Mind Breaths: Poems, 1972-1977, Vol. 35 Book

The poems of Mind Breaths show two distinctive sides of Ginsberg's poetics: the personal and the transcendental. In Ginsberg's previous collection, these two sides have co-existed harmoniously, articulated in separate poems or together in the same poem. In Mind Breaths, however, there is a disharmony evident in the divide of these two sides; indeed, they don't co-exist as harmoniously as they did in Ginsberg's early work, but rather seem to have retreated to opposing poles where they have developed (for better or worse) to such an extreme that one can't help but wonder how they ever co-existed. In some cases, the personal poems take on a blunt quality. Whereas the transcendental poems have lost their subtly; indeed, they have become more surface, more conspicuous, more forced (perhaps as Ginsberg's public identity became more prominent)...
When the red pond fills fish appear

When the red pond dries fish disappear.

Everything built on the desert crumbles to dust.

Electric cable transmission wires swept down.

The lizard people came out of the rock.

The red Kangaroo people forgot their own song.

Only a man with four sticks can cross the Simpson Desert.

One rain turns red dust green with leaves.

One raindrop begins the universe.

When the raindrop dries, world come to their end.
- Ayers Rock / Uluru Song


a lot of mouths and cocks,
under the world there's a lot of come, and a lot of saliva dripping into brooks,
There's a lot of Shit under the world, flowing beneath cities into rivers,
a lot of urine floating under the world,
a lot of snot in the world's industrial nostrils, sweat under the world's iron arm, blood
gushing out of the world's breast
endless lakes of tears, seas of sick vomit rushing between hemispheres
floating toward Sargasso, old oily rags and brake fluids, human gasoline -
[...]
- Under the world there's a lot of ass, a lot of cunt


lemme kiss your face, lick your neck
touch your lips, tongue tickle tongue end
nose to nose, quiet questions
ever slept with a man before?
hand stroking you back slowly down to the cheeks' moist hair soft asshole
eyes to eyes blur, a tear strained from seeing 0
[...]
- Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass


[...]
- and as I looked at the crowd of kids on the stoop - a boy stepped up, put his arm around my neck
tenderly I thought for a moment, squeezed harder, his umbrella handle against my skull,
and his friends took my arm, a young brown companion tripped his foot 'gainst my ankle -
as I went down shouting Om Ah Hum to gangs of lovers on the stoop watching
[...]
- Mugging


Jaweh with Atom Bomb
Allah cuts throat of Infidels
Jaweh's armies beat down neighbouring tribes
Will Red Sea waters close & drown h'armies of Allah?
[...]
- Jaweh and Allah Battle

This may be interpreted as progress, as a refinement of the poet's voice(s) to its most potent; it may reflect personal or creative growth/development, exploring the possibilities of poetry and expanding into new territory; or it may be symptomatic of the poet's fatigue in the wake of the 1960s (the death of the 1960s idealism), along with the deaths of his friends Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac. Perhaps "mourn" is the wrong word as it relates to Cassady and Kerouac. Ginsberg doesn't reflect on the death of his friends, he reflects on his reflection on the death of his friends - that is, the poems of The Fall of America , his previous collection, in which he pays tribute to his friends. Ginsberg's "reflections on his reflections" provides an insightful and revelatory conclusion to the relationships shared by the Beat icons...
Annotations to Rabindranath Tagore's Sung Poetry

"In later days, remembering this I shall certainly go mad."

Reading Sung poems, I think of my poems to Neal
dead few years now, Jack underground
invisible - their faces rise in my mind.
Did I write truthfully of them? In later times
I saw them little, not much different they're dead.
They live in books and memory, strong as on earth.
[...]
- Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit

The deaths of the 1960s idealism, Cassady, and Kerouac, along with the account of the mugging, combine to create a darker tone in Mind Breaths - another departure from Ginsberg's early work. There is a preoccupation with death that may have been present in Ginsberg's early work, but not as prominent as it is here, in poems like "Sad Dust Glories" (a poem that is, incidentally, dedicated To the Dead) that begin "You were here on earth, in cities - / where now? / Bones in the ground, / thoughts in my mind." But the list isn't complete without the poems that address the deaths of Pablo Neruda, William Carlos Williams (for whom Ginsberg already wrote a tribute in a poem from Planet News ), and the poet's father...
Some breath breathes out Adonais & Canto General
Some breath breathes out Bombs and dog barks
Some breath breathes out silent over green snow mountains
Some breath breathes not at all
- On Neruda's Death


Dawn's orb orange-raw shining over Palisades
bare crowded banches bush up from marshes -
New Jersey with my father riding automobile
highway to Newmark Airport - Empire State's
spire, horned buildingtops, Manhattan
rising as in W. C. Williams' eyes between wire trestles -
trucks six wheeled steady rolling overpass
beside New York - I am here
tiny under sun rising in vast white sky,
staring thru skeleton new buildings,
with pen in hand awake . . .
- We Rise on Sun Beams and Fall in the Night


Walking at night on asphalt campus
road by the German Instructor with Glasses
W. C. Williams is dead he said in accent
under the tree in Benares; I stopped and asked
Williams is dead? Enthusiastic and wide-eyed
under the Big Dipper. Stood on the Porch
of the International House Annex bungalow
insects buzzing round the electric light
reading the Medical obituary in >Time.
"out among the sparrows behind the shutters"
Williams is in the Big Dipper. He isn't dead
as the many pages of words arranged thrill
with his intonations the mouths of meek kids
becoming subtle even in Bengal.
[...]
- Death News (from Planet News)


What's to be done about Death?
Nothing, nothing
Stop going to school No. 6 Patterson, N.J., in 1937?
Freeze time tonight, with a headache, at quarter to 2 A.M.?
Not go to my Father's funeral tomorrow morn?
Not go back to Naropa teach Buddhist poetics all summer?
Not be buried in the cemetery near Newark Airport some day?
- Don't Grow Old, VII