Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1926, to a Jewish Russian immigrant family. His father, Louis, was a published poet, a high school teacher and a moderate Jewish Socialist. His mother, Naomi, was a radical Communist who went insane and got institutionalized in early adulthood. While dealing with his mother's problems, he was struggling with his own budding homosexuality.
In the 1940's, Ginsberg entered Columbia University as a pre-law student, but late changed to his true love, literature. During this time, he began close friendships with a group of wild souls: William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom later became key figures of the Beat movement. In 1954, Ginsberg moved to San Francisco. He was the first Beat writer to gain popular notice when he delivered a thundering performance of his highly controversial poem, Howl. Howl, had to overcome censorship trials and became one of the most widely read poems of the century, translated into more than twenty-two languages.
In the early sixties, Ginsberg threw himself into the hippie scene, experimented with drugs, and took place in protests against the Vietnam War. In 1965 he coined a famous phrase of the sixties, "Flower Power." Also his willingness to state his controversial views in public was an important factor in the development of the revolutionary state of mind that America developed during the 1960's. In the1960's and '70's, Ginsberg studied under gurus and Zen masters. He went on to co-found and direct the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Colorado. During the 70's and 80's, Ginsberg recorded and occasionally toured with Bob Dylan and the Clash.
In his later years he became a Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College, and carried and active social schedule until his death. He died in his East Village apartment on April 5, 1997 surrounded by friends and loved ones. Now I am going to tell you a little bit about the Beat Movement, Allen Ginsberg's role in it, and some criticism. The "Beats" were members of a literary protest that was and artistic movement in the mid 1950's.
During this period, a small clique of writers declared themselves, "disaffected nonconformists and were elevated by the media to the status of antiheroes," (Layman 34). They wanted to close the gap between life and art. To try to achieve their aspirations, they began by searching for "raw experiences.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana to Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. and Edith Lieber Vonnegut. He had an older brother named Bernard and an older sister named Alice. Kurt, Sr. was a well-known architect in the city and Edith was the daughter of a wealthy local family. The Vonneguts had been in Indianapolis for several generations, and were well-off, respected members of the community. Unlike the characters in most of his books, Vonnegut's early childhood was extremely privileged. It wasn't until the stock market crash of 1929 that he experienced the type of life that he would go on to write about in the future: the middle Middle Class.
Words can have a profound, meaningful impact that may alter, shift, and even end lives. In “Create Dangerously”, Edwidge Danticat reveals how words crafted her reality and identity as a woman who lived through a dictatorship. “Create Dangerously” is a nonfiction essay and memoir that focuses on the impact of literature not only in dire times, but in everyday life. Through the use of detail, allusions, and vivid recounting of the past in her writing, Danticat reveals importance and valor of creating art in times where art is a death sentence, and how this belief shaped her identity.
Allen Ginsberg was a Jewish American poet, who was born in June 3 1929, he’s poetry vigorously opposed such topics as militarism, economic materialism and sexual- repression. Ginsberg is best known for his epic poem "Howl", in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States.
After graduation in 1920, he went to Mexico to teach English for a year. While on the train to Mexico, he wrote the poem “the Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which was published in the June 1921 issue of The Crisis, a leading black publication. After his academic year at Columbia, he lived for a year in Harlem, embarked on a six-month voyage as a cabin boy on a merchant freighter bound for West Africa. After its return, he took a job on a ship sailing to Holland.
Jack Kerouac, was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, as the youngest of three children. Jack decided to be a writer after his brother Gerard died at the age of nine. From the life and death experience of his brother's death, and the Catholic faith of his childhood, he developed a spiritual tendency in his character that would last throughout his life. The fact that Kerouac was a spiritual "seeker," may be the most vital aspect of his life. In post WWII, Eisenhower America, Jack Kerouac came from a poor rustic industrial community to change the face of American Culture forever. He chronicled the wild rebellious culture of "the Beats" in the late 50's and early 60's, paving the way for a more accepting American Society and the tolerance of alternative lifestyles enjoyed today.
Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet Transylvania on September 30, 1928. Prior to being taken under the Nazi 's rule, he decided to pursue Religious studies,as his father did. He grew up with his parents and three sisters. in the year 1944, when Elie was 15 years old,
Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, where he was reared. His father was an architect, as his grandfather had been. Though the family's fortune was eroded during the Depression-his father went without an architectural commission from 1929 to 1940-they were well-to-do. Kurt attended Shortridge High School, where he was the editor of the nations oldest daily high school paper, the Echo. (((high school quote)))
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on November 11, 1922. After attending Cornell University from 1941-43 Vonnegut served in World War II and was captured during the Battle of the Bulge. As a prisoner of war, he survived the fire bombing of Dresden by Allied forces on 13 February, 1945 in an underground meat-storage cellar. When he emerged the next morning, Vonnegut was put to work pulling corpses from the ruins of the desolated city once known as "the Venice of the North." In one night the horrific fire-bombing of Dresden killed more people than the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, more than 135,000 in all. Vonnegut's first-hand experiences of this, one of the darkest episodes in human history, would later provide the basis for his most influential work, Slaughterhouse Five (1969), though it would take him more than twenty years to come to terms with his wartime experiences and complete the novel.
Regarding significant musical movements in history, more specifically the twenty first century, few were more important than the folk revolution that took shape in the mid-nineteen hundreds. One of the leaders of this revolution was Robert Allen Zimmerman, known by his popular assumed name, Bob Dylan. Born in 1941 in Minnesota, Dylan grew up the grandchild of Jewish-Russian immigrants and had a surprisingly unexceptional childhood. His interest in music became evident in his high school years when he taught himself basic piano and guitar. From these rudimentary skills Dylan would build his knowledge and experience in music to his present status as a forefather of folk music in the rock era.
Leonard Bernstein was born on August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. Leonard's father, Samuel immigrated to America in 1908 at the age of sixteen from the Russian province of Volhynia where he came from a long line of rabbis. (Gradenwitz 1987: 20)
While the Beats experimented with drugs, they were more mild in their departure from the mainstream culture than the counterculture of the hippies and acid-heads . Tom Wolfe observed that, ““Kerouac was the old star. Kesey was the wild new comet form the West heading Christ knows where”” (Lytle, 4). Even though Kerouac was a major part of the Beat movement and experimented with drugs, he was not cut out for the world of LSD. When considering On the Road, Sal Paradise, does in the end return home to his mother just as Kerouac did when Neal Cassady tried to get him to join Kesey. In Howl, Allen Ginsberg laments over the deprivation of his generation. He addresses one of the roots of the problem, “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!” (Part II, l.5). He blames the mechanization of the mind, prefer a more steeped in nature approach, drugs as bringing us closer to our own nature The ideas of the Beats echo in the ideas of the counter: a rejection of materialism, an embrace of experimentation with drugs, sexuality, and forms of expression, especially music. The change from the Beats to the Hippies was not so much a ra...
As a child Dylan was comfortable being the center of attention, often writing creative poetry for his mother and on occasion singing. Dylan had no formal music lessons, but none the less he began to compose. Later at age 14, he took up the guitar and shortly after formed a band, one of many he played the guitar in. Always plunging ahead, performing to his up most potentional, Dylan absorbed his surroundings as a source of inspiration. Even during his early efforts Dylan responded very positivly to mainstream musicians, such as country star Hank Williams. Yet, he responded especially well to early rock stars such as Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. In the summer of 1959, after graduation Dylan began to work at a cafe, where he began to pay increasing attention to folksingers such as Judy Collins and Jesse Fuller. Finding an instant connection with their songs, songs relevant to social issues. Dylan was drawn into both the musical style and the social message of these indivisuals.
During the 1950’s, a group of young American writers began to openly oppose societal norms in favor of other radical beliefs. These writers believed in ideas such as spiritual and sexual liberation, decriminalization of drugs, and opposition to industrialism as well as consumerism (Parkins). Over time, these writers became known as the Beat Generation and created the Beat Movement. Among the members of this rebellious group was the infamous Allen Ginsberg, who is considerably one of the most influential poets of his time. By utilizing tools like imagery, allusions, and symbols, Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” discusses themes such as consumerism, sexuality, and alienation, which reflect Ginsberg’s personal beliefs and desire for change.
...p from the world they live in, a world of separation and indicate themselves with their own realities. Art is handed over into society’s hands, as in one movement it is suggested - to fixate what is real, live like you create and create like you live; in other – abandon media’s proposed ideas and take the leadership of life in our own hands.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January nineteenth, 1809. His actor parents, Betty and David Poe orphaned Edgar at the age of three. John and Francis Allan of Richmond, Virginia took Edgar in.