Howl & Kaddish By Allen Ginsberg
As you read the first lines of "Howl" and "Kaddish", the overall tone of the poem hits you right in the face. Allen Ginsberg, the poet, presents these two poems as complaints and injustices. He justifies these complaints in the pages that follow. Ginsberg also uses several literary techniques in these works to enhance the images for the reader. His own life experiences are mentioned in the poems, the majority of his works being somewhat biographical. It is said that Allen Ginsberg was ahead of his time, but in fact he was just riding the wave of a literature revolution. The decade of the 1950’s was a time of change. America and the world was experiencing a transition ...
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the most famous and most criticized of these "beatniks" is Allen Ginsberg. Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey. His mother, Naomi, was a Russian immigrant, and his father Louis was a poet and Paterson, NJ teacher. Allen’s childhood was not always a happy one; Naomi went back and forth from mental hospitals and endured the physical abuse of Louis. She also had Communist leanings, thinking that spies were out to get her and that Hitler was on the way. All of these are mentioned in some of Allen’s works, the topic of many of them. After being dismissed from Columbia University, he joined the merchant marines and sailed to the West Coast. In San Francisco he befriended young men just like himself: angry, pessimistic about the future, confused about their sexuality, and not knowing what their place in life really was. After he was released from the merchant marines, he went back to the Bay Area. These young men began to hold meetings where they ...
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much pain and pressure is put on them that they are "demanding instantaneous lobotomy" Ginsberg is also aware of the fact that these atrocities are not just occurring in San Francisco and New York but in all of America, big and small. He mentions Houston, Chicago, Denver, North Carolina, etc. No one is excluded from the changes that are happening. The allusion in the first part of the poem reflects the tone and the way that Ginsberg feels about the future of the world. You can be "listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox" which is of course in reference to the hydrogen bomb. The ever growing threat of nuclear war loomed over the 1950’s and Ginsberg was no ...
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Howl & Kaddish By Allen Ginsberg. (2006, December 22). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Howl-Kaddish-By-Allen-Ginsberg/57537
"Howl & Kaddish By Allen Ginsberg." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 22 Dec. 2006. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Howl-Kaddish-By-Allen-Ginsberg/57537>
"Howl & Kaddish By Allen Ginsberg." Essayworld.com. December 22, 2006. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Howl-Kaddish-By-Allen-Ginsberg/57537.
"Howl & Kaddish By Allen Ginsberg." Essayworld.com. December 22, 2006. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Howl-Kaddish-By-Allen-Ginsberg/57537.
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