Selected Poems 1947-1995 - Hardcover

Ginsberg, Allen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060164573 ISBN 13: 9780060164577

Publisher: Harper, 1996

Synopsis

Celebrating the seventieth birthday of the acclaimed American poet, a collection of never-before-published poems and old favorites spans Ginsberg's full career and includes some of his earliest works, signature pieces, and recent gems.

About this title

Review:

Allen Ginsberg made his mark, along with Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and others, in the Beat movement, a poetry of social protest that refused perceived elitist boundaries. Tortured by the paranoia and mental illness of his immigrant mother, and by his own homosexuality in a society that was homophobic, Ginsberg's early work was as much a measure of his self-loathing as his detestation of social hypocrisy and injustice. His poems reached depths of humiliation and shame that presaged a mental breakdown, followed by recovery with the help of Buddhist philosophy. His best poetry rises above both personal despair and political propagandizing with satiric comedy, and cheerful self-parody, and is most readily appreciated when read aloud. This volume includes sixty pages of songs, some written in collaboration with Bob Dylan, which are not included in his Collected Poems 1947-1980.

About the Author:

Allen Ginsberg was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1926, and died in New York City in 1997.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0060164573
• ISBN 13: 9780060164577
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464