Poems inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s “Death on All Fronts”

Poets inspire other poets, poems spawn other poems, & poetry is a form of energy that propagates itself across a network of words. For a long time, the poets in our Poetry Forum have been using selected lines from favorite poems to spark new work in the Workshop Challenge series. And a few years ago we asked our readers to submit poems inspired by Ted Hughes and/or Sylvia Plath for a new About Poetry anthology. (The response was underwhelming, but we’d welcome new poems for consideration.) Now Big Bridge, one of our favorite online litzines, is calling for new poems inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s 1969 meditation on a time of war, “Death on All Fronts.”

from Big Bridge & Halvard Johnson of the NewPoetry list:
“Friends and neighbors--
“For a mini-anthology of poems inspired by/responding to/related to Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Death on All Fronts’ and/or the various wars/insurgencies/etc. going on in the world today, please send 1-6 poems to me at halvard@earthlink.net with the words ‘Big Bridge’ followed by your own name in the subject line. Unidentified submissions may be lost or discarded--advertently or inadvertently. The poems submitted may be either previously published or unpublished and brand-new. We cannot, though, seek or pay for reprint permissions from publishers. This mini-anthology (approximately 30 poems) will appear in the January issue of Big Bridge, and submissions of work will be accepted until the end of November.”

DEATH ON ALL FRONTS

“The Planet is Finished”

A new moon looks down on our sick sweet planet
Orion’s chased the Immovable Bear halfway across the sky
from winter to winter. I wake, earlier in bed, fly corpses
cover gas lit sheets, my head aches, left temple
brain fibre throbbing for Death I created on all Fronts.
Poisoned rats in the Chickenhouse and myriad lice
Sprayed with white arsenics filtering to the brook, City Cockroaches
stomped on Country kitchen floors. No babies for me.
Cut earth boy & girl hordes by half & breathe free
say Revolutionary expert Computers:
Half the blue globe’s germ population’s more than enough
keep the cloudy lung from stinking pneumonia.
I called in the Exterminator Who soaked the Wall floor
with bed-bug death-oil. Who’ll soak my brain with death-oil?
I wake before dawn dreading my wooden possessions,
my gnostic books, my loud mouth, old loves silent, charms
turned to image money, my body sexless fat, Father dying,
Earth Cities poisoned at war, my art hopeless --
Mind fragmented--and still abstract--Pain in
left temple living death --

Sept. 26, 1969
--Allen Ginsberg
(from The Fall of America: poems of these states, 1965-1971,
[San Francisco: City Lights, 1972])

Related articles:
“Ginsberg & Whitman: America’s rebel poets a century apart”
Chorus of Poets Gather for “Howl” Celebration: the 50th anniversary, by Teresa Conboy
The Bard His Own Self, Allen Ginsberg says “That's all Goodnight”
Links to purchase Ginsberg’s books & recordings
Selected links to read more of & by Ginsberg on the Net

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