Beat Movement
Beat movement, also called the Beat Generation, was an American social and literary movement that originated in the 1950s in the artist communities of San Francisco’s North Beach, Los Angeles' Venice West, and New York City’s Greenwich Village. Its participants used the word "beat" as a way of saying self made, original, or unordinary. People in this movement used slang or cool language from Jazz musician beat artists.They were different from traditional writers. Generally they wrote in favor of personal release, purification, and intellectual or spiritual enlightenment through the important features of the awareness of feeling that might be induced by drugs, jazz, sex, or the accordance to the rules of Zen
Buddhism. Beat poets sought to bring poetry "back to the streets" with
originality. They created writings that were more bold, straight forward, and
expressive than anything that had been composed before.
Buddhism. Beat poets sought to bring poetry "back to the streets" with
originality. They created writings that were more bold, straight forward, and
expressive than anything that had been composed before.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression. Ginsberg is best known for his epic poem "Howl", in which he celebrated his fellow "angel-headed hipsters" and harshly denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. This poem is one of the classic poems of the Beat Generation.
Howl
By: Allen Ginsberg
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381
Poem Summary:
This poem is about his generation of people being destroyed. He makes a reference to "the best of minds" saying not geniuses
or doctors and lawyers but the middle class people. He means the drug addicts, prostitutes, bums, dropouts, musicians, poets, and the many other people with problems in their life or within themselves. He says he has been a witness to the destruction of these people although some may say they are out casts or people not considered important. Ginsberg still considers these folks as his people and his generation and of importance. He doesn't tell us in the beginning what exactly has ruined these people's minds until the second part of the poem. Ginsberg uses the word in the Hebrew Bible Moloch. This is basically a bad god that uses children being thrown in fire as sacrifice. For Ginsberg, Moloch is associated with war, government, and mainstream culture. Moloch is an inhuman monster that kills youth and love which is what Ginsberg is trying to portray to us has happened to his generation. The third section is addressed to Carl Solomon, Ginsberg's close friend from the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute. Ginsberg refers the psychiatric hospital by the shorter fictional name of "Rockland." He continues repeating the phrase "I'm with you in Rockland." The poem ends with the image of his dream of Solomon walking from New York where they will reunite.
Howl
By: Allen Ginsberg
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381
Poem Summary:
This poem is about his generation of people being destroyed. He makes a reference to "the best of minds" saying not geniuses
or doctors and lawyers but the middle class people. He means the drug addicts, prostitutes, bums, dropouts, musicians, poets, and the many other people with problems in their life or within themselves. He says he has been a witness to the destruction of these people although some may say they are out casts or people not considered important. Ginsberg still considers these folks as his people and his generation and of importance. He doesn't tell us in the beginning what exactly has ruined these people's minds until the second part of the poem. Ginsberg uses the word in the Hebrew Bible Moloch. This is basically a bad god that uses children being thrown in fire as sacrifice. For Ginsberg, Moloch is associated with war, government, and mainstream culture. Moloch is an inhuman monster that kills youth and love which is what Ginsberg is trying to portray to us has happened to his generation. The third section is addressed to Carl Solomon, Ginsberg's close friend from the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute. Ginsberg refers the psychiatric hospital by the shorter fictional name of "Rockland." He continues repeating the phrase "I'm with you in Rockland." The poem ends with the image of his dream of Solomon walking from New York where they will reunite.
Literary Elements
The poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg cleverly uses many literary elements to create his three piece work of art. In this work, Ginsberg uses many examples of imagery such as when he writes these following quotes: "hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking", "unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall", "jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vommitting whispering facts and memories", "burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down". There is use of personification in the following quotes: "angry fix", "unshaven rooms", "blind streets", "brilliant eyes", "grandfather night", "airplanes roaring". The next literary element used in this peom is an allusion, "starving hysterical naked; dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection." This to me was an allusion because this is an indirect reference to someone. Those people are his people. The people of his generation that he is describing throughout the entire first piece of his poem. The metaphors in this poem are, "bodies turned to stone" and "the shade of my mother". An example of a simile is "bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon". There is a cliche also used in this poem. When the poem repeats "I'm with you in Rockland". This is a repetition that is used over and over after the understanding of the sentence is allready established, therefore, this sentence in no longer effective or useful. The last literary element I have found in this poem is irony. An example of ths is when Ginsberg says "who threw potato salad at CCNY leturers on Dadaism". This is an example of irony because these are the patients teaching the teachers who are supposed to be the educators.