By Marlon Labovitch
Few poets in the modern era have had as much of an effect on American (and indeed world) culture as Allen Ginsberg. His shocking and affecting poem, Howl, came to define his generation and the literary movement of the beats, which he is largely responsible for bringing about with the sheer force of his willpower and the love he held for his friends. In this essay, we will see how Allen’s life lead up to the publishing of Howl, and how the beat generation was born.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark at Beth Israel hospital on the 3rd of June 1926 to a pair of Russian-Jewish immigrants named Naomi and Louis Ginsberg. Louis was a second-generation immigrant, and a socialist, whilst Naomi had grown up in Russia, speaking Yiddish and was tellingly a staunch communist. Ginsberg also had a brother named Eugene who was born five years earlier. Like many poets (and indeed artists in general) Ginsberg’s childhood -especially his mother’s constant paroxysms of madness and paranoia- had profound effect on his life and work. Naomi’s mother had died of influenza in 1918, just four years after Naomi had graduated high school, and Naomi suffered the first of her many mental breaks in 1919.
After a brief stay in the Bronx, the Ginsberg’s moved to Paterson in New Jersey, where the majority of Allen’s childhood was spent. At the time, Naomi was recuperating from a breakdown in a sanatorium nearby. Allen’s early childhood, while not particularly explosive, was defined by a sense of isolation from people his own age. He was already begging to develop the constant need for love and affection that would make him so key in bringing the beat generation together later on in his life. When he and his brother shared a bed, Allen would constantly try and cuddle up to Eugene, and was always met with a brusque shove. Due to his parents’ far-left leaning political beliefs he was raised an atheist and didn’t learn Hebrew. Whilst obviously not consciously aware of his sexuality, Allen also later documented some erotic fantasies he’d had about other boys growing up. Naomi suffered many mental breakdowns, which were extremely traumatic for Allen, and was constantly in and out of local sanatoriums. She was paranoid that Louis’ mother (dubbed “Buba”) was plotting to kill her. At one point, she even slashed her wrists with shards from a broken mirror to the horror of her two young sons.
By his mid-teens, Allen was developing regular crushes on other boys. He had found a copy of Kraft-Ebbing’s Psychopathia Sexualis and was delighted to discover case histories that mirrored his own sexual tendencies. When he was in his last year of high school, he fell head-over-heels for another Jewish boy named Paul Roth, who was completely unaware of Allen’s adoration. Roth, who was a half-year ahead of Allen, got into Columbia and left for New York City, and as soon as he could, Allen followed him dutifully. Whilst Allen didn’t end up seeing Roth much at Columbia, his decision to go was one of the most important decisions in not only his life, but also the development of modern American literature. This fertile ground of scholarly pursuit and forward-thinking city mannerisms was the fertile earth from which the Beats would spring.
Allen’s first key meeting was with a young, extremely attractive man named Lucien Carr. Lucien was the portal through which Allen would be introduced to both Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, both of whom were defining writers of the beat generation and became lifelong friends of his. Lucien was constantly dogged by David Kammerer, a much older man who was obsessed with him and whom Lucien would soon end up murdering. Lucien would hide from Kammerer in his friend, Edie’s apartment and Edie was dating Kerouac at the time, and this is how Allen met Jack. David Kammerer and William Burroughs were old friends from St. Louis. Bill (Burroughs) was highly revered by the group as a sort of mentor, for he was much older and far more worldly.
It was at this time that Jack, Lucien, and Allen came up with an idea: “the new vision”, a movement which would produce “uninhibited expression of art”- a philosophy which would come to heavily influence Jack, Bill and Allen in their literary pursuits. Speaking of uninhibited expression, on the night of August 14th, 1944, a drunken David Kammerer tried to force himself on Lucien, who stabbed him with his pocketknife and sunk his corpse in the Hudson with rocks he’d found on the shore. Burroughs advised that Lucien turn himself in, and eventually he did. This traumatic event seems to have shocked Allen into participating more actively in his own life. He soon came out to Jack as gay. In 1945, Allen began seriously writing poetry, and while none of these are seminal works, it was a very important step towards becoming one of America’s greatest poets. Another important development: in 1945 Allen, believing his cleaning lady at the Columbia dorms to be antisemitic, scrawled “fuck the Jews” on the dust on his windowsill in jest. He was almost immediately thrown out of Columbia for this offense.
During this time in his life, Allen became more fully introduced to the darker side of New York City’s streets. He was introduced to drugs by Jack and Bill, specifically Benzedrine, which they extracted from asthma inhalers. Allen also joined the military briefly, but soon found out he was not a soldier. At this time, Jack, Allen and Burroughs where all obsessed with exploring human consciousness with drugs, including everything from peyote to heroin. It was a very creative time for the three, and the constant presence of raving drug addicts and criminals like Herbert Huncke provided Allen with many of the images he would use in his famous poem “Howl”. This lackadaisical lifestyle couldn’t last forever though, and eventually Allen was readmitted to Columbia. In 1946, Allen met and fell in love with Neal Cassady in a tumultuous romance which would harry them both for years to come. In 1947, Allen’s mother’s mental state began seriously deteriorating, so it’s probably not a coincidence that Allen began to wonder if he himself was going insane and started seeing a psychiatrist.
One day, whilst masturbating and reading the poems of William Blake, Allen had an extremely powerful vision of Blake reading his own poetry aloud. The vision was accompanied by a heightened sense of joy and enlightenment, and Allen would spend many years of his life trying to achieve a similar experience, often through experimentation with psychedelic drugs. Incidentally, Allen doesn’t seem to have perceived any connection between the encroaching madness he was so worried about and this vision. It was enlightenment to him, not schizophrenia.
1949 found Allen working for a newspaper, Associated Press, and living in a small apartment on Lennox Hill in Manhattan. Herbert Huncke, who had recently been released from Riker’s Island, showed up at Allen’s door having walked so long his shoes were full of blood. Allen took him in, and he brought with him an entourage of drug addicted criminals- thieves who flipped stolen cars, guns and expensive trinkets for a prophet. Allen, being so caring and desperate for affection allowed his apartment to become a shooting gallery, and even let Huncke wear his clothes. Eventually, things came to a head: Allen and some of Huncke’s criminal friends where chased in a stolen car full of stolen goods and crashed the car. Allen managed to escape, but soon the police came to his apartment and arrested all of the residents. Allen’s father paid his son’s bail.
After this incident, under pressure from his father and Columbia University itself, Allen agreed to be admitted to the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute. This is where he met Carl Solomon, who would later become the main focus of “Howl”. Carl’s tales of intellectualism and madness clearly struck a chord with Allen, and it’s no wonder considering Allen’s mother, and the direction his life had taken lately. Allen left the institute on the 27th of February and moved in with his father. Here, in Patterson, he struck up a relationship with the local poet William Carlos Williams. Williams became an important critic to Allen’s work, who helped Allen find his voice. Over the next few years, under Williams’ tutelage, Allen worked intensely on his writing style, shaping it into a semblance of what we know today. During this time also, Jack was writing up a storm, and had completely finished his famous book On the Road . Allen came into his own here as the designated beat manager, spending much time trying to get both On the Road and Bill Burroughs’ Junkie published. Allen held a deep faith in all of his close friends and was so determined to see their work published that if not for him many of the beat works that have come to define modern American literature may not have seen a printing press without him. Allen managed to get Junkie published in the spring of 1953 . Bill, with whom Allen had been in constant correspondence, returned from a Mexican jail into which he’d been thrown after accidentally shooting his wife, Joan Vollmer, in the face. Allen and Bill had an intense love affair, but eventually Bill’s neediness and intensity became too much for Allen, and they split up, Bill heading East to Tangiers, where he would write his seminal Naked Lunch, based at least in part on he and Allen’s relationship, and Allen heading south to Guatemala, and then back north to visit Neal Cassady in San Jose. He was painfully rejected by Neal, though, and when Neal eventually gave in and allowed Allen to give him a blowjob, Neal’s wife burst in screaming and threw Allen out of their house. Allen eventually wound up finding a job and a place to stay nearby in San Francisco. Though he was probably feeling quite dejected at the time, San Francisco was the place where everything was to eventually come together, and the beat generation would burst howling and shrieking onto the literary scene.
In San Francisco, Allen entered a brief affair with a woman named Sheila, but it was cut short when he fell in love with Peter Orlofsky. Allen had met a young painter named Robert Lavigne in a cafeteria, and eventually gone back to his place to see some of Robert’s paintings. Immediately, he was entranced by a nude painting of a young man, and upon asking who it was the boy magically appeared from another room in the house- this was Peter. Allen and he quickly fell deeply in love and moved in together. Allen had really only been in tumultuous, unsatisfactory relationships with men like Neal and Bill, and a couple of women (the latter being unsatisfactory for obvious reasons). His relationship with Peter was different, and in it Allen found the stability and care he had always felt he lacked from his family and other lovers. They would remain together (in an open relationship) until Allen’s death in 1997.
Armed with a new sense of stability and purpose Allen sat down at his typewriter on afternoon in August. Instead of sitting down to write a poem, he tried for something looser, more like prose, which would give him more freedom… He began to write about his life, again using William Carlos Williams’ triadic verse form, only with lines extended out to his own long breath length- each line a single breath, like blowing an extended cadenza on a saxophone.
This is how Howl was born. It’s an incredible poem- it affected me so deeply that the tattoo covering my left arm is based on it. It weaves together Allen, Carl Solomon, and countless other lost souls of their generation’s experiences together into one blistering tapestry of tragedy and hope.
Allen gave a performance of Howl at the Six Gallery in San Francisco before the poem was actually completed.
Allen was completely transported. At each line he took a deep breath, glanced at the manuscript, then delivered it, arms outstretched, eyes gleaming, swaying from one foot to the other with the rhythm of the words… Allen continued to the last sob, the audience cheering him wildly at every line.
Needless to say, the performance was a resounding success. Allen immediately became famous in the San Francisco area. His new position would allow him to better promote the writing of his friends, Jack Kerouac and Bill Burroughs who soon also became household names.
The poem was completed by April of 1956, and Allen’s publisher was so taken with it that he decided to give Allen the royalties. In early August, Howl and Other Poems released with instant attention from the critics, much of it extremely positive.
On the 9th of June, Naomi Ginsberg died. Just after he had published his first great work, the subject of his second great poem, Kaddish, had occurred. Allen wasn’t home, but Peter was, and he set off to deliver the news. We’ll leave Allen here, though: blissfully unaware of his mother’s death, basking in the recognition he and his group of friends had suddenly received as great writers, finally having found the love he needed in Peter.
Bibliography:
Barry Miles, Allen Ginsberg,(Great Britain, Virgin Books, 2010).
Marlon Labovitch 