Kaddish

I was listening to a recording of Allen Ginsberg recite his poem "Kaddish" in Greenwich Village in the seventies.  A kaddish is a Jewish prayer of mourning, and Ginsberg wrote the book length poem for his late mother.  The poem is a list of things of this world his mother no longer has to deal with: the pain, the suffering, the health problems, the injustice, the transient nature of joy and beauty, the family problems, politics, religion, the problems big and small.  This year I am thankful I'm still around to deal with this life.  Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for the good things.  But I'm thankful for the crap too as it is a constant reminder that I am blessed with the ability to choose how to respond to these challenges.

I love Ginsberg's poetry.  The poems have a serene, wise tone to them that remind me of Walt Whitman.  But Whitman had a larger vision; he visualized the earth and its people and how people could love it, and love themselves.  Ginsberg's vision was a little narrower but still potent.  "Howl" has a national vision; it laments the passing of an idealized America, an America that never was or an America that could have been - before Vietnam, Watergate, and the assassinations of Martin Luther, JFK, Malcom X, and Bobby Kennedy.  The poem "America" also explores the author's disappointment and pain as he envisions both what is wrong with America and what could have been right. 

Poems lamenting the destruction of a nation or the possibility of a nation is called a jeremiad, because the Book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament describes Jeremiah's lament over the destruction of Israel, a destruction they brought on themselves, for not listening to God.