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.
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,