Study of Spirituality in Allen Ginsberg's selected Poetry

Abstract

Allen Ginsberg's (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) "Howl" poem was first seen as largely a social record, but it eventually came to be recognised as a symbol of the avant-garde artist and as the designer of a poetry form for a postwar generation seeking its own voice. However, as Ginsberg's notes demonstrate, it was also the most recent result of a long-running study of formal and structural elements. Several aspects of Ginsberg's life culminated in this seminal poem, written as he neared the age of thirty when he was still aimlessly bouncing from one job to another and from one country to another. There was more to Ginsberg's father's influence than met the eye. Even though Allen Ginsberg found little inspiration in his father Louis's highly conventional, metrical poems, the latter's interest in literary history served as a foundation for Ginsberg's understanding of prosody. The young poet was then guided by a series of other influential figures, such as Williams, whose use of American vernacular and local material served as an inspiration, and great scholars like Meyer Shapiro, an art historian at Columbia, who introduced him to the principles of modernism from an analytical standpoint.