This incredible poem; a landmark in the history or America, is one which I return to time and again since discovering it in my early 20s. There is so much to take from it and so many ways to read and understand it. Perhaps surprisingly, the 2010 film with James Franco playing Ginsberg gives a great jumping off point into understanding parts of the poem and it's context. The film is broken into four intermingled streams - the poem being read in a club, the poem with animated interpretation, a re-enactment of the obsenity trial against it's publishers where there is some analysis of it's meaning and an interview with Alan Ginsberg (played by Franco) where he talks about his life and the context of the poem. The interview and court sections are taken from transcripts, but the editing together of the parts gives the makers the ability to interpret the poem by juxtposing scenes with lines from the poem. For me it would be the perfect film to play in every high school English class as an introduction to reading poetry, except the content is probably a bit juicy for high school.
The poem itself goes much deeper than the examination of the film of course, and each time I read it I am brought to a different passage, and find new meaning or new ways to frame the text. Ginsberg brings together his personal life, his jewish background, his eastern philosophical viewpoints with the very state of America in that moment in 1956. It was published with a group of other poems including "America" and "sunflower sutra" which (to my mind) all re-enforce each other and can almost be read as one poem. The collection is a superb read and I am not going to try to crossword clue it out for you, but I love the simultaneous celebration and mourning of the "angel headed hipsters" whilst healing the divide between the profane and sacred. Listen, read watch. It's a cracker.