Selected Poems: 1947-1995 [Paperback]

Allen Ginsberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

Personally selected 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 over fifty years. His innovative verse and provocative attitudes of spiritual, political, and sexual liberation inspired countless poets and musicians, visual and performance artists worldwide, and helped shape several generations' views of the world.

Selected Poems 1947-1995 commemorated 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, 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

"This volume," states Ginsberg in a prefatory note, "summarizes what I deem most honest, most penetrant of my writing." Roughly half the size of 1984's Collected Poems (LJ 12/84), the selection is nevertheless massive, spanning pieces written in the poet's early twenties to those written just a year or two ago on the threshold of his seventies, an avalanche of songs, rants, and chants. Never less than engaged ("I want to be the spectacle of Poesy triumphant over the trickery of the world"), Ginsberg unleashes tidal celebrations of homoeroticism, leftist politics, Eastern mysticism, and Beat camaraderie as through he were writing for his life, out to prove?like his mentor Whitman?that there is no sector of consciousness that poetry cannot encompass. His best ("Howl," "Kaddish," "Mugging") shares first-class seats with more impoverished company ("Sphincter," "Hum Bom," "Birdbrain") as if to drive home the point. And that perhaps is the most productive way to approach Ginsberg's canon: as a feverish history of one consciousness in the second half of the 20th century, articulating the moment's raunchy, mortal urgency, leaving nothing out. [For more from Ginsberg, see Illuminated Poems, a collection illustrated by Eric Drooker and recently published by Four Walls Eight Windows.-Ed.]?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.
-?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 444 pages
• Publisher: Perennial (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060928549
• ISBN-13: 978-0060928544
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,580,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Allen Ginsberg was born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, a son of Naomi Ginsberg and lyric poet Louis Ginsberg. In 1956 he published his signal poem, Howl, one of the most widely read and translated poems of the century. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awarded the medal of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French minister of culture in 1993, and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute, the first accredited Buddhist college in the Western world, Allen Ginsberg died on April 5, 1997.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars and the beat goes on... and the beat goes on..., December 13, 1999

By 

J. Koscher (Indiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems: 1947-1995 (Paperback)

There are several books out there filled with Ginsbergs ponderings (I've looked at most of them)... so why pick this one? For one... this collection spans 48 years of A. Ginsberg's work. Highlighting poetry that the author selected personally. Sure here you will find the ever famous "Howl", "Sunflower Sutra" and "America" as well as, "Elegy for Neal Cassady" which was written by Ginsberg shortly after hearing of his long time friend's death. However, where many of these sort of books highlight one particular phase the author has gone through (like a gallery showing of only Picasso's blue phase) this tome lets the reader experience the entire Ginsberg. I highly suggest this book for anyone who is interested in getting to know Ginsberg and in experiencing his greatness which spanned over 48 years (longer then his friend Kerouac was on the planet).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Allen, we miss you, June 28, 2001

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C. M. Newland (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Selected Poems: 1947-1995 (Paperback)

Regardless of your feelings about his political and religious beliefs, can you deny that Allen Ginsburg was one of the most honest of all American Men of Letters? If only all men and women were able to confront themselves as honestly and as purely as Allen did our culture would extend to much greater heights. Enjoy these poems and find within them a man who spent his entire life describing his pains and his ecstasies, and by extension the pains and pleasures of America in the late 20th Century.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Saw the Best Minds of My Generation, May 17, 2002

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Selected Poems 1947-1995 (Hardcover)

It is daunting to undertake the review of a book of Allen Ginsberg's poems. If fact, it is impossible. The extent of his talent, his willingness to experiment, the number of broad themes that run through his work, defy any four-paragraph explication. This collection of poems, selected and edited by Ginsberg himself is really the poet's last oversight of his own life. In four hundred pages covering nearly fifty years we are given not a collection of poetry, but an interior autobiography.

Ginsberg died in 1997, of the complications of Hepatitis C, the same year I discovered that I was suffering from the same disease. His death was untimely, not in the sense that he died too young, but because his creativity, the unique vision that allowed him to be critical, sarcastic, caring and brutally honest had not yet exhausted itself. 'Selected Poems' captures his many facets, from the anger of 'Howl' to the whimsy of 'The Ballad of the Skeletons.' One of my favorites is the simply early 'Song' that opens with "The weight of the world is love." This is the poem that circulated the Internet when he died.

Ginsberg is often perceived as a political or social poet, voicing first the concerns of the Beats and then the Anti-War movement. He is always questioning the motivation of those in authority, and those that were not as well. This collection also explores his open homosexuality and his long spiritual quest. Ginsberg's poetry is himself. For all his technical brilliance, what we remember in the reading is the intensity of his presence in his poems. Filled with knowledge, Ginsberg was not the kind to resort to academicism.

'Selected Poems' is a lean presentation. A short preface by Ginsberg leads off; followed by poems in order by appearance, arranged by the volumes they appeared in. A section at the end contains fragmentary notes and comments by the poet on the individual poems. Yet I am happy that I have this volume of his work rather than something more complete. For this is the work that Ginsberg, in retrospect, felt was important, and I think you will agree. As the poet said, "I didn't come here to solve anything. I came here to sing and for you to sing with me."