Collected Poems 1947-1997 Read online

  Five A.M.

  Power

  Anger

  Multiple Identity Questionnaire

  Don’t Get Angry with Me

  Swan Songs in the Present

  Gone Gone Gone

  Reverse the rain of Terror

  Sending Message

  No! No! It’s Not the End

  Bad Poem

  Homeless Compleynt

  Happy New Year Robert & June

  Diamond Bells

  Virtual Impunity Blues

  Waribashi

  Good Luck

  Some Little Boys Dont

  Jacking Off

  Think Tank Rhymes

  Song of the Washing Machine

  World Bank Blues

  Richard III

  Death & Fame

  Sexual Abuse

  Butterfly Mind

  A fellow named Steven

  Half Asleep

  Objective Subject

  Kerouac

  Hepatitis Body Itch …

  Whitmanic Poem

  American Sentences 1995–1997

  Variations on Ma Rainey’s See See Rider

  Sky Words

  Scatalogical Observations

  My Team Is Red Hot

  Starry Rhymes

  Thirty State Bummers

  “I have a nosebleed …”

  “Timmy made a hot milk”

  “This kind of Hepatitis can cause ya”

  “Giddy-yup giddy-yup giddy-yap”

  “Turn on the heat & take a seat”

  Bop Sh’bam

  Dream

  Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgias)

  Afterword

  Notes

  Index of Titles, First Lines, and Original Book Sources

  About the Author

  ALSO BY ALLEN GINSBERG

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  COLLECTED POEMS 1947–1980

  “Things are symbols of themselves.”

  Portions of this work have appeared in the following Allen Ginsberg books:

  Airplane Dreams. House of Anasi, Toronto/City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1968.

  Angkor Wat. Fulcrum Press, London, 1968.

  As Ever: Collected Correspondence Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady. Creative Arts Book Company, Berkeley, 1977.

  Empty Mirror, Early Poems. Totem/Corinth, New York, 1961.

  The Fall of America, Poems of These States 1965–1971. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1973.

  The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems, 1948–1951. Grey Fox Press, 1972.

  Howl & Other Poems. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1956.

  Indian Journals. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1970.

  Iron Horse. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1974.

  Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties. Grove Press, New York, 1977.

  Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958–1960. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1978.

  Mind Breaths: Poems 1972–1977. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1978.

  Planet News. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1968.

  Plutonian Ode: Poems 1977–1980. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1982.

  Poems All Over the Place: Mostly Seventies. Cherry Valley Editions, Cherry Valley, NY, 1978.

  Reality Sandwiches: 1953–1960. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1963.

  Sad Dust Glories: Poems Work Summer in Woods 1974. Workingmans Press, 1975.

  Straight Hearts’ Delight: Love Poems & Selected Letters, by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Edited by Winston Leyland. Gay Sunshine Press, 1980.

  To

  Naomi Ginsberg

  1894–1956

  Louis Ginsberg

  1896–1976

  Author’s Preface, Reader’s Manual

  Arrangement of Text

  Herein author has assembled all his poetry books published to date rearranged in straight chronological order to compose an autobiography. Collected Poems includes seven volumes published in City Lights Pocket Poets series: Howl, Kaddish, Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, The Fall of America, Mind Breaths, and Plutonian Ode, backbone of three decades’ writing.

  Books circulated less widely by delicate small presses (excepting song experiments in First Blues) fill gaps in the sequence. Youthful poetries were printed in Empty Mirror and The Gates of Wrath. Three odd books, Angkor Wat, Iron Horse and Airplane Dreams, interleaf poems of the 1960s. Poems All Over the Place flash on spots of time from President Kennedy’s assassination day, through 1972 Presidentiad, to author’s meditation practice in his fiftieth year.

  Among half-dozen poems taken from prose journal and letter books, one singular rhapsody, “The Names,” falls into place, with motifs from “Howl” particularized in 1958.

  “Many Loves” manuscript, detailing first erotic encounter with a lifelong friend, not printed till now for reasons of prudence and modesty, completes a sequence of writing that included “Sunflower Sutra” and “America,” Berkeley 1956.

  Advantages of Chronological Order

  The Gates of Wrath’s imperfect literary rhymes are interspersed with Empty Mirrors raw-sketch practice poems. Disparate simultaneous early styles juxtaposed aid recognition of a grounded mode of writing encouraged by Dr. Williams, “No ideas but in things.”

  “A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley” precedes “A Supermarket in California” because it was composed on top of the same page, originally one poem in two parts, here rejoined.

  Travel poems Calcutta-Saigon-Angkor Wat-Japan, 1963, mixed through three separate books, now cohere in sequence.

  Cross-country Auto Poesy chronicle starts 1965 at Northwest border (The Fall of America), continues through Wichita vortex East (Planet News), recrosses U.S.A. Oakland to New York (Iron Horse) and tarries 1966 East, returns via Chicago North of vortex 1967, and comes back through Northwest passage 1969 (The Fall of America).

  * * *

  Reader exploring Collected Poems mass of writing will find Contents divided into ten sections, roughly indicating time, geography, and motif or “season” of experience.

  Reader may further observe poetic energy as cyclic, the continuum a panorama of valleys and plateaus with peaks of inspiration every few years. This chain of strong-breath’d poems links “The Song of the Shrouded Stranger of the Night,” 1949, with “The Green Automobile,” 1953, “Siesta in Xbalba,” 1954, “Howl,” “Sunflower Sutra” and “Many Loves,” 1955–1956, “The Names,” 1958, “Kaddish,” 1959, “TV Baby,” 1960, “The Change,” 1963, “Kral Majales,” 1965, “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” 1966, “Wales Visitation,” 1967, “On Neal’s Ashes,” 1968, “September on Jessore Road,” 1971, “Mind Breaths,” 1973, “Father Death Blues,” 1976, “Contest of Bards,” 1977, “Plutonian Ode,” 1978, “Birdbrain!” and “Capitol Air,” 1980.*

  Texture of Texts

  “First thought, best thought.” Spontaneous insight—the sequence of thought-forms passing naturally through ordinary mind—was always motif and method of these compositions.

  Syntax punctuation Capitalization remain idiosyncratic, retaining the variable measure of nervous systematics. In many poems, semi-irregular indentation of verse conforms to divisions of original notation or spacings of first thought-speech mindfully recollected. “Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.”

  Nevertheless some touches are added here and there, adjustments made after years of reading works aloud, changes few and far between. Defective passages or words are excised from several poems, including “Sunflower Sutra” and “Wales Visitation.” Author has altered a dozen or more phrases that consistently annoyed him over years, eliminated half-dozen foggy adjectives or added a half-dozen factual epithets to clear up the sense of dated verses, notably in “America.”

  Typographical errors, misalignment of verse on pages of previous printings, and unintended grammatic quirks are corrected. Apparent solecisms were judged, approved or cast out.

  Assembled Appendixes

  “Notes” transmit cultural archetypes to electroni
c laser TV generations that don’t read Dostoyevsky Buddha bibles. Karma wants understanding, Moloch needs noting. Mini-essays hint further reading for innocent-eyed youths. Author took opportunity to verify ephemera in his poetry, interpret recurrent reference images for peers and elders.

  Dante, Milton, Blake and Smart footnotes were made by scholars. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote extensive commentaries for Percy Shelley’s posthumous collections. Wordsworth and Eliot favored readers by composing their own notes; their practice had precedents.

  The back of this book preserves old title-page “Epigraphs” and “Dedications,” artifacts of original pamphlets which played their part in the drama of breakthrough from closed form to open form in American poetry. A small-press culture revolution helped change hyper-industrialized public consciousness from provincial wartime nationalist-history-bound egoic myopia to panoramic awareness of planet news, eternal view of both formal charm and empty nature of local identity. “Acknowledgments” alphabetize an extravagant list of publications that first printed these poems throughout three decades of explosive humor during which legal censorship broke down. Present gratitudes find place here. Artisans who collaborated on this volume are specified. William Carlos Williams’s “Introductions” to two early books are retained, as well as “Author’s Writ,” jacket-blurb prose-poetries once composed as précis for each book.

  “Index of Proper Names” is designed to make this large volume “user friendly.” Collected Poems may be read as a lifelong poem including history, wherein things are symbols of themselves. Cross-reference between texts and notes can serve as rough concordance to the book’s mythic actualities, from Cassady to CIA to Sakyamuni. “Index of Proper Names” and “Index of Titles, First Lines, and Original Book Sources” complete the work.

  ALLEN GINSBERG

  New York City

  June 26, 1984

  * “White Shroud,” 1983, dream epilogue to “Kaddish” and title poem of book subsequent to Collected Poems, is late work of true inspiration in this sequence.

  I

  EMPTY MIRROR:

  GATES OF WRATH

  (1947–1952)

  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

  The Bricklayer’s Lunch Hour

  Two bricklayers are setting the walls

  of a cellar in a new dug out patch

  of dirt behind an old house of wood

  with brown gables grown over with ivy

  on a shady street in Denver. It is noon

  and one of them wanders off. The young

  subordinate bricklayer sits idly for

  a few minutes after eating a sandwich

  and throwing away the paper bag. He

  has on dungarees and is bare above

  the waist; he has yellow hair and wears

  a smudged but still bright red cap

  on his head. He sits idly on top

  of the wall on a ladder that is leaned

  up between his spread thighs, his head

  bent down, gazing uninterestedly at

  the paper bag on the grass. He draws

  his hand across his breast, and then

  slowly rubs his knuckles across the

  side of his chin, and rocks to and fro

  on the wall. A small cat walks to him

  along the top of the wall. He picks

  it up, takes off his cap, and puts it

  over the kitten’s body for a moment.

  Meanwhile it is darkening as if to rain

  and the wind on top of the trees in the

  street comes through almost harshly.

  Denver, Summer 1947

  Two Sonnets

  After Reading Kerouac’s Manuscript

  The Town and the City

  I

  I dwelled in Hell on earth to write this rhyme,

  I live in stillness now, in living flame;

  I witness Heaven in unholy time,

  I room in the renownèd city, am

  Unknown. The fame I dwell in is not mine,

  I would not have it. Angels in the air

  Serenade my senses in delight.

  Intelligence of poets, saints and fair

  Characters converse with me all night.

  But all the streets are burning everywhere.

  The city is burning these multitudes that climb

  Her buildings. Their inferno is the same

  I scaled as a stupendous blazing stair.

  They vanish as I look into the light.

  II

  Woe unto thee, Manhattan, woe to thee,

  Woe unto all the cities of the world.

  Repent, Chicagos, O repent; ah, me!

  Los Angeles, now thou art gone so wild,

  I think thou art still mighty, yet shall be,

  As the earth shook, and San Francisco fell,

  An angel in an agony of flame.

  City of horrors, New York so much like Hell,

  How soon thou shalt be city-without-name,

  A tomb of souls, and a poor broken knell.

  Fire and fire on London, Moscow shall die,

  And Paris her livid atomies be rolled

  Together into the Woe of the blazing bell—

  All cities then shall toll for their great fame.

  New York, Spring 1948

  On Reading William Blake’s “The Sick Rose”

  Rose of spirit, rose of light,

  Flower whereof all will tell,

  Is this black vision of my sight

  The fashion of a prideful spell,

  Mystic charm or magic bright,

  O Judgement of fire and of fright?

  What everlasting force confounded

  In its being, like some human

  Spirit shrunken in a bounded

  Immortality, what Blossom

  Gathers us inward, astounded?

  Is this the sickness that is Doom?

  East Harlem, June-July 1948

  The Eye Altering Alters All

  Many seek and never see,

  anyone can tell them why.

  O they weep and O they cry

  and never take until they try

  unless they try it in their sleep

  and never some until they die.

  I ask many, they ask me.

  This is a great mystery.

  East Harlem, June-July 1948

  A Very Dove

  A very Dove will have her love
>
  ere the Dove has died;

  the spirit, vanity approve,

  will even love in pride;

  and cannot love, and yet can hate,

  spirit to fulfill;

  the spirit cannot watch and wait,

  the Hawk must have his kill.

  There is a Gull that rolls alone

  over billows loud;

  the Nightingale at night will moan

  under her soft shroud.

  East Harlem, July 1948

  Vision 1948

  Dread spirit in me that I ever try

  With written words to move,

  Hear thou my plea, at last reply

  To my impotent pen:

  Should I endure, and never prove

  Yourself and me in love,

  Tell me, spirit, tell me, O what then?

  And if not love, why, then, another passion

  For me to pass in image:

  Shadow, shadow, and blind vision.

  Dumb roar of the white trance,

  Ecstatic shadow out of rage,

  Power out of passage.

  Dance, dance, spirit, spirit, dance!

  Is it my fancy that the world is still,

  So gentle in her dream?

  Outside, great Harlems of the will

  Move under black sleep:

  Yet in spiritual scream,

  The saxophones the same

  As me in madness call thee from the deep.

  I shudder with intelligence and I

  Wake in the deep light

  And hear a vast machinery

  Descending without sound,

  Intolerable to me, too bright,

  And shaken in the sight

  The eye goes blind before the world goes round.

  East Harlem, July 1948

  Do We Understand Each Other?

  My love has come to ride me home

  To our room and bed.

  I had walked the wide sea path,

  For my love would roam

  In absence long and glad

  All through our land of wrath.

  We wandered wondrously

  I, still mild, true and sad,