Allen Ginsberg:
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”
The Beats, or The Beats Generation, were a literary movement started by a group of writers who explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era with their work. The Beat culture rejected standard narrative values, and focused on making spiritual quests, exploring Native American and Eastern religions, rejecting materialism, explicitly portraying the human condition, experimenting with psychedelic drugs, and championing sexual liberation and exploration.
Ginsberg’s Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs‘ Naked Lunch (1959), and Jack Kerouac‘s On The Road (1957) are three of the best known pieces of Beat literature.
Ginsberg was the ultimate Beat Generation poet. Howl warns of the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States of America at the time, and its first reading was an iconic moment in the social upheaval of the 1960s.
Ginsberg was born into a New Jersey Jewish family, the son of poet/teacher father and a mother who was a member of the Communist party. At Columbia University, Ginsberg (who never considered himself a Communist), met Lucien Carr, who introduced him to Kerouac and Burroughs. Carr’s story is lurid and deserves its own account, but in brief, a repressed Carr murdered David Kammerer, a tall, lanky friend of Burroughs, and got off on a manslaughter conviction using the ever popular “gay panic” as a defense.
This group bonded over the potential they saw in the youth of America as a counter movement to the post-World War II era of Joseph McCarthy, the Republican Senator from Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the public face of a period in the USA in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion. He alleged that lots of Communists had infiltrated the federal government, universities, showbiz, and everywhere he looked. Ultimately, his smear tactics led him to be censured by the Senate. The term “McCarthyism”, first used in 1950, was soon used to describe any and all anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used to mean reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponent
In 1954, in San Francisco, Ginsberg met 21-year-old Peter Orlovsky, with whom he fell in love. It was the first time Ginsberg had an affair with someone who was not primarily straight, and their relationship was unusually open. Ginsberg felt that Orlovsky would be his “life-long love”. Orlovsky had worked as an ambulance attendant, psychiatric nurse, and handyman. Ginsberg called their relationship “marriage”. They were together for more than 40 years, surviving all the drugs they did in the 1960s, and the strains caused by Ginsberg’s worldwide fame. Ginsberg encouraged Orlovsky to try writing poetry. Orlovsky’s gentleness and kindness were an appropriate foil for Ginsberg’s brittleness.
It was then that Ginsberg met members of the “San Francisco Renaissance” and other poets who would become part of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg planned a poetry reading at the Six Gallery in the city, advertising the event as Six Poets at the Six Gallery. The reading was held in October 1955, bringing together the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation. It was the first public reading of Howl, the poem that brought worldwide fame to Ginsberg and the poets associated with him.
Because of its explicit, raw language, Howl was scandalous when it was first published. It was banned for obscenity shortly after its publication in 1956.
Ginsberg’s speeches and writings about taboo subjects made him a controversial figure in the conservative 1950s, but he continued to tackle sensitive and inflammatory subjects throughout the next four decades. His openness about his gayness, including his love of young men, was a constant expression. In his poetry he wrote openly and graphically about his desire for the freedom of men to love other men, paving the way for other writers to express themselves more honestly. His use of language deemed indecent challenged obscenity laws in his era, ultimately changing them.
All of us owe our legal freedom of expression to this man who bravely challenged the status quo. Ginsberg’s willingness to talk about taboo subjects made him a controversial figure during the conservative 1950s, and a significant figure in the cultural-changing 1960s. In the mid-1950s, no reputable publishing company would even consider publishing Howl. The poem was considered by many to be vulgar or even pornographic and publishing it could be prosecuted under law. Ginsberg used phrases such as “cocksucker” and “fucked in the ass” as part of the poem’s depiction of American culture. The sex that Ginsberg describes in his works is not the sex between straight married couples, or even longtime lovers. Ginsberg portrayed casual sex.
The explicit language in Howl led to an important trial on First Amendment issues. Ginsberg’s publisher was brought up on charges for publishing pornography, and the outcome led to a judge going on record dismissing the charges, because the poem carried “redeeming social importance”, setting an important legal precedent that continues to this day. Howl warns of the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the USA of the time, and its publication was an iconic moment in the social upheaval of the 1960s. Ginsberg continued to take on controversial subjects throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, including America’s wars, AIDS, and LGBTQ Rights.
I’m not sure Ginsberg’s most famous poem is good, exactly (who am I to judge?), but it’s a poem that has been quoted for too long to really ignore. The image of Ginsberg in his later years, as a bald bear, has over-shadowed his early years as a very cute, soulful Jewish gay boy.
He died in 1997, surrounded by family and friends in his East Village loft in Manhattan, succumbing to liver cancer via complications of hepatitis contracted from an unsterilized needle administered by a doctor 37 years earlier. Roy Lichtenstein and Patti Smith were among those that were with him at the end. He was cremated, and his ashes are buried in his family plot in a cemetery in Newark. In 1998, a group of writers read at a gathering at Ginsberg’s farm to honor him and the Beats.
Gus Van Sant’s film Good Will Hunting (1997) is dedicated to Ginsberg, and to Burroughs, who died four months later. In Kill Your Darlings (2013), about the college days of Carr, Burroughs, and Kerouac, Ginsberg is played by Daniel Radcliffe.
Although they had an open relationship, Ginsberg and Orlovsky stayed a couple until Ginsberg’s death in 1996. Orlovsky was taken by lung cancer in 2010.
Gay people owe our legal freedom of expression to Ginsberg who bravely challenged the conservative conditions of our reactionary times.
Howl was made into a film of sorts in 2010. In the movie, Ginsberg talks about his life and art while his famous poem is illustrated in animation while the obscenity trial over the work is dramatized with an improbable James Franco playing Ginsberg.
