American poet Allen Ginsberg is an exemplar of the so-called "Beat Generation," a generation that came of age in the 1950s, representing a literary and social movement centered in artistic communities—such as Ginsberg's Greenwich Village—that sought to bring poetry back to the streets and to the common people. The beat poets also encouraged people to seek personal freedom and enlightenment rather than pursue any particular kind of social justice. Ginsberg was educated at New York's Columbia University but spent his college years and beyond experimenting with drugs and sexuality. Ginsberg first generated public interest with the publication of Howl and Other Poems (1956) which included graphic descriptions of his homosexual experiences with other men. By the time Kaddish and Other Poems was published, Ginsberg was living in San Francisco (where he moved in the 1950s).

The poem "Kaddish" (the title poem of the collection in which it was published) is also known as "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894-1956)." As the alternate title suggests, it is a literary memorial to the poet's mother. It is rife with allusions to topographical locations (such as "Greenwich Village" and "Patterson"). The extended poem's name is taken from the name for a Jewish hymn. The poem is written in free verse and is episodic in nature, including a series of loosely connected images by means of which the poet remembers select details off is mother's life.

In the poem's five sections, Ginsberg obliquely explains how his mother was Russian and had two siblings, Elanor (who died before her) and Max. The poet begins by describing a walk through the neighborhood in which Ginsberg grew up (the Lower East Side of Manhattan). He remarks on the travels (specifically her journey to America and then back to Europe) made by his mother during her lifetime. He later describes her battle with mental illness. A particularly vivid image is one of the poet attending her to the hospital on a stretcher "vomiting chemicals thru Jersey." In the second part, the poet acknowledges his mother's raw humanity, even likening her to a sexual object, despite her physical wounds and signs of aging. He also discusses her Communist sympathies. In the third verse, the poet summarizes her life succinctly (from her childhood Newark to her later life in a hospital). In the fourth part, the poet invokes his late mother to ask "what have I forgot?" It uses repetition to cite various character traits of his mother (such as her abortion, divorce, and stroke). These lines essentially constitute a eulogy to her imperfect being. In the final stanza, Ginsberg invokes God and introduces the image of crows in a field under which his mother is buried.