Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Brief Article

Spread the word. Allen Ginsberg is back! Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992 is vintage Ginsberg. He inscribes on the title page instructions to his readers: "I'm going to try speaking some reckless words,/and I want you to try to listen recklessly." Here he is in all his glory, with his unmistakable stream-of-consciousness ("first thought, best thought") long-line style, his celebration of Walt Whitman and gay sex, recollections of his mother and father, denunciations of the CIA, nuclear weaponry, and the U.S. Police State, brought up to date with newly penned indictments of Reagan, Bush, U.S. Death Squads in Central America, and the U.S. war against Iraq.

In "After the Big Parade," Ginsberg sees through the "confetti'd ecstasy" that millions of Americans felt during the Persian Gulf war, and he asks: "Have they forgotten the Corridors of Death that gave such victory?/Will another hundred thousand desert deaths across the world be cause for the next rejoicing?"

This collection finds him introspective as always, but now meditating more on mortality and immortality, bored with being famous, wracked by self-doubt ("what a mess I am, Allen Ginsberg"), and aware of his advancing age: "Now I'm an old man and/I won't live another/20 years maybe not another/20 weeks."

There is much that is memorable here. The...