It's a completely powerful and serious book, as good as anything in prose or poetry written by a 'beat' writer, and one of the most alive books written by any American for years. I don't see how it could be considered immoral.

We feel the machine slipping from our hands As if someone else were steering; If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming train.

Middle Age At forty-five, What next, what next? At every corner, I meet my Father, My age, still alive.

Most poetry is very formal, but when a modern poet is formal he gets more attention for it than old poets did.

Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event.

Pity the planet, all joy gone from this sweet volcanic cone; peace to our children when they fall in small war on the heel of small war--until the end of time to police the earth, a ghost orbiting forever lost in our monotonous sublime

Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat.