Allen Ginsberg was without a doubt one of the most respected Beat writers and acclaimed American poets of his generation. Born in 1926 New Jersey to a teacher and Russian expatriate father, Ginsberg went on to exert a prominent influence in post-World War II American culture. Throughout his literary career, Ginsberg strongly opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression. He became one of the pivotal figures of the Beat Movement which included famous writers such as Jack Kerouac and William S Burroughs and was known for his unconventional views, and frequently rambunctious behaviour. He championed gay rights and anti-war movements and openly protested the Vietnam War. Ginsberg embodied various aspects of this counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions. Despite his counterculture background, he was recognized as America’s prolific writer and artistic icon. His most famous works include the poem, ‘Howl’ wherein he denounced the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in US. His unconventional thoughts and counterculture belief is also visible on his quotes that perfectly describe his emotion and his thought. Check this section and find out some of the top quotes by Allen Ginsberg on life and living.
Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illumnations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Allen Ginsberg
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
This is the one and only
firmament; therefore
it is the absolute world.
There is no other world.
The circle is complete.
I am living in Eternity.
The ways of this world
are the ways of Heaven.
Allen Ginsberg
A naked lunch is natural to us
We eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don't hide the madness.
Allen Ginsberg
Well, while I'm here I'll do the work — and what's the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.
Allen Ginsberg
The closet door is open for me, where I left it, since I left it open, it has graciously stayed open.
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing...
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art.
Allen Ginsberg
Who can live with this Consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?
Allen Ginsberg
I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator.
The hero surviving his own murder, his own suicide, his own addiction, surviving his own disappearance from the scene
Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade.
He saw that I was shy, and at the time I was still scared of feeling with another person, so he put his arm around me and pulled me and put my head on his breast and gave me love actually.
Shit, Violence, bullets in the brain Unavailing.
We're in too deep to pull out.
Waiting for an orgasm, Mr. Baldwin?
Yes, waiting for an orgasm that's all.
Allen Ginsberg
The electric network selling itself: "The medium is the message
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