Postnuclear Poetry and the Beats–Ginsberg, Reed, Kerouac, and Vonnegut
What was perplexing, enlightening, or thought-provoking in this week’s readings? Who were your favorites?
My personal favorite of the week is Jack Kerouac. You might want to check out an NPR story that ran in the summer of 2007, on the 50-year anniversary of On the Road and Kerouac’s manuscript scroll. Among other interesting tidbits, it reveals how Kerouac connected sheets of typing paper into a long scroll so he’d never have to slow down to change the paper, allowing him to just burn through his story. As Dean Moriarty says early in the novel, “Man, wow, there’s so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears…” Just going without stop probably helped Kerouac avoid getting “hung-up.”
Fast-paced seems to be a theme in many of these writers’ approaches. They all (maybe not Kerouac) are itching to attack the establishment, to rebel. Recently, our family watched West Side Story. I hadn’t watched it in a long time, and I was struck by how much it felt like a period piece (produced in 1961) and how parts of it reminded me of The Beats, especially the song/dance number, “Play it Cool.” The young characters are full of rage and anger, and yet the new leader of the Jets urges them to “play it cool.” Even when they’re playing it cool, underneath boils rebellion. Here’s a YouTube video of the scene:
One final 20th century pop connection with our poets: last week my 12-year-old son was listening to an old CD of ours and kept replaying one song that he liked, “I Should Be Allowed to Think,” by the band They Might Be Giants (1994). As I hummed along, it struck me–these are words from one of our Giants of American Poetry. Here are some of the lyrics that piqued my interest…and a video of the song itself…can you tell who they steal from and riff on?
I saw the best minds of my generation
Destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical
I should be allowed to glue my poster
I should be allowed to think…
I saw the worst bands of my generation
applied by magic marker to dry wall
I should be allowed to shoot my mouth off
I should have a call-in show…
I am not allowed
To ever come up with a single original thought
I am not allowed
To meet the criminal government agent who oppresses me
I was the worst hope of my generation
Destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical
I should be allowed to share my feelings
I should be allowed to feel…
I am not allowed to think
I am not allowed to think
This has been my least favorite lesson thus far in class…it makes me feel like a prude! I do not understand the allure of Ginsberg and I did not care for “On the Road”, at all. They are so reminiscent of a lifestyle that I no longer want to be a part of. For me, I feel like these men’s literary contributions are overshadowed by their drug and alcohol use. I can’t seem to see anything past that in ‘Howl’ and while reading “On the Road”, I was just reminded of the insanity that came along in my own addiction; drugs/alcohol, sex and rock and roll (instead of jazz). I’ve lived the vagabond life for a while, and it was anything but enlightening…but at the time, we thought we were the most intellectualized people on the planet! I feel like I cannot be objective enough to get out of my own way and appreciate these two men. I feel as if I would be condoning behavior and lifestyle choices that nearly killed me and did take the life of someone I love.
Out of all the authors we read this week, Reed and Vonnegut were by far my favorite. I believe that they added to the scope of post-nuclear literature and I was invested in their work.
This week reading really redefine what we think of poetry. I LOVE IT! I think I like it so much because the poem I truly ‘dig’ was “Howl” and “Neo-HooDoo Manifesto” because they reminds me of a boardway musical I saw years ago, “RENT”. Rent was a musical about la vie Bohemia! There was a lot of power and raw emotions in those poems. I also think it was not too hard to read. Usually I read our poetry assignment with google.com ready to go but I can easily understand the message behind these poem!
Thanks for your comment, Maryann. Your comment that you can’t “comprehend how that can even be called poetry” raises the question of how we define poetry. It’s a form that’s constantly shape shifting, but here’s one definition: “A verbal composition designed to convey experiences, ideas, or emotions in a vivid and imaginative way, characterized by the use of language chosen for its sound and suggestive power and by the use of literary techniques such as meter, metaphor, and rhyme.”
I would say that Ginsberg is definitely conveying emotion…and there’s power and literary technique in it. It’s concentrated language, which makes it stand apart from prose.
You were not kidding about the wild ride reading this week, were you? Along with wild, I would add bizarre, full of anger, rebellion, and downright venomous language. Particularly in Ginsberg’s “Howl”. I don’t know if it’s me or what, but I can’t quite comprehend how that can even be called poetry.
I can, however, identify with the concept of the song mentioned, “I should be allowed to think”. I know what it’s like to feel that thinking for oneself isn’t allowed. That’s how I grew to adulthood.
Someone commented previously that not being allowed to think is crazy, it is, but one learns not to think when punishment is the result of daring to articulate thoughts. Or perhaps, it’s more that one learns not to talk about one’s thoughts. Either way, I never could figure out why so many people feel so threatened by disagreements and challenges to one’s thoughts.
My favorite author is Kurt Vonnegut and I enjoyed returning to “Slaughterhouse Five” this week. I read it many years ago and also saw the movie adaptation from the 1970’s. For anyone who has not read the book in its entirety I highly recommend it. Vonnegut has this way of creating in depth characters, placing them in unfamiliar settings and connecting them with with other things and people in society. Sometimes he makes sense with complete nonsense.
I was also impressed with the writing style of Kerouac’s “On The Road” but found myself annoyed at the laissez faire existence of the characters. I understand it was written as an affront toward societal constraints but disliked the idiocy.
As for the poetry this week, I did not like Reed’s “Nee Hoo Doo Manifesto” but I loved “Howl”. The work is timeless and conjures T.S. Eliot’s statement,”No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.” It is clear that Ginsberg draws from history and is inspired by poets who came before him. “Howl” reminds me of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” as it acts as a stream of consciousness that draws from a similar style and voice.
It seems the greatest work is accomplished as a stream which is probably why Kerouac was successful as he literally streamed his ideas while writing “On The Road” by connecting paper.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Nevin and Whitney!
@Nevin–I don’t get many comments on Neo Hoodoo, so it’s good to hear that you identify with it.
@Whitney–I’m about ready to hit the road and head west! (a few papers to grade first, though)
This was a great, turbulent and exciting lesson. Although I personally don’t like “Howl”, Nevin I see how you would say that it “brought the poetry…around full circle”. I can definitely see Whitman in its long, descriptive lines, I can also see Eliot’s, “The Waste Land”. Instead of a modern lament of the tragic chaos, “Howl” seems to represent a perverse celebration of the fragmented chaos and confusion–very post-modern, and both are pregnant with many references and allusions that are waiting to be discovered. This was what I found most interesting about Ginsberg’s poem. I thoroughly enjoyed Kerouac’s On the Road and have read it some time ago, but it was just as engaging as it was then. I don’t agree with all of the philosophies and behaviors encountered in the story, but there are some vivid moments of clarity with Kerouac that I cannot deny. And there will always be that juvenile dream inside of me where I hit the road and head west into the sunset without a worry or responsibility to my name.
The “Beats” are interesting. I loved Ginsberg’s Howl.” It brought the poetry section of the course around full circle. We started out with Whitman sitting and observing people and everyday events in his time. He wrote poems about what he saw. Then, 100 years later Ginsberg did the same thing. Some of “Howl” could have been written last night. A poet in Harlem, or Kansas City, or Little Rock could observe similar events today and write about them.
I also can identify with Ishmael Reed’s “Neo-HooDoo Manifesto.” For someone who has done much soul searching in his time on earth, I can Identify with someone who looks for outside faiths, or teaching to symbolize their lifestyle.
Plus, it is hard in the modern age to see God through technology and knowlege.
Kerouac this week is, for me as well, the absolute highlight. I haven’t finished the other authors yet, but in just re-reading On the Road, I’m finding I just can’t get enough of it. I keep relating it back to “my generation,” trying to find the new beat generation and it’s so strange. I feel like we’re, in a way, more complacent than the romanticzed lives of the beats. I’m pretty political and attend protests, but even there, it’s almost as if everyone’s kind of given up–even the radicals.
I’ll hear things like “Man, no one’s listening. There’s no changing this place,” or “WHAT are we fighting FOR, we lack means, we lack a voice, we lack IMPORTANCE.” It’s so disheartening.
I just want to pass out to everyone a copy of On the Road and say “Hey guys, let’s hit the road. Let’s live how we WANT to live, how we NEED to live to feel sane, or insane, or alive.”
Finally to sum up my reviews of this course I would like to end with Jack Kerouac and The Beat generations. This generation has been my favorite time period because it was the time period closest to the the one we live in now. I also love to read books about American history where the characters as you say are “itching to attack the establishment, to rebel.”
The youtube link you posted with the song “I should be allowed to think” is a perfect comparison to the writers of The Beat generation. I have always been one who wants to challenge what other people tell me is right when I think it is wrong. This song helps me relate even more to the readings of this generation.
My favorite reading from this lesson was Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. It was both adventuresome and inspiring because he was leaving all that he knew in order to find something better even though he wasn’t even sure that something would necessarily be out there. This book was so enjoyable for me to read because I like to think there is always something more to see, to learn, or to achieve and I believe this book helped reassure me that there is always more.
Overall, this was a great way to end our course, it was both inspiring and fun!
Thanks for your insights, Emily. I agree with you about the curator of Kerouac’s scroll: “It is almost morbid that he describes riding along with the black box from city to city.”
I, like many of the other students who have commented on this blog, really think that it was interesting that Kerouac made scrolls so that he could just continually keep writing. Although I may not enjoy his writing overly much, I do admire the dedication and skill with which he wrote.
I really enjoyed the poem “Howl” however and found it amusing that they had used parts of this poem in the song above. This is actually probably a regular occurrence for music today and we just do not notice it because we may not have come upon the poem or story that the lines were borrowed from. I do not blame the artists that borrow these lines though because with a starting line like that of the poem “Howl” it would be a shame not use it in a song or movie.
I love the NPR special that you posted about ‘On The Road.’ It is one of my favorite books but I never knew that Kerouac wrote the entire thing on a scroll! I can’t believe that this scroll was buried and is now actually ‘on the road.’
It is fascinating that Canary, the curator of the scroll feels such a connection with the piece. It is almost morbid that he describes riding along with the black box from city to city.
Even if he had planned to write the piece and had “crafted” it in his head and journals, the fact that he typed it in around three weeks is incredible. It shows the manic nature of the author, who I can just imagine sitting in “a frenzy” and typing in a whirlwind.
I love the folklure of Kerouac just as much as the reality. It all lends to the fantasy of the piece.
I love the line “I’m not allow to think, I’m not allow to think”. Of all the lines in the poem and all the lines in the log post these lines made me think the most. The thought of not being allowed to think is just absurd. “I should be able to feel”. That also intrigues me, the thought of not being able to feel. How can you not be able to feel? Not that he can’t feel, not allowed? The idea of these things that cannot be done but are not allowed to do. It reminds me of being 10 years old and not being allowed to do things, like play outside after 5 or not being allowed to have dessert on any night except Saturdays. But not being allowed to think, feel, or share feelings. Crazy!
So interesting to hear that you are reading and enjoying Naked Lunch, Kelsey. This course used to include that book, but few students liked it. Many were offended that they were asked to read it and objected to its inclusion on the syllabus. We took it out last year when we revamped to course (to make room for some more women writers and to allow a different trajectory at the end of the term). Glad to hear it intrigues you.
Lenore, when I read Ginsberg’s Howl i similarly thought it was all about suffering and how difficult life was. However, if you read the foreword to Howl in the Norton Anthology it says that Howl “combined apocalyptic criticism of the dull, prosperous Eisenhower years with exuberant celebration of an emerging counterculture.” Although his descriptions of the lives of the beat generation seem bleak and miserable to us, I think Ginsberg was celebrating his fellow crazed expatriates just as much as he was criticizing them. He recognized that the lives they lead were reckless, temporary ways to live, but he also wanted no part of the expected way of living. I can’t help but thin that while Howl sounds depressing to us, for Ginsberg it was celebratory. In the footnote, for example, he writes “”The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!”
Hello Ms. Jaenicke,
I was also very intrigued by the beat generation and the works produced during that time. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road really interested and excited me as a writer! I definitely think it was my most favorite piece in the class.
I’m really glad that you shared the link for the Play it Cool scene in West Side Story. I think that was a great connection and now I want to re-watch the movie because I haven’t seen it since I was a kid.
I read that the book Naked Lunch was also produced during the beat generation. I happen to be reading it this summer and, although written in wildly different styles, I can definitely see some similarities now that I’ve researched the beat works. Like On the Road, Naked Lunch is super fast-paced with many characters and lots of traveling.
I definitely want to read more of these works, especially at the age of twenty, I feel like it is a good time in my life to be reading such stories. Thanks for such a great class!
Kelsey
After reading this weeks work I could not help but question the way I am living my life. I was intrigued by On The Road and Howl and how the beat generation became a way of life for many people. Being a college student studying to one day have a 9 to 5 job I can’t help but think that maybe this isn’t what I want, maybe I want to travel the road like Kerouac and find meaning in other things than a steady paycheck and a typical nuclear family. Of course these are all dreams, but for Kerouac and others this was reality and I can now see why the beat generation caught on like it did.
At first, I really didn’t understand what the poem “Howl” was really about but after reading it again, I realize how free Allen Ginsberg must have felt after writing the poem. I read where he left his nine to five job and decided to do what he enjoyed the most- write. In his poem, he tells the world what he really thinks about it. He uses obscenities, speaks of the power of drugs and uses many references about sex. He dared to say what others probably felt.
I decided to find out more about his life when I discovered that there will be a movie about his life and poem, “Howl” coming out soon ( I think in September) with James Franco playing Greenberg. I saw a few clips and it looks good. You can read more about the movie at
Sorry about the mixup! Can you tell it’s almost the end of the class?
I can imagine that this poem would have been truly shocking to hear aloud, especially in 1955. Nonetheless, I think that the depth of the poem is truly interesting, especially after reading it a few times.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Lindsay. I am particularly interested to hear the process through which you came to appreciate “Howl” and what you appreciate about it. (Note, though, that “Howl” is by Allen Ginsberg, not Ismael Reed.)
Can you imagine being in San Francisco, at the first public reading of “Howl” in 1955, HEARING the words and those repeated line openings building on each other?
From Poets.org (http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/8):
In response to Ginsberg’s reading, Michael McClure, curator for the gallery where Ginsberg first read “Howl,” wrote: “Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America…”
I think that the fact that Kerouac created the long scroll so he could just “burn through” the story makes the story even more admirable and interesting. We hear so many modern writers talk about writers block, the long editing process, etc. I think that this fact alone speaks wonders for Kerouac’s skill.
I thought Reed’s style of writing was particularly interesting. At first, I didn’t like “Howl”. I found it jumbled, confusing, and just plain strange. After reading it a second time and researching Reed a litle bit, I realized how interesting the poem really is. I really liked how he started out each line the same way; interestingly enough, this gave his work a sense of flow and continuity.
I thought it was interesting to read works from eras that aren’t in the distant past; some of our relatives actually lived through these eras. I found it interesting to get a snapshot of the time period through these writings.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Michael, Lenore, and Holly!
@Michael: Yes, it might be fun to BE the rambling man or woman, but not as much fun to try to be WITH that person.
@Lenore: Glad to hear you liked Ishmael Reed…yes, he’s sacrilegious…and funny! I’ll put Slaughterhouse-Five on my Netflix queue if you do!
@Nikki: thanks for the discussion of Up in the Air–I also liked that movie and found it disturbing. It’s like On the Road, in that the protagonist is “on the road” and has no need to have a place to call home…and yet it feels so different, so regimented, so much less exploratory and free-wheeling. Perhaps because Clooney’s working? Do you think they’re both running from something? Or both trying to find something?
The Jack Kerouac-esque idea of living on a whim, taking one day as it comes, following wherever the wind takes you is certainly an interesting topic. I can definitely understand how this life mentality would be frustrating to a different frame of mind. One perspective viewing another is practically frustrating by default. Where one person likes freedom and impulsiveness another prefers structure and certainty. Both personalities inherently clash.
This topic particularly reminds me of a movie I recently watched: Up in the Air. The movie is about a man (George Clooney) who works for a company that is hired by other companies to terminate their employees. Clooney, therefore, spends about 360 days of the year on a plane, flying from location to location and looks forward to achieving a certain amount of air miles that few people achieve. When his company considers firing remotely, via computer, Clooney’s foundation of life is upset. His traveling lifestyle has become habit and furthermore secure, it’s what he knows. At risk of spoiling the movie for anyone I’ll spare further details except that when Clooney finally does reach the “elite” mile marker (in flight) and the pilot asks where he is from, Clooney says “here.”
Personally, living on an airplane would not be my first choice. Or even second, third, or fourth! I’m more of a homebody by heart and this on-the-go lifestyle portrayed in Up in the Air seems quite a bit unsettling to me! But I suppose that’s just my prerogative and perhaps the character in the movie would consider my lifestyle unexciting or stagnant. To each his own!
Michael, I agree with you that the pick-up-and-go attitude in the characters would be hard to deal with. I guess the whole point of that was the rebellion against the society that expected them to behave in a certain way, for example, the “normal” 9 to 5 job, a house, a wife, 2.5 kids, a dog. Not having that “normalcy” or maybe a better word would be stability, or even predictibility, would make me crazy. However, some people, like your roomate, seem to thrive on spontaneity and chaos. My boring life would be a prison sentence…driving kids to ball practice, after-school activities, errands, cooking, groceries. Hum drum.
As for the other authors this week… I had heard of “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, and all I could get out of that was anger. Anger at everyone and everything in the world that wasn’t right, and that, according to Ginsberg, is a lot. I’m reading a book right now (in my spare time, lol) called The Essence of Buddhism by Jo Durden Smith. In this basic explanation, life is described as an existence full of suffering, and the whole purpose of life is to try to find the path to avoid suffering. “Howl” seems to be a diatribe of every injustice and suffering ever incurred upon mankind. It is depressing. Partially because a lot of it is true. Most thought-provoking for me.
Now, on a lighter note, I loved Ishmael Reed’s “Neo-HooDoo Manifesto”. It was trying to be explanatory, but I found it very humorous, as on page 2845 in our book, “Neo-HooDoo tells Christ to get lost. (Judas Iscariot holds an honorary degree from Neo-HooDoo.)” The content seems, quite frankly, sacreligious, but it is Reed’s style that made me smile.
Lastly, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”, or at least Chapter One was interesting, and you feel immediately pulled in to the characters, and the scene in the kitchen with his buddy O’Hare. It made me want to read the rest of the book, as well as the “war book” he wrote and kept referring to. I stumbled across this title on Netflix the other day, made in 1972, only 3 years after Vonnegut wrote it. I might have to put that on my queue.
I currently live with someone who seems to live their life by life-philosophies (or lack thereof) similar to those found in “On the Road”. It’s pretty maddening. To me, it looks like it involves no responsibility, no thought for others, and no capacity to see beyond today. All of that being couched in terms of ‘freedom’, where in reality it’s simply a different sort of bondage. So I suppose “On the Road” is my thought-provoking reading for the week. Makes me think: What do the characters sacrifice in their lives for this lifestyle they choose?