Beat Poets Conformity

The Beat poets are known for their rejection of traditional ideals of societal behaviour, making the Beat platform ideal for artists who wish not to conform to common principles in North American culture. Artists such as Leonard Cohen, whose art was deeply influenced by the freedom that the Beat generation offered. Leonard Cohen translates Beat influences in his poetry through the criticism of the conformist ideology that dictated North American society in the mid to late twentieth century. Beat poetry is non-conformist both in the content it offers and the way in which the content is organized in stylistic manner. Free verse, which Cohen is fond of in his poetry, is quite common amongst Beat poets because this device allows for a more open

Beat poets actively rejected conformity both in the style of poetry that they used and the content they presented to the reader. Focusing on topics not much discussed before, such as sex, drugs and spirituality, the Beat movement became a platform for non conformist ideology, and for breaking the boundaries of what was considered to be abnormal or deviant. One of the essential topics of discussion in the Beat poetry aesthetic is the exploration of religious cultural understandings in the postmodernist North American society. Although much of the poets who came before the Beat movement distanced themselves from exploration of religious philosophy as much as possible, in an attempt to modernize their art, postmodernist artists such as Ginsberg reverted back to the examination of this topic. This being more of a spiritual return more than conservatism. Beat poetry marked a new wave in spirituality and examination of religious and cultural heritage. This allowed for a new understanding of the way in which society functioned in relation to religious cultural identity. Cohen has focused much of his poetry on the cultural and religious influences of his ancestors. He does this in his poem titled “The Genius”, where he explores stereotypical