The Use Of Vulgarity in the Works of Allen Ginsberg
The beat poets were the voice of a generation. Unadulterated honesty and truth is a primary objective of the beat poets, and to them this honesty and truth is best achieved with a raw, oftentimes vulgar language that can make some readers uncomfortable. In this excerpt from his book, Allen Ginsberg, Thomas Merrill comments on the truth exhibited by the poet:
...such a commitment to internal truth not only permits but demands the uninhibited confessions that tend to make conventional readers squirm. Many beat writers, especially Ginsberg, flaunt their most intimate acts and feelings...in an aggressive street language (2).
In Ginsberg's collection of poems, Reality Sandwiches, 1953-1960 , "The reader gets a good taste of Ginsberg's mouth... which, as usual is uninhibitedly and often flamboyantly honest (Merrill 88). The unabashed honesty in this collection often concerns sex and drugs, those subjects being important for this generation of rebellion. In "The Green Automobile," a poem about a fantasy road-trip enjoyed by Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, his one time lover, Ginsberg presents images of a sexual nature. Two of the images follow:
I'd honk my horn at his manly gate,
inside his wife and three
children sprawl naked
on the living room floor.
(Ginsberg, Reality Sandwiches 11)
Neal, we'll be real heroes now
in a war between our cocks and time:
(15)
Even if some readers pay little attention to the allusions to homosexuality, one of the images, the one concerning Cassady's children, could make some readers uncomfortable. The imagery here is strong, it is this strength of imagery that ...
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...s "Howl" and "On Neal's Ashes" the vulgarities are used not merely for effect, but to truly convey the feeling he wishes to express. Although some are made to feel uncomfortable, the true nature of the poet is to convey feeling, and this is done in an extremely proficient manner.
Works Cited
Ginsberg, Allen. Reality Sandwiches 1953-1960. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1963.
- - - . "Howl". Contemporary American Poetry-5th Edition. Ed. A.Poulin Jr.. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. 175-182.
- - - . "America". Contemporary American Poetry-5th Edition. Ed. A.Poulin Jr.. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. 182-184.
- - - . "On Neal's Ashes". Contemporary American Poetry-5th Edition. Ed. A.Poulin Jr.. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. 188.
Merrill, Thomas. Allen Ginsberg. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. 348-350. Print.
A few cases in which this poem is particularly relevant in today’s society, apart from just the general hipster culture, is the fact that in many ways we’re faced with similar issues of social oppression of certain sects of the population, homophobia, discord amongst different cultures and excessive consumerism – all these being matters than Ginsberg felt strongly about and sought to fight against.
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Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. 8th ed. Vol A. New York: W.
Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. 3rd ed. Ed. Helen Vendler. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
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Homosexuality remained illegal in most parts of America until the 1960s, but Ginsberg refused to equate his Gay identity with criminality. He wrote about his homosexuality in almost every poem that he wrote, most specifically in ‘Many Loves’ (1956) and ‘Please Master’ (1968), his paeans to his errant lover Neal Cassady. Ginsberg’s poems are full of explicit sexual detail and scatological humour, but the inclusion of such details should not be interpreted as a childish attempt to incense the prudish and the square.
Allison, Barrows, Blake, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry . 3rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 1983. 211.
Jarrell, Randall. ?Fifty Years of American Poetry.? The Third Book of Criticism. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969.
Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey on June 2nd, 1926. He experienced a very troubled childhood. His mother, Naomi, suffered from multiple mental illnesses and was institutionalized several times. These problems left Ginsberg feeling emotionally distraught and confused. This is reflected in Ginsberg's later poems since the mother helped to determine his overall character and outlook in very important ways. In his adolescence, he began to feel an increased awareness of his homosexuality which he kept very private until his twenties. Ginsberg was first introduced to poetry by his father who was a high school teacher and a poet. However, it was not until Ginsberg’s affiliation with William Carlos Williams that he began to attain a severe interest in poetry. Williams became something of a mentor to the young Ginsberg. Ginsberg’s literary choice was further influenced by Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren, whom which he had made acquaintances with through classes at Columbia University. Columbia is actually where he established powerful friendships with writers William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac. “This group, along with several West Coast writers that included Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, among others, would form the core of the Beat movement” (The Beat Generation vol 2: 363). To be understood, the Beat movement, also called the Beat Generation, was an American social and literary movement that originated in the 1950s. The members of this movement, including Ginsberg, were self-proclaimed as "beat", which was originally meant to describe them as weary, downtrodden individuals. This meaning later took on a more musical sense t...
Ginsberg¡¦s style is not disciplined, but based on a spontaneous utterance of ideas, violating all the current artistic canons, provoking a literary and social scandal. The powerful representations of the urban realities, of the language and matter of the urban streets were meant to induce powerful reactions of the reader. He brought the culture down to the level of streets and neighborhoods. That¡¦s why the language and the images are obscene, including symbolism and direct references to oral and anal sex, homosexuality and drug use. We can even say that the form of the poem seems to be a self exploration, shaped after his own life.
Mar. 1972: 86-100. pp. 86-100. Major, Clarence. American Poetry Review.
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