Alan Ginsberg's life and literary contributions

Allen Ginsberg was born to Louise and Naomi Ginsburg on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey. His father Louise was a poet, a high school teacher, and a restrained Jewish Socialite. His mother Naomi Levy was Communist and a nudist -- who went insane in early adulthood. She seldom wore clothes around the house and there were times that she only wore a Kotex belt when she was menstruating. Ginsberg told psychiatrists about this strange behavior as a child, and there was some amount of belief that Naomi had made sexual advances on Ginsberg; however, Ginsberg never admitted to this (Morgan 13). Ginsberg would later rationalize that the reason he was afraid of getting close to women was because of his mother, even though Ginsberg was openly homosexual for most of his life. Though his home life as a child was challenging, it was a home life that was "saturated with literature and politics" (Jackson, Markoe, & Markoe 225) and it was because of his parents that Ginsberg inherited a love of poetry and an admiration for artistic achievement. Ginsberg's childhood, mixed with the challenges of his mother's insanity and his own homosexual desires as well as his parent's passionate view on politics, perhaps gave Allen Ginsberg the insight into darker sides of life, all of which led him to be one of the greatest poets of a generation.

Allen was shy, but complicated as a child growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. During the 1930s, his mother was in and out of asylums because of mental illness (Morgan 13). Allen mentions the Greystone State, one of his mother's asylums, in his most famous poem Howl (13). His mother was severely paranoid, but she trusted Allen more than anyone. This was difficult for young Allen to deal with at such a young age, especially since he was also going through his own unique challenge: his attraction to other boys his own age. Throughout his high school career, he never had any romantic life (Morgan 33). However, he had one good friend, Paul Roth, a popular, attractive kid already in university at Columbia, who wasn't aware of Allen's feelings for him (33). Yet, it was Paul who encouraged Allen to apply to Columbia University (33).

Allen did apply to Columbia University and did get in. Right before he graduated from high school, his first published poem appeared in the Senior Mirror (Morgan 34). It was selected as the class poem and it began, "We leave the youthful pennants and the books…" (34). When he left home for Columbia in 1943, he remembered his past and was happy to leave his problems -- his mother's insanity especially -- behind him. Later, he noted that he had lost quite a bit by distancing himself from her. He wrote that he lost the ability to become close to "later friendly girls" (35). He believed that he had denied his feelings toward women out of fear of what happened to his mother (35). However, he was on a path to become a lawyer, although this path would change his sophomore year when he changed his major to English literature (35).

At the end of his second term at Columbia, Allen met Lucien Carr, who thought Ginsberg to be, a "shy little Jewish boy" (Morgan 37). Paul Roth had left for the war and Lucien became Allen's first serious "crush" (37). They two built a strong friendship and remained great friends until the day Allen died. It was through Lucien that Allen met William Seward Burroughs II (39) and he became quite taken immediately by Burroughs' "Old World, aristocratic nature" (41). By 1944, Allen's new friends were taking up a lot of his time and his studies were suffering (43). It was through connections to Burroughs that Allen met Jack Kerouac, who was four years older than Allen and had won an academic scholarship to Columbia, but dropped out because he wanted to be a writer like Thomas Wolfe and he didn't think that one needed a college degree for that (45). Needless to say, Allen was attracted to Jack's external beauty, his maturity, and his wild ambition to become a great writer (45).