Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Chapter Eighteen, Section One. The Poet as Creator of the Beat Generation by Dave Jaffe

   The Poet as Creator of the Beat Generation - Section One


   On the night of October 7, 1957, five poets showed up to give a poetry reading at an art gallery in San Francisco called the Six Gallery.
     One of the poets, the 29 year-old Allen Ginsberg read the first version of his long poem called 'Howl'.
     "I saw the best minds of my generation," Ginsberg's poem started out, "destroyed by madness, hysterical naked." The poem went on to denounce America, or at least portray its underside as it hadn't been seen before.
    In 1957, the United States of America was locked in a titanic struggle for world domination with the communists-ruled Soviet Union. Yet in the U.S. , the jobless rate remained low and inflation didn't go up too much every year. Many Americans, for the first time in their lives, enjoyed small homes, rising paycheques, buying new shiny cars and living in somewhat stable families.
     It was the height of the so-called 'American Century' and the U.S. of A.'s image sat at an all-time high.
    Ginsberg's 'Howl' trashed all this. What the British artist and writer John Berger said about Pablo Picasso's 1905 painting 'Les Desmoiselle D'Avignon' could be said of 'Howl'. "It was a raging frontal attack against life," as Picasso found it, wrote Berger. "Against the waste, the disease, the ugliness and the ruthlessness of it."
      In his poem Ginsberg talked about substance abuse, same sex love and many other supposedly out-of-order subjects. With this one work and a few other poems, Ginsberg and some of his friends set off a cultural revolution. They created what came to be called 'The Beat Generation' which was part literary movement and partly a massive shift in cultural tastes.
     In the 1960's and after, Ginsberg became a public figure who campaigned ceaselessly for many causes. He was overtly gay and constantly battled bigoted rulers and others who clamped down on gays and lesbians. Ginsberg sought to legalize marijuana, he joined peace campaigns and played a major role in the anti-Vietnam War movement.
     A Jew from birth, Ginsberg sought for something spiritual to believe in and found it at last in Buddhism.
     He became a sometime musician, and got interested in photography. He took many photographs that showed his talent. He also gave away much of what he earned. By the time he died, he was supporting at least ten people. The son of a poet and a disturbed mother he waged a peaceful war against all forms of censorship. Growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, Ginsberg died in New York City at the age of 70.
    Constantly on the move, Ginsberg travelled in dozens of countries and met many of his famous contemporaries. He helped create the Beat Generation and shook up the American literary establishment. Ginsberg found publishers for many of the Beat writers and others as well.
    "He was not just an artist," someone said of the great British painter J.W.M. Turner.  "He was a force of nature." So was Allen Ginsberg who helped father many of the cultural revolutions that swept across the western world in the 1960's and after.
     He was a poet who made a difference in the lives of many many people.