Wait Till I'm Dead: Uncollected Poems

Rainy night on Union Square, full moon. Want more poems? Wait till I'm dead.--Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1990, 3:30 A.M.

The first new Ginsberg collection in over fifteen years, Wait Till I'm Dead is a landmark publication, edited by renowned Ginsberg scholar Bill Morgan and introduced by award-winning poet and Ginsberg enthusiast Rachel Zucker. Ginsberg wrote incessantly for more than fifty years, often composing poetry on demand, and many of the poems collected in this volume were scribbled in letters or sent off to obscure publications and unjustly forgotten. Wait Till I'm Dead, which spans the whole of Ginsberg's long writing career, from the 1940s to the 1990s, is a testament to Ginsberg's astonishing writing and singular aesthetics.

Following the chronology of his life, Wait Till I'm Dead reproduces the poems together with extensive notes. Containing 104 previously uncollected poems and accompanied by original photographs, Wait Till I'm Dead is the final major contribution to Ginsberg's sprawling oeuvre, a must-read for Ginsberg neophytes and longtime fans alike.

Author: Allen Ginsberg
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 02/14/2017
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.62lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780802126320

About the Author

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was a poet, activist, and one of the Beat Generation's most renowned writers. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and cofounder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute. He won the National Book Award for Poetry and his groundbreaking poem Howl is one of the most widely read and translated poems of the century.

Bill Morgan has written and edited thirty-nine books, including I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg.

Rachel Zucker is the author of nine books, including a memoir, MOTHERs, and a double collection of prose and poetry, The Pedestrians. She has been named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2013. She teaches poetry at New York University.