Search Results (8)

In this article, I analyze the use of Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic texts—and the Kaddish in particular—as esoteric tongues in Jewish–American narratives, including poems, plays, television shows, and films. I suggest that by doing so, the creators of these works evoke the Lurianic notion of millin setimin or “secreted words”—utterances that transcend the communicative function of everyday speech and partake in some profound revelations. I hope to show that from Allen Ginsberg, through Tony Kushner, to the Coen Brothers and beyond, Jewish–American creators have been evoking Jewish tongues both as symbols of a lost past and as millin setimin that aspire to restore the connection to that past, within the Jewish–American community and beyond. Full article

The New American Poetry anthology delineated “schools” of North American poetry which have become seminal: The Black Mountain School (Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov), the New York School (John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Frank O’Hara), the San Francisco Renaissance (Robert Duncan, Robin Blaser, Jack Spicer), and the Beats (Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure). The word seminal is used in a traditional way, from the root: “of seed or semen … full of possibilities”, but here also because the work is dominated by men and the omission of poets like Diane di Prima and Joanne Kyger seems especially egregious now. As compared to the whiteness of academic verse of the time, the New American Poetry was radical and more diverse, but could be seen as quite inadequate in those aspects from a contemporary perspective. Of course culture must always be judged in proper context, including its era and the anthology has had a powerful impact on the poetry of the continent from which it came. This paper posits that The New American Poetry, had it looked even slightly off the shore of North America, could have included the Neo-Barroco school of Latin American poetry. The affinities are almost endless and the limited scope of even the most radical poets of the post-war generation is exposed. Full article

Beat poetry, since its origination in the American milieu in the 1950s until its further maturation in the late 1960s and 1970s, has embodied ecological visions. Allen Ginsberg’s and Gary Snyder’s Buddhist poetics of the emptiness of material phenomena evoke one’s awareness ofthe true nature of material goods. This ecological awarenessenlightensanyoneto not overconsume the goods in fulfilling his/her daily necessities. In this recent era, Ginsberg’s “Plutonian Ode” and Snyder’s “Smokey the Bear Sutra” memorialize this Beat green poetics against anthropocentric materialism and its potential detrimental impacts on the natural environment. These poems view human’s material attachment as a recurring melancholia even in today’s digital technology era. Their ecological criticisms through the Buddhist poetics pave the way for anyone to cherish rather than objectify any material thing in living the biotic community. Full article

As was the case for other writers from the Beat Generation, geography is more than simply a setting for Allen Ginsberg’s work, as his poetry also bears the imprint of the influence of the landscapes through which he traveled in his mind and poetic practice. In the 1950s, the same decade which saw the composition of Ginsberg’s Howl, Guy Debord and his followers developed the concept of “psychogeography” and “dérive” to analyze the influence of landscapes on one’s mind. The Debordian concept of psychogeography implies then that an objective world can have unknown and subjective consequences. Inspired by Debord’s theories and through the analysis of key poems, this paper argues that a psychogeographical focus can shed new light on ecocritical studies of Ginsberg’s poetry. It can indeed unveil the complex construction of the poet’s own space-time poetics, from hauntological aspects to his specific composition process. Full article

The article examines Allen Ginsberg’s cultural and spiritual journeys, and traces the poet’s paths as foreshadowing those of many American Jews of the last generation. Ginsberg was a unique individual, whose choices were very different other men of his era. However, it was larger developments in American society that allowed him to take steps that were virtually unthinkable during his parents’ generation and were novel and daring in his time as well. In his childhood and adolescence, Ginsberg grew up in a Jewish communist home, which combined socialist outlooks with mild Jewish traditionalism. The poet’s move from communism and his search for spirituality started already at Columbia University of the 1940s, and continued throughout his life. Identifying with many of his parents’ values and aspirations, Ginsberg wished to transcend beyond his parents’ Jewish orbit and actively sought to create an inclusive, tolerant, and permissive society where persons such as himself could live and create at ease. He chose elements from the Christian, Jewish, Native-American, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions, weaving them together into an ever-growing cultural and spiritual quilt. The poet never restricted his choices and freedoms to one all-encompassing system of faith or authority. In Ginsberg’s understanding, Buddhism was a universal, non-theistic religion that meshed well with an individualist outlook, and offered personal solace and mindfulness. He and other Jews, who followed his example, have seen no contradiction between practicing Buddhism and Jewish identity and have not sensed any guilt. Their Buddhism has been Western, American, and individualistic in its goals, meshing with other interests and affiliations. In that, Ginsberg served as a model and forerunner to a new kind of Jew, who takes pride in his heritage, but wished to live his life socially, culturally and spiritually in an open and inclusive environment, exploring and enriching herself beyond the Jewish fold. It has become an almost routine Jewish choice, reflecting the values, and aspirations of many in the Jewish community, including those who chose religious venues within the declared framework of the Jewish community. Full article

This essay explores the relationship between the U.S.-based Beat literary movement and the Hungry Generation literary movement centered in and around Calcutta, India, in the early 1960s. It discusses a trip Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky took to India in 1962, where they met writers associated with the Hungry Generation. It further explains how Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of City Lights Books in San Francisco, was inspired to start a new literary magazine, City Lights Journal, by Ginsberg’s letters from India, which included work by Hungry Generation writers. The essay shows how City Lights Journal packaged the Hungry Generation writers as the Indian wing of the Beat movement, and focuses in particular on the work of Malay Roy Choudhury, the founder of the Hungry Generation who had been prosecuted for obscenity for his poem “Stark Electric Jesus”. The essay emphasizes in particular the close relationship between aesthetics and politics in Hungry Generation writing, and suggests that Ginsberg’s own mid-1960s turn to political activism via the imagination is reminiscent of strategies employed by Hungry Generation writers. Full article

Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, poetics or cultural activism; Jack Kerouac’s prose, poetry and his method of composition; Gary Snyder’s environmental and Buddhist consciousness and bioregional ethos, or the opening made by the Beats for Eastern spirituality in the west are of intrinsic value and will be for generations, this paper seeks to posit that it is Michael McClure’s use of Projective Verse, that future generations of writers and readers will come to appreciate as that movement’s spiritual legacy. Full article

The cultural role of Allen Ginsberg does not fit a typical Weberian model of charisma. The avant-garde poet was an outstanding personality and possessed an unusual ability to affect people. He played a vital role in expanding the boundaries of personal freedom in America of the 1950s–1990s, blazing new paths for spiritual, communal and artistic expression. Serving as a father figure for the counterculture—a symbol of an alternative set of cultural norms, lifestyles and literary forms—Ginsberg was a charismatic counter-leader, with no clearly defined followers or movement. As a leader in a more liberated era, he offered energy, ideas, inspiration, and color, but no structure or authority. Instead he was a prophet of freedom, calling on people to express themselves openly, to expand and experiment. This role demanded charisma but of a different kind—one that was more spiritual and less organizational or hierarchical. This article follows Gary Dickson’s essay “Charisma, Medieval and Modern,” in offering a suggestive analysis of and supplement to Weber’s understanding of charisma. The article grapples with the concept of charisma in relation to a generation that resented rigid structures and authorities. Full article