Allen Ginsberg
Long incantatory works and books of known American poet Irwin Allen Ginsberg, a leading figure of the Beat Generation, include
Howl
(1956) and
Kaddish
(1961).
Naomi Ginsberg bore Irwin Allen Ginsberg, a son, to Louis Ginsberg, a Jewish member of the New York literary counterculture of the 1920s. They reared Ginsberg among several progressive political perspectives. Mental health of Naomi Ginsberg, a nudist, who supported the Communist party, concerned people throughout the childhood of the poet. According to biographer Barry Miles, "Naomi's illness gave Allen an enormous empathy and tolerance for madness, neurosis, and psychosis."
As an adolescent, Ginsberg savored Walt Whitman, though in 1939, when Ginsberg graduated high school, he considered Edgar Allan Poe his favorite poet. Eager to follow a childhood hero who had received a scholarship to Columbia University, Ginsberg made a vow that if he got into the school he would devote his life to helping the working class, a cause he took seriously over the course of the next several years.
He was admitted to Columbia University, and as a student there in the 1940s, he began close friendships with William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom later became leading figures of the Beat movement. The group led Ginsberg to a "New Vision," which he defined in his journal: "Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art."
Around this time, Ginsberg also had what he referred to as his "Blake vision," an auditory hallucination of William Blake reading his poems "Ah Sunflower," "The Sick Rose," and "Little Girl Lost." Ginsberg noted the occurrence several times as a pivotal moment for him in his comprehension of the universe, affecting fundamental beliefs about his life and his work. While Ginsberg claimed that no drugs were involved, he later stated that he used various drugs in an attempt to recapture the feelings inspired by the vision.
In 1954, Ginsberg moved to San Francisco. His mentor, William Carlos Williams, introduced him to key figures in the San Francisco poetry scene, including Kenneth Rexroth. He also met Michael McClure, who handed off the duties of curating a reading for the newly-established "6" Gallery. With the help of Rexroth, the result was "The '6' Gallery Reading" which took place on October 7, 1955. The event has been hailed as the birth of the Beat Generation, in no small part because it was also the first public reading of Ginsberg's "Howl," a poem which garnered world-wide attention for him and the poets he associated with.
Shortly after Howl and Other Poems was published in 1956 by City Lights Bookstore, it was banned for obscenity. The work overcame censorship trials, however, and became one of the most widely read poems of the century, translated into more than twenty-two languages.
In the 1960s and 70s, Ginsberg studied under gurus and Zen masters. As the leading icon of the Beats, Ginsberg was involved in countless political activities, including protests against the Vietnam War, and he spoke openly about issues that concerned him, such as free speech and gay rights agendas.
Ginsberg went on publish numerous collections of poetry, including Kaddish and Other Poems (1961), Planet News (1968), and The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1973), which won the National Book Award.
In 1993, Ginsberg received the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters) from the French Minister of Culture. He also co-founded and directed the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Colorado. In his later years, Ginsberg became a Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College.
On April 5, 1997, in New York City, he died from complications of hepatitis.
“Now mind is clearas a cloudless sky.Time then to make ahome in wilderness.What have I done butwander with my eyesin the trees? So Iwill build: wife,family, and seekfor neighbors.Or Iperish of lonesomenessor want of food orlightning or the bear(must tame the hartand wear the bear).And maybe make an imageof my wandering, a littleimage—shrine by theroadside to signifyto traveler that I livehere in the wildernessawake and at home.”
“Who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish.”
“No rest without love,No sleepwithout dreamsof love -be mad or chillobsessed with angelsor machinesthe final wishis love.”
“Sanity - a trick of agreement”
“No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love- be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love -cannot be bitter, cannot deny,cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy”
“You can own an elephant or a bank or power thereof but if there's no personal breast bliss all you own is a lot of dead atoms and ideas.”
“Every American wants MORE MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug.”
“The madman bum and angel beat in time with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years”
“What is obscenity? And to whom?”
“Many seek and never see, anyone can tell them why. O they weep and O they cry and never take until they try unless they try it in their sleep and never some until they die. I ask many, they ask me. This is a great mystery.”
“Who’ll come lie down in the dark with me Belly to belly and knee to knee Who’ll look into my hooded eye Who’ll lie down under my darkened thigh?”
“Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath, As I lay my body down Between the ache of breath and breath, Golden slumber in the bone.”
“Scientist alone is true poet.”
“We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessedby our own seed & hairy nakedaccomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.”
“Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.”
“I never dreamed the sea so deep,The earth so dark; so long my sleep,I have become another child.I wake to see the world go wild.”
“A naked lunch is natural to usWe eat reality sandwiches.But allegories are so much lettuce.Don't hide the madness.”
“What came is gone forever every time”
“I learned a world from each / one whom I loved”
“May no Evil Eye peek thru window, keyhole or gunsight at his white haired face!”
“Who can live with this Consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?”
“Central Intelligence cutting Meo opium fields! China Lobby copping poppies in Burma! How long this Addict government support our oil-burner matter-habit”
“Clock hands move noonward”
“Steak swallowers zonked on Television!”
“Slaves of Plastic! Leather-shoe chino-pants prisoners! Haircut junkies! Dacron-shiffers!”
“now the Great Fear's rolled round the world and washes over Newspaper Grey air”
“Who can prophesy peace, or vow Futurity for any but armed insects”
“When Violence floods the State from above, flowery land razed for robot proliferation”
“Earth pollution identical with Mind pollution, consciousness Pollution identical with filthy sky”
“washing terror-waves round earth-globe back to suburb TV home night kitchens”
“Banks burn, boys die bullet-eyed, mothers scream realization the vast tonnage of napalm”
“all Revolution and Consumption, Manufacture and Communication”
“What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?”
“War is good business Invest your son”
“artificial trees, robot sofas,Ignorant cars-One Way Street to Heaven”
“he threw up his handsand wrote the Universe dont existand died to prove it”
“The Package is the Product, onomatopoeticized”
“Scream in despair over Meat and Metal Microphone”
“...robots pencil prescriptions for acid gas sunsets”
“Brainwash cried Romney, the Governor of Pollution”
“Shit, Violence, bullets in the brain Unavailing.We're in too deep to pull out.Waiting for an orgasm, Mr. Baldwin?Yes, waiting for an orgasm that's all.”
“The electric network selling itself: "The medium is the message”
“Mothers weep and Sons be dumbyour brothers and children murder the beautiful yellow bodies of Indochina in dreams invented for your eyes by TV”
“enraptured in hypnotic war”
“Electric Networks spread fear of murder on the streets”
“Eat Eat said the sign”
“Anger falling asleep at the heart”
“And the Children of the Warmakers're exempt from fighting their parents' war”
“A missle lost Unprogrammed”
“False emotions broadcast thru the Land”