Posted on 06/16/2013 5:02:16 PM PDT by nickcarraway
I think he appeared on “Politically Incorrect”.
https://www.google.com/search?q=allen%20ginsberg%20site%3Ayoutube.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Like Kerouac, highly over rated and utterly unreadable...
Give me Elizabeth Bishop or Robert Hayden or Robert Lowell, anyone not connected to the free verse crap associated with the spoiled brats that came out of the 50’s and 60’s....
I respectfully beg to differ. As a person, who is both a lover of poetry and a published poet myself, I consider Ginsberg to be one of the truly great poets that America has produced, and I am absolutely not ashamed to admit it.
I have always preferred to focus most of my regard for Ginsberg on his work rather than on the lifestyle that he chose to live. Conservative or liberal, many writers and artists make poor choices in their personal lives, and indeed some can be or have been quite repulsive in their own ways.
Al Capp and Ernest Hemingway immediately come to mind for examples of more conservative writers, who were nevertheless not exactly all sunshine and roses in their personal lives.
The worst!
“malodorous clown”....best put down of the year so far...
~ Allen Ginsberg, poet.
” Like Kerouac, highly over rated ..”
I beg to differ . BTW - how many of his books have you read ???
they made it to FR.
“we’re the Beatniks now”
my tagline since the NOV ‘12 defeat
I’ve written some research work on Ginsberg, and while I find Howl to be a really incredible poem, much of Ginsbergs other work is not impressive. I tend to agree with Kerouak that “Beat” wasn’t what Ginsberg tried to craft it to be, but was really a New Romantism.
Howl is one hell of a poem though!
So the fact you don’t like him automatically means he is over-rated ??? He was a great influence on many musicians and other writers , too , but you probably wouldn’t like them either .
Alan Ginsberg was a fake poet and a fake guru. A mess of cliche archetypes pushed his pencil around in circles. The only Beat poet of any real consequence was Robert Kaufman. That boy had the Muse Calliope sitting on his shoulder piping ocarina melodies straight to the helmsman.
On the Road was one of the first books I fell in love with when I started reading seriously as a teenager in the 70’s. Kerouac became one of my favourite writers and he helped to give me a love of literature ( BTW I’ve read everything he wrote ). I can’t think of any other writer who has inspired me with such a feeling of optimism and the desire to go and live life to the full. He is the only writer I can think of who does this. It’s depressing that I can’t think of any other good writer who is able to inspire this feeling.
Ginsberg is one of the reasons the gays have taken over our culture.
Ha! I’ll second that ...
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