The Ginsberg/Milosz Experience By: Andrew Rash, David LePage, Nick Ellison, and Ajay Mani

Allen Ginsberg

Champion of civil rights

Renowned poet

Founder of major literary movement

Born in 1926

First earned public recognition after the release of “Howl and Other Poems”

“Howl”

Was seen as a outcry of rage and despair against a destructive society

Ginsberg’s works were influenced by his mothers growing insanity

Ginsberg’s writing style was one of emotion and feeling

Usually didn’t have traditional rythym

“Howl”

“ I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night”

“Howl” Analysis

It’s first part is made to feel like a stream of consciousness and shows Ginsberg lifestyle

Part two discusses political issues in great depth

Part three is a view into carl Solomons decent into madness, but eventually switches to the perspective of Solomon himself.

Criticism

Ginsberg was critcized for his encouragement of druge use as well as rejection of authority, and freedom of sexual expression.

These complaints only increased his popularity.

Czeslaw Milosz

Wrote most of his works about WWII, and the events after it

His poems, novels, essays, and other works are written in Polish, and translated by others

Milosz writes of the past in a tragic, ironic, style that nonetheless affirms the value of human life.

WWII

He spent WWII in Warsaw, under Nazi Germany’s “General Government”

After moving to America in 1960, Milosz became a professor at Cal Berkely

In 1980 he received a Nobel prize for Literature

Influences

Milosz was influenced by his life under two totalitarian system of modern history

His writings were influenced by what he saw during the war

Magic Mountain and Black Despair

Milosz most famous poems are “A Magic Mountain”, and “In Black Despair” shown below

“In grayish doubt and black despair

I drafted hymns to the earth and the air,

Pretending to joy, although I lacked it,

The age had made lament redundant,

So here’s the question—who can answer it—

was he a brave man or a hypocrite?”

Analysis

The poem tells of a person going through a depressive

It tells how they pretend to be happy by singing songs

But this is only to keep others from asking about their sadness

This leads the narrator to question whether or not this is a cowardly act

Criticism

Milosz works have been criticized in the states for appealing to Communism

But these were all seen as beautifully written

They were the product of an incisive mind