![]() Ginsberg later said that his mother "made up bedtime stories that all went something like: 'The good king rode forth from his castle, saw the suffering workers and healed them.'" Of his father Ginsberg said: "My father would go around the house either reciting Emily Dickinson and Longfellow under his breath or attacking T. His mother was also an active member of the Communist Party and took Ginsberg and his brother Eugene to party meetings. Ginsberg referred to his parents in a 1985 interview as "old-fashioned delicatessen philosophers". Mark's Church in-the-Bowery which would later hold a memorial service for him after his death. Ginsberg also took part in public readings at the Episcopal St. It was noted that the stolen property was not his, but belonged to an acquaintance. He was allegedly being prosecuted for harboring stolen goods in his dorm room. Īccording to The Poetry Foundation, Ginsberg spent several months in a mental institution after he pleaded insanity during a hearing. Ginsberg has stated that he considered his required freshman seminar in Great Books, taught by Lionel Trilling, to be his favorite Columbia course. He was a resident of Hartley Hall, where other Beat Generation poets such as Jack Kerouac and Herbert Gold also lived. While at Columbia, Ginsberg contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal, the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize, served as president of the Philolexian Society (literary and debate group), and joined Boar's Head Society (poetry society). ![]() In 1945, he joined the Merchant Marine to earn money to continue his education at Columbia. In 1943, Ginsberg graduated from Eastside High School and briefly attended Montclair State College before entering Columbia University on a scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson. While in high school, Ginsberg became interested in the works of Walt Whitman, inspired by his teacher's passionate reading. He published his first poems in the Paterson Morning Call. Īs a teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Times about political issues, such as World War II and workers' rights. He was the second son of Louis Ginsberg, also born in Newark, a schoolteacher and published poet, and the former Naomi Levy, born in Nevel (Russia) and a fervent Marxist. Ginsberg was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Paterson. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992. In 1979, he received the National Arts Club gold medal and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His collection The Fall of America shared the annual National Book Award for Poetry in 1974. His poem " September on Jessore Road" drew attention to refugees fleeing the 1971 Bangladeshi genocide, exemplifying what literary critic Helen Vendler described as Ginsberg's persistent opposition to "imperial politics" and the "persecution of the powerless". įor decades, Ginsberg was active in political protests across a range of issues from the Vietnam War to the war on drugs. At Trungpa's urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics there in 1974. One of his most influential teachers was Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa, the founder of the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. ![]() He lived modestly, buying his clothing in second-hand stores and residing in apartments in New York City's East Village. Ginsberg was a Buddhist who extensively studied Eastern religious disciplines. Horn ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, asking: "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?" : 338 The poem reflected Ginsberg's own sexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner. San Francisco police and US Customs seized copies of "Howl" in 1956, and a subsequent obscenity trial in 1957 attracted widespread publicity due to the poem's language and descriptions of heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made (male) homosexual acts a crime in every state. īest known for his poem " Howl", Ginsberg denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions. ![]() Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Irwin Allen Ginsberg ( / ˈ ɡ ɪ n z b ɜːr ɡ/ June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |