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20th century american poetry analysis
How is whitman and ginsberg similar
On poetry and history
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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.
Comparing Whitman’s “Song of Myself” with Ginsberg’s “Howl”, both poets’ use of line is similar – long free verse line. It was not a popular trend when Ginsberg wrote “Howl” but he used it purposely, taking the inspiration from Whitman poetry. See the long line in Whitman’s verse, “Speeding through space,…speeding through heaven and stars, […] storming enjoying planning loving cautioning,/ Backing and filling, ...
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...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.
Works Cited
Ginsberg, Allen. Selected Poems 1947-1995. London: Penguin, 1997.
Monforton, Nicole. “Whitman and Ginsberg”. Weblog entry. Blog. 1 December 2010. 2 May 2012 .
Moritz, Michael. Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg: Singing and Howling their American Selves. Diss. University College Dublin, 2002.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. 1885 Ed. Malcolm Cowley. Penguin: New York, 1996.
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.
American Bards: Walt Whitman and Other Unlikely Candidates for National Poet. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2010. Print.
This makes me conclude Whitman as a homosexual and the fact Ginsberg is fascinated with him, that he may be as well. Looking past traditional customs, the supermarket
Very few people will contest that Walt Whitman may be one of the most important and influential writers in American literary history and conceivably the single most influential poet. However many have claimed that Whitman’s writing is so free form as evident in his 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself that it has no style. The poetic structures he employs are unconventional but reflect his very democratic ideals towards America. Although Whitman’s writing does not include a structure that can be easily outlined, masterfully his writing conforms itself to no style, other then its own universal and unrestricted technique. Even though Whitman’s work does not lend itself to the conventional form of poetry in the way his contemporaries such as Longfellow and Whittier do, it holds a deliberate structure, despite its sprawling style of free association.
... City Lights Books San Francisco 1956 Ginsberg, Allen Kaddish and other Poems City Lights Books San Francisco 1961 Hyde, Lewis (Editor) On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor, MI 1984 Merill, Thomas. Allen Ginsberg Twayne Publishers Boston 1988 Stephanchev, Stephen. American Poetry Since 1945 Harper and Row Publishers New York 1965 Turco, Lewis. Visions and Revisions of American Poetry The University of Arkansas Press Fayetteville, AK 1986 Footnotes 1) Eberhart, Richard "West Coast Rhythms" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 2) Rexroth, Kenneth "San Francisco Letter" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 3) Eberhart, Richard "West Coast Rhythms" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 4) Grossman, Allen "Allen Ginsberg:The Jew as an American Poet" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 5) Shapiro, Harvey. "Exalted Comfort" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 6) Alvarez, A. "Ginsberg and the Herd Instinct" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 7) Shaprio, Harvey. "Exalted Comfort" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg"
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere” (Whitman 33) is Walt Whitman’s first and one of his most popular works, Leaves of Grass. It was and still is very inspirational to many people including Ralph Waldo and many others after him. He had a major influence on modern free verse. Following a hard childhood in and around New York, Walter Whitman was well known and received in his time for Leaves of Grass which did not use the universal theme, which he became known for in the eighteenth century as well as his way of seeing the world in a view that very few could comprehend in his time.
“Song of Myself” is an attempt by Walt Whitman to become the “American poet” as described by Ralph Waldo Emerson; he attempts to be “[T]he sayer, the namer, and [representative] of beauty” (Emerson 1182). Whitman wants to speak to and for America. Whitman does not explicitly choose sides on the slavery debate that was raging at the time of his writing, but he does express the equality of all people, regardless of gender and race in “Song of Myself”. While Whitman’s writing can be read as neutral but “Song of Myself” is, in reality, very anti-slavery and pro-equality.
Poets in American history have struggled over time to create or find a distinct American voice among the many different cultural influences and borrowed styles. Each era of poets contributed to the search in a slightly different way, but it was the modernists that really sought to make poetry new. A group to these modernists, called the expatriates, thought that the only way to obtain a new voice would be to escape any ties with old traditions, and to leave the country that held them captive in an inspirationaless environment. Turned off by America, they left for Europe only to rediscover America, and in turn, contribute enormously to the growth and development of the American voice.
Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” criticizes America during the midst of the twentieth century, in which society had acquired an attitude that heavily valued the materialistic aspects of life. In order to efficiently express the speaker’s discontent with society, he paints images by using vivid detail throughout the entire poem to allow the reader to experience what the speaker experiences himself. He begins by describing the setting on the streets of California, “I walked down the sidestreets under the trees./. looking at the full moon” (2-3) and had thoughts of Walt Whitman, a nineteenth century poet whom Ginsberg deeply admired. The setting is essential as it describes the two worlds in which the speaker lives; one represented by the metropolitan landscape of downtown California and another represented by nature, which the speaker longs to be a part of.... ... middle of paper ... ...
While Wordsworth formatted his poetry into beautiful ballads, Whitman wrote in more relatable poems, some of which truly did not follow any form. According to William E. H. Meyer Jr., “Indeed, the very substance of Whitman 's ‘barbaric yawp,’ in contrast to Wordsworth 's ‘plaintive numbers,’ is the revolutionary and unbridgeable gap that exists between a ‘song of myself’ and a ‘prelude’ or ‘lyrical ballad.’”(Meyer 83). While Wordsworth keeps more structure and regulation in his ballads, Whitman does what feels most effective. This allows for Whitman to be slightly more organic in form than Wordsworth. However, this difference can also be seen as an addition to Wordsworth, as Wordsworth advocated for organic form. Whitman’s further use of organic form is still within the influence of Wordsworth, as it ties back to the Romantic ideals he put forth. Overall, while Whitman may have denied inspiration from Wordsworth, the evidence points in a different
There are no obscure intellectual rants about Moloch and what is going on in America which happened in parts I and II. Ginsberg in a way starts to mellow out and began to accept reality as it is. Furthermore, he realizes that he is not alone in coping with the everyday drudgery of life itself. He starts by earnestly telling his friend Carl Solomon that “I’m with you in Rockland…” (line 94). Ginsberg met Solomon in Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute, where Solomon “was treated there for depression with insulin shock” (Charters par. 7). There was a common ground between the two; both men were “great writers on the same dreadful typewriter” (line 99), as well as being among “twenty-five-thousand mad comrades all together [in an insane asylum] singing the final stanzas of the Internationale” (line 109). Ginsberg’s mother was admitted to many psychiatric wards and eventually passed away in one; Solomon becomes a comfort for Ginsberg as he saw “the shade of [his] mother” (line 96). The tight bond shared between the two allowed them to get through hell-on-earth experiences such as going through “fifty more shocks…” (line 106). Ginsberg and Solomon’s friendship gave both men internal peace to ward off the destruction of the outer
In Howl, Ginsberg constantly refers to the great how these great minds were pushed to the side of society and were forgotten and mistreated because they weren’t understood. Ginsberg writes “who were expelled form their academies form crazy & publishing obscene
Malcom Cowley, an American literary critic, once said that, “Before Walt Whitman, America hardly existed”. Walt Whitman was an American poet born in 1819 in New York, living during the time period of slavery, The Civil War, and the death of Abraham Lincoln. Often nicknamed ‘The Bard of Democracy’, Whitman was most remembered for celebrating the freedom Americans had found through their new political system of democracy. Democracy is a form of government in which citizens have the power to elect leaders who represent their beliefs. Through democracy, people are treated equally and have equal rights. Whitman believed that the American form of democracy for government gave American citizens freedoms that they were unable to experience before this type of government was put in place. Throughout many of his poems, Whitman repeats this deep love of American freedom which he expresses through his creative writing. He writes about several categories of freedom, including the freedom to pursue what one desires, the freedom to be an individual, and the freedom of equality. The poems “I Hear America Singing”, “One’s- Self I Sing”, and “America” reveal Whitman’s love of freedom through democracy as his source of inspiration which he conveys as good news for Americans to hear.
One very important topic that major American authors Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson incorporated into their writing was the idea of the “self” or “self-identity”. Both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were prolific major American poets and many of the topics they chose to write about involved aspects of transcendentalism. Though Whitman and Dickinson wrote about some of the same topics, they did not share the same meanings, especially with the description of “self”. Published in 1855 within a poetry collection called Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself” gives a look into how Walt Whitman felt about self-identity. Whitman uses a first person narrator to describe the “self” as the celebration of the individual through personal exploration and gaining personal experience. In Emily Dickinson’s poem, “I heard a Fly buzz when I died” published in 1896 as part of Poems by Emily Dickinson (third series), she alludes that the key to identifying the “self” is sight.