Kaddish (poem)

Kaddish is a poem by Beat writer Allen Ginsberg about the death of his mother Naomi in 1956. After her death, a rabbi would not allow the traditional Kaddish to be read with Ginsberg's Christian and Atheist friends, so he rebelled and wrote a kaddish of his own. It was begun in the Beat Hotel in Paris in December 1957, completed in New York in 1959, and published by City Lights Books in 1961 as the lead in the collection Kaddish and Other Poems 1958-1960. It is often considered one of Ginsberg's finest poems, and some scholars hold that it is his best. Ginsberg wrote the poem in a single 40-hour session while on a cocktail familiar to him of dexedrine (a psychostimulant amphetamine), LSD, and coffee.

The title Kaddish refers to the mourning prayer or blessing in Judaism. This long poem was Ginsberg's attempt to mourn his mother, Naomi, but also reflects his sense of loss at his estrangement from his born religion. The traditional Kaddish contains no references to death, whereas the poem in riddled with thoughts and questionings of death.