homework by allen ginsberg analysis

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Summary and Analysis of Homework by Allen Ginsberg: 2022

Introduction to the poet:.

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet born on 3 rd June, 1926 at Newark, New Jersey, U.S as the son of an English teacher and Russian expatriate . He was one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that would soon follow. He vigorously opposed militarism , economic materialism and sexual repression . One of the most influential writers of his time known as Beat Generation, he exemplified various aspects of the counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions . He came into the spotlight after the publication of “Howl and Other Poems” in 1956. “Howl” was a poem in the tradition of Walt Whitman , and a protest of outburst and despair against a destructive, abusive society.The ‘Kaddish’ is one of his purest poem and he soon rose to fame. He undertook non violent protest against everything from Vietnam War to War of Drugs. There had been controversies against his homosexual relationship with many men, specifically his lifelong partner, Peter Orlovsky . In 1986 Ginsberg was awarded the Golden Wreath by the Struga Poetry Evenings International Festival in Macedonia, the second American poet to be so awarded since W. H. Auden. He died surrounded by family and friends in his East Village loft in New York City, succumbing to liver cancer via complications of hepatitis , on 5th April, 1997.

The poem “Homework” by Allen Ginsberg is a metaphorical poem speaking about the socio-political background, the economy, the corruption and various issues that surrounded the nations in that period. This poem reflects much upon the poet’s thought and his continuous anti – violent movements. Through his words and the strength of his writing, this poem distinctly reflects on the serious socio-political, economical, environmental, military unrests that the nations were facing.

Setting of Homework:

The poem is set at a period when the poet had been occupied with the Vietnam War. From United Nations to Iran, Africa, Asia were facing issues of corruption, war, sociological, political, military innuendo. The dramatic changes in the international front, the troublesome and disturbing situation that the world was facing were his concern. Though it seems that the poet was doing his laundry at his home, this poem actually concerned about the events of the nations. The poem, in it’s most wonderful form is a critical mockery with an increasingly developed willingness to bring forth goodness among various nations.

Style of Homework:

The poem is written in free verse.

Poetic devices in Homework:

Alliteration : “Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos.” as the author repeats the ‘ub’ sound in “Rub a Dub Dub” is an alliteration used in the poem. Onomatopoeia: “Rub a dub dub” is an onomatopoeia used. Assonance : In the first stanza, “If ….Iran” as he repeats the vowel I in “If..I..I’d..Iran” assonance is used as a poetic device . Personification: “..squeeze out …state” as Ginsberg gives the country a personal trait of being able to tell on other states when people have done wrong. Imagery: “I’d throw in …….in the jungle” as it gives us a visual of him cleaning the country and putting back animals and birds is yet an imagery. Hyperbole : Hyperbole is used repeatedly for exaggeration to indicate the urgency and desperation of situations: “Wash my dirty Iran” “Rub ……North Pole “ “Put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or Aeon till it came out clean”. Metaphor: The whole poem acts as a metaphor to awaken our consciousness by stating that the poet wants to cleanse the world like he is doing the laundry in a washing machine.

Summary of Homework:

The poem deals with massive message about the world’s nationwide changes. On the international front, the reforms and issues in the world that had been faced by the nations was the imminent concern of the poem. The poem starts with the poet wishing to wash Iran. The first line itself amazes us with the transformation from the domestic affairs to the national thought. Yet, when we move through the lines we realise it is not only Iran but also the United States that he wants to clean. He is concerned about the environmental hazards that the generation have been facing. Thus, he wants to regain the environmental counterpoise, the old environmental equilibrium. That is why he says : “put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,” He also wants to cleanse the phenomenal water bodies that had been subject to pollution. As a matter of fact, all the air pollution, soil pollution and water pollution, he wants to clean them up. Rocky Flats Plant was a former nuclear weapons production facility in the western United States and Los Alamos is a town in Los Alamos County, New Mexico, United States that is recognized as the birthplace of the first atomic bomb. The love canal was supposed to be a short canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers , to provide electricity. However, it became a dumping ground later that exploded after few years . When he mentions these he wants to get rid of these disastrous weapons and the man made events that had been harming the countries for a destruction leading to environmental tragedies taking lives of people, cause births with defects and mis balance the environmental equilibrium, disastrously. The acid rain that destroyed Parthenon’s magnificent marble relief frieze panels, chemically transformed into soft gypsum or dissolved the marvelous structure of Sphinx at Egypt, made of limestone. The blue sky , the white snowy clouds , the clean Mediterranean basin , Thames, Lake Erie are all the wonderful things that the poet wants to recover. The disastrous pollution and the corruption is something the poet wants to get rid of. Agent Orange is an herbicide and defoliant chemical. It is widely known for its use by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand during the Vietnam War . The poet wants to wash out the Agent orange, too, that harmed the people of Vietnam. The following stanzas focus on the way the poet wants to change the nations, their corruptions, the wars that are caused. He wants to put the whole planet ‘in a drier’, this means, he wants to obliterate all the hazards, socio-political issues, wars and bring back harmony and peace in the planet.

Central Idea of Homework:

The central idea of the poem deals with the conveying of a message of political, economical, and military unrest in the international realm. The poet speaks of the worldly hazard that the nations are facing, leading to destruction of nature in the hand of mankind. With the developing era, the age old destruction brought by mankind on Mother Earth is something the human species should be ashamed of. Further, the effort of him desiring to cleanse the world stands as a suitable example of what the mankind must focus on: not his domestic affair but for the betterment of the world, for future generation. The amount of destruction we did is worth mending and not be kept for worse. This poem gives one the magnanimous ideas about the massacre caused by the human, to this remarkable creation, Nature.

Critical Analysis of Homework:

The poem describes how the poet would metaphorically cleanse many problems of the world in a metaphorical washing machine. The poem displays a good deal of humour, and its socio political points are thought provoking. The poem emphasises on the socio-political and environmental problems that the world faces. From cleaning the Amazon or the polluted Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico to the effort for maintaining the equilibrium of environment by putting back all the birds and elephants back in the jungle of Africa: the poet is trying to wash the pollution war and violence in the world. Throughout the poem, the various examples suggest that the poet is meaning to strike a chord in our heart making us aware of the ongoing torture that the world is confronting in the hands of mankind. He imbibes a sense in us how we, as humans, must be ashamed of our deeds that has put mother earth in such a devastating bearings. Through his act of cleaning he wants to launder the world and the whole poem stands as a metaphor to awaken us about our misdeeds on Mother Nature.

Tone of Homework:

The tone of the poem is more sincere that it initially seems to be. Though the first line states it is a poem that would be more of a domestic one soon we realise this poem has universal front. The tone from the beginning to the end is light hearted mixed with satires and a great sense of humiliation to the human species for our torture on Mother Earth. It acts as a metaphor for cleansing the world rather than being concerned about one’s domestic affair.

Typical to the style of the Beats Generation, this poem is an ideally unconventional poem pointing out to the world crisis , and stands supreme of the era. Contributor: Bidisha Das

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Allen Ginsberg

Homage Kenneth Koch

If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran I’d throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle, I’d wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico, Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska, Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again, Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow, Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie Then I’d throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange, Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state, & put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon till it came out clean

Analysis, meaning and summary of Allen Ginsberg's poem Homework

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Allen Ginsberg’s Poems

Analysis of Allen Ginsberg’s Poems

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 14, 2020 • ( 1 )

“Howl,” the poem that carried Allen Ginsberg ( June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) into public consciousness as a symbol of the avant-garde artist and as the designer of a verse style for a postwar generation seeking its own voice, was initially regarded as primarily a social document. As Ginsberg’s notes make clear, however, it was also the latest specimen in a continuing experiment in form and structure. Several factors in Ginsberg’s life were particularly important in this breakthrough poem, written as the poet was approaching thirty and still drifting through a series of jobs, countries, and social occasions. Ginsberg’s father had exerted more influence than was immediately apparent. Louis Ginsberg’s very traditional, metrical verse was of little use to his son, but his father’s interest in literary history was part of Ginsberg’s solid grounding in prosody. Then, a succession of other mentors—including Williams, whose use of the American vernacular and local material had inspired him, and great scholars such as art historian Meyer Shapiro at Columbia, who had introduced him to the tenets of modernism from an analytic perspective—had enabled the young poet to form a substantial intellectual foundation.

In addition, Ginsberg was dramatically affected by his friendships with Kerouac, Cassady, Burroughs, Herbert Hunke, and other noteworthy denizens of a vibrant underground community of dropouts, revolutionaries, drug addicts, jazz musicians, and serious but unconventional artists of all sorts. Ginsberg felt an immediate kinship with these “angelheaded hipsters,” who accepted and celebrated eccentricity and regarded Ginsberg’s homosexuality as an attribute, not a blemish. Although Ginsberg enthusiastically entered into the drug culture that was a flourishing part of this community, he was not nearly as routed toward self-destruction as Burroughs or Hunke; he was more interested in the possibilities of visionary experience. His oft-noted “illuminative audition of William Blake’s voice simultaneous with Eternity-vision” in 1948 was his first ecstatic experience of transcendence, and he continued to pursue spiritual insight through serious studies of various religions—including Judaism and Buddhism—as well as through chemical experimentation.

His experiments with mind-altering agents (including marijuana, peyote, amphetamines, mescaline, and lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD) and his casual friendship with some quasi-criminals led to his eight-month stay in a psychiatric institute.He had already experienced an unsettling series of encounters with mental instability in his mother, who had been hospitalized for the first time when he was three. Her struggles with the torments of psychic uncertainty were seriously disruptive events in Ginsberg’s otherwise unremarkable boyhood, but Ginsberg felt deep sympathy for his mother’s agony and also was touched by her warmth, love, and social conscience. Although not exactly a “red diaper baby,”Ginsberg had adopted a radical political conscience early enough to decide to pursue labor law as a college student, and he never wavered from his initial convictions concerning the excesses of capitalism. His passionate call for tolerance and fairness had roots as much in his mother’s ideas as in his contacts with the “lamblike youths” who were “slaughtered” by the demon Moloch: his symbol for the greed and materialism of the United States in the 1950’s. In conjunction with his displeasure with what he saw as the failure of the government to correct these abuses, he carried an idealized conception of “the lost America of love” based on his readings in nineteenth century American literature, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau in particular, and reinforced by the political and social idealism of contemporaries such as Kerouac, Snyder, and McClure.

Ginsberg brought all these concerns together when he began to compose “Howl.” However, while the social and political elements of the poem were immediately apparent, the careful structural arrangements were not. Ginsberg found it necessary to explain his intentions in a series of notes and letters, emphasizing his desire to use Whitman’s long line “to build up large organic structures” and his realization that he did not have to satisfy anyone’s concept of what a poem should be, but could follow his “romantic inspiration” and simply write as he wished, “without fear.” Using what he called his “Hebraic- Melvillian bardic breath”—a rhythmic pattern similar to the cadences of the Old Testament as employed by Herman Melville—Ginsberg wrote a three-part prophetic elegy, which he described as a “huge sad comedy of wild phrasing.”

The first part of “Howl” is a long catalog of the activities of the “angelheaded hipsters” who were his contemporaries. Calling the bohemian underground of outcasts, outlaws, rebels, mystics, sexual deviants, junkies, and other misfits “the best minds of my generation”—a judgment that still rankles many social critics—Ginsberg produced image after image of the antics of “remarkable lamblike youths” in pursuit of cosmic enlightenment, “the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.” Because the larger American society had offered them little support, Ginsberg summarized their efforts by declaring that these people had been “destroyed by madness.” The long lines, most beginning with the word “who” (which was used “as a base to keep measure, return to and take off from again”), create a composite portrait that pulses with energy and excitement. Ginsberg is not only lamenting the destruction—or self-destruction—of his friends and acquaintances, but also celebrating their wild flights of imagination, their ecstatic illuminations, and their rapturous adventures. His typical line, or breath unit, communicates the awesome power of the experiences he describes along with their potential for danger. Ginsberg believed that by the end of the first section he had expressed what he believed “true to eternity” and had reconstituted “the data of celestial experience.”

Part 2 of the poem “names the monster of mental consciousness that preys” on the people he admires. The fear and tension of the Cold War, stirred by materialistic greed and what Ginsberg later called “lacklove,” are symbolized by a demon he calls Moloch, after the Canaanite god that required human sacrifice. With the name Moloch as a kind of “base repetition” and destructive attributes described in a string of lines beginning with “whose,” the second part of the poem reaches a kind of crescendo of chaos in which an anarchic vision of frenzy and disruption engulfs the world.

In part 3, “a litany of affirmation,” Ginsberg addresses himself to Solomon, a poet he knew from the Psychiatric Institute; he holds up Solomon as a kind of emblem of the victim-heroes he has been describing. The pattern here is based on the statement- counterstatement form of Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno (1939; as Rejoice in the Lamb , 1954), and Ginsberg envisioned it as pyramidal, “with a graduated longer response to the fixed base.” Affirming his allegiance to Solomon (and everyone like him), Ginsberg begins each breath unit with the phrase “I’m with you in Rockland” followed by “where . . .” and an exposition of strange or unorthodox behavior that has been labeled “madness” but that to the poet is actually a form of creative sanity. The poem concludes with a vision of Ginsberg and Solomon together on a journey to an America that transcends Moloch and madness and offers utopian possibilities of love and “true mental regularity.”

During the year that “Howl” was written, Ginsberg wondered whether he might use the same long line in a “short quiet lyrical poem.” The result was a poignant tribute to his “old courage teacher,” Whitman, which he called “A Supermarket in California,” and a meditation on the bounty of nature, “A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley.” He continued to work with his long-breath line in larger compositions as well, most notably the poem “America,” which has been accurately described by Charles Molesworth as “a gem of poly vocal satire and miscreant complaint.” This poem gave Ginsberg the opportunity to exercise his exuberant sense of humor and good-natured view of himself in a mock-ironic address to his country. The claim “It occurs to me that I am America” is meant to be taken as a whimsical wish made in self-deprecating modesty, but Ginsberg’s growing popularity through the last decades of the century cast it as prophetic as well.

Naomi Ginsberg died in 1956 after several harrowing episodes at home and in mental institutions, and she was not accorded a traditional orthodox funeral because a minyan (a complement of ten men to serve as witnesses) could not be found. Ginsberg was troubled by thoughts of his mother’s suffering and tormented by uncertainty concerning his own role as sometime caregiver for her. Brooding over his tangled feelings, he spent a night listening to jazz, ingesting marijuana and methamphetamine, and reading passages from an old bar mitzvah book. Then, at dawn, he walked the streets of the lower East Side in Manhattan, where many Jewish immigrant families had settled. A tangle of images and emotions rushed through his mind, organized now by the rhythms of ancient Hebrew prayers and chants. The poem that took shape in his mind was his own version of the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish service for the dead that had been denied to his mother. As it was formed in an initial burst of energy, he saw its goal as a celebration of her memory and a prayer for her soul’s serenity, an attempt to confront his own fears about death, and ultimately, an attempt to come to terms with his relationship to his mother. “Kaddish” begins in an elegiac mood, “Strange now to think of you gone,” and proceeds as both an elegy and a kind of dual biography. Details from Ginsberg’s childhood begin to take on a sinister aspect when viewed from the perspective of an adult with a tragic sense of existence. The course of his life’s journey from early youth and full parental love to the threshold of middle age is paralleled by Naomi’s life as it advances from late youth toward a decline into paranoia and madness. Ginsberg recalls his mother “teaching school, laughing with idiots, the backward classes—her Russian speciality,” then sees her in agony “one night, sudden attack . . . left retching on the tile floor.” The juxtaposition of images ranging over many years reminds him of his own mortality, compelling him to probe his subconscious mind to face some of the fears that he has suppressed about his mother’s madness. The first part of the poem concludes as the poet realizes that he will never find any peace until he is able to “cut through—to talk to you—” and finally to write her true history.

The central incident of the second section is a bus trip the twelve-year-old Ginsberg took with his mother to a clinic. The confusion and unpredictability of his mother’s behavior forced him to assume an adult’s role, for which he was not prepared. For the first time, he realizes that this moment marked the real end of childhood and introduced him to a universe of chaos and absurdity. As the narrative develops, the emergence of a nascent artistic consciousness, poetic perception, and political idealism is presented against a panorama of life in the United States in the late 1930’s. Realizing that his growth into the poet who is revealing this psychic history is closely intertwined with his mother’s decline, Ginsberg faces his fear that he was drawing his newfound strength from her as she failed. As the section concludes, he squarely confronts his mother’s illness, rendering her madness in disjointed scraps of conversation while using blunt physical detail as a means of showing the body’s collapse: an effective analogue for her simultaneous mental disorder. There is a daunting authenticity to these details, as Ginsberg speaks with utter candor about the most intimate and unpleasant subjects (a method he also employs in later poems about sexual contacts), confirming his determination to bury nothing in memory.

This frankness fuses Ginsberg’s recollections into a mood of great sympathy; he is moved to prayer, asking divine intervention to ease his mother’s suffering. Here he introduces the actual Hebrew words of the Kaddish, the formal service that had been denied his mother because of a technicality. The poet’s contribution is not only to create an appropriate setting for the ancient ritual but also to offer a testament to his mother’s most admirable qualities. As the second section ends, Ginsberg sets the power of poetic language to celebrate beauty against the pain of his mother’s last days. Returning to the elegiac mode (after Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais”), Ginsberg has a last vision of his mother days before her final stroke, associated with sunlight and giving her son advice that concludes, “Love,/ your mother,” which he acknowledges with his own tribute, “which is Naomi.”

The last part of the poem, “Hymmnn,” is divided into four sections. The first is a prayer for God’s blessing for his mother (and for all people); the second is a recitation of some of the circumstances of her life; the third is a catalog of characteristics that seem surreal and random but coalesce toward the portrait he is producing by composite images; and the last part is “another variation of the litany form,” ending the poem in a flow of “pure emotive sound” in which the words “Lord lord lord,” as if beseeching, alternate with the words “caw caw caw,” as if exclaiming in ecstasy.

By resisting almost all the conventional approaches to the loaded subject of motherhood, Ginsberg has avoided sentimentality and reached a depth of feeling that is overwhelming, even if the reader’s experience is nothing like the poet’s. The universality of the relationship is established by its particulars, the sublimity of the relationship by the revelation of the poet’s enduring love and empathy.

The publication of “Kaddish” ended the initial phase of Ginsberg’s writing life. “Howl” is a declaration of poetic intention, while “Kaddish” is a confession of personal necessity. With these two long, powerful works, Ginsberg completed the educational process of his youth and was ready to use his craft as a confident, mature artist. His range in the early 1960’s included the hilarious “I Am a Victim of Telephone,” which debunked his increasing celebrity, the gleeful jeremiad “Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber,” the generously compassionate “Who Be Kind To,” and the effusive lyric “Why Is God Love, Jack?”Atribute to his mentor, “Death News,” describes his thoughts on learning of Williams’s demise.

Kral Majales

In 1965, after he had been invited to Cuba and Czechoslovakia, Ginsberg was expelled from each country for his bold condemnation of each nation’s policies. In Prague, he had been selected by students (including young Václav Havel) as Kral Majales (king of May), an ancient European honor that has lasted through centuries of upheaval. In the poem “Kral Majales”—published accompanied by positive and negative silhouettes of the smiling poet, naked except for tennis shoes and sporting three hands bearing finger cymbals, against a phallic symbol—he juxtaposed communist and capitalist societies at their most dreary and destructive to the life-enhancing properties of the symbolic May King: a figure of life, love, art, and enlightenment. The first part of the poem is marked by discouragement, anger, and sorrow mixed with comic resignation to show the dead end reached by governments run by a small clique of rulers. However, the heart of the poem, a list of all the attributes that he brings to the position of Kral Majales, is an exuberant explosion of joy, mirth, and confidence in the rising generation of the mid-1960’s. Written before the full weight of the debacle in Vietnam had been felt and before the string of assassinations that rocked the United States took place, Ginsberg reveled in the growth of what he thought was a revolutionary movement toward a utopian society. His chant of praise for the foundations of a counterculture celebrates “the power of sexual youth,” productive, fulfilling work (“industry in eloquence”), honest acceptance of the body (“long hair of Adam”), the vitality of art (“old Human poesy”), and the ecumenical spirit of religious pluralism that he incarnates: “I am of Slavic parentage and Buddhist Jew/ who worships the Sacred Heart of Christ the blue body of Krishna the straight back of Ramthe beads of Chango.” In a demonstration of rhythmic power, the poem builds until it tells of the poet’s literal descent to earth from the airplane he took to London after his expulsion. Arriving at “Albion’s airfield” with the exultation of creative energy still vibrating through his mind and body, he proudly presents (to the reader or listener) the poem he has just written “on a jet seat in mid Heaven.” The immediacy of the ending keeps the occasion fresh in the poet’s memory and alive forever in the rhythms and images of his art.

Witchita Vortex Sutra

The Prague Spring that was to flourish temporarily in events such as the 1965 May Festival was crushed by Soviet tanks in 1968. By then, the United States had become fully involved in the war in Southeast Asia, and Ginsberg had replaced some of his optimism about change with an anger that recalled the mood of the Moloch section of “Howl.” In 1966, he was in Kansas to read poetry, and this trip to the heartland of the United States became the occasion for a poem that is close to an epic of American life as the country was being torn apart. “Witchita Vortex Sutra,” one of Ginsberg’s longest poems, combines elements of American mythological history, personal psychic exploration, multicultural interaction, and prophetic incantation. The poem is sustained by a twin vision of the United States: the submerged but still vital American spirit that inspired Whitman and the contemporary American realities by which “many another has suffered death and madness/ in the Vortex.” A sense of a betrayal informs the narrative, and the poet is involved in a search for the cause and the cure, ultimately (and typically) discovering that only art can rescue the blighted land.

The first part of the poem depicts Kansas as the seat of American innocence, where the spirit of transcendental idealism is still relatively untouched by American actions in Vietnam. Whitman’s dream of an open country and worthy citizens seems to remain alive, but events from the outside have begun to reach even this sheltered place. The land of Abraham Lincoln, Vachel Lindsay, William Jennings Bryan, and other American idealists is being ruined by the actions of a rogue “government” out of touch with the spirit of the nation. The poet attempts to understand why this is happening and what consequences it has for him, for any artist. After this entrance into the poem’s geopolitical and psychic space, the second part presents, in a collage form akin to Ezra Pound’s Cantos (1925-1972), figures, numbers, names, and snatches of propaganda about the conflict in Vietnam. Following Pound’s proposal that a bad government corrupts a people by its misuse of language, Ginsberg begins an examination of the nature of language itself to try to determine how the lies and deceptions in “black language/ writ by machine” can be overcome by a “lonesome man in Kansas” who is “not afraid” and who can speak “with ecstatic language”: that is, the true language of human need, essential human reality. Calling on “all Powers of imagination,” Ginsberg acts as an artist in service to moral being, using all the poetic power, or versions of speech, that he has worked to master.

Ginsberg’s “ecstatic language” includes the lingo of the Far Eastern religions he has learned in his travels. To assist in exorcising the demons of theWest, he implores the gods of the East to merge their forces with those of the new deities of the West, whose incarnation he finds in such American mavericks as the musician Dylan. He summons them as allies against the Puritan death-wish he locates in the fanaticism of unbending, selfrighteous zealots such as Kansas’s Carrie Nation, whose “angry smashing ax” began “a vortex of hatred” that eventually “defoliated the Mekong Delta.” Ginsberg has cast the language artist as the rescuer and visionary who can restore the heartland to its primal state as a land of promise and justice. In a testament to his faith in his craft, Ginsberg declares, “The war is over now”—which, in a poem that examines language in “its deceits, its degeneration” (as Charles Molesworth says), “is especially poignant being only language.”

The Fall of America

Other poems, such as “Bayonne Entering NYC,” further contributed to the mood of a collection titled The Fall of America, but Ginsberg was also turning again toward the personal. In poems such as “Wales Visitation,” a nature ode written in the spirit of the English Romantics, and “Bixby Canyon,” which is an American West Coast parallel, Ginsberg explores the possibilities of a personal pantheism, attempting to achieve a degree of cosmic transcendence to compensate for the disagreeable situation on earth. His loving remembrance for Beat poet Cassady, “On Neal’s Ashes,” is another expression of this elegiac inclination, which reaches a culmination in Mind Breaths.

https://literariness.org/2020/07/09/an-introduction-to-the-beat-poets/

Mind Breaths

“Mind Breaths,” the title poem of the collection Mind Breaths, is a meditation that gathers the long lines of what Ginsberg has called “a chain of strong-breath’d poems” into a series of modulations on the theme of the poet’s breath as an aspect of the wind-spirit of life. As he has often pointed out, Ginsberg believes that one of his most basic principles of organization is his ability to control the rhythms of a long line (“My breath is long”). In “Mind Breaths,” he develops the idea that the voice of the poet is a part of the “voice” of the cosmos—a variant on the ancient belief that the gods spoke directly through the poet. Ranging over the entire planet, Ginsberg gradually includes details from many of the world’s cultures, uniting nations in motive and design to achieve an encompassing ethos of universality. Beneath the fragmentation and strife of the world’s governments, the poet sees “a calm breath, a silent breath, a slow breath,” part of the fundamentally human universe that the artist wishes to inhabit.

Plutonian Ode

In the title poem of Plutonian Ode, Ginsberg offers another persuasive poetic argument to strengthen the “Mind-guard spirit” against the death wish that leads some to embrace “Radioactive Nemesis.” Recalling, once again, “Howl,” in which Moloch stands for the death-driven impulses of humankind gone mad with greed, Ginsberg surveys the history of nuclear experimentation. The poem is designed as a guide for “spiritual friends and teachers,” and the “mountain of Plutonian” is presented as the dark shadow-image of the life force that has energized the universe since “the beginning.” Addressing himself, as well, to the “heavy heavy Element awakened,” Ginsberg describes a force of “vaunted Mystery” against which he brings, as always, the “verse prophetic” to “wake space” itself. The poem is written to restore the power of mind (which is founded on spiritual enlightenment) to a civilization addicted to “horrific arm’d, Satanic industries”—an echo of Blake’s injunctions at the dawn of an era in which machinery has threatened human well-being.

The tranquility of such reveries in poems such as “Mind Breaths” did not replace Ginsberg’s anger at the social system but operated more as a condition of recovery or place of restoration, so that the poet could venture back into the political arena and chant, “Birdbrain is the ultimate product of Capitalism/ Birdbrain chief bureaucrat of Russia.” In the poem “Birdbrain,” published in Collected Poems, 1947-1980, Ginsberg castigates the idiocy of organizations everywhere. His humor balances his anger, but there is an implication that neither humor nor anger will be sufficient against the forces of “Birdbrain [who] is Pope, Premier, President, Commissar, Chairman, Senator!” In spite of his decades of experience as a political activist, Ginsberg never let his discouragement overcome his sense of civic responsibility. The publication of Collected Poems, 1947-1980 secured Ginsberg’s reputation as one of the leading writers of late twentieth century American literature.

White Shroud

The appearance in 1986 of White Shroud revived Ginsberg’s political orations; in this work, he identifies the demons of contemporary American life as he sees them: “yes I glimpse CIA’s spooky dope deal vanity.” There is a discernible sense of time’s passage in “White Shroud,” which is a kind of postscript to “Kaddish.” Once again, Ginsberg recollects the pain of his family relationships: His difficulties in dealing with aging, irascible relatives merges with his responsibility to care for those who have loved him, and his feeling for modern America fuse with his memories of the Old Left past of his immigrant family. The poem tells how Ginsberg, in search of an apartment, finds himself in the Bronx neighborhood where his family once lived. There he meets the shade of his mother, still berating him for having abandoned her, but now offering him a home as well. There is a form of comfort for the poet in his dream of returning to an older New York to live with his family, a return to the “lost America,” the mythic America that has inspired millions of American dreams.

Cosmopolitan Greetings

Ginsberg in the 1990’s expressed his introspective side with lyric sadness in such poems as “Personals Ad” (from Cosmopolitan Greetings ), in which he communicates his quest for a “. . . companion protector friend/ young lover w/empty compassionate soul” to help him live “in New York alone with the Alone.” With the advent of his seventh decade, he might have settled for a kind of comfortable celebrity, offering the substance of his literary and social experiences to students at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and to countless admirers on reading tours throughout the nation. Instead, he accepted his position as the primary proponent and spokesperson for his fellow artists of the Beat generation, and he continued to write with the invention and vigor that had marked his work from its inception. Acknowledging his perspective as a “poet professor in autumn years” in “Personals Ad,” Ginsberg remains highly conscious of “. . . the body/ where I was born” (from “Song,” in Howl, and Other Poems ), but his focus is now on the inescapable consequences of time’s passage on that body in poems that register the anxieties of an aging man trying to assess his own role in the cultural and historical patterns of his era.

The exuberance and the antic humor that have always been a feature of Ginsberg’s poetry of sexual candor remain, but there is a modulation in tone and mood toward the rueful and contemplative. Similarly, poems presenting strong positions about social and governmental policies often refer to earlier works on related subjects, as if adding links to a chain of historical commentaries. Although few of Ginsberg’s poems are as individually distinctive as the “strong-breath’d poems” such as “Howl,” “Kaddish,” or “Witchita Vortex Sutra,” which Ginsberg calls “peaks of inspiration,” Ginsberg’s utilization of a characteristic powerful rhythmic base figure drives poems such as

“Improvisation in Beijing.” “On Cremation of Chogyam Trungpa, Vidadhara,” “Get It,” and “Graphic Winces” offer statements that are reflections of fundamental positions that Ginsberg has been developing throughout his work. “Improvisation in Beijing,” the opening poem, is a poetic credo in the form of an expression of artistic ambition. Using the phrase “I write poetry . . .” to launch each line, Ginsberg juxtaposes ideas, images, data, and assertion in a flux of energetic intent, his life’s experiences revealing the desire and urgency of his calling. Ginsberg has gathered his responses to requests for his sources of inspiration: from the explicitly personal “I write poetry to make accurate picture my own mind” to the overtly political “. . . Wild West destroys new grass & erosion creates deserts” to the culturally connected “I write poetry because I listened to black Blues on 1939 radio, Leadbelly andMaRainey” to the aesthetically ambitious in the concluding line, “I write poetry because it’s the best way to say everything in mind with 6 minutes or a lifetime.”

“On Cremation of Chogyam Trungpa, Vidadhara,” a tribute to a spiritual guide, reverses the structural thrust of “Improvisation in Beijing” so that the lines beginning “I noticed the . . .” spiral inward toward a composite portrait built by “minute particulars,” Ginsberg’s term for Williams’s injunction “No ideas but in things.” Ginsberg concentrates on specifics in tightly wound lines that present observations of an extremely aware, actively thoughtful participant: “I noticed the grass, I noticed the hills, I noticed the highways,/ I noticed the dirt road, I noticed the cars in the parking lot.” Eventually, the poet’s inclusion of more personal details reveals his deep involvement in the occasion, demonstrating his ability to internalize his guide’s teaching. The poem concludes with a summation of the event’s impact, a fusion of awe, delight, and wonder joining the mundane with the cosmic. Typically at this time in his life, Ginsberg acts from a classic poetic position, speaking as the recorder who sees, understands, and appreciates the significance of important events and who can find language adequate for their expression.

The collection, like Ginsberg’s other major volumes, contains many poems that are not meant to be either especially serious or particularly profound. These works include poems written to a musical notation (“C.I.A. Dope Calypso”), poetic lines cast in speech bubbles in a “Deadline Dragon Comix” strip, three pages of what are called “American Sentences” (which are, in effect, a version of haiku), and a new set of verses to the old political anthem, “The Internationale,” in which Ginsberg pays homage to the dreams of a social republic of justice while parodying various manifestations of self-important propagandists and salvationists.

The poems in the volume that show Ginsberg at his most effective, however, occur in two modes. Ever since his tribute to Whitman, “A Supermarket in California,” Ginsberg has used the lyric mode as a means of conveying his deeply romantic vision of an idealized existence set in opposition to the social disasters he has resisted. These are poems of appreciation and gratitude, celebrating the things of the world that bring delight. “To Jacob Rabinowitz” is a letter of thanks for a translation of Catullus. “Fun House Antique Store” conveys the poet’s astonishment at finding a “country antique store, an/ oldfashioned house” on the road to “see our lawyer in D.C.” The lovingly evoked intricate furnishings of the store suggest something human that is absent in “the postmodern Capital.” Both of these poems sustain a mood of exultation crucial to a lyric.

The other mode that Ginsberg employs is a familiar one. Even since he described himself as “Rotting Ginsberg” in “Mescaline” (1959), Ginsberg has emphasized physical sensation and the extremes of sensory response as means for understanding artistic consciousness, a mind-body linkage. Some of the most despairing lines Ginsberg has written appear in these poems— understandable considering the poet’s ailments, including the first manifestations of liver cancer, which Ginsberg endured for years before his death. Nonetheless, the bright spirit that animates Ginsberg’s work throughout is present as a counterthrust.

“In the Benjo,” which has been placed at the close of the collection, expresses Ginsberg’s appreciation for Snyder’s lessons in transcendent wisdom and epitomizes a pattern of affirmation that is present in poems that resist the ravages of physical decline (“Return to Kral Majales”), the loss of friends (“Visiting Father & Friends”), the sorry state of the world (“You Don’t Know It”), and the fraudulent nature of so-called leaders (“Elephant in the Meditation Hall”). In these poems, as in many in earlier collections, Ginsberg is conveying the spirit of an artistic age that he helped shape and that his work exemplifies. As Snyder said in tribute, “Allen Ginsberg showed that poetry could speak to our moment, our political concerns, our hopes and fears, and in the grandest style. He broke that open for all of us.”

Collected Poems, 1947-1997

Collected Poems, 1947-1997 is a massive chronological compilation—combining Collected Poems, 1947-1980, White Shroud, Cosmopolitan Greetings, and Death and Fame —that gathers virtually every poem Ginsberg ever wrote, from his first published effort, “In Society” (1947), to his last written work, “Things I’ll Not Do (Nostalgia),” finished just days before he died. The volume incorporates drawings, photographs, sheet music, calligraphy, notes, acknowledgments, introductions, appendixes, and all the other addenda included in the previous publications that collectively reveal Ginsberg’s far-reaching interests and his enormous skill. Ginsberg’s entire body of work portrays the poet’s growth as a craftsperson, a seeker of truth, a spokesperson for his generation, and ultimately as a human being.

Even in his earliest work, “In Society”—which alludes to his homosexuality and includes epithets that polite society would deem vulgar—Ginsberg demonstrated that no subject was unworthy of consideration, no phrase taboo. Though his topics from the beginning were sometimes controversial, the format of his poems was still restrained and formal because he had not yet rejected his father’s traditionalist ways. Such poems as “Two Sonnets” (1948), with their conventional fourteen-line structures and rhyme schemes, would not look out of place in collections of William Shakespeare or Edmund Spenser. Indeed, much of Ginsberg’s early work (in the first section, “Empty Mirror: Gates of Wrath, 1947-1952”) constitutes rhyming verse as the poet experimented with meter, line length, and language in his fledgling efforts to find a unique voice. Subject matter, too, is fairly traditional: love poems, contemplation of nature, and musings on life, death and religion. With few exceptions, the titles of these poems—”A Very Dove,” “Vision 1948,” “Refrain,” “A Western Ballad,” “The Shrouded Stranger,” “This Is About Death,” “Sunset,” “Ode to the Setting Sun”— give little indication of Ginsberg’s pixie-like humor or his coming break with literary convention.

Part 2 of the collection (“The Green Automobile, 1953-1954”) provides the first inkling that Ginsberg was beginning to discover the appropriate form of expression for ideas too large to be otherwise contained. The long poem “Siesta in Xbalba and Return to the States,” an impressionistic work based on Ginsberg’s travels in Mexico, sets the stage for the angry, dynamic, no-holds-barred compositions that would follow and characterize the bulk of his poetic career. The main part of Ginsberg’s career is collected in eleven sections: “Howl, Before and After: San Francisco Bay Area (1955-1956),” “Reality Sandwiches: Europe! Europe!” (1957-1959),” “Kaddish and Related Poems (1959-1960),” “Planet News: To Europe and Asia (1961-1963),” “King of May: America to Europe (1963-1965),” “The Fall of America (1965-1971),” “Mind Breaths All over the Place (1972-1977),” “Plutonian Ode (1977-1980),” “White Shroud: Poems, 1980-1985,” “Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems, 1986-1992,” and “Death and Fame: Poems, 1993-1997.”

At the very end of his life, as he lay dying, Ginsberg, like someone reviewing the span of his existence in clarifying flashes, seemed to return full circle to where he had begun. Brief bursts of inspiration, such as “American Sentences,” are whimsical, epigram- like in nature. Other final thoughts, including “Sky Words,” “Scatological Observations,” “My Team Is Red Hot,” “Starry Rhymes,” “Thirty State Bummers,” and “Bop Sh’bam,” are almost childlike ditties in conventional verse forms such as rhyming couplets and quatrains.

Collected Poems, 1947-1997 captures the essence of an artist who, like Whitman before him, exploded the notion of what poetry could or should be. Mostly, though, it lays bare the mind and soul of an individual of consummate craft, a person of fierce intelligence and insatiable curiosity, a human blessed with playful wit, undying optimism, all-encompassing compassion and unstinting generosity for other people.

Major Works Nonfiction: Indian Journals, 1963; The Yage Letters, 1963 (with William Burroughs); Indian Journals, March 1962-May 1963: Notebooks, Diary, Blank Pages, Writings, 1970; Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness, 1974; Gay Sunshine Interview, 1974; Visions of the Great Rememberer, 1974; To Eberhart from Ginsberg, 1976; As Ever: The Collected Correspondence of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, 1977; Journals: Early Fifties, Early Sixties, 1977, 1992; Composed on the Tongue: Literary Conversations, 1967-1977, 1980; Allen Ginsberg Photographs, 1990; Snapshot Poetics: A Photographic Memoir of the Beat Era, 1993; Journals Mid-Fifties, 1954-1958, 1995; Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays, 1952-1995, 2000; Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son, 2001 (with Louis Ginsberg); Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958-1996, 2001; The Letters of Allen Ginsberg, 2008 (Bill Morgan, editor); The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, 2009 (Morgan, editor). Edited text: Poems for the Nation: A Collection of Contemporary Political Poems, 2000. Miscellaneous: Beat Legacy, Connections, Influences: Poems and Letters by Allen Ginsberg, 1994; The Book of Matyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems, 1937-1952, 2006.

Bibliography Baker, Deborah. A Blue Hand: The Tragicomic, Mind-Altering Odyssey of Allen Ginsberg, a Holy Fool, a Lost Muse, a Dharma Bum, and His Prickly Bride in India. New York: Penguin, 2009. Edwards, Susan. The Wild West Wind: Remembering Allen Ginsberg. Boulder, Colo.: Baksun Books, 2001. Felver, Christopher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and David Shapiro. The Late Great Allen Ginsberg: A Photo Biography. New York: Running Press, 2003. Ginsberg, Allen. Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript, and Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Presentation. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Landas, John. The Bop Apocalypse. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Miles, Barry. The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1958-1963. New York: Grove Press, 2000. Morgan, Bill. I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. New York: Viking Press, 2006. Podhoretz, Norman. Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and NormanMailer. New York: Encounter Books, 2000. Raskin, Jonah. American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and the Making of the Beat Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Trigillo, Tony. Allen Ginsberg’s Buddhist Poetics. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007.

The Poets Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

About the Poet

A disciple of American liberties found in the writings of Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Irwin Allen Ginsberg was a latter-day prophet of freedom. Unconventional in life and art, he was a gay anarchist and Jew-turned-Buddhist who flaunted eccentricity as a badge of distinction. He was a dissenter and political spokesman for leftists, union organizers, and proponents of unfettered sex and psychedelic drugs, and he pursued the ideal and visionary along with the creative in pop culture.

Apart from the wealth of analysis attached to his work, Ginsberg's literary doctrine was simple and personal: Poetry equals sanity. His blunt sexuality and unconventional ravings challenged notions of propriety and decorum left over from seventeenth-century puritanism, compounded by eighteenth-century conservatism and nineteenth-century prudery. Spurned by purists as a drugged-out degenerate, but admired by contemporaries as a libertarian crusader, he earned respect from a sprinkling of the literary in-crowd, including poet William Carlos Williams.

Ginsberg was born of a liberal Jewish working-class background on June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, and reared in Paterson. His Russian immigrant parents, Naomi Levy and high school English teacher Louis Ginsberg, conditioned him to buck conservative trends by supporting spontaneous expression, radical Communism, and nudity. He graduated from Paterson High School in 1943.

Labeled a gay drug experimenter while completing a B.A. at Columbia University, Ginsberg resided with fellow free spirits in Harlem. To accentuate his mounting rebellion, he studied Franz Kafka and William Blake and hung out at the West End Café, one of the first locations connected with the birth of the Beat movement. During his erratic college years, he was suspended for two semesters for scrawling obscene words on his dorm room window and allowing Jack Kerouac to stay as unofficial roommate.

After working as a welder, dishwasher, and deckhand, Ginsberg served the New York World Telegram as a copy boy and Newsweek as a reviewer. During his tenure in San Francisco, he discovered congenial artists in North Beach, which thrived at the end of the McCarthy era in outrageous, anticonservative artistic bliss. Acknowledged with a letter of introduction from William Carlos Williams, he launched the Beat movement in 1955 at his "Happy Apocalypse," a public reading of "Howl," an apocalyptic diatribe against modern corruption. City Lights Bookshop published Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (1956), which effectively channeled his rage into self-conscious experimental verse. The volume's controversial content preceded his arrest on an obscenity charge against publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who, in 1957, weathered a highly publicized trial and acquittal.

Ginsberg did not limit himself to the California scene. He taught at the University of British Columbia, appeared in twenty movies, formed a lifetime relationship with mate Peter Orlovsky, and recited verse in the British Isles, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, India, Peru, and Chile. During his residency in Greenwich Village, New York, he shared a 7th Street apartment with Kerouac and William Burroughs while completing Kaddish and Other Poems (1961), a verse biography of his mother. Ginsberg's correspondence with Burroughs appeared as The Yage Letters (1963). He drew police surveillance while picketing the Vietnam War in New York and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and authorities ejected him from Cuba in 1965 for protesting antigay treatment at state schools. The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1973), a lament for the poet's deceased mother, won a National Book Award.

While living on the ultraliberal university campus at Berkeley, California, Ginsberg published First Blues: Rags, Ballads, & Harmonium Songs, 1971-1974 (1975). As Ever (1977) reprises his letters to fellow Beat poet Neal Cassady. His Journals Early Fifties Early Sixties (1977) covers travels in Greece and reveals an anti-establishment bent, which he celebrated with poetry readings at the Second Bisbee Poetry Festival in Bisbee, Arizona, in 1980. In a wacky but sincerely rebellious spirit, he cofounded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado, where he codirected curriculum and taught poetry each summer.

Following Ginsberg's death on April 15, 1997, his funeral at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco turned into a media circus. Old friends and admirers exulted that the poet would have loved it.

Chief Works

Howl, Ginsberg's Dantean masterwork, dominated the poet's canon to his last years and formed a catechism for young bohemians in search of a mentor and mythmaker. In old age, he wished aloud that he had the vigor to start again and denounce more recent government repression with Howl II. A dynamic sermon composed in Old Testament rhythms, rich active verbs, explicit nouns, and ordinary speech, the original Howl condemns authoritarians for forcing the fringe, later called beatniks or hippies, into subhumanity. He anchored his furor on a shared experience with Carl Solomon, whom he met while both were receiving insulin shock treatment for mental illness at Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institution. The shock factor of astonishing juxtapositions — for example, the hungry figure plunging under a meat truck in search of an egg; boxcar bums traveling toward "grandfather night"; the use of shocking terms like cunt, balls, and gyzym; and personal memories of a sexual relationship with N. D. [Neal Cassady] — precipitated an investigation by San Francisco police, who censored the work for obscenity.

To control wave on wave of painful memories, a catalog of evils, and disdainful prophecy, Ginsberg tames elongated lines with sight mechanisms, primarily parallel entries preceded by repetitions of the pronoun "who." The list of complaints cites unrelated places — Atlantic City, Newark, Baltimore, Los Alamos — and intersperses jubilant acts of straight and gay sex with state coercion, alienation, despair, suicide, and expatriation. His exaggerations of injustice weave a black-on-white tapestry of suppression by which "the absolute heart of the poem of life [is] butchered out of their own bodies." Like a challenge, the innovative verve of Howl presses into the reader's face a new poetic style either exciting or exasperating, depending on the point of view.

In less frenzied style, Ginsberg employs the same free verse for "A Supermarket in California," a satire on American plenty. The poem opens with an address to his literary idol and spiritual mentor, Walt Whitman. Despairing for the haven that Whitman prophesied, Ginsberg's apostrophe closes on the "black waters of Lethe," a romantic cliché for oblivion. Juxtaposing human shoppers among inanimate vegetables and fruit, the poet moves to a verse biography of Whitman, a solitary man obsessed by lust for young bag boys. Ginsberg idealizes his relationship with the nineteenth-century poet in images of artichoke tasting. Once out in the street with his dream companion, the poet makes a pun on "shade to shade," a vision of a ghost shadowed by trees along the sidewalk. Like Ginsberg, Whitman, a wartime medic, lived in difficult times as Union fought Confederate. The poem closes on the formidable "courage — teacher," whom the ferryman Charon abandons on a smoking bank of the underworld.

Ginsberg pursues his signature tumbling style in "Sunflower Sutra," a pseudo-religious poem written in 1956 following a vision of William Blake reciting "Ah! Sunflower." The text, which reads with the honesty of a diary entry, opens on somber lament. Alongside friend Kerouac, the grieving poet obsesses over polluted streams devoid of fish and rusted machinery until Jack points out one hopeful entity, a sunflower. In technically powerful lines enlivened with similes, the poet summarizes America's downhill slide. In alliterated monosyllables, he decries "the smut and smog and smoke" of trains. Dramatically, powerfully, the poem rises to an intense melancholy in line 9: "O my soul, I loved you then."

Ginsberg seems overwhelmed with the violation of technology, which he characterizes as "artificial worse-than-dirt." Continuing in a flood of alliterated pairings, he humanizes the wreckage around him in slang anatomical terms. With mannered exaggeration, he differentiates sunflower from locomotive, humorously warning, "forget me not!" The glorified sunflower becomes the cavalier's sword. Stuck in his belt, it arms the idealist, who lectures "anyone who'll listen." In the final line of the vision, which he sets apart by a dash, the poet embraces the internal sunflower beauty of self while rejecting the outer shame that fouls society.

"America," a self-conscious national evaluation composed in the same period, speaks with the ringing self-righteousness of the inquisitor. The pace is deliberately slow, the tone brow-beating, almost intimidating. Less like oratory than a nose-to-nose confrontation, the poem departs from the long-lined lyricism of "Sunflower Sutra" with harshly end-stopped, verbal accusations against the poet's native land. In snarly discontent, he badgers America like a parent scolding a child, blaming the nation for ignoring want and war and for forcing Ginsberg to "want to be a saint." His insistence on run-on sentences creates a peevish atmosphere, which suits a boyish confession, "I smoke marijuana every chance I get."

The second stave jerks at the lapels of Ginsberg's homeland with a curt, "I'm addressing you." In rebellion against the vision of America published in Time magazine, the poet makes his discovery, "It occurs to me that I am America." By pairing self and country, the speaker considers national enemies his personal foes. To remind the nation of its blunted purpose, he trivializes contemporary concerns over marijuana, sexuality, and censorship in the opening line of the third stave, which accuses America of fostering a "silly mood."

The poem champions the underdog by name, ordering America to stop tormenting a labor agitator and two radicals unjustly accused of murder. Mixed in are Spanish Loyalists and the racially charged cases of the Scottsboro boys, two celebrated cases that Americans abandoned. With a brief return to sentence overload, the poet spews out childhood memories of Communist cell meetings and abandons straightforward rhetoric for the comic Old West Indian dialect from such television series as "The Lone Ranger." In a final dedication to task, the speaker declares himself unfit mentally, morally, and physically for anything but the people's poetry. Phrasing his intent in cliché, he pledges with mock-seriousness to put his "queer shoulder to the wheel."

Discussion and Research Topics

1. Discuss the role of authoritarian power in Howl. How does Ginsberg buck authority in the work?

2. In Howl, Ginsberg cites various cities spread throughout the United States. What role do these cities play in the work? Is Ginsberg's vision an urbanized vision, or does it encompass rural settings as well?

3. Write an essay in which you discuss whether or not the images in Howl are obscene. If the work were written today, would the government's reaction to it be different? Why or why not?

4. Contrast Ginsberg's pessimism in Howl with Hart Crane's ecstatic vision of America's greatness in The Bridge.

5. Contrast Ginsberg's portrait "To Aunt Rose" with the lyric biography of Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah.

6. Contrast the speaker of "America" with the speaker of Howl. Is one speaker more pessimistic than the other? If so, which speaker, and why?

7. Chronicle the parallel growth of beat expression with imagism, impressionism, and modern verse.

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Allen Ginsberg's Poetry

By allen ginsberg, allen ginsberg's poetry summary and analysis of "america".

" America " was written in 1956 during Ginsberg's time in Berkeley, California and was included in the original publication of "Howl and Other Poems." “America” was one of the first widely read literary statements of political unrest in the post-World War II United States. Themes from the decade’s previous wars are prominent such as the nuclear bomb or Asian foreign policy, yet the poem also seems prescient in its depiction of national racial unrest and the fight with communism that would characterize the Cold War foreign policy positions of the United States in the second half of the 20th century. Ginsberg was always one of the most politically active members of the Beat Poets and “America” is both an introduction to Ginsberg’s political thought as well as a broad representation of views he would hold throughout his life.

Like "Howl," the poem displays the irregular meter and structure that was to be a hallmark of Ginsberg's poetry. The poem is filled with cultural and political references as well as references to incidents and events in Ginsberg's own life as well as the lives of his friends and fellow Beat writers. Ginsberg used the "long line" as his creative foundation, experimenting and riffing on rhythm and meter in one long line that would be "all held together within the elastic of the breath...."

Ginsberg relates the poem to music, saying that the key to understanding the structure of the poem is "in the jazz choruses...." Sentences often run on without punctuation and the poem skips from subject to subject with little relation to each other. As in jazz, the point that Ginsberg hoped to get across was not narrative or beauty but spontaneity, human expression, and reaction. A persons emotion was to rise and build just as the long lines themselves built upon the emotion contained within.

The stanzas of the poem are also irregular and spontaneous. The first stanza is sixteen lines, the second and third both twelve, the fourth and fifth both ten. The final stanza is an amalgamation of rhythms and stream of consciousness writing. Ginsberg shifts in the poem from talking to America like a jilted friend or lover, to discovering that much of himself is America, and finally moving towards ridiculing and taunting this personified America for its militaristic culture, its vapid media, and its paranoid politics. Like other Ginsberg poems, the structure is really meant to be heard rather than read. In reading the poem aloud one better understands the conversational nature of the poem.

Lines 1 - 16

The poem's first stanza is somewhat of an introduction that sets the time and context for the poem. The first line sets an exhausted and depressed mood for the poem. Ginsberg expresses his own hopelessness that his life or work, or anyone's life, would mean anything within a culture of censorship and oppression. He laments the cultural poverty of the time, equating it to only a few dollars and cents, and finds that he is not even able to be himself in such a culture.

The following lines of the poem start Ginsberg's conversation with this personified America. He is partly dissatisfied with the militarism of the country and he tells America to "go fuck yourself with your atom bomb" (5). He wants to stop the conversation before it even starts, making excuses that he doesn't want to be bothered with such a conversation (ignoring that he was the one who started it) and declaring that he won't write until "I'm in my right mind" (7). But as he noted before, he will never be in his right mind. He cannot stand his mind.

The stanza then turns into a kind of angry lament. These lines make America seem like a lost lover, someone that Ginsberg once loved and saw great promise and potential in; it was a potential for salvation. Ginsberg is perhaps remembering the great promise that America offered his own family as immigrant to the land. He asks when America will once again become the land that it once promised to be. When will it become "angelic" (8), when will it see the death and destruction that it has caused, when will it understand that its own political oppression is greater than the political oppression of the "Trotskyites" (communists) that it denounces and goes to war with (11)? Ginsberg laments that the libraries of America, representing the potential of free information and free expression, are "full of tears" (12), and he denounces the corporatism of American life symbolized by "the supermarket" and how those with "good looks" are given easy entry into American wealth (15-16).

Lines 17-28

The second stanza continues the back and forth argument that Ginsberg is having with the personified country. He begins with a tone of reconciliation, trying to find commonality amongst himself and his country. He writes that it is "you and I who are perfect" and insinuates that the longing for the "next world" is pointless. One of the most poignant lines of the poem is line 19, when Ginsberg, speaking to his country like a lost lover, says that "You made me want to be a saint." This confession demonstrates the love Ginsberg once felt, and the hope and optimism he felt in his own earlier life. As a young man, influenced by his mother's Communist affiliations, Ginsberg felt that his first calling was to help workers and laborers as a labor lawyer. Even though his ambitions took him in a different direction - that of a poet instead of a lawyer - Ginsberg admits that he cannot "give up my obsession." It is an obsession with the promise of America, with the things that he once believe deeply in: justice, tolerance, freedom, and acceptance. This is patriotic optimism that Ginsberg writes about here, though as the rest of the poem attests, there has been a definite break in the relationship. Line 20 continues the theme of reconciliation. Ginsberg hopes that "There must be some other way to settle this argument." But this will be the last time that Ginsberg offers to reconcile with his country. As he noted in lines from the first stanza, he feels that, in a way, this conversation is pointless, though through the act of writing it he knows there must be some validity in it.

This stanza also sees Ginsberg offer themes of warning to his country. He asks if America is being "sinister" or if the country, through is artistic suppression and police-like state, is simply playing some kind of twisted practical joke on him and those like him. He tells America that "Burroughs is in Tangiers," a reference to William S. Burroughs ' time spent in Tangiers, Morrocco where he was in a kind of exile from the United States because of legal problems related to the transport of illegal drugs from Mexico. Ginsberg, for his whole career, was strongly in support of legalizing drugs and his warning to America in this line is that if the country continues to prosecute for such petty crimes, the country will loose their "best minds." The end of the stanza begins to turn more cynical and violent. Ginsberg accuses the country of "pushing" him and he asserts that he knows "what I'm doing" (25). Line 26 uses imagery from Eastern influences, a region of the world whose religion and culture would fascinate Ginsberg throughout his life. He writes that "the plum blossoms are falling." In Eastern culture, the plum blossom is a symbol of peace. By using this imagery from another country and culture, Ginsberg is attempting to tell America that its essence as a benevolent leader of the world is in decline. It is the East - both in its culture and its politics - that show the way to a better world.

Ginsberg finishes the stanza by telling America that he has not "read the newspapers for months" and that the reason is because "everyday somebody goes on trial for murder" (27-28). This is both a lament at the violence, or threat of violence, that was increasingly a part of American culture. But this line also has personal resonance for Ginsberg. Throughout his time in New York and San Francisco, Ginsberg saw several of his friends and acquaintances in the Beat movement arrested for murder. Most of the arrests were not unwarranted. While Ginsberg often felt that the police unfairly targeted people like him and his friends, the line of the poem also hints at the remorse that Ginsberg feels over the senseless violence that even his own company took part in. The reason that he doesn't read the newspapers is not only because the news will only tell more of how his country betrays him, but because it will also tell of how his own friends and colleagues become a part of the cycle of violence and rage.

Lines 29-40

Ginsberg starts the third stanza with his most overt political statements of the poem yet. In line 29, Ginsberg tells America that he is "sentimental about the Wobblies." The Wobblies was a nickname given to The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an international worker's union that was a powerful political and social group during Ginsberg's childhood and that leaned strongly towards Socialist and leftist policies. They believed that all wages should be abolished and that all workers should be united as a class of persons. The Wobblies were harshly criticized by the United States government which largely shut down the group during World War I by prosecuting and politically embarrassing many of its leaders. Ginsberg's sentimentality towards the group is a result of his mother's influence. Naomi Ginsberg held strong Communist views throughout her life and, during Allen's childhood, often took him and his brother to meetings of the local Communist Party. Ginsberg admits this sentimentality again in the next line of the poem (30) where he tells America that as a child he was a communist and is not sorry for that fact. Context here is key: during the 1950's there was a strong anti-communist attitude in the nation, exemplified by Senator Joseph McCarthy's congressional hearings in which many Americans were accused of communist activities, often ruining their careers. Ginsberg is taking a social risk by admitting in the poem that he was once a communist. Such a statement risked not only government interrogation but possibly criminal charges brought against him for treason.

This stanza serves as a kind of confession for Ginsberg. He goes on to detail his other "sins," though there is hardly in regret in his recounting. Ginsberg tells America that he smokes "marijuana every chance I get," that he gets drunk in Chinatown, and that he has read the writings of Karl Marx . None of these activities would have been considered morally or legally upstanding, but Ginsberg makes no apologies. As if to make his point, Ginsberg also says that he "won't say the Lord's Prayer." This line symbolizes the confessional nature of the stanza, but it also demonstrates Ginsberg's unwillingness to feel guilty for his acts. The Lord's Prayer, which Ginsberg equates with culpability for one's sins, represents the oppression of what Marx called the "opiate of the masses." This fits with Ginsberg's earlier statements of his communist affiliation.

Ginsberg also attempts to bring in modern psychology to help acquit him of his deeds. He says in line 36 that "My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right." A few years before writing "Howl" and "America," Ginsberg had sought psychological help for the depression and guilt he felt over the life he was choosing. After the therapist asked Ginsberg what would make him ultimately happy, Ginsberg tells him that writing poetry and living the life of the artist is what would make him happy. The therapist then answers that that is what Ginsberg should do. Ginsberg felt that this was a validation of his feelings, and uses this stanza of the poem to show that the therapists opinion of his lifestyle means that he is justified in shirking responsibility. Ginsberg ends the stanza with a deeper seeded reason for why he feels no culpability for his actions. He tells America that he never "told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia." This line is in reference to Max Livergant, Ginsberg's uncle on his mother's side of the family, who was met with his own hardships after immigrating to America for being both a communist and a Jew. Ginsberg, here, is in effect saying that if America can act badly, so can he.

Lines 41-50

Ginsberg then shifts his focus away form politics - for the moment - and to the media. Ginsberg often had a kind of "love/hate" relationship with the media. He did not shy away from media attention, especially during the 1960's where his political activism often drew a lot of attention. Yet, while he often appeared in the media, he also often took the opportunity to criticize the media as well. These lines in "America" are some of his earliest public critiques of America's growing reliance on media.

Ginsberg uses Time magazine as his example, here. During this period, Time was the most successful and one of the most read periodicals in America. To be on the cover of Time magazine was to grab the attention of the nation and of the world. Ginsberg here critizes America, not just for seeing all events through the lens of the media (represented by Time) but also for letting its "emotional life" be effected by the magazine. Ginsberg suggests here that the country is really being run by the media, who can effect the emotional outcry of citizens who can then strike fear into their elected representatives. Political and social decisions, therefore, are not being made on rational and humanitarian bases. Instead, they are being made by leaders who are more afraid of how the media might portray them for their decisions.

But Ginsberg makes a surprising turn in the next few lines of the poem. While he spent most of the last stanza of the poem abdicating himself from personal responsibility, he suddenly starts to take responsibility for the "emotional" reactions that media causes. He admits that is reads Time magazine every week. He admits that its news is just as important for his own understanding of the world as it is for everyone else. He is surrounded by Time magazine and, hence, the media. He, who hopes to hold himself to a higher standard of justice and love, cannot escape the way his own perception of events is clouded by media interpretation. Time magazine, he says, helps him to know where he stands in the world. This happens, of course, to be beneath all of the "serious" people in the world, but it does not change the fact that he himself adapts and conforms to the societal norms imposed by Time magazine and the media.

Ginsberg then makes an admission that changes the tone and focus of the poem: he suddenly realizes that "I am America" and that "I am talking to myself again" (49-50). Ginsberg started the stanza by telling America that "I'm addressing you," (41) and ends the stanza by realizing that the "you" is really himself. His own conformity, his own willingness to accept the place in life and the roles of career and personhood within the American context, makes him just as much part of America as anyone else.

Lines 51-60

The next stanza returns to the political and builds on the psychedelic nature of the poem. While the whole poem has demonstrated a form of spontaneous thought and stream of consciousness writing, this stanza makes particular use of this style.

Ginsberg begins by claiming that "Asia is rising against me" (51). He is referencing two particular events here: the first is the rise of China as a communist power in the East. The United States and Russia had fought throughout the first half of the twentieth century to influence the politics of China and its population. The Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the victory of the Communist Party of China. This naturally meant that China would become a ally of the USSR, a setback for US foreign relations in that part of the world following the allied victory in World War II. But Ginsberg is also referencing his own engagement with Asian religion and culture. As a college student Ginsberg had studied Zen Buddhism. Buddhism would be an important religious outlook for many of the Beat writers, including Kerouac and Neal Cassady , as they sought to reach higher levels of consciousness using drugs like LSD. By claiming that "Asia is rising against me," Ginsberg is relating how the tenets of Buddhism - peace, love, transcendence - testify against the America that he himself claimed identity with in the previous stanza. Ginsberg acknowledges that he doesn't have "a chinaman's chance" of avoiding this collision of values. He uses a derogatory phrase here mainly to set the tone of discrimination that he has now admitted he participates in.

Ginsberg then decides that he had "better consider my national resources." Again, Ginsberg has become the personified country that he began the poem in conversation with. Here, he mixes both the personal and the national. He has "two joints of marijuana millions of genitals / an unpublishable private literature..." (54). Ginsberg seems here to be self-deprecating, noting how the lifestyle that he lives (drugs, sex, art) is a poor resource for the monumental challenge to his identity and the political identity of the country. Moving to a broader scope, he notes that he also has "jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions" (55-56). The comparisons here are stark. These lines beg the question of why a country with such technological advances criminalizes and punishes their insane in such inhumane ways. Ginsberg's own views of insanity were influenced by his mother's psychological problems that saw her live much of her life in and out of mental institutions. Ginsberg then admits that he is not even bringing up the most damning evidence: "...my prisons...(and) the millions of underprivaledged..." (57). He ends the stanza with another example of discrimination. He says that he wants "to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic." Ginsberg himself was Jewish, but he makes this point because during this time it was widely assumed that a Catholic could not be elected President, though this assumption would fall only a few years later with the election of John F. Kennedy.

Lines 61-77

These lines begin by attacking America's economic modes of production and ends with a political rant on communist Russia. The poem returns here to a less personal point of view. While Ginsberg realized that he himself was America, and then began to introspectively examine his complicity in the America that he was attacking, he has given up this line of thought and returned to conversation with a separate personified America. He accuses America of being in a "silly mood" and that this prevents him from writing a true "holy litany" of the country's faults.

He begins with a kind of acquiescence to American values. He uses Henry Ford , whose assembly line method of production revolutionized industry in the beginning of the twentieth century and made America the economic superpower that it became. Ginsberg says that he will "continue like Henry Ford" with his poetry, writing it not from an emotional and artistic point of view but instead with an eye towards profit. This it he American way, Ginsberg suggests. Everything is done for profit and nothing valuable comes without business sense. This, of course, goes against the values of worker rights and unionizing that Ginsberg says he once adhered to. His profit motive will make him "$2500 a piece $500 down" for his poems, as if he were selling used cars.

But Ginsberg's conscious then speaks up, as if another more interior voice has added its opinion to the matter. Ginsberg begins to make demands of America for justice, using historical examples to make his case. He tells America to "Free Tom Mooney " (65), a labor leader in the early twentieth century who had been falsely imprisoned for a San Francisco bombing in 1916. He tells America to "...save the Spanish Loyalists" (66), the leftist army supported by the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War who fought the Fascist uprising supported by Nazi Germany. He tells America that "...Sacco & Vanzetti must not die" (67), a reference to a famous legal case in which two men, Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian born laborers with anarchist political views, were accused of murder and tried without due process. They were executed, sparking a controversy over the rights of the accused. Ginsberg then separates himself from his previous identity with America by telling it that "...I am the Scottsboro boys " (68), a reference to a 1931 incident in Scottsboro, Alabama where nine black men were tried and convicted of raping two white women and sentenced to death. The Supreme Court over ruled the death penalty sentences, citing unfair representation for the defendants and lack of due process. Ginsberg uses all of these historical examples to demonstrate to America that is is not the country that it presents itself to be in patriotic statements like the National Anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance. He wants the country to remember that there is great injustice in its work as well.

Ginsberg then moves into eight lines of stream of consciousness writing in which he remembers a meeting of a Communist Party cell that his mother took him to when he was seven years old. Here, he explains his earlier statement about how he was a communist as a child and how he was not sorry for this fact. He remembers this meeting fondly, recounting that "everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was..." (71-73). As if to counter the damning claims of injustice that Ginsberg levels against America in the previous lines, he then begins to cite historical socialist and communist leaders who he felt worked for justice and peace, not for war and violence which were the charges leveled against leftists during this period of American history. Ginsberg cites Scott Nearing, an economist who advocated for pacifism and socialism; Mother Bloor, a leading figure in the Socialist Party of America in the early twentieth century who fought for workers' rights; the "Silk-strikers," a radical group of silk workers in Ginsberg's hometown of Paterson, New Jersey who organized a strike against silk manufacters; and Israel Amter, a Socialist party leader in the early twentieth century. These are Ginsberg's examples of the decency of a political ideology that the American government sought to destroy. Ginsberg, being coy, proclaims that "Everbody must have been a spy" (75-76), a sarcastic comment on the government's paranoia over all Socialist or Communist activity during this period. Ginsberg then makes a plea to America in line 77. "America you don't really want to go to war."

Lines 78-86

As the poem begins to close, Ginsberg continues his rant on America's discriminatory attitudes, it's unthinking patriotism, and it's unjust treatment of minority racial and political groups. Yet, in these lines, Ginsberg moves from an angry tone to a biting sarcasm. He moves his conversation from an attack on a personified country to a sarcastic attack on the citizens of the actual country. He begins with trying to imitate American colloquial speech, an indicator that he's mocking the uninformed and uneducated who would blindly follow a blind patriotism. The antagonists, Ginsberg says, are "Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians" (79). He then makes fun of America's paranoia over communist Russia by making ridiculous statements like "Russia wants to eat us alive" and "She wants to take our cars from out our garages" and "Her wants to grab Chicago" (80-82). Ginsberg mocks the misdirected fear of those that choose not to learn and not to think for themselves about the political and social state of their country. Those uneducated persons can think only that Russia, and therefore all communist and socialist sympathizers, wants to steal the American way of life. Ginsberg tries to point out the absurdity of such thought just as he is trying to point out that the American way of life is bankrupt to begin with and not worth stealing. His most devastating blow to American discrimination comes in lines 85 and 86: "That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black / niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help."

These lines function on several levels. First, Ginsberg continues his mockery of American ignorance by continuing to use forms of colloquial speech. He uses wrong pronouns and incorrect verb tenses, suggesting the ludicrousness of the populist fears of people who have not even learned to read correctly. He also makes use of sounds, a part of the poem that can only be accurately assessed through a verbal reading. The sounds are meant to be primal, again suggesting that these ignorant populists are only a little above animals and certainly not as advanced as those that they fear. His derogatory use of Native Americans and African Americans here is a palpable display of their fear: the Russians, these ignorant populists believe, will elevate these minority groups to a status equal to their own. Communism will make all persons equal and these populists want only to maintain the discriminatory status quo. Finally, Ginsberg suggests that what these persons are most afraid of is that their middle class comfortable lifestyle will be taken from them and they will instead have to work for "sixteen hours a day," a plight that is simply untenable to the culture of laziness that has enveloped America.

Lines 87-93

The closing lines of the poem abandon the sarcasm and playful language of the previous lines. Ginsberg sets a more "serious" tone for the end by telling America upfront that "this is quite serious" (87). He is almost in disbelief over all that he has just accused the country of. The final four lines are Ginsberg's statement of action. He tells both the country and the reader that it's time for him to "get right down to the job" (90). He then qualifies what he can do: he cannot join the Army and he cannot work in a factory, both because of his political and social beliefs but also because he's "nearsighted and psychopathic anyway," two conditions that would preclude him from this kind of service. Instead, Ginsberg suggests that he will have to find his own way to contribute to changing the social situation that he has just described in the poem, though he makes no positive statement towards what he will actually do. It is probable that in the 1950's, before the anti-war and civil rights activism of the 1960's, there was little outlet for political change and expression and therefore Ginsberg could not add a more detailed description of what work he would actually accomplish.

Instead, he makes a final statement that is both a statement of his difference and a statement of his desire to work towards a better America. "America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel." Putting one's shoulder to the wheel is an expression of hard work and labor. Yet this is contrasted by Ginsberg's use of the word queer, a word that then denoted softness and an effeminate style. Ginsberg suggests that he will prove that even the outcasts, the weak, and the effeminate can affect change, a statement that would prove to be quite true in the coming decades.

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Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How has Ginsberg's vision of America proven accurate, and how has it not?

It's always difficult to legitimately assess the "accuracy" of a poet's vision because it's usually the case that accuracy is not necessarily his or her goal. In Ginsberg's case, it's because he just doesn't...

Can you exolain with your words this poem?????

Sorry, I'm not familiar with this poem.

Give your opinion of the poet arguments,explain the grounds of Ginsbergs criticism of his country.PLEASE HELP ME WITH THIS EXAM!

Study Guide for Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry

Allen Ginsberg's Poetry study guide contains a biography of Allen Ginsberg, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About Allen Ginsberg's Poetry
Allen Ginsberg's Poetry Summary
Character List

Essays for Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry

Allen Ginsberg's Poetry literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Allen Ginsberg's Poetry.

An Analysis and Interpretation of Allen Ginsberg's America
From a Whitman Song to a Ginsberg Howl: Homophobia Creates a Forum for Biased Critical Evaluation of Poetry
Imagery in Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California"
The Invisible War of "Howl"

Lesson Plan for Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry

About the Author
Study Objectives
Common Core Standards
Introduction to Allen Ginsberg's Poetry
Relationship to Other Books
Bringing in Technology
Notes to the Teacher
Related Links
Allen Ginsberg's Poetry Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry

Introduction
Social and political activism
Bibliography

'Homework' by Allen Ginsberg

Editor 1 interpretation, homework by allen ginsberg.

Wow! What a poem! Homework by Allen Ginsberg is a classic poem that has been studied and analyzed for decades. In this literary criticism and interpretation, we will explore the themes, imagery, and symbolism in Homework.

Before we dive into the poem, let's first take a look at its background. Homework was written in 1995 by Allen Ginsberg, who was an American poet, philosopher, and writer. Ginsberg was a leading figure of the Beat Generation, a group of writers who rejected mainstream culture and celebrated individualism and non-conformity. He was also a political activist who spoke out against war, capitalism, and social injustice.

One of the main themes in Homework is the boredom and monotony of everyday life. Ginsberg describes the repetitive tasks that people do, such as ironing clothes, washing dishes, and mowing lawns. He suggests that these activities are mind-numbing and soul-draining, and that they prevent people from experiencing true joy and creativity. Ginsberg writes, "I want to be free / of the dirty dishes / and the hot stove / which I want to give back / to the world." This line shows his desire to escape from the mundane chores of daily life.

Another theme in Homework is the search for meaning and purpose. Ginsberg suggests that people often feel lost and disconnected in modern society, and that they struggle to find a sense of belonging and identity. He writes, "I want to be somebody / I want to be understood / I want to be recognized / I want to be appreciated / I want to be loved." These lines show his longing for connection and validation.

A third theme in Homework is the power of language and expression. Ginsberg uses poetic language to convey his emotions and ideas, and he suggests that writing and art can help people to express themselves and find meaning in life. He writes, "I want to be a poet / I want to be a musician / I want to be a painter / I want to be an actor / I want to be an artist." These lines show his belief in the transformative power of creative expression.

Ginsberg uses vivid imagery in Homework to create a sense of the mundane and the extraordinary. He describes the ordinary tasks of daily life in detail, such as "the dirty dishes / piled in the sink / like a mountain of despair," and "the drudgery of scrubbing floors / and cleaning toilets / with a toothbrush." These images are contrasted with more fantastical and imaginative images, such as "the stars exploding / in the sky / like fireworks / on the Fourth of July," and "the rainbow of colors / swirling in my mind / like a kaleidoscope." These images create a sense of the ordinary and the extraordinary coexisting in the same world.

Another important image in Homework is that of the body. Ginsberg often uses bodily imagery to suggest the physical and emotional limitations of human existence. He writes, "my body is tired / my bones ache / my muscles scream / for rest and relief." This image shows the physical toll that everyday life can take on the body. Ginsberg also writes, "my heart is heavy / my soul is weary / my spirit is crushed." These lines suggest the emotional and psychological toll that daily life can have on a person.

One of the main symbols in Homework is that of the clock. Ginsberg uses the clock to represent the passage of time and the inevitability of aging and death. He writes, "the clock ticks / the seconds pass / the minutes fly / the hours fade." These lines suggest the fleeting nature of time and the urgency of living in the moment. Ginsberg also writes, "the clock strikes / the midnight hour / the witching time / when ghosts and goblins roam." This image suggests the mystical and supernatural aspects of time.

Another important symbol in Homework is that of the mirror. Ginsberg uses the mirror to represent self-reflection and self-awareness. He writes, "I look in the mirror / and I see myself / but I don't recognize / the person staring back at me." This image suggests the disconnect between the self and the external world. Ginsberg also writes, "I want to shatter the mirror / and see what lies beyond / the reflection of myself." This line suggests his desire to break free from the limitations of the self and explore the unknown.

In conclusion, Homework by Allen Ginsberg is a powerful and thought-provoking poem that explores the themes of boredom, meaning, and expression. Through vivid imagery and symbolic language, Ginsberg creates a sense of the mundane and the extraordinary coexisting in the same world. He suggests that daily life can be both soul-draining and transformative, and that creative expression is a powerful tool for finding meaning and purpose. Homework is a timeless poem that continues to inspire and challenge readers today.

Editor 2 Analysis and Explanation

Homework by Allen Ginsberg: A Poem of Rebellion and Freedom

Allen Ginsberg, the iconic American poet, is known for his rebellious and free-spirited approach to life and literature. His poem "Homework" is a perfect example of his unique style and perspective. In this poem, Ginsberg challenges the traditional notions of education and conformity, and celebrates the freedom of the human spirit.

The poem begins with the speaker addressing his teacher, who has assigned him homework. The speaker is clearly not interested in doing the homework, and instead wants to explore the world outside the classroom. He says:

"I refuse to do my homework I refuse to go to school I refuse to listen to the teacher I refuse to obey the rules"

These lines set the tone for the rest of the poem, which is a defiant and rebellious statement against the constraints of the educational system. The speaker is not interested in conforming to the expectations of his teacher or society, but wants to follow his own path and discover his own truth.

The next stanza of the poem is a celebration of the freedom of the human spirit. The speaker says:

"I want to be free To run through the fields To climb the mountains To swim in the rivers"

These lines are a powerful expression of the human desire for freedom and adventure. The speaker wants to break free from the constraints of the classroom and explore the natural world. He wants to experience the beauty and wonder of the world around him, and to feel the exhilaration of being alive.

The third stanza of the poem is a critique of the educational system and its emphasis on conformity and obedience. The speaker says:

"I don't want to be a robot I don't want to be a clone I don't want to be a puppet I don't want to be alone"

These lines express the speaker's rejection of the idea that education should be about conformity and obedience. He does not want to be a robot or a clone, mindlessly following the rules and expectations of others. He also does not want to be a puppet, controlled by those in power. Instead, he wants to be free to be himself, and to connect with others who share his desire for freedom and authenticity.

The final stanza of the poem is a call to action for others who feel the same way as the speaker. He says:

"Join me in rebellion Join me in freedom Join me in the search for truth Join me in the celebration of life"

These lines are a powerful invitation to others who share the speaker's desire for rebellion, freedom, and authenticity. The speaker is calling on others to join him in the search for truth and the celebration of life. He is inviting them to break free from the constraints of the educational system and society, and to embrace their own unique path and perspective.

In conclusion, "Homework" is a powerful and inspiring poem that challenges the traditional notions of education and conformity, and celebrates the freedom of the human spirit. Allen Ginsberg's rebellious and free-spirited approach to life and literature is evident in every line of this poem, and his message is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it. The poem is a call to action for all those who feel trapped by the expectations of others, and a celebration of the human desire for freedom, authenticity, and connection.

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Poem Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

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Summary and Study Guide

“America” (1956) by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) is a free verse Beat poem that captures the discontent and revolutionary, rebellious spirit of the Beat Generation and the burgeoning youth counter-culture movement that would come in the 1960s. In the poem, Ginsberg’s sprawling, manic, stream-of-consciousness mind wanders between contemporary politics, luminous ramblings, and psychoanalytic contemplations of his childhood to paint a picture of displacement and isolation in Eisenhower’s 1950s America. The poem perfectly captures Ginsberg’s poetic philosophy of first thought/best thought as it follows no set rhythmic or logical structure; instead, the poem weaves in a seemingly random way as Ginsberg explores the loosely connected images and thoughts that come to his mind at the moment, ultimately leading to a powerful condemnation of Cold War American bourgeois culture. “America” is one of Ginsberg’s most popular poems, and it has endured for decades as a rallying cry for those who seek to criticize the status quo and American consumer society.

Content Warning : This study guide quotes and obscures the poet’s use of the n-word. The source material includes other instances of racist, outdated language. There are also depictions of drug use and mental health issues.

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Poet Biography

Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey to Louis Ginsberg and Naomi Levy. Ginsberg inherited his poetic talent and interest from his father, who was a published poet and teacher, and he gained an interest in Leftist politics from his mother, who was a Marxist activist. His parents’ influence stuck with Ginsberg as he grew older, especially when his mother was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Her mental health issues would play a key role in Ginsberg’s later poetry and in his own mental and emotional issues.

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Ginsberg studied at Columbia, where he would meet Jack Kerouac, who became a literary mentor; Neal Cassady, who became his muse for many years; and William Burroughs, who would become a major figure in the Beat Generation as well.

Perhaps the most important literary moment of Ginsberg’s life happened in 1948. Ginsberg claimed that he experienced a vision of the poet William Blake. Ginsberg claimed that this vision opened his eyes to the interconnectedness and vastness of the universe, and it fueled most of his poetic pursuits for the rest of his life as he attempted to recapture the feeling he had during his vision.

Soon after the vision, Ginsberg moved west and settled in San Francisco. It was there that he wrote, performed, and published the poem that would make him famous, “Howl” (1956). This poem, along with Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) and Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (1959), launched the Beat Generation into the mainstream. Known for explicit and honest portrayals of everyday life, vivid descriptions of sex, drug use, and what was considered taboo, the Beat Generation served as a crucial commentary against the established polite society of the 1950s and as a key step to the counterculture of the 1960s. The Beats challenged censorship, conventional literary standards, bigotry, anti-gay bias, the military-industrial complex, capitalism, and American exceptionalism, and their influence reached many artistic movements, including music, movies, and literature.

Ginsberg would go on to have a long writing career, and he spent many years teaching, including at Naropa University in Colorado. Though Ginsberg maintained public notoriety until his death, he never again reached the celebrity he gained after publishing “Howl.”

Ginsberg died from heart failure in 1997.

Ginsberg, Allen. “ America .” 1956. Poetry Foundation .

“America” opens with an unnamed speaker who declares he has given everything and now he is nothing. He claims he is only worth “two dollars and twentyseven cents” (Line 2), and that he “can’t stand [his] own mind” (Line 3). Ginsberg wonders when America will end the Cold War, and he takes a strong stand against nuclear proliferation. He then asks a series of questions about America’s soul, such as when it will be honest with the world, when it will own up to its own atrocities, and when it will help those who need to be helped.

His criticisms then become more personal. He wonders when he will be able to “go into the supermarket and buy what [he needs] with [his] good looks” (Line 15), and he admits that all the things he is frustrated about have become too much for him to handle.

Ginsberg’s thoughts, worries, and complaints become a bit more frenzied as the poem rolls on, and each line reflects on a distinct thought, often times unrelated to the previous one. He admits to having communist sentiments, he proudly admits to smoking marijuana and drinking, and he refutes religion.

Near the end of the first long stanza, Ginsberg’s perspective begins to shift. He mentions how he is “obsessed by Time Magazine” (Line 40), and here he admits that in his obsession with this magazine, he has realized that he is America.

The second stanza embodies the voice of America. Ginsberg begins lamenting the state of the world beyond America, saying America might eventually struggle against Asia as countries there are rising while he, America, struggles with suppression, poverty, and imprisonment. He says that while Asia is rising, America has been busy abolishing “the whorehouses of France” (Line 53) and concerning itself with the fact that a Catholic wants to run for President.

The final stanza shifts back to Ginsberg’s perspective. He complains that he cannot write with the current state of the world and vows to write like Henry Ford made cars, though he says his writing is more unique and varied than Ford’s creations. He then makes demands about various political figures, including Tom Mooney, a long-dead socialist political prisoner; the Spanish Loyalists, who fought against the Nazi-backed fascists in the Spanish Civil War; Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarchists who had been executed in the 1920s; and the Scottsboro boys, nine Black teens who were falsely accused of rape in the 1930s.

Ginsberg then goes into an extended narrative about going to a Communist Cell meeting when he was a child with his mother. He namedrops multiple famous leftist and socialist leaders and organizers, and the memory is important to him.

The poem begins its final shift with Ginsberg claiming America doesn’t actually want war (Line 66), before shifting the perspective once more to a sarcastic tone where Ginsberg, as America, blames all of the world’s problems on the Russians and China. He accuses Russia of wanting to infiltrate American culture, parodying Cold War paranoia, and he comments on America’s own racial issues with Indigenous Americans and Black Americans. In the last five lines of the poem, Ginsberg returns to his own perspective and asks if his impressions of America are correct. He ends with the declaration that he needs to set to work to fix these problems, and the last line expresses his desire to get to work.

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Homework by Allen Ginsberg
Poem Analyzed by Sudip Das Gupta. First-class B.A. Honors Degree in English Literature. 'Homework' by Allen Ginsberg is a poem depicting the environmental degradation in the modern world. The metaphorical reference to "Laundry" is significant. It reflects how dirty the world looks like from the eyes of an aware citizen of the world.
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Summary and Analysis. "Homework," by the American poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), was written on April 26, 1980 in Boulder, Colorado (as a note following the text of the poem reveals). The ...
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The poem "Homework" by Allen Ginsberg is a metaphorical poem speaking about the socio-political background, the economy, the corruption and various issues that surrounded the nations in that period. This poem reflects much upon the poet's thought and his continuous anti - violent movements. Through his words and the strength of his ...
Homework by Allen Ginsberg
Homework. By Allen Ginsberg. Homage Kenneth Koch. If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran. I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle, I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico, Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up ...
Homework by Allen Ginsberg
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge. out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again, Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little. Clouds so snow return white as snow, Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie. Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load ...
Homework by Allen Ginsberg
Poem: "Homework: Homage Kenneth Koch," by Allen Ginsberg from Collected Poems, 1947-1980 (Harper and Row). out clean. It's the birthday of poet Allen Ginsberg, born in Newark, New Jersey (1926). His early poems made a huge impact, and are considered his best: "Howl" (1956), which became a manifesto for the Beat Generation, and "Kaddish" (1961 ...
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Analysis of Allen Ginsberg's Poems By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 14, 2020 • ( 1) "Howl," the poem that carried Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 - April 5, 1997) into public consciousness as a symbol of the avant-garde artist and as the designer of a verse style for a postwar generation seeking its own voice, was initially regarded as primarily a social document.
Allen Ginsberg Ginsberg, Allen (Vol. 4)
Ginsberg, Allen 1926-. Ginsberg, an American poet, is a gentle, generous man, and the "leading apostle" of the Beat Generation. As much a public as a literary figure, Ginsberg writes "mystical ...
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
In a wacky but sincerely rebellious spirit, he cofounded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado, where he codirected curriculum and taught poetry each summer. Following Ginsberg's death on April 15, 1997, his funeral at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco turned into a media circus.
Allen Ginsberg's Poetry Study Guide
Ginsberg, like his fellow Beat poets, felt that he simply could not belong in modern America. Ginsberg's poetry, along with other Beat Generation works, thus became a seed for the rebellion, protest, and cultural revolution that would mark the late 1960's and early 1970's. Ginsberg would be characterized as a "hippie," though his poetry never ...
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Allen Ginsberg Poetry: American Poets Analysis Ginsberg, Allen ... Identify five literary devices used in Allen Ginsberg's poem Homework.
Allen Ginsberg's Poetry Summary and Analysis of "America"
Summary "America" was written in 1956 during Ginsberg's time in Berkeley, California and was included in the original publication of "Howl and Other Poems.""America" was one of the first widely read literary statements of political unrest in the post-World War II United States. Themes from the decade's previous wars are prominent such as the nuclear bomb or Asian foreign policy, yet the ...
Homework by Allen Ginsberg
Homework was written in 1995 by Allen Ginsberg, who was an American poet, philosopher, and writer. Ginsberg was a leading figure of the Beat Generation, a group of writers who rejected mainstream culture and celebrated individualism and non-conformity. He was also a political activist who spoke out against war, capitalism, and social injustice.
Homework
Homework Allen Ginsberg Nationality: American Allen Ginsberg was a leader of the Beat Generation. Notable works include 'America' and 'Howl.' 'Homework' by Allen Ginsberg is a poem depicting the environmental degradation in the modern world. ... Analysis of "Homework" Ginsberg's poem "Homework" is one big metaphor and ...
America by Allen Ginsberg
Summary of America. 'America' by Allen Ginsberg stands as a symbol of his disappointment and indifference to the social and political situation prevailed during the time of unsetting. In this poem, 'America', the speaker addresses America directly. He expresses his despair about his financial situation and the way the country is engaged ...
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Dive deep into Allen Ginsberg's Howl with extended analysis, commentary, and discussion ... You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help ...
America Summary and Study Guide
Overview. "America" (1956) by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) is a free verse Beat poem that captures the discontent and revolutionary, rebellious spirit of the Beat Generation and the burgeoning youth counter-culture movement that would come in the 1960s. In the poem, Ginsberg's sprawling, manic, stream-of-consciousness mind wanders between ...
Kaddish Analysis
Dive deep into Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish with extended analysis, commentary, and discussion ... by Allen Ginsberg. ... to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help ...
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The title "Howl" suggests a howl of anger and distress, raging against a society that, according to Ginsberg, has abused the people he loved and destroyed the human in favor of the machine. Summary This study guide for Allen Ginsberg's Howl offers summary and analysis on themes, symbols, and other literary devices found in the text.
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Essays and criticism on Allen Ginsberg - Ginsberg, Allen. ... Allen Ginsberg American Literature Analysis ... You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 ...
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