Allen Ginsberg has a prominent place in American culture after World War II. He is one of the most respected beatnik writers and a famous poet of his generation.
Allen Ginsberg: biography
He was born in 1926 in Newark (New Jersey) into a Jewish immigrant family. Grew up in nearby Paterson. Father Louis Ginsberg taught English, and Naomi's mother was a school teacher and activist of the US Communist Party. Allen Ginsberg in his youth witnessed her psychological problems, including a number of nervous breakdowns due to fear of persecution for her social activities.
Beginning of the bit movement
Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr met in 1943, while studying at Columbia University. The latter brought a freshman student with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Friends later established themselves as key beats in the hipster movement. Known for their subtle looks and irritable behavior, Allen and his friends also experimented with drugs.
Ginsberg once used his college dorm room to store stolen goods he had acquired from acquaintances. Faced with accusations, he decided to pretend to be insane, and then spent several months in a psychiatric hospital.
After graduation, Allen stayed in New York and did various jobs. In 1954, however, he moved to San Francisco, where the beat movement was represented by poets Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlingetti.
Scream against civilization
Allen Ginsberg first became an object of public attention in 1956, after the publication of the book "Yelling and Other Poems." This poem in the tradition of Walt Whitman is a cry of anger and despair directed against a destructive and inhuman society. Kevin O'Sullivan at Newsmakers called the works angry, sexually explicit verses and added that, according to many, this is a revolutionary event in American poetry. Allen Ginsberg himself called "Wail" as "Jewish-Melville Bard breath."
The fresh, honest language of the poem has stunned many traditional critics. James Dickey, for example, described Yelling as "an exhausted state of excitement" and concluded that "this is not enough to write poetry." Other critics responded more positively. Richard Eberhart, for example, called the work “strong work breaking into dynamic meaning … This is a cry against all that in our mechanistic civilization that kills the spirit … Its positive strength and energy come from the redeeming power of love." Paul Carroll called the poem "one of the milestones of the generation." Assessing the influence of Scream, Paul Zweig noted that the author "almost single-handedly supplanted the traditionalist poetry of the 1950s."
Process
In addition to shocked critics, the “Scream” stunned the San Francisco Police Department. Due to the graphic sexual language of the poem, the book was declared obscene, and the publisher poet Ferlingetti was arrested. The subsequent lawsuit attracted the attention of the country and prominent literary figures: Mark Schorer, Kenneth Rexroth and Walter Van Tilberg Clark defended the “Scream”. Schorer testified that “Ginsberg uses rhythms and diction of ordinary speech. The poem is forced to use the language of vulgarity. " Clark called “Scream” the work of an extremely honest poet, who is also a very competent specialist. Witnesses eventually convinced Judge Clayton Horn to decide that the work was not obscene.
Thus, Allen Ginsberg, whose reviews on the qualities of the poem during the trial were widespread, became the author of the manifesto of the literary movement of the beatniks. Novelists such as Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs and poets Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Ginsberg wrote in the street language about previously forbidden and non-literary topics. The ideas and art of the bitstream had a great influence on popular culture in America in the 1950s and 1960s.
Memorial prayer
In 1961, Ginsberg published Kaddish and Other Poems. The poem was similar in style and form to “Yelling” and, based on traditional Jewish memorial prayer, narrated the life of his mother. The complex feelings that the poet felt for her, colored by her struggle with mental illness, are the focus of this work. It is considered one of Allen’s best creations: Thomas Merrill called him “Ginsberg in its purest and possibly best manifestation, ” and Louis Simpson - “masterpiece”.
This is it!
Allen Ginsberg, whose works were strongly influenced by William Carlos Williams, recalled his school characterization as “a clumsy rough provincial from New Jersey, ” but after talking with him “he suddenly realized that the poet was sensitive to his“ bare “ears.” Sound, pure sound and rhythm, such as those around him, and he tried to adapt his poetic rhythms from real conversational ones that he heard, and not by the metronome or the tune of archaic literary.
According to the poet, after a sudden insight, he acted immediately. Allen Ginsberg quotes from his own prose in the form of small fragments in 4 or 5 lines, exactly corresponding to someone’s conversation-thinking, arranged according to his breath, exactly as they should have been broken if it was required to pronounce them, and then sent them to Williams. He almost immediately sent him a note with the words: “This is it! Do you still have one? ”
Kerouac and others
Ginsberg was also significantly influenced by his friend Kerouac, who wrote novels in the style of "spontaneous prose", which Allen admired and adapted in his own work. Kerouac wrote some of his books, loading a typewriter with a roll of white paper and typing continuously in a "stream of consciousness." Allen Ginsberg began to write poetry not as he claims, "working on them in small passages and fragments from different periods, but keeping the idea in his head, and writing it down in place, and completing them there."
Williams and Kerouac emphasized the emotions of the writer and the natural way of expression compared to traditional literary structures. Ginsberg referred to the historical precedents of this idea in the works of poet Walt Whitman, prose writer Herman Melville and writers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Libertarian politician
The main theme of Ginsberg's life and work was politics. Kenneth Rexroth called this aspect of Allen’s work “an almost perfect embodiment of Whitman’s long populist social revolutionary tradition in American poetry.” In a number of poems, Ginsberg mentions the trade union struggle of the 1930s, popular radical figures, the hunt for the McCarthy Reds and other milestones of the left movement. In Wichita Vortex Sutra, he is trying to put an end to the Vietnam War through a kind of magic spell. In "Pluto's Ode" a similar technique is tested - the poet’s magical breath relieves the energy of the atom from its dangerous qualities. Other poems, such as "Scream, " although they are not of a pronounced political nature, nevertheless, according to many critics, contain strong social criticism.
Flower power
Ginzberg’s political activity was strongly libertarian, echoing his poetic preferences for individual self-expression over the traditional form. In the mid-1960s, he was closely associated with the counterculture and the anti-war movement. He created and defended the “flower power” strategy when antiwar protesters advocated positive values such as peace and love to dramatize their opposition to death and destruction caused by the Vietnam War.
The use of flowers, bells, smiles and mantras (sacred chants) for some time has become common among demonstrators. In 1967, Ginsberg was the organizer of the "Tribal Collection for Human Existence" - an event that was held on the model of a Hindu religious holiday. It was the first countercultural festival that became an inspiration to thousands of others. In 1969, when some antiwar activists staged a “Pentagon Exorcism, ” Ginsberg composed a mantra for him. He also witnessed defense at the Chicago Seven, in which anti-war activists were accused of "conspiring to cross state borders to organize riots."
Protester
Sometimes Ginsberg’s political activity provoked a reaction from law enforcement agencies. He was arrested at an antiwar demonstration in New York in 1967 and dispersed with tear gas at the National Congress of the Democratic Party in Chicago in 1968. In 1972, he was imprisoned for participating in demonstrations against then-President Richard Nixon at the National Republican Party Congress in Miami. In 1978, he and his long-time companion Peter Orlovsky were detained for blocking railroad tracks in order to stop the train of radioactive waste coming from the Rocky Flats plant, which produces weapons-grade plutonium in Colorado.
King of may
Ginzberg's political activity caused him problems in other countries. In 1965, he visited Cuba as a correspondent for the Evergreen Review. After complaining about gay treatment at the University of Havana, the government asked Ginsberg to leave the country. In the same year, the poet traveled to Czechoslovakia, where he was elected “King of May” by thousands of Czech citizens. The next day, the Czech government asked him to leave because he was "untidy and sinking." Ginsberg himself explained his expulsion by the fact that the Czech secret police were embarrassed by the universal approval of the "bearded American fabulous poet poet."
Mystic
Another problem that was reflected in Ginsberg's poetry was the emphasis on the spiritual and mystical. His interest in these matters was fueled by a series of visions that he visited while reading poetry by William Blake. Allen Ginsberg remembered the "very deep grave voice in the room", which he immediately, without thinking, attributed to the voice of Blake. He added that “there was something unforgettable in the specific quality of the sound, because it looked like God had a human voice with all the infinite tenderness and patriarchy and the mortal burden of the living Creator, addressing his son.” Such visions aroused interest in mysticism, which led the poet to temporary experiments with various drugs. As Allen Ginsberg later claimed, “Wail” he wrote under the influence of peyote, “Kaddish” - thanks to amphetamines, and “Wales - visit” - with the help of LSD.
After traveling to India in 1962, during which he became acquainted with meditation and yoga, Ginsberg changed his attitude towards drugs. He was convinced that meditation and yoga would increase awareness much better, but he considered hallucinogens useful for writing poetry. Psychedelics, he said, are a variant of yoga and a means of exploring consciousness.
Conversion to Buddhism
Ginsberg's study of eastern religions began after his discovery of mantras, rhythmic tunes used in spiritual practices. Their use of rhythm, breathing and elementary sounds seemed to him a kind of poetry. In a number of poems, he included mantras in the text, turning the work into a kind of prayer. He often began poetry readings with chanting mantras to create the right mood. His interest in Eastern religions eventually led him to the Rev. Chogyama Trungpa, a Buddhist priest from Tibet, who had a strong influence on Ginsberg's work. In the early 1970s, the poet took classes at the Trungpa Institute in Colorado, and also studied poetry. In 1972, Allen Ginsberg made vows to the Bodhisattva, formally adopting Buddhism.
The main aspect of Trungpa’s training is a form of meditation called shamatha, in which they concentrate on their own breathing. According to Ginsberg, it leads to the calming of the mind, the mechanical production of fantasy and mental forms; this leads to heightened awareness and accounting. The book Breath of the Mind, dedicated to Trungpa, contains several poems written using shamatha meditation.
From dirt to Kings
In 1974, Allen Ginsberg and his colleague Ann Waldman founded Jack Kerouac's school of incorporeal poetics as a branch of the Naropa Institute. According to the poet, the ultimate idea was to establish a permanent college of art in the Tibetan tradition, where there are teachers and students living together in the same building, which will operate for hundreds of years. Ginsberg drew prominent writers such as Diana di Prima, Ron Pagett, and William Burroughs to teach and talk at the school. Comparing his poetry with an interest in the spiritual, Ginsberg once said that the addition of verses is a form of self-knowledge for self-improvement, liberating the consciousness of that which you are not. This is a form of discovering one’s own nature and identity, or one’s ego, as well as understanding what part of oneself is outside of it.
Ginsberg survived a literary equivalent of what is called "from rags to riches" - from his early "dirty" work, which was feared and criticized, to his later inclusion in the "pantheon of American literature." He was one of the most influential poets of his generation and, according to James Mersman, "a great figure in the history of poetry."
Last years
The documentary directed by Jerry Aronson, Allen Ginsberg’s Life and Times, was released in 1994. In the same year, Stanford University paid the poet one million dollars for his personal archive. New poems and collections of Ginsberg's previous works continued to be regularly published. And his letters, magazines, and even photographs of fellow beatniks made it possible to take a fresh look at the poet's life and work.
In the spring of 1997, Ginsberg was diagnosed with liver cancer in a person suffering from diabetes mellitus and chronic hepatitis. After studying this disease, he quickly wrote 12 short poems. The next day, the poet suffered a stroke and fell into a coma. Two days later he died. In the New York Times, William Burroughs said goodbye to him, calling him "a great man with world influence."
Allen Ginsberg: Books
Poems of the last few years of the poet's life were collected in the book "Death and Glory: Poems, 1993-1997." This volume includes works created immediately after Allen found out about his illness. Publishers Weekly columnist described the collection as "the perfect culmination of a noble life." Ray Olson and Jack Helberg, who write on the Booklist, found Ginsberg's poems “polished, if not constrained, ” and Rochelle Ratner, in her assessment of the Library Journal, notes that “there is a lot of evidence of tenderness and care.”
Ginsberg's posthumous publication, Intentional Prose: Selected Essays, 1952-1995, presents more than 150 essays on nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War, censorship, poets such as Walt Whitman and hipster Gregory Corso, and other cultural luminaries, including John Lennon and photographer Robert Franke. The critic Publishers Weekly rated the book as "sometimes sweet, sometimes careless" and added that it "will surely find a response from a wide circle of fans of the poet." Booklist found Ginsberg's essay "more accessible than most of his poems."
