Allen Ginsberg Biography the Poet

Allen Ginsberg

Biography

The poet Allen Ginsberg was born during 1926 in Newark, New Jersey to second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants. His father, Louis, was a teacher and poet, and his mother, Naomi, had a tendency towards mental instability. Both his parents were interested in modern concepts such as Marxism, nudism, and feminism. During Allen Ginsberg's childhood, his mother began to suffer from paranoia, and was committed to an institution where she was lobotomized and eventually died in 1956.

Ginsberg's family lived in Paterson during the Depression years, and it is here that Ginsberg was first introduced to the poetry of Walt Whitman. After graduating from a public high school, Ginsberg's first choice of direction was law. When he won a scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson to Columbia University, however, he changed his direction to major in English. It was here where Ginsberg's poetic career received great input in the form of friendships with great minds such as Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.

Furthermore, it was also during his university career that Ginsberg learned to accept his own sexual orientation, which was homosexuality. Pivotal in this experience was Neal Cassady and Lucien Carr, a fellow student with whom Ginsberg fell in love during 1943.

Long-term happiness was however not to be for this relationship, as Lucien was convicted of murder, and Ginsberg sent for psychiatric counseling. After this, the poet was suspended from his studies for the period of one year. He received his B.A. from Columbia University in 1949. During his studies, Ginsberg supplemented his income in several ways, including work as a welder in the naval yards of Brooklyn, a dishwasher, night porter, and copy boy.

After his university career, Ginsberg shared a flat with the writer and hustler Herbert Huncke. The latter was also a somewhat shady figure, and used their house for storing stolen goods. This association led to Ginsberg's plea of insanity followed by eight months at the Columbia Psychiatric Institute.

Ginsberg preceded his full-time literary career with work for Newsweek and for market research companies in New York and San Francisco during 1951-1953. In 1955, Ginsberg's Howl! gained immediate fame at a poetry reading, and was published by the City Light Press, with a foreword by William Carlos Williams, Ginsberg's mentor. This however brought further legal trouble for Ginsberg, as the work was seized by the police on the grounds of obscenity; specifically, the openly declared homosexuality in the poet's work.

After the death of his mother in 1956, Ginsberg boarded a ship sailing to the Arctic Circle. This marked the beginning of many travel opportunities, including trips to the far East and India, where Ginsberg's relationship with Peter Orlovsky brought further inspiration in the form of the Change, a collection of poetry published in 1963.

Ginsberg became a central poetic figure of his time in the 1960s counter-culture in his capacity as protester against the injustices of the time. As such, the poet lectured at universities, opposed the war in Vietnam, and marched against the Shah of Iran. Not being a stranger to law trouble, the poet was also arrested in 1968, during the Democratic Convention in Chicago. During this turbulent age, Ginsberg became the spokesman for the Beat Generation. Indeed, his protests against social injustices did not only manifest locally, but also during his travels abroad: the poet was deported from Cuba after protesting the treatment of homosexuals in this country. He was elected as "The King of May" by the students of Prague, after which he was deported from the country by Czech authorities.

Although he was most prominent as a Beat Generation leader, the poet continued his fight against injustice until his death in 1997. In the 1970s for example, Ginsberg spent time in jail for his contribution to an anti-Nixon protest, toured with Bob Dylan, and became involved in environmental issues. In fact, the reading of his poem "Plutonium Ode" in Colorado resulted in another arrest. In the 1980s the poet protested against President Reagan's Nicaragua policies, was a visiting professor at Columbia during 1986-1987, and taught at Brooklyn college.

Ginsberg died of liver cancer in 1997, when he was 70 years old. Even at this late stage of his life, the poet was planning performances with musicians such as Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney, although these were never realized. Allen Ginsberg's legacy of works are collected at Stanford University.

Major Works

Howl!," as mentioned above, is Ginsberg's first significantly major work. This poem signifies the poet's future works in terms of natural rhythms, often associated with spontaneous thinking and breathing. This poem is also indicative of Walt Whitman's influence on the poet. In terms of both Ginsberg's political and literary connections, the poem became a symbol of liberation in American cultures from the 1950s. The poem as such is a protest and a reformation of the outmoded forms of academic formalism and political conservatism. The poem is a dichotomy of lamentation and celebration: it laments the disasters and casualties caused by capitalism and consumerism while at the same time celebrating what remains: the love that is still alive in the human heart, despite everything.

Allen Ginsberg's work was significantly influenced not only by major events in his life, but also by loss. The death of his mother, for example, resulted in the poem "Kaddish," which he originally wrote for the funeral. This poem is included in the 1961 publication of Kaddish and other Poems. This collection was also profoundly affected by Ginsberg's conversion to Buddhism and his association with the guru Chgyam Trungpa. Reality Sandwiches, published in 1963, includes a fantasy about Neal Cassidy, entitled "The Green Automobile." Planet News (1968), incorporated the 1960s radicalism supported by the poet, and First Blues was published in 1975. The Fall of America earned Ginsberg the National Book Award in 1973, while some of his political and poetic talks are published in Allen Verbatim (1974).

The Significance of the Author and his Work in Society and History

As seen above, Allen Ginsberg has been exposed to numerous progressive political perspectives by his parents practically since birth. His parents were members of the New York literary counter-culture of the 1920s, setting the stage for Ginsberg's later political associations. While Walt Whitman was a major influence on his work, the poet considered Edgar Allan Poe as his favorite when he graduated from high school.

In addition to devoting his life to poetry, his childhood heroes also inspired Ginsberg to devote his life to helping the working class in particular. This is a cause the poet devoted his life and work to for the years during and subsequent to his college career. His friends William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, all contributed to the poet's position in the Beat movement, which Ginsberg viewed as providing them with a "New Vision." This Vision inspired Ginsberg to create art in the most self-expressive and uninhibited way possible. This is what Ginsberg and his associates saw as the ultimate expression of art.

Interestingly, Ginsberg reports having had a "Black vision" during the late 1960s. In this vision, the poet heard Blake reading the poems "Ah Sunflower," "The Sick Rose," and "Little Girl Lost." This was a pivotal moment for the poet, which profoundly influenced not only his work itself, but also his comprehension of the universe, his own life, and work. While Ginsberg at first claimed that no drugs were involved in the episode itself, he later admitted that he subsequently did use drugs in an attempt to recreate the inspiration experienced during this episode.

The Beat Movement

When Allen Ginsberg moved to San Francisco in 1954, William Carlos Williams introduced him to major figures in poetry, including Kenneth Rexroth and Michael McClure, who instigated the "6' Gallery Reading" on October 7, 1955. This event is viewed as the beginning of the Beat Generation. This reading also featured Ginsberg's "Howl."