Wait Till I'm Dead - by Allen Ginsberg (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Allen Ginsberg's poems, from "Howl" to "Kaddish" to "The Fall of America," have influenced generations of writers and made him a defining figure of the twentieth century. Ginsberg's Collected Poems, first published in 1984, and expanded in 1997, was originally thought to contain all of his poetic work. But now, for the first time, Ginsberg's stray poems have been gathered and the result, Wait Till I'm Dead is a landmark publication spanning five decades of Ginsberg's writing life.

The first new Ginsberg collection in over fifteen years, Wait Till I'm Dead is edited by renowned scholar Bill Morgan, with a foreword written by award-winning poet Rachel Zucker. Many of the poems collected in this volume were scribbled in letters or sent off to obscure publications and unjustly forgotten. Tracing the chronology of his life, Wait Till I'm Dead follows Ginsberg from his high school days and earliest political satire to his activism, spiritual maturation, and on-the-road experiences worldwide. The collection concludes with his personal thoughts on mortality as he watched his friends, and himself, grow old.

Throughout the collection Ginsberg pays homage to his contemporaries and poetic icons, including Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound. The selection also features several of Ginsberg's collaborative poems, works coauthored by Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Gary Snyder, and Kenneth Koch, providing an inside view of famed Beat poets and their relationships. Containing 104 previously uncollected poems and accompanied by original photographs and extensive notes, Wait Till I'm Dead is the final major contribution to Ginsberg's sprawling oeuvre, a must-read for Ginsberg neophytes and longtime fans alike.

Review Quotes

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

About the Author

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.