"Cut down by an idiot Snowman's icy—even in the Spring—strange ghost thought—some Death—Sharp icicle in his hand—crowned with old roses—a dog for his eyes—cock of a sweatshop—heart of electric irons.

All the accumulations of life, that wear us out—clocks, bodies, consciousness, shoes, breasts—begotten sons—your Communism—'Paranoia' into hospitals."

When Ginsberg's mother died in 1958, his life changed forever. He flew back to New York from San Francisco and, under the guidance of William Carlos Williams, wrote for thirty-six hours. Straight. (We hear he survived on boiled eggs, coffee and methamphetamine.) 

In that time, his "terrible masterpiece" came to life. In it, Ginsberg adopts a non-linear, post-modernist style. He salt-and-peppers that with a confessional concerning his mother's madness and death. 

This poem is a real heart breaker, folks.

We'll be real with you: it's really hard to understand what's going on in this passage. The thoughts being expressed here could, in context, be understood to emerge from Ginsberg himself or from the ghost of his mother. It's like a post-modern Ghostbusters. 

And, besides that: a crown of roses? A dog for eyes? These descriptions are all dashed together, seemingly randomly. There are a bunch of beyond-quirky turns of phrase here, but little to grab onto in terms of direct content.

The second part of the passage above cuts more to the quick of the Beat Movement. Here, Ginsberg's talking about being fed up with all of the aspects of modern life that he believes have driven us crazy. Have driven his mom crazy. And maybe even, in a way, caused her death.

Here, we see the signature confessionalism of Beat poetry in action. It's this combination of deeply personal material with the previous generation's modernist techniques (you know, those wacky phrases and disruptive dashes) that really defined Beat literature.

Now go ace that lit test for us, okay?

The Beats loved inner monologue. They wrote what their characters were thinking. And, as would be true if you took a peek inside our heads here at Shmoop—um, please don't try, have some decency, jeez—some of those thoughts turned out to be really bizarre.

In this piece, Ginsberg is talking to his dead mother. Their "dialogue" manifests as a type of mystical, inner monologue, where Ginsberg is maybe talking to his mother's ghost, but most likely piecing together memories of her and stuff to have a long conversation with himself.

The narrator says he's talking to the "strange ghost thought." But no matter how you slice it, this narrative technique is a far cry from the humdrum, everyday first-person or third-person perspective. This technique definitely messes with your head—how do you know what's real in this poem, and what's not?

Which is exactly what the modernists, and the post-modernists, were going for: a little chaos.

But what distinguishes the post-modernists from the modernists is, in part, the intimacy of post-modern tales. "Kaddish" combines inner monologue with Ginsberg's own, hyper-personal stories. We think the poet put down in "Kaddish" whatever he felt he couldn't say to his mother (or anyone else) while she was alive.

The result is a scarily personal poem that sometimes makes you ask yourself, "Should I even be reading this?" And that's post-modernism, folks.