Allen Ginsberg is one of the most prominent voices of the Beat Generation. The Beat culture consists of rejection of established standards, experimentation with various drugs, expression of different sexualities and exploration of distinctive religious beliefs. As a leading figure of the Beat Generation; Ginsberg opposes conformity, authorities and sexual repression, but favors travels, various religions and freedom of self-expression. This attitude can be clearly seen in the title, structure and theme of his epic poem Howl. The poem consists of explicit portrayals of the frustration and self-destruction suffered by the artistic minds of his generation. Due to its revolutionary sexual, social, political and religious ideas, the poem remains as the great work of American Literature.
The title of the poem expresses the main theme of the poem. The word Howl mimics the madness of the Beat Generation. It also serves as a powerful revolutionary voice against the conformists and the capitalists. The poem does not keep traditional rhyme or meter. Howl has three parts which can be categorized as thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The first part of the poem serve as the thesis. The thesis explicitly states the sufferings of the best mind of the young generation of 1950s. The antithesis explains the root and the causes of this sufferings. The synthesis gives a solution to the problems describes throughout the poem. The structure and the title of the poem relates to its theme in its cry against conformity.
Allen Ginsberg criticizes the popular American culture during the 1950s by personifying them as Moloch. Moloch often represents as a big furnace where people sacrifice their first sons. Ginsberg blames the system that people live in as t...
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...owards them. He is with them all along. The lines of his poem, Howl mirrors Allen Ginsberg’s favor for experimenting life with travels and various religious beliefs.
Howl by Allen Ginsberg is a revolutionary poem against conformity, authorities and sexual repression. The poet attitude towards his society is explicitly expressed in this epic poem. Moreover, Allen Ginsberg explains the reason behind the travels and drug abuses of the Beat Generation in this poem. In addition, the Beat Generation thirst for freedom sexuality can also be seen throughout the poem. Howl introduces the readers to its fresh ideas about human sexuality, social norms and freedom of religion.
Works Cited
Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter and Richard Yarborough. 6th ed. Vol. E. Boston: Wadsworth Cencage Learning, 2010. 2582-2590. Print.
The "Poet of the New Violence" On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg. Ed. Lewis Hyde. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. 29-31.
Throughout the words and the lives of the Beat Generation, one theme is apparent: America, everywhere from Allen Ginsberg’s “America,” to Jack Kerouac’s love for Thomas Wolfe. Although the views of America differ, they all find some reason to focus in on this land. Ginsberg, in his poem “America,” makes a point that not many of us can see as obvious: “It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again.” Each and every one of us make up America, and when we complain about something that is wrong, we are complaining about ourselves. Being raised by his mother as a Communist, and being homosexual, Ginsberg found many things wrong with America, and he does his fare share of complaining, but at the end he decides, “America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.” Ginsberg didn’t want to sit and watch everything go wrong. He was going to do something, despite the fact that he was not the ideal American.
Arensberg, Mary. The American Sublime. Ed. Mary Arensberg, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1986.
Franklin, Gura, Klinkowitz, Krupat, Levine, Loeffelholz, Reesman, Wallace. The Norton Anthology of American Literature Seventh Edition Volume A. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. , 2007.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
Michael Gray’s analysis of Dylan’s lyrics being a contrast between hackneyed expressions and “beautifully done” are exemplified in the song “Just Like a Woman.” Dylan’s lyrics “she aches just like a woman but she breaks just like a little girl” is given the harsh description of “maudlin platitude” and deemed to be a “non-statement.” If Dylan’s lyrics cannot uphold against meaningful music of the same category, how can they be expected to stand against literature written for a different field. John Lennon had his own critiques of Dylan’s works, calling out how the abstract nature of his lyrics, having loose definition, never achieved an actual point. Lennon’s definition of “poetry” referred to “stick[ing] a few images together” and “thread[ing] them” in order to create something meaningful. It once again boils down to the fact that Dylan’s music that was written and intended to be received as a live performance. The acknowledgement that “…you have to hear Dylan doing it” is a recognition of his composition’s failure to come across as a normal literary work. It’s all part of a “good game.” This in itself should disqualify Dylan as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize.
A few cases in which this poem is particularly relevant in today’s society, apart from just the general hipster culture, is the fact that in many ways we’re faced with similar issues of social oppression of certain sects of the population, homophobia, discord amongst different cultures and excessive consumerism – all these being matters than Ginsberg felt strongly about and sought to fight against.
Adolescents and young adults have been disregarding the rules of the older generation and sparking up arguments since time could tell. One of the forerunners for this teen-angst filled defiance was none other than the king of outcasts, Kurt Cobain, lead singer and songwriter for Nirvana. Cobain was a trailblazer ready to defy the Baby Boomers and all that the tired generation saw to be important; Cobain pushed against many traditional structures but few more relevant than sexism and the mainstream music industry. Cobain rallied his army of misfits, labeled Generation X, to also stand against the sexists and the money-grubbing music bosses. Although Cobain didn’t do so by leading rallies or picket-marches, he found his rebellious essence through writing strange, contentious, and confusing music. With this in mind, it’s easy to say that Kurt Cobain was a model for Generation X; however, he is most notable as a rebel writer that expressed his resistance to sexism and to the music industry through his unconventional writing, mixed-music styles, and controversial songs.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.” The opening lines of Howl, by Allan Ginsberg, melodiously encapsulates the beat generation. The beats alluded to by the verbatim ,“The best minds”, are a group of idiosyncratic poets whom through the instrument of prose(driven by spontaneity and a primal lifestyle) , orchestrated a rebellion against the conservative beliefs and literary ideals of the 1950s. Howl, utilizing picturesque imagery, expounds holistically upon the instigator of the movement in culmination with personal experiences of beat members. Accordingly “Howl” evokes feelings of raw emotional intensity that reflects the mindset in which the poem was produced. The piece is structured into three stanzas, sacrificing temporal order for emphasis on emotional progression. The first sequence rambles of rampant drug forages and lewd sexual encounters, eliciting intonations of impetuous madness, one ostensibly hinging upon on a interminable need for satiation of hedonistic desires. Concordantly the following stanza elucidates upon the cause of the aforementioned impulsive madness (i.e corruption of the materialistic society motivated by capitalism), conveying an air of hostility coalesced with quizzical exasperation. Yet, the prose concludes by turning away from the previous negative sentiments. Furthermore, Ginsberg embraces the once condemned madness in a voice of jubilation, rhapsodizing about a clinically insane friend while ascertaining the beats are with him concerning this state of der...
...erg’s lines are inwardly. The self of Whitman is all-encompassing but Ginsberg’s self is passive, lacking diversity by excluding rural settings. In short, Ginsberg’s Howl” is a journey through a different route to reality by leaving the doubts behind and taking the lead role of a public American poet-prophet, which Whitman only dreamt of in his life by composing poetry for an imagined audience.
Ferguson, Margaret W., Salter, Mary J., and Stallworthy, Jon. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. fifth ed. N.p.: W.W. Norton, 2005. 2120-2121. 2 Print.
Firstly, the group of friends and writers most commonly known as the Beats evolved dramatically in focal points such as Greenwich Village and Columbia University, and subsequently spread their political and cultural views to a wider audience. The three Beat figureheads William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac each perceived an agenda within American society to clamp down on those who were in some way different from the accepted ‘norm’, and in response deliberately flirted with the un-American practices of Buddhism, drug use, homosexuality and the avant-garde. Ginsberg courted danger by lending a voice to the homosexual subculture that had been marginalised by repressive social traditions and cultural patterns within the United States.
Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” paints a vivid scene in the minds of readers and uses allusions and symbols in order to express the wrongs of society, such as consumerism and negative views of homosexuality. However, for having such radical beliefs during a time period in which members of society conformed to strict ideas, the speaker, along with many individuals, are alienated and in turn, wish for extreme change and even another life. Ginsberg conveys a vital message that carries through to the year 2010 even more. Materialism does not make a person, it is insignificant. What is imperative is the natural world; beauty, individuality, and real human interactions as these are concepts that make an individual.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
Ginsberg says that Moloch is a “sphinx of cement and aluminum”, a “heavy judger of men”, and “whose soul is electricity and banks” (line 79-85). All these can point towards higher powers such as the Government. Such things like government buildings, the law makers, and the banks that control all the money in our cities and states. This means that our government can be the Moloch in our lives just like how they were to Ginsberg. Ginsberg says that it is “Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy” and that it is Moloch in which he “wakes up in”. The word play used confirms that he is suffering by the hands of “Moloch”, the ridged and unchangeable false god that we sacrifice our very lives