The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems, 1948-1952

by Allen Ginsberg

Book by Ginsberg, Allen

Genres: Poetry

56 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Allen Ginsberg was a groundbreaking American poet and activist best known for his central role in the Beat Generation and for writing the landmark poem Howl. Born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish parents, Ginsberg grew up in a household shaped by both intellectualism and psychological struggle. His father, Louis Ginsberg, was a published poet and a schoolteacher, while his mother, Naomi, suffered from severe mental illness, which deeply affected Ginsberg and later influenced his writing—most notably in his poem Kaddish.
As a young man, Ginsberg attended Columbia University, where he befriended other future Beat luminaries such as Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. These relationships formed the core of what became known as the Beat Generation—a loose-knit group of writers and artists who rejected mainstream American values in favor of personal liberation, spontaneity, spiritual exploration, and radical politics.
Ginsberg rose to national prominence in 1956 with the publication of Howl and Other Poems, released by City Lights Books in San Francisco. Howl, an emotionally charged and stylistically experimental poem, offered an unfiltered vision of America’s underbelly. It included candid references to homosexuality, drug use, and mental illness—subjects considered taboo at the time. The poem led to an obscenity trial, which ultimately concluded in Ginsberg’s favor, setting a precedent for freedom of speech in literature.
His work consistently challenged social norms and addressed themes of personal freedom, sexual identity, spirituality, and political dissent. Ginsberg was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was still criminalized in much of the United States, and he became a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights throughout his life. His poetry often intertwined the personal with the political, blending confessional intimacy with a broader critique of American society.
Beyond his literary achievements, Ginsberg was also a dedicated activist. He protested against the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation, and later, U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. He was present at many pivotal cultural and political moments of the 1960s and 1970s, including the 1968 Democratic National Convention and various countercultural gatherings. His spiritual journey led him to Buddhism, which deeply influenced his writing and worldview. He studied under Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa and helped establish the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Ginsberg’s later years were marked by continued literary output and collaborations with musicians such as Bob Dylan and The Clash. His poetry collections, including Reality Sandwiches, Planet News, and The Fall of America, were widely read and respected. He received numerous honors for his work, including the National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
He died of liver cancer in 1997 at the age of 70. Today, Allen Ginsberg is remembered not only as a pioneering poet, but also as a courageous voice for free expression, social justice, and spiritual inquiry. His influence on American literature and culture remains profound and enduring.

Reviews

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains some of Ginsberg’s earlier poems, and I wasn’t particularly impressed. For me, whilst there was the odd spark of genius, it pales into insignificance next to his later work. Still worth reading it, though.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's likely surprising to many that Allen Ginsberg, the poetic-freedom avatar who wrote "Howl", actually began his career by writing about half his poems in, more or less, strict meter and rhyme. If you want to get a full picture of young Ginsberg the poet, you can find it in Part I of his majestic Collected Poems 1947-1997, a book I'm not close to finishing but whose first part taken alone might just earn five stars from me. In their original publication, however, Ginsberg's free versifications from this period were collected in Empty Mirror, while his metered poetry was gathered in this book.

In his introduction to Collected Poems, Ginsberg writes, about Part I, "The Gates of Wrath's imperfect literary rhymes are interspersed with Empty Mirror's raw-sketch practice poems. Disparate simultaneous early styles juxtaposed aid recognition of a grounded mode of writing...." In Collected Poems, this juxtaposition is, I would say, in fact a huge contributor to the effect: my experience of reading The Gates of Wrath alone was simultaneously less grounded and far more opaque than reading the exact same poems in Collected Poems. Without the Empty Mirror poems interspersed among them, the picture of young Ginsberg arrived at from the works in The Gates of Wrath appears confusing and incomplete.

However: the style of the Gates of Wrath poems is simultaneously one that vastly rewards rereading, I would say, far more than the Empty Mirror poems. The fact that it's unclear what Ginsberg means in many cases did lead, in my reading experience, to an urge to clarify — an urge that, unlike perhaps for the poems of some writers, was duly rewarded. Of course, I'm guided here by my knowledge of Ginsberg's later poetry, as well as by having read Deborah Baker's excellent Beat chronicle A Blue Hand: The Beats in India, which describes Ginsberg's early poetry as "death-obsessed". Obsession really does seem like a good characterization of The Gates of Wrath sometimes: it can seem as if, at this point in his life, Ginsberg the writer was far less moved by the reality of objects than by that of what we, less visionary than he, would term abstractions.

I also don't deny the contention of the Goodreads reviewer who claims of this book, "It actually reminds me of being a teenager in writing classes and adding 'groans' or 'grave' or 'blood' when I felt things needed an extra cheap kick." Now: maybe it's relevant that while reading The Gates of Wrath I happened upon some of my own poetry from middle school and found it thrillingly un-hackneyed; but, my position at this point seems to be that there's really something exciting about the early work of someone with oodles of creative ambition and some key lack of control over what they're actually doing. Here, Ginsberg writes with the particular absence of corniness that comes from trying to pack, perhaps, too much into tight structures, combined with his youthful failure to have figured out yet which references are easily transferable to readers, and which personal to him. The results are splendid.

When I died, love, when I died
there was a war in the upper air:
all that happens, happens there;
there was an angel at my side
when I died, love, when I died.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting formal experiments in rhyme and rhythm. Hard to believe that "Howl" would arrive a few years later.

[Vince · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting juvenalia, if you're interested in Ginsberg. If you aren't, it isn't really worth bothering with this - there's better rhymed and metred verse out there, and more worthwhile Ginsberg too.

[David Eves]

I like working through a poet's canon in chronological order (of writing), but found Ginsberg's early rhyming stuff mostly melodramatic and ultimately forgettable.

It actually reminds me of being a teenager in writing classes and adding "groans" or "grave" or "blood" when I felt things needed an extra cheap kick.

[Roger · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Allen Ginsberg. A lot. But whatever he was going for with these poems just doesn't work. These poems are decidedly Not Good. There are a couple bright spots, but they are few & far between.

Short, rhyming (sometimes lyrical, bordering on limericky at times) poems are not his forte.