Best Selling Books by Allen Ginsberg

Essays and reviews that trace the changes in Ginsberg''s career and in his poetry

Allen Ginsberg was the bard of the beat generation, and Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems is a collection of his finest work published in Penguin Modern Classics, including ''Howl'', whose vindication at an obscenity trial was a watershed moment in twentieth-century history. ''I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked'' 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. Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) was an American poet, best known for the poem ''Howl'' (1956), celebrating his friends of the Beat Generation and attacking what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States at the time. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, won the National Book Award for The Fall of America and was a co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the first accredited Buddhist college in the Western world. If you enjoyed Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems, you might like Jack Kerouac''s On the Road, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. ''The poem that defined a generation'' Guardian on ''Howl'' ''He avoids nothing but experiences it to the hilt'' William Carlos Williams

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was one of twentieth-century literature''s most prolific letter-writers. This definitive volume showcases his correspondence with some of the most original and interesting artists of his time, including Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady, Lionel Trilling, Charles Olson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, Peter Orlovsky, Philip Glass, Arthur Miller, Ken Kesey, and hundreds of others. Through his letter writing, Ginsberg coordinated the efforts of his literary circle and kept everyone informed about what everyone else was doing. He also preached the gospel of the Beat movement by addressing political and social issues in countless letters to publishers, editors, and the news media, devising an entirely new way to educate readers and disseminate information. Drawing from numerous sources, this collection is both a riveting life in letters and an intimate guide to understanding an entire creative generation.

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. "Ginsberg is both tragic and dynamic, a lyrical genius ... probably the single greatest influence on American poetical voice since Whitman." - Bob Dylan ''Allen is ever-present in his words. His words are him - they''re like a living embodiment of him - they have his energy, his philosophy, his playfulness, his sexuality and his compassion. Not only did he give us love and poetry, he reminded us of our civic duty to use our voice.'' - Patti Smith

In 1977, twenty years after the publication of his landmark poem “Howl,” and Jack Kerouac’s seminal book On the Road, Allen Ginsberg decided it was time to teach a course on the literary history of the Beat Generation. Through the creation of this course, which he ended up teaching five times, first at the Naropa Institute and later at Brooklyn College, Ginsberg saw an opportunity to present the history of Beat Literature in his own inimitable way. Compiled and edited by renowned Beat scholar Bill Morgan, and with an introduction by Anne Waldman, The Best Minds of My Generation presents the lectures in edited form, complete with notes, and paints a portrait of the Beats as Ginsberg knew them: friends, confidantes, literary mentors, and fellow revolutionaries. Ginsberg was seminal to the creation of a public perception of Beat writers and knew all of the major figures personally, making him uniquely qualified to be the historian of the movement. In The Best Minds of My Generation, Ginsberg shares anecdotes of meeting Kerouac, Burroughs, and other writers for the first time, explains his own poetics, elucidates the importance of music to Beat writing, discusses visual influences and the cut-up method, and paints a portrait of a group who were leading a literary revolution. For Beat aficionados and neophytes alike, The Best Minds of My Generation is a personal yet critical look at one of the most important literary movements of the twentieth century.

Here, for the first time, is a volume that gathers the published verse of Allen Ginsberg in its entirety, a half century of brilliant work from one of America''s great poets. The chief figure among the Beats, Ginsberg changed the course of American poetry, liberating it from closed academic forms with the creation of open, vocal, spontaneous, and energetic postmodern verse in the tradition of Walt Whitman, Guillaume Apollinaire, Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams. Ginsberg''s classics Howl, Reality Sandwiches, Kaddish, Planet News, and The Fall of America led American (and international) poetry toward uncensored vernacular, explicit candor, the ecstatic, the rhapsodic, and the sincere—all leavened by an attractive and pervasive streak of common sense. Ginsberg''s raw tones and attitudes of spiritual liberation also helped catalyze a psychological revolution that has become a permanent part of our cultural heritage, profoundly influencing not only poetry and popular song and speech, but also our view of the world. The uninterrupted energy of Ginsberg''s remarkable career is clearly revealed in this collection. Seen in order of composition, the poems reflect on one another; they are not only works but also a work. Included here are all the poems from the earlier volume Collected Poems 1947-1980, and from Ginsberg''s subsequent and final three books of new poetry: White Shroud, Cosmopolitan Greetings, and Death & Fame. Enriching this book are illustrations by Ginsberg''s artist friends; unusual and illuminating notes to the poems, inimitably prepared by the poet himself; extensive indexes; as well as prefaces and various other materials that accompanied the original publications.

The first collection of letters between the two leading figures of the Beat movement Writers and cultural icons Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg are the most celebrated names of the Beat Generation, linked together not only by their shared artistic sensibility but also by a deep and abiding friendu00adship, one that colored their lives and greatly influenced their writing. Editors Bill Morgan and David Stanford shed new light on this intimate and influential friendship in this fascinating exchange of letters between Kerouac and Ginsberg, two thirds of which have never been published before. Commencing in 1944 while Ginsberg was a student at Columbia University and continuing until shortly before Kerouac''s death in 1969, the two hundred letters included in this book provide astonishing insight into their lives and their writing. While not always in agreement, Ginsberg and Kerouac inspired each other spiritually and creatively, and their letters became a vital workshop for their art. Vivid, engaging, and enthralling, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters provides an unparalleled portrait of the two men who led the cultural and artistic movement that defined their generation.

Gathered here for the first time is the verse of three decades of one of America''s greatest poets. Collected Poems 1947-1980 includes all writings in the groundbreaking paperback volumes published by City Lights Books, the contents of many rare pamphlets issued by small presses, and, finally, some notable texts hitherto unpublished—one, "Many Loves," withheld "for reasons of prudence and modesty," is an erotic rhapsody dating from the historic "San Francisco Renaissance" era. Allen Ginsberg is, of course, a chief figure in the group of writers (among them Kerouac, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Creeley, Duncan, snyder, and O''Hara) who, in the Bay Area and in New York in the 1950s, began to change the course of American poetry, liberating it from closed academic forms by the creation of open, vocal, spontaneous, and energetic postmodern verse in the tradition of Whitman, Apollinaire, Hart, Crance, Pound, and William Carlos Williams. Within a decade, Ginsberg''s classics "Howl," "Kaddish," and "The Change" would become central in leading American (and international) poetry toward uncensored vernacular, raw candor, the ecstatic, the rhapsodic, and the sincere—al leavened, in Ginsberg''s work, by an attractive and pervasive streak of common sense. These raw tones and attitudes of spiritual liberation helped catalyze a psychological revolution that has become a permanent part of our cultural heritage, profoundly influencing not only poetry and popular song and speech but also a generation''s view of the world. Even the literary establishment, hostile at first toward the revolutionary new spirit, has recognized Allen Ginsberg''s achievement by honoring him with a National Book Award and membership in the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The uninterrupted energy of Ginsberg''s remarkable career—embodying political activism as well as Buddhist spiritual practice—is clearly revealed in this volume. Seen in the order of composition, the poems reflect on one another; they are not only works but also a work. Here are the familiar anthology staples "Sunflower Sutra" and "To Aunt Rose"; the great antiwar poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra"; "Wales Visitation" (an extraordinary nature ode inspired by psychedelic experiments); the much-translated elegy "September on Jessore Road" and the meditative fantasy "Mind Breaths," followed by the haunting "Father Death Blues" and a later heroic, full-voiced "Plutonian Ode," addressed to "you, Congress and American people." Among the recent poems are the delicate familiar anecdotes in "Don''t Grow Old"; "Birdbrain!," a savage political burlesque; and the new-wave lyric "Capitol Air." Adding to the splendid richness of this book are illustrations by Ginsberg''s artist friends; unusual and illuminating notes to the poems, inimitably prepared by the author; extensive indexes; and prefaces and other materials that accompanied the original publications.

It is wonderfully eclectic, visionary, at times intensely private, and always in possession of a hallucinatory clarity that affirms Ginsberg''s truly great ability, as well as his ebullient spirit.

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.

Written at a turning point in his life - when he was kicking drugs in Tangiers, writing Naked Lunch, and emerging from the literary underworld, these letters from Burroughs to his young friend Ginsberg are not only an intimate and diaristic account.

Rainy night on Union Square, full moon. Want more poems? Wait till I’m dead.—Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1990, 3:30 A.M. The first new Ginsberg collection in over fifteen years, Wait Till I’m Dead is a landmark publication, edited by renowned Ginsberg scholar Bill Morgan and introduced by award-winning poet and Ginsberg enthusiast Rachel Zucker. Ginsberg wrote incessantly for more than fifty years, often composing poetry on demand, and many of the poems collected in this volume were scribbled in letters or sent off to obscure publications and unjustly forgotten. Wait Till I’m Dead, which spans the whole of Ginsberg’s long writing career, from the 1940s to the 1990s, is a testament to Ginsberg’s astonishing writing and singular aesthetics. Following the chronology of his life, Wait Till I’m Dead reproduces the poems together with extensive notes. Containing 104 previously uncollected poems and accompanied by original photographs, Wait Till I’m Dead is the final major contribution to Ginsberg’s sprawling oeuvre, a must-read for Ginsberg neophytes and longtime fans alike.

Featuring the legendary and groundbreaking poem "Howl," this remarkable volume showcases a selection of Allen Ginsberg''s poems, songs, essays, letters, journals, and interviews, and contains sixteen pages of his personal photographs. One of the Beat Generation''s most renowned poets and writers, Allen Ginsberg became internationally famous not only for his published works but also for his actions as a human rights activist who championed the sexual revolution, gay liberation, Buddhism and Eastern religion, and the confrontation of societal norms—all before it became fashionable to do so. He was also the dynamic leader of war protesters, artists, Flower Power hippies, musicians, punks, and political radicals. The Essential Ginsberg collects a mosaic of material that displays the full range of Ginsberg''s mental landscape. His most important poems, songs, essays, letters, journals, and interviews are displayed in chronological order. His poetic masterpieces, "Howl" and "Kaddish," are presented here along with lesser-known and difficult-to-find songs and prose. Personal correspondence with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac is included, as well as photographs—shot and captioned by Ginsberg himself—of his friends and fellow rogues William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and others. Through his essays, journals, interviews, and letters, this definitive volume will inspire readers to delve deeper into a body of work that remains one of the most impressive literary canons in American history.

Date of publication taken from Amazon.com.

In 1953, Burroughs began an expedition into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his eye over the local regimes to record trademark vignettes of political and psychic malaise. The book was completed by the addition of Ginsberg''s experiences with yage.

In these most personal of pages we follow Allen Ginsberg from heady times of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance and sojourns in the Arctic and Mexico, through his 1957 visit to Burroughs in Morocco, and adventures in Paris, Amsterdam, London, and New York. These journals offer an account of Ginsberg''s emotional life: his homosexuality; his love affair with Peter Orlovsky; and the death of his mother.

An insider''s history of the "Beat" movement and its personalities through the personal photographs of one of its principle figures. Pointing his camera randomly at the counterculture around him, the poet created a unique visual record of his friends and companions covering a period of almost forty years. His subjects include Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Robert Frank, Paul Bowles, Timothy Leary, dozens of other writers, painters, and friends, and several revealing self-portraits. Beneath each photograph are Ginsberg''s handwritten reminiscences of the circumstances, people, and places relating to the photograph.

Poems by a modern master. "[Ginsberg''s] powerful mixture of Blake, Whitman, Pound, and Williams, to which he added his own volatile, grotesque, and tender humor, has assured him a memorable place in modern poetry."-- Helen Vendler

A collection of Ginsberg''s poems include meditations, songs, soliloquies, fantasies, elegies, and regional portraits of America.

One of the central relationships in the Beat scene was the long–lasting friendship of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Ginsberg introduced Snyder to the East Coast Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, while Snyder himself became the model for the serious poet that Ginsberg so wanted to become. Snyder encouraged Ginsberg to explore the beauty of the West Coast and, even more lastingly, introduced Ginsberg to Buddhism, the subject of so many long letter exchanges between them. Beginning in 1956 and continuing through 1991, the two men exchanged more than 850 letters. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg''s biographer and an important editor of his papers, has selected the most significant correspondence from this long friendship. The letters themselves paint the biographical and poetic portraits of two of America''s most important—and most fascinating—poets. Robert Hass'' insightful introduction discusses the lives of these two major poets and their enriching and moving relationship.

A glorious collection of some 70 remarkable photographs of Beat writers and personalities taken by Ginsberg between 1953 and 1991 in venues from San Francisco to New York to Tangier. Originally published in Germany and re-edited for the present edition. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A touching look into the heart and family of one of America''s greatest poets. As a literary portrait of a father and son, little can match the eloquence and honesty of this collection of letters, written between Allen Ginsberg and his father, Louis, spanning the years 1944 to 1976. Their correspondence is filled with affection, respect, and a healthy dose of argumentative zeal-they debate every major political and artistic issue that faced America in over three decades of extraordinary change. But the letters also tell of a strong bond of intimacy and affection between the two, revealing just how crucial that closeness was to the development of Allen Ginsberg''s art.