Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was a poet, activist, and one of the Beat Generation's most renowned writers. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and cofounder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute. He won the National Book Award for Poetry and his groundbreaking poem Howl is one of the most widely read and translated poems of the century.
Bill Morgan has written and edited thirty-nine books, including I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg.
Rachel Zucker is the author of nine books, including a memoir, MOTHERs, and a double collection of prose and poetry, The Pedestrians. She has been named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2013. She teaches poetry at New York University.
Praise for Wait Till I'm Dead: "Ginsberg['s] importance is
unquestionable. Among his many roles in 20th century culture--'60s
protest jokester, Zen ambassador, literary lion--he was also, for
many, the gateway poet. These are not unlike other Ginsberg
poems--fierce, funny, libidinous, subversive--but here they afford
a fresh chronological tour of Ginsberg's life, which is also one
version of the story of the second half of the 20th century . . .
The high point is a long poem called 'New York to San Fran, ' the
book's most ambitious and fulfilled piece. Ginsberg . . . treats
everything with an utterly absorbing present-tense vividness, which
this book lets us view through grown-up eyes."--Los Angeles Times
"An intimate new collection from the 'shy but outspoken Jewish
bard, ' as Rachel Zucker dubs him in her artful foreword . . . Wait
Till I'm Dead expands our vision, takes us on a wild road trip with
the poet and his friends through the second half of the 20th
century . . . He reveals his inner life with magnificent range,
from traveling epics to lucid haiku . . . Ginsberg's singular
voice, speaking out from the past."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Delights include the opening set of quatrains slamming student
Allen's congressman, a long ramble on America written during a
cross-country flight in 1965, a final conversation with old friend
Carl Solomon, and enough jokey or philosophical or contemplative or
observational short poems to make those who've sworn off Ginsberg
reconsider."--Booklist "[A] carefully chosen gathering of
Ginsberg's fugitive pieces . . . [His] spontaneous aesthetic at its
liveliest is the heretofore uncollected 'NY to San Fran, ' a
27-page Whitmanic reverie of hallucinogenic scope . . . Together
with the editor's informative notes, this volume not only
complements its larger predecessor but similarly offers an
impressionistic microhistory of the 20th-century American
counterculture, its restless consciousness and broad emotional
register filtered through the unbridled visions of one of its most
outspoken icons. Ginsberg fans and scholars alike will appreciate
the wealth of new material included."--Library Journal "Bill Morgan
has really tracked down over a hundred Ginsberg poems that 'would
have gotten away.' . . . What we come away with is wanting more,
and wishing we knew what Allen would say about these complicated
times."--Empty Mirror Praise for Allen Ginsberg: Winner of the
National Book Award for Poetry "Ginsberg has been one of the most
influential poets in America in our time. . . . A spectacular
career."--New York Times Book Review "Ginsberg is both tragic and
dynamic, a lyrical genius, con man extraordinaire and probably the
single greatest influence on American poetical voice since
Whitman."--Bob Dylan "An iconic American poet . . . An often
outrageous, groundbreaking poet and tireless social
activist."--Kirkus Reviews, on The Essential Ginsberg "Places
Ginsberg firmly among the most prolific poets of the
age."--Washington Post Book World, on Collected Poems:
1947-1997
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