jargamas's blog

Jacob Argamaso

CULF 1318.10

Dr. Sievers

4 May 2016

 

Project 2 Annotations

 

• “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,”
  1986. In the first draft of his poem this word originally was written as “mystical”. However, it was changed because it was seen as a little over the top and too emotional for the tone he was going for with the piece. By changing it to “hysterical” he kept the poem grounded and eased up on the intense metaphorical style he used in earlier drafts. (Ginsberg, Allen, Barry Miles, and Carl Solomon. Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. Print.)
• “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,”
  1. These first two lines set the tone for the flow of the poem as someone reads it. The sentences are long and hard to get out of your mouth, which was the intention by Ginsberg. By forcing you out of breath and flustered you reach the irritation that Ginsberg felt at the time of writing this poem towards the world around him, helping you relate to the story and himself as it progresses.
• “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,”
  1. This line became an almost battle-cry like phrase for The Beats and lit a creative fire under them that was just begging to be lit. Suppressed by Cold War image concerns of the time, this gave them the inspiration to be free and open, and led to a resurgence in The Beats.
• “Angleheaded hipsters burning…”
  1. Hipsters here in this poem take on a completely different meaning than it does now. At the time of writing, hipsters were those who had an affinity for Jazz and doing drugs, often associated with the group known as The Beat Generations. By preceding it with “angelheaded” Ginsberg associates these “best minds” to angels sent from heaven to help the country.
• “Who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine…”
  1. One of the first allusions to drug use Ginsberg uses in this poem. Drugs were a large part of not only his life, but as the Beats as well as they felt it helped them gain a new perspective on life and the world that couldn’t be seen without the use of substances, mainly marijuana.
• “Who cowered in unshaven rooms…”
  1. The imagery here puts the reader in the head of the person this is happening to and makes them empathize with one of the central themes in Howl, which is madness. This hits home for Ginsberg as well due to his experience with mental health and the struggles that came along with it. This is also a reference to Carl Solomon and one of the things he was quoted as doing before his admission into a mental institution.
• “Paradise Alley…”
  1. Paradise alley refers to Kerouac, a known influence of Ginsberg, and the character he created to live there. According to the book, many of The Beats lived in cheap hotels, much like the one described as Paradise Alley. This line also refers more to the rampant drug use that was going on with The Beats at the time of this writing. (Allen Ginsberg, Barry Miles)
• “With waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,”
  1. In anything else, these words would be seen as vulgar and pointless, but by using this kind of language, Ginsberg gets the exact response that he wants from the reader. In a time where image was key for the Unites States (i.e. The Cold War) Ginsberg laid it all out there to wake the reader up and see past the façade placed in front of them.
• “Battery to holy Bronx on Benzedrine…”
  1. This was a drug used by Beat writers, and Ginsberg to keep them awake and coherent so that they could get a stream of consciousness flow of writing going through their work. Known to stimulate the user and suppress hunger, it kept them locked in so their creativity wouldn’t suffer. (Barry Miles)
• “who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,”
  1. : Referring to The Beats yet again, though this time this is a metaphor for the mindset of these people. Often times The Beats felt so outside of regular American culture, that even if they were to vanish and run away, things would continue as normal.
• “Who thought they were only mad when Baltimore…scattered in fireplace Chicago”
  1. Here Ginsberg writing brings us from places to place, showing us through words the things he has experienced in these places. By going into great detail the reader gets an emotional connection with these locations, much like Ginsberg had for them.
• “Who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets…”
  1. At the time this was written the US was entrenched in the Cold War, so what this line does is give an explanation to not only the Anti-War mentality of The Beats, but also them as a counter-culture that marched to a beat of their own drum.
• “Waving genitals and manuscripts”
  1. By placing these two right next to each other, Ginsberg equates them to one another. This is a graphic metaphor of spreading yourself out to as many people as possible, for without either of those things, who you are and what you believe in, will die.
• “Who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer and sweetheart a package of cigarettes…”
  1. Again the use of hard language here is used to put a point across to the reader, rather than being there just because he wanted to be. These harsh words show that these “best minds” had harsh lives that didn’t always have an easy path to success. A lot of bad things happened, and often times many of them succumbed to these horrible occurrences.
• “who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,”
  1. Another allusion to drug use and madness, this time referring to those who were so delirious from either the things they took or their mind, that even the best ideas late at night were worth nothing in the morning.
• “who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue…”
  1. Placing the words of things that are fatal to humans next to something casual is a metaphor for society killing these people around him. By being oppressed and suppressed they can never reach their full potentials, and when creative people cannot create anything, they are essentially dead.

 

 

Jacob Argamaso

CULF 1318.10

Dr. Sievers

26 April 2016

Howl Part I

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl is not only a masterwork of emotional writing, but a timely piece that perfectly reflects the strife of a nation during a time where it was considered to be the most successful country in the world. While the country was moving into an era of prosperity the likes of which had not been seen before, those who were on the fringes of society were being pushed away more than every with the advent of the “Nuclear Family” being the normal thing to strive for in America. No more were we a people that experimented and questioned what life really was, but instead were entrapped within the spoils of wealth and settling for a family, a backyard and a dog. As part of The Beat Generation, Ginsberg was not okay with this, creating Howl as a cry against conformity and normalism in the country. His work quickly became a rallying cry for The Beats and showcased the irritation, frustration and anger towards the country the tried to suppress them and change them to conform to the image heavy times of the Cold War.

In the first few lines of the first section of Howl, Ginsberg refers to different people as, “who…” These people that he’s talking about are those on the outside of American society, the ones being shoved out by what the majority of the country considered to be “normal.” These people, so oppressed by the society around them, “…in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the terror through the wall,” struggle to make a living for themselves. This frustrates Ginsberg greatly because these people are expected to fit into the norms of society, yet everything is made more difficult to achieve because they started on the outside of what the American people considered to be “the right way” at the time.

However, for all the negative parts that work their way into each line, there are some positives images we can take away as well. While these people he refers to throughout the first section are disparaged and mistreated, he sees them as a beacon of hope in the darkness, the salvation for what America should be and not what it was. Referring to them as “angelheaded hipsters” and those “with radiant cool eyes,” these people, though pushed out of American society, are what would save the true American life, according to Ginsberg.

As the poem goes on, he begins to focus less and less on the people around him and instead on the place he lived: New York City. It’s great to know that he lived there and knew the area so well, but what exactly was the significance of New York and its surrounding borough’s? It was a popular meeting place for many of those involved in the “Beat Generation” including some of Ginsberg’s biggest influences, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. These men were part of this off-shoot of American society, and even though they were the “best minds of my generation,” according to Ginsberg, they were “destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.” This frustrated Ginsberg even more because he didn’t understand how a country can be so concerned with image that it goes ahead and ignores the fact that these men are brilliant and creative and have so much to say. Looking back with a modern perspective now however, it’s easy to see why the country was so concerned with the way it looked to others: The Cold War.

The Beats were an inherently non-violent group and were strongly against conflict, so The Cold War didn’t sit with them lightly at all from the get go. The Cold War was a conflict of image and who looked like the right side to those around them, and with Howl, Ginsberg denounced that and spoke out against what the American government was doing to its people. It’s also important to remember that during this time a large wave of nationalism that made people proud to be an American, and not a “stupid commie”, and denounced anyone or anything that spoke poorly about the country and our government. Ginsberg spoke out so much, in fact that in March of 1957 520 copies of his book, Howl and Other Poems, were seized and, and the publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was arrested for publishing and disseminating obscene material.

So as the government sought to censor and silence these great minds for their thoughts against America, there became a need for a safe haven for the Beat writers, and New York housed them perfectly. Ginsberg mentions the city incessantly as a place where the “best minds” have room to travel around and be free from the entrapments of American society and the oppression to conform. From the “Holy Bronx…” to the “…drear light of Zoo,” this was a safe place for them with plenty of inspiration to be found. It’s a natural fit for them, a place that allows them to be who they are without questioning what they’re doing.

Another common theme used by Ginsberg are his allusions to drug use and the effects they have on others as well as himself. Many, if not all, of the Beats used some sort of drug to either keep them sane or focused on what they wanted to write at the time. Ginsberg’s drug of choice as Benzedrine, a drug that was easily available as a cold remedy, but used widely by Beat writers as a way of helping them keep a stream of consciousness going, referred to in Howl by saying, “…talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar…” It allowed for continued focus for them regardless of the setting around them. However, while it was great for them to get some writing done, it also had the downside of causing abnormal behavior and self harm. Ginsberg talks about his struggles with the drug as well, by saying “yacketyyakking screaming vomiting whispering facts…” and “…Eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars.”

Being a Beat writer was all about being free and separating yourself from the society around you, and the drug use that Ginsberg refers to was one of the ways they used to differentiate from the rest. Marijuana being the chief drug amongst most of the beats, as it contributed to the experience of being a Beat as well as the way they wrote and expressed themselves. While highly illegal at the time, the significance of the Beat generation is owed to their exploitation of drugs because it allowed them to open up to a new world in front of them. With these substances in their systems, they were able to fully express and separate themselves from the mundane and settled people around them. Certain perspectives can only be reached in certain ways, and their massive drug use gave them that window to a new outlook on life and the world around them. However, it’s also worth noting that many of these Beat writers died young, so while these illicit materials gave them a new view on the world, it came at the highest price a person can pay: their lives.

One of the arguments at the time of its banning was that there was no point in keeping it around because the piece wouldn’t carry a lasting impact as the years went by, but the facts have proved that line of thought to be anything but true. Ginsberg portrays an emotional confusion the likes of which is not easy to replicate, and in a time where Donald Trump leads the pack on one side to the presidency, it preserves the frustrations that every day Americans feel when it seems as though they’re being shut out of the equation. From the inception of America it has been the story of a disparaged people rising up and overtaking an overreaching government or group of people, and Howl acts as well as a rallying call for the masses to wake up and take back the country that was rightly there from the beginning. Without Howl as well, the Beat generation wouldn’t have had as profound an impact as it had without the publicity that the banning of Howl case had on the American public eye.

Over time, Howl has become less of a literary work and more of a reminder of the times in which the piece was published. A show of frustration, anger and disgust towards a society that rejects those with a creative mind rather than the ones who’s only ambition is to settle for the bare minimum in life. It’s a manifesto for those who’ve just had enough of the mundane and the push back from the world on being themselves. Individuality has been such a common theme in the success and cultivation of our nation, and Ginsberg wanted to go back to that. With Howl he set into motion that ambition, and left the world something we’ll never forget about as long as we wish to succeed as a nation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

1. Ginsberg, Allen, Barry Miles, and Carl Solomon. Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. Print.
2. “Howl – Poetry Foundation.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 1955. Web. 03 May 2016.
3. “A Brief Guide to the Beat Poets.” org. Academy of American Poets, 3 May 2004. Web. 03 May 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

In his Huffington Post editorial, I feel that Eboo Patel really hits the mark on his points when he shares his emotional thoughts of the time with us, the readers. One of the biggest parts of having a strong literary piece is to forge an emotional connection with those who lay their eyes on your work. He’s frantically looking for solutions to the problems of the world that he wants to change and make a difference of, but struggles to find a simple solution, or even a place to start his quest to fix a world that “needed more than flimsy tape.” Talking about “flailing about wildly” and having a “frantic outlook,” you can sense the tension in his thoughts, and how worried he was for the world that he lives in.

One of the classical ways of telling a story is to have your protagonist find a path to discover who they and what they’re meant to do with their life. By being directed to the St. Jude Catholic Worker’s house, even as a non-Catholic, it was the first step for him reaching a new inner peace for himself. After visiting his Grandmother in India, and discovering a new person on the couch, who they call Anisa, who sought out refuge after being beaten by her family, life became all about becoming a good person to all, regardless of religion and beliefs. Religions should be used to get people into the door, not the reason for being a good person to one another. Being nice to all should be a given, it shouldn’t be something we’re religiously contractually obligated to do, it should come from the goodness of out hearts. Because, if we’re not good to those around us, do we even have any humanity left inside us?

There are many themes that a reader comes into contact with when going through the works of Tomas Rivera. From conveying emotion effectively to the reader to the way he formulates his words and ideas to paint a full picture, he uses a wide array of tactics and techniques to reach his full potential as a writer. Reaching our full potential as students, many of us were able to identify these key themes and explain them well.

One of the first themes pointed out was by mmcnulty, who said that “Rivera depicted the terrible working conditions they had to work in, and how those who were in charge seemed to have no regard for human life…” This point was also resonated through rmcgrai’s blog in the very opening sentence, saying “I believe that Rivera captures the suffering and strength of his people, the Bracero workers…”.

The play on emotions and empathy in the reader’s mind is just one of a few reasons of why people come back to his works after reading, but all of that would be reduced to nothing if it weren’t for the next theme he used: the plot. Emotions are well and good, but without a proper story for which to convey those emotions, the entire piece is rendered useless. Jlohr catches Rivera’s plot usage, saying, “The next device Rivera uses is the plot, the sequence of events that play out for Doña María…” With his storytelling abilities, Rivera is able to bring order to a complex and chaotic world around him, while also making the reader feel like they’re right there with the characters.

Finally, the last big theme many of us keyed in on was the use of faith and how events in one’s life can shake that belief. Dbrowni points this out very well saying that he, “uses his writing to portray his suffering and loss of faith throughout this time period in his life.” This suffering comes from the prejudice and hate the character receives as a Mexican trying to survive in the world. Dbrowni also compares the lives of these characters to a constant struggle by quoting Rivera himself from page 110, “That’s how it is, m’ijo. Only death brings us rest.”

Tomas Rivera is a very emotional writer in that he writes with his heart on his sleeves and gets readers to feel the emotions he conveys to them. In the short piece, “What his mother never knew…” he plays on our emotions and empathy. It portrays a son doing something so simple to keep his mother going even in tough times. She was reassured that, even in hard times, that the spirits were there with her, and that allowed her to be the best person she could be for herself as well as her family.

That is also what’s so impressive about Rivera’s writing, is that it can give you the whole story without actually telling you exactly what’s going on. He writes that the son “would drink the glass of water that she left under the bed for the spirits.” And because the mother would find it empty every morning she “continued doing her duty.” We don’t know, and are never told, exactly what her duty is, but from the whole passage we can understand that she needs something to keep her moving forward, and that the son provides that for her.

 

One theme from Ginsberg’s Howl that I thought was most prevalent was how he handled madness and his explanation into how those who would be considered “insane” may not be all that crazy. For Ginsberg, the greatest minds weren’t in the politicians or activists, but the disenfranchised citizens of America. The world around them mistook their words for insanity rather than wisdom, and in the first section of his work, Ginsberg expresses his dismay and frustration that these people are being ignored for the sake of convenience. He mentions these people by saying, “Who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,” and “Who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of capitalism.” These people are doing something worth looking at and are trying to make their voices heard, but instead the world around them silences them, and that’s where Ginsberg displays his frustration.

Ginsberg’s repetition to me is the most profound technique that he perfects in his writing of Howl. When you read over the first section you almost get sick and tired of reading it, but by feeling that emotion we play right into what Ginsberg wants us to feel: frustration. He’s sick and tired of the lazy world around him, and by repeating himself and hammering the idea in our heads, he gets us to march to the beat of his drum as well. By starting every sentence with the word “who” followed by a person that has been slighted by the country, we join his team and get frustrated, not at Ginsberg, but at the world around him.

In Emerson’s piece, the Divinity School Address, he talks a lot about the world and the nature in which things operate and how we fit into that equation. In his third paragraph, he reminds us of the virtuous life he feels that all people should lead so that they get the most out of this world as it provides. Saying, “Virtue, I am thine: save me: use me: thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in small, that I may be not virtuous, but virtue;’ — then is the end of the creation answered, and God is well pleased.” What I feel he is really saying here is that not only should we lead a virtuous life, but leave the virtue of God in our back pocket at all times so that it may be accessible for us to use whenever we may need it. When we accept virtue in our lives and allow it to come out through us, it not only benefits us individually in the long run, but also the world around us that God left for us to use.

While Emerson’s piece focused on the nature and elements of the world, Thoreau presents a different perspective on the nature of the world that we control: with law. To sum up his essay, Resistance to Civil Government or Civil Disobedience, he essentially talks about how unjust laws have become in our country, and the only cure for it is for the citizens to rise up and protest what the men in charge have done to the country. He sites the corruption of the law with this excerpt, saying, “Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.” He is frustrated at how out of hand things have gotten, and is literally laying out for the reader why they should be upset. Someone who has more money than you gets more say just because they can wave that dollar amount in front of the face of the greedy politician, and get away with it too. He’s not trying to incite a riot with these words, but more simply just wants someone to take action against these injustices he found, because he’s sick and tired of the world he lived in at the time.

Becoming involved in a cause is extremely easy, but getting people to join that very same cause with you can be difficult and convoluted. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a fantastic example of a call to action for her, and many others of the time, cause to end the slave trade in the United States. Throughout the first few chapters I found myself asking why she was being so descriptive about these characters and not others, and to what effect does this descriptiveness go? Then it became clear why she was doing it, because one key way to get people to follow you to a certain point is to make them feel empathy, to place them in the particular groups shoes, and Stowe does this to absolute perfection. For example, in Chapter IV, Stowe talks about George, saying “George, who was a bright boy, and well trained in religious things by his mother, finding himself an object of general admiration, threw in expositions of his own, from time to time, with a commendable seriousness and gravity, for which he was admired by the young and blessed by the old; and it was agreed, on all hands, that “a minister couldn’t lay it off better than he did; that ‘t was reely ‘mazin’!” So other than exposition, what purpose does it have? Shemakes it known not only is this a person, but a person who makes great contributions to the world around him. It reminds people that these slaves that we are trading and selling away are real life human beings who have lives just like those outside the slave trade, and we wouldn’t do it to an average everyday citizen, so why would we do this to them?

So in the first seven chapters, Stowe does a great deal in attempting to get the reader to empathize with the characters, but where she really locks in on her points is in Chapter X. Once you have the readers in the shoes of the characters, you need to make them feel the same emotions that they’re going through, mainly what the characters are risking by running away and attempting to escape the slave trade. Stowe writes, “a doom which was hanging either over themselves or their husbands, their wives or children.” Eliza, being the selfless mother she is, puts herself in the way of immense danger just so her child could have a slim chance of escaping the treachery of the slave trade and lead somewhat of a normal life. All day everyday, these people were not only fighting for their lives, but they also had to fight the people chasing them, the elements and virtually everything around them just for the slimmest of chances to be a free person. The fear that constantly hung over them was unlike anyone of that time reading this has ever felt, and with her way of words, Stowe perfectly conveys all those emotions to the reader, and get them on her side.

 

 

In the 8^th part of Franklin’s autobiography, he speaks on religion and the way he practices it, and the way I believe he wants us to follow. He states, “…I found them more or less mix’d with other articles, which, without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serv’d principally to divide us, and make us unfriendly to one another.” This was one of the things that turned him off about attending public sessions, because it seemed all in charge were motivated by their own prosperity and who was “better,” and not about the faith itself. He also said, “Tho’ I seldom attended any public worship, I had still an opinion of its propriety, and of its utility when rightly conducted, and I regularly paid my annual subscription for the support of the only Presbyterian minister or meeting we had in Philadelphia.” Here he’s talking about how important he saw giving back to the community even if others views didn’t align with yours. Sure, they were the same faith, but he was motivated by good will, rather than to increase the amount of wealth he had to his name.

In his writings, Franklin likes to supplement the points he makes by alluding to it through a quick story or an anecdote, often involving people he interacted with. For example, when he talks about rarely going to church services, he uses it as an opportunity to further hammer home his point by saying, “These might be all good things; but, as they were not the kind of good things that I expected from that text, I despaired of ever meeting with them from any other, was disgusted, and attended his preaching no more.” By using words of emotion, such as disgusted, he changes the attitude of the reader towards what he’s talking about, and thus swaying them towards what he’s trying to convey.

 

 

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