The General Grubbiness of Allen Ginsberg Or: Why I love The New Criterion.

NRO ^ | September 14, 2006 5:56 AM | By John J. Miller

[.cnI redruM]

I was equally non-plused. I really got my college English professor red-hot by saying. "This poem is awesome. Why don't you read it to the parents during Freshman Orientation?"

I still managed a B in the course. I admire the man for not gunning me down for that quip.

[dfwgator]

Howl sounds like a poem that Leonard-Pinth Garnell would have featured on "Bad Poetry" on the old SNL.

[Tax-chick]

I feel grateful to have totally missed this. I thought Allen Ginsberg was an economist, to the extent I thought of him at all.

I like the World War I poets - Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, etc.

[trisham]

Then came “Howl.” It blew me away with its sheer awfulness.

**************

That was my reaction as well. Not to mention, that Ginsberg appeared to be a very disturbed individual.

[Chi-townChief]

I actually like "Howl." I realized from first hearing that the message is totally bogus but I love the over-top-melodramatics and the disconnect between them and Ginsburg's quiet nasal voice (although he got into some hysterics in 60s' readings.)

[Chi-townChief]

P.S. I'm also quite a fan of Kerouac's writing.

[.cnI redruM]

By way of funny parody....

"http://www.litkicks.com/Texts/Yowl.html"

[madinmadtown]

I encountered Allen Ginsberg in person a couple of times during the seventies and he was easily recognizable by being even more grubby and unkempt than the nearly anyone I had ever met, which was no mean feat in those days...and his appearance was more palatable than his personality.

[.cnI redruM]

With further apologies to awful Allen...

http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/03/22/howl/index.html

[Vaquero]

I met him in 1968 at a reading....he signed my cigar box "Allen Ginsberg doesn't smoke". Of course I didn't know at the time that he was a bone smoking pedophile....

a friend also a (very minor) poet would write poems goofing on such "poets" as Ginsberg... he wrote a work called "Three Room Kaddish"

Funny how Ginsberg paled around with such writers as Kerouac who was revealed to be a closet conservative.

[aculeus]

New Criterion is first rate.

[ckilmer]

During the 70's & 80's I used to drink at West End Cafe on 114st & B-way Across the street from Columbia University. I even read poetry there once or twice. The West End was an old hang out of Ginsberg during the 50's.

At the time Ginsburg lived in Colorado. He would come back to NYC from time to time to do a reading. I attended some of the readings. I never cared much for Ginsburg's stuff. For all his focus on excretions and emissions and such his writing is inhuman. But he was a pretty animated guy.

[.cnI redruM]

I went to VCU in Richmond where Ginsberg is actually still a cult hero of sorts in certain corners. This is because he came there in 1972 to lead an anti-Vietnam protest. He and his buddies proceeded to sit down on Main Street and block all the traffic while they chanted Buddhist Prayers. There really are times when demented liberals are just too funny to sincerely hate.

[wideawake]

ping

[Cicero]

I suppose students should have a look at "Howl" and "Kaddish" just to see what the Beat Generation poets look like.

Great poetry? No.

I have met Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball a few times, and admire them both.

The only point I disagree with them on is that Kramer glorifies High Modernism and pans everything that followed it. I think high modernism was also vastly overrated in its time. I don't think Jackson Pollock or the Abstract Expressionists are worth much more than the pop artists who followed them. Both movements are essentially decadent, IMHO. Perhaps Pollock aimed higher than Andy Warhol, but I don't think in the end that either is worth a place in the museums.

[joylyn]

I also like Howl. It's just one long screech of madness but it has a lot of energy and -- more or less accidentally -- some powerful lines mixed in with the nonsense. I can't imagine asking students to analyze it in class because obviously it is insane. Either you buy the whole package for what it is, or you don't.

Of course it was a one-off performance. Ginsberg had the ability to go on to write better things, but he settled for becoming a parody of himself. From a PR point of view this worked out well for him. I believe he was the only American poet of his generation who made a living from his work.

[Old North State]

City Lights in North Beach?

[.cnI redruM]

I'm more paleo-conservative than him on art. If it's past Representative-Expressionism, I don't buy it.

[wideawake]

City Lights today is just a BoBo tourist trap. True story: last time I was there management physically booted an unruly bum trying to panhandle in the store.

It was great looking at the faces of the customers: they were horrified at themselves for being relieved that the smelly mess was being tossed out on his ear.

[joylyn]

Cicero --
I share your doubts about High Modernism and never cared much for the Abstract Expressionists. Still, about 15 years ago my father -- a retired steelworker with a high school education -- visited NYC and I took him to MOMA. All art was new to him. He wasn't impressed with the water lillies. But LOVED the Pollacks. He saw the one that used to hang in the hallway near the escalator and exclaimed, "Now, there's a painting." It made me think that there might be something to Pollack after all.