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The Absolutely
Coolest Ginsberg Poetry Collections
Collected Poems 1947-1980
Paperback / Published 1988
$18.40Amazon.com Books:
Tortured by the paranoia and mental illness of his immigrant mother, and by his own homosexuality in a society that was homophobic, Allen Ginsberg's early work was as much a measure of his self-loathing as his detestation of social hypocrisy and injustice. His poems reached depths of humiliation and shame that presaged a mental breakdown, followed by recovery with the help of Buddhist philosophy. Ginsberg's political commitment was fired by his involvement with Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and others in the Beat movement, a poetry of social protest that refused perceived elitist boundaries. Despite a tendency toward propaganda, Ginsberg's best poetry is infused with satiric comedy and cheerful self-parody, and is most readily appreciated when read aloud.The New Yorker, Helen Vendler:
Ginsberg, at his best, is alert, unprogrammed, free.
Cosmopolitan Greetings : Poems 1986-1992
Paperback / Published 1995
$9.60Synopsis:
Fifty years following his "founding" of the Beat Generation, Ginsberg has written a powerful collection of poems in which he fearlessly confronts evil--from the ravages of capitalism to the destruction of the environment--and death, though his zest for life remains constant and undiminished.Synopsis:
In his first collection since White Shroud in 1986, the renowned poet wittily explores his own vocation, the abuse of the environment, the casualties of capitalism, the problem of death, and the lust for life. (National ad/promo. Tour. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.)Card catalog description
Published on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Beat Generation - that historic encounter in 1944 in New York City between Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs - Cosmopolitan Greetings is the first new collection of poems from Allen Ginsberg since his highly acclaimed book White Shroud appeared in 1986. In Cosmopolitan Greetings, Ginsberg's ebullient spirit, his compassion, humor, playfulness, and candor are as refreshing as ever. These are poems from the autumn years of his life, a time of extensive activity and engagement for the public figure and a period of reflection and meditation for the Buddhist. The poet confronts evil in the world - the ravages of government, dictators, and the CIA; the wanton destruction of natural resources and of our planet; the suffering of the persecuted, the victims of war - and he does it fearlessly and with passion. Death lurks around the corners of these poems, but Ginsberg's zest for life remains undiminished. His search for love is as poignant, funny, and energetic as his attempt to understand why he writes poetry. There is a wonderful balance in this collection between memory and desire. Ginsberg's ardent pursuit of younger lovers alternates with his poignant revisiting of family, friends, and scenes from his earlier days. Cosmopolitan Greetings demonstrates a variety of poetic style and voice. Some of the poems here have dance rhythms; others are song lyrics, and some are accompanied by sheet music on the facing page. There's even an original comic strip - "Deadline Dragon Comix" - in which Ginsberg's publisher is gently taken to task for pressuring the poet about deadlines. The poems in Cosmopolitan Greetings are vintage Allen Ginsberg; fresh, hopeful, full of humanity and soul in the face of the darkness of our times. (This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.)
Selected Poems 1947-1995
Hardcover / Published 1996
$19.60Synopsis:
Celebrating the seventieth birthday of the acclaimed American poet, a collection of never-before-published poems and old favorites spans Ginsberg's full career and includes some of his earliest works, signature pieces, and recent gems.Amazon.com Books:
Allen Ginsberg made his mark, along with Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and others, in the Beat movement, a poetry of social protest that refused perceived elitist boundaries. Tortured by the paranoia and mental illness of his immigrant mother, and by his own homosexuality in a society that was homophobic, Ginsberg's early work was as much a measure of his self-loathing as his detestation of social hypocrisy and injustice. His poems reached depths of humiliation and shame that presaged a mental breakdown, followed by recovery with the help of Buddhist philosophy. His best poetry rises above both personal despair and political propagandizing with satiric comedy, and cheerful self-parody, and is most readily appreciated when read aloud. This volume includes sixty pages of songs, some written in collaboration with Bob Dylan, which are not included in his Collected Poems 1947-1980.Amazon.com Poetry Editor's Recommended Book, 05/01/97:
If your collection lacks Allen Ginsberg, this is the one to get. Complete with various indices, notes to the poems, photographs of various scenes and cohorts, and all the best and best-known poems from Ginsberg's storied career. Masterpieces like "Howl," "Kaddish," and "White Shroud" stand majestically alongside playful trifles like "Dope Fiend Blues." This is the best overview of one of our century's greatest poets.The New Yorker, Helen Vendler:
Ginsberg's poems are X-rays of a considerable part of American society during the last four decades . . . [his poetry] still exerts a powerful imaginative pressure.
White Shroud : Poems 1980-1985
Paperback / Published 1987
$10.40Collected Poems 1947-1980
Hardcover / Published 1991
(Publisher Out Of Stock)Howl : Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, With Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Publication
Barry Miles (Editor) / Published 1995
(Hard to Find)Howl : Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript and Variant Versions
Published 1988
(Hard to Find)
Other Ginsberg
Poetry Collections
Howl and Other Poems
Paperback / Published 1991
$4.76Amazon.com Books:
The epigraph for Howl is from Walt Whitman: "Unscrew the locks from the doors!/Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" Announcing his intentions with this ringing motto, Allen Ginsberg published a volume of poetry which broke so many social taboos that copies were impounded as obscene, and the publisher, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was arrested. The court case that followed found for Ginsberg and his publisher, and the publicity made both the poet and the book famous. Ginsberg went on from this beginning to become a cultural icon of sixties radicalism. This works seminal place in the culture is indicated in Czeslaw Milosz's poetic tribute to Ginsberg: "Your blasphemous howl still resounds in a neon desert where the human tribe wanders, sentenced to unreality".The New Yorker, Helen Vendler:
[Ginsberg's political] actions make him a significant cultural figure, but it is the poetry that makes him a significant literary figure.David Veronese (DVeronese@aol.com) from Washington, DC , 10/03/97:
HOWL defies comparison with anything. Ginsberg cracks open the mind of America--while riding on an hallucinogenic roller coaster--and takes a studied look
inside. The style is incredible, pyrotechnical, it transcends words themselves, taking on the characteristics of a hieroglyph. Using all elements of the profane, he
creates something holy. Should be required reading in all bars, bowling alleys and elementary schools.
Illuminated Poems
Eric Drooker (Illustrator) / Hardcover / Published 1996
$24.50Illuminated Poems
Eric Drooker (Illustrator) / Paperback / Published 1996
$15.16Synopsis:
Street-smart, hip urban graphics accompany a collection of some fifty poems that span the poet's creative evolution from 1948 to the present, including the complete text of "Howl," as well as four never-before-anthologized works. Simultaneous. IP.Synopsis:
In the tradition of William Blake, the 18th century English poet whose Illuminated Poems became a literary classic, quintessential Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and illustrator Eric Drooker have joined forces to create a book of 50 poems which span Ginsberg's creative period from 1948 to the present, enchanced by full color and black-and-white illustrations. --This text refers to the paperback edition of this title.Card catalog description
Illuminated Poems is the collaboration between two visionaries of different generations: Allen Ginsberg, the quintessential Beat and America's best-known poet, and Eric Drooker, an artist of the metropolis whose provocative images reflect life at the turn of the millennium. Illuminated Poems contains two never-before-published works, an introduction by Ginsberg and thirty-four poems from 1948 through the present day, including the poem "Howl" in its entirety. "Howl," perhaps the single poem that best captures the anguish and aspirations of the Beat Generation, was originally published forty years ago and is one of the most widely read poems of the century.Midwest Book Review:
This collaboration between a Beat generation poet and an urban artist makes for an unusual, visionary collection blending images with poetic embellishments and visa versa. Full page black and white and color images spring to life in much the manner of a graphic novel while Ginsberg provides the unusual free verse poem/song reflections. A striking combination is created.Book News, Inc., 11/30/96:
A "to die for" Ginsberg collection with paintings and drawings by Eric Drooker forming a stylistic duet of provocative, radical, and beat art. The volume contains two unpublished poems, an introduction by Ginsberg, and 34 poems written between 1948 and the present, including Howl. The drawings, in the Blake tradition, envision New York City in all its cosmopolitan and cosmic enormity, perfectly capturing Ginsberg's frenetic pace. Paper edition (unseen), $18.95. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958-1960
Paperback / Published 1991
$6.36
Fall of America : Poems of These States, 1965-1971
Paperback / Published 1984
$7.96Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg 1894-1956
Hardcover / Published 1992
$600.00 (Special Order)Mind Breaths : Poems, 1972-1977 Vol 35
Paperback / Published 1977
$7.16Planet News, 1961-1967
Paperback / Published 1971
$7.16Plutonian Ode; Poems, 1977-1980 (Pocket Poets Series, vol. 40) Vol 40
Paperback / Published 1981
$7.16Reality Sandwiches, 1953-1960
Paperback / Published 1981
$6.36Plutonian Ode; Poems, 1977-1980 (Pocket Poets Series)
Hardcover / Published 1981
$10.95 (Back Ordered)Empty Mirror Early Poems
Published 1961
(Hard to Find)The Gates of Wrath : Rhymed Poems, 1948-1952
Published 1973
(Hard to Find)Howl
Published 1992
(Hard to Find)Poems all over the place, mostly 'seventies
(Hard to Find)Sad Dust Glories Poems Work Summer in Wood
Published 1974
(Hard to Find)Iron Horse
Published 1978
(Hard to Find)Mostly Sitting Haiku
Published 1983
(Hard to Find)
Journal
Writings and Letter Collections
Journals Mid-Fifties 1954-1958
Gordon Ball (Editor) / Paperback / Published 1996
Our Price: $13.60Journals Mid-Fifties, 1954-1958:
Edited by Gordon Ball / Hardcover / Published 1995
$27.50 (Special Order)Synopsis:
Intimate detail and reflection inform the noted poet's journal account of his emotions, affairs, friendships, family relationships, and travels during the mid-1950s and of the events and discoveries that shaped his controversial poetry. 20,000 first printing. $20,000 ad/promo. Tour.From Kirkus Reviews, 02/01/95:
Ball has shaped these raw, revealing ``journals''--gleaned from a dozen sources, including pocket notebooks and a large 1954 desk calendar bearing Ginsberg's random jottings--into the essential record of the questing, wild-eyed, lustful young poet's sexual, spiritual, and literary odyssey. The entries embrace the period from Ginsberg's early San Francisco days to the bittersweet arrival of the Beat Movement as a media curiosity. As early as the summer of 1954, when he was still lusting after Neal Cassady and before his romance with Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg had ``recognitions...crucial to the writing of Howl.'' These writings and poetic ramblings are peppered with ``Howl''-like phrasings: ``drunken naked apartments''; ``bursts of tropic artichoke energy.'' He records his dreams, usually frank and frustrated sexual encounters, in detail. He also confesses real sexual episodes with Cassady, Orlovsky, women. Of more interest, perhaps, are his ruminations on poetry and process, his copious reading lists, his comments on friends such as William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, and others. He marks the day in October 1955 when he debuted ``Howl, Part 1'' at the Six Gallery as the day when ``the San Francisco Renaissance and a new American poetry were born.'' His early West Coast days and his sojourns to Mexico and Morocco have received ample attention. But manifest in his 195758 ramblings through Paris, Venice, and London is his profound sense of alienation, his cultivation of the notion of poet-as-expatriate, so evident in his work. On his return to the US and the media circus stirred up by Kerouac, he notes that his journal writing has ``become too unspontaneous'' and resolves to focus more on writing ``loose poems,'' which fill hundreds of pages. ``Only poetry,'' he notes, ``will save America.'' Ball has illuminated and brought cohesion to the fragmented and often hallucinatory ruminations and ravings of a mad, genius poet. An important document has been added to the Beat canon. (photos, illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1995, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Indian Journals March 1962-May 1963 : Notebooks Diary Blank Pages Writings
Paperback / Published 1996
$8.80Synopsis:
The leading poet of the Beat generation and late twentieth-century American letters, a spokesman for the anti-war generation, an icon of the counterculture, Allen Ginsberg led a movement that profoundly altered the American literary and cultural landscapes. Indian Journals collects Ginsberg's writing from a 1962-63 stay in India, offering a wonderfully eclectic, visionary, and, at times, intensely private account of his time there.
Journals : Early Fifties Early Sixties
Paperback / Published 1993
$10.36Straight Hearts' Delight : Love Poems and Selected Letters, 1947-1980
with Peter Orlovsky / Paperback / Published 1980
Our Price: $8.95 + $0.85 special surcharge (Back Ordered)NOTE: Amazon.com has recently listed this book as out of print. But we have received a call from Winston Leyland, who published the book, to let us know it is still available. You may want to check for it at the Gay Sunshine web site. Also available at that site are other titles of related interested.
As Ever : The Collected Correspondence of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady
Published 1977
(Hard to Find)Indian Journals
Published 1978
(Hard to Find)
Photo Collections
Snapshot Poetics : A Photographic Memoir of the Beat Era
Paperback / Published 1993
$10.36Book News, Inc., 03/01/94:
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 Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Allen Ginsberg Photographs
Hardcover / Published 1991
$38.50Allen Ginsberg : Photographs
Hardcover / Published 1989
(Publisher Out Of Stock)
Audio and Video
RecordingsFried Shoes Cooked Diamonds
VHS Tape / Published 1987
$60.00 (Special Order)Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds
VHS Tape / Published 1996
$29.99 (Special Order)Holy Soul Jelly Roll-Poems and Songs
Audio Cassette / Published 1994
$38.98 (Special Order)Holy Soul Jelly Roll-Poems and Songs
Audio CD / Published 1994
$52.98 (Special Order)Lion for Real
Audio CD / Published 1996
$12.98 (Special Order)
Other WritingsLiterary History of Beats
Hardcover / Published 1997
$17.47 (Not Yet Published -- On Order)Mind Writing Slogans
Hardcover / Published 1994
$50.00 (Special Order)Mind Writing Slogans
Paperback / Published 1994
$15.00 (Back Ordered)Allen Verbatim : Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness
Published 1974
(Hard to Find)Chicago Trial Testimony
Published 1975
(Hard to Find)To Eberhart from Ginsberg: a letter about Howl, 1956 : an explanation by Allen Ginsberg of his publication Howl and Richard Eberhart's New York times article "West coast rhythms," together with comments by both poets and relief etchings by Jerome Kaplan
(Hard to Find)To Eberhart from Ginsberg: A Letter About Howl
Published 1976
(Hard to Find)
Miscellaneous
Beat Culture and the New America, 1950-1965
Lisa Phillips, et al / Hardcover / Published 1996
$38.50Amazon.com History Editor's Recommended Book, 03/01/97:
Now that Francis Ford Coppola is making a film of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the beats--Kerouac, Ginsberg, Whalen, Cassady, and others, some gone but not forgotten--are due for another in a series of periodic rediscoveries by the mainstream media. This heavily illustrated book does the work of several tomes. It analyzes beat culture from a historical viewpoint, showing its growth in the Cold War as an expression of alienation on one hand and utter artistic joy on the other. It also charts the rise of a postwar African American intellectual movement whose influence remains strong; examines the effect of beat sensibilities on the hippies who followed a decade later, and on youth culture generally; and traces the path of beat ideas in the arts, especially film. Most of all, it makes you want to turn to Desolation Angels and Howl for the first or the hundredth time for a righteous dose of bebop delight.
Composed on the Tongue
Paperback / Published 1980
$7.96Potpoourri of Poetry : Summer Nineteen Hundred and Seventy Five
Hardcover / Published 1997
$10.95 (Back Ordered)Allen Ginsberg and Hiro Yamagata
Ginsberg, et al / Published 1996
(Hard to Find)Bixby Canyon ocean path word breeze
(Hard to Find)Open head
(Hard to Find)Philip Glass : Hydrogen Jukebox
Allen Ginsberg (Editor) / Published 1991
(Hard to Find)The Visions of the Great Rememberer
Published 1974
(Hard to Find)Your Reason and Blake's System
Published 1988
(Hard to Find)Amazon.com: Earth's biggest bookstore! One million titles, easy searching, ordering, shipping, and reasonable prices. If you can't find it here, it's probably not available on line!
Other Sources
to Buy On-Line:Most Ginsberg material is readily available from local bookstores. But if you like the convenience of shopping on-line, here are a few of the best sources:
The Ginsberg Book Listing: From 1-800-Kerouac. Includes pages on Snapshot Poetics. (Photography book by Ginsberg), Howl, and Kaddish. Links courtesy of 1-800-Kerouac.[PM001,A,B,C] **OUT OF SERVICE 2/20/1998**
The Ballad of the Skeletons: The new EP of Ginsberg's poem. This work is a collaboration with Paul McCartney, Philip Glass and Lenny Kaye. It includes three versions of the poem, set to music, and a wonderful rendition of "Amazing Grace". Link courtesy of Newbury Comics Interactive. [PM002]
The Ballad of the Skeletons: Is also available directly from Mouth Almighty Records. Link courtesy of Mouth Almighty Records. [PM040]
The Lion for Real: Allen considered this bis best recording, and it would be hard to argue. As an introduction to his work, it covers the gamut. It is available directly from Mouth Almighty Records. Link courtesy of Mouth Almighty Records. [PM041]
Cosmopolitan Greetings: Link courtesy of Open Book Systems. [PM003]
Booksmith Ginsberg Page. An excellent commercial site! Events, biography, available books and CDs, related links. Good stuff! Link courtesy of Booksmith. [PM004]
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