Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet Extraordinare

¶ … Allen Ginsberg:

Beat Poet Extraordinare

As one of America's most controversial poets of the mid to late 20th century, Allen Ginsberg, best-known for his radical poem "Howl" and for his outspoken views on American society, politics and the Vietnam War, was a very influential figure in the so-called "counterculture" of the mid to late 1960's and stands as the quintessential member of the "Beat Generation," a literary movement which encompassed life in the urban streets of our major American cities, such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Los Angeles, and often focused on specific topics that at the time were considered as taboo and forbidden, especially as literary centerpieces in the form of poetry, short stories, journals and magazine articles.

Thus, most of the work of Allen Ginsberg can be seen as culturally significant, for it explores through verse and narrative the inner workings of the cities and how the people that worked and died in these cities during the late 1940's and 1950's experienced everyday life. In essence, Ginsberg's poetry and narrative pieces are filled with "cultural poetics," also known as New Historicism, "a theory that emphasizes the importance of history as a standard of cultural value or as a determinant of events" (Schumacher, 56).

Before commencing on the biography of Allen Ginsberg, it seems appropriate to make some brief comments on the status of America during the 1950's, the period which highly influenced Ginsberg and his writings. Following the close of World War II in 1945, America was plunged into a "Cold War" with the Soviet Union, a war based on threat instead of action. Culturally, America was in the throes of massive change, due to the victories over Nazi Germany and Japan and the economic boom that followed in the wake of World War II. For the most part, Americans were experiencing new and at times disturbing cultural trends linked to politics, economics and the rapid development of technology, especially regarding television. Also, as a result of World War II, Americans had a sense of belonging to the greater whole and began to see themselves as conformists, meaning that they never questioned authority and subscribed to "herd mentality."

But deep down inside the American psyche, there was a sense that something was wrong with America and its values, such as those linked to morality, self-will and religion. Also, there existed the idea that America and its leaders were practicing pure hypocrisy, i.e. they said one thing while doing another, usually in utter contrast to what was generally accepted and viewed as right and wrong.

As a result of these views and changes in American culture, certain individuals and groups became non-conformists and dissenters and were soon seen as threats to the national security of the Unites States. Some of these individuals were political figures, while many were artists, writers, poets and musicians. To make matters worse, when Senator McCarthy set about to reveal and identify those with alleged connections to the Communist Party, many of these non-conformists and dissenters were blacklisted, a form of punishment which often resulted in unemployment and ostracism from American society.

Thus, the non-conformists and dissenters, one being Allen Ginsberg, created an upheaval in American culture by exposing, via their poetry and narrative language, what was wrong with America, at least in their view. The most visible of these individuals were part of a group of outcast poets and writers who rebelled against the traditional structure and morals of American society related to work and labor, conventional marriage, sexual identity and preference, the middle classes, authoritarianism and various social taboos. These individuals were known as beatniks, the heart of the "Beat Generation" and as Thomas F. Merrill puts it, "Allen Ginsberg, one of the quintessential Beats, was the principle voice of the upheaval which led to new forms of expression, based on culture and non-conformity" (178).

Allen Ginsberg, born on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, was the son of Naomi (of Russian descent) and Louis Ginsberg, born in Newark in 1895. Politically, Louis Ginsberg was a pacifist/socialist and was strongly opposed to America's involvement in World War I; Naomi, on the other hand, was a Communist and supported America' entry into the war. Because of these political differences, Naomi and Louis often engaged in fierce arguments which surely had an effect on their son, due to his own political beliefs that bordered on Communism. In 1929, when Allen was three years old, his mother began to suffer from mental illness which at times was debilitating, recurring and life-threatening.

As a direct result of his mother's mental illness, Allen lived in an environment full of very odd behavior on the part of his mother, who when "sane" acted like any other loving mother, but when "mad" acted erratically and was quite unpredictable. In this environment, it is feasible that young Allen first viewed American society and culture through a distorted lens, meaning that he saw the cultural arena about him as being "mad" and unpredictable like his mother. Of course, when a small child at the age of ten or so experiences such behavior in someone he dearly loves, it undoubtedly makes an huge impact on the mind and perhaps acts as a catalyst on the development of one's character and personality.

Not surprisingly, Allen found an outlet for the frustrations related to his mother's mental problems, namely, by writing and recording what was happening around him. In the context of time and place, Ginsberg was keeping a personal journal of his life experiences related to his environment within the city of Newark -- the internal and external phenomenon of his world. According to Lewis Hyde, "the poetry of Allen Ginsberg exhibits the trait of great cultural awareness, for it is as if he was making a panoramic scan of all that was before him, shifting from one perspective to another, much like a voyeur staring through an open window and watching with much intensity the shifting and ambiguous activity before his wandering eyes" (267).

In addition to writing his journals, Allen took great pleasure in the times when his mother was "sane" and his father, while relaxing at home, would recite the poetry of John Milton, Percy Shelley or even Emily Dickinson. These readings surely affected Allen's personality and character, even more so when he would sit and listen to his parents argue about political situations in the world. Certainly, in such an atmosphere, Allen developed a sense of political awareness and perhaps decided on his own political stance.

In support of this, Allen put together a large file of newspaper clippings from the New York Times concerning prominent and culturally significant events in the world, such as the intervention of the U.S. into Spain in support of the Loyalists against Franco and the exploits of Adolph Hitler in Europe prior to the opening of World War II. Obviously, the cultural influence of these and other events in Allen's young life adhered to his psyche and were later incorporated in many of his poetical writings. Also, Allen was becoming a true non-conformist set against the conformity of modern America, for he once stated that he was "a kind of mental ghoul, totally disconnected from any reality" (Schumacher, 178), meaning that he was "disconnected" from ordinary cultural experiences such as those that any "normal" child would find interesting or entertaining.

In 1943, Allen Ginsberg entered Columbia University on a scholarship and at first decided to take up the study of law, but not long after starting his classes, he was introduced to Mark Van Doren, the literary editor of The Nation and a close friend of poet Robert Frost. Through Van Doren, Ginsberg became interested in literature and quickly immersed himself in all things literary. In one particular English class, his instructor "raised questions about how we live our lives, about the nature of good and evil, about the roles played by culture... " (Merrill, 189).

As a result of this epiphany, Ginsberg began to study the writings of the great authors of Western civilization. He then joined a select group of English students and became friends with Lucien Carr who had the greatest influence on Ginsberg and played a major role in shaping Ginsberg the poet. Through Carr, Ginsberg was introduced to William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, two the leading exponents of the "Beat Generation." Kerouac, author of On The Road, the so-called Bible of the "beatniks," and William Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, an expose on drug addiction and crime, stand today as the pivotal figures of the "Beat Generation" and symbolize all that the "beatniks" admired -- rabid non-conformity, unconventionality, "rugged individualism," personal reflection and, of course, a life submerged in art and culture, existing on the fringes of society as outcasts and literary criminals.

Clearly, it was Lucien Carr who introduced Ginsberg to the cultural miasma of Greenwich Village in New York City, a place rampant with people from all walks of life. It was in this setting that Ginsberg's literary mind was set on fire and where he first experienced the thrill of being an intellectual steeped in an explosion of culturally-diverse phenomenon. Not long after meeting Carr, Ginsberg wrote to his brother and said, "I plan to go down to Greenwich Village with a friend of mine who claims to be an intellectual, and knows queer and interesting people. I plan to get drunk, if I can" (Hyde, 89).

It was while Ginsberg was attending Columbia University that he realized, for the first time as an adult, his sexual orientation as a homosexual. In a letter to his brother Eugene, Allen stated that he had "accumulated a modest number of close friends, some neurotic, some insane, some political." He placed these friends in categories of social standing -- "the madmen and artists from Greenwich Village and Columbia," such as Kerouac and Carr; the "sensitive youths and young intellectuals," mostly composed of his "normal" classmates at school, and lastly, a group of other classmates whom he had daily contact with, such as his roommates (Schumacher, 189).

Thus, from these three groups, Ginsberg's personal identity came about which influenced his own future and that of society, namely, American culture, style, values and even consciousness, all of which were soon to be exploited in a number of controversial and powerful literary outpourings.

Of course, the group in which Lucien Carr belonged was dedicated to literally destroying the traditional values of ordinary society which they saw as very hypocritical and unbending. As a result of this highly unusual viewpoint, considering that it was still the mid-1940's, Carr and his close-knit circle of friends, including Ginsberg, decided to live their lives free of hypocrisy and guided by the "idea of living in a transient world of phenomena with everyone lost in a dream world of their own creation" which ultimately served as the basis for the "Beat Generation." Not surprisingly, the method of execution which this group choose to express their radical ideas was literature, and one of the writers that most influenced them was Arthur Rimbaud, the radical French poet of the late 19th century who believed that all artists must be seers and live without any kind of social or political restraints.

For Rimbaud, art and literature was the ultimate mode of self-expression, and when the "Beat Generation" picked up on this philosophical tenet, they became the spokesmen for an entire generation of Americans which, by the mid-1950's, had infiltrated every aspect of American culture and was to lead to what has come to be called the "Counterculture" of the 1960's, a time when young people from all walks of life became non-conformists and lived as they saw fit without any concern for how traditional society viewed them.

When Lucien Carr was arrested for the murder of David Kammerer in 1944, Ginsberg found himself in throes of self-examination, due to the fact that Ginsberg was in love with Carr. As a way of easing the pain for his loss of his best friend, Ginsberg attempted to entice Jack Kerouac into a homosexual union, but Kerouac dismissed it and made it clear that he had no intentions of sleeping with Ginsberg. But the two men did remain close and vibrant friends and shared the desire to become great writers and forever alter American culture in order to make it "more open, candid and spontaneous and more receptive to one's personal vision and expression; in short, to create a new American culture where unacceptable behavior was accepted and endorsed" (Merrill, 215).

At this point, Ginsberg experienced the first of many disappointments in his life, for when Bill Lancaster, Allen's roommate, told the Dean of Columbia University what was occurring in his dorm room, Ginsberg was summarily expelled from the university. Ginsberg then commenced to live on the street within the very atmosphere from which his first inklings of wanting to change American culture sprang. He then moved into an apartment owned by Joan Vollmer, located on New York City's upper West Side. The environment within this apartment was nothing short of mind numbing -- Kerouac was living there and William Burroughs could often be found lingering about. Not long after moving into this apartment, Ginsberg began to hang out with Burroughs who enticed him to explore the criminal scene in and around Times Square.

Ginsberg then began to openly explore the cultural miasma of Times Square and his own homosexuality. According to John Tytell in his Naked Angels: Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, the following scenario sums up what Ginsberg's life was like during this rather tumultuous period during the mid to late 1940's:

Burroughs and Ginsberg haunted the bars and sided up with hoodlums, crooks, prostitutes and drug dealers. Burroughs took on the role of a fence via the receiving and selling of stolen merchandise. One time, Burroughs managed to obtain a box full of Syrettes, single-dose morphine syringes, and wanting to get rid of them, he came into contact with Herbert Huncke, a low-life thief, pimp and junky, who quickly bought the morphine. Huncke then showed Burroughs how to inject the morphine and while stoned began to roll and beat up drunks in the subways; Burroughs wrote most of this down which served as the basis for his novel Junky. Ginsberg did not take part in this activity, yet he did come to know Huncke. It was through this shady character that Benzedrine was taken to Vollmer's apartment, where Ginsberg and his cohorts starting shooting up" (215).

The events that transpired between 1945 and 1956, the year that Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems was published, are so thickly overlaid with situations and occurrences that it seems fitting to sum up these years chronologically. In 1946, Ginsberg met his longtime companion Neal Cassady and returned to Columbia University. In January of 1947, William Burroughs and Joan Vollmer moved to Texas with the intent of growing marijuana and was soon joined by Huncke.

In July, Ginsberg paid a visit to Cassady in Denver, Colorado and both soon embarked on a journey to visit Burroughs and Vollmer. Not long after this, Ginsberg joined the merchant marines but returned to New York City only two months later, being greatly disillusioned by life in the military. In 1948, Ginsberg, while under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug, experiences an audio-visual dream of English poet William Blake reading his poetry; Blake just happened to be one of Ginsberg's favorite poets.

In 1949, Huncke moved into Ginsberg's apartment and uses it as a storehouse for stolen merchandise. In April, Ginsberg is arrested for allegedly playing a role in the stolen merchandise ring. In court, he pleads insanity and is placed in the Columbia Psychiatric Institute, where he encounters Carl Solomon. In 1950, Ginsberg was released from the hospital and quickly moved in with his father and step-mother in Paterson, New Jersey, where he vainly attempts to hold down a progression of "normal" jobs and curtail his homosexual tendencies by "going straight." On March 30, 1950, Ginsberg attends a lecture given by American poet and short story writer William Carlos Williams and is deeply affected by what he hears.

In 1951, Ginsberg urges his friend and sometime sexual partner Jack Kerouac to seek a publisher for his narrative epic On The Road. In 1952, Ginsberg experiences his first contact with peyote (mescaline). In 1953, Ginsberg urges Burroughs to publish Junkie which comes to pass. After this, Burroughs moved in with Ginsberg and the they soon became lovers, but by December, the relationship sours and Ginsberg ends his sexual relations with Burroughs. The year 1954 was a pivotal time for Ginsberg, for it was when he moved to San Francisco and met and fell in love with Peter Orlovsky. In San Francisco, Ginsberg became "enlightened" and began the first and last parts of his epic poem "Howl."

At a special reading by British poet W.H. Auden, Ginsberg became acquainted with "Beat" poet Michael McClure of San Francisco who asked Ginsberg to read his "Howl" at the Six Gallery. With Jack Kerouac "roaming about the audience with a jug of wine which he freely offered to anyone who would take it" (Portuges, 122), Ginsberg began to recite the poem and by its end, he was in tears and the audience exploded into rapturous applause.

As some in the audience remarked, it seemed as though Ginsberg had presented poetry as it had never been done before, a "visceral expedition into the culture and consciousness of America...which gave Ginsberg worldwide recognition and a career as a poet, prophet, teacher, and catalyst for revolutionary changes in American culture for the rest of his life" (Sanders, 221).

Before commencing on a literary critic of "Howl," one important event must be covered. In October of 1956, the first printing of the poem went through customs and the second printing was confiscated in March of 1957. One month later, the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the legality of the confiscation and as a result, the U.S. Attorney General in San Francisco allowed the confiscated copies to be released. But in May, two undercover policemen purchased a copy of the poem in the City Lights Bookstore, the original publisher of the poem. Almost immediately, the owner of the bookstore and the clerk who had sold the copy to the policemen were arrested. They went to trial in August of 1957 and were subsequently found not guilty by Judge Clayton W. Horn, a Bible teacher and evangelist, who ruled in favor of the store owner and the clerk.

Obviously, the contents of Ginsberg's "Howl" disturbed a good number of people, even those in San Francisco, a city known for its non-conformity and outlandish social life. Somehow, Ginsberg had managed to created a mirror of American society in "Howl" which had not been viewed before. Anyone today who sits down and reads "Howl," even after almost fifty years since its publication, will automatically detect a strange undercurrent of raw emotion as if the speaker/narrator, in this case Ginsberg himself, was "howling" at American society like some rabid, mad dog, frustrated and "mad as hell" for all of the concealed and hypocritical underpinnings of American culture, one in which people like Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs were viewed as un-American and filled with hate and loathing for the culture in which they had grown and matured.

As John Tytell puts it, "the critical response to "Howl" was... A response to the values it cherished and celebrated and to the attitude of Ginsberg out of which it was created. It also reflected the type of life that Ginsberg lived, and in regard to the political and cultural values which he advocated, "Howl" threw the proverbial window wide open and allowed everyone to see themselves reflected in a pool of angst and non-conformity" (215).

In order to fully understand the content and context of "Howl" as it relates to American culture, it would be best to listen to the words and commentary of some of his contemporaries and modern literary critics. In 1956, Richard Eberhart, writing in the New York Times Book Review, declares that "Howl" "is a powerful work, cutting through to dynamic meaning" and is "based on destructive violence. It is profoundly Jewish in temper. It is Biblical in its repetitive grammatical build-up. It is a howl against everything in our mechanistic civilization which kills the spirit, assuming that the louder you shout the more likely you are to be heard. It lays bare the nerves of suffering and spiritual struggle. Its positive force and energy come from a redemptive quality of love, although it destructively catalogues evils of our time from physical deprivation to madness" ("On Howl," Internet).

From this perspective, it is clear that when it was first published, "Howl" reflected some of the most absurd and decadent traits of American culture, all of which were ignored by most people, due to not wanting to seem as non-conformists. Also, Eberhart mentions "destructive violence" which appears to indicate that Ginsberg was advocating the destruction of the American cultural system, one that he viewed as hypocritical and replete with corporate shenanigans, much like in today's world.

In contrast to Eberhart's commentary, John Hollander, a reviewer for the Partisan Review in 1957 states that "Howl" presents an "utter lack of decorum of any kind in (this) dreadful little volume... The poem itself is a confession of the poet's faith... In the ravings of a lunatic friend... And in the irregularities in the lives of those of his friends who populate this disturbed pantheon." Hollander then adds that the poem "seems to have emerged under the influence of a certain kind of literary Festspiel held at frequent intervals on the West Coast, in the course of which various poets, "with radiant cool eyes," undoubtedly read their works before audiences of... adoring youths.... all in a hopped-up and improvised tone, (where) nothing seems worth saying save in a hopped-up and improvised tone." ("On Howl," Internet).

With this commentary, Hollander is quite obviously part of the problem which Ginsberg relates in the poem. Ginsberg's "utter lack of decorum" reflects Hollander's opinion that Ginsberg the poet is not part of traditional American society, for he does not conform to the usual soft-spoken and quasi-politically correct language which most of American society was accustomed to hearing and reading during the late 1950's while the "Cold War" raged about them.

Hollander's statement that the poets which read non-conformist poetry like "Howl" are "hopped up" reflects the early growth period in America when the use of illegal drugs was just beginning to spread in the urban cities. Culturally, the use of drugs in the late 1950's, like marijuana, LSD, heroin and morphine, was almost mandatory in order to achieve a certain level of "stream of consciousness" thought which continued well into the 1960's during the "Counterculture" days of the hippies, an offshoot of the "Beatniks." When the reading public realized that poets like Ginsberg were "high" on drugs during the writing of their poetry and other works, they automatically assumed that the writer was a madman and did not deserve "proper" recognition as a serious artist.