Kaddish and Other Poems: 1958-1960 (City Lights Pocket Poets Series)

I actually liked this one better than Howl. The personal poems are more concrete. I also liked that the book had a narrative running throughout, starting with Ginsberg's ode to his late mother, running through his trip to France to visit famous cemeteries. Definitely captures a specific time in the poet's life.

I'm not sure I get the Beats. Kaddish is a great poem, though.

from cover In the midst of the broken consciousness of mid twentieth century suffering anguish of separation from my own body and its natural infinity of feeling its own self one with all self, I instinctively seeking to reconstitute that blissful union which I experienced so rarely I took it to be supernatural and gave it holy Name thus make hymn laments of longing and litanies of triumphancy of Self over the mind-illusion mechano-universe of un-feeling Time in which I saw my self my own mother and my very nation trapped desolate our worlds of consciousness homeless and at war except for the original trampling of bliss in breast and belly of every body that nakedness refected in suits of fear that familiar defenseless living hurt self show more which is myself same as all others abandoned scared of own our unchanging desire for each other. These poems almost un-conscious to confess the beatific human fact, the language intuitively chosen as in trance & dream, the rhythms rising from breath into breast and belly, the hymn completed in tears, the movement of the physical poetry demanding and receiving decades of life while chanting Kaddish the names of Death in many mindworlds the self seeking the Key to life found at last in our self.--Allen Ginsberg Contents Kaddish: Poem, narrative, hymmnn, lament, litany & fugue Poem Rocket Europe! Europe! To Lindsay Message To Aunt Rose At Apollinaire's Grave The Lion for Real Ignu Death to Van Gogh's Ear! Laughing Gas Mescaline Lysergic Acid Magic Psalm The Reply The End show less

A powerful collection of beat poetry.