Allen Ginsberg

Your Name appears here

Your teacher 's name

Subject

Date

ALLEN GINSBERG

His parents , Naomi and Louis Ginsberg , named him Irwin Allen at his birth in Newark , New Jersey , in 1926 . Twenty-nine years later , in San Francisco in 1955 - when he began to write Howl - he liked to think that he was in a cosmos of his own creation . In fact , he was still very much connected to his parents . Wasn 't Naomi a madwoman , and wasn 't Howl about madness ? Didn 't Louis write apocalyptic poetry , and wasn 't

Howl an apocalyptic poem , too ? His parents haunted him in the months just before he wrote Howl - they appeared in his dreams , and he wrote about them in his journals and unpublished poems from that period . Moreover , they provided the germinating seeds for Howl - madness , nakedness , and secrecy

Few poets have quarreled with their parents as intensely as Ginsberg quarreled with his , and few young men have turned those quarrels into poems as remarkable as Howl and Kaddish . His quarrels were with himself as much as they were with Naomi and Louis , and in the quarrels with himself he expanded the possibilities not only for himself , but for American poetry , as he pushed against the limits of literary caution and conservatism that characterized the times . If ever there was a poet in rebellion against his own parents it was Allen Ginsberg . And yet if ever there was a dutiful poet it was also Allen Ginsberg . The son carried on the family heritage even as he railed against it

For decades , Louis Ginsberg had been far more famous than Allen . The elder Ginsberg taught poetry at Rutgers and played a leading role in the prestigious , though stodgy , Poetry Society of America . He had two books of poems to his name , dozens of poems in anthologies , and publications in most of the leading literary magazines . Then , in 1956 and 1957 , with the advent of Howl , attention suddenly shifted from father to son . Allen was the bright new star in the literary firmament . Never again would Louis outshine his son , though for a brief time in the late 1960s and early 1970s , father and son shared the stage and gave poetry readings together from California to New Jersey . Other fathers might have bridled at a son who was more famous than they were , and other sons might have used their fame to berate their fathers and settle old scores . Allen 's fame brought him closer to his father now that he was famous he could pay homage to Louis and his work . In To My Father in Poetry ' which he wrote in 1959 , he acknowledged , at long last , his father 's influence on his own work - something he had long ignored and long denied . He heard his father 's voice in his own voice . Louis was delighted that his famous son respected him . The father-son love feast notwithstanding they disagreed as strongly as ever about politics , poetry , sex , and the self . In To...