Confessionalist Characteristics Of Allen Ginsberg And The Literary Movements

Allen Ginsberg’s revolutionary poem, Howl, is a powerful portrayal of life degraded. It represents the harsh life of the beat generation and chronicles the struggles of the repressed. Howl is a poem of destruction. Destruction of mind, body, and soul through the oppression of the individual. Using powerful diction, Allen Ginsberg describes this abolition of life and its implications through our human understanding of abstractions like Time, Eternity, and self. The poem’s jumbled phrasing and drastic emotion seems to correspond with the minds of the people it describes. Ginsberg uses surprisingly precise and purposeful writing to weave the complex

Desire is a strong feeling an individual wish for wanting something such as objects, people or based on anything. Every literary text is about the idea of desire but not all the texts has the same desires as each text is different whereas Michel Foucault suggested that “desire is bound up with all sorts of social and institutional practices and discourses-with all questions of laws, gender and sexuality, with the discourses of medicine, theology, economic and so on” (Foucault, 1978, Pg. 84). Allen Ginsberg establishes desire in different varieties within his poems where he showed his and people’s desires in his society, his most importantly desire that he wanted was to be famous and he got attention by his poems and work “Transcription of Organ Music” (1955): “I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator” (lecture 13,2015, Pg. 18) this quote shows that Ginsberg desires fame and to be well recognized and respected by others, give him all devotion as they see him. In literary text the desire is that makes us the readers to read the text, as Bennett and Royle said “we desire solution, we desire to get to the end of the story, we desire insight or wisdom, pleasure or sadness, laughter or anger” (Bennett, Royle, 2009, Pg. 210). Desires are revealed in the poem ‘Howl’ as it is based on women, death, drug and peace and the main desires for the poem ‘Kaddish’ are love, sex and god.

During the 1960s Music was heavily influenced by the political and social events happening at the time. At this time civil rights movements were common as many people were trying to spread the emancipation of racism and segregation. As a result the music of the time tended to reflect this counterculture of peace. This “culture” encompassed civil rights, anti-establishment and, inciting revolution. This was a vital time in history for civil rights activists as well as anti-war revolutionaries and the music industry. From folk music to rock music, everyone was affected by the war and chose to express it through the most international form of art, music. Anti-war activists and counterculture enthusiast craved the music that truly expressed

It was a 1951 TIME cover story, which dubbed the Beats a ‘Silent Generation, ’ that led to Allen Ginsberg’s retort in his poem ‘America,’ in which he vocalises a frustration at this loss of self- importance. The fifties Beat Generation, notably through Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl as will here be discussed, fought to revitalise individuality and revolutionise their censored society which seemed to produce everything for the masses at the expense of the individual’s creative and intellectual potential. Indeed, as John Clellon Holmes once noted: “TIME magazine called them the Silent Generation, but this may have been because TIME was not

Ginsberg's "America" was written in 1956, a time when beatniks and beat poetry were popular. The poem is indeed a reflection of the beat

Allen Ginsberg started his infamous life as a revolutionary and poet of the beat generation when he began attending Colombia University. While at Colombia Ginsberg met friend and mentor Jack Kerouac whom he would later join to form the School of Disembodied Poets. During his education at Colombia University Ginsberg started his highly political and opinionated poems, which would become his signature for the beat

In the poem Howl, Allen Ginsberg challenges the modernity of American culture, which enforces the “best minds” (1) to give up their freedom to conform to the desired sense of normality. Ginsberg states “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” (9). His expression of Moloch The angry fix is what all of these “best minds” look for after being stripped of their freedom to conform to the new American culture after World War II.

Century apart, Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman share similar cultural, political and moral values, which they express in their literary work. Whitman’s writing is considered controversial for the eighteen hundreds. He sets the stage for generations to come breaking way from the strict Victorian poetic tradition by writing in free verse. Ginsberg follows his footsteps when composing his poem “Howl” by writing in long lines almost resembling prose and subdividing the poem into several parts. Likewise, he uses numerous repetitions to achieve rhythmicity of his verse. Ginsberg’s poem is heavily influenced by Whitman’s philosophy. The works “Song of myself” and “Howl” are similar in ideas, structure and underling themes. The two authors protest against old traditions imposed on the individual by corrupt society, stand against conformity and put emphasis on the need for change. They identify with their generation and dwell on themes such as sexuality, religion and the state of American society.

To understand the sixties counterculture, we must understand the important role of Bob Dylan. His lyrics fueled the rebellious youth in America. Songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times are A-Changin” made him favorable to anti-war demonstrators and supporters of the Civil Rights movement. He was commonly hailed as the spokesman for his generation. Dylan used lyrics to allow the youth to find their own form of counter-culture. The youth generation began to see the effects racism, war, etc. effect the society in America. To combat this, the youth created their own form of counter-culture to promote a peaceful change within society. Some of their actions include forming anti-war protests that opposed America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and supporting African Americans/women get the rights they deserve through the Civil Rights Movement. Bob Dylan’s music appealed to the young generation because he openly expresses his disapproval of the establishment in order to influenced his audience to move in a direction for change. Counterculture youth rejected cultural norms of the previous generation and their values and lifestyles opposed the mainstream culture present in the 1950’s. The folk music revival of the early 1960s, as well as the counter-culture movement played an important role in advocating change. Bob Dylan wrote songs that influenced the Civil Rights Movement, New Left Movement, and Anti-War Movement.

The Beat Movement, beginning in the 1950’s, consisted of a group of American writers that went against the social norms of that generation. During that time in America, society bent themselves out

Jack Kerouac was one of a group of young men who, immediately after the Second World War, protested against what they saw as the blandness, conformity and lack of cultural purpose of middle-class life in America. The priorities of people of their age, in the mainstream of society, were to get married, to move the suburbs, to have children and to accumulate wealth and possessions. Jack Kerouac and his friends consciously rejected this pursuit of stability and instead looked elsewhere for personal fulfillment. They were the Beats, the pioneers of a counterculture that came to be known as the Beat Generation. The Beats saw mainstream life as a prison. They wanted freedom, the freedom to pick up and go at a moments notice. This search for

In Allen Ginsberg’s “America,” the speaker angrily blasts America in a one-sided argument. In this poem America is personified and is addressed by the speaker as if it were human. After calling himself America the speaker asks several rhetorical questions that make the reader think about America’s ethical and moral values while questioning its goals and ambitions. In essence, the speaker presents to the reader those unanswerable questions that neither himself nor him as America are able to answer.

Allen Ginsberg was one of the founding fathers of what is considered the Beat Generation and the Beat Movement. Throughout his entire life he wrote multiple poems which voiced his certain opinions and thoughts about what America had been going through at the time. American poet, writer, and philosopher, Allen Ginsberg uses his life experiences and ideas on resistance, freedom, and the Beat Movement to express specific ideas within his poems.

What Allen Ginsberg did in 1955 was unthinkable. In the midst of McCarthyism and severe anticommunist sentiment, he wrote a poem in which he admitted having belonged to the Communist party. Yet, even more surprising was that he didn't stop there. In his poem "America," Allen Ginsberg challenges the beliefs and values that the United States has always cherished, leaving no stone unturned, and no feather unruffled. Always the cynic and revolutionary, Ginsberg slaughters the sacred cows.

When writers and poets of post World War II America started questioning the mainstream and accepted social conventions of society, a cultural and literary movement was born. During the postwar economic boom several progressive university students started asking such profound questions as: How do we as a society move beyond runaway capitalism and rampant materialism? How can we enlighten people to live beyond the oppressive prudery of the previous generation? These expansive thinkers used art and literature to rally against social norms and became the ultimate contrarians to all of society and common thought. These artistic provocateurs became known as ‘Beats” and their movement became known as The Beat Generation (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013).