Cosmopolitan Greetin [Paperback]

Alexander Laurence: Cosmopolitan Greetings is your new book of poems which collects your most recent work: 1986-1992. Your poetry seems to have changed stylistically, especially in your delicate attention to language; I think of your earliest poems, such as Howl, possessing a complex use of language, utilizing many adjectives, and being influenced by Surrealism, yet the new writing is much more transparent, direct and simplified.

Allen Ginsberg: More or less, with the occasional touches of a surreal sequence of images. There are a number of poems in here and in White Shroud which are examples of complicated language or complicated dream situations. Within some simple poems are some surreal word chains, particularly "I Went To The Movie of Life," "Grandma Earth's Song," and in the Jacob Rabinowitz poem: "Put me down now for not hearing your teenage heartbeat, / think back were you serious offering to kidnap me / to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore, Miami, God / knows, rescued from boring fame & Academic fortune, / Rimbaud Verlaine lovers starved together in boondocks houseflat / stockyard furnished rooms eating pea soup reading E. A. Poe?" I want to have lucid clear pictures in my poetry rather than jump-cut, cut-up, chaotic flashes. I want my poetry to be like a cinematic movie. The magic comes not from the speed up of the words, but the magic comes from the fact that it's an imaginary dream vision. The prototype of that is Shelley's "Triumph of Life."

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I must also admit that this particular book has confirmed my belief that Ginsberg was a poet that may have received his share of attention, but perhaps his share of literary credit is long overdue.

In "Cosmo Greetings", Ginsberg's second last volume of poetry (the last would be the equally-excellent but posthumous "Death and Fame") sees Ginsberg growing older, looking at the world as one small, global community and with more humour than I have read in his work since the early years of "Howl" and "Kaddish".

Give this one a try, and re-establish your love for this man's work.

Some of my favorites in this collection: "Improvisation in Beijing," a Whitmanesque chant on why Ginsberg is a poet; "Sphincter," both a bawdy ode to the poet's title orifice and a celebration of gay sex; the title poem, "Cosmopolitan Greetings," a rather Blakean series of mystical declarations (example, "Inside skull vast as outside skull"); "Personals Ad," a poem in the form of a personals ad by an older poet seeking a young male lover; "Yiddishe Kopf," a celebration of the speaker's Jewishness; "Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (Dont Smoke)," an anti-smoking piece that attacks big tobacco companies and their politician allies; and "Everyday," a haiku-like poem about a lama.

Throughout the book Ginsberg uses a nember of different poetic forms, some of which I have already mentioned. Other forms include songs (complete with musical notation), a letter, and even a comic strip. The book is often outrageous, often tender, and sometimes quite funny.