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Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg are often referred to as two of the greatest and most influential American poets. There are many stylistic similarities in both of their lives and their work. Whitman’s modern beliefs are voiced in Song of Myself (1855) as a naturally flowing free-verse poem. Whitman’s life and work resonated with Allen Ginsberg in the Twentieth Century, and Ginsberg published his contemporary voice in the grittier Howl (1956). Due to Whitman’s inspiration of Ginsberg, it is plain to see the similarities between the form and scope of these two poems; the similarities also frame a clear juxtaposition of the separate 19th and 20th centuries. Walt Whitman was a contemporary of the 19th century, as such, his work can be seen as …show more content…
Ginsberg published his free-versed poem Howl in 1956 as something of an anthem of the Beat Generation and a lament of modern America. In the first part of Howl, the speaker tells of those great minds “who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish. . . who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballots for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade” (Ginsberg, 16). This narration shows the desire of the subjects to be free of the structured lives set out for them. These people want to experience all things and to do so outside of time and schedule. They wish to create and record their own thoughts in order to experience something profound and unique rather than idly watch their lives continue on without them. However, they themselves are a minority and are kept from doing as they please as long as they please due to the constrictions of the majority. Part II of Howl describes the forces that be, the all-powerful Moloch that crushes all into the majority. “What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! . . . Moloch the heavy judger of men” (Ginsberg, 21)! Moloch is the force of discerning authority. The be-all end-all of a society that destroys the freedom and individuality that men inherit from within. Moloch is shown as a sphinx, a monumental structure of cement and aluminum, urbanization and industry, the force of capital markets, greed and warfare. The same forces that forged 20th century America at the cost of social disillusionment through growth, development and a war-time
Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself." The Norton Anthology of American Literature.. Gen. ed. Nina Baym. 8th ed. Vol. C. New York: Norton, 2012. 24-67. 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.
Why. Excuse me. Why. Does. Excuse. Why me. I mean. Excuse me. Why. Does. It . Always end up this way. Like this. A performance. It's my best excuse. And. I'm on the wagon. Again. Why. Excuses. Sitting in the state of a daydream. No. Falling. A performance. Why what it comes down to. Poetry. And. My two main men. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Both use their individual voice to perform the buddhistic beat they feel is part of their poetry/ their beatific movement. Even though these two poets influenced each other. And. Their voices are significantly different. Each has a personal style one cannot deny. And. Each boy added his separate beat to the music they created as a generation. A beat generation. Jack's buddhistic jazz/ blues chorus poetry is domesticized/ tainted Christianity-wise. And. Allen's sound becomes zentific without Christianity/ hanging on a cross in the backbeat of his prose poetry. While each may have his own personal style/ both poets use the same technique in sound. And. Rhythm to give their audience something to bugaloo to. Excuse me. What's. That. Poetry. Baby. A performance. So. Please brother. Take a chance. And. Dance. (She says that as she shh shh shivers.)
The 1950s saw a period of great material prosperity in the United States. After World War II G.I.s came back to take charge of the family again. Women no longer had to work and could return to the home to nurse their newborn babies. Housing, automobiles, and white picket fences were in high demand. Televisions became commonplace, making possible the rapid distribution of visual information- not to mention the sitcom. McCarthy had started to purge the U.S. of those pesky Communists, ensuring a democratic future for all. While the blacks, of course, could not realize it, virtually everyone else saw the fulfillment of the American Dream.
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.
Widely recognized as an American classic, Howl by Allen Ginsberg of The Beat Generation is a poem that managed to have a powerful influence on the American society in the 50s - the impact
“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...
American poetry, unlike other nations’ poetry, is still in the nascent stage because of the absence of a history in comparison to other nations’ poetry humming with matured voices. Nevertheless, in the past century, American poetry has received the recognition it deserves from the creative poetic compositions of Walt Whitman, who has been called “the father of American poetry.” His dynamic style and uncommon content is well exhibited in his famous poem “Song of Myself,” giving a direction to the American writers of posterity. In addition, his distinct use of the line and breath has had a huge impression on the compositions of a number of poets, especially on the works of the present-day poet Allen Ginsberg, whose debatable poem “Howl” reverberates with the traits of Whitman’s poetry. Nevertheless, while the form and content of “Howl” may have been impressed by “Song of Myself,” Ginsberg’s poem expresses a change from Whitman’s use of the line, his first-person recital, and his vision of America. As Whitman’s seamless lines are open-ended, speaking the voice of a universal speaker presenting a positive outlook of America, Ginsberg’s poem, on the contrary, uses long lines that end inward to present the uneasiness and madness that feature the vision of America that Ginsberg exhibits through the voice of a prophetic speaker.
Ginsberg was a literary revolutionary as can be seen in his poetry. He pushed form and genre, theory and confrontation, confession and controversy right to the threshold and over the doorway of societal standards. In pushing and pushing, Ginsberg creates a new vocabulary for certain words by capitalizing them and giving them the significance of the ‘proper noun.’ By capitalizing the first letter of certain words, Ginsberg gives a solid identity to intangible things and redefines their role in a corrupted society that has destroyed the “best minds” of his generation.
Allen Ginsberg was considered one of the leading poets of his time in the 1950’s during a period known as the “beat” generation. The beat generation was considered the turning point of literature as many writers deterred from the status quo of standard writing narratives leaning towards religious quests and materialism. Ginsberg's works represents the rejection of these narratives in poems such “Howl”, where vulgar language and the incorporation of alcoholism, drugs and violence are quite apparent. While most of Ginsberg’s poems consist of this use of symbolism and imagery, his poem “A Supermarket in California” is written in admiration of fellow poet, Walt Whitman.
(A critique of Walt Whitman’s themes and ideas in Song of Myself 6, 46, 47)
A howl is the sound of a dog or wolf’s cry and Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” is a long cry for creative liberties. The poem refers to various institutions that contributed to the suppression of artistic liberties, including the government, capitalist institutions, and universities. These institutions deemed the mentally ill, alcoholics and drug addicts, homosexuals, and anyone else who did not conform to their social and political values as insane, causing the rest of society to also reject them. Allen Ginsberg, on the other hand, believed that these individuals actually consisted of some of the most creative and “best minds.” Though society’s political and social institutions tried to hinder the artistic expressions
Life in today’s society can cause many to question themselves and their beliefs. This feeling was all too familiar for Allen Ginsberg who experienced the frustration of not being allowed by modernity to live outside the rules and regulations that it prescribed. Ginsberg’s “Howl” is a protest against social, political and sexual conformity. Through this poem he is fighting for the “best minds” who were driven to insanity or suicide by both their inability to live in the modern world and their inability to escape it. His brazen account of the world portrays how extremely dystopian the conditions of our world have become.
Allen Ginsberg (1926 – 1997) was an American poet from the Beat Generation, a literary movement that greatly influenced culture and society in the United States during the 1950s and gave way to the counterculture known as the hippie movement. The Beat Generation fought and wrote against militarism, sexual repression and the consumerist society created by Capitalism; and embraced Eastern religions, the use of drugs and queerness. In this essay, my aim is to analyze Allen Ginsberg’s views on the United States as depicted in his most famous poem, Howl, which was published in 1956 and caused a lot of controversy due to its explicit content and savage critic to Capitalism.
Hence, Moloch plays multiple roles in destroying the society and Ginsberg is trying to notify the people of the wrongs that are happening around them in order for everyone to stand up together against Moloch to make a change. The base motivation for the poem is to encourage the best minds to stand up for themselves and hopefully one day can eliminate the existence or Moloch so that visions and creativity can be regained by the