Ginsberg assumes the role of witness, confessor, and victim. Who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness ofĬold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,ĭragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,Īngelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, Eliot's "The Waste Land," published in the years after WWI and showing similar feelings of shock, loss, and pain. An interesting comparison to Ginsberg's postwar reflections is T.S. Ginsberg's most famous poem, "Howl," published in 1956 (and introduced in this publication by Ginsberg's mentor, William Carlos Williams), was an era-defining poem for those who had survived the War but struggled to survive the aftermath. Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems is a collection of his most influential work. Allen Ginsberg (J– April 5, 1997), like his fellow poets of the Beat Generation, existed on society's parameter fighting its most conforming postwar forces: sexual repression, militarism, and capitalism.
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