2. Allen Ginsberg.
Allen Ginsberg, born in Newark, N.J., June 3, 1926, was
an American poet and leading apostle of the Beat
Generation. His first published work, Howl and Other
Poems (1956), sparked the San Francisco Renaissance
and defined the generation of the '50s.
Ginsberg was also part of the counter-cultural revolution
of the ‟60s.
In the 1960s, while vigorously participating in the anti-
Vietnam War movement, he published several poetic
works, including Reality Sandwiches (1963) and Planet
News (1969). The Fall of America received the National
Book Award for 1974.
3. Biography.
Ginsberg was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey.
His mother suffer from periods of mental illness which disturbed Ginsberg
greatly, later this would lead to his famous work 'Kaddish„. His mother was also
a member of the Communist Party and sometimes took her sons along to the
local meetings.
As a young teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Times about
political issues, such as World War II and workers' rights. While in high school,
Ginsberg began reading Walt Whitman, which later became a major influence for
him.
In 1943, Ginsberg graduated from High School and briefly attended
Montclair State College before entering Columbia University on a scholarship
from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson.
While at Columbia, Ginsberg contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal,
the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize and served as
president of the Philolexian Society, the campus literary and debate group.
4. Career.
Though early on he had intentions to be a labor lawyer, Ginsberg
wrote poetry for most of his life. Most of his very early poetry was
written in formal rhyme and meter like that of his father or his idol
William Blake. His admiration for the writing of Jack Kerouac
inspired him to take poetry more seriously.
Though he took odd jobs to support himself, in
1955, upon the advice of a psychiatrist, Ginsberg
dropped out of the working world to devote his
entire life to poetry. Soon after, he wrote
"Howl", the poem that brought him and his friends
much fame and allowed him to live as a
professional poet for the rest of his life.
5. Ginsberg. Rise to fame.
In October 1955, Ginsberg and five other unknown poets
gave a free reading at an experimental art gallery in San
Francisco. Ginsberg's "Howl" electrified the audience.
According to fellow poet Michael McClure, it was clear "that a
barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had
been hurled against the harsh wall of America and its
supporting armies and navies and academies and
institutions and ownership systems and power support
bases."
In 1957, "Howl" attracted widespread publicity when it
became the subject of an obscenity trial in which a San
Francisco prosecutor argued it contained
"filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language."
6. “Howl”
Howl is considered one of the most important works of the
Beat Generation.
The poem seemed especially outrageous in 1950s America
because it depicted both 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.
It was initially written as a performance piece,
the poem consists of three parts.
7. HOWL
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,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
8. Ginsberg activism.
Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who studied Eastern
religious disciplines extensively. One of his most influential
teachers was the Tibetan Buddhist, the Venerable Chögyam
Trungpa, founder of the Naropa Institute, now Naropa
University at Boulder, Colorado. At Trungpa's
urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started a poetry
school there in 1974 which they called the "Jack Kerouac
School of Disembodied Poetics". In spite of his attraction to
Eastern religions, the journalist Jane Kramer argues that
Ginsberg, like Whitman, adhered to an "American brand of
mysticism" that was, in her words, "rooted in humanism and
in a romantic and visionary ideal of harmony among men."
Ginsberg's political activism was consistent with his religious
beliefs
9. Awards.
He took part in decades of non-violent political
protest against everything from the Vietnam
War to the War on Drugs. The literary
critic, Helen Vendler, described Ginsberg as
"tirelessly persistent in protesting
censorship, imperial politics, and persecution
of the powerless." His achievements as a
writer as well as his notoriety as an activist
gained him honors from established
institutions. Ginsberg's book of poems, The
Fall of America, won the National Book Award
for poetry in 1974. Other honors included the
National Arts Club gold medal and his
induction into the American Academy and
Institute of Arts and Letters, both in 1979.
Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995
for his book, Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems
1986–1992
10. Awards
National Book Award for poetry 1974, for The Fall of
America
Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995, for his book Cosmopolitan
Greetings: Poems 1986-1992.
National Arts Club gold medal.
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
member.
11. Poetry works
Howl and Other Poems (1956)
Kaddish and Other Poems (1961)
Reality Sandwiches (1963)
The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948–1951 (1972)
The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1973)
First Blues: Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs 1971 - 1974 (1975)
Mind Breaths (1978)
Collected Poems: 1947–1980 (1984)
Cosmopolitan Greetings Poems: 1986–1993 (1994)
Howl Annotated (1995)
Illuminated Poems (1996)
