Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsbergwas an American poet and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that soon would follow. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression and was known as embodying various aspects of this counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions. He was one of many influential American writers of his time known as the Beat Generation, which included famous writers...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth3 June 1926
CityNewark, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
I'm an old man now, and a lonesome man in Kansas / but not afraid / to speak my lonesomeness in a car, / because not only my lonesomeness / it's Ours, all over America, / O tender fellows --/ & spoken lonesomeness is Prophecy / in the moon 100 years ago or in / the middle of Kansas now.
I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade.
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit- man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
I know I'm not God, are you? Don't be silly. God? God? Everybody's God? Don't be silly.
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstacy is holy!
Who can live with this Consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?
Thank God I am not God! Thank God I am not God!
What is obscenity? And to whom?
Tell your secrets. [In reply to the question "How does one become a prophet?"]
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
he threw up his hands and wrote the Universe dont exist and died to prove it
A naked lunch is natural to us We eat reality sandwiches. But allegories are so much lettuce. Don't hide the madness.
The hero surviving his own murder, his own suicide, his own addiction, surviving his own disappearance from the scene
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!