Vivid Writings Of Allen Ginsberg example essay topic

The often explicit and always vivid writings of Allen Ginsberg seemed to stem from his own life. Allen's childhood in the city, political issues of the times, and the trials of understanding the vast psychology of human beings often emerged. His mother, Naomi Ginsberg, frequently tended to appear as topic or subject matter in Allen's work as well. His writing would describe her life, her beliefs, and her mental misfortune, how they affected him, and how his own experiences compared.

The course vocabulary and graphic descriptions Allen used would emulate the harsh reality of the time in which he lived. Ginsberg recreated his life, his family, his urban upbringing, and the way his world unfolded in his poetry. Son to Communist Russian immigrants, Allen Ginsberg grew up in urban Newark and Manhattan, and his writings reflected such an up bringing. In his poem "America" Allen expressed his thoughts and retrospectively looked at his life, "America I used to be communist when I was a kid I am not sorry". Ginsberg often used his urban environment as settings in his work, "Who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky", he depicted in his poem "Howl."Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities", he continued. With picturesque narrations and metropolitan situations in "Mugging", Ginsberg wrote, "Along E. 10th's glass splattered pavement, kid blacks & Spanish oiled hair adolescents crowded house fronts".

Ginsberg used these urban settings in his writings, introspective to the life he led and the times he grew up during. "Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb", Ginsberg exploded in "America" at the actions of the government of his time. Allen wrote, in dissatisfaction, of political during the 1940's and 1950's. "Who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism", he wrote in "Howl". Later in his life he wrote a poem titled, "Anti-Vietnam War Peace Mobilization", in which he expressed anti-war protest, "Assembled before White House filled with mustached Germans & police buttons". Allen appeared to have issues with political events and government actions taken during his life, as he wrote of Nixon and Roosevelt, Hitler and Communism.

One of the most visible aspects in his writing is the presence of his mother. "Kaddish" was for Naomi. It captured her as Allen grew up seeing her, images of her coming to America, and slowly descending into madness. "Where you walked 50 years ago, little girl - from Russia, eating the first poisonous tomatoes of America - frightened on the dock", Allen spoke of life when his mother first immigrated to New York.

He wrote of the sad and demanding times while she was in and out of mental institutions, "Don't be afraid of me because I'm just coming home from a mental hospital - I'm your mother". He captured something endearing even as his mother struggled, "Once locked herself in with razor or iodine - could hear her cough in tears at sink". Allen also used extremely vivid imagery to tell of Naomi's horrible condition, "Convulsions and red vomit coming out of her mouth - diarrhea water exploding from her behind". His writing painted very understandable pictures of his mother and portrayed his and her life, suffering through those times.

Allen Ginsberg's life seemed to be the muse for his creativity. He wrote of his mother and family, of being mugged, and of events that happened in the world around him. The urban settings in his writing reflected his own settings for the duration of his life, living in Newark, Manhattan, and San Francisco. Ginsberg's work held nothing back, was real, and painted life as it often is, ugly and imperfect. Allen's writing was his life.