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A review by jonbrammer
Collected Poems 1947-1997 by Allen Ginsberg
3.0
Howl, Supermarket in California, and Kaddish are the bangers. Kaddish is particularly affecting, as it takes him out of his zeitgeist-chasing beatnik mode and has him wrestle with the meaning behind mom Naomi Ginsberg's madness and death.
The rest is pretty uneven. There is the drug-addled rambling, the attempts to recapture the lightning in the bottle of his early poems, the fixation with Eastern religious traditions, interspersed with graphic depictions of his sex life. By making frequent references to Blake and Whitman, Ginsberg self-consciously includes himself in the lineage of poetic mysticism and large-hearted Democracy.
The rest is pretty uneven. There is the drug-addled rambling, the attempts to recapture the lightning in the bottle of his early poems, the fixation with Eastern religious traditions, interspersed with graphic depictions of his sex life. By making frequent references to Blake and Whitman, Ginsberg self-consciously includes himself in the lineage of poetic mysticism and large-hearted Democracy.