“Cultural Heroes (2):
Allen Ginsberg, Angel-Headed Hipster”
OK, let’s get this out of the way. In Howl, the line reads “angelheaded [one word no hyphen]
hipsters.”
Early on in this essay,
written before Ginsberg’s death, Leonard writes:
Howl is 32 years old, Ginsberg
is 61 and the Constitution’s 200. That’s three consenting adults we’re still
afraid of, and I’m secretly pleased a their continuing power to subvert.
Leonard sees Ginsberg (“the only beat with genuine talent” in he words of Whittaker Chambers) as a
crucial force in waking America (and the world) from the 1950s and shoving them
through the 1960s. Here’s a great passage that says it all:
Maybe because he contained in himself all
countercultures, he was the bridge in the sixties between the Yippie media
brats and the New Left Little-League Leninists. But his ultimate role, at every
engagement of this second Civil War, seemed to be that of a nurse, like his friend
Walt Whitman. [Howl drew on the free
verse style of Leaves of Grass]
New word: Moloch = (from Part II of Howl) a Canaanite god
associated with child sacrifice. Used in literature to represent something that
requiring a very costly sacrifice.
New
learning: Ginsberg was a life-long friend of Bob Dylan (and participated in the
1975-76 Rolling Thunder Review). They also collaborated on putting several of
Ginsberg’s (and William Blake’s) poems to music in the 1970s. Here is September on Jessore Road (Jessore
Road is a main connecting artery in Bangladesh):
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