The Human Tumbleweed

The poem starts by evoking an odd image in the minds of the readers.

Understanding Carl Solomon

Allen Ginsberg’s repetition is essential in creating consistency in his free verse “Howl.” The Beat Generation…

Gary Snyder’s Enduring Image of Women

Imagery is perhaps the most powerful tool at a poet’s dispense. Though Gary Snyder is a master at crafting clear, evocative images in his poetry, the picture of women that he builds can be quite problematic when we read him today. In “Praise for Sick Women,”…

Viva La Vie Boheme

Amiri Baraka (also known as Leroi Jones) was a founding member of the Black Arts Movement. An inspiration to many, he was…

Spontaneous Prose and Its Improvisational Influences

Looking at Diction in Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”

In his poem “Howl,” Allen Ginsberg employs a stunning combination of abstract, poetic, and concrete diction in order to suffuse the poem with his unique voice as well as to critique the dominant American culture of his time — which he sees as a…

Jack Kerouac, Charlie Parker, and the Nature of Art and Death

The Hallucinogenic Spectrum

Using literary tools in writing is one thing, but using drugs is another. While accompanied by suddenly…

Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”: Life is a Poem

To Allen Ginsberg and his contemporaries of the Beat Generation, poetry was far more than…

Jack Kerouac and Rhythm

For Jack Kerouac, to write spontaneous prose was to “satisfy yourself first, then reader cannot fail to receive…