forward thru
sand throated
streambed
And in his breathing there is what he calls a "mental inspiration of thought contained in the elastic of a breath":
rocks foamed
floating above
the
horizon's
watery
wrinkled
skin
grandmother
oceanskirt
rumbling
pebbles
silver hair ear to ear.
Ginsberg flirts with his craft, though. He refuses to submit to any control, relying on Jack Kerouac's famous spontaneous prose theories. As a result, almost all of his poems are spotted with badly wrought images and incongruous inanities. These add unintended disappointments to the intentional depression of his sad confessionals and his strong social criticisms.
Ginsberg's complete openness about his own life as a homosexual has probably helped his poetry in the sense that he's remained very close to the truth. But it's also given him a sensationalist reputation. It's hard sometimes to suppress the feeling that he's trying to do more with his poetry that "surprise by a fine excess."