National Poetry Month: Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg has managed to make himself one of America's most distinguished iconoclasts, leading the counter culture when he was young and then becoming mainstream enough to show up to the AWP conference in coat and tie in the years before his death. Ginsberg has had several collections of poetry go on to be literary classics -- in addition to Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems, Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, and Fall of America are all classics. Kaddish, named after a Jewish death prayer, deals with the passing of his mother Naomi. Fall of America, recipient of the National Book Award, is a series of poems chronicling the counter-culture, and especially its opposition to Vietnam. Planet News inspired the title of Bob Dylan's album Planet Waves; two years later Ginsberg joined Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Review and wrote the liner notes for Desire.

My favorite Ginberg poem may be "Supermarket in California," a poem in which Ginsberg imagines stalking Walt Whitman's ghost as he shops in a modern-day grocery store, interacting with contemporary commerce. In it, as in much of his work, Ginsberg adopts Whitman's unique style of writing and the long line which is his trademark.

Ginsberg also did much to bridge the gap between music and poetry. He recorded the album First Blues with Bob Dylan. Near his death, he recorded "Ballad of the Skeletons" with Paul McCartney. A fantastic version of him reading "America" exists set against the background of Tom Waits' "Closing Time." It is breathtaking and powerful.