Allen Ginsberg: Selected Poems

If you’ve heard Howl, the long-form poem that made him famous you get the idea. Kaddish assigned to Naomi Ginsberg, his mad Mother, seems only appropriate in its convoluted wanderings to the madcap woman to whom it is dedicated. ECT, Insulin Shock Treatment, and Lobotomies were all performed in her day. Passing an electric current via electrodes through the brain to cause an epileptic like seizure seems barbaric but is still done in modified form today because as a last ditch solution for extreme depression it works. Decreasing the brain’s higher functions via lobotomy is no longer practised nor is inducing insulin coma, a procedure also used on Mrs Ginsberg. The fact that his mother was severely paranoid would seem to have had a lasting effect on Allen. I can’t imagine what it was like to have a person you loved react in this way.  More than a few of these poems give one the impression that the writer was high on one mind-altering drug or another. Attempting to make sense or dissect many of these wandering lines would tend to render the reader more than a little mad as well.

To say that Ginsberg is a dirty old man begs the question. Many of these poems are homoerotic in the extreme. A couple decades ago I decided I wanted to learn about the beat poets. Having read most of them I’m no closer to a definition of what that is. Most seem to have been gay and were active in the Vietnam War era inveighing against that involvement. There’s an environmental component but most seem to be more consumers than protectionist. In the second half of this collection the poems start having a rhyme scheme and are set to music which is supplied. No I haven’t tried to sing them.