Allen Ginsberg
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Allen Ginsberg started his infamous life as a revolutionary and poet of the beat generation when he began attending Colombia University. While at Colombia Ginsberg met friend and mentor Jack Kerouac whom he would later join to form the School of Disembodied Poets. During his education at Colombia University Ginsberg started his highly political and opinionated poems, which would become his signature for the beat generation. The poetry he produced would become the basis of protest and due to this and his strong political presence Ginsberg earned himself a spot on the FBIs dangerous list.
Ginsbergs poems were that of a revolutionary and showed his dislikes of American Society and the Injustices throughout America. Ginsbergs most recognized and an earliest poem was Howl and other poems written in 1956 (Ostriker 4). Howl being one of Ginsbergs most infamous poems has been translated to the T. In Alicia Ostrikers criticism of Howl she relates Ginsbergs “Meloch” in part two of Howl to many of the evils that befall this nation today (5). Ostriker states, “Ginsbergs mind forged Meloch likewise as oppressiveness of a modern industrial and military state, excluded from reason. Ginsbergs Meloch is also the modern version of Mammon, the capitalism of unobtainable dollars running money… electricity and banks. (7).” Howl records in veiled fashion, the humiliation and crippling of a population of immigrants to shores, which promised, hope and produced despair (3). In the poem Howls (1956) first lines, ” I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. (Ginsberg, Howl)” Ginsberg is speaking of the destruction that drugs have caused in American Society and Americas addiction to drugs.
Ginsberg also describes the members of his community:
Who distributed supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square and undressing while the sirens of Los Alomos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island Ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,
Who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in police cars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication (Ginsberg, Howl)
In Levi Ashers review of Howl he describes these lines as Ginsbergs fellow travelers, the crazy, lonely members of his community of misunderstood poet artists, unpublished novelists, psychotics, radicals, pranksters, sexual deviants, and junkies (Asher 1).
Ginsbergs more politically inspired poems include Hadda Be Playing on the JukeBox, America, and Industrial Waves.
The Poem Hadda Be Playing on the Juke Box is bursting with politics, anger against the federal government, alliances America has, and the crimes against humanity it commits.
Ginsberg attacks the FBI and its head of operation J Edgar Hoover by describing the corruption within the FBI and its collaboration with the Mafia in the following lines:
It had to be the FBI and organized crime working together
In cahoots against the commies (Ginsberg, HBPOTJB.)
These lines show Ginsberg awareness of the mob and the FBI s friendly terms. Ginsberg is relating to the mobs black mail of Hoover and Hoovers cross-dressing and homosexuality. Ginsbergs anger over the widespread corruption in America is seen in the following lines:
It had to be the CIA and the Mafia and the Mafia and the FBI together
They were bigger than Nixon
It had to be Central Intelligence, the family, allofthis, the agency Mafia
It had to be organized crime
One big set of gangs working together in cahoots
Hit-men
Murders everywhere (Ginsberg, HBPOTJB)
Ginsberg shows his dislikes towards the capitalist economy and relates his dislikes and the injustices in America to capitalism in these words.
Multinational Capitalists
Strong-armed squads
Private Detective Agencies for the rich
And their armies and navies and their air force bombing planes
It had to be capitalism the vortex of this rage
This competition man to man (Ginsberg, HBPOTJB)
Critic Helen Vendler says these lines summed up the poems rage towards capitalism and capitalisms imperialistic shadow that lurks behind it (Vendler 3). These last lines of the poem finish:
Brute force and full money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
It had to be rich and it had to be powerful (Ginsberg, HBPOTJB)
In Helen Vendlers criticism of the poem she stated that this was Ginsbergs view of America at the time, brutal, imperialistic, and full of itself and money (Vendler 6).
In Ginsbergs politically inspired poem America Ginsberg struggles with his dislikes, grievances, and hopes of and for America. In Ginsbergs America (1956) he discusses some of his grievances:
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb…
America why are your libraries full of tears?
I am sick of your insane demands…
America I used to be a Communist when I was a kid and Im not sorry
America Free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Saccco & Vanzetti must not die
America