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Kaddish and Other Poems (Pocket Poets) (Pocket Poets)

By: Allen Ginsberg
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872860191
ISBN-13: 9780872860193
Released: 30 Nov 1967
RRP: £8.50
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Customer Reviews

Garbage, utter garbage - By: J. Roberts, 25 May 2006
This was written in one non-stop 40 hour marathon session fueled by dexedrine, LSD & coffee. To many, this makes 'Kaddish' an epic testament to Ginsberg's literary talent. To me, it makes it the inane ramblings of a waffling, drug-addled mind.

Copious amounts of drugs do not an 'artist' maketh. But, this is Ginsberg we're talking about here - the most over-hyped & overrated poet in the history of poetry. The champion of drug use, loose morals & NAMBLA-promoted child abuse cannot pull the wool over my eyes. He is a talent-vaccum, a wretched human aberration, & there isn't one word of poetry in this book worthy of note. Or in 'Howl', for that matter.

AVOID!!!!!
On par with Howl - By: Jon Brown 'bombu', 03 Aug 2003
Howl is widely considered (perhaps justifiably) as Ginsberg's defining work. His viscious incitement of his country in the poem America is enormously affecting & the title piece epic & dazzling in it's original use of spontaneous prose. Yet if the Ginsberg reader cares to look only two years ahead he will find a work at least on par with Ginsberg's classic if not exceeding it.

Ginsberg's verse has always been lively, packed with surreal detail at times hard to make sense of. Yet in the poem Kaddish i this becomes entirely appropriate as it regards his mother Naomi who spent her years during his childhood in & out of mental hospital. It is written in the style of rapturous, nightmare epitaph, Kaddish being a jewish hymn traditionallly sung at funerals. The tragedy of her death is made more affecting by the realisation that, deprived of this tradition, the poem becomes his gift to her in death.

The jewel amongst so many wonders in this collection is Laughing Gas, dedicated to Gary Snyder, whom Ginsberg informs - 'the red tin begging cup you gave me/ I lost it but its contents are undisturbed'. Here, before the poem even begins, we are given a charming little haiku (beat haiku did not always follow the 5-7-5 rule), moving in its simplicity. As for the poem itself, it charts his experiences under nitrous oxide with suitably halllucinatory imagery - 'mechanical voices over the radio singing Destination Moon'.

Ginsberg is a remarkable chronicler of the psychadelic experience & this theme comes full cycle on the trilogy of poems 'Magic Psalm', 'The Reply', & 'The End'. Ginsberg, callling on God to experience his real presence, & essentiallly become God, suffers under the influence of yage horrific consequences in imagery vivid with gruesome detail -'my visions fallling over my eyes to cover them from sight of my skeleton'.

By time the reader finishes this collection he will feel exhausted, such is Ginsberg's affect. Yet it comes as credit to the man's talent that said reader will immediatly want to pick it up & start alll over again. 'Taste my mouth in your ear' he implores. You'd be wise to do as he asks.