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…

Spontaneous Prose and Its Improvisational Influences

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

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…

The Industrial Sphinx, Catalyst of American Madness

Although many American institutions promote conformity, Beat poets, such as Allen Ginsberg, argued that this very nature of conformity was destroying their generation. In the poem “Howl”, Ginsberg argues that the best minds are…

Beat Poetry Mixtapes Introduction

Although it is one of the most influential poetry movements of the mid 20th century, for many of us…