Methods of Reading: Analyzing Desire, Modernism, and Ginsberg's Poetry

This essay examines Allen Ginsberg's poetry through the lens of desire, exploring how his work reflects both modernist techniques and deconstructed forms. It analyzes poems such as "Howl" and "Kaddish," highlighting Ginsberg's engagement with themes of rebellion, social critique, and the counterculture movement of the Beat Generation. The essay draws upon the concepts of desire as presented by Bennett and Royle, emphasizing how Ginsberg's work evokes desire in readers through its controversial content and exploration of sexuality, social ills, and the search for freedom. The essay also discusses Ginsberg's biographical context, including his homosexuality and his relationship with his mother, to demonstrate how personal experiences shaped his poetic expression of desire. The essay concludes by emphasizing Ginsberg's role as a voice for freewill and liberation in America, and his use of poetry as a means of achieving higher consciousness.

ALLEN GINSBERG DISCUSSION
ALLEN GINSBERG DISCUSSION
NAURUS HAMODEE
18147054
Methods of reading

1ALLEN GINSBERG DISCUSSION
Allen Ginsberg’s poetry can be considered an amalgamation of pure modernist
techniques along with deconstructed modernist forms, as he is seen deviating from the formal
style within poetry. His poetry was an attempt to experiment with the various patterns of
conversation, which will be explored by this paper, along with the basic idea of ‘desire’
incorporated in his poems with the help of Bennett and Royle, which notes that not only does
any literary piece recount what is desired by the poet, but it is through this the poet invokes
desire in the minds of readers who empathise with the situation presented in the piece. Desire
is present everywhere, not only is it limited to sexuality. He exemplified the poets belonging
to the ‘Beat Generation’ like Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso and Neal Cassidy.
The Beat Generation presented the readers with poetry that brought forward the spirit
of rebellion, protest and Cultural Revolution in the late sixties till the seventies. They were
the fine line in-between the American Romantics and the reality that was bleak given the
state of poverty, industrialization and maligned urban groups. Ginsberg, like his
contemporaries knew that the conditions in America had depreciated however, his poetry was
iconic because of the highly controversial content that redefined both the values of poetry and
activism. It depicted various social ills like, drug abuse, violence and bloodshed and
scandalous sexual references. It is the face of an underground generation that defied all kinds
of standards and authority during this time.
His most famous poem, ‘Howl’ is elegiac in nature. It is a cry against capitalism,
repression, subjugation and exploitation. It celebrates the counter culture movement which
was accompanied by madness in various forms of hysteria through which they mourned the
dreams that seem like something, that would never be achieved. The element of desire in his
poems is the face of the counterculture Ginsberg preached. It embodies the desire for freedom
as it consists of everything society considers vile and distasteful as it mentions and paints out

2ALLEN GINSBERG DISCUSSION
the drug culture, homosexuality and profanity vividly through his poems like, “who let
themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists/and screamed with joy.” (“Howl” 4)
The attempt to ban the publication of Howl because of the lascivious thoughts it
portrayed, like the one above, which according to many was enough to incite lust which
could corrupt the readers. However, this imagery turns out as something important with the
tendency to redeem society.
Desire is Ginsberg’s aim. He wants to break free from the materialistic, capitalistic,
depressing American society that wants him to channel his being within this narrow tunnel of
limitations that makes people suffer, after they enter it. ‘Howl’ inexplicably puts in the
forefront his homosexuality, his desire for the embrace of men and not just women. His
desire runs alongside spirituality. He was an independent soul that burned with desire, he
wanted his free will and thought to fly unoppressed. He affirms his countless heterosexual
and homosexual encounters that claim that sexuality has no binary. This can be noticed in,
“With dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and/cock and endless balls”
(“Howl” 1)
Writing about homosexuality was banned in the University of Columbia where Ginsberg used
to study. Even in a letter from Ginsberg father Louis Ginsberg, it is seeing that he considered
homosexuals as insane and as threats to the society. Surprisingly one of the beat writers
Lucien Carr had murdered a man David Krammerer, who used to pursue him for a few years
and thus posed a risk of ‘outing’ him. This taught Ginsberg, who was still nineteen at that
time about how homosexuality was persecuted in America (Raskin 2005). The country was
not a safe place for homosexuals, it threatened a man’s life so much that he resorted to
murder than being outed.

3ALLEN GINSBERG DISCUSSION
‘Howl’ presents the desire of the generation to break free from the cycle of capitalism
and promote communism. Desire keeps shifting in the poem, from sex to ideologies to the
state of life. The desire shown mostly springs to life within the person because of the lack of
whatever is being desired. Mostly, desires are unfulfillable and remain absent like, “All the
accumulations of life, that wear us out – clocks, bodies, consciousness, shoes, breasts –
begotten sons – your Communism – ‘Paranoia’ into hospitals.” (Kaddish 39)
According to Freud, all desire originates in the child’s desire for the mother’s breast.
This central to Ginsberg’s poem ‘Kaddish’, in which he shows a desire to return to her or to
regain her. Kaddish means a lament or a litany (Sim 2019). It is highly elegiac in nature. His
mother’s decline into a gut-wrenching psychic ordeal happened to be a formative experience
in his life. The central section of narration was triggered by a night he spent listening to Jazz,
abusing Marijuana and reading an old bar Mitzvah booklet. With Hebrew prayers racing
within his mind on a walk through the roads of New York City and his horrible desire to
speak to her when he needed her the most made his write, “Strange now to think of you,
gone.” (Kaddish)
Ginsberg shows an unflinching desire to save his now dead mother but realizes the
irony that it was a similar mind of madness that inspired poetry within him. He seeks to
redeem her through poetry. This is where desire takes the center stage. We see that he lacks
the warmth of his mother. This desire is grounded in the lack of a maternal figure and for the
desire of a relationship that is no longer possible because the other person is dead. “No love
since Naomi screamed – since 1923? – Now lost in Greystone ward – new shock for her –
Electricity, following the 40 Insulin. And Metrasol had made her fat” (“Kaddish” 47)

4ALLEN GINSBERG DISCUSSION
Naomi, his mother was his muse. He invoked her like one would do in an Epic, “O
glorious muse that bore me from the womb, gave suck first mystic life & taught me talk and
music, from whose pained head I first took Vision.”
However, this poem recounts his experiences in his childhood when he witnessed his
mother as a sexual predator, in the lines, “Know the Monster of the Beginning Womb --
Perhaps -- that way. Would she care? She needs a lover.”
This psychoanalyzed Ginsberg during his heterosexual phase after which he began believing
that homosexuality was a problem caused by his experiences with his mother. But this is
addressed in Howl where he comes to terms with it and accepts it wholeheartedly. One might
even say that he allowed his id to take over his ego but in reality, it is impossible to gain that
level if one does not let go of worldly attachments that are controlled by the Ego.
Both poems give repressed feelings of desire a voice. I howl, the need to break free
from the clutches of the society that look down upon homosexuality is addressed to give
wings to his desire that freedom will let the ‘best minds of his generation’, like he mentioned
in ‘Howl”, soar because humanity cannot flourish without freedom. Howl explores the
problems faced by the homosexual society during the 1960’s and proclaims loudly about their
existence to provide a poem that tackles hypocrisy head on. The desire in Howl is also the
desire of a better society as he exclaims Moloch! This was is all purpose symbol for the
greedy and oppressive government who were ruling the states. He rebelled against it. This is
evident in his open defamation, “Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the cross
bone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!” (Ginsberg 2013). Here
Moloch represented destructive authority with the power to give and take as well as
personified Capitalism.

5ALLEN GINSBERG DISCUSSION
The last line of this poem especially drips desire as he exclaims his desire to standing tall till
he sees his lacks addressed, “I’m with you in Rockland. In my dreams you walk dripping
from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the
Western night.”
In ‘Kaddish’ Ginsberg yearns to uncover the apparent sanity of humans are masked
because every human is born with some sort of vulnerability. He wants to redeem Naomi by
exploring the fact that insanity was a metaphor, which can be used to imbibe purity and
simplicity within the human mind. The madness will cure humanity of the lust for aimless
materialism and help live a life free from convoluted lifestyles, like his mother Naomi
serving a bowl of lentil soup to God. The poem was a prayer for both Naomi and humanity,
both carriers of some kind of vulnerable madness.
Truth be told, all of his Ginsberg’s poems embodied desire to restore the full
capability of the mind within the body. He wants to achieve the ‘self’ through his poems that
has attained the highest level of consciousness that will no longer need or want anything
more. He talks about his understanding of the Zen, drugs and drug law to talk about methods
through which one might overcome the barriers of monotony in this life surpass it all to
become a perfectly conscious human much more capable than everyone plain ordinary.
In conclusion, Ginsberg is notorious for his depictions of desire in his pieced because
he openly seemed to reach the higher levels of consciousness through various methods. He
believed in freewill of humanity and protested against any agent that might bar one from
doing so. Ginsberg will always be one the epitomes of the desire for freewill and liberation in
America with all of his ferociousness in writing. He spared no word, line or sentence in both
‘Howl’ and ‘Kaddish’ to hope and make it happen.

6ALLEN GINSBERG DISCUSSION
References
Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. An introduction to literature, criticism and theory.
Routledge, 2016.
Ginsberg, Allen. Howl, Kaddish and other poems. Penguin UK, 2013.
Raskin, John, American Scream. Berkeley: Uni. of California Press, 2005. Chapters 2 (family
background).
Sim, Dr. Lorraine. 2019. Methods of Reading. Ginsberg and Desire. Retrieved from western
Sydney university lecture sliders.