4: Song, Ray Charles's “Drown in My Own Tears,” 1956, and poetry excerpt, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s "Adonais," 1821.

4: Song, Ray Charles's “Drown in My Own Tears,” 1956, and poetry excerpt, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s "Adonais," 1821.

Early in Kaddish, Ginsberg names two important intertexts: the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais” (1821), a long elegy for John Keats, a fellow poet, and a recording of Ray Charles singing a blues song. Elegy and the blues are two important genres responding to grief, each with a distinct history. In the 1950s, elegy would have been seen as “high culture,” deriving from the English literary canon and, before this, classical literature. Blues, on the other hand, might have been seen as “low” or popular culture, emerging from African American musical traditions.
 
(Note: while it’s not certain that “Drown in My Own Tears” is the song referenced in Kaddish, it was released as a single in early 1956, the year Naomi Ginsberg died, and topped the charts. If nothing else, it’s representative of Ray Charles’s style of this period.)
 
Suggested Activity: Have students read the first and final stanzas of “Adonais” aloud and listen to the recording of Ray Charles. Based on these examples, ask students to describe and distinguish the ways that elegy and blues respond to loss and grief (e.g., in terms of tone, rhythm, and attitude). If you have already discussed (or wish to introduce) the Mourner’s Kaddish, ask students to compare this traditional Jewish approach to mourning alongside blues and elegy. Finally, ask them to consider which approach(es) Ginsberg uses in his poem, looking at the first several lines of Kaddish or at other excerpts of the poem.
 
For an additional activity, play the recording of Ray Charles and the recordings of Ginsberg reading the poem (see resource 2) sequentially. Ask students to compare the rhythm and style of these recordings.

Sources: Ray Charles, “Drown in My Own Tears,” Atlantic Records, 1956. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ekn9dAYfz0.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Adonais,” Poems selected from Percy Bysshe Shelley, preface by Richard Garnett (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co, 1880).