Beatniks

Elizabeth Merna and Amanda Barfield 12 November 2010 American Literature II Professor Bishop    Kickin' It with the Beatniks: Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti

The time in America's history after the end of World War II was a time of great upheaval, under the surface at least. The American white washed picket fence illusion was a facade that the underground beats thumped against, rising up out of the subterranean and transforming into a counterculture, a "Beat Movement". Those who were hailed as the leaders of this movement, did not become so on purpose. Their larks were recorded in memoirs that became a sensation for those who were disillusioned by the idyllic religion and black and white politics of the time. The amalgamation of these like-minded "beatniks", became a movement that the media labelled the Beat Movement. Two key players among these jovial rebels are Lawrence Ferlinghetti, writer and publisher of beat literati, and Allen Ginsberg, poet and author of the radically groundbreaking "Howl". Allen Ginsberg may possibly be the easiest American/Jewish, homosexual, beat poet there is to talk about. Why is this? Because the man was literally, an open book. His poems were not riddles, his speech was frank, and he strove to capture his thoughts and observations in a tattered notebook companion. Allen wrote from the time he was a child. His last entry was a few days before his death. He didn't censor himself or even barely revise, saying "first thought, best thought" (Newman). Living from the years of 1926-1997, Ginsberg made it longer than most of his peers, surviving the many doses of illegal drugs that were a major characteristic of his writing and rebellious persona. "Ginzy", as he enjoyed being called, was said to have birthed the "Beat Movement" when he read his poem "Howl" at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955. But truthfully, the "Beat Generation", (the term Kerouac coined in his novel "On the Road" back in 1948), had been "beating" around the country for quite a while now. In the words of a fellow poet friend of Ginzy's, Gary Snyder: "In the spiritual and political loneliness of America of the fifties you'd hitch a thousand miles to meet a friend" (Davidson, 23). Those words succinctly show you how the Beat Movement evolved out of a spirit of camaraderie; how this group of miscreants couldn't have done it without the motivation and help from their friends (a lot like depicted in the Beatles' song written years later). These boys wouldn't have had the same amount of clobber without each other; they wondered in packs and they egged each other on. That is why your can't talk about one beatnik and not the others. In Ginsberg's high school year book, he had written that he'd become involved in government work in the future. But the average jobs that he filled during college left him sad and unfulfilled. According to one of his friend's accounts, Ginzy went to a psychiatrist who asked him what it was Allen really wanted to do. '“I want to write a lot of poetry and have a lot of sex.' The psychiatrist said that sounded good to him. When Allen expressed his fear of dying alone if he pursued such a life, the psychiatrist said, 'You seem like a lovable guy. People will take care of you.' And they did" (Newman). Allen Ginsberg's style of writing is heavily influenced by his "literary father", Walt Whitman, and also his personal mentors and peers such as Bill Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, who were giants of the Beat Generation. "My feeling is for a big long clanky statement, not the way you would say it, a thought, but the way you would think it-i.e., we think rapidly, in visual images as well as words, and if each successive thought were transcribed in its confusion...you get a slightly different prosody than if you were talking slowly" (Baym, 2575). How right he is, for when one is reading "Howl", and being ushered on by the commas and unstopped by any kind of period dominance, the speed and expectation of the reading is heightened to almost unbearable heights. "Howl", Allen's breakthrough poem bequeaths its readers with a peeping-tom's view into the windows of seedy hotel rooms, back alleys, or back seats of speeding stolen Cadillacs to see how these beatniks really behaved. They made no attempt to keep their antics a secret, instead boasting of their lifestyle in published works of non fiction. "Howl" does this in a strange way. We know that Ginsberg wasn't ashamed of his style of life, but we also can feel the sense of despondency in "Howl". As William Carlos Williams put it in the introduction, "Say what you will, he proves to us, in spite of the most debasing experiences that life can offer a man, the spirit of love survives to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith - and the art! to persist" (Ginsberg, 8). When reading Ginsberg's "Howl", the emotive language, lack of punctuation, combined with the overwhelming presence of purpose, design, and brutal honesty can't help but send an audience over the top into fits of laughter and thunderous applause. Ginzy was putting the escapism of the times into a manuscript which told you of how he and the likes coped when escape was found futile: "who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons" (Ginsberg, 13). He was drawing the curtains of idealistic poetry written by those who wouldn't dare speak frankly, and bursting out on America's stage, courageous enough to say what was on everybody's mind. Put on trial for his obscenity, yet redeemed by the poem's "cultural value" (Newman), Ginzy was victorious in getting his point across to many Americans and the world. On that night, when Ginzy first read his "Howl" for the San Franciscan audience, there was a young publisher in the audience who was moved. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the owner of Night Lights Publishing, approached him and using the words of Emerson to Walt Whitman said, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?" (Charters).

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an influential poet from the Beat Movement, and was foundational by being the first to publish some very controversial literature. In 1919 he was born in Yonkers, New York but spent most his childhood in France. Ferlinghetti has his bachelors from the University of North Carolina, his masters from Columbia University, and his doctoral from the University of Paris Sorbonne. Before Ferlinghetti got married in 1951, he and his Navy Reserve were sent to a freshly bombed Nagasaki. Seeing the shattered human existence here would have a great impression on his future writings. During Ferlinghetti’s marriage he had one son and one daughter. The turning point in Ferlinghetti's career came in 1953. Ferlinghetti and his friend Peter Martin started publishing "City Lights Magazine"//.// After the successful publishing of the magazine, the two opened the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. To even more push the new magazine and bookstore, in 1955 City Lights Publishing was launched. This is the one act that will transform the beats into a movement, spreading their ideas and adventures in the form of published books and poetry pamphlets. (poets.org) Ferlinghetti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, each filled with over twenty poems. His poetry during the beat movement received Ferlinghetti numerous awards and honors. San Francisco renamed a street in his honor in 1994, and in 1998 he was named the first Poet Laureate of San Francisco. The National Book Critics Circle in 2000 gave Ferlinghetti the Lifetime Achievement Award. The Robert Frost Memorial Medal was awarded to Ferlinghetti in 2003. Ferlinghetti is still alive; writing poetry, operating the bookstore, and writing a weekly column for the //San Francisco Chronicle//. He also does a number of readings and travels all over to share his work. Lawrence Ferlinghetti uses the characteristic of fragmentation to theorize the meaning of America and to illustrate the differences from years before up until the 1950s in his poem “1”. Ferlinghetti plays off of Goya’s paintings. He says the only difference between before and now is industry. There is always “suffering humanity” and how it is illustrated is the difference. Before it was shown brutal and cruel; blood and death in abundance. Now it is turned into so called pleasure; the gore is now sex appeal and fake happiness. Ferlinghetti reveals that in 1956 Americans live “on a concrete continent / spaced with bland billboards/ illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness” (29-31). The poem exemplifies the meaning of fragmentation in modernism by revealing the splits of society and the industrious difference in time. “In a veritable rage / of adversity’ (7-8) the elder years are divided by difficulties and struggles as is the recent times; but only industry is the difference. Ferlinghetti restores the meaning and connects the time periods allowing Americans to see nothing has changed when it comes to society; the only change is how society uses industry. The poem itself is a mass of fragmentation. Ferlinghetti has line breaks and word segmentation to emphasize the meaning in the diction of his writing. It also illustrates the fragmented time period. Ferlinghetti's use of fragmentation is based on the definition of fragmentation being the segemented and broken society in which he lived. Ferlinghetti’s “25” is an interpretation of the passing of love and life through “a blather of asphalt and delay” (9). The society is fragmented and segregated where people are kept to themselves and caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. As love and life come and go the people do not notice. People are not worried with the comings and goings of the two tenets so they do not realize the comings and goings. People reach out to find love where it really isn’t and in turn do not see what is truly there. “A foolish fish which tries to draw / its breath from flesh of air” (4-5); an image which is so common amongst society. Society likes to search for love in the wrong places and try to pull it in; but if they were like a fish, the air (love) would come right to them. Since society strives to hunt down love, “no one [is] there to hear its death” (6). Society out hunts itself and finds itself dying without a heart of love there beside it. The poem illustrates how life is fragmented to the thought of love. Love comes and goes and most will not even know it has. The Beatniks were bolstered into becoming a Beat Movement by their strong friendships. These friendships, which began on the East Coast during college at Colombia University, spread across the country during arbitrary road-trips, and began the San Francisco Renaissance with the critical publishing done at City Lights Book Store. Thanks to these contrary writers and publishers, Americans were introduced to a new way of writing, reading, and living. The Beats' Whitmanian ideas of "contradicting" and freedom of love and assertion, ushered in a new era of expression. These rebellious attitudes were the seeds of American rebellion and Rock n' Roll, which Ginsberg took great pride in supporting as he lived through following decades. Looking back in appreciation, its easy to forget that these men were simply shooing responsibility, galavanting around in search of a rush.

**Bibliography**

Ginsberg, Allen. Howl: and other poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1959. Print.

Baym, Nina. "Allen Ginsberg." Literature since 1945. 7 ed. Vol. E. New York [u.a.: Norton, 2007. 2574-2584. Print.

Newman, Leslea. "Allen Ginsberg: A Poetic Life - Obit Magazine." Obit Magazine - Life Stories, Obituaries, Essays, Criticism and More - Life and Death Examined. Obit Magazine, 6 Apr. 2009. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. .

Charters, Ann. "Allen Ginsberg's Life." Welcome to English « Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois. Modern American Poetry, n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. <http://www.english.illinois.edu/

Michael Davidson: The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century.

"City Lights Books." //City Lights Books//. City Lights, n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2010. .