Indian Journals

By Allen Ginsberg

Book Overview

The leading poet of the Beat generation and late-twentieth-century American letters, a spokesman for the antiwar generation, an icon of the counterculture, Allen Ginsberg led a movement that profoundly altered the American literary and cultural landscapes. Indian Journals collects Ginsberg's writing from a 1962-63 stay in India. It is wonderfully far-reaching, imaginative, at times intensely private, and always in possession of a hallucinatory clarity that affirms Ginsberg's truly great ability, as well as his ebullient spirit.

Indian Journals took half a decade to transcribe and edit; when it was originally published in 1970 it catalyzed a large movement of young Western pilgrims to explore India and Eastern thought. This perfect combination of text and images, Indian Journals is testimony to Ginsberg's passionate interest in Eastern religion and mysticism and contains the initial ideas that compose some of his greatest poems. Published more than thirty years ago, Ginsberg's intimate writings on India will be reissued in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Howl's publication.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802134750
• ISBN13: 9780802134752
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful and paranoiac at the same time

Beautiful and paranoiac in the same time this epic journey of Allen Ginsberg w/ Peter Orlowsky in India shows written bits as diary writing, journals, magnificent poems along the way with wonderful photographs inserted. This books is a collage of ideas, sentiments, emotions captured by Allen's ink along his trip throught Calcutta, beautiful instants, praise for the police state, words that fall on the text, announced with a cold voice. This book begin as a diary and classic Allen Ginsberg poems comes at some moments, lenghty experimental poetry classic from the Beat instant. A really nice book with nice paper and typographs.

A travel diary from India

This collection of diary entries, pieces of poems, personal reflections, and other notations written by Allen Ginsberg (poet + prophet) reveals a lot not only about Ginsberg, but about India itself. The conditions on the streets of Calcutta, Bombay, and other Indian cities are presented in stark clarity; many of the images he invokes are startling (like the burning ghats, or burial mounds), and sometimes even disturbing, but they are always described in a way that is at once personal and human. Ginsberg frequently writes about different Hindu gods and goddesses, reflecting his deep interest in and knowledge of Indian culture. There are a series of photographs that compliment the written words very well; as opposed to the original printing of this book, there are several new photographs included. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Allen Ginsberg, the Beats, Poetry, India, or the human spirit and it's compassionate nature....