The Message in the Literary Works of Allen Ginsberg

When Allen Ginsberg writes he does not just write beautiful, appealing, poetry to sell. Ginsberg writes with a message in mind. Ginsberg steals the reader’s attention with his aggravated cursing and startling openness. Through his lack of structure, rhyme and rhetoric, Ginsberg portrays chaos not only through the words of his poetry but through the poems themselves. Allen Ginsberg was an eccentric: man, defiant, nonconforming, and comfortable with his homosexuality. The fact that his sexual orientation was considered taboo and vastly unaccepted to say the least fueled his defiant demeanor and caused him to flaunt it.

He did this through his poetry, but someone who was so fond of causing a scene his poetry is far from the academic norm. “Because of its sensationalism and frequent obscenity, Ginsberg’s verse often makes a considerable initial impact upon readers of listeners” (Sutton). By astonishing his readers with his unorthodox diction, Ginsberg piques their curiosity and uses their own curiosity to trap them into reading farther. Some of Ginsberg’s lines are so offensive and insulting, his readers may be inclined to put down the poem, but their own astonishment captivates them, and causes them to read further.

This is the true genius behind his poetry is: Ginsberg insures that if his readers do not understand or see the underlining message of his poetry, the poem offends them so much that it leaves an impression. Ginsberg’s language alone sends a message “In Ginsberg … language and … attitudes are entirely personal, and … excitement is direct, unabashed. … Only someone who was sure of his attitudes toward his society could find an imagery as coherent, as consistent, as Ginsberg finds” (Charters). By using obscene diction there is really no misconstrued understanding of Ginsberg’s views, or of how strongly he stands by them.

Although many parts of his poems are hard to relate to, by taking a few steps back and look at the bigger image and message, one can find themselves relating to many of the minor themes. By far the one thing that makes Ginsberg’s poems more relatable is that he adds his own memories and experiences into his poetry giving his poems a whole new level of relativity and power. “[Allen] Ginsberg hurls not only curses but everything—his own purported memories of a confused, squalid, humiliating existence in the ‘underground’ of American life and culture, mock political and sexual confessions’ (together with a childishly aggressive vocabulary of obscenity),” (Rosenthal).

Unlike many other poets whose powerful verses come from: slant rhyme, beautiful pairing of words, and the concrete structure of the poems; Ginsberg’s comes from his disregard of all of this. SPECIFIC EXAMPLE TO STRENGTHEN Instead Ginsberg relies on appeal of people’s self-pity to cause them to relate to his own painful situations he inserts into his poetry. When Ginsberg writes he hides nothing, his writing is “Naked, gauche, and crudely confessional as it was—seemed the very antithesis of the dry, precise, and calculated verse of the academic poets”(Cook 119). His openness is a method of keeping the reader from being deterred by his cursing. By seeming like has nothing to hide, Ginsberg ensures that his readers are more inclined to build a genuine interest in him and read past his obscene diction.

This is also just natural for Ginsberg; he has always been one to make a scene. So as he writes and his poems come under scrutiny for their failure to adhere to what is ruled as poetry, he enjoys the argument as long as he is the topic. In some of Ginsberg’s poems he over use of obscene vocabulary becomes deterring. In Understand That This Is a Dream “full of his cock / my ass burning / full of his cock” (1. 50) and “with many men I knew one generation / our sperm passing into our mouths and bellies / beautiful when I love / given” (61-2).

There is no denying that this was a testament to Ginsberg’s homosexuality, and this alone is nothing to deter a reader but coinciding with his aggressive obscenity it does become dissuading. Once you get past his obscenities and his inherent lack of reservations, Ginsberg’s poetry has a message behind it. Some messages are more precedent than others though. Kissass is a poem with one of the more obvious

messages. With just its four lines and one word title it does clearly express the flaw Ginsberg sees in society. The flaw being the only way to keep peace is to kissass, for by making everyone feel secure there is no need for confrontation and everything works fluidly, without it chaos would ensue. In his poem A Desolation Ginsberg talks of how one must conform to a status quo to survive.

“So I

build: wife,

family and seek

for neighbors.

Or I

perish of lonesomeness 

or want of food or

lightning or the bear” (7-14).

For someone to survive in the society we created they must do as others do or face the chaotic wilderness of the unknown. He felt the full effect of this fear of the unknown because

of his sexuality. Ginsberg also harshly attacks the economy in his poem “Velocity of Money” “Everybody running after the raising dollar….. nothing’s happening but the collapse of the economy” (22 and 26). He clearly portrays the chaos that ensues from a failing economy where money is becoming worthless and useless, a problem his family faced in his young years during the great depression. This is another example of Ginsberg inserting his own personal experiences into his poetry. However the words of his poems are the shallowest form of expression in Ginsberg’s poems.

Ginsberg uses a deeper means of expression in some of his poems, or rather with the poems. This is clearly evident in his most popular poem “Howl”, in which Ginsberg sends a message of chaos. However this message is more powerful than that of some of his other poems. This is due to the style he took in writing this poem. Much of the poem seems more like rant than poetry. Ginsberg was criticized by academic poets for this lack of structure until quite a while after the poem was published, when scholars began to see he had an underlying reason for his poor structure.

Harold Bloom once said: “Ginsberg’s genuine poetic flaws are not in structure or in the control of rhetoric. Granted his tradition, he has a surer grasp of the shape of his poem and a firmer diction than almost all of his academic contemporaries, so many of whom have condemned him as formless. A little sympathetic study will establish that most of his larger poems move with inevitable continuity.” Bloom was referencing Ginsberg’s “Howl” one of Ginsberg’s larger poems, and when Ginsberg wrote the poem its structure helped to portray it as a howl voicing his disdain towards his country.

There are critics who label Ginsberg’s “Howl” as merely a rant rather than a poem. These critics must look past the formless verse of the poem and observe the words Ginsberg uses; their placement on the page and how they interact with one another. “Howl” is actually a testimony of Ginsberg’s political and social views. This must be remembered when in the middle of talking about Capitalism and Communism he writes a line such as: “who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy” (55).

Many would see this as Ginsberg just expressing his homosexuality, as he so openly and often does, but due to its placement in the poem it is clear it means much more. The line, when looked at with a political lens, is expressing how America is run by suppressive groups, “the saintly motorcyclists”, and then the people thank them, “screamed with joy”, for the false security these groups give them by protecting the people from other groups just like them. “But there is a wilder side to Ginsberg that grows increasingly more apparent throughout his development” (Cook 118). Once Ginsberg is sure he has the audience hooked he holds