Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems

One of the best American poets ever, and maybe the best of the 20th century? I dunno. I know I love it. It's like updated Whitman, with lots more grit and modernity. When I first read “Howl”, it was a sublime experience. Re-reading it only deepened that feeling: it revealed more layers, seemed even more amazing.

The other poems in this collection are generally OK or good, though the two great poems are “Howl” and “Kaddish”. The latter - an elegy for Ginsberg's mother, Naomi, who passed away in 1956 and had likely suffered from schizophrenia - is brutal, powerful, and makes “Howl” look pretty chilled out, by comparison (which is saying something). I look forward to re-reading that one too, though I may need a serious breather from it first.

It's a bit impossible to extricate Allen from the Beat Generation he was so famously part of; I run into the Beats every now and again, mostly via the Buddhism stuff (they were all into Zen and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche). From a historical perspective (especially the history of Buddhism in America), that's always very interesting; Ginsberg's allusions to Buddha this or Buddha that - very intriguing.