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This book contains almost all of Ginsberg's poetry. If you are one of those people that must have all of his poems, a great purchase would be The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice. It is his journals and early poems from 1937-1952. You will have every poem that he wrote and his journal. Also, you can buy his book of letters too.
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Allen Ginsberg's work is powerful. I highly recommend this book! Although not always as cheerful as you may wish him to be, Ginsberg brings the reality of life to these poems.
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Ginsberg's poems are the bardic cries of the American counter-culture. His recitation of "Howl" in a San Francisco bookstore in 1955 changed America and the world forever. How one poem can have such an effect is astounding and I can think of no other poetic work that has had such an impact. Regardless of one's political or religious leanings, if one is to seriously study and read American poetry, then one must come to terms with the works of Allen Ginsberg. This volume contains it all.
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Ginsberg has always been an enigma to me. He certainly has sparks of genius; the justly famous "Howl" and the in some ways even better "Footnote to Howl" are excellent poems, and he has quite a few other poems of near-equal calibre (I find they tend to centre around "Howl").
Nonetheless, he falls short of being a first-rate poet. He is well worth reading, because he is an important figure and a better poet than most, but he falls short of the greatness of other 20th century American poets like Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, Eliot, etc., and well short of the greatness of a Yeats. [I will admit I am a bit old-fashioned in my poetic tastes, and this may shine through here, so perhaps some may appreciate the avante garde, rather risque poetry of Ginsberg a bit more than I!]
That said, there is a lot of schlock here too, a lot of poems that are just downright bad. Overall, unfortunately, the bad-to-mediocre poems outweigh the good-to-great ones, which is why I weight this volume lower. Perhaps a "Selected Poems" would be a better choice, one well-edited to sift out the good from the bad; I know volumes like this exist, but I haven't looked through any of them enough to recommend a particular edition.
Some have tried to name Ginsberg the inheritor of Blake's legacy, but this hardly seems appropriate. Ginsberg was a fan of Blake, and, if I'm not mistaken, claimed to have seen Blake in visions, but he just lacks the visionary and linguistic power of a Blake. Others claim him the just inheritor of Whitman; in this, he is lacking too.
Such comparisons are faulty, and should not be made. Ginsberg is a strong poet, but he doesn't hold up to the Whitmans and Blakes of the world, and it is truly unfair to try to compare the two in such a way.
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Americans who can't name five poets will name Allen Ginsberg. In this case, that is good since he was one of America's Greatest Poets. This book attest to this.
I write this review to show disappointment in the publisher who continues to publish the collected works on the cheapest paper next to newsprint.
For the next edition, I would like to see, at least in limited edition, a volume printed on quality paper which could last more than a few years before turning yellow.
Ginsbergs deserves better treatment.
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