Essays on Allen Ginsberg

Ideology in Allen Ginsberg’s “America” and “Sunflower Sutra”

Ideology is a very important topic as it relates to literature. Literature is one of the primary methods in which people that perhaps are not within the mainstream of culture, politics and society employ to question hegemonic power structures. Dominant power structures are often posed primarily as the synthesis of modernity, objective reality, logocentrism, patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism, which are often cited in shorthand as “imperialism.” The United States, after the Second World War the period in which Allen Ginsberg and the other beat generation writers were most active was arguably the point in world history in which ...

Three poems, which have been chosen for this paper: “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, “A Supermarket in California” by Allen Ginsberg, and “Sailing to Byzantium” by W. B. Yeats, are all very different and belong to different literary trends. However, they all are focused on the subject of death, which they depict from different standpoints, systems of beliefs, and values. In the first poem, “Because I could not stop for Death”, Emily Dickinson describes death using the image of a gentleman, who takes her into his carriage: “He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage” ( ...

Every literary epoch has its own features. However, they have some common and different characteristics. Romanticism and Beat Generation are two different generations and the brightest representatives are William Blake and Jack Kerouac. It is important to look at both literary directions in order to understand the authors who belonged to these movements. Romanticism was an artistic development that cleared through practically every nation of Europe, the United States, and Latin America that kept going from around 1750 to 1870. Nonetheless, the Romantic Movement did not achieve France until the1820's. Sentimentalism's crucial soul was one of rebellion against a ...

The Beat movement that was formed in the late 1940s in the United States and has gained acknowledgement in the 1950s is one of the most important and well-known literary trends that have been in the 20th century in the United States. Modern literary critics consider the beat generation in various guises and forms: as writers existentialists, immoral persons, romantic, apolitical people and bohemians; the most accurate, according to one of the researchers, is to consider the Beat Generation as a motto or symbol of the revolution of American morals. This literary trend and the three most famous representative ...

The beats generation represents a time when a group of famous writers were highlighted for their work. The writers represented a time after the Second World War and showcased the issues that affected society at the time (Docherty, Brian, 84). The 1950s was a time that was coupled with a lot of cultural, economic and political issues. The writers, who were American, wrote about such issues in an effort to condemn and educate about them. One such writer is Allen Ginsberg. He was born in Jersey in 1936 and was raised by an English teacher who influenced his background that led to his ...

“America” is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in the 1958. The poem revolves around the life of the speaker, who feels overwhelmed by life in U.S. Specifically, the speaker is dissatisfied with the level of capitalism in the country, which makes him admire his communist upbringing. He also conveys his admiration for Marxism. Although there are several literary strategies (put forward by different theorists) on the best means to interpret a text, none would be more appropriate than Michael Foucault’s in analyzing Ginsberg’s poem. In his articles “The Archaeology of Knowledge” and “What is an Author?” Michael ...

Modernism emerged as a reaction to a certain state of affairs that was occurring around the 19th and 20th century. These were far-reaching changes that revealed itself most pronounced in the arts. This essay analyzes Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Father Death Blues” is a playful poem with a bouncy rhyme scheme, which personifies death into familiar characters, and is characteristic and reflective of the modernist movement. Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Father Death Blues” is a playful treatment of death in which death is personified under various guises. It addresses death with “Hey” and personifies it as a father, a poor man, an old daddy. To ...

Dedication: This poetry analysis essay, which analyzes four poems exploring death, is lovingly dedicated to my grandfather who recently passed on.

This essay analyzes four different poems from four different authors. All of the poems relate to death, and each author has a distinct way of thinking and exploring the issue. “Play”, by A. R. Ammons begins by painting a gloomy picture of everyone’s eventual demise and then turns that around by using it as a justification for following one’s dreams. Dylan Thomas’s poem “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” is a powerful statement against, written in a Biblical voice of ...