Collected Poems 1947-1997

by Allen Ginsberg

Overview

“Taken all together, Ginsberg’s poems are X-rays of a considerable part of American society during the last four decades.” — The New Yorker

This magnificent volume gathers the published verse of Allen Ginsberg in its entirety, a half-century of brilliant work from one of America’s greatest poets.

A 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 Whitman, Apollinaire, Hart Crane, Pound, and William Carlos Williams. 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 views of the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061139758
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/09/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	1216
Sales rank:	321,924
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.95(d)

About the Author

Allen Ginsberg was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1926, and died in New York City in 1997.

Read an Excerpt

Collected Poems 1947-1997

In Society

I walked into the cocktail party
room and found three or four queers
talking together in queertalk.
I tried to be friendly but heard
myself talking to one in hiptalk.
"I'm glad to see you," he said, and
looked away. "Hmn," I mused. The room
was small and had a double-decker
bed in it, and cooking apparatus:
icebox, cabinet, toasters, stove;
the hosts seemed to live with room
enough only for cooking and sleeping.
My remark on this score was understood
but not appreciated. I was
offered refreshments, which I accepted.
I ate a sandwich of pure meat; an
enormous sandwich of human flesh,
I noticed, while I was chewing on it,
it also included a dirty asshole.

More company came, including a
fluffy female who looked like
a princess. She glared at me and
said immediately: "I don't like you,"
turned her head away, and refused
to be introduced. I said, "What!"
in outrage. "Why you shit-faced fool!"
This got everybody's attention.
"Why you narcissistic bitch! How
can you decide when you don't even
know me," I continued in a violent
and messianic voice, inspired at
last, dominating the whole room

Dream New York–Denver, Spring 1947

Collected Poems 1947-1997. Copyright © by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

“A hefty, brilliant volume that shows Ginsberg (1926-97) to be not only a legendary protest writer but also a lyric poet preoccupied with passion, place and fate.” — New York Times

“If you want to read Ginsberg’s poetry, you should go straight to the source. COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1997 gathers everything, from the early work of “Empty Mirror” to the last pieces he completed before his death…One is continually blown away by Ginsberg’s poetic structures.” — Los Angeles Times

“Taken all together, Ginsberg’s poems are X-rays of a considerable part of American society during the last four decades.” — The New Yorker

“The mammoth new COLLECTED POEMS, 1947-1997 places Ginsberg firmly among the most prolific poets of the age.” — Washington Post Book World

“as the new volume shows [Ginsberg] was a lyric poet of the old school preoccupied with passion, place and fate, whose consciousness, under pressure from the Bomb, released weird new isotopes into the atmosphere.” — New York Times Book Review

“At 1,200 pages, the current volume testifies to the poet’s scope and indefatigable energy; there’s a lot to like…The best of his verse in COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1997 accumulates with a relentless, visionary eye, his characteristic mix of activism and mysticism enduring in his aging body, still howling.” — Chicago Sun-Times

“Sooner or later, anyone interested in American poetry must embrace Allen Ginsberg.” — Houston Chronicle

“The COLLECTED POEMS” are the ultimate statement on Ginsberg’s art.” — Chicago Tribune

“he wrote any number of splendid, singular poems that no other American poet of our age was capable of penning…the Spoken Word, Romantic, street-smart, vatic, wise-ass, good-humored anti-academic drift in American verse is largely the stepchild of his singular brilliance.” — San Diego Union-Tribune

“The volume gathers for the first time all the published verse of beat poet Ginsberg, whose raw voice led poetry in a new, radical direction…Taken together, this collection serves as Ginsberg’s autobiography and a history, in verse, of a turbulent time in American culture.” — Salt Lake City Tribune

“The volume gathers for the first time all the published verse of...poet Ginsberg...A history...of a turbulent time.” — Salt Lake City Tribune

“Essential…COLLECTED POEMS…is easily the best of the bunch…Some 50 years later, Ginsberg’s talent still glows on paper.” — The Post and Courier

“Ginsberg’s poems are reminders that those who face a culture’s disapproval can approve themselves.” — The Progressive

“Ginsberg is both tragic and dynamic, a lyrical genius, con man extraordinaire and probably the single greatest influence on American poetical voice since Whitman.” — Bob Dylan

From the Publisher

If you want to read Ginsberg’s poetry, you should go straight to the source. COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1997 gathers everything, from the early work of “Empty Mirror” to the last pieces he completed before his death…One is continually blown away by Ginsberg’s poetic structures.

|Los Angeles Times

he wrote any number of splendid, singular poems that no other American poet of our age was capable of penning…the Spoken Word, Romantic, street-smart, vatic, wise-ass, good-humored anti-academic drift in American verse is largely the stepchild of his singular brilliance.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Sooner or later, anyone interested in American poetry must embrace Allen Ginsberg.

Houston Chronicle

At 1,200 pages, the current volume testifies to the poet’s scope and indefatigable energy; there’s a lot to like…The best of his verse in COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1997 accumulates with a relentless, visionary eye, his characteristic mix of activism and mysticism enduring in his aging body, still howling.

Chicago Sun-Times

The COLLECTED POEMS” are the ultimate statement on Ginsberg’s art.

Chicago Tribune

as the new volume shows [Ginsberg] was a lyric poet of the old school preoccupied with passion, place and fate, whose consciousness, under pressure from the Bomb, released weird new isotopes into the atmosphere.

New York Times Book Review

Ginsberg is both tragic and dynamic, a lyrical genius, con man extraordinaire and probably the single greatest influence on American poetical voice since Whitman.

Bob Dylan

Ginsberg’s poems are reminders that those who face a culture’s disapproval can approve themselves.

The Progressive

The COLLECTED POEMS” are the ultimate statement on Ginsberg’s art.

Chicago Tribune

If you want to read Ginsberg’s poetry, you should go straight to the source. COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1997 gathers everything, from the early work of “Empty Mirror” to the last pieces he completed before his death…One is continually blown away by Ginsberg’s poetic structures.

Los Angeles Times

Taken all together, Ginsberg’s poems are X-rays of a considerable part of American society during the last four decades.

The New Yorker

At 1,200 pages, the current volume testifies to the poet’s scope and indefatigable energy; there’s a lot to like…The best of his verse in COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1997 accumulates with a relentless, visionary eye, his characteristic mix of activism and mysticism enduring in his aging body, still howling.

Chicago Sun-Times

Essential…COLLECTED POEMS…is easily the best of the bunch…Some 50 years later, Ginsberg’s talent still glows on paper.

The Post and Courier

The volume gathers for the first time all the published verse of...poet Ginsberg...A history...of a turbulent time.

Salt Lake City Tribune

The mammoth new COLLECTED POEMS, 1947-1997 places Ginsberg firmly among the most prolific poets of the age.

Washington Post Book World

A...brilliant volume that shows Ginsberg...to be not only a legendary protest writer but also a lyric poet.

New York Times

"I'm happy, Kerouac, your madman Allen's / finally made it." When hipster Allen Ginsberg wrote about a newfound love in 1955, he could have scarcely imagined the world renown that would follow shortly. (Years later, he would be astonished when a Budapest audience repeated lines from his "Howl" aloud -- in English.) Collected Poems: 1947-1997 gathers together a full half century of Ginsberg's "reality sandwiches," 1,216 pages that reconfirm our sense that there is no one alive like him.

Counterculture icon, beat apostle, Buddhist chanter, heir to William Blake, unapologetic explorer of intoxicating substances, world traveler, political protest leader, celebrant of gay sex, chronicler of New Jersey Jewish heritage and of Lower East Side post-hippie bohemians, Ginsberg (1926-1997) became by the midpoint of his career the most famous American poet of his era. At first hardworking and tormented, later on a spontaneous, welcoming mentor, the writer who in Howl (1956) "saw the best minds of my generation starving hysterical naked," and who mourned his psychotic mother in the wrenching title poem of Kaddish (1960) kept creating entertaining (if not quite so innovative) poems, for almost three decades after he rose to fame. This first complete collection of Ginsberg's work reproduces his 1980 Collected Poems including all the extensive notes: here are "Howl" and "Kaddish" and the great anti-Vietnam War poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra"; here too are the poems about Prague and Cornwall, Benares and Shanghai and the Australian outback, the songs and chants in quatrains (with sheet music) and the unashamed odes to beautiful young men. This complete edition adds White Shroud (1986), Cosmopolitan Greetings (1994) and the aptly titled Death and Fame: Last Poems (2000). A hefty, vivid and important tome, it should remind us just how much Ginsberg accomplished. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Though his literary career spanned a half-century, Ginsberg remained contemporary throughout. As iconic a cultural presence as James Dean or Bob Dylan, he attracted friends and fans among successive generations of disaffected youth through his robust, rebellious spirit and oppositional politics. As the flagship beat poet, he reintroduced a Whitmanic energy that continues to flourish wherever poetry slams are held. This huge, single-volume testimony to his prodigious output reprints the complete text of 1984's Collected Poems 1947-1980, along with the collections that followed White Shroud, Cosmopolitan Greetings, and Death and Fame, including the original book attributes of each collection. A poet of extremes at times too trusting of his instincts, Ginsberg could be playful, angry, strident, obscene, graceful, and hilarious in the space of a page, and by now his readers know they are likely to encounter as many embarrassing poems as enlightening ones. Still, this compendium provides the most complete edition of Ginsberg available. Recommended for libraries lacking the original volumes. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/06.] Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Taken all together, Ginsberg’s poems are X-rays of a considerable part of American society during the last four decades.

The New Yorker