Kaddish By Allen Ginsberg Research Paper

Even though his mom struggled with psychological troubles, Ginsberg was one of the most respected Beat writers and American poets of his generation. He was an honorable poet, who published many books and written many successful poems. Allen Ginsberg had a hard childhood, but because of this he became a very successful poet. Ginsberg’s poem “Kaddish” is based off the struggles he faced in his childhood having a mother who was diagnosed with a psychological illness. Allen Ginsberg grew up with his older brother Eugene in a household shadowed by his mother's mental illness; she suffered from recurrent epileptic seizures and paranoia. In the winter of 1941, when Allen was a junior in high school, his mother insisted that he take her to a therapist in
Naomi Ginsberg spent most of the next fifteen years in mental hospitals, enduring the effects of electroshock treatments and a lobotomy before her death at Pilgrim State Hospital in 1956. Witnessing his mother’s death had a traumatic effect on Ginsberg, who wrote poetry about her unstable conditions for the rest of his life. Allen’s poem “Kaddish” was written in memory of his mother. He first started writing “Kaddish” in 1957 in a Paris hotel and completed it in New York in 1959. It is often considered one of Ginsberg's finest poems, with some scholars holding that it is his best poem.
Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Kaddish” is primarily a mournful response to the death of his mother, Naomi. It draws on a Jewish traditional background as it addresses personal themes of family and inheritance, illness and identity. The poem takes its title from an Aramaic word meaning “holy.” It also refers to a Jewish prayer used in mourning. The choice of Kaddish as a background is appropriate for several reasons. In Judaism, mourners are encouraged to give full expression to their grief; Kaddish is one mode of this