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Cosmopolitan Greetings
Half a century after "founding" the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg has written this powerful collection of poems that are suffused with a range of emotional colors that gives Ginsberg's work an elegiac tone.
144 pages, paper
First published January 1, 1994
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307 people want to read
About the author
Allen Ginsberg
489 books4,090 followersAllen Ginsberg was a groundbreaking American poet and activist best known for his central role in the Beat Generation and for writing the landmark poem Howl. Born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish parents, Ginsberg grew up in a household shaped by both intellectualism and psychological struggle. His father, Louis Ginsberg, was a published poet and a schoolteacher, while his mother, Naomi, suffered from severe mental illness, which deeply affected Ginsberg and later influenced his writing—most notably in his poem Kaddish.
As a young man, Ginsberg attended Columbia University, where he befriended other future Beat luminaries such as Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. These relationships formed the core of what became known as the Beat Generation—a loose-knit group of writers and artists who rejected mainstream American values in favor of personal liberation, spontaneity, spiritual exploration, and radical politics.
Ginsberg rose to national prominence in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems, released by City Lights Books in San Francisco. Howl, an emotionally charged and stylistically experimental poem, offered an unfiltered vision of America’s underbelly. It included candid references to homosexuality, drug use, and mental illness—subjects considered taboo at the time. The poem led to an obscenity trial, which ultimately concluded in Ginsberg’s favor, setting a precedent for freedom of speech in literature.
His work consistently challenged social norms and addressed themes of personal freedom, sexual identity, spirituality, and political dissent. Ginsberg was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was still criminalized in much of the United States, and he became a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights throughout his life. His poetry often intertwined the personal with the political, blending confessional intimacy with a broader critique of American society.
Beyond his literary achievements, Ginsberg was also a dedicated activist. He protested against the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, and later, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. He was present at many pivotal cultural and political moments of the 1960s and 1970s, including the 1968 Democratic National Convention and various countercultural gatherings. His spiritual journey led him to Buddhism, which deeply influenced his writing and worldview. He studied under Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa and helped establish the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Ginsberg’s later years were marked by continued literary output and collaborations with musicians such as Bob Dylan and The Clash. His poetry collections, including Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, and The Fall of America, were widely read and respected. He received numerous honors for his work, including the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
He died of liver cancer in 1997 at the age of 70. Today, Allen Ginsberg is remembered not only as a pioneering poet, but also as a courageous voice for free expression, social justice, and spiritual inquiry. His influence on American literature and culture remains profound and enduring.
As a young man, Ginsberg attended Columbia University, where he befriended other future Beat luminaries such as Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. These relationships formed the core of what became known as the Beat Generation—a loose-knit group of writers and artists who rejected mainstream American values in favor of personal liberation, spontaneity, spiritual exploration, and radical politics.
Ginsberg rose to national prominence in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems, released by City Lights Books in San Francisco. Howl, an emotionally charged and stylistically experimental poem, offered an unfiltered vision of America’s underbelly. It included candid references to homosexuality, drug use, and mental illness—subjects considered taboo at the time. The poem led to an obscenity trial, which ultimately concluded in Ginsberg’s favor, setting a precedent for freedom of speech in literature.
His work consistently challenged social norms and addressed themes of personal freedom, sexual identity, spirituality, and political dissent. Ginsberg was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was still criminalized in much of the United States, and he became a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights throughout his life. His poetry often intertwined the personal with the political, blending confessional intimacy with a broader critique of American society.
Beyond his literary achievements, Ginsberg was also a dedicated activist. He protested against the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, and later, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. He was present at many pivotal cultural and political moments of the 1960s and 1970s, including the 1968 Democratic National Convention and various countercultural gatherings. His spiritual journey led him to Buddhism, which deeply influenced his writing and worldview. He studied under Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa and helped establish the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Ginsberg’s later years were marked by continued literary output and collaborations with musicians such as Bob Dylan and The Clash. His poetry collections, including Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, and The Fall of America, were widely read and respected. He received numerous honors for his work, including the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
He died of liver cancer in 1997 at the age of 70. Today, Allen Ginsberg is remembered not only as a pioneering poet, but also as a courageous voice for free expression, social justice, and spiritual inquiry. His influence on American literature and culture remains profound and enduring.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
November 4, 2020
Huffing puffing upstairs downstairs telephone
office mail checks secretary revolt—
The Soviet Legislative Communist bloc
inspired Gorbachev's wife and Yeltsin
to shut up in terror or stand on a tank
in front of White House denouncing Putschists—
September breezes sway branches & leaves in
a calm schoolyard under humid grey sky.
Drink your decaf Ginsberg old communist New
York Times addict, be glad you're not Trotsky.
July 16, 2021
Kind of an exhausting read. Ginsberg flits from one idea or image or hemisphere to the next so quickly that at times I could hardly keep up. Great stuff on every page. I know there will be deeper depths to plumb when I return to re-read. I plan to do this despite some of the grundgy images and ashtray taste the poems left in my head.
August 1, 2013
I remember this one especially because I'd probably read it back when I was a beat-obsessed lad but I'd forgotten it like you do.
But I remember this one because of the wonderful day when I'd quit my shit job (for the time being) to go to grad school and I had nothing to do but lay in the bright summer grass and talk to my dear friend Les, who was reading this at the time and really kinda digging it and who really got into reading it pretty much the way Allen would have had he been on the other line and since obviously we dig Ginsberg just fine and obviously we each have plenty of other, more worthy books under our respective belts it's still just sort of fun to cheerfully chuckle, guffaw and hum approvingly when you dust off a minor classic from an old favorite.
July 9, 2012
My buddy Rook sent this to me because she loved it. I can't say that I loved it, but there are some neat poems in it. Then there were a lot of poems that I didn't get, that seemed like the average, written-on-a-napkin-while-drunk type poem. Then there were some that made me say, "Jesus Christ, that's awesome."
I'll try some more of his work to see if it grows on me because the brilliant stuff was well worth reading the whole book.
I'll try some more of his work to see if it grows on me because the brilliant stuff was well worth reading the whole book.
March 20, 2019
"Want more poems? Wait till I'm dead."
November 19, 2025
these were so awful. it's bewildering to me that people consume this kind of trash and can actually convince themselves that there's something of merit in it. this man had zero talent and should never have been famous
August 8, 2017
I contain multitudes. When I see the white light I'll know so many contradictions and connection shared at once. Finding beauty in resistance, art it ailment, and an expansive universe in your mind.
November 13, 2023
Vintage Ginsberg worth having
Written as he reached the significant age of 65, this book shows Ginsberg's continuing characteristic experimentalism, candor, humor, and political commitment shot throught with a heightened sense of mortality and the transience of all things. The experimentalism is exemplified by the inclusion some of of Ginsberg's comic-art style drawings and musical scores for poems he wrote as song lyrics. Though the quality is uneven, and the poems less revolutionary and spectacular than in his earlier, better known work, this book is nevertheless worth more than a whole shelf of more typical books of contemporary American poetry -- and in addition to his other merits, Ginsberg's poetry is always actually fun to read, even when the themes are grim, and how many other poets nowadays can you say that about. Recommendation: anyone interested in Ginsberg or beat poetry will be glad to have this book. Readers who are new to Ginsberg might be better off starting with the earlier classics Howl and Other Poems and Kaddish and Other Poems.
Written as he reached the significant age of 65, this book shows Ginsberg's continuing characteristic experimentalism, candor, humor, and political commitment shot throught with a heightened sense of mortality and the transience of all things. The experimentalism is exemplified by the inclusion some of of Ginsberg's comic-art style drawings and musical scores for poems he wrote as song lyrics. Though the quality is uneven, and the poems less revolutionary and spectacular than in his earlier, better known work, this book is nevertheless worth more than a whole shelf of more typical books of contemporary American poetry -- and in addition to his other merits, Ginsberg's poetry is always actually fun to read, even when the themes are grim, and how many other poets nowadays can you say that about. Recommendation: anyone interested in Ginsberg or beat poetry will be glad to have this book. Readers who are new to Ginsberg might be better off starting with the earlier classics Howl and Other Poems and Kaddish and Other Poems.
July 27, 2022
always enjoy'd Allen's condensing of sentences. very practical. have much to say? write quickly! eschew comma! Gertrude Stein said comma is crutch anyway. Allen says maybe also true sometimes of verbs articles prepositions. (no, really! many languages do without, and still have meaningful conversations.)
Cosmopolitan Greetings is shorter than Big Red Brother Book, but no less a work without Howl Kaddish Kral Wichita. if eyes open there is always something interesting to talk about.
if poems not enough there are songs (echoes in my ear of Ann Arbor harmonium!), also Spring photo of kitchen window view New York, and even cartoons, years in the making.
ps: glad to see my copy of book once lived in highschool library (Lake Washington, where art thou?), but sad it was evicted -- alas! weeded by librarial gardner, but not truly discarded. little book come inside i will re-introduce you to Blake Burroughs Eliot Morrison St. Vincent Millay Rilke Wordsworth & Nick Cave: all good company.
Cosmopolitan Greetings is shorter than Big Red Brother Book, but no less a work without Howl Kaddish Kral Wichita. if eyes open there is always something interesting to talk about.
if poems not enough there are songs (echoes in my ear of Ann Arbor harmonium!), also Spring photo of kitchen window view New York, and even cartoons, years in the making.
ps: glad to see my copy of book once lived in highschool library (Lake Washington, where art thou?), but sad it was evicted -- alas! weeded by librarial gardner, but not truly discarded. little book come inside i will re-introduce you to Blake Burroughs Eliot Morrison St. Vincent Millay Rilke Wordsworth & Nick Cave: all good company.
December 7, 2021
Every once in a while I read some more Beat poetry to remind myself why I don't like it. There are three fine poems in here to remind you how talented Ginsberg was and garner three stars for the fans, but the rest is rants, political doggerel and Buddhist noodling. I blame the whole "first thought, best thought" mantra, which I believe is dead wrong. Maybe his success had made Ginsberg lazy by the age of 66.
August 18, 2020
Political diatribes, some private "whilst drunk" poems, musical notations to accompany a handful of poems, writes of past/present national/international concerns, self-described leftist/gay/Jew, masculine/machinist diction, etc.
December 12, 2023
And here I was thinking Ginsberg couldn't possibly write a poem more annoying than "Pull My Daisy". This collection has two! As usual with post-Kaddish Ginsberg, the one or two gems don't make the rest worth it.
August 25, 2024
The only book I've ever thrown across the room. It seemed intentionally tedious - repeating the same thing over and over and over again - and as soon as I realized this was being done to me on purpose, my hand reacted with an appropriate level of violence.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 14, 2018
I like Allen Ginsberg most when he approaches politics indirectly. Here there are a lot of great poems, plus some less-great political chatter poems, and some forgettable ones.
December 30, 2021
Cosmopolitan Greetings
Allen Ginsberg
Part of the collected works
Still it is not the same as his earlier works
Allen Ginsberg
Part of the collected works
Still it is not the same as his earlier works
June 23, 2024
“Trapped in living nightmare, I made a big mistake I got born” (Elephant in the Meditation Hall)
May 11, 2016
What's more surprising: that it wouldn't be till 2016 that I'd finally read an Allen Ginsberg book cover to cover, or that, when I did, it'd be his late-eighties-early-nineties collection, Cosmopolitan Greetings? Perhaps at least the latter choice can be explained well enough: it's quite possible that things like Howl and Other Poems and Kaddish and Other Poems were simply too epochal, too legendary, too intimidating for me to start with. Meanwhile, Cosmopolitan Greetings actually does contain lots of poems I'd heard before, either from the live 1992 recording "The Three Angels: Original Beat Poetry" (with Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso) or from the Ginsberg CD box set "Holy Soul Jelly Roll", especially the fourth and chronologically final volume that's far and away my favorite. So, at least there was some rationale behind picking out this one....
The poems in Cosmopolitan Greetings vary widely in length, style, required background knowledge, and so on, which I mostly found charming, except for the few, like "You Don't Know It", that were just too dense with references, mostly to news of the moment, treated as poetic allusions anyone should be able to hold vaguely in the back of their mind. But, for every "Hum Bom!" -- thrilling to listen to, doggerel on the page -- there's an "After the Big Parade", with its haiku-like zing that isn't captured at all on recording. Some of the best poems in this volume were entirely new to me, too, like the satirical list poems "Graphic Winces" and "Research", the Andrei Voznesensky translation "Angelic Black Holes" (I want to see more translations by Ginsberg!), and the near-epics "I Went to the Movie of Life", an intentionally chaotic story about Ginsberg and the Merry Pranksters, and perhaps my favorite selection of all, the surprisingly ecological "Poem in the Form of a Snake That Bites Its Tail".
There's no intentional sequencing here -- the poems are simply arranged in the order Ginsberg wrote them -- and, I'd say that makes this book look like even more of a mess, but surprisingly, the differences in the poems are enough to give the whole collection a sort of de facto form regardless. And, it's definitely not nearly as corny as I expected it to be, knowing what my favorite recordings of the Ginsberg of that period are...!
The poems in Cosmopolitan Greetings vary widely in length, style, required background knowledge, and so on, which I mostly found charming, except for the few, like "You Don't Know It", that were just too dense with references, mostly to news of the moment, treated as poetic allusions anyone should be able to hold vaguely in the back of their mind. But, for every "Hum Bom!" -- thrilling to listen to, doggerel on the page -- there's an "After the Big Parade", with its haiku-like zing that isn't captured at all on recording. Some of the best poems in this volume were entirely new to me, too, like the satirical list poems "Graphic Winces" and "Research", the Andrei Voznesensky translation "Angelic Black Holes" (I want to see more translations by Ginsberg!), and the near-epics "I Went to the Movie of Life", an intentionally chaotic story about Ginsberg and the Merry Pranksters, and perhaps my favorite selection of all, the surprisingly ecological "Poem in the Form of a Snake That Bites Its Tail".
There's no intentional sequencing here -- the poems are simply arranged in the order Ginsberg wrote them -- and, I'd say that makes this book look like even more of a mess, but surprisingly, the differences in the poems are enough to give the whole collection a sort of de facto form regardless. And, it's definitely not nearly as corny as I expected it to be, knowing what my favorite recordings of the Ginsberg of that period are...!
July 4, 2014
Cosmopolitan Greetings is pretty special because it’s some of the last work that the great poet Ginsberg ever wrote, written between 1986 and 1992 and published in 1994, three years before his death. Despite his old age, his work is as strong as ever, and much of it is still relevant today.
If you’re a musician or an artist, you’ll be particularly interested in some of Ginsberg’s visual work and some of his music – he wrote lyrics to go alongside music, like Bob Dylan in reverse. Cosmopolitan Greetings sees Ginsberg back in the form that he was in back in the 1950s.
If you’re a musician or an artist, you’ll be particularly interested in some of Ginsberg’s visual work and some of his music – he wrote lyrics to go alongside music, like Bob Dylan in reverse. Cosmopolitan Greetings sees Ginsberg back in the form that he was in back in the 1950s.
January 13, 2014
Ginsberg weirdly feels really 90s East-Bay Gilman St. punk to me. Like Jeff Ott, or something.
This was much better than I figured late-Ginsberg would be.
I feel like the general perception of Ginsberg is that he's corny to like. I don't think he should be.
This was much better than I figured late-Ginsberg would be.
I feel like the general perception of Ginsberg is that he's corny to like. I don't think he should be.
July 30, 2016
I found myself pretty lost with a lot of this material as there are so many references to (at the time) current events which I have no idea about.
The minority, which I didn't feel so out of my depth with, was stunning, as expected of mr Ginsberg.
The minority, which I didn't feel so out of my depth with, was stunning, as expected of mr Ginsberg.
December 13, 2007
Granted he was a strange weird little man, these poems came to me pre- "Howl" and somehow helped me to make sense of a lot of my overly emotional youth.
April 26, 2008
Has a poem (same as title) which is probably amongst the most vital for dedicated writers to read.
July 5, 2008
Just adore this book, content is immaterial, some pieces are soo fine, and others he may have written out of boredom.
Still class.
Still class.
November 16, 2023
I just connected with this collection, sphincters and all.
November 24, 2015
Ginsberg is a serious genie. Loved this book and every single word in it. Can't get over how much I appreciated his sarcastic comments on lots situations.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews