What Thoughts I Have of You Tonight, Allen Ginsberg
Uploaded by lmmu on May 23, 2007
Thomas Paine. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Martin Luther King, Jr. When one thinks of people who began a new generation, inspiring people, motivating people, and leading them, these names may come to mind. However, one that many neglect is the genius of Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg’s actions and opinions, built by his background, caused the eternal and cultural birth known as the 1960s.
Allen Ginsberg’s colorful childhood led him to a deviant youth, causing an eruption of unique and intellectual poetry, which not only incited a new genre of literature and life, but inspired countless others to take a stand—no matter how differently they thought. Truly, Ginsberg proved to be a real individual, especially seen in his stylistic, liberal poetry.
Unfortunately, his life began awkwardly, and he struggled to cope with his family’s dysfunction. Many of the things which occurred while he was still a youth molded him into the poetic giant the world now knows today. While he may be very famous, his poetry outweighs his name. One of his most renowned works, “A Supermarket in California” still remains unclear to many, but it stands as an innovating and thought-provoking piece of literature, expressing his views of the world and its future, while praising the poetic idols of the past. While Ginsberg drew inspiration from artists of the past, he inspired an entire generation and is indeed considered a forerunner of ‘60s culture and life.
Precisely one month after Napoleon Bonaparte died at age sixty-three, Allen Ginsberg was born. June 3, 1926, created the boy, born of a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, two days after the World’s Fair hit Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Wikipedia).
The son of a high school teacher and part time poet, Ginsberg developed a love of great literature and often wrote to the New York Times as a teen, expressing his views on World War Two and worker’s rights (Wikipedia). Sadly, he never got along well with his father. His mother, Naomi Levi Ginsberg, aside from being a nudist and member of Communist Party USA, suffered from epilepsy and paranoia. When Ginsberg became a teenager, his mother asked him to accompany her by bus to a mental home, where she could receive electroshock therapy and a lobotomy. His mother and that trip gave Ginsberg “enormous empathy and tolerance for madness, neurosis, and psychosis” (Poet.org, Wikipedia, Charters).
After graduating from Eastside High School in 1943, Ginsberg briefly studied...