read Allen Ginsberg. I'm not surprised that I was not introduced to him in in my college years as I attended a small Catholic university. Now that that is past, I enjoyed my first experience with Plant News, but I wish I had found him when I was younger. While dealing with the more mundane, I especially liked "I Am A Victim of Telephone":

"...and I lay back on my pallet contemplating $50 phone bill,
broke, drowsy, anxious, my heart fearful of the fingers
dialing, the deaths, the singing telephone bells
ringing at dawn ringing all afternoon ringing up midnight
ringing now forever"

Another interesting piece to me is "Sunset S.S. Azemour"

As orange dusk-light falls on an old idea
I gaze thru my hand on the page
sensing outward the intercoiled weird being I am in
and seek a head of that -- Seraphim
advance in lightening flash through aether storm
Messengers arrive horned bearded from Magnetic spheres
disappearing radios receive aged galaxies
Immensity wheels mirrored in every direction
Announcement swifting from Invisible to Invisible
Eternity-dragon's tail lost to the eye
Strange death, forgotten births, voices calling in the past
"I was" that greets "I am" that writes now "I will be "
Armies marching over and over the old battlefield --
What powers sit in their domed tents and decree Eternal Victory?
I sit at my desk and scribe the endless message from myself to my
own hand

[Craig Werner]

Going to start this with a review of the actual physical book. I read (re-read actually for the fourth or fifth time) the poems Ginsberg wrote during the early-mid 60s while hiking in the Rockies. The Pocket Poets Series published by City Lights was designed with exactly that sort of situation in mind, and I really appreciated being able to take it out during the breaks. Nice work, Editor Ferlinghetti.

On the more ethereal level, it was a good period for Ginsberg. I've been reading his journals lately and the contrast between the raw material and the polished (but still spontaneous-feeling) poems is striking. For all his commitment to improvisational and immediacy, Ginsberg worked hard to capture the rhythms of mental syntax. You can feel the Sixties taking shape, moving from the Cold War paranoia (then again, if they're out to get you....) of "Television Was a Baby Crawling toward the Deathchamber" to the political confrontation/exhortation/meditation of "Wichita Vortex Sutra," a Vietnam poem that comes damn close to matching the power of "Howl". No better LSD poem than "Wales Visitation."

Ginsberg's not known for his consistency, but Planet News reads well from start to end.

[Brendan]

138 pages of Ginsberg the traveler, Ginsberg the political malcontent, Ginsberg the drug-induced rambler. The two longest pieces are "Television Was A Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber" (18 pages) and "Wichita Vortex Sutra" (23 pages). 39 other poems.

There is much here that left me unimpressed. But there are gems as well. "After Yeats", "Café In Warsaw", "First Party At Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels", and to a lesser extent, "Kral Majales" are all notable. Each of these poems represents AG at his more accessible, more focused. In the first and the third, he boils it down to just a few efficient lines.

I'll leave you with a few lines:

Art is just a shadow, like cows or tea - "Galilee Shore"

Today is slowly ending - I will step back into it and disappear. - "Today"

It all came true in the sunset on a deserted street - "The Moments Return"

[James]

I enjoyed it overall, but found it uneven. Some poems, such as “Television was a Baby Crawling Toward that Deathchamber” I found almost incomprehensible, while “Waking In New York,” “I am a Victim of Telephone,” “Studying the Signs,” “Portland Coliseum,” “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” “City Midnight Junk Strains,” and “Wales Visitation” were excellent.