Howl & Kaddish By Allen Ginsberg Essay -- essays research papers fc

As you read the first lines of "Howl" and "Kaddish", the overall tone of the poem hits you right in the face. Allen Ginsberg, the poet, presents these two poems as complaints and injustices. He justifies these complaints in the pages that follow. Ginsberg also uses several literary techniques in these works to enhance the images for the reader. His own life experiences are mentioned in the poems, the majority of his works being somewhat biographical. It is said that Allen Ginsberg was ahead of his time, but in fact he was just riding the wave of a literature revolution. The decade of the 1950’s was a time of change. America and the world was experiencing a transition from innocence to a more knowledgeable society. Revolutions in all aspects of life were going on: civil rights, sexual, rock and roll and the introduction of new experimental drugs in the communities of San Francisco and Greenwich Village. Out of all of these revolutions came the beat generatio n, a group of young Bohemian writers who wrote and thought about the things that Americans used to "throw under the rug". Names can be mentioned: Jack Kerouac, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Felinghetti. Perhaps the most famous and most criticized of these "beatniks" is Allen Ginsberg. Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey. His mother, Naomi, was a Russian immigrant, and his father Louis was a poet and Paterson, NJ teacher. Allen’s childhood was not always a happy one; Naomi went back and forth from mental hospitals and endured the physical abuse of Louis. She also had Communist leanings, thinking that spies were out to get her and that Hitler was on the way. All of these are mentioned in some of Allen’s works, the topic of many of them. After being dismissed from Columbia University, he joined the merchant marines and sailed to the West Coast. In San Francisco he befriended young men just like himself: angry, pessimistic about the future, confused about their sexuality, and not knowing what their place in life really was. After he was released from the merchant marines, he went back to the Bay Area. These young men began to hold meetings where they would read poems and share ideas. They also formed a sense of friendship, because they were all that they really had. "Howl" is a three part poem writte... ... City Lights Books San Francisco 1956 Ginsberg, Allen Kaddish and other Poems City Lights Books San Francisco 1961 Hyde, Lewis (Editor) On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor, MI 1984 Merill, Thomas. Allen Ginsberg Twayne Publishers Boston 1988 Stephanchev, Stephen. American Poetry Since 1945 Harper and Row Publishers New York 1965 Turco, Lewis. Visions and Revisions of American Poetry The University of Arkansas Press Fayetteville, AK 1986 Footnotes 1) Eberhart, Richard "West Coast Rhythms" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 2) Rexroth, Kenneth "San Francisco Letter" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 3) Eberhart, Richard "West Coast Rhythms" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 4) Grossman, Allen "Allen Ginsberg:The Jew as an American Poet" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 5) Shapiro, Harvey. "Exalted Comfort" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 6) Alvarez, A. "Ginsberg and the He rd Instinct" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg 7) Shaprio, Harvey. "Exalted Comfort" from On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg"