 | Allen Ginsberg: Encyclopedia II - Allen Ginsberg - Career
Allen Ginsberg - Career
Ginsberg's poetry was strongly influenced by modernism, romanticism, the beat and cadence of jazz, and his Kagyu Buddhist practice and Jewish background. He considered himself to have inherited the visionary and homoerotic poetic mantle handed from the English poet and artist William Blake on to Walt Whitman. The power of Ginsberg's verse, its searching, probing focus, its long and lilting lines, as well as its New World exuberance, all echo the continuity of inspiration which he claimed. Other influences included the American poet William Carlos Williams.
Ginsberg's principal work, "Howl", is well-known to many for its opening line: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness". It was considered scandalous at the time of publication due to the rawness of the language, which is frequently explicit. Shortly after its 1956 publication by San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore, it was banned for obscenity. The ban became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment, and was later lifted after judge Clayton W. Horn, declared the poem to possess redeeming social importance. Ginsberg's leftist and generally anti-establishment politics attracted the attention of the FBI, who regarded Ginsberg as a major security threat.
Ginsberg's spiritual journey began early on with his reported spontaneous visions, and continued with an early trip to India and a chance encounter on a New York City street (they both tried to catch the same cab) with Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master of the Vajrayana school, who became his friend and life-long teacher. Ginsberg helped found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, a school founded by Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. Music and chanting were both important parts of his live delivery during poetry readings. He often accompanied himself on a handheld organ called a harmonium, and was often accompanied by a guitarist. Attendance to his poetry readings was generally standing room only for most of his career, no matter where in the world he appeared.
Ginsberg won the National Book Award for his book "The Fall of America." In 1993, the French Minister of Culture awarded him with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters).
In 1994, when the International Lesbian and Gay Association successfully banished all connections to the North American Man-Boy Love Association in order to gain consultative status in the United Nations, Ginsberg opposed (together with modern gay rights founder Harry Hay). He said that he supported NAMBLA's right to free speech because the hysteria over pederasty reminded him of the hysteria over homosexuality itself while he was growing up.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Career", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
