Similarities Between Whitman And Ginsberg

Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg are often referred to as two of the greatest and most influential American poets. There are many stylistic similarities in both of their lives and their work. Whitman’s modern beliefs are voiced in Song of Myself (1855) as a naturally flowing free-verse poem. Whitman’s life and work resonated with Allen Ginsberg in the Twentieth Century, and Ginsberg published his contemporary voice in the grittier Howl (1956). Due to Whitman’s inspiration of Ginsberg, it is plain to see the similarities between the form and scope of these two poems; the similarities also frame a clear juxtaposition of the separate 19th and 20th centuries. Walt Whitman was a contemporary of the 19th century, as such, his work can be seen as

Ginsberg published his free-versed poem Howl in 1956 as something of an anthem of the Beat Generation and a lament of modern America. In the first part of Howl, the speaker tells of those great minds “who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish. . . who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballots for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade” (Ginsberg, 16). This narration shows the desire of the subjects to be free of the structured lives set out for them. These people want to experience all things and to do so outside of time and schedule. They wish to create and record their own thoughts in order to experience something profound and unique rather than idly watch their lives continue on without them. However, they themselves are a minority and are kept from doing as they please as long as they please due to the constrictions of the majority. Part II of Howl describes the forces that be, the all-powerful Moloch that crushes all into the majority. “What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! . . . Moloch the heavy judger of men” (Ginsberg, 21)! Moloch is the force of discerning authority. The be-all end-all of a society that destroys the freedom and individuality that men inherit from within. Moloch is shown as a sphinx, a monumental structure of cement and aluminum, urbanization and industry, the force of capital markets, greed and warfare. The same forces that forged 20th century America at the cost of social disillusionment through growth, development and a war-time