Allen Ginsberg

A beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. The apocalyptic "Howl" became the subject of an obscenity trial when it was first published in 1956 -- its vindication was a watershed moment in twentieth-century history. Dark, ecstatic and rhapsodic, "Howl" shows why Ginsberg was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century. Howl and Other Poems is a collection of Ginsberg's finest work, including "Howl," one of the principal works of the Beat Generation as well as "A Supermarket in California," "Transcription of Organ Music," "Sunflower Sutra," "America," "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound," and some of his earlier works. 

Now a Major Motion Picture First published in 1956, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is a prophetic masterpiece—an epic raging against dehumanizing society that overcame censorship trials and obscenity charges to become one of the most widely read poems of the century.

Beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. This new collection brings together the famous poems that made his name as a defining figure of the counterculture. They include the apocalyptic 'Howl', which became the subject of an obscenity trial when it was first published in 1956; the moving lament for his dead mother, 'Kaddish'; the searing indictment of his homeland, 'America'; and the confessional 'Mescaline'. Dark, ecstatic and rhapsodic, they show why Ginsberg was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century.

These are Allen Ginsberg's funny, indiscreet journals from the mid-1950s, containing poems, and thoughts on drink, sex and politics.

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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.

Aullido y otros poemas fue el primer libro de Allen Ginsberg, y produjo una conmoción que cambió para siempre una parte de la poesía norteamericana, la que no se inscribe en la caverna o la frialdad académicas. Allen Ginsberg tomó su Aullido e hizo toda una performance en la que dio a conocer su forma de representar la poesía con cánticos, melopeas, llantos, gritos y lamentos que subrayasen claramente sus versos apocalípticos de denuncia total de una forma adocenada de vivir y proclamasen un modo nuevo de hacer literatura totalmente sincera y auténtica, dejar fluir la «escritura de la mente». La voz se fue corriendo, los medios de comunicación se fijaron en él, lo fueron convirtiendo en una figura famosa y él aprovechó para promocionar a sus amigos y colegas de credo literario: el lanzamiento de la Generación Beat. De hecho, en su versión impresa, Aullido y otros poemas acabó dedicado, además de a Cari Solomon, un amigo poeta recluido en un manicomio, a los escritores Jack Kerouac y Wiliam Seward Burroughs y a Neal Cassady, el héroe que emerge detrás de todos ellos. El verso inicial de Aullido es probablemente el más conocido de todos los escritos hasta el día de hoy: «Yo vi las mejores mentes de mi generación destruidas por la locura.» No es nada raro: Aullido es un largo poema, entre épico e imprecatorio, que pasa revista a las injusticias y carencias de una sociedad acomodada y egoísta como la norteamericana de la posguerra mundial y protesta dolorida y airadamente contra los horrores individuales que sufren quienes no pueden o no quieren competir por la ficción de una felicidad proclamada oficialmente. Aullido alza una voz distinta que zarandeó las conciencias y que consiguió hacerse oír.

"Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages for yr own joy." Many of Ginsberg's most famous poems. Wake-up nightmares in Lower East Side, musings in public library, across the U.S. in dream auto, drunk in old Havana, brooding in Mayan ruins, sex daydreams on the West Coast, airplane vision of Kansas, lonely in a leafy cottage, lunch hour on Berkeley, beer notations on Skid Row, slinking to Mexico, wrote this last night in Paris, back on Times square dreaming of Times Square, bombed in NY again, loony tunes in the dentist chair, screaming at old poets in South America, aethereal zigzag Poesy in blue hotel room in Peru—a wind-up book of dreams, psalms, journal enigmas & nude minutes from 1953 to 1960 poems scattered in fugitive magazines here collected.

El Kaddish es una plegaria del judaísmo que se reza en público y una de cuyas variantes es la oración para los difuntos. Allen Ginsberg dedica el suyo a la muerte de su madre, Naomi, una mujer cuya vida estuvo marcada por los problemas mentales. Kaddish es un extenso poema de tono narrativo, construido con esos versículos de vertiginosa cadencia whitmaniana ya utilizados en Aullido, con un ritmo sincopado en el que se entremezclan las imágenes urbanas, el dolor de la pérdida y los recuerdos. Para buena parte de la crítica y de los estudiosos de la poesía de Ginsberg, Kaddish es su obra maestra, superior incluso al más conocido Aullido, y esta edición especial que aparece con motivo del cincuenta aniversario de su primera publicación incorpora, además de otros poemas breves que forman parte del libro, un texto del propio Ginsberg en el que explica el proceso de escritura, iniciado en París en 1958 y finalizado en Nueva York el año siguiente; un epílogo de su biógrafo Bill Morgan, que ayuda a situar esta obra en las coordenadas personales del poeta. Kaddish es probablemente el mejor poema escrito por Ginsberg, un texto clave para entender a la generación beat y una pieza fundacional de la poesía norteamericana contemporánea, pero es sobre todo una obra intensamente biográfica de una desgarradora intensidad. Cincuenta años después de haber sido escrita, sigue sonando arrolladora, un hito incontestable de la literatura del siglo XX.

Great strange visionary poems by the author of Howl, “in the midst of the broken consciousness of mid-twentieth century . . .” 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 experience so rarely. I took it to be supernatural an gave it holy Name thus made hymn laments of longing and litanies of triumphancy of Self over 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 trembling of bliss in breast and belly of every body that nakedness rejected in suits of fear that familiar defenseless living hurt self which is myself same as all others abandoned scared to own unchanging desire for each other. These poems almost unconscious to confess the beatific human fact, the language intuitively chosen as in trance & dream, the rhythms rising on breath from belly thru breast, 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 worlds the self seeking the Key to life found at last in our self.