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.Widening theand Other Poems.Ginsberg himself had become boundaries of mental experience is a crucial stepsomething of a media figure, given the attention in all the poems of this book toward transform-that he received from the 1957 HOWL obscen- ing the cultural conditions of the poet s historicality trial and from the attention bestowed on the moment.As an exercise in the expansion of theseBeats as a result of the combined success of both boundaries, Kaddish and Other Poems attempts, inHowl and Other Poems and JACK KEROUAC s ON the language of Ginsberg s back-cover afterword,THE ROAD.Thus, Kaddish and Other Poems should to reconstitute the broken consciousness of midbe seen within the social and cultural framework twentieth century suffering. of Ginsberg s increased public visibility as a writer The title poem of the book, for Ginsberg sand a public figure.Ginsberg s international travel mother, Naomi, is as much a private elegy as it isin the period after Howl and Other Poems confirms a public epic.In his afterword, Ginsberg describeshow the shift from private to public life affected KADDISH as a response to seeing my self my ownthe composition of Kaddish and Other Poems.Bi- mother and my very nation trapped desolate ourographer Michael Schumacher notes that during worlds of consciousness homeless and at war ex-Ginsberg s 1957 trip to Tangier, the period when cept for the original trembling of bliss in breast andHowl and Other Poems was seized in San Francisco, belly of every body. To redeem body and mind,the poet started to feel that Howl was too private Kaddish must first acknowledge how the indi-and singular for the public persona necessitated vidual integrity of both are beaten down, for Gins-by his self-representation as a poet prophet.As berg, by contemporary U.S.capitalism.Naomi s lifeSchumacher describes it, Ginsberg was shaken by is outlined in the opening section of the poem, ahis direct experiences with colonialism and state- veritable overture, as Naomi, the young Russiansponsored police brutality during his trip and that immigrant from a Communist family, grows intohe vowed to produce poetry in response to global womanhood in what she perceives as a hostilestruggle.Especially in its title poem, this book re- country.Borrowing one of the dominant symbols ofshapes his career as a writer from a poetry of pri- vision in Sunflower Sutra and Transcription ofvate statement to one of public statement.Yet this Organ Music (both from Howl and Other Poems),movement from private to public in Kaddish and Naomi s life is a flower burning in the Day ; sheOther Poems is enacted through a poetry that pays is a flower which knew itself in the garden, andclose attention to the integrity of each individual s fought the knife lost. This first section, writtenimagination and emphasizes, moreover, what in a long-strophe form resembling Howl, endsGinsberg saw as the necessity of shaping a public with a revision of the Hebrew Kaddish prayer forvoice from nevertheless inward pilgrimages.As the dead.Section II chronicles the pain sufferedoften is the case with Ginsberg, the autobiographi- by Naomi and the extended Ginsberg family as hercal is rarely removed from the prophetic.illness worsened.It closes with appropriated mate-Ginsberg s epigraph to the book can serve as rial from a letter that Naomi sent right before hera symbol for this combined private public voice.death, which Ginsberg, living on the opposite coast,Preceding the table of contents, he writes, Magic did not receive until he already knew that she hadPsalm, The Reply, & The End record visions ex- died.Her final message, then, motherly adviceperienced after drinking Ayahuasca, an Amazon to [g]et married and don t take drugs, resem-spiritual potion.The message is: Widen the area of bles a voice from beyond the grave.Immediatelyconsciousness [emphasis Ginsberg s].The impor- thereafter, a new section, Hymmnn, continuestance of selfhood in these poems, the final three Ginsberg s revision of the Kaddish prayer.Sectionin the book, would seem to suggest that Kaddish III reviews Naomi s life, borrowing at times fromand Other Poems does not extend further than the the language and imagery of Naomi s final letter.boundaries of the poet s mind and body.Yet in the Section IV is a litany of bodily description of the Kaddish and Other Poems 169depredations Naomi suffered at the hands of doc- closes, and sit by my grave beneath a tree. Thetors a section framed by discussion of the cultural Western world may be at war again, but in theconditions in which Naomi lived with Communist face of his desire to set it all right, the poet neverParty and a broken stocking and with your eyes leaves the place of the dead and is buried alongsideof Czechoslovakia attacked by robots (a nod to those whom he wishes to eulogize.the political satire of playwright Karl Capek).Sec- The next two poems, The Lion for Real andtion V continues to merge public and private life, Ignu revisit Ginsberg s 1948 William Blake visionwith Ginsberg reimagining Naomi s otherwise pri- to reconstitute a speaking self for Kaddish and Othervate burial as a public visionary experience
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