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First published in the United States of America by HarperCollins Publishers 2006
First published in Great Britain in Penguin Classics 2009
Copyright © Allen Ginsberg, 1956, 1961
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-141-19018-1
COLLECTED POEMS 1947–1980
Author’s Preface, Reader’s Manual
I. EMPTY MIRROR: GATES OF WRATH (1947–1952)
In Society
The Bricklayer’s Lunch Hour
Two Sonnets
On Reading William Blake’s “The Sick Rose”
The Eye Altering Alters All
A Very Dove
Vision 1948
Do We Understand Each Other?
The Voice of Rock
Refrain
A Western Ballad
The Trembling of the Veil
A Meaningless Institution
A Mad Gleam
Complaint of the Skeleton to Time
Psalm I
An Eastern Ballad
Sweet Levinsky
Psalm II
Fie My Fum
Pull My Daisy
The Shrouded Stranger
Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City
After All, What Else Is There to Say?
Sometime Jailhouse Blues
Please Open the Window and Let Me In
“Tonite all is well”
Fyodor
Epigram on a Painting of Golgotha
“I attempted to concentrate”
Metaphysics
In Death, Cannot Reach What Is Most Near
This Is About Death
Hymn
Sunset
Ode to the Setting Sun
Paterson
Bop Lyrics
A Dream
Long Live the Spiderweb
The Shrouded Stranger
An Imaginary Rose in a Book
Crash
The Terms in Which I Think of Reality
The Night-Apple
Cézanne’s Ports
The Blue Angel
Two Boys Went Into a Dream Diner
A Desolation
In Memoriam: William Cannastra, 1922–1950
Ode: My 24th Year
How Come He Got Canned at the Ribbon Factory
The Archetype Poem
A Typical Affair
A Poem on America
After Dead Souls
Marijuana Notation
Gregory Corso’s Story
I Have Increased Power
Walking home at night
“I learned a world from each”
“I made love to myself”
A Ghost May Come
“I feel as if I am at a dead end”
An Atypical Affair
345 W. 15th St.
A Crazy Spiritual
Wild Orphan
II. THE GREEN AUTOMOBILE (1953–1954)
The Green Automobile
An Asphodel
My Alba
Sakyamuni Coming Out from the Mountain
Havana 1953
Green Valentine Blues
Siesta in Xbalba
Song (“The weight of the world”)
In back of the real
On Burroughs’ Work
Love Poem on Theme by Whitman
Over Kansas
III. HOWL, BEFORE & AFTER: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA (1955–1956)
Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo
Dream Record: June 8, 1955
“Blessed be the Muses”
Howl
Footnote to Howl
A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley
A Supermarket in California
Four Haiku
Sunflower Sutra
Transcription of Organ Music
Sather Gate Illumination
America
Fragment 1956
Afternoon Seattle
Tears
Scribble
In the Baggage Room at Greyhound
Psalm III
Many Loves
Ready to Roll
IV. REALITY SANDWICHES: EUROPE! EUROPE! (1957–1959)
POEM Rocket
Squeal
Wrote This Last Night
Death to Van Gogh’s Ear!
Europe! Europe!
The Lion for Real
The Names
At Apollinaire’s Grave
Message
To Lindsay
To Aunt Rose
American Change
‘Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square’
Laughing Gas
Funny Death
My Sad Self
Ignu
Battleship Newsreel
V. KADDISH AND RELATED POEMS (1959–1960)
Kaddish: Proem, Narrative, Hymmnn, Lament, Litany and Fugue
Mescaline
Lysergic Acid
I Beg You Come Back & Be Cheerful
Psalm IV
To an Old Poet in Peru
Aether
Magic Psalm
The Reply
The End
Man’s glory
Fragment: The Names II
VI. PLANET NEWS: TO EUROPE AND ASIA (1961–1963)
Who Will Take Over the Universe
Journal Night Thoughts
Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber
This Form of Life Needs Sex
Sunset S.S. Azemour
Seabattle of Salamis Took Place off Perama
Galilee Shore
Stotras to Kali Destroyer of Illusions
To P. O.
Heat
Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat
Death News
Vulture Peak: Gridhakuta Hill
Patna–Benares Express
Last Night in Calcutta
Understand That This Is a Dream
Angkor Wat
The Change: Kyoto–Tokyo Express
VII. KING OF MAY: AMERICA TO EUROPE (1963–1965)
Nov. 23, 1963: Alone
Why Is God Love, Jack?
Morning
Waking in New York
After Yeats
I Am a Victim of Telephone
Today
Message II
Big Beat
Café in Warsaw
The Moments Return
Kral Majales
Guru
Drowse Murmurs
Who Be Kind To
Studying the Signs
Portland Coliseum
VIII. THE FALL OF AMERICA (1965–1971)
Thru the Vortex West Coast to East (1965–1966)
Beginning of a Poem of These States
Carmel Valley
First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels
Continuation of a Long Poem of These States
These States: into L.A.
A Methedrine Vision in Hollywood
Hiway Poesy: L.A.–Albuquerque–Texas–Wichita
Chances “R”
Wichita Vortex Sutra
Auto Poesy: On the Lam from Bloomington
Kansas City to Saint Louis
Bayonne Entering NYC
Growing Old Again
Uptown
The Old Village Before I Die
Consulting I Ching Smoking Pot Listening to the Fugs Sing Blake
Zigzag Back Thru These States (1966–1967)
Wings Lifted over the Black Pit
Cleveland, the Flats
To the Body
Iron Horse
City Midnight Junk Strains
A Vow
Autumn Gold: New England Fall
Done, Finished with the Biggest Cock
Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss
Bayonne Turnpike to Tuscarora
An Open Window on Chicago
Returning North of Vortex
Wales Visitation
Pentagon Exorcism
Elegy Che Guevara
War Profit Litany
Elegies for Neal Cassady (1968)
Elegy for Neal Cassady
Chicago to Salt Lake by Air
Kiss Ass
Manhattan Thirties Flash
Please Master
A Prophecy
Bixby Canyon
Crossing Nation
Smoke Rolling Down Street
Pertussin
Swirls of black dust on Avenue D
Violence
Past Silver Durango Over Mexic Sierra-Wrinkles
On Neal’s Ashes
Going to Chicago
Grant Park: August 28, 1968
Car Crash
Ecologues of These States (1969–1971)
Over Denver Again
Imaginary Universes
Rising over night-blackened Detroit Streets
To Poe: Over the Planet, Air Albany–Baltimore
Easter Sunday
Falling Asleep in America
Northwest Passage
Sonora Desert-Edge
Reflections in Sleepy Eye
Independence Day
In a Moonlit Hermit’s Cabin
Rain-wet asphalt heat, garbage curbed cans overflowing
Death on All Fronts
Memory Gardens
Flash Back
Graffiti 12th Cubicle Men’s Room Syracuse Airport
After Thoughts
G. S. Reading Poesy at Princeton
Friday the Thirteenth
Anti–Vietnam War Peace Mobilization
Ecologue
Guru Om
“Have You Seen This Movie?”
Milarepa Taste
Over Laramie
Bixby Canyon to Jessore Road (1971)
Bixby Canyon Ocean Path Word Breeze
Hūṃ Bom!
September on Jessore Road
IX. MIND BREATHS ALL OVER THE PLACE (1972–1977)
Sad Dust Glories (1972–1974)
Ayers Rock / Uluru Song
Voznesensky’s “Silent Tingling”
These States: to Miami Presidential Convention
Xmas Gift
Thoughts Sitting Breathing
“What would you do if you lost it?”
Who
Yes and It’s Hopeless
Under the world there’s a lot of ass, a lot of cunt
Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit
Night Gleam
What I’d Like to Do
On Illness
News Bulletin
On Neruda’s Death
Mind Breaths
Flying Elegy
Teton Village
Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass
Jaweh and Allah Battle
Manifesto
Sad Dust Glories
Ego Confessions (1974–1977)
Ego Confession
Mugging
Who Runs America?
Thoughts on a Breath
We Rise on Sun Beams and Fall in the Night
Written on Hotel Napkin: Chicago Futures
Hospital Window
Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox
Come All Ye Brave Boys
Sickness Blues
Gospel Noble Truths
Rolling Thunder Stones
Cabin in the Rockies
Reading French Poetry
Two Dreams
C’mon Jack
Pussy Blues
Don’t Grow Old
“Junk Mail”
“You Might Get in Trouble”
Land O’Lakes, Wisc.
“Drive All Blames into One”
Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin: Vajrayana Seminary
For Creeley’s Ear
Haunting Poe’s Baltimore
Contest of Bards
I Lay Love on My Knee
Stool Pigeon Blues
Punk Rock Your My Big Crybaby
Love Replied
X. PLUTONIAN ODE (1977–1980)
What’s Dead
Grim Skeleton
Ballade of Poisons
Lack Love
Father Guru
Manhattan May Day Midnight
Adapted from Neruda’s “Que dispierte el leñador”
Nagasaki Days
Plutonian Ode
Old Pond
Blame the Thought, Cling to the Bummer
“Don’t Grow Old”
Love Returned
December 31, 1978
Brooklyn College Brain
Garden State
Spring Fashions
Las Vegas: Verses Improvised for El Dorado H.S. Newspaper
To the Punks of Dawlish
Some Love
Maybe Love
Ruhr-Gebiet
Tübingen–Hamburg Schlafwagen
Love Forgiven
Verses Written for Student Antidraft Registration Rally 1980
Homework
After Whitman & Reznikoff
Reflections at Lake Louise
τεθνάκην δ‘ λίγω ‘πιδεης φαίνομ‘ λαία
Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters
Ode to Failure
Birdbrain!
Eroica
“Defending the Faith”
Capitol Air
Appendix for Collected Poems 1947–1980
Notes
Epigraphs from Original Editions
Dedications
Acknowledgments
Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Empty Mirror
Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Howl
Author’s Cover Writ
WHITE SHROUD: POEMS 1980–1985
Acknowledgments
Porch Scribbles
Industrial Waves
Those Two
Homage Vajracarya
Why I Meditate
Love Comes
Old Love Story
Airplane Blues
Do the Meditation Rock
The Little Fish Devours the Big Fish
Happening Now?
A Public Poetry
“What You Up To?”
Maturity
“Throw Out the Yellow Journalists of Bad Grammar & Terrible Manner”
Going to the World of the Dead
Irritable Vegetable
Thoughts Sitting Breathing II
What the Sea Throws Up at Vlissingen
I Am Not
I’m a Prisoner of Allen Ginsberg
221 Syllables at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center
Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms
Arguments
Sunday Prayer
Brown Rice Quatrains
They’re All Phantoms of My Imagining
White Shroud
Empire Air
Surprise Mind
Student Love
The Question
In My Kitchen in New York
It’s All So Brief
I Love Old Whitman So
Written in My Dream by W. C. Williams
One Morning I Took a Walk in China
Reading Bai Juyi—I. II. III. IV. V. China Bronchitis VI. VII. Transformation of Bai’s “A Night in Xingyang”
Black Shroud
World Karma
Prophecy
Memory Cousins
Moral Majority
The Guest
After Antipater
Jumping the Gun on the Sun
Cadillac Squawk
Things I Don’t Know
Notes
COSMOPOLITAN GREETINGS: POEMS 1986–1992
Acknowledgments
Preface: Improvisation in Beijing
Prologue: Visiting Father & Friends
You Don’t Know It
On the Conduct of the World Seeking Beauty Against Government
Hard Labor
Velocity of Money
Sphincter
Spot Anger
London Dream Doors
Cosmopolitan Greetings
Fifth Internationale
Europe, Who Knows?
Graphic Winces
Imitation of K.S.
I Went to the Movie of Life
When the Light Appears
On Cremation of Chögyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara
Nanao
Personals Ad
Proclamation
To Jacob Rabinowitz
Grandma Earth’s Song
Salutations to Fernando Pessoa
May Days 1988
Numbers in U.S. File Cabinet
Return of Kral Majales
Elephant in the Meditation Hall
Poem in the Form of a Snake That Bites Its Tail
Mistaken Introductions
CIA Dope Calypso
N.S.A. Dope Calypso
Just Say Yes Calypso
Hum Bom!
Supplication for the Rebirth of the Vidyadhara
After the Big Parade
Big Eats
Not Dead Yet
Yiddishe Kopf
John
A Thief Stole This Poem
Lunchtime
Deadline Dragon Comix
After Lalon
Get It?
Angelic Black Holes
Research
Put Down Your Cigarette Rag
Violent Collaborations
Calm Panic Campaign Promise
Now and Forever
Who Eats Who?
The Charnel Ground
Everyday
Fun House Antique Store
News Stays News
Autumn Leaves
In the Benjo
American Sentences
Notes
DEATH & FAME: POEMS 1993–1997
Acknowledgments
Foreword
New Democracy Wish List
Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina
After the Party
After Olav H. Hauge
These knowing age
C’mon Pigs of Western Civilization Eat More Grease
Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush
Tuesday Morn
God
Ah War
Excrement
New Stanzas for Amazing Grace
City Lights City
Newt Gingrich Declares War on “McGovernik Counterculture”
Pastel Sentences (Selections)
Nazi Capish
Is About
The Ballad of the Skeletons
“You know what I’m saying?”
Bowel Song
Popular Tunes
Five A.M.
Power
Anger
Multiple Identity Questionnaire
Don’t Get Angry with Me
Swan Songs in the Present
Gone Gone Gone
Reverse the rain of Terror
Sending Message
No! No! It’s Not the End
Bad Poem
Homeless Compleynt
Happy New Year Robert & June
Diamond Bells
Virtual Impunity Blues
Waribashi
Good Luck
Some Little Boys Dont
Jacking Off
Think Tank Rhymes
Song of the Washing Machine
World Bank Blues
Richard III
Death & Fame
Sexual Abuse
Butterfly Mind
A fellow named Steven
Half Asleep
Objective Subject
Kerouac
Hepatitis Body Itch …
Whitmanic Poem
American Sentences 1995–1997
Variations on Ma Rainey’s See See Rider
Sky Words
Scatalogical Observations
My Team Is Red Hot
Starry Rhymes
Thirty State Bummers
“I have a nosebleed …”
“Timmy made a hot milk”
“This kind of Hepatitis can cause ya”
“Giddy-yup giddy-yup giddy-yap”
“Turn on the heat & take a seat”
Bop Sh’bam
Dream
Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgias)
Afterword
Notes
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PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1926. As a Columbia College student in the 1940s he began close friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation, and, while living in California in the mid 1950s, befriended, among others, San Francisco Renaissance poets Gary Snyder and Michael McClure. It was in California, in 1956, that he published his first volume, Howl and Other Poems. ‘Howl’ overcame censorship trials to become one of the most widely read poems of the century. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Allen Ginsberg was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 1993, honoured as Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Poet 1994 and co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the first Accredited Buddhist college in the western world. Ginsberg died in New York, where he lived for most of his life, on 5 April 1997. He continued to write until the last few days of his life and died surrounded by his friends and family. His publications include the annotated Howl, White Shroud: Poems 1980–1985, Cosmopolitan Greetings, Journals Mid-Fifties: 1954–1958, Collected Poems 1947–1985 and Selected Poems 1947–1995. Rhino Records released his four-CD box Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems & Songs 1949–1993.
Collected Poems 1947–1997 is a compilation of the texts of Collected Poems 1947–1980, White Shroud: Poems 1980–1985, Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992, and Death & Fame: Poems 1993–1997.
The Estate would like to express gratitude to Eliot Katz for his dedication and assistance in preparation of this manuscript, Danny Mulligan at HarperCollins for attentive coordinating, and Jeffrey Posternak at the Wylie Agency for his tireless intermediation.
Portions of this work have appeared in the following Allen Ginsberg books:
Airplane Dreams. House of Anasi, Toronto/City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1968.
Angkor Wat. Fulcrum Press, London, 1968.
As Ever: Collected Correspondence Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady. Creative Arts Book Company, Berkeley, 1977.
Empty Mirror, Early Poems. Totem/Corinth, New York, 1961.
The Fall of America, Poems of These States 1965–1971. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1973.
The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems, 1948–1951. Grey Fox Press, 1972.
Howl & Other Poems. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1956.
Indian Journals. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1970.
Iron Horse. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1974.
Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties. Grove Press, New York, 1977.
Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958–1960. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1978.
Mind Breaths: Poems 1972–1977. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1978.
Planet News. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1968.
Plutonian Ode: Poems 1977–1980. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1982.
Poems All Over the Place: Mostly Seventies. Cherry Valley Editions, Cherry Valley, NY, 1978.
Reality Sandwiches: 1953–1960. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1963.
Sad Dust Glories: Poems Work Summer in Woods 1974. Workingmans Press, 1975.
Straight Hearts’ Delight: Love Poems & Selected Letters, by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Edited by Winston Leyland. Gay Sunshine Press, 1980.
To
Naomi Ginsberg
1894–1956
Louis Ginsberg
1896–1976
Thanks to hospitable editors, variants of these writings were printed first in: Action, American Poetry Review, Apartment, Art contre/against Apartheid, The Atlantic, Big Scream, Bombay Gin, Christopher Street, Folger Library Broadside, Full Circle, Here Now, Hidrogenski Dzuboke, L. A. Weekly, Long Shot, Mag City, Nagyvilag, NAMBLA Journal, Naropa Institute Bulletin, National Lampoon, New Age, New Blood, Northern Literary Quarterly, Open, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Peace or Perish, Poesi 1 (Oslo), Poetry, Poetry East, Portable Lower East Side, riverrun, Spao Spassiba, Sulfur, The New York Times Magazine, Tribu, United Press International, Vajradhatu Sun, Vanity Fair, White Shroud (Kunsthalle, Basle).
To
Edith Ginsberg
Thanks to the hospitable editors, variants of these writings were printed first in: After the Storm; Allen in Vision; Alpha Beat Soup; The Alternative Press; American Poetry Review; Be Released in Los Angeles; Big Scream; Big Sky; Black Box; Bombay Gin; Boulevard; Break the Mirror; Broadway 2; [Brooklyn College] English Majors Newsletter; Brooklyn Review; Casse Le Mirroir; City Lights Review; Collateral Damage; Collected Poems; Core; Cottonwood Commemorative; River City Portfolio 1987; Cover; Culturas; Entretien; Ergo; Esquire; Exit Zero; Exquisite Corps; Fall of America; Fear, Power, God (recording); First Blues; First Line; Flower Thief; Gandhabba; A Garden of Earthly Delight; Gathering of Poets; The Ginsberg Gallimaufry (John Hammond Records); Gown Literary Supplement; Grand Rapids College Review; Harper’s; Holunderground; Howling Mantra; Hum Bom! (broadside); Hydrogen Jukebox (libretto); Inquiring Mind; Journal of the Gulf War; Karel Appel; Recent Work; Long Shot; Lovely Jobly; Man Alive!; Mill Street Forward; Moment; Moorish Science Monitor; Napalm Health Spa; Naropa Institute Summer Writing Program (1991); Nation; National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side; New Age Journal; New Censorship; A New Geography of Poets; New Letters; New Observations; New York Newsday; New York Planet; New York Times; Nigen Kazoku; Nightmares of Reason; Nola Express; La Nouvelle Chute de l’Amerique; Off the Wall; Organica; Paria; Pearl; Peckerwood; Personals Ad (broadside); Poem in the Form of a Snake (broadside); Poets for Life; Portable Lower East Side; Qualità di Tempo; Reality Sandwich; Riverrun; RuhRoh!; Sekai; Semiotext[e]; Shambhala Sun; Sixpack; Steaua; Struga; Sugar, Alcohol & Meat (recording); Sulfur; Supplication for the Rebirth of the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche (broadside); Talus; Thinker Review (broadside); This Is Important; Threepenny Review; Tikkun; Underground Forest; Vagabond; Vajradhatu Sun; Venue; The Verdict Is In; Village Voice; Vinduet; Visiting Father & Friends (pamphlet); Vylizanej Mozek!; Washington Square News; Wiersze; World; WPFW 89.3 FM Poetry Anthology.
To
Steven Taylor
If music be the food of love, play on.
I write poetry because the English word Inspiration comes from Latin Spiritus, breath, I want to breathe freely.
I write poetry because Walt Whitman gave world permission to speak with candor.
I write poetry because Walt Whitman opened up poetry’s verse-line for unobstructed breath.
I write poetry because Ezra Pound saw an ivory tower, bet on one wrong horse, gave poets permission to write spoken vernacular idiom.
I write poetry because Pound pointed young Western poets to look at Chinese writing word pictures.
I write poetry because W. C. Williams living in Rutherford wrote New Jerseyesque “I kick yuh eye,” asking, how measure that in iambic pentameter?
I write poetry because my father was poet my mother from Russia spoke Communist, died in a mad house.
I write poetry because young friend Gary Snyder sat to look at his thoughts as part of external phenomenal world just like a 1984 conference table.
I write poetry because I suffer, born to die, kidneystones and high blood pressure, everybody suffers.
I write poetry because I suffer confusion not knowing what other people think.
I write because poetry can reveal my thoughts, cure my paranoia also other people’s paranoia.
I write poetry because my mind wanders subject to sex politics Buddhadharma meditation.
I write poetry to make accurate picture my own mind.
I write poetry because I took Bodhisattva’s Four Vows: Sentient creatures to liberate are numberless in the universe, my own greed anger ignorance to cut thru’s infinite, situations I find myself in are countless as the sky okay, while awakened mind path’s endless.
I write poetry because this morning I woke trembling with fear what could I say in China?
I write poetry because Russian poets Mayakovsky and Yesenin committed suicide, somebody else has to talk.
I write poetry because my father reciting Shelley English poet & Vachel Lindsay American poet out loud gave example—big wind inspiration breath.
I write poetry because writing sexual matters was censored in United States.
I write poetry because millionaires East and West ride Rolls-Royce limousines, poor people don’t have enough money to fix their teeth.
I write poetry because my genes and chromosomes fall in love with young men not young women.
I write poetry because I have no dogmatic responsibility one day to the next.
I write poetry because I want to be alone and want to talk to people.
I write poetry to talk back to Whitman, young people in ten years, talk to old aunts and uncles still living near Newark, New Jersey.
I write poetry because I listened to black Blues on 1939 radio, Leadbelly and Ma Rainey.
I write poetry inspired by youthful cheerful Beatles’ songs grown old.
I write poetry because Chuang-tzu couldn’t tell whether he was butterfly or man, Lao-tzu said water flows downhill, Confucius said honor elders, I wanted to honor Whitman.
I write poetry because overgrazing sheep and cattle Mongolia to U.S. Wild West destroys new grass & erosion creates deserts.
I write poetry wearing animal shoes.
I write poetry “First thought, best thought” always.
I write poetry because no ideas are comprehensible except as manifested in minute particulars: “No ideas but in things.”
I write poetry because the Tibetan Lama guru says, “Things are symbols of themselves.”
I write poetry because newspapers headline a black hole at our galaxy-center, we’re free to notice it.
I write poetry because World War I, World War II, nuclear bomb, and World War III if we want it, I don’t need it.
I write poetry because first poem Howl not meant to be published was prosecuted by the police.
I write poetry because my second long poem Kaddish honored my mother’s parinirvana in a mental hospital.
I write poetry because Hitler killed six million Jews, I’m Jewish.
I write poetry because Moscow said Stalin exiled 20 million Jews and intellectuals to Siberia, 15 million never came back to the Stray Dog Café, St. Petersburg.
I write poetry because I sing when I’m lonesome.
I write poetry because Walt Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
I write poetry because my mind contradicts itself, one minute in New York, next minute the Dinaric Alps.
I write poetry because my head contains 10,000 thoughts.
I write poetry because no reason no because.
I write poetry because it’s the best way to say everything in mind within 6 minutes or a lifetime.
October 21, 1984
I climbed the hillside to the lady’s house.
There was Gregory, dressed as a velvet ape,
japing and laughing, elegant-handed, tumbling
somersaults and consulting with the hostess,
girls and wives familiar, feeding him like a baby.
He looked healthy, remarkable energy, up all night
talking jewelry, winding his watches, hair over his eyes,
jumping from one apartment to another.
Neal Cassady rosy-faced indifferent and affectionate
entertaining himself in company far from China
back in the USA old 1950s–1980s still kicking
his way thru the city, up Riverside Drive without a car.
He hugged me & turned attention to the night ladies
appearing disappearing in the bar, in apartments
and the street, his continued jackanapes wasting his time
& everyone else’s but mysterious, maybe up to something
good—keep us all from committing more crimes,
political wars, or peace protests angrier than wars’
cannonball noises. He needed a place to sleep.
Then my father appeared, lone forlorn & healthy
still living by himself in an apartment a block up
the hill from Peter’s ancient habitual pad, I hadn’t
noticed where Louis lived these days, somehow obliterated
his home condition from my mind, took it for granted
tho never’d been curious enough to visit—but as I’d no place
to go tonight, & wonder’d why I’d not visited him recently,
I asked could I spend the night & bed down
there with him, his place had bedroom and bath
a giant Jewish residence apartment on Riverside Drive
refugees inhabited, driven away from Europe by Hitler,
where now my father lived—I entered, he showed me his couch
& told me get comfortable, I slept the night, but woke
when he shifted his sleeping pad closer to mine I got up
—he’d slept badly on a green inch-thick dusty
foam rubber plastic mattress I’d thrown out years ago,
poor cold mat upon the concrete cellar warehouse floor—
so that was it! He’d given his bed for my comfort!
No no I said, take back your bed, sleep comfortable
weary you deserve it, amazing you still get around,
I’m sorry I hadn’t visited before, just didn’t know
where you lived, here you are a block upstreet
from Peter, hospitable to me Neal & Gregory &
girlfriends of the night, old sweet Bohemian heart
don’t sleep in the floor like that I’ll take your place
on the mat & pass the night ok.
I went upstairs, happy to see
he had a place to lay his head for good, and woke in China.
Peter alive, though drinking a problem, Neal was dead
more years than my father Louis no longer
smiling alive, no wonder I’d not visited this place
he’d retired to a decade ago, How good to see him home, and take
his fatherly hospitality for granted among the living
and dead. Now wash my face, dress in my suit
on time for teaching classroom poetry at 8am Beijing,
far round the world away from Louis’ grave in Jersey.
November 16, 1984, 6:52 A.M.
Baoding, P.R.C.
Thanks to the hospital editors, variants of these writings were printed first in: Aftonbladet, Allen Ginsberg e Il Saggiatore, The Alternative Press, American Poetry Review, American Sentences, Ballad of the Skeletons [recording], The Best American Poetry 1997, Bombay Gin, Booglit, City Lights Review, Cuaderno Carmin, Davka, Harper’s magazine, Harvard magazine, Illuminated Poetics, Lettre International, Literal Latté, Long Shot, Man Alive, The Nation, New York Newsday, New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, Off the Wall, Poetry Flash, Poetry Ireland Review, Shambhala Sun, Tribu, Tricycle, Viva Vine, Viva Ferlinghetti!, and Woodstock Journal.
Vale
This is Allen Ginsberg’s last book, particular to his determining intent, his last writings when in hospital aware of his impending death, his last reflections and resolutions—his last mind. When he was told by the doctors that he had at best only a short time to live, he called his old friends to tell them the hard news, comforting, reassuring, as particular to their lives as ever. Despite the intensely demanding fame he’d had to deal with for more than forty years, he’d kept the world both intimate and transcendent. It was a “here and now” that admitted all the literal things of each day’s substance and yet well knew that all such was finally “too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky/at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street …” He was, and remains, the enduring friend, the one who goes with us wherever we are taken, who counsels and consoles, who gets the facts when it seems we will never be told them, who asks “Who’ll council who lives where in the rubble,/who’ll sleep in what brokenwalled hut/in the moonlight …” He kept a witness of impeccable kind.
The playful, reductive, teasing verses, which could sometime make this world seem just the bitter foolishness it finally has to, sound here clearly. What is the grandness of death, of a body finally worn out, at last the simple fact of stubbornly reluctant shit and a tediously malfunctioning heart, of “all the accumulations that wear us out,” as he put it, when still a young man? There is no irony, no despair, in delighting as one can in “No more right & wrong/yes it’s gone gone gone/gone gone away …” No poet more heard, more respected, more knew the intricacies of melody’s patterns. He took such pleasure in the whimsical, insistent way the very rhythms could take hold of attention, bringing each word to its singular place. “Chopping apples into the fruit compote—suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer!” His company insisted upon music and he danced with a consummate grace.
Now we must make our own music, albeit his stays with us forever. William Blake’s great call, “Hear the voice of the bard …,” now changes to “The authors are in eternity,” because ours is a passing world. Yet the heroic voices, the insistent intimacies of their tenacious humanity, hold us in a profound and securing bond. Where else would we think to live? Our friend gave his whole life to keep faith with Whitman’s heartfelt insistence, “Who touches this book touches a man.” So Allen Ginsberg will not leave us even now. “To see Void vast infinite look out the window into the blue sky.”
ROBERT CREELEY
JUNE 13, 1998
“Things are symbols of themselves.”