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Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997)
Irwin Allen Ginsber was an American poet and one of the leading figures of
the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism,
materialism and sexual repression. Ginsberg is best known for his epic poem
"Howl", in which he celebrated his fellow "angel-headed hipsters" and harshly
denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and
conformity in the United States. This poem is one of the classic poems of the
Beat Generation. The poem, which was dedicated to writer Carl Solomon,
opens:
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...
In October 1955, Ginsberg and five other unknown poets gave a free reading
at an experimental art gallery in San Francisco. Ginsberg's "Howl" electrified
the audience. According to fellow poet Michael McClure, it was clear "that a
barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled
against the harsh wall of America and its supporting armies and navies and
academies and institutions and ownership systems and power support
bases." In 1957, "Howl" attracted widespread publicity when it became the
subject of an obscenity trial in which a San Francisco prosecutor argued it
contained "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language." The poem
seemed especially outrageous in 1950s America because it depicted both
heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made
homosexual acts a crime in every U.S. state. "Howl" reflected Ginsberg's own
homosexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter
Orlovsky, his lifelong partner. Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that "Howl" was
not obscene, adding, "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one
must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"
In "Howl" and in his other poetry, Ginsberg drew inspiration from the epic,
free verse style of the 19th century American poet Walt Whitman. Both wrote
passionately about the promise (and betrayal) of American democracy, the
central importance of erotic experience, and the spiritual quest for the truth
of everyday existence.J. D. McClatchy, editor of the Yale Review, called
Ginsberg "the best-known American poet of his generation, as much a social
force as a literary phenomenon." McClatchy added that Ginsberg, like
Whitman, "was a bard in the old manner – outsized, darkly prophetic, part
exuberance, part prayer, part rant. His work is finally a history of our era's
psyche, with all its contradictory urges."
Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who studied Eastern religious disciplines
extensively. One of his most influential teachers was the Tibetan Buddhist,
the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa, founder of the Naropa Institute, now
Naropa University at Boulder, Colorado. At Trungpa's urging, Ginsberg and
poet Anne Waldman started a poetry school there in 1974 which they called
the "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics". In spite of his attraction
to Eastern religions, the journalist Jane Kramer argues that Ginsberg, like
Whitman, adhered to an "American brand of mysticism" that was, in her
words, "rooted in humanism and in a romantic and visionary ideal of
harmony among men."He lived modestly, buying his clothing in second-hand
stores and residing in downscale apartments in New York’s East Village.
Ginsberg's political activism was consistent with his religious beliefs. He took
part in decades of non-violent political protest against everything from the
Vietnam War to the War on Drugs. The literary critic Helen Vendler described
Ginsberg as "tirelessly persistent in protesting censorship, imperial politics,
and persecution of the powerless." His achievements as a writer as well as
his notoriety as an activist gained him honors from established institutions.
Ginsberg's book of poems The Fall of America won the National Book Award
for poetry in 1974. Other honors included the National Arts Club gold medal
and his induction into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and
Letters, both in 1979. Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his
book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992.
Life
Ginsberg was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up
in
nearby Paterson.
As a young teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Times
about political issues, such as World War II and workers' rights. While in high
school, Ginsberg began reading Walt Whitman, inspired by his teacher's
passionate reading.
In 1943, Ginsberg graduated from Eastside High School and briefly attended
Montclair State College before entering Columbia University on a scholarship
from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson.In 1945, he joined the
Merchant Marine to earn money to continue his education at Columbia.While
at Columbia, Ginsberg contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal,
the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize and served as
president of the Philolexian Society, the campus literary and debate group.
Relationship with his parents
His father Louis Ginsberg was a poet and a high school teacher. Ginsberg's
mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg, was affected by a rare psychological
illness that was never properly diagnosed. She was also an active member of
the Communist Party and took Ginsberg and his brother Eugene to party
meetings. Ginsberg later said that his mother "made up bedtime stories that
all went something like: 'The good king rode forth from his castle, saw the
suffering workers and healed them.'" Naomi's mental illness often manifested
as paranoid delusions. She would claim, for example, that the president had
implanted listening devices in their home and that Louis' mother was trying
to kill her. Her suspicion of those around her caused Naomi to draw closer to
young Allen, "her little pet," as Bill Morgan says in his biography of Ginsberg,
entitled, I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg.She
also tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists and was soon taken to
Greystone, a mental hospital; she would spend much of Ginsberg's youth in
mental hospitals. His experiences with his mother and her mental illness
were a major inspiration for his two major works, "Howl" and his long
autobiographical poem "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894–1956)".
When he was in junior high school, he accompanied his mother by bus to her
therapist. The trip deeply disturbed Ginsberg — he mentioned it and other
moments from his childhood in "Kaddish". His experiences with his mother's
mental illness and her institutionalization are also frequently referred to in
"Howl". For example, "Pilgrim State, Rockland, and Grey Stone's foetid halls"
is a reference to institutions frequented by his mother and Carl Solomon,
ostensibly the subject of the poem: Pilgrim State Hospital and Rockland
State Hospital in New York and Greystone State Hospital in New Jersey.This
is followed soon by the line "with mother finally ******." Ginsberg later
admitted the deletion was the expletive "fucked." He also says of Solomon in
section three, "I'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my
mother," once again showing the association between Solomon and his
mother.
Naomi died in 1956, and she did not have a kaddish at her funeral because
there were not ten Jewish men present. Ginsberg tried to have one
performed for her, but was unable to since the two companions with him, Jack Kerouac
and Peter Orlovsky, were not Jewish.Ginsberg received a letter from his
mother, responding to a copy of "Howl" he had sent her, after Naomi had
died. It admonished Ginsberg to be good and stay away from drugs; she
says, "The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight at the window -- I
have the key -- Get married Allen don't take drugs -- the key is in the bars,
in the sunlight in the window".In a letter she wrote to Ginsberg's brother
Eugene, she said, "God's informers come to my bed, and God himself I saw
in the sky. The sunshine showed too, a key on the side of the window for me
to get out. The yellow of the sunshine, also showed the key on the side of
the window."These letters and the inability to perform the kaddish ceremony
inspired Ginsberg to write "Kaddish" which makes references to many details
from Naomi's life, Ginsberg's experiences with her, and the letter, including
the lines "the key is in the light" and "the key is in the window".
New York Beats
In Ginsberg's freshman year at Columbia he met fellow undergraduate Lucien
Carr, who introduced him to a number of future Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac , William
S. Burroughs, and John Clellon Holmes. They bonded because they saw in
one another an excitement about the potential of American youth, a potential
that existed outside the strict conformist confines of post–World War II,
McCarthy-era America. Ginsberg and Carr talked excitedly about a "New
Vision" (a phrase adapted from Arthur Rimbaud ) for
literature and America. Carr also introduced Ginsberg to Neal Cassady, for
whom Ginsberg had a long infatuation.Kerouac later described the meeting
between Ginsberg and Cassady in the first chapter of his 1957 novel On the
Road. Kerouac saw them as the dark (Ginsberg) and light (Cassady) side of
their "New Vision." Kerouac's perception had to do partly with Ginsberg's
association with Communism. Though Ginsberg was never a member of the
Communist Party, Kerouac named him "Carlo Marx" in On the Road. This was
a source of strain in their relationship, since Kerouac grew increasingly
distrustful of Communism.
In 1948 in an apartment in Harlem, Ginsberg had an auditory hallucination
while reading the poetry of William Blake (later
referred to as his "Blake vision"). At first, Ginsberg claimed to have heard
the voice of God, but later interpreted the voice as that of Blake himself
reading Ah, Sunflower, The Sick Rose, and Little Girl Lost. Ginsberg believed
that he had witnessed the interconnectedness of the universe. He looked at
lattice-work on the fire escape and realized some hand had crafted that; he
then looked at the sky and intuited that some hand had crafted that also, or
rather, that the sky was the hand that crafted itself. He explained that this
hallucination was not inspired by drug use, but said he sought to recapture
that feeling later with various drugs.
Also, in New York, Ginsberg met Gregory Corso in the
Pony Stable Bar. Corso, recently released from prison, was supported by the
Pony Stable patrons and was writing poetry there the night of their meeting.
Ginsberg claims he was immediately attracted to Corso, who was straight,
but understanding of homosexuality after three years in prison. Ginsberg was
even more struck by reading Corso's poems, realizing Corso was "spiritually
gifted." Ginsberg introduced Corso to the rest of his inner circle. In their first
meeting at the Pony Stable, Corso showed Ginsberg a poem about a woman
who lived across the street from him, and sunbathed naked in the window.
Amazingly, the woman happened to be Ginsberg's girlfriend from one of his
forays into heterosexuality. Ginsberg was living with the woman and took
Corso over to their apartment, where the woman proposed sex while Corso
was very young. He fled in fear. Ginsberg introduced Corso to Kerouac and
Burroughs and they began to travel together. Ginsberg and Corso remained
life-long friends and collaborators.
Shortly after this period in Ginsberg's life, he became romantically involved
with Elise Nada Cowen after meeting her through Alex Greer, a philosophy
professor at Barnard College that she had dated for a while during the
burgeoning Beat generations period of development. As a Barnard student,
Elise Cowen extensively read the poetry of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, when she met
Joyce Johnson and Leo Skir, among other Beat players. As Cowen had felt a
strong attraction to darker poetry most of the time, Beat poetry seemed to
provide an allure to what suggests a shadowy side of her persona. While at
Barnard, Cowen earned the nickname "Beat Alice" as she had joined a small
group of anti-establishment artists and visionaries known to outsiders as
beatniks, and one of her first acquaintances at the college was the beat poet
Joyce Johnson who later portrayed Cowen in one of her books Come and Join
the Dance, which expressed the two women's experiences in the Barnard and
Columbia Beat community. Through his association with Elise Cowen,
Ginsberg discovered that they shared a mutual friend, Carl Solomon, to
whom he later dedicated his most famous poem "Howl". This poem is
considered an autobiography of Ginsberg prior to 1955, and a brief history of
the Beat Generation through its references to his relationship to other Beat
artists of that time.
San Francisco Renaissance
In 1954, in San Francisco, Ginsberg met Peter Orlovsky (1933–2010), with
whom he fell in love and who remained his life-long partner. Also in San
Francisco, Ginsberg met members of the San Francisco Renaissance and
other poets who would later be associated with the Beat Generation in a
broader sense. Ginsberg's mentor William Carlos
William wrote an introductory letter to San Francisco Renaissance
figurehead Kenneth Rexroth, who then introduced Ginsberg into the San
Francisco poetry scene. There, Ginsberg also met three budding poets and
Zen enthusiasts who were friends at Reed College: Gary Snyder, Philip
Whalen, and Lew Welch. In 1959, along with poets John Kelly, Bob Kaufman,
A. D. Winans, and William Margolis, Ginsberg was one of the founders of the
Beatitude poetry magazine.
Wally Hedrick — a painter and co-founder of the Six Gallery — approached
Ginsberg in mid-1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six
Gallery. At first, Ginsberg refused, but once he had written a rough draft of
"Howl", he changed his "fucking mind", as he put it. Ginsberg advertised the
event as "Six Poets at the Six Gallery". One of the most important events in
Beat mythos, known simply as "The Six Gallery reading" took place on
October 7, 1955. The event, in essence, brought together the East and West
Coast factions of the Beat Generation. Of more personal significance to
Ginsberg: that night was the first public reading of "Howl", a poem that
brought worldwide fame to Ginsberg and to many of the poets associated
with him. An account of that night can be found in Kerouac's novel The
Dharma Bums, describing how change was collected from audience members
to buy jugs of wine, and Ginsberg reading passionately, drunken, with arms
outstretched.
Ginsberg's principal work, "Howl", is well known for its opening line: "I saw
the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical
naked...." "Howl" was considered scandalous at the time of its publication,
because of the rawness of its language. Shortly after its 1956 publication by
San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore, it was banned for obscenity. The ban
became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment, and was
later lifted, after Judge Clayton W. Horn declared the poem to possess
redeeming artistic value. Ginsberg and Shig Murao, the City Lights manager
who was jailed for selling "Howl," became lifelong friends.
Continuing literary activity
Though the term "Beat" is most accurately applied to Ginsberg and his
closest friends (Corso, Orlovsky, Kerouac, Burroughs, etc.), the term "Beat
Generation" has become associated with many of the other poets Ginsberg
met and became friends with in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A key
feature of this term seems to be a friendship with Ginsberg. Friendship with
Kerouac or Burroughs might also apply, but both writers later strove to
disassociate themselves from the name "Beat Generation." Part of their
dissatisfaction with the term came from the mistaken identification of
Ginsberg as the leader. Ginsberg never claimed to be the leader of a
movement. He claimed that many of the writers with whom he had become
friends in this period shared many of the same intentions and themes.
Later in his life, Ginsberg formed a bridge between the beat movement of the
1950s and the hippies of the 1960s, befriending, among others, Timothy
Leary, Ken Kesey, and Bob Dylan. Ginsberg gave his last public reading at
Booksmith, a bookstore in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San
Francisco, a few months before his death.
Final years
In 1986 Ginsberg was awarded the Golden Wreath by the Struga Poetry
Evenings International Festival in Macedonia, as the second American poet
since W.H. Auden
. At Struga he met with the other Golden Wreath winners, Bulat Okudzhava
and Andrei Voznesensky. Ginsberg won the National Book Award for his book
The Fall of America. In 1993, the French Minister of Culture awarded him the
medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Knight of Arts and Letters).
With the exception of a special guest appearance at the NYU Poetry Slam on
February 20, 1997, Ginsberg gave what is thought to be his last reading at
The Booksmith in San Francisco on December 16, 1996. He died April 5,
1997, surrounded by family and friends in his East Village loft in New York
City, succumbing to liver cancer via complications of hepatitis. He was 70
years old. Ginsberg continued to write through his final illness, with his last
poem, "Things I'll Not Do (Nostalgias)", written on March 30.
Ginsberg is buried in his family plot in Gomel Chesed Cemetery.
Style and technique
From the study of his idols and mentors and the inspiration of his
friends—not to mention his own experiments—Ginsberg developed an
individualistic style that's easily identified as Ginsbergian. "Howl" came out
during a potentially hostile literary environment less welcoming to poetry
outside of tradition; there was a renewed focus on form and structure among
academic poets and critics partly inspired by New Criticism. Consequently,
Ginsberg often had to defend his choice to break away from traditional poetic
structure, often citing Williams, Pound, and Whitman as precursors.
Ginsberg's style may have seemed to critics chaotic or unpoetic, but to
Ginsberg it was an open, ecstatic expression of thoughts and feelings that
were naturally poetic. He believed strongly that traditional formalist
considerations were archaic and did not apply to reality. Though some, Diana
Trilling, for example, have pointed to Ginsberg's occasional use of meter (for
example the anapest of "who came back to Denver and waited in vain"),
Ginsberg denied any intention toward meter and claimed instead that meter
follows the natural poetic voice, not the other way around; he said, as he
learned from Williams, that natural speech is occasionally dactylic, so poetry
that imitates natural speech will sometimes fall into a dactylic structure, but
only accidentally. Like Williams, Ginsberg's line breaks were often
determined by breath: one line in "Howl", for example, should be read in one
breath. Ginsberg claimed he developed such a long line because he had long
breaths (saying perhaps it was because he talked fast, or he did yoga, or he
was Jewish). The long line could also be traced back to his study of Walt Whitman ;
Ginsberg claimed Whitman's long line was a dynamic technique few other
poets had ventured to develop further. Whitman is often compared to
Ginsberg because their poetry sexualized aspects of the male form — though
there is no direct evidence Whitman was homosexual.
Many of Ginsberg's early long line experiments contain some sort of
anaphora, repetition of a "fixed base" (for example "who" in "Howl",
"America" in America) and this has become a recognizable feature of
Ginsberg's style. He said later this was a crutch because he lacked
confidence; he did not yet trust "free flight". In the 1960s, after employing it
in some sections of "Kaddish" ("caw" for example) he, for the most part,
abandoned the anaphoric experiment.
Several of his earlier experiments with methods for formatting poems as a
whole become regular aspects of his style in later poems. In the original
draft of "Howl", each line is in a "stepped triadic" format reminiscent of
Williams (see Ivy Leaves for example). He abandoned the "stepped triadic"
when he developed his long line, but the stepped lines showed up later, most
significantly in the travelogues of The Fall of America. "Howl" and "Kaddish",
arguably his two most important poems, are both organized as an inverted
pyramid, with larger sections leading to smaller sections. In America, he
experimented with a mix of longer and shorter lines.
Eserleri:
Howl and Other Poems (1956)
Kaddish and Other Poems (1961)
Empty Mirror: Early Poems (1961)
Reality Sandwiches (1963)
The Yage Letters (1963) with William S. Burroughs
Planet News (1971)
First Blues: Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs 1971 - 1974 (1975)
The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948–1951 (1972)
The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1973)
Iron Horse (1972)
Sad Dust Glories: poems during work summer in woods (1975)
Mind Breaths (1978)
Plutonian Ode: Poems 1977–1980 (1981)
Collected Poems 1947–1980 (1984)
White Shroud Poems: 1980–1985 (1986)
Cosmopolitan Greetings Poems: 1986–1993 (1994)
Howl Annotated (1995)
Illuminated Poems (1996)
Selected Poems: 1947–1995 (1996)
Death and Fame: Poems 1993–1997 (1999)
Deliberate Prose 1952–1995 (2000)
Howl & Other Poems 50th Anniversary Edition (2006)
The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952
(Da Capo Press, 2006)
The Letters of Allen Ginsberg (Philadelphia, Da Capo Press, 2008)
The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder (Counterpoint, 2009)
Poetry Breaks: Allen Ginsberg Reads "A Supermarket in California"
Allen Ginsberg interview (1994)
"Howl" read by Allen Ginsberg, 1975
Allen Ginsberg on Letterman, June 10, 1982
Beats in NYC (1959) - Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Friends ( AI Colourised)
An Elegy for Allen Ginsberg 2006 FULL MOVIE
Allen Ginsberg - Interview + [May 1994]
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: The Avant Garde
Allen Ginsberg on The Beatles
Allen Ginsberg With Paul McCartney "Ballad of The Skeletons" - Bohemia Afterdark
Allen Ginsberg: Buddhism and the Beats
A Discussion with Ram Dass & Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg reads America
Incredibly Rare Interview With Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg About LSD | Our History
Allen Ginsberg Reading Howl (Part 1)
Bob Dylan & Allen Ginsberg Visiting Jack Kerouac's Grave (Lowell, MA., 1975)
Allen Ginsberg reads "Howl," (Big Table Chicago Reading, 1959)
Allen Ginsberg and Paul McCartney playing "A Ballad of American Skeletons"
EP73 allen ginsberg - kvílení
An inside look at Allen Ginsberg’s photographs
Bob Dylan & Allen Ginsberg - Vomit Express.mp4
Allen Ginsberg Reads Beat Poetry at Royal Albert Hall London 1965 | Premium Footage
Trailer - The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg on Poetry - No Direction Home: Bob Dylan
Allen Ginsberg - Moloch (from Howl movie)
Allen Ginsberg & Bob Dylan - Prajnaparamitra Sutra
Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady conversation
America by Allen Ginsberg with music by Tom Waits
Allen Ginsberg - America
Howl by Allen Ginsberg - Lisa Mansell (Banned Books Week)
Ginsberg on Kerouac
Allen Ginsberg - Face to Face
Allen Ginsberg - Kvílení, rozbor a životopis
Dick Cavett: Paddy Chayefsky, Allen Ginsburg, Christopher Isherwood - 1971
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Allen Ginsberg Dying
Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, outs from HEAVY PETTING interview (part 1)
Interview with Allen Ginsberg
A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg #PoetryThursday
Learning from Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg reads poetry to William Buckley
Allen Ginsberg on Bob Dylan
Johnny Depp - The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg
USA: Poetry Episode Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Allen Ginsberg Reads Aloud His Wildest Sex Fantasies
Fernanda Pivano intervista Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg- A Biography
Howl by Allen Ginsberg Animation by Eric Drooker
Allen Ginsberg - Sunflower Sutra
The Life and Selected Poems of Allen Ginsberg (ENG)
Allen Ginsberg: On the Truth of Poetry