Alan Ginsberg
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Assembled by Allen Ginsberg, Selected Poems 1947-1995 is the definitive collection of the best works of one of the most influential and revolutionary poets of the twentieth century. Allen Ginsberg, famous for helping catalyze the Beat Generation, wrote poetry for more than fifty years. His innovative verse and provocative attitudes of spiritual, political, and sexual liberation inspired countless poets, musicians, and visual and performance artists worldwide, and helped shape several generations' views of the world.
Selected Poems 1947-1995 commemorates Ginsberg's brilliant career as one of America's most distinguished poets. Here are well-known masterpieces such as the lyric "Howl" and the narrative "Kaddish" -- classic works of American literature -- as well as more recent gems, including the long dream poem "White Shroud," the visionary "After Lalon," and the political rock lyric "The Ballad of the Skeletons," a song he recorded in 1996 with a stellar band that included Philip Glass, Lenny Kaye, and Paul McCartney.
From his conversation with the conservative William F. Buckley on PBS to his testimony at the Chicago Seven trial to his passionate riffs on Cezanne, Blake, Whitman, and Pound, the interviews collected in Spontaneous Mind, chronologically arranged and in some cases previously unpublished, were conducted throughout Allen Ginsberg's long career. From the late 1950s to the mid-1990s, Ginsberg speaks frankly about his life, his work, and major events, allowing us to hear once again the impassioned voice of one of the most influential literary and cultural figures of our time.
Written as a cultural weapon and a call to arms, Howl
touched a raw nerve in Cold War America and has been controversial from the day
it was first read aloud nearly fifty years ago. This first full critical and
historical study of Howl brilliantly elucidates the nexus of politics and
literature in which it was written and gives striking new portraits of Allen
Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs. Drawing from newly released
psychiatric reports on Ginsberg, from interviews with his psychiatrist, Dr.
Philip Hicks, and from the poet's journals, American Scream shows how Howl
brought Ginsberg and the world out of the closet of a repressive society. It
also gives the first full accounting of the literary figures--Eliot, Rimbaud,
and Whitman--who influenced Howl, definitively placing it in the tradition of
twentieth-century American poetry for the first time.
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Allen Ginsberg was one of the bravest and most admired poets of this century. Famous for energizing the Beat Generation literary movement upon his historic encounter with Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs in mid-century New York City, Ginsberg influenced several generations of writers, musicians, and poets. When he died on April 5, 1997, we lost one of the greatest figures of twentieth-century American literary and cultural history. This singular volume of final poems commemorated the anniversary of Ginsberg's death, and includes the verses he wrote in the years shortly before he died.
Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays
Whether criticizing the American government, protesting the war in Vietnam, or denouncing capitalism, Ginsberg gave voice to the moral conscience of the nation. His personal essays on Jean Genet, Andy Warhol, Philip Glass, and others, give us compelling portraits of his fellow artists. And his views on poetry, free speech, Buddhism, and the Beats reflect the concerns of the postwar American culture he helped shape. Provocative, playful, eloquent, and of the moment, these essays offer a social history of modern America that remind us of the events and issues that preoccupied the minds of a nation -- and one of its most influential citizens -- in the postwar years.
Barry Miles has thoroughly updated and revised his authorative
and immensely readable account of the life of one of the twentieth-century's
most extraordinary poets. Drawing on his long friendship and literary
association with Ginsberg, as well as on the poet's journals and correspondence,
Barry Miles presents a compelling account of a controversial life. Miles also
offers a sensitive and illuminating critical appreciation of Ginsberg's poetry,
ultimately painting an exhaustive and intimate portrait of this colorful man,
whose experiences reflect the developments and changes in larger society.
Tortured by the paranoia and mental illness of his immigrant
mother, and by his own homosexuality in a society that was homophobic, Allen
Ginsberg's early work was as much a measure of his self-loathing as his
detestation of social hypocrisy and injustice. His poems reached depths of
humiliation and shame that presaged a mental breakdown, followed by recovery
with the help of Buddhist philosophy. Ginsberg's political commitment was fired
by his involvement with
Jack Kerouac,
Gary Snyder and others in the Beat movement, a poetry of social protest that
refused perceived elitist boundaries. Despite a tendency toward propaganda,
Ginsberg's best poetry is infused with satiric comedy and cheerful self-parody,
and is most readily appreciated when read aloud.
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Please also consider: Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958-1960 (Pocket Poets Series) by Allen Ginsberg
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