Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Allen Ginsberg

Been reading about the beat poet Allen Ginsberg. I got a book of his work called "Collected Poems 1947-1997 Allen Ginsberg" from Amazon this week. Ginsberg created activist type poetry that had a social message. I would like to try to do this kind of poetry, words with a social conscience. Here are a few excerpts from his famous poem 152-line poem, September on Jessore Road. The poem was something he wrote after witnessing first hand the suffering of the people in Bangladesh after their war for liberation in 1971.

This is from his linked Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Ginsberg
Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit & groan
Millions of families hopeless alone
Ginsberg's poem also serves as an indictment of the United States:
Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?
Out of the poem, he made a song that was performed by Bob Dylan, other musicians and Ginsberg himself.
The last few lines of the poem read:
Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go