BBC Season - Poets & Prophets
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (IPA: [ˈgɪnzˌbɝg]) (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American Beat poet. Ginsberg is best known for Howl (1956), a long poem about the self-destruction of his friends of the Beat Generation and what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in United States at the time.
Ginsberg was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey. He grew up in nearby Paterson. His father Louis Ginsberg was a poet and a high school teacher. Ginsberg's mother, Naomi Levy Ginsberg (who was affected by epileptic seizures and mental illnesses such as paranoia[1]) was an active member of the Communist Party USA and often took Ginsberg and his brother Eugene to party meetings. Ginsberg later said that his mother "Made up bedtime stories that all went something like: 'The good king rode forth from his castle, saw the suffering workers and healed them.'"[2]
As a teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Times about political issues such as World War II and workers' rights.[2] When he was a junior in high school, he accompanied his mother by bus to her therapist. The trip disturbed Ginsberg and he mentioned it in his long autobiographical poem "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894-1956)."[1] This and other moments from his childhood dealing with his paranoid mother end up in the poem. While in high school, Ginsberg began reading Walt Whitman; he said he was inspired by his teacher's passion in reading.
In 1943 Ginsberg graduated from high school and briefly attended Montclair State University before entering Columbia University on a scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson, (1949).[3] While at Columbia, Ginsberg contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal, the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize and served as President of the Philolexian Society debate club.
As a teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Times about political issues such as World War II and workers' rights.[2] When he was a junior in high school, he accompanied his mother by bus to her therapist. The trip disturbed Ginsberg and he mentioned it in his long autobiographical poem "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894-1956)."[1] This and other moments from his childhood dealing with his paranoid mother end up in the poem. While in high school, Ginsberg began reading Walt Whitman; he said he was inspired by his teacher's passion in reading.
In 1943 Ginsberg graduated from high school and briefly attended Montclair State University before entering Columbia University on a scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson, (1949).[3] While at Columbia, Ginsberg contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal, the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize and served as President of the Philolexian Society debate club.
Biographical references in "Howl"
Ginsberg claimed at one point that all of his work was an extended biography (like Kerouac's Duluoz Legend). Howl is not only a biography of Ginsberg's experiences before 1955, but a history of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg also later claimed that at the core of Howl was his unresolved emotions about his schizophrenic mother. Though Kaddish deals more explicitly with his mother (so explicitly that a similar line-by-line analysis would be both overly-exhaustive and relatively unrevealing), Howl in many ways is driven by that same emotion. Though references in most of his poetry reveal much about his biography, his relationship to other members of the Beat Generation, and his own political views, Howl, his most famous poem, is still perhaps the best place to start. See Howl
