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.
Firstly, the group of friends and writers most commonly known as the Beats evolved dramatically in focal points such as Greenwich Village and Columbia University, and subsequently spread their political and cultural views to a wider audience. The three Beat figureheads William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac each perceived an agenda within American society to clamp down on those who were in some way different from the accepted ‘norm’, and in response deliberately flirted with the un-American practices of Buddhism, drug use, homosexuality and the avant-garde. Ginsberg courted danger by lending a voice to the homosexual subculture that had been marginalised by repressive social traditions and cultural patterns within the United States.
Allison, Barrows, Blake, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry . 3rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 1983. 211.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. 348-350. Print.
Jarrell, Randall. ?Fifty Years of American Poetry.? The Third Book of Criticism. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969.
Our memory is made up of many different types of memories; episodic, semantic, and implicit. Episodic memory is the remembrance of a certain event. An example of this
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The randomness in jazz music paralelles to the randomness some authors use in literature. Meaning, literature can abruptly travel in time and along with the charcaters. Author, Toni Morrison, uses key elements of the artistic art form of jazz to tell the story of Violet, Dorcas, and Joe in, Jazz.
Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. 3rd ed. Ed. Helen Vendler. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,
Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. 8th ed. Vol A. New York: W.
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...ortant to understand when examining the Beat Generation since many of its readers sympathized with the message that the pocketbook poem successfully conveyed, allowing Ginsberg to have great influence on his future actions towards the Beat movement.
Mar. 1972: 86-100. pp. 86-100. Major, Clarence. American Poetry Review.
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