Allen Ginsberg's Biography and Citations

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

Life at home

• Born Newark, New Jersey

• “politically active Marxist parents”
• Mother Naomi Ginsberg--nervous breakdown, hospitalized
• this made Ginsberg more tolerant
• Father Louis Ginsberg--published poet, school teacher
• advocated liberal ideas, openness
• parents: communist, socialist background; jewish background

College--Columbia University

• came back as a professor
• Neal Cassady--had a homosexual relationship with him
• buddhist convert 1953
• anti war and drug decriminalization movements
• antinuclear movement
• gay civil rights

Influences

• mother’s mental instability
• William Blake
• “mystical visions” in his apartment and a Colombia bookstore
• started taking drugs to get the visions
• 14 year obsession
• moved to India
• met Tibetan lama Dudjom Rinpoche
• Walt Whitman

Greatest impact

• mother
• “mystical visions”
• Whitman
• line length
• physical involvement in poetry

Themes in poems

• body, mind and spirit
• condemnation of American culture

• “Beat Generation” --transgress societal norms, creativity
• machinery

Style:

• lengthy sentences to show intensity of his work
  
  
  
  
  Murphy, A. Mary. "Ginsberg, Allen." In Kimmelman, Burt, and Temple Cone, eds.The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 2. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 10 Nov. 2014
  http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&WID=100680&SID=5&iPin=CAP164&SingleRecord=True.
  
  
  Boswell, Marshall, and Carl Rollyson, eds. "Ginsberg, Allen." Encyclopedia of American Literature: The Contemporary World, 1946 to the Present, Revised Edition, vol. 4. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 10 Nov. 2014
  http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&WID=100680&SID=5&iPin=EAmL1756&SingleRecord=True.
  
  
  Trigilio, Tony. "Ginsberg, Allen." In Hemmer, Kurt, ed. Encyclopedia of Beat Literature. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 10 Nov. 2014
  http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&WID=100680&SID=5&iPin=EBL058&SingleRecord=True.