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Allen Ginsberg

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Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5 1997) was an American Beat poet born in Paterson, New Jersey. He formed a bridge between the Beat movement of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s, befriending, among others, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, William S. Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Gregory Corso, Bob Kaufman, Herbert Huncke, Rod McKuen, and Bob Dylan.

Allen Ginsberg, far left, at Airport Frankfurt, Germany

Overview

Ginsberg's poetry was strongly influenced by modernism, romanticism, the beat and cadence of jazz, and his Kagyu Buddhist practice and Jewish background. He considered himself to have inherited the visionary and homoerotic poetic mantle handed from the English poet and artist William Blake on to Walt Whitman. The power of Ginsberg's verse, its searching, probing focus, its long and lilting lines, as well as its New World exuberance, all echo the continuity of inspiration which he claimed. Other influences included the American poet William Carlos Williams.

Ginsberg's principal work, "Howl", is well-known to many for its opening line: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness". It was considered scandalous at the time of publication due to the rawness of the language, which is frequently explicit. Shortly after its 1956 publication by San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore, it was banned for obscenity. The ban became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment, and was later lifted after judge Clayton W. Horn, declared the poem to possess redeeming social importance. Ginsberg's leftist and generally anti-establishment politics attracted the attention of the FBI, who regarded Ginsberg as a major security threat.

It is of some interest to note that the second part of Howl was inspired and written primarily during a peyote vision. Ginsberg attempted a number of poems while under the influence of various drugs, including LSD. This practice was a specific manifestation of his more general experimental approach. He also "wrote" poems by reciting them into tape recorders and transcribing the results and, after being encouraged by Chögyam Trungpa (see below), began extemporaneous composition on stage.

In his writing and in his life Ginsberg strove for freedom and authenticity. Many of his poems are extremely honest and direct. For example, in "Kaddish" he describes his mother's madness in unflinching terms. In "Many Loves" he describes his first sexual contact with Neal Cassady, a lover and friend. Some of his later poems focus on his relationship with Peter Orlovsky, his lifetime lover to whom he dedicated Kaddish and Other Poems.

His spiritual journey began early on with spontaneous visions, and continued with an early trip to India and a chance encounter on a New York City street (they both tried to catch the same cab) with Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master of the Vajrayana school, who became his friend and life-long teacher. The famous indian writer and poet Sunil Gangopadhyay is one of his Indian friends. Sunil mentioned about Ginsberg in his book "Chhobir Deshe Kobitar Deshe"(Country of Pictures and Poetry).

In his political life he was an iconoclast, using his wit and humor to militate for the cause of others' personal freedom, often at significant risk to himself. In 1994, when the International Lesbian and Gay Association successfully banished all connections to the North American Man-Boy Love Association in order to gain consultative status in the United Nations, Ginsberg opposed (together with modern gay rights founder Harry Hay). He said that he supported NAMBLA's right to free speech because the hysteria over pederasty reminded him of the hysteria over homosexuality itself while he was growing up.

Ginsberg helped found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, a school founded by Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche.

In 1993, the French Minister of Culture awarded him with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

List of works

Quotes

  • "Our goal was to save the planet and alter human consciousness. That will take a long time, if it happens at all."
  • "Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does."
  • "Pot is fun."
  • "The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does."
  • "Master thyself and others will follow."


Further Reading

  • Miles, Barry. Ginsberg: A Biography. London: Virgin Publishing Ltd. (2001), paperback, 628 pages, ISBN 0753504863
  • Schumacher, Michael (edt.). Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son. Bloomsbury (2002), paperback, 448 pages, ISBN 1582342164
  • Schumacher, Michael. Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
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