Sportlight 1
13:48This Spotlight is on Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg ( June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that soon would follow.
He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression and was known as embodying various aspects of this counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions. He was one of many influential American writers of his time known as the Beat Generation, which included famous writers such as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.
Ginsberg is best known for his poem "Howl", in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States.
In 1956, "Howl" was seized by San Francisco police and US Customs.In 1957, it attracted widespread publicity when it became the subject of an obscenity trial, as it described 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?"
Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who studied Eastern religious disciplines extensively. He lived modestly, buying his clothing in second-hand stores and residing in downscale apartments in New York’s East Village.
Ginsberg took part in decades of non-violent political protest against everything from the Vietnam War to the War on Drugs. His poem "September on Jessore Road," calling attention to the plight of Bangladeshi refugees, exemplifies what the literary critic Helen Vendler described as Ginsberg's tireless persistence in protesting against "imperial politics, and persecution of the powerless."
The Parents behind the man:
Ginsberg referred to his parents, in a 1985 interview, as "old-fashioned delicatessen philosophers".
His father Louis Ginsberg was a published poet and a high school teacher.Ginsberg's mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg, was affected by a 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.'"Of his father, Ginsberg said "My father would go around the house either reciting Emily Dickinson and Longfellow under his breath or attacking T. S. Eliot for ruining poetry with his 'obscurantism.' I grew suspicious of both sides."
His father Louis Ginsberg was a published poet and a high school teacher.Ginsberg's mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg, was affected by a 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.'"Of his father, Ginsberg said "My father would go around the house either reciting Emily Dickinson and Longfellow under his breath or attacking T. S. Eliot for ruining poetry with his 'obscurantism.' I grew suspicious of both sides."
Naomi Ginsberg'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 her mother-in-law was trying to kill her.
Blake Vision:
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, also described by Ginsberg as "voice of the ancient of days".
The experience lasted several days. 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.
Ginsberg stated: "living blue hand itself [E]xistence itself was God" and "[I] felt a sudden awakening into a totally deeper real universe."
The 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 Yeats' "A Vision"), for literature and America. Carr also introduced Ginsberg to Neal Cassady, with whom Ginsberg had a long infatuation.
In the first chapter of his 1957 novel On the Road Kerouac described the meeting between Ginsberg and Cassady.Kerouac saw them as the dark (Ginsberg) and light (Cassady) side of their "New Vision", a perception stemming partly from Ginsberg's association with communism, of which Kerouac had become increasingly distrustful. 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.
Biographical References in "howl":
Ginsberg claimed at one point that all of his work was an extended biography (like Kerouac's Duluoz Legend). "Howl" is not only a biography of Ginsberg's experiences before 1955 but also a history of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg also later claimed that at the core of "Howl" were his unresolved emotions about his schizophrenic mother.
Though "Kaddish" deals more explicitly with his mother, "Howl" in many ways is driven by the same emotions. "Howl" chronicles the development of many important friendships throughout Ginsberg’s life. He begins the poem with “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”, which sets the stage for Ginsberg to describe Cassady and Solomon, immortalizing them into American literature.
This madness was the “angry fix” that society needed to function—madness was its disease. In the poem, Ginsberg focused on “Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland”, and, thus, turned Solomon into an archetypal figure searching for freedom from his “straightjacket”. Though references in most of his poetry reveal much about his biography, his relationship to other members of the Beat Generation, and his own political views, "Howl", his most famous poem, is still perhaps the best place to start.
films about his work or life:
- The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg (film)
- Allen Ginsberg Live in London
- Hungry generation
- Howl (2010 film)
- Central Park Be-In
- Trevor Carolan
- Burroughs: the Movie by Howard Brookner
- Kill Your Darlings
- Jewish Buddhist
You Can Watch Kill Your Darlings on Netflix Canada Right Now
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