Somehow I hadn’t properly encountered Allen Ginsberg until this year, when a friend read America to me. That poem kind of blew me away, and I realized I’d been missing out! I read White Shroud over the past month, his collection of poems from 1980-1985. I like Ginsberg’s sort of stream of consciousness style, the way I feel like I have fallen down his personal rabbit hole with each poem, his surprising and funny and gut-punching turns of phrase. He doesn’t ever let me get comfortable.
Here is Ginsburg reading (performing?) My Kitchen in New York, one of my favorites from the collection – a poem anyone who has attempted to practice Tai Chi will surely appreciate:
And since it suits a lot of what has been on my mind lately, here is Ginsburg reading America (nearly as well as my friend did…!)
what we have here is a failure to communicate 
For Allen Ginsberg, pretty much essential reading is the Ginsberg blog – 1,000 & more postings so far and with daily updates – Consider joining the 750 plus Google Friends of the site – and, yes, what a pleasure to properly discoverGinsberg
By: steven on June 25, 2013
at 8:55 am
oops, forget to mention that Ginsberg site’s URL – it’s http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.com/
By: steven on June 25, 2013
at 8:57 am