Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Born: June 3, 1926

Years Active: 1943 – 1997

Genre: Arts & Literature, Gay, Sexually Explicit

Biography:

Allen Ginsberg, otherwise known as, Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926. He was born to a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey to Louis Ginsberg and Naomi Livergant Ginsberg. His father was, like Allen, a poet although he was also a high school teacher. His mother on the other hand, had epileptic seizures and was schizophrenic. Naomi was also a member of the Communist party and frequently took her two sons, Allen and Eugene to the party meetings when they were little.

Allen began writing at an extremely young age. He started to write letters to the New York Times when he was in middle school about many political issues such as World War II and the workers’ rights. When he was in middle school his mother took him on a bus to her therapist which disturbed him greatly for he wrote of it throughout many of his poems. It was in high school when he first began reading poetry such as Walt Whitman whom he was inspired by. In 1943 Allen graduated from Eastside High School and decided to go to Montclair State University. He stayed at Montclair for only a brief period of time before transferring to Columbia University. While attending Columbia University Allen wrote for the Columbia Review literary journal, the Jester humor magazine, and won the Woodberry Poetry Prize. Not only did he do all these things but he also served as the president of the Philolexian Society which was the campus literary and debate group.

Allen was known to be different in his time; he was a homosexual that wasn’t afraid to talk about taboo subjects. In 1954, during Allen’s time in San Francisco, he met Peter Orlovsky whom he fell in love with and stayed his life long lover. While in San Francisco he also met Wally Hedrick. It was Wally who asked Allen to gather a collection of poetry and read at the Six Gallery. When Wally first asked Allen he refused his offer, then later after he’d written his rough draft of Howl, he changed his mind. Allen’s reading of Howl is now known as one of the most important events of the Beat mythos and it is also the collection of poems that first brought worldwide fame to him.

Allen died on April 5, 1997 of liver cancer brought on by complications of his hepatitis. When he died he was surrounded by all his family and friends and later was buried in a Jewish cemetery on a family plot. Although he was just seventy years old he continued to write poetry even on his death bed. Before dieing Allen received the National Book Award for his book The Fall of America. Also, in 1993 the French Minister of Culture awarded Allen the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. What is thought to be Allen’s last reading of his poetry was given just a few months before his death on December 16, 1996, although he wrote his last poem only a few days before his death on March 30, 1997. Allen Ginsberg was a not only a homosexual poet that wasn’t afraid to speak of taboo subjects, but also frequently protested on things such as the Vietnam war and marijuana legalization. He also was a key contributor to the Beat Movement.

Works Consulted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Allen%20Ginsberg&page=1

Works Page:

• The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, 1956-1991
• Howl and Other Poems
• The Letters of Allen Ginsberg
• The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems: 1937-1952
• What? 108 Zen Poems
• Collected Poems 1947-1997
• The Beat Book: Writings from the Beat Generation
• Beat Bible
• Illuminated Poems
• Aullido
• Gay Day: The Golden Age of the Christopher Street Parade 1974-1983
• The Yage Letters Redux
• Allen Ginsberg: Beat & Pieces: A Complete Story of the Beat Generation In the Words of Fernanda Pivano with Photographs by Allen Ginsberg
• The Beat Generation
• Poesia Beat
• First Thought Best Thought
• Voice of the Poet: Allen Ginsberg
• Van Gogh’s Ear: World Poetry for the New Millenium
• Lines Drawn in the Sand: The Life and Writings of Allen Ginsberg
• Gedichte
• Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son
• Junky: The Definitive Text of Junk
• Travels with Ginsberg: A Postcard Book, Allen Ginsberg Photographs 1944-1997
• Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958-1996
• New York Notebook Cuaderno de Nueva York
• What Use Am I a Hungry Ghost?
• Deliberate Prose
• Selected Poems 1947-1995
• La chute de l’Amerique
• Composed on the Tongue
• The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971
• Kaddish and Other Poems: 1958-1960
• Mind Breaths: Poems 1972-1977
• Planet News: 1961-1967
• Plutonian Ode: And Other Poems 1977-1980
• Reality Sandwiches: 1953- 1960
• Death & Fame: Last Poems 1993-1997
• Poems for the Nation
• Deliberate Prose, Selected Essays 1952-1995
• Ginsberg at Evergreen: An extended interview
• A Burroughs Compendium: Calling the Toads
• Allen Ginsberg and Friends
• Screaming with Joy
• Think of the Self Speaking: Harry Smith, Selected Interviews
• Catullus
• Potpourri of Poetry: Summer 1975
• The Phoenix Book Shop: a Nest of Memories
• Journals: Mid-fifties (1954-58)
• Indian Journals
• Canoeing Up Cabaga Creek: Buddhist Poems 1955-1986
• Beat Culture and the New America 1950-1965
• Cosmopolitan greetings: Poems 1986-1992
• Allen Ginsberg and Hiro Yamagata
• “American X-Rays.” Forty years of Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry. Review of AG’s Selected Poems 1947-1995
• The Fallen Angels
• Shambhala Sun, Volume 4 Number 6, July 1996, Arts Issue, Members’ Edition
• Collected Poems, 1947-85
• Kerouac: A Biography
• Linceul blanc
• Souffles d’esprit
• Mind Writing Slogans
• Beat Legacy, Connections, Influences: Allen Ginsberg
• Viele Lieben/ Many Loves
• Snapshot Poetics: Allen Ginsberg’s Photographic Memoir of the Beat Era
• The Moroccan
• Your Reason & Blake’s System
• Philip Glass: Hydrogen Jukebox
• Out of This World: An Anthology of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project 1966-1991
• Photographs
• Visions of Cody
• The Maverick Poets: An Anthology
• Automatic Refinement of Expert System Knowledge Bases
• Your Reason and Blake’s System
• White Shroud: Poems 1980-1985
• Best Minds
• Since Man Began to Eat Himself
• Some Writings on War Tax Resistance
• Karel Appel
• Mailer, his Life and Times
• Mostly Sitting Haiku
• Plutonian Ode and Other Poems 1977-1980
• The Postermoderns: The New American Poetry Revised
• Sagetrieb
• Letters to Allen Ginsberg 1953-1957
• Straight Hearts’ Delight: Love Poems and Selected Letters, 1947-1980
• What’s Dead
• Iron Horse
• Careless Love
• Composed Poems All Over the Place
• Maderia and Toasts for Basil Buntings Seventy-Fifth Birthday
• As Ever
• Christopher Street
• Mind Breaths Poems 1972-1977
• Morning in Spring
• The Fall of America
• The Retreat Diaries
• Allen Verbatim
• Sad Dust Glories Poems Work Summer in Woods
• Allen Verbatim Lectures On Poetry, Politics, Consciousness
• Chicago trial testimony
• Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit
• The Visions of the Great Rememberer
• Gay Sunshine Interview
• The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems, 1948-1952
• Bixby Canyon ocean path word breeze
• Improvised Poetics
• New year blues
• Open head
• Handbill calling attention to the Living Theater who were busted in Brazil
• Empty Mirror
• The Moment’s Return
• Notes After An Evening With William Carlos Williams
• Airplane Dreams: Compositions From Journals
• “America when will you be angelic?”
• Ankor Wat
• Some Mantras
• Take Care of My Ghost, Ghost
• T.V. Baby Poems
• The Bedside Playboy
• Image, Spring 1968
• Incense, No. 16, 1968
• Scrap Leaves
• Wales. A Visitation
• Entering Kansas City High
• Where is Vietnam?: American Poets Respond
• Who Be Kind To.
• Wichita Vortex Sutra
• Prose Contribution to Cuban Revolution
• Checklists of Separate Publications of Poets at the First Berkeley Poetry Conference 1965
• Kral Majales
• Wholly Communion
• Wynn Chamberlain
• The Change
• Way Out, January 1963
• Beat Coast East: An Anthology of Rebellion
• Big Table
• Folio, Winter 1960
• Kulchur, Spring 1960
• Naked Lunch
• Wagner, Spring 1959
• Columbia Review, May 1947

Group Movement

The objective of the beat movement was to be different. The so called, Beatniks, tried to start a new movement in literature. The beat movement started in the late fifties and went on into the early sixties before hippies came around. Those involved with the beat movement were sometimes called beatniks, which refer to how they rejected the mainstream values of America. They not only rejected these mainstream values but they also experimented with different drugs and different sexualities, and were interested in Eastern spirituality. Some of the major works of the beat movement were Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. Those that were involved with the beat movement met in New York then moved to San Francisco in the mid 1950s where they expanded and met with members of the San Francisco Renaissance. This expanding of the beat generation quickly transformed in the sixties to the hippie generation.

Allen Ginsberg not only fits into the beat movement, but some would call him a founder of it. Howl, a book written by Ginsberg is one of the major works of the beat movement. It is a biography of Ginsberg’s experiences prior to 1955 and a history of the beat generation. Ginsberg also claimed that in Howl were his unresolved emotions towards his mother, Naomi’s schizophrenia. In Howl Ginsberg also writes about his homosexuality which was extremely rare for his time period.

“…with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
cohol and cock and endless balls,…”

Moods

Obscene “…who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
love…”(Howl)

Futuristic “...who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
Square weeping and undressing while the sirens
of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
wailed…” (Howl)

Bohemian “…who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot..” (Howl)

Truthful “…I can't stand my own mind…” (America)

Spiritual “…I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations…”

(America)

Similar Artists:

Gregory Corso was another writer from the Beat Movement like Allen Ginsberg, therefore I believe, like others, that he is a similar artist. Ginsberg was impressed with the poetry that Corso had written while he was in jail for burglary, and decided to meet him in 1950. Corso was then deemed one of the three core writers for the Beat Movement like Ginsberg. When Ginsberg was spoken of Corso was normally associated with him.

I believe Neal Cassidy is also a similar writer to Allen Ginsberg. When Cassidy was introduced into the world in 1947 many people were fascinated with him. Ginsberg was known to have an affair with Cassidy and then later became his own personal writing- tutor. In many of Cassidy’s letters he has the similar free-flowing style that Ginsberg has.

Influenced By:

One person Ginsberg was influenced by was Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman was one of the first poets he started to read in high school when he first became fascinated with poetry. Like Walt Whitman, Ginsberg usually likes to write in free verse. I believe he also looked up to Walt Whitman because like Ginsberg, Whitman also wrote about his homosexuality which was a rare occurrence in his time.

Another person that Ginsberg was influenced by was William Carlos Williams. It was Williams who Ginsberg studied poetry with. During the time he studied poetry with Ginsberg he was in the middle of writing his poem “Paterson” which was about the city that he lived near. Ginsberg attended many readings by Williams and then decided to write him letters and send him poems of his own. In these poems that he sent to Williams he used rhyme and meter which Williams hated. Even though he hated Ginsberg’s poems he loved his letters and even included a part of his letter in “Paterson”. It was Williams that taught Ginsberg not to copy his masters but to write in his own voice.

Follower:

One person that Ginsberg influenced is the well known, Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan is an American singer/ songwriter, author, poet, and painter. Much of his work dates from the 1960s which was around the time that Ginsberg had befriended Dylan. It was at this time that there was a bridge that formed between the beat movement and the hippie movement.