What was the title of Allen Ginsberg’s 1961 collection that includes “Kaddish”?

Allen Ginsberg’s 1961 collection that includes “Kaddish” is titled Kaddish and Other Poems.

The volume was published by City Lights Books in San Francisco. Its central poem, “Kaddish,” is a long elegy for Ginsberg’s mother, Naomi Ginsberg, and examines family memory, mental illness, hospitalization, and grief. The title refers to the Jewish mourning prayer, although Ginsberg’s poem is an intensely personal and formally expansive adaptation rather than a conventional liturgical text.

The collection followed the success of Howl and Other Poems and helped establish Ginsberg as a major American poet. Its title is sometimes shortened in conversation to “Kaddish,” which can create confusion between the individual poem and the complete book.

City Lights was central to the Beat publishing network. Ferlinghetti’s press had already issued Howl, and its publication of Kaddish continued the relationship between Ginsberg and the San Francisco bookstore and publisher.