In “Elegy for Neal Cassady,” Allen Ginsberg demonstrates his slight reluctance to accept the death of his longtime friend and fellow Beat poet. Three years later, Ginsberg writes “On Neal Cassady’s Ashes” to intimately describe Cassady’s physicality and the finality of his ashes. From the elegy to the short poem, Ginsberg explores the gradual journey toward accepting a loved one’s death. He compares the finality of death to the finality of ashes by declaring the final state of Cassady’s body as “all ashes” (“Ashes,” ll. 1,3, 7). By commemorating Neal Cassady in both poems, Ginsberg solemnly affirms the permanence of the spirit without the physical presence of the body..
Throughout the elegy, Ginsberg addresses Cassady as the spirit; he actively reinforces that Cassady will remain a spirit and nothing more, though he pines for his physical presence. By opening the poem with “OK Neal/aethereal spirit” (“Elegy,” ll. 1-2), Ginsberg directly addresses Cassady’s spirit, rather than his body. This address shows that Ginsberg acknowledges that Cassady’s physical body is no longer…show more content… With each line, Ginsberg details the intimate features of Cassady’s physicality. In the entire poem, Ginsberg describes Cassady’s body parts, parts that most people would not have described, such as “nipples, ribs touched w/ my thumb” and “earlobes & eyelids, youthful cock-tip, curly pubis” (“Ashes,” ll. 2, 5). The sensuality of these parts disappears in each line when Ginsberg notes that all these parts have irreversibly become ash. What was there in the physical that Ginsberg once enjoyed has been reduced to a state that is no longer as detailed as the “asshole anneal’d to silken skin” (l. 7). The declaration of Cassady’s physicality being reduced to ashes, Ginsberg reinforces the idea that there is a finality in
