1940s
Rep Gordon Canfield
In the fall of 1942 Republican incumbent Gordon Canfield (1898–1972) ran for reelection in New Jersey’s Eight Congressional District. It was Ginsberg’s home district and the sixteen-year-old Allen helped campaign for the Democratic nominee, Irving Abramson, who lost to Canfield.
We leave the youthful pennants and the books,
This poem was selected as the class poem for Ginsberg’s Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey. At his twenty-fifth high school reunion in 1968 Ginsberg read his poem again and commented: “Oh well, there it is. Doesn’t seem to be much change in the world after twenty-five years.”
A Night in the Village
After Ginsberg arrived at Columbia College in 1943 he began to frequent Greenwich Village with his new friends: Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs, David Kammerer, and Jack Kerouac. This poem may reflect on common moments they shared as they visited the neighborhood bars looking for new experiences.
As Robert Genter wrote in “‘I’m Not His Father’: Lionel Trilling, Allen Ginsberg, and the Contours of Literary Modernism” in College Literature, vol. 31, no. 2 (Spring 2004): “In poems such as ‘A Night in the Village’ Ginsberg paid strict attention to the length of his poetic line and the closeness of his rhymes. But while he followed the New Critics in their concern with the ideological and political claims attached to poetry by liberals and communists alike and the theoretical arrogance of science which subordinated the little details of human existence to the strictures of categorical claims, Ginsberg began to reject their intense focus on form as the only source of the poetic transcendence of everyday life.”
Epitaph for a Suicide; Epitaph for a Poet
Only a week after Lucien Carr (1925–2005), a close friend of Ginsberg, killed his gay stalker, David Kammerer (1911–1944), Allen wrote these two poems. Originally the first poem was titled “Epitaph for David Kammerer,” but to hide the identities of the people involved Ginsberg renamed it “Epitaph for a Suicide” even though his death was far from suicide. This is the first time the two poems have been published together.
This poem was included in a letter Ginsberg wrote to his friend Jack Kerouac. Some of the lines later turned up in a collaborative poem the two wrote called “Pull My Daisy.”
1950s
Her Engagement
Following William Carlos Williams’s suggestion that he look to his prose for poetic inspiration, Ginsberg went back to his journals, rearranging many passages into verse. This prose journal description of a dream was created in 1952, but reappeared as a poem in 1955.
What’s buzzing
This poem was written while Ginsberg was living in San Jose with Carolyn and Neal Cassady. Unbeknownst to Carolyn was the fact that Allen and Neal were having a sexual relationship behind her back.
Thus on a Long Bus Ride; We rode on a lonely bus
In late December 1954, Ginsberg met Peter Orlovsky (1933–2010), the young man who became his life’s companion. While living in San Francisco the two took many bus trips together, one of which must have occasioned this earlier memory. Allen liked it enough to include it in a letter to Jack Kerouac, and then reworked it for publication in Yugen. Both versions are included here.
There’s nobody here
Carolyn Cassady kicked Ginsberg out of the house when she caught him in bed with her husband, but Neal frequently visited Ginsberg in his San Francisco apartment at 1010 Montgomery Street in North Beach.
On Nixon; Chain Poem
Richard Nixon was vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 until 1961. This poem was a collaborative effort by Ginsberg, Corso, and Kerouac. Later, in May 1979, Allen wrote the following about the poem. “This poem was written in a bar on Broadway near 110th Street Manhattan, soon after the Vice-President’s celebrated Checkers Speech, at a time when Kerouac was besieged by Esquire, Vogue or other slick magazines to write “timely” articles on subjects editors thought modish. On this visit he had refused to write a “critique of American women,” and said with a wry world-weary cry, “We ought to make 1500 dollars right now, write a big attack on American Women!” By applying some literary detective work, it appears that this poem must have been written either in late 1956 when the three were in Mexico City or in early 1957 before Corso left for Europe. Nixon’s Checkers speech was given in 1952, but Allen didn’t meet Lafcadio until 1955, so Allen has mistaken the date.
The Real Distinguished Thing
Ginsberg was given the anesthesia laughing gas or nitrous oxide on several visits to the dentist during the late 1950s. He said that it was the first time he really felt that life was just an illusion. In later years he said that laughing gas helped turn him into a Buddhist.
1960s
To Frank O’Hara & John Ashbery & Kenneth Koch
While on a trip to South America, Ginsberg tried to interest Lawrence Ferlinghetti in publishing some of the New York School poets he knew. Here he composed a poem in their style.
Ayahuasca—
Ginsberg defined ayahuasca (yagé or soga del muerto, a Banisteriopsis caapi vine infusion used by Amazon curanderos) as a spiritual potion, used for medicine and sacred vision.
Ginsberg excerpted this poem from what he called “a longer poem on politics.”
Tokyo Tower
After a lengthy trip to India, Ginsberg stopped to visit Gary Snyder and Joanne Kyger in Kyoto, Japan. On his way back to America he passed through Tokyo and spent a few days enjoying all the luxuries he had missed during his year and a half in India.
B.C. [Bob Creeley]
This poem was written shortly after Ginsberg had participated in the Vancouver Poetry Conference organized by Robert Creeley. Attached to the manuscript was a note from Allen to Creeley saying, “Battered that out last night, trying to approximate your style, the middle stanza almost makes it no?, but the last line sing-songs bad …”
War Is Black Magic
On October 30, 1963, Ginsberg joined several hundred picketers who were protesting a visit to San Francisco by Madame Nhu, the powerful wife of South Vietnam’s secret police chief. Allen composed this poem then put it on a poster that he carried all day in what was his first of many demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
Journals November 22, ’63
President John F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Ginsberg, like most Americans, followed the events on television and wrote this poem.
Line 6: Robert McNamara (1916–2009) was the U.S. secretary of defense at the time.
In a Shaking Hand
This poem was composed while riding on Ken Kesey’s bus “Furthur” back to New York City from Millbrook, New York, where they had been visiting Timothy Leary at the Hitchcock family mansion. Neal Cassady was driving the Day-Glocolored psychedelic school bus and Allen titled it “Shaking — because the bus shook me.”
Line 5: Shabda yoga is a spiritual form of yoga concerned with the power of words, sounds, and music.
Little Flower M.M. [Marianne Moore]
Ginsberg was asked to write a poem in honor of Marianne Moore’s seventy-seventh birthday. At the time she was living at 260 Cumberland Street in Brooklyn, hence the references to the bridges, the Navy Yard, etc.
During the mid-sixties Ginsberg began to compose poetry while he was in the process of traveling. He often carried a portable tape recorder with him to record on the spot. “New York to San Fran” was composed in a notebook during one of his cross-country flights. It is one of the best results of that process but he never collected it into a book, perhaps due to the length.
Line 7: Adlai Stevenson II (1900–1965) was a politician who ran for president in 1952 and again in 1956. He died in London while on a diplomatic trip.
Line 58: Hudson River.
Line 99: Mauna Loa is a volcano in Hawaii.
Line 194: Otto Klemperer (1885–1973) was a German composer and conductor of classical music.
Line 204: The Satan Bug (1965) was the in-flight movie shown on this trip. It dealt with the theft of a dangerous virus by terrorists.
Line 239: Herbert Huncke (1915–1996), a writer and longtime friend of Ginsberg’s, grew up in Chicago.
Line 274: The Mainliner was the airline’s complimentary magazine.
Line 284: While in Benares, India, Ginsberg lived near the Dasawamedh Ghat, the steps that led down to the Ganges, frequented by pious Hindus and beggars alike.
Line 288: During the Vietnam War, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was used by North Vietnamese troops as a staging area.
Line 299: Joliet, Ilinois, is the home of a well-known prison.
Line 322: Reference to the poet Hart Crane (1899–1932).
Lines 363–64: Reagan and Dr. Baxter were characters in the film The Satan Bug that he was watching on the plane.
Line 368: Although Adlai Stevenson was born in California, he was closely identified with Illinois and Ginsberg probably believed that he had been born there.
Line 389–98: Random quotes from The Satan Bug.
Line 485: References to the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (b. 1932) and Lubyanka, which was the headquarters of the KGB in Moscow and served as its prison as well.
Line 486: Spoleto was the location in Italy of an international festival of the arts.
Line 492: Democrat/Republican.
Line 500: Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is the site of a maximum security American prison.
Line 505: At one time the Potala Palace was the residence of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa, Tibet.
Line 511: John Wieners (1934–2002) was an American poet and author of The Hotel Wentley Poems.
Line 574: San Francisco, where Ginsberg had once lived.
Line 598: The Belvedere was a complex of Baroque buildings in Vienna.
Line 615: Charles Olson (1910–1970) was an American poet and the author of The Maximus Poems.
Line 650: Mount Tamalpais is the highest mountain peak in the San Francisco Bay area.
After being expelled from Prague, Ginsberg arrived in England, saw Bob Dylan perform, and was immediately swallowed up by the music scene surrounding groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He began to quote a paraphrasing of Plato, “When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.” The new music gave him hope that things were changing in the world for the better.
Line 3: The Sink Club was a Liverpool jazz club that featured the Motown sound.
Line 16: The Yoruba are an African people.
Entering Kansas City High
In early 1966 Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky drove back home to New York from California via Kansas where their friend and poet Charles Plymell had lined up several readings for them.
Busted
On June 14, 1966, Ginsberg testified about his own drug use before a special subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. This poem reflects some of the opinions that he shared with them.
Ginsberg and civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael spoke at the 1967 IMPACT Symposium held at Vanderbilt University on April 8.
After Wales Visitacione July 29 1967
“Wales Visitation” is considered to be one of Ginsberg’s greatest poems of the period. This is a continuation of that poem written at the same time and under the effects of LSD.
Line 19: The Llanthony Valley is in southeast Wales.
Lines 50,52: Both Lord Hereford’s Knob and Capel-y-ffin are in southern Wales.
Mabillon Noctambules
The title refers to a Paris metro station near where Ginsberg and his father stayed on the elder Ginsberg’s first trip to Europe.
Line 1–2: Noctambules, Old Navy, and Lipp were Parisian cafés where Charles Baudelaire might have hung out.
Line 14: Guillaume Apollinaire’s love affair with Marie Laurencin broke up on the Mirabeau Bridge.
Line 16: One of Tristan Tzara’s favorite cafés was Deux Magots.
Line 18: Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) was a renowned French playwright and poet.
Line 19: Henri Michaux (1899–1984) was a Belgian-born poet who lived on Rue Segur.
Line 44: Jamais, French for “never.”
Line 54: The White Queen was a café near Ginsberg’s hotel at the time.
Lines 56–60: La Cloiserie des Lilas was one of Hemingway’s favorite cafés and the “Great Lesbians” must certainly refer to his friends Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas.
Genocide
Line 1: LeRoi Jones (1934–2014) was an African American poet and friend of Ginsberg’s who changed his name to Amiri Baraka a few years before this poem was written.
No Money, No War
For a decade the Vietnam War was paramount in Ginsberg’s mind as it was for many Americans. At one point he decided to stop paying taxes toward that war and he urged others to do the same.
1970s
May King’s Prophecy
On the fifth anniversary of Ginsberg’s election as the King of May by the students of Prague he was in New Haven, Connecticut, in support of a strike organized by Yale students.
Hum! Hum! Hum!
In the winter of 1970–71 Ginsberg was asked to be one of the judges for the National Book Award for Poetry. He became enraged when his fellow judges selected Mona Van Duyn over Gregory Corso and he wrote this poem in protest.
The world’s an illusion
When a group of New Jersey high school students asked Ginsberg to write a poem for their yearbook, it gave him an opportunity to exercise his wry sense of humor.
Reef Mantra
While on a reading tour to Australia with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, they stopped over in Fiji for a few days. Ginsberg composed several songs and a few short poems including this one and the next.
Postcard to D
While still in Fiji Ginsberg wrote this postcard to Bob Dylan, which took the form of a poem.
Inscribed in George Whitman’s Guest Register
George Whitman (1913–2011) was the owner of Le Mistral Bookshop at 37 Rue de la Bûcherie, Paris, from 1951 until 1964. At that time he changed the name to Shakespeare and Company in honor of Sylvia Beach’s bookstore of the same name.
Line 9: Jonathan Robbins was a young American poet and friend of Ginsberg.
Line 10: Brion Gysin (1916–1986) was an artist and the co-inventor with William S. Burroughs of the cut-up method of writing.
On Farm
For several years Ginsberg lived on a farm near Cherry Valley, New York. This poem was part of a letter Allen wrote to the poet Gary Snyder.
Wyoming
This poem was written in Wyoming while Ginsberg was on a Buddhist retreat with his meditation teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Exorcism
This poem was really a curse on Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979) who had been New York’s wealthy governor from 1959 until December 18, 1973. His term ended just a few weeks before the poem was written.
Line 21: The Attica, New York, prison riot took place in September 1971. A total of thirteen guards and inmates were killed during the uprising. Rockefeller famously refused to visit the prison to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
Eyes Full of Pitchpine Smoke
Ginsberg owned land adjacent to Gary Snyder in the Sierra Mountains of California. Allen and Gary collaborated on this poem while Allen was building his own cabin there.
Line 6: The Greensfelders were neighbors.
Spring night four a.m.
In early May 1976, the Eighth Street Bookshop, owned by Ginsberg’s friends Ted and Eli Wilentz, caught fire. A reporter taped Ginsberg’s eulogy for the store, which became this poem.
Line 8: Amiri Baraka, aka LeRoi Jones.
Louis’ First Night in Grave
When Ginsberg’s father died he was buried in the family plot. The cemetery was in an industrial area near the Newark Airport.
Line 10: Rose Gaidemak was Allen’s aunt.
Line 32: The Ginsberg family often spent summer holidays at the seaside resort of Belmar, New Jersey.
Line 58: Naomi Ginsberg was Allen’s mother.
Line 73: Edith Ginsberg was Allen’s stepmother and Louis Ginsberg’s second wife.
Kidneystone Opium Traum
While taking medication for kidney stones Ginsberg recorded the following dream. The form of the poem was inspired by Michael Brownstein (b. 1943), a poet Allen knew from New York’s Lower East Side.
Homage to Paris at the Bottom of the Barrel
Philip Lamantia (1927–2005) was a surrealist poet.
Ginsberg’s poem was inspired by Lamantia’s work.
Verses Included In Howl Reading Boston City Hall
Occasionally Ginsberg tailored new lines for old poems for particular audiences. In 1978 he added these lines to his poem “Howl” for a reading he gave in Boston after the police arrested twenty-four men in Revere, Massachusetts, for making gay porn with underage boys.
This poem was another one based on Ginsberg’s childhood memories of the summers he spent in Belmar, New Jersey.
Line 48: Ginsberg’s mother, Naomi, spent a good deal of time as a mental patient in the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris Plains, New Jersey.
A Brief Praise of Anne’s Affairs
Anne Waldman (b. 1945) is a poet and was co-director with Ginsberg of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, part of the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Line 5: Angelos Sikelianos (1884–1951) was a Greek poet who was once nominated for the Nobel Prize.
Line 26: Waldman was also the director of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York between 1968 and 1978.
Lines 48–49: Andrei Voznesensky (1933–2010) was a Russian poet and longtime friend; Chögyam Trungpa (1939–1987) was Ginsberg’s Buddhist meditation teacher and the head of the Naropa Institute.
Line 62: Ted Berrigan (1934–1983) was a poet and a friend of Ginsberg’s and Waldman’s.
Popeye and William Blake Fight to the Death
From time to time Ginsberg collaborated with other poets. On several occasions he and poet Kenneth Koch spontaneously exchanged improvised lines with one another on the stage at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project. On this particular occasion it was at the suggestion of poet Ron Padgett, as mentioned at the end of the poem.
Line 13: It would appear that Ginsberg incorrectly thought that William Blake’s wife’s name was Mary, perhaps confusing her with Mary Shelley. In fact William Blake was married to Catherine Sophia Boucher. The editor considered changing the name throughout the poem, but that would give a different syllable count to the lines, so a note will suffice. The form chosen was a ballad and each poet had to improvise alternate rhyming lines in real time in front of an audience.
Line 35: Thomas Stothard (1755–1834) was a British painter and engraver who worked with William Blake.
1980s
Second Spontaneous Collaboration Into the Air, Circa 23 May 1980
Line 5: Arlo Guthrie (b. 1947), Woody Guthrie’s son, is also a musician.
Good God I got high bloodpressure answering
More and more frequently Ginsberg’s declining health began to creep into his poetry and occupy his mind as the years passed.
Following the murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980, by a “fan,” Ginsberg began to think about the price of fame, something that he had always sought.
A knock, look in the mirror
Following the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, Ginsberg asked his class to write a poem about the moment they heard the news. This was Allen’s own contribution.
Thundering Undies
In 1981 Ginsberg and Ron Padgett wrote this chain poem together paraphrasing an ode by Catullus in imitation of a poem by Sappho.
Pinsk After Dark
At this time Ted Berrigan was helping to edit Peter Orlovsky’s book of poetry entitled Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs. Berrigan was to die suddenly on July 4, 1983.
Line 5: The Kiev was one of Ginsberg’s favorite all-night diners. Now closed, it once served mushroom barley soup at Second Avenue and 7th Street in New York’s East Village.
Listening to Susan Sontag
In 1982 writer Susan Sontag (1933–2004) spoke at Naropa as Ginsberg’s guest. Here Allen referenced many specific Boulder sites such as the Chautauqua Meadows and the Flatiron Mountains.
You Want Money?
Ginsberg wrote this poem in response to a preface in a book about obtaining foundation grants.
I used to live in gay sad Paris!
In May 1982 the Dutch artist Karel Appel visited Naropa and collaborated with Ginsberg on several paintings. Allen wrote this poem on one of Appel’s canvases.
Having bowed down my forehead on the pavement on Central Park West
Line 2: Ginsberg was once forced to take a cab that was waiting for Chögyam Trungpa.
Ginsberg wrote this poem and the following one “Am I a Spy from the Moon?” while on an extended reading tour through Europe. Peter Orlovsky was traveling with him and was experiencing severe drug- and alcohol-induced outbursts. Even in the winter snow of Eastern Europe Peter preferred to wear shorts and go barefoot. Steven Taylor was Allen’s musical accompanist for the trip and translator Jurgen Schmidt went to several German venues with them.
Line 11: Foulard is a necktie.
Grey clouds hang over
Line 2: The Flatirons were a range of mountains near Boulder, Colorado.
CXXV
This poem was written and titled in the tradition of Ezra Pound’s Cantos.
Line 2: William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) lived on Ridge Road in Rutherford, New Jersey, when Ginsberg had visited him years earlier.
Line 8: Basil Bunting (1900–1985) was a British poet.
Line 13: Tom Pickard (b. 1946) is a British poet.
Line 12: When Ginsberg was eleven years old he lived with his family in an apartment building at 288 Graham Avenue in Paterson, New Jersey.
Line 24: In 1952–53 Ginsberg lived in an apartment at 206 East 7th Street in New York where he snapped some of his most famous photographs of Kerouac, Burroughs, and Corso.
3’d day down Yangtze River, yesterday
Late in 1984 Ginsberg visited China with a delegation of American writers including Gary Snyder who is mentioned at the end of this poem. When the rest of the writers returned to the Unied States, Allen stayed on to teach until the end of the year.
African Spirituality Will Save the Earth
Near the end of January 1986, Ginsberg returned to Nicaragua at the invitation of poet Ernesto Cardenal (b. 1925). Allen had first visited in 1982 and he was interested to see what had happened to the Nicaraguans’ revolutionary spirit in the intervening years.
Bob Dylan Touring with Grateful Dead
Line 10: These and later references to a drunken farmer refer to Peter Orlovsky.
Line 12: Around this time the rents in the East Village began to soar due to gentrification, but Ginsberg was able to keep his rent-controlled apartment for another ten years.
Line 28: Gregory Corso.
1990s
Asia Minor for Gregory
Gregory Corso had a great love for the ancient world, and while Ginsberg was touring Greek ruins in the Aegean with his friend and musical collaborator Philip Glass he wrote this poem for him.
Line 1: Kusadasi was a resort town in Turkey.
Line 8: Bodrum is the contemporary name for the ancient port city Halicarnassus.
The moon in the dewdrop is the real moon
Line 3: Madhyamaka refers to the Mahayana school of Buddhist philosophy.
New Years Greeting
Line 2: Mary Help of Christians Church, torn down in 2013, stood across the street from Ginsberg’s apartment on East 12th Street near Avenue A.
Last Conversation with Carl or In Memoriam
On February 26, 1993, a terrorist’s bomb exploded in the garage underneath the World Trade Center. That same day Ginsberg visited his old friend Carl Solomon (1928–1993) in the hospital and they watched the television news together. Allen made notes on their conversation, which he later arranged into verse. Solomon died on February 26, 1993, and Ginsberg read this poem at his funeral.
Line 50: Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) was one of Solomon’s favorite French
Line 69: Neurotica was a little magazine published by Jay Landesman (1919–2011) during the early 1950s. Both Ginsberg and Solomon were contributors.