Allen Ginsberg's Celestial Homework - Repository of Poems Recommended by Allen Ginsberg

in #poetry8 years ago (edited)

Ginsberg

Celestial Homework is a specialized reading list for "Literary History of the Beat Generation,"
a course taught by Allen Ginsberg at Naropa Institute during the summer of 1977.

I put together this website about a decade ago, and it has since gone offline. I went through and found archived links for everything to put it back online.

To view a brief biography for each poet, click on their image and it will take you to their biography.

As many poems as possible are hyperlinked to an archived version of the poem. A copy of the original syllabus can be viewed at the end.


Anderson

Sherwood Anderson

short story Hands from Winesburg Ohio


Artaud

Antonin Artaud

City Lights Artaud Anthology: To Have Done With the Judgement of
God
, Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society


Blake

William Blake

Songs of Innocence and Experience, Thel


Bremser

Ray Bremser

Poem of Holy Madness Part IV from Don Allen Anthol.


Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

Selections from Big Table, Naked Lunch


Cassady

Neal Cassady

The First Third


Celine

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

opening or any pages from Journey to End of Night or Guignol's Bowl


Cocteau

Jean Cocteau

Opium, see movies Blood of a Poet and Orpheus


Corso

Gregory Corso

Bomb, Power, Army, Police, Death,
Hair, Clown. All can be found in The Happy Birthday of Death.


Crane

Hart Crane

Voyages, The Hurricane, Havana Rose, The Bridge


Creeley

Robert Creeley

Early poems in For Love


DiPrima

Diane Di Prima

*Revolutionary Letters: *April Fool Birthday Poem for Grandpa, 4, 24, 31, 37, 38, 54, 62, 63


Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

I Died for Beauty, I Heard a Fly Buzz, Because I Could Not Stop for Death,
Success is Counted Sweetest


Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Idiot, A Raw Youth, etc.


Elliot

T.S. Eliot

The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock


Fenollosa

Extra credit

Ernest Fenollosa

The Chinese Written Character as a Medium For Poetry


Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

From Pictures of the Gone World: Numbers 2, 10, 13, 17


Genet

Jean Genet

Opening pages of Our Lady of the Flowers


Gide

Andre Gide

The Immoralist, The Counterfeiters


Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Kaddish


Holmes

John Clellon Holmes

pages of Go and Nothing More to Declare on Kerouac
"The Great Rememberer"


Huncke

Herbert Huncke

See material in Beat Book


Kafka

Franz Kafka

Metamorphosis


Kaufman

Bob Kaufman

Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness: Second April, Abomunist Manifesto


Keats

John Keats

Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Melancholy, Ode to Nightingale, Lines
Supposedly Addressed to Fanny Brawne


Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Mexico City Blues


Lamantia

Philip Lamantia

Selection in the Don Allen Anthol., poems from EXSTASIS and Blue Grace especially, see also -- Man in Pain, Terror Conduction, Put Down of Whore of Babylon, Morning Light Song, The Night in Space of White Marble, There is This
Distance Between Me
, Fair Warning, from Selected Poems, City Lights, '67


Marvell

Andrew Marvell

The Garden, To His Coy Mistress, The Bermudas, The Mower to the Glow Worms


McClure

Michael McClure

Poisoned Wheat, Fuck Ode, and Garland in Dark Brown. Browse through September Blackberries


Melville

Herman Melville

Poems:

The House Top, The Maldive Shark, The Portent, The Berg, The Muster, The Martyr, On the Slain Collegians, A Canticle, To Ned, Bridegroom Dick, Monody, America, The Ravaged Villa, the poem at end of Billy Budd; Bartleby the Scrivener, *Billy Budd , Moby Dick


Micheline

Jack Micheline

Wanderer, Ballad of Benny Roads from Collected Poems


Milton

John Milton

L'allegro and Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Sonnet on his Blindness


Ohara

Frank O'Hara

The Day Lady Died, A True Account of Talking to the Sun at
Fire Island


Orlovsky

Peter Orlovsky

Selection in Beatitude Anthology and Don Allen Anthology


Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Ulalume, Annabel Lee, The Raven, The Bells


Pound

Ezra Pound

Sestina Altaforte, In Durance, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, "When the nightingale to his mate" in Personae,

Cantos: Usura 45, CXV, CXVII, CXX


Proust

Marcel Proust

taste a few pages from Swann's Way, Combray


Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth

From Collected Shorter Poems:

Gic to Har, On What Planet, When We with Sappho, Floating, Letter to William Carlos Williams, The Lights in the Sky are Stars


Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud

Drunken Boat, Season in Hell, Illuminations, letters


Sanders

Ed Sanders

Poem from Jail (City Lights), Cemetery Hill in Peace Eye,
Death of Olson Poem, VFW Crawling Contest in 20,000 A.D.


Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

The Tempest, Sonnets, Hamlet, Songs


Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mont Blanc, The Cloud, Skylark, Adonais, Ozymandias, Ode West Wind, last lines Epipsychidion


Smart

Christopher Smart

Jubilate Agno, Song to David


Snyder

Gary Snyder

From Turtle Island: The Bath, Mother Earth: Her Whales, The Hudsonian Curlew, The Wilderness; browse through Back Country


Solomon

Carl Solomon

Report from the Asylum, Page 36 etc. Mishaps Perhaps, also
letter to Gov. Rockefeller, Artaud, etc.


Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

How I Lived and What I Lived For from Walden


Whalen

Philip Whalen

See selections in Don Allen Anthology. Also Regalia in Immediate
Demand
in Severance Pay


Whitman

Walt Whitman

Song of Myself


Wieners

John Wieners

Hotel Wentley Poems, and Poem for Trapped Things in Don Allen Anthol.


Williams

William Carlos Williams

from Collected Poems: To Elsie, Horned Purple, Smell, Danse Russe, A Goodnight, Thursday


Wolfe

Thomas Wolfe

First pages of Look Homeward Angel and You Can't Go Home
Again


Wyatt

Sir Thomas Wyatt

They Flee from me who sometime did me seeke; My Lute awake, perform the last; The long love that in my heart; Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hinde


Yeats

William Butler Yeats

The Crazy Jane series, Sailing to Byzantium, The Second Coming, Among School Children


Syllabus1

Syllabus2

Syllabus3