Ginsberg’s Affinities with Whitman

Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” have similarities right from the first page. The first thing that they both have in common is the structure of their work. Both “Howl” and “Song of Myself” have long lines and they keep like that. Having these long lines makes the story flow. Doing this in these two works made it have some kind of steady rhythm so it was easy to read. Also another similarity Whitman had on Ginsberg was at the beginning of each sentence. In “Howl” the beginning would always start with “who”. In “Song of Myself” the first word of the line is “Nor.” This would be happening quite often.

Both “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman and “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg are important pieces of American poetry. “Song of Myself” was written in the 1850’s and “Howl” was written about a century later. Both poets were part of groups that wanted to change America – the Transcendentalists and the Beats. Transcendentalists believed in the goodness of people and nature. They believe that people are at their best when they are truly independent. The Beats rejected standard values and materialism. They experimented with drugs and sexuality. Both movements tended to portray the wilderness as heavenly, while thinking that human nightlife was too showy. Both of these groups were fully American literary movements.

As you read “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg’s you pay attention more to the way the words are structured and out in a certain way. So personally for me I didn’t get to feel the same vibes as I got from the visuals. In the visuals u get a much better perspective in what the author tries to imply. But after analyzing both the poem and the visuals I now believe that Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” is the author’s attempt to express his views on how rules and order is what is causing the generations to go mad. He believed that the severity of the justice systems stunted the creativity of the nation’s most promising individuals.

“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg can be labeled as a prose poem, but it does not seem to fit any one category in literature. One could argue that “Howl” can not be confined by categorization because of how different in style and form that it is. This version of the poem was published in 1956 and has three parts. It can be viewed as a stream of consciousness with many random comma placements and few chances to take a breath while reading it. The poem is constantly building upon itself giving the reader little time to pause. The long stretched out lines help add to this effect of, what Ginsberg called, “a big long clanky statement” (492). By stretching out the sentences Ginsberg adds to the overall lengthy feeling that the poem has.

Allen Ginsberg is one of the great authors of the 20th century and he was one of the influential people who created and inspired the beat generation in literature. It was not until Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs started writing that the young generation in 1950’s America had a voice they felt was representing them in literature. Ginsberg’s most noted piece is the poem, "Howl" which he finished writing in 1955, being published in 1956 along with other poems in the book titled Howl and Other Poem. The three part poem with footnote has had mixed reviews and feelings from its readers. Some relate on an emotional level with the images they glean, while others find it to be a distasteful,

There is a stereotype that the best minds of a generation are the heroes of their generations, making new discoveries that can alter the course of history. While this holds true most of the time, Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem “Howl” offers a different perspective. In “Howl,” Ginsberg chronicles the chaotic lives of the “best minds of [his] generation,” using graphic language that eventually landed the publishers of the poem in court for a lawsuit, which was documented in the 2010 film Howl. Howl suggests that education and intellect provides the ability to persevere through madness as well as the ability to exhibit resistance to the self-destruction that madness has the potential to invoke. The poem effectively communicates this message through its repeated refrains, juxtaposition, and allusion. The theme of perseverance through madness is more prominent in the poem than in the film, yet it can still be recognized with close attention. The movie also serves as a solid resource in understanding the context of the poem within Ginsberg’s own life.

Ginsberg’s work often represents a struggle for spiritual survival in a dehumanized, repressive society. This can be seen in his writing of “Howl”:

“Follow your inner moonlight; don 't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don 't care who 's listening.” Walt Whitman was a brilliant writer of his time, a writer that created a voice for the masses to no longer be a mass, but an individual. He was truly a pioneer of his generation, a revolutionary in thought, and this is not his quote. Due to his paralleled lifestyle to Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg learned and drew inspiration from such works as “Leaves of Grass” to apply towards his own book, “Howl and Other Poems” in the 1960s.

Allen Ginsberg, one of the most innovative poets of the age, characterized his poetry as the “desire to be [...] in a time of apathy” (Tytell, 313). Howl, Ginsberg’s most esteemed piece of work, surprised the majority of readers due to its vulgarity and explicit content. The urban settings across the United States greatly influence beatniks in writing about the environment of post World War II. This new mindset of free spirit allowed Ginsberg to explore new, but vulnerable subjects that may cause one to cringe. The literary experience present in Howl “allow[ed] an individual to discover his own vulnerability, his humanness, without cowering” (Tytell, 313). This was an important theme that encourage artistic development in the midst of conformity and bleakness. In the first line of his poem, he mentions how he saw “ the best minds of [his] generation destroyed by [the] madness” (ln 1) of materialism and pressure of technological advancement. The free spirited lifestyle that hipsters promoted distracted many authors and writers into getting hooked on drugs, sex and alcohol, which are main topics Ginsberg discusses throughout the poem. Through his writings, Ginsberg strives to “exorcise the shame, guilt and far that he [saw] as barriers to self-realization and total being” (Tytell 312), placing great emphasis on individuality. Poets like Ginsberg were responsible for the revival of creative potency in an age of silence. For example, Howls presents a range of tones ranging from severe anguish to uncontainable excitement. This literary aspect of his poems provided a way for readers “to retain the ability to feel in numbing times [...] in the face of materialistic culture” (Tytell 313). The bizarre breed of hipsters and the Beatnik writers who found literary ways of bringing their dull societies back to life were ready to cure, what Ginsberg saw

Why is this poem so fascinating to scholars, students, and others in America, even today fifty-six years after it was published? Indeed it remains of interest because this poem was part of the literary movement that put the Beat Generation on the map, and it also demonstrated, "…in a seismic way," that social change could be driven by literature, Amiri Baraka and colleagues explain in The American Poetry Review. The poem broke form, and challenged cultural and moral values, and it amounted to "…more than a collective, thrilling scream" (Baraka, 2006, p. 3). In fact it changed "and continues to change" the "potential and vision of the lives and work of its readers, including those of our most distinguished artists and authors" (Baraka, 3).

     ¡§Howl¡¨ is a long free verse poem which exemplifies Ginsberg¡¦s ars poetica of spontaneous composition:

Allen Ginsberg’s revolutionary poem, Howl, is a powerful portrayal of life degraded. It represents the harsh life of the beat generation and chronicles the struggles of the repressed. Howl is a poem of destruction. Destruction of mind, body, and soul through the oppression of the individual. Using powerful diction, Allen Ginsberg describes this abolition of life and its implications through our human understanding of abstractions like Time, Eternity, and self. The poem’s jumbled phrasing and drastic emotion seems to correspond with the minds of the people it describes. Ginsberg uses surprisingly precise and purposeful writing to weave the complex

"Why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious?……I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones." (pg 40)Nature and all of her wondrous facets, especially the human body, was Whitman's religion. Walt Whitman was indeed an intensely spiritual man in his own unconventional way. His epic classic "Song of Myself" demonstrates these attitudes of his, and in his view how the proverbial "poet" of his America should believe. Humanity yearns for spiritual fulfillment and Whitman believed that everything around us and even ourselves were walking testaments to what true ethereal life is.

In and around the 1950s Allen Ginsberg, along with several other great poets interested in changing social consciousness and defying conventional writing, became known as the Beat generation. Beat poetry focuses on the battle against social conformity and literary tradition. These Beat poets, known for their unconventional lifestyle, unorthodox political views, rowdy behavior, and experimental drug use, caused a lot of controversy. In Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, Ginsberg employs a particularly confrontational and crude writing style to challenge the heteronormative, nuclear driven society that promotes the marginalisation and ostracisation of minorities and individuals whose ideology does not agree with that of the rest of the nation. Ginsberg believes that American society remains gravely repressed and his writing works to challenge that. Ginsberg, along with the other poets of the beat generation, introduce all the social taboos of the time such as heterosexual as well as homosexual sex, drugs, and addiction, into their writings. Ginsberg became one of the most influential poets in literary history, preaching his personal truths and promoting the idea of breaking the mold of the idealistic nuclear American society.

During the 1950s, many different literary movements came to the spotlight. Two such movements were Confessionalism and Beat poetry. There are many commonalities between these movements, and often, authors and works from the Beat movement incorporate various Confessionalist characteristics. Allen Ginsberg, one such author, combined both Confessionalism and Beat poetry in a variety of his works, including Howl and Kaddish. The Confessionalist aspects of Allen Ginsberg and his works, such as Howl and Kaddish were heavily outweighed by the Beat aspects in his work.