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Alcohol (chemistry) | Hydrolysis | Hydrolysis
Alkenes engage in an acid catalyzed hydration reaction using concentrated sulfuric acid as a catalyst that gives usually secondary or tertiary alcohols. Formation of a secondary alcohol via alkene reduction and hydration is shown:
class=skin-invert-image|frameless|upright=1.6|Preparation of a secondary alcohol
The hydroboration-oxidation and oxymercuration-reduction of alkenes are more reliable in organic synthesis. Alkenes react with N-bromosuccinimide and water in halohydrin formation reaction. Amines can be converted to diazonium salts, which are then hydrolyzed. |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Reactions | Reactions |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Deprotonation | Deprotonation
With aqueous pKa values of around 16–19, alcohols are, in general, slightly weaker acids than water. With strong bases such as sodium hydride or sodium they form salts called alkoxides, with the general formula (where R is an alkyl and M is a metal).
The acidity of alcohols is strongly affected by solvation. In the gas phase, alcohols are more acidic than in water. In DMSO, alcohols (and water) have a pKa of around 29–32. As a consequence, alkoxides (and hydroxide) are powerful bases and nucleophiles (e.g., for the Williamson ether synthesis) in this solvent. In particular, or in DMSO can be used to generate significant equilibrium concentrations of acetylide ions through the deprotonation of alkynes (see Favorskii reaction). |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Nucleophilic substitution | Nucleophilic substitution
Tertiary alcohols react with hydrochloric acid to produce tertiary alkyl chloride. Primary and secondary alcohols are converted to the corresponding chlorides using thionyl chloride and various phosphorus chloride reagents.
class=skin-invert-image|frameless|upright=3.2|Some simple conversions of alcohols to alkyl chlorides
Primary and secondary alcohols, likewise, convert to alkyl bromides using phosphorus tribromide, for example:
In the Barton–McCombie deoxygenation an alcohol is deoxygenated to an alkane with tributyltin hydride or a trimethylborane-water complex in a radical substitution reaction. |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Dehydration | Dehydration
Meanwhile, the oxygen atom has lone pairs of nonbonded electrons that render it weakly basic in the presence of strong acids such as sulfuric acid. For example, with methanol:
class=skin-invert-image|frameless|upright=2.25|Acidity & basicity of methanol
Upon treatment with strong acids, alcohols undergo the E1 elimination reaction to produce alkenes. The reaction, in general, obeys Zaytsev's rule, which states that the most stable (usually the most substituted) alkene is formed. Tertiary alcohols are eliminated easily at just above room temperature, but primary alcohols require a higher temperature.
This is a diagram of acid catalyzed dehydration of ethanol to produce ethylene:
class=skin-invert-image|frameless|upright=2.5
A more controlled elimination reaction requires the formation of the xanthate ester. |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Protonolysis | Protonolysis
Tertiary alcohols react with strong acids to generate carbocations. The reaction is related to their dehydration, e.g. isobutylene from tert-butyl alcohol. A special kind of dehydration reaction involves triphenylmethanol and especially its amine-substituted derivatives. When treated with acid, these alcohols lose water to give stable carbocations, which are commercial dyes.
class=skin-invert-image|thumb|right|322px|Preparation of crystal violet by protonolysis of the tertiary alcohol. |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Esterification | Esterification
Alcohol and carboxylic acids react in the so-called Fischer esterification. The reaction usually requires a catalyst, such as concentrated sulfuric acid:
Other types of ester are prepared in a similar manner−for example, tosyl (tosylate) esters are made by reaction of the alcohol with 4-toluenesulfonyl chloride in pyridine. |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Oxidation | Oxidation
Primary alcohols () can be oxidized either to aldehydes () or to carboxylic acids (). The oxidation of secondary alcohols () normally terminates at the ketone () stage. Tertiary alcohols () are resistant to oxidation.
The direct oxidation of primary alcohols to carboxylic acids normally proceeds via the corresponding aldehyde, which is transformed via an aldehyde hydrate () by reaction with water before it can be further oxidized to the carboxylic acid.
class=skin-invert-image|upright=2.25|thumb|center|Mechanism of oxidation of primary alcohols to carboxylic acids via aldehydes and aldehyde hydrates
Reagents useful for the transformation of primary alcohols to aldehydes are normally also suitable for the oxidation of secondary alcohols to ketones. These include Collins reagent and Dess–Martin periodinane. The direct oxidation of primary alcohols to carboxylic acids can be carried out using potassium permanganate or the Jones reagent. |
Alcohol (chemistry) | See also | See also
Beer chemistry
Enol
Ethanol fuel
Fatty alcohol
Index of alcohol-related articles
List of alcohols
Lucas test
Polyol
Rubbing alcohol
Sugar alcohol
Transesterification
Wine chemistry |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Notes | Notes |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Citations | Citations |
Alcohol (chemistry) | General references | General references
Category:Antiseptics
Category:Functional groups
Category:Organic chemistry
Category:Addiction |
Alcohol (chemistry) | Table of Content | Short description, History, Nomenclature, Etymology, Systematic names, Common names, Primary, secondary, and tertiary, Examples, Applications, Toxicity, Physical properties, Occurrence in nature, Production, Hydroxylation, Ziegler and oxo processes, Hydration reactions, Fermentation, Substitution, Reduction, Hydrolysis, Reactions, Deprotonation, Nucleophilic substitution, Dehydration, Protonolysis, Esterification, Oxidation, See also, Notes, Citations, General references |
Achill Island | Short description | Achill Island (; ) is an island off the west coast of Ireland in the historical barony of Burrishoole, County Mayo. It is the largest of the Irish isles and has an area of approximately . Achill had a population of 2,345 in the 2022 census. The island, which has been connected to the mainland by a bridge since 1887, is served by Michael Davitt Bridge, between the villages of Achill Sound and Polranny. Other centres of population include the villages of Keel, Dooagh, Dooega, Dooniver, and Dugort. There are a number of peat bogs on the island.
Roughly half of the island, including the villages of Achill Sound and Bun an Churraigh, are in the Gaeltacht (traditional Irish-speaking region) of Ireland, although the vast majority of the island's population speaks English as their daily language.
The island is within a civil parish, also called Achill, that includes Achillbeg, Inishbiggle and the Corraun Peninsula.
thumbnail|Our Escort into Glenaragh, from the sketch book and diary of Elizabeth Thompson |
Achill Island | History | History
It is believed that at the end of the Neolithic Period (around 4000 BC), Achill had a population of 500–1,000 people. The island was mostly forest until the Neolithic people began crop cultivation. Settlement increased during the Iron Age, and the dispersal of small promontory forts around the coast indicates the warlike nature of the times. Megalithic tombs and forts can be seen at Slievemore, along the Atlantic Drive and on Achillbeg. |
Achill Island | Overlords | Overlords
Achill Island lies in the historical barony of Burrishoole, in the territory of ancient Umhall (Umhall Uactarach and Umhall Ioctarach), that originally encompassed an area extending from the County Galway/Mayo border to Achill Head.
The hereditary chieftains of Umhall were the O'Malleys, recorded in the area in 814 AD when they successfully repelled an incursion by Viking attackers in Clew Bay. The Anglo-Norman invasion of Connacht in 1235 AD saw the territory of Umhall taken over by the Butlers and later by the de Burgos. The Butler Lordship of Burrishoole continued into the late 14th century when Thomas le Botiller was recorded as being in possession of Akkyll and Owyll. |
Achill Island | Immigration | Immigration
In the 17th and 18th centuries, there was migration to Achill from other parts of Ireland, including from Ulster, due to the political and religious turmoil of the time. For a period, there were two different dialects of Irish being spoken on Achill. This led to several townlands being recorded as having two names during the 1824 Ordnance Survey, and some maps today give different names for the same place. Achill Irish has been described as having an Ulster Irish superstratum on top of a northern Connacht Irish substratum. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, seasonal migration of farm workers to East Lothian to pick potatoes took place; these groups of 'tattie howkers' were known as Achill workers, although not all were from Achill, and were organised for potato merchants by gaffers or gangers. Groups travelled from farm to farm to harvest the crop and were allocated basic accommodation. On 15 September 1937, ten young migrant potato pickers from Achill died in a fire at Kirkintilloch in Scotland.
Achill was connected to the mainland by Michael Davitt Bridge, a bridge connecting Achill Sound and Polranny, in 1887. |
Achill Island | Specific historical sites and events | Specific historical sites and events |
Achill Island | Grace O'Malley's Castle | Grace O'Malley's Castle
Carrickkildavnet Castle is a 15th-century tower house associated with the O'Malley Clan, who were once a ruling family of Achill. Grace O' Malley, or Granuaile, the most famous of the O'Malleys, was born on Clare Island around 1530. Her father was the chieftain of the barony of Murrisk. The O'Malleys were a powerful seafaring family, who traded widely. Grace became a fearless leader and gained fame as a sea captain and pirate. She is reputed to have met Queen Elizabeth I in 1593. She died around 1603 and is buried in the O'Malley family tomb on Clare Island. |
Achill Island | Achill Mission | Achill Mission
thumbnail|left|View of the "Colony", prior to 1900
The Achill Mission, also known as 'the Colony' at Dugort, was founded in 1831 by the Anglican (Church of Ireland) Rev Edward Nangle. The mission included schools, cottages, an orphanage, an infirmary and a guesthouse.
The Colony gave rise to mixed assessments, particularly during the Great Famine when charges of "souperism" were leveled against Nangle. The provision of food across the Achill Mission schools - which also provided 'scriptural' religious instruction - was particularly controversial.
For almost forty years, Nangle edited a newspaper called the Achill Missionary Herald and Western Witness, which was printed in Achill. He expanded his mission into Mweelin, Kilgeever, West Achill where a school, church, rectory, cottages and a training school were built. Edward's wife, Eliza, suffered poor health in Achill and died in 1852; she is buried with six of the Nangle children on the slopes of Slievemore in North Achill.
In 1848, at the height of the Great Famine, the Achill Mission published a prospectus seeking to raise funds for the acquisition of significant additional lands from Sir Richard O'Donnell. The document gives an overview, from the Mission's perspective, of its activities in Achill over the previous decade and a half including considerable sectarian unrest. In 1851, Edward Nangle confirmed the purchase of the land which made the Achill Mission the largest landowner on the island.
The Achill Mission began to decline slowly after Nangle was moved from Achill and it closed in the 1880s. When Edward Nangle died in 1883 there were opposing views on his legacy. |
Achill Island | Railway | Railway
In 1894, the Westport – Newport railway line was extended to Achill Sound. The railway station is now a hostel. The train provided a great service to Achill, but it also is said to have fulfilled an ancient prophecy. Brian Rua O' Cearbhain had prophesied that 'carts on iron wheels' would carry bodies into Achill on their first and last journey. In 1894, the first train on the Achill railway carried the bodies of victims of the Clew Bay Drowning. This tragedy occurred when a boat overturned in Clew Bay, drowning thirty-two young people. They had been going to meet the steamer SS Elm which would take them to Britain for potato picking.
The Kirkintilloch Fire in 1937 almost fulfilled the second part of the prophecy when the bodies of ten victims were carried by rail to Achill. While it was not literally the last train, the railway closed just two weeks later. These people had died in a fire in a bothy in Kirkintilloch. This term referred to the temporary accommodation provided for those who went to Scotland to pick potatoes, a migratory pattern that had been established in the early nineteenth century.
thumb|Memorial for the victims of the Clew Bay Drowning on 15 June 1894 at Kildavenet Graveyard |
Achill Island | Kildamhnait | Kildamhnait
Kildamhnait on the south-east coast of Achill is named after St. Damhnait, or Dymphna, who founded a church there in the 7th century. There is also a holy well just outside the graveyard. The present church was built in the 1700s and the graveyard contains memorials to the victims of two of Achill's greatest tragedies, the Kirchintilloch Fire (1937) and the Clew Bay Drowning (1894). |
Achill Island | The Monastery | The Monastery
In 1852, John MacHale, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, purchased land in Bunnacurry, on which a Franciscan Monastery was established, which, for many years, provided an education for local children. The building of the monastery was marked by a conflict between the Protestants of the mission colony and the workers building the monastery. The dispute is known in the island folklore as the Battle of the Stones.
A monk who lived at the monastery for almost thirty years was Paul Carney. He wrote a biography of James Lynchehaun who was convicted for the 1894 attack on an Englishwoman named Agnes MacDonnell, which left her face disfigured, and the burning of her home, Valley House, Tonatanvally, North Achill. The home was rebuilt and MacDonnell died there in 1923, while Lynchehaun escaped to the US after serving 7 years and successfully resisted extradition but spent his last years in Scotland, where he died. Carney's great-grandniece, Patricia Byrne, wrote her own account of Mrs MacDonnell and Lynchehaun, entitled The Veiled Woman of Achill."Assault on Achill" , irishtimes.com. Accessed 27 October 2022.
Carney also wrote accounts of his lengthy fundraising trips across the U.S. at the start of the 20th century. The ruins of this monastery are still to be seen in Bunnacurry today. |
Achill Island | Valley House | Valley House
The historic Valley House is located in Tonatanvally, "The Valley", near Dugort, in the northeast of Achill Island. The present building sits on the site of a hunting lodge built by the Earl of Cavan in the 19th century. Its notoriety arises from an incident in 1894 in which the then owner, an Englishwoman, Mrs Agnes McDonnell, was savagely beaten and the house set alight by a local man, James Lynchehaun. Lynchehaun had been employed by McDonnell as her land agent, but the two fell out and he was sacked and told to quit his accommodation on her estate. A lengthy legal battle ensued, with Lynchehaun refusing to leave. At the time, in the 1890s, the issue of land ownership in Ireland was politically charged. After the events at the Valley House in 1895, Lynchehaun would falsely claim his actions were carried out on behalf of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and motivated by politics. He escaped from custody after serving seven years and fled to the United States seeking political asylum (although Michael Davitt refused to shake his hand, calling Lynchehaun a "murderer"), where he successfully defeated legal attempts by the British authorities to have him extradited to face charges arising from the attack and the burning of the Valley House. Agnes McDonnell suffered terrible injuries from the attack but survived and lived for another 23 years, dying in 1923. Lynchehaun is said to have returned to Achill on two occasions, once in disguise as an American tourist, and eventually died in Girvan, Scotland, in 1937. The Valley House is now a hostel and bar.
thumb|View of the deserted village from beside the ruins of one of the houses
thumb|Inside the ruins of one of the houses at the deserted village |
Achill Island | Deserted Village | Deserted Village
Close to Dugort, at the base of Slievemore mountain lies the Deserted Village. There are between 80 and 100 ruined houses in the village. The houses were built of unmortared stone. Each house consisted of just one room. In the area surrounding the Deserted Village, including on the mountain slopes, there is evidence of 'lazy beds' in which crops like potatoes were grown. In Achill, as in other areas of Ireland, a 'rundale' system was used for farming. This meant that the land around a village was rented from a landlord. This land was then shared by all the villagers to graze their cattle and sheep. Each family would then have two or three small pieces of land scattered about the village, which they used to grow crops. For many years people lived in the village and then in 1845 famine struck in Achill as it did in the rest of Ireland. Most of the families moved to the nearby village of Dooagh, which is beside the sea, while others emigrated. Living beside the sea meant that fish and shellfish could be used for food. The village was completely abandoned and is now known as the 'Deserted Village'.
While abandoned, the families that moved to Dooagh (and their descendants) continued to use the village as a 'booley village'.Deserted village, Slievemore, Achill Island, achill247.com Retrieved on 17 February 2008. This means that during the summer season, the younger members of the family, teenage boys and girls, would take the livestock to the area and tend flocks or herds on the hillside and stay in the houses of the Deserted Village. They would then return to Dooagh in the autumn. This custom continued until the 1940s. Boolying was also carried out in other areas of Achill, including Annagh on Croaghaun mountain and in Curraun. At Ailt, Kildownet, the remains of a similar deserted village can be found. This village was deserted in 1855 when the tenants were evicted by the local landlord so the land could be used for cattle grazing; the tenants were forced to rent holdings in Currane, Dooega and Slievemore. Others emigrated to America. |
Achill Island | Archaeology | Archaeology
thumb|The "Deserted Village" at the foot of Slievemore was a 'booley' village (see transhumance).
In 2009, a summer field school excavated Round House 2 on Slievemore Mountain under the direction of archaeologist Stuart Rathbone. Only the outside north wall, entrance way and inside of the Round House were completely excavated.Amanda Burt, member of Achill Field School, Summer 2009.
From 2004 to 2006, the Achill Island Maritime Archaeology Project directed by Chuck Meide was sponsored by the College of William and Mary, the Institute of Maritime History, the Achill Folklife Centre (now the Achill Archaeology Centre), and the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP). This project focused on the documentation of archaeological resources related to Achill's rich maritime heritage. Maritime archaeologists recorded a 19th-century fishing station, an ice house, boat house ruins, a number of anchors which had been salvaged from the sea, 19th-century and more recent currach pens, a number of traditional vernacular watercraft including a possibly 100-year-old Achill yawl, and the remains of four historic shipwrecks. |
Achill Island | Other places of interest | Other places of interest
thumb|Keem Bay
thumb|Croaghaun, the third highest sea cliff in Europe
thumb|Slievemore mountain dominates the centre of the island
thumb|Caisleán Ghráinne, also known as Kildownet Castle
The cliffs of Croaghaun on the western end of the island are the third highest sea cliffs in Europe but are inaccessible by road. Near the westernmost point of Achill, Achill Head, is Keem Bay. Keel Beach is visited by tourists and used as a surfing location. South of Keem beach is Moytoge Head, which with its rounded appearance drops dramatically down to the ocean. An old British observation post, built during World War I to prevent the Germans from landing arms for the Irish Republican Army, still stands on Moytoge. During the Emergency (WWII), this post was rebuilt by the Irish Defence Forces as a lookout post for the Coast Watching Service wing of the Defence Forces. It operated from 1939 to 1945.See Michael Kennedy, Guarding Neutral Ireland (Dublin, 2008), p. 50
The mountain of Slievemore, (672 m) rises dramatically in the north of the island. On its slops is an abandoned village, the "Deserted Village". West of this ruined village is an old Martello tower, again built by the British to warn of any possible French invasion during the Napoleonic Wars. The area also has an approximately 5000-year-old Neolithic tomb.
Achillbeg (, Little Achill) is a small island just off Achill's southern tip. Its inhabitants were resettled on Achill in the 1960s.Jonathan Beaumont (2005), Achillbeg: The Life of an Island; A plaque to the boxer Johnny Kilbane is situated on Achillbeg and was erected to celebrate 100 years since his first championship win.
Caisleán Ghráinne, also known as Kildownet Castle, is a small tower house built in the early 1400s. It is located in Cloughmore, on the south of Achill Island. It is noted for its associations with Grace O'Malley, along with the larger Rockfleet Castle in Newport. |
Achill Island | Economy and tourism | Economy and tourism
While a number of attempts at setting up small industrial units on the island have been made, its economy is largely dependent on tourism. Subventions from Achill people working abroad allowed a number of families to remain living in Achill throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In the past, fishing was a significant activity but this aspect of the economy has since reduced. At one stage, the island was known for its shark fishing, and basking shark in particular was fished for its valuable shark liver oil.
During the 1960s and 1970s, there was growth in tourism. The largest employers on Achill include its two hotels. The island has several bars, cafes and restaurants. The island's Atlantic location means that seafood, including lobster, mussels, salmon, trout and winkles, are common. Lamb and beef are also popular. |
Achill Island | Religion | Religion
Most people on Achill are either Roman Catholic or Anglican (Church of Ireland).
Catholic churches on the island include: Bunnacurry Church (Saint Josephs), The Valley Church (only open for certain events), Pollagh Church, Dooega Church and Achill Sound Church.
There is a Church of Ireland church (St. Thomas's church) at Dugort.
The House of Prayer, a controversial "religious retreat" on the island, was established in 1993. |
Achill Island | Artists | Artists
For almost two centuries, a number of artists have had a close relationship with Achill Island, including the landscape painter Paul Henry. Within the emerging Irish Free State, Paul Henry's landscapes from Achill and other areas reinforced a vision of Ireland of communities living in harmony with the land. He lived in Achill for almost a decade with his wife, artist Grace Henry and, while using similar subject-matter, the pair developed very different styles.
This relationship of artists with Achill was particularly intense in the early decades of the twentieth century when Eva O'Flaherty (1874–1963) became a focal point for artistic networking on the island. A network of over 200 artists linked to Achill is charted in "Achill Painters - An Island History" and includes painters such as the Belgian Marie Howet, the American Robert Henri, the modernist painter Mainie Jellett and contemporary artist Camille Souter.
The 2018 Coming Home Art & The Great Hunger exhibition, in partnership with The Great Hunger Museum of Quinnipiac University, USA, featured Achill's Deserted Village and the island lazy beds prominently in works by Geraldine O'Reilly and Alanna O'Kelly; also included was an 1873 painting, 'Cottage, Achill Island' by Alexander Williams - one of the first artists to open up the island to a wider audience. |
Achill Island | Education | Education
Hedge schools existed in most villages of Achill in various periods of history. A university was started by the missions to Achill in Mweelin.
At the turn of the 21st century there were two secondary schools in Achill: Mc Hale College and Scoil Damhnait. These two schools amalgamated, in 2011, to form Coláiste Pobail Acla.
For primary education, there are eight national schools. These including Bullsmouth NS, Valley NS, Bunnacurry NS, Dookinella NS, Dooagh NS, Saula NS, Achill Sound NS and Tonragee NS. |
Achill Island | Transport | Transport
thumb|As of the early 20th century, a railway station operated on Achill. |
Achill Island | Rail | Rail
Achill railway station, still on the mainland and not on the island, was opened by the Midland Great Western Railway on 13 May 1895, the terminus of its line from Westport via Newport and Mulranny. The station, and the line, were closed by the Great Southern Railways on 1 October 1937. The Great Western Greenway, created during 2010 and 2011, follows the line's route and has proved to be very successful in attracting visitors to Achill and the surrounding areas. |
Achill Island | Road | Road
The R319 road is the main road onto the island.
Bus Éireann's route 450 operates several times daily to Westport and Louisburgh from the island. Bus Éireann also provides transport for the area's secondary school children. |
Achill Island | Sport | Sport
Achill has a Gaelic football club which competes in the junior championship and division 1E of the Mayo League. There are also Achill Rovers which play in the Mayo Association Football League.
There is a 9-hole links golf course on the island. Outdoor activities can be done through Achill Outdoor Education Centre. Achill Island's rugged landscape and the surrounding ocean offers multiple locations for outdoor adventure activities, like surfing, kite-surfing and sea kayaking. Fishing and watersports are also common. Sailing regattas featuring a local vessel type, the Achill Yawl, have been run since the 19th century. |
Achill Island | Demographics | Demographics
In 2016, the population was 2,594, with 5.2% claiming they spoke Irish on a daily basis outside the education system. The island's population has declined from around 6,000 before the Great Famine of the mid-19th century.
The table below reports data on Achill Island's population taken from Discover the Islands of Ireland (Alex Ritsema, Collins Press, 1999) and the census of Ireland. |
Achill Island | Notable people | Notable people
Heinrich Böll, German writer who spent several summers with his family and later lived several months per year on the island
Charles Boycott (1832–1897), unpopular landowner from whom the term boycott arose
Nancy Corrigan, pioneer aviator, second female commercial pilot in the US.
Dermot Freyer (1883–1970), writer who opened a hotel on the island
Paul Henry, artist, stayed on the island for a number of years in the early 1900s
James Kilbane, singer, lives on the island
Johnny Kilbane, boxer
Saoirse McHugh, former Green Party politician
Danny McNamara, musician
Richard McNamara, musician
Eva O'Flaherty, Nationalist, model and milliner
Manus Patten, recipient of the Scott Medal
Thomas Patten, from Dooega. Died during the Siege of Madrid in December 1936
Honor Tracy, author, lived there until her death in 1989 |
Achill Island | In popular culture | In popular culture
The island is featured throughout the film The Banshees of Inisherin in various locations on the island including Keem Bay, Cloughmore, and Purteen Pier.
The island is also the primary setting of the visual novel If Found.... |
Achill Island | Further reading | Further reading
Heinrich Böll: Irisches Tagebuch, Berlin, 1957
Bob Kingston The Deserted Village at Slievemore, Castlebar, 1990
Theresa McDonald: Achill: 5000 B.C. to 1900 A.D.: Archeology History Folklore, I.A.S. Publications [1992]
Rosa Meehan: The Story of Mayo, Castlebar, 2003
James Carney: The Playboy & the Yellow lady, 1986 Poolbeg
Hugo Hamilton: The Island of Talking, 2007
Mealla Nī Ghiobúin: Dugort, Achill Island 1831–1861: The Rise and Fall of a Missionary Community, 2001
Patricia Byrne: The Veiled Woman of Achill – Island Outrage & A Playboy Drama, 2012
Mary J. Murphy: Achill's Eva O'Flaherty – Forgotten Island Heroine, 2011
Patricia Byrne: The Preacher and The Prelate – The Achill Mission Colony and The Battle for Souls in Famine Ireland, 2018
Mary J. Murphy, Achill Painters - An Island History, 2020 |
Achill Island | See also | See also
List of islands of County Mayo |
Achill Island | References | References |
Achill Island | External links | External links
Colaiste Pobail Acla students project on the Achill area
Achill Island Maritime Archaeology Project
VisitAchill multilingual visitor's site
Category:Islands of County Mayo
Category:Gaeltacht places in County Mayo |
Achill Island | Table of Content | Short description, History, Overlords, Immigration, Specific historical sites and events, Grace O'Malley's Castle, Achill Mission, Railway, Kildamhnait, The Monastery, Valley House, Deserted Village, Archaeology, Other places of interest, Economy and tourism, Religion, Artists, Education, Transport, Rail, Road, Sport, Demographics, Notable people, In popular culture, Further reading, See also, References, External links |
Allen Ginsberg | short description | Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.
Best known for his poem "Howl", Ginsberg denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. San Francisco police and US Customs seized copies of "Howl" in 1956, and a subsequent obscenity trial in 1957 attracted widespread publicity due to the poem's language and descriptions of heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made male homosexual acts a crime in every state. The poem reflected Ginsberg's own sexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner. Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, asking: "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"
Ginsberg was a Buddhist who extensively studied Eastern religious disciplines. He lived modestly, buying his clothing in second-hand stores and residing in apartments in New York City's East Village. One of his most influential teachers was Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa, the founder of the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. At Trungpa's urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics there in 1974.
For decades, Ginsberg was active in political protests across a range of issues from the Vietnam War to the war on drugs.Ginsberg, Allen, Deliberate Prose, the foreword by Edward Sanders, p. xxi. His poem "September on Jessore Road" drew attention to refugees fleeing the 1971 Bangladeshi genocide, exemplifying what literary critic Helen Vendler described as Ginsberg's persistent opposition to "imperial politics" and the "persecution of the powerless".Vendler, Helen (January 13, 1986), "Books: A Lifelong Poem Including History", The New Yorker, p. 81. His collection The Fall of America shared the annual National Book Award for Poetry in 1974. In 1979, he received the National Arts Club gold medal and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992. |
Allen Ginsberg | Biography | Biography |
Allen Ginsberg | Early life and family | Early life and family
Ginsberg was born into a JewishPacernick, Gary. "Allen Ginsberg: An interview by Gary Pacernick" (February 10, 1996), The American Poetry Review, July/August 1997. "Yeah, I am a Jewish poet. I'm Jewish." family in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Paterson. He was the second son of Louis Ginsberg, also born in Newark, a schoolteacher and published poet, and the former Naomi Levy, born in Nevel (Russia) and a fervent Marxist.
As a teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Times about political issues, such as World War II and workers' rights. He published his first poems in the Paterson Morning Call.David S. Wills, "Allen Ginsberg's First Poem?" While in high school, Ginsberg became interested in the works of Walt Whitman, inspired by his teacher's passionate reading. In 1943, Ginsberg graduated from Eastside High School and briefly attended Montclair State College before entering Columbia University on a scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson. Ginsberg intended to study law at Columbia but later changed his major to literature.
In 1945, he joined the Merchant Marine to earn money to continue his education at Columbia.Ginsberg, Allen (2008) The Letters of Allen Ginsberg. Philadelphia, Da Capo Press, p. 6. While at Columbia, Ginsberg contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal, the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize, served as president of the Philolexian Society (literary and debate group), and joined Boar's Head Society (poetry society).
He was a resident of Hartley Hall, where other Beat Generation poets such as Jack Kerouac and Herbert Gold also lived. Ginsberg has stated that he considered his required freshman seminar in Great Books, taught by Lionel Trilling, to be his favorite Columbia course. In 1948, he graduated from Columbia with a B.A in English and American Literature.Charters, Ann (July 2000) "Ginsberg's Life." American National Biography Online. American Council of Learned Societies.
According to The Poetry Foundation, Ginsberg spent several months in a mental institution after he pleaded insanity during a hearing. He was allegedly being prosecuted for harboring stolen goods in his dorm room. It was noted that the stolen property was not his, but belonged to an acquaintance.Allen Ginsberg." Allen Ginsberg Biography. Poetry Foundation, 2014. Web. November 6, 2014. Ginsberg also took part in public readings at the Episcopal St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery which would later hold a memorial service for him after his death. |
Allen Ginsberg | Relationship with his parents | Relationship with his parents
Ginsberg referred to his parents in a 1985 interview as "old-fashioned delicatessen philosophers". His mother was also an active member of the Communist Party and took Ginsberg and his brother Eugene to party meetings. Ginsberg later said that his mother "made up bedtime stories that all went something like: 'The good king rode forth from his castle, saw the suffering workers and healed them.'" Of his father Ginsberg said: "My father would go around the house either reciting Emily Dickinson and Longfellow under his breath or attacking T. S. Eliot for ruining poetry with his 'obscurantism.' I grew suspicious of both sides."
Naomi Ginsberg had schizophrenia which often manifested as paranoid delusions, disordered thinking and multiple suicide attempts. She would claim, for example, that the president had implanted listening devices in their home and that her mother-in-law was trying to kill her.Hyde, Lewis and Ginsberg, Allen (1984) On the poetry of Allen Ginsberg. University of Michigan Press. . p. 421. Her suspicion of those around her caused Naomi to draw closer to young Allen, "her little pet," as Bill Morgan says in his biography of Ginsberg, titled I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. She also tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists and was soon taken to Greystone, a mental hospital; she would spend much of Ginsberg's youth in mental hospitals.Dittman, Michael J. (2007), Masterpieces of Beat literature. Greenwood Publishing Group. , pp. 57–58. His experiences with his mother and her mental illness were a major inspiration for his two major works, "Howl" and his long autobiographical poem "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894–1956)".Breslin, James (2003), "Allen Ginsberg: The Origins of Howl and Kaddish." in Poetry Criticism. David M. Galens (ed.). Vol. 47. Detroit: Gale.
When he was in junior high school, he accompanied his mother by bus to her therapist. The trip deeply disturbed Ginsberg—he mentioned it and other moments from his childhood in "Kaddish". His experiences with his mother's mental illness and her institutionalization are also frequently referred to in "Howl." For example, "Pilgrim State, Rockland, and Grey Stone's foetid halls" is a reference to institutions frequented by his mother and Carl Solomon, ostensibly the subject of the poem: Pilgrim State Hospital and Rockland State Hospital in New York and Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey.Ginsberg, Allen (1995). Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography. Barry Miles (Ed.). Harper Perennial. . pp. 131, 132, 139–140.Theado, Matt (2003) The Beats: A Literary Reference. Carroll & Graf Publishers. . p. 53. This is followed soon by the line "with mother finally ******." Ginsberg later admitted the deletion was the expletive "fucked." He also says of Solomon in section three, "I'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my mother," once again showing the association between Solomon and his mother.
Ginsberg received a letter from his mother after her death responding to a copy of "Howl" he had sent her. It admonished Ginsberg to be good and stay away from drugs; she says, "The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight at the window—I have the key—Get married Allen don't take drugs—the key is in the bars, in the sunlight in the window."Hyde, Lewis and Ginsberg, Allen (1984), On the poetry of Allen Ginsberg. University of Michigan Press. , pp. 426–27. In a letter she wrote to Ginsberg's brother Eugene, she said, "God's informers come to my bed, and God himself I saw in the sky. The sunshine showed too, a key on the side of the window for me to get out. The yellow of the sunshine, also showed the key on the side of the window." These letters and the absence of a facility to recite kaddish inspired Ginsberg to write "Kaddish", which makes references to many details from Naomi's life, Ginsberg's experiences with her, and the letter, including the lines "the key is in the light" and "the key is in the window."Ginsberg, Allen (1961), Kaddish and Other Poems. Volume 2, Issue 14 of The Pocket Poets series. City Lights Books. |
Allen Ginsberg | New York Beats | New York Beats
In Ginsberg's first year at Columbia he met fellow undergraduate Lucien Carr, who introduced him to a number of future Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and John Clellon Holmes. They bonded, because they saw in one another an excitement about the potential of American youth, a potential that existed outside the strict conformist confines of post–World War II, McCarthy-era America. Ginsberg and Carr talked excitedly about a "New Vision" (a phrase adapted from Yeats' "A Vision"), for literature and America. Carr also introduced Ginsberg to Neal Cassady, for whom Ginsberg had a long infatuation.Barry Gifford, ed., As Ever: The Collected Correspondence of Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady. In the first chapter of his 1957 novel On the Road Kerouac described the meeting between Ginsberg and Cassady. Kerouac saw them as the dark (Ginsberg) and light (Cassady) side of their "New Vision", a perception stemming partly from Ginsberg's association with communism, of which Kerouac had become increasingly distrustful. Though Ginsberg was never a member of the Communist Party, Kerouac named him "Carlo Marx" in On the Road. This was a source of strain in their relationship.
Also, in New York, Ginsberg met Gregory Corso in the Pony Stable Bar. Corso, recently released from prison, was supported by the Pony Stable patrons and was writing poetry there the night of their meeting. Ginsberg claims he was immediately attracted to Corso, who was straight, but understood homosexuality after three years in prison. Ginsberg was even more struck by reading Corso's poems, realizing Corso was "spiritually gifted." Ginsberg introduced Corso to the rest of his inner circle. In their first meeting at the Pony Stable, Corso showed Ginsberg a poem about a woman who lived across the street from him and sunbathed naked in the window. Amazingly, the woman happened to be Ginsberg's girlfriend that he was living with during one of his forays into heterosexuality. Ginsberg took Corso over to their apartment. There the woman proposed sex with Corso, who was still very young and fled in fear. Ginsberg introduced Corso to Kerouac and Burroughs and they began to travel together. Ginsberg and Corso remained lifelong friends and collaborators.
Shortly after this period in Ginsberg's life, he became romantically involved with Elise Nada Cowen after meeting her through Alex Greer, a philosophy professor at Barnard College whom she had dated for a while during the burgeoning Beat generation's period of development. As a Barnard student, Elise Cowen extensively read the poetry of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, when she met Joyce Johnson and Leo Skir, among other Beat players. As Cowen had felt a strong attraction to darker poetry most of the time, Beat poetry seemed to provide an allure to what suggests a shadowy side of her persona. While at Barnard, Cowen earned the nickname "Beat Alice" as she had joined a small group of anti-establishment artists and visionaries known to outsiders as beatniks, and one of her first acquaintances at the college was the beat poet Joyce Johnson who later portrayed Cowen in her books, including "Minor Characters" and Come and Join the Dance, which expressed the two women's experiences in the Barnard and Columbia Beat community. Through his association with Elise Cowen, Ginsberg discovered that they shared a mutual friend, Carl Solomon, to whom he later dedicated his most famous poem "Howl." This poem is considered an autobiography of Ginsberg up to 1955, and a brief history of the Beat Generation through its references to his relationship to other Beat artists of that time. |
Allen Ginsberg | The "Blake vision" | The "Blake vision"
In 1948, in an apartment in East Harlem, Ginsberg experienced an auditory hallucination while masturbating and reading the poetry of William Blake, which he later referred to as his "Blake vision". Ginsberg claimed to have heard the voice of God—also described as the "voice of the Ancient of Days"—or of Blake himself reading "Ah! Sun-flower", "The Sick Rose" and "The Little Girl Lost". The experience lasted several days, with him believing that he had witnessed the interconnectedness of the universe; Ginsberg recounted that after looking at latticework on the fire escape of the apartment and then at the sky, he intuited that one had been crafted by human beings, while the other had been crafted by itself. He explained that this hallucination was not inspired by drug use, but said he sought to recapture the feeling of interconnectedness later with various drugs. Later, in 1955, he referenced his "Blake vision" in his poem "Sunflower Sutra", saying "—I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions—". |
Allen Ginsberg | San Francisco Renaissance | San Francisco Renaissance
Ginsberg moved to San Francisco during the 1950s. Before Howl and Other Poems was published in 1956 by City Lights, he worked as a market researcher.Schumacher, Michael (January 27, 2002). "Allen Ginsberg Project".
In 1954, in San Francisco, Ginsberg met Peter Orlovsky (1933–2010), with whom he fell in love and who remained his lifelong partner. Selections from their correspondence have been published.Straight Hearts' Delight: Love Poems and Selected Letters, by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, edited by Winston Leyland. Gay Sunshine Press, 1980, .
Also in San Francisco, Ginsberg met members of the San Francisco Renaissance (James Broughton, Robert Duncan, Madeline Gleason and Kenneth Rexroth) and other poets who would later be associated with the Beat Generation in a broader sense. Ginsberg's mentor William Carlos Williams wrote an introductory letter to San Francisco Renaissance figurehead Kenneth Rexroth, who then introduced Ginsberg into the San Francisco poetry scene. There, Ginsberg also met three budding poets and Zen enthusiasts who had become friends at Reed College: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Lew Welch. In 1959, along with poets John Kelly, Bob Kaufman, A. D. Winans, and William Margolis, Ginsberg was one of the founders of the Beatitude poetry magazine.
Wally Hedrick—a painter and co-founder of the Six Gallery—approached Ginsberg in mid-1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery. At first, Ginsberg refused, but once he had written a rough draft of "Howl," he changed his "fucking mind," as he put it. Ginsberg advertised the event as "Six Poets at the Six Gallery." One of the most important events in Beat mythos, known simply as "The Six Gallery reading" took place on October 7, 1955. The event, in essence, brought together the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation. Of more personal significance to Ginsberg, the reading that night included the first public presentation of "Howl," a poem that brought worldwide fame to Ginsberg and to many of the poets associated with him. An account of that night can be found in Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums, describing how change was collected from audience members to buy jugs of wine, and Ginsberg reading passionately, drunken, with arms outstretched.
thumb|First edition cover of Ginsberg's landmark poetry collection, Howl and Other Poems(1956)
Ginsberg's principal work, "Howl," is well known for its opening line: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked [...]." "Howl" was considered scandalous at the time of its publication, because of the rawness of its language. Shortly after its 1956 publication by San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore, it was banned for obscenity. The ban became a cause célèbre among defenders of the First Amendment, and was later lifted, after Judge Clayton W. Horn declared the poem to possess redeeming artistic value. Ginsberg and Shig Murao, the City Lights manager who was jailed for selling "Howl," became lifelong friends.Ball, Gordon, Howl' and Other Victories: A friend remembers City Lights' Shig Murao", San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 1999. |
Allen Ginsberg | Biographical references in "Howl" | Biographical references in "Howl"
Ginsberg claimed at one point that all of his work was an extended biography (like Kerouac's Duluoz Legend). "Howl" is not only a biography of Ginsberg's experiences before 1955, but also a history of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg also later claimed that at the core of "Howl" were his unresolved emotions about his schizophrenic mother. Though "Kaddish" deals more explicitly with his mother, "Howl" in many ways is driven by the same emotions. "Howl" chronicles the development of many important friendships throughout Ginsberg's life. He begins the poem with "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness", which sets the stage for Ginsberg to describe Cassady and Solomon, immortalizing them into American literature. This madness was the "angry fix" that society needed to function—madness was its disease. In the poem, Ginsberg focused on "Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland", and, thus, turned Solomon into an archetypal figure searching for freedom from his "straightjacket". Though references in most of his poetry reveal much about his biography, his relationship to other members of the Beat Generation, and his own political views, "Howl," his most famous poem, is still perhaps the best place to start. |
Allen Ginsberg | To Paris and the "Beat Hotel", Tangier and India | To Paris and the "Beat Hotel", Tangier and India
In 1957, Ginsberg surprised the literary world by abandoning San Francisco. After a spell in Morocco, he and Peter Orlovsky joined Gregory Corso in Paris. Corso introduced them to a shabby lodging house above a bar at 9 rue Gît-le-Cœur that was to become known as the Beat Hotel. They were soon joined by Burroughs and others. It was a productive, creative time for all of them. There, Ginsberg began his epic poem "Kaddish", Corso composed Bomb and Marriage, and Burroughs (with help from Ginsberg and Corso) put together Naked Lunch from previous writings. This period was documented by the photographer Harold Chapman, who moved in at about the same time, and took pictures constantly of the residents of the "hotel" until it closed in 1963. During 1962–1963, Ginsberg and Orlovsky travelled extensively across India, living half a year at a time in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Benares (Varanasi). On his road to India he stayed two months in Athens ( August 29, 1961 – October 31, 1961) where he visited various sites such as Delphi, Mycines, Crete, and then continued his journey to Israel, Kenya and finally India. Also during this time, he formed friendships with some of the prominent young Bengali poets of the time including Shakti Chattopadhyay and Sunil Gangopadhyay. Ginsberg had several political connections in India; most notably Pupul Jayakar who helped him extend his stay in India when the authorities were eager to expel him. |
Allen Ginsberg | England and the International Poetry Incarnation | England and the International Poetry Incarnation
In May 1965, Ginsberg arrived in London, and offered to read anywhere for free.Nuttall, J (1968) Bomb Culture MacGibbon & Kee, Shortly after his arrival, he gave a reading at Better Books, which was described by Jeff Nuttall as "the first healing wind on a very parched collective mind." Tom McGrath wrote: "This could well turn out to have been a very significant moment in the history of England—or at least in the history of English Poetry."Fountain, N: Underground: the London alternative press, 1966–1974, p. 16. Taylor & Francis, 1988 .
Soon after the bookshop reading, plans were hatched for the International Poetry Incarnation, which was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on June 11, 1965. The event attracted an audience of 7,000, who heard readings and live and tape performances by a wide variety of figures, including Ginsberg, Adrian Mitchell, Alexander Trocchi, Harry Fainlight, Anselm Hollo, Christopher Logue, George MacBeth, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael Horovitz, Simon Vinkenoog, Spike Hawkins and Tom McGrath. The event was organized by Ginsberg's friend, the filmmaker Barbara Rubin.
Peter Whitehead documented the event on film and released it as Wholly Communion. A book featuring images from the film and some of the poems that were performed was also published under the same title by Lorrimer in the UK and Grove Press in US. |
Allen Ginsberg | Continuing literary activity | Continuing literary activity
thumb|250px|Ginsberg with his partner, poet Peter Orlovsky. Photo taken in 1978
Though the term "Beat" is most accurately applied to Ginsberg and his closest friends (Corso, Orlovsky, Kerouac, Burroughs, etc.), the term "Beat Generation" has become associated with many of the other poets Ginsberg met and became friends with in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A key feature of this term seems to be a friendship with Ginsberg. Friendship with Kerouac or Burroughs might also apply, but both writers later strove to disassociate themselves from the name "Beat Generation." Part of their dissatisfaction with the term came from the mistaken identification of Ginsberg as the leader. Ginsberg never claimed to be the leader of a movement. He claimed that many of the writers with whom he had become friends in this period shared many of the same intentions and themes. Some of these friends include: David Amram, Bob Kaufman; Diane di Prima; Jim Cohn; poets associated with the Black Mountain College such as Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Denise Levertov; poets associated with the New York School such as Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch. LeRoi Jones before he became Amiri Baraka, who, after reading "Howl", wrote a letter to Ginsberg on a sheet of toilet paper. Baraka's independent publishing house Totem Press published Ginsberg's early work. Through a party organized by Baraka, Ginsberg was introduced to Langston Hughes while Ornette Coleman played saxophone.
thumb|250px|Portrait with Bob Dylan, taken in 1975
Later in his life, Ginsberg formed a bridge between the beat movement of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s, befriending, among others, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bob Dylan. Ginsberg gave his last public reading at Booksmith, a bookstore in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, a few months before his death.. Video at fora.tv. October 23, 2008. In 1993, Ginsberg visited the University of Maine at Orono to pay homage to the 90-year-old great Carl Rakosi. |
Allen Ginsberg | Buddhism and Krishna | Buddhism and Krishna
In 1950, Kerouac began studying Buddhism and shared what he learned from Dwight Goddard's Buddhist Bible with Ginsberg. Ginsberg first heard about the Four Noble Truths and such sutras as the Diamond Sutra at this time. Ginsberg's endorsement helped establish the Krishna movement within New York's bohemian culture.
Ginsberg's spiritual journey began early on with his spontaneous visions, and continued with an early trip to India with Gary Snyder. Snyder had previously spent time in Kyoto to study at the First Zen Institute at Daitoku-ji Monastery. At one point, Snyder chanted the Prajnaparamita, which in Ginsberg's words "blew my mind." His interest piqued, Ginsberg traveled to meet the Dalai Lama as well as the Karmapa at Rumtek Monastery. Continuing on his journey, Ginsberg met Dudjom Rinpoche in Kalimpong, who taught him: "If you see something horrible, don't cling to it, and if you see something beautiful, don't cling to it."
After returning to the United States, a chance encounter on a New York City street with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (they both tried to catch the same cab), a Kagyu and Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist master, led to Trungpa becoming his friend and lifelong teacher. Ginsberg helped Trungpa and New York poet Anne Waldman in founding the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Ginsberg was also involved with Krishnaism. He had started incorporating chanting the Hare Krishna mantra into his religious practice in the mid-1960s. After learning that A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement in the Western world had rented a store front in New York, he befriended him, visiting him often and suggesting publishers for his books, and a fruitful relationship began. This relationship is documented by Satsvarupa dasa Goswami in his biographical account Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta. Ginsberg donated money, materials, and his reputation to help the Swami establish the first temple, and toured with him to promote his cause.
thumb|left|Allen Ginsberg greeting A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada at San Francisco International Airport. January 17, 1967
Despite disagreeing with many of Bhaktivedanta Swami's required prohibitions, Ginsberg often sang the Hare Krishna mantra publicly as part of his philosophy and declared that it brought a state of ecstasy. He was glad that Bhaktivedanta Swami, an authentic swami from India, was now trying to spread the chanting in America. Along with other counterculture ideologists like Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, and Alan Watts, Ginsberg hoped to incorporate Bhaktivedanta Swami and his chanting into the hippie movement, and agreed to take part in the Mantra-Rock Dance concert and to introduce the swami to the Haight-Ashbury hippie community.(from the "Houseboat Summit" panel discussion, Sausalito CA. February 1967)():
Ginsberg: So what do you think of Swami Bhaktivedanta pleading for the acceptance of Krishna in every direction?
Snyder: Why, it's a lovely positive thing to say Krishna. It's a beautiful mythology and it's a beautiful practice.
Leary: Should be encouraged.
Ginsberg: He feels it's the one uniting thing. He feels a monopolistic unitary thing about it.
Watts: I'll tell you why I think he feels it. The mantras, the images of Krishna have in this culture no foul association [...] [W]hen somebody comes in from the Orient with a new religion which hasn't got any of [horrible] associations in our minds, all the words are new, all the rites are new, and yet, somehow it has feeling in it, and we can get with that, you see, and we can dig that!
On January 17, 1967, Ginsberg helped plan and organize a reception for Bhaktivedanta Swami at San Francisco International Airport, where fifty to a hundred hippies greeted the Swami, chanting Hare Krishna in the airport lounge with flowers in hands.Addressing speculations that he was Allen Ginsberg's guru, Bhaktivedanta Swami answered a direct question in a public program, "Are you Allen Ginsberg's guru?" by saying, "I am nobody's guru. I am everybody's servant. Actually I am not even a servant; a servant of God is no ordinary thing." (; ) To further support and promote Bhaktivedanta Swami's message and chanting in San Francisco, Allen Ginsberg agreed to attend the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event 1967 held at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. It featured some leading rock bands of the time: Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and Moby Grape, who performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami and donated proceeds to the Krishna temple. Ginsberg introduced Bhaktivedanta Swami to some three thousand hippies in the audience and led the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra.
thumb|right|upright|The Mantra-Rock Dance promotional poster featuring Allen Ginsberg along with leading rock bands.
Music and chanting were both important parts of Ginsberg's live delivery during poetry readings.Chowka, Peter Barry, "This is Allen Ginsberg? " (Interview), New Age Journal, April 1976. "I had known Swami Bhaktivedanta and was somewhat guided by him [...] spiritual friend. I practiced the Hare Krishna chant, practiced it with him, sometimes in mass auditoriums and parks in the Lower East Side of New York. Actually, I'd been chanting it since '63, after coming back from India. I began chanting it, in Vancouver at a great poetry conference, for the first time in '63, with Duncan and Olson and everybody around, and then continued. When Bhaktivedanta arrived on the Lower East Side in '66 it was reinforcement for me, like 'the reinforcements had arrived' from India." He often accompanied himself on a harmonium, and was often accompanied by a guitarist. It is believed that the Hindi and Buddhist poet Nagarjun had introduced Ginsberg to the harmonium in Banaras. According to Malay Roy Choudhury, Ginsberg refined his practice while learning from his relatives, including his cousin Savitri Banerjee.Klausner, Linda T. (April 22, 2011), "American Beat Yogi: An Exploration of the Hindu and Indian Cultural Themes in Allen Ginsberg", Masters Thesis: Literature, Culture, and MediaLund University. When Ginsberg asked if he could sing a song in praise of Lord Krishna on William F. Buckley, Jr.'s TV show Firing Line on September 3, 1968, Buckley acceded and the poet chanted slowly as he played dolefully on a harmonium. According to Richard Brookhiser, an associate of Buckley's, the host commented that it was "the most unharried Krishna I've ever heard."Konigsberg, Eric (February 29, 2008), "Buckley's Urbane Debating Club: Firing Line Set a Standard For Political Discourse on TV", The New York Times, Metro Section, p. B1.
At the 1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the 1970 Black Panther rally at Yale campus Allen chanted "Om" repeatedly over a sound system for hours on end.
Ginsberg further brought mantras into the world of rock and roll when he recited the Heart Sutra in the song "Ghetto Defendant". The song appears on the 1982 album Combat Rock by British first wave punk band The Clash.
Ginsberg came in touch with the Hungryalist poets of Bengal, especially Malay Roy Choudhury, who introduced Ginsberg to the three fish with one head of Indian emperor Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar. The three fish symbolised coexistence of all thought, philosophy, and religion.Mitra, Alo (May 9, 2008), Hungryalist Influence on Allen Ginsberg . thewastepaper.blogspot.com.
In spite of Ginsberg's attraction to Eastern religions, the journalist Jane Kramer argues that he, like Whitman, adhered to an "American brand of mysticism" that was "rooted in humanism and in a romantic and visionary ideal of harmony among men."Kramer, Jane (1968), Allen Ginsberg in America. New York: Random House, p. xvii.
The Allen Ginsberg Estate and Jewel Heart International partnered to present "Transforming Minds: Kyabje Gelek Rimpoche and Friends", a gallery and online exhibition of images of Gelek Rimpoche by Allen Ginsberg, a student with whom he had an "indissoluble bond," in 2021 at Tibet House US in New York City. Fifty negatives from Ginsberg's Stanford University photo archive celebrated "the unique relationship between Allen and Rimpoche." The selection of never-before presented images, featuring great Tibetan masters including the Dalai Lama, Tibetologists, and students were "guided by Allen's extensive notes on the contact sheets and images he'd circled with the intention to print." |
Allen Ginsberg | Illness and death | Illness and death
In 1960, he was treated for a tropical disease, and it is speculated that he contracted hepatitis from an unsterilized needle administered by a doctor, which played a role in his death 37 years later.
Ginsberg was a lifelong smoker, and though he tried to quit for health and religious reasons, his busy schedule in later life made it difficult, and he always returned to smoking.
In the 1970s, Ginsberg had two minor strokes which were first diagnosed as Bell's palsy, which gave him significant paralysis and stroke-like drooping of the muscles in one side of his face. Later in life, he also had constant minor ailments such as high blood pressure. Many of these symptoms were related to stress, but he never slowed down his schedule.
thumb|Allen Ginsberg, 1979
Ginsberg won a 1974 National Book Award for The Fall of America (split with Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck).In 1993, Ginsberg visited the University of Maine at Orono for a conference, to pay homage to the 90-year-old great Carl Rakosi and to read poems as well. "National Book Awards1974". National Book Foundation. Retrieved April 7, 2012 (with acceptance speech by Ginsberg and essay by John Murillo from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog).
In 1986, Ginsberg was awarded the Golden Wreath by the Struga Poetry Evenings International Festival in Macedonia, the second American poet to be so awarded since W. H. Auden. At Struga, Ginsberg met with the other Golden Wreath winners, Bulat Okudzhava and Andrei Voznesensky.
In 1989, Ginsberg appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's award-winning film Silence = Death about the fight of gay artists in New York City for AIDS-education and the rights of HIV infected people.
In 1993, the French Minister of Culture appointed Ginsberg a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
Ginsberg continued to help his friends as much as he could: he gave money to Herbert Huncke out of his own pocket, regularly supplied neighbor Arthur Russell with an extension cord to power his home recording setup, and housed a broke, drug-addicted Harry Smith.
With the exception of a special guest appearance at the NYU Poetry Slam on February 20, 1997, Ginsberg gave what is thought to be his last reading at The Booksmith in San Francisco on December 16, 1996.
After returning home from the hospital for the last time, where he had been unsuccessfully treated for congestive heart failure, Ginsberg continued making phone calls to say goodbye to nearly everyone in his address book. Some of the phone calls were sad and interrupted by crying, and others were joyous and optimistic. Ginsberg continued to write through his final illness, with his last poem, "Things I'll Not Do (Nostalgias)", written on March 30.Ginsberg, Allen Collected Poems 1947–1997, pp. 1160–61.
He died on April 5, 1997, surrounded by family and friends in his East Village loft in Manhattan, succumbing to liver cancer via complications of hepatitis at the age of 70. Gregory Corso, Roy Lichtenstein, Patti Smith and others came by to pay their respects. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried in his family plot in Gomel Chesed Cemetery in Newark. He was survived by Orlovsky.
In 1998, various writers, including Catfish McDaris, read at a gathering at Ginsberg's farm to honor Allen and the Beats.
Good Will Hunting (released in December 1997) was dedicated to Ginsberg, as well as Burroughs, who died four months later. |
Allen Ginsberg | Social and political activism | Social and political activism |
Allen Ginsberg | Free speech | Free speech
Ginsberg's willingness to talk about taboo subjects made him a controversial figure during the conservative 1950s, and a significant figure in the 1960s. In the mid-1950s, no reputable publishing company would even consider publishing Howl. At the time, such "sex talk" employed in Howl was considered by some to be vulgar or even a form of pornography, and could be prosecuted under law. Ginsberg used phrases such as "cocksucker", "fucked in the ass", and "cunt" as part of the poem's depiction of different aspects of American culture. Numerous books that discussed sex were banned at the time, including Lady Chatterley's Lover. The sex that Ginsberg described did not portray the sex between heterosexual married couples, or even longtime lovers. Instead, Ginsberg portrayed casual sex. For example, in Howl, Ginsberg praises the man "who sweetened the snatches of a million girls." Ginsberg used gritty descriptions and explicit sexual language, pointing out the man "who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup." In his poetry, Ginsberg also discussed the then-taboo topic of homosexuality. The explicit sexual language that filled Howl eventually led to an important trial on First Amendment issues. Ginsberg's publisher was brought up on charges for publishing pornography, and the outcome led to a judge going on record dismissing charges, because the poem carried "redeeming social importance,"Morgan, Bill (ed.) (2006), "Howl" on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression. California: City of Lights. thus setting an important legal precedent. Ginsberg continued to broach controversial subjects throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. From 1970 to 1996, Ginsberg had a long-term affiliation with PEN American Center with efforts to defend free expression. When explaining how he approached controversial topics, he often pointed to Herbert Huncke: he said that when he first got to know Huncke in the 1940s, Ginsberg saw that he was sick from his heroin addiction, but at the time heroin was a taboo subject and Huncke was left with nowhere to go for help.Ginsberg, Allen. Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995. Harper Perennial, 2001. |
Allen Ginsberg | Role in Vietnam War protests | Role in Vietnam War protests
thumb|right|Protesting at the 1972 Republican National Convention
Ginsberg was a signer of the anti-war manifesto "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority", circulated among draft resistors in 1967 by members of the radical intellectual collective RESIST. Other signers and RESIST members included Mitchell Goodman, Henry Braun, Denise Levertov, Noam Chomsky, William Sloane Coffin, Dwight Macdonald, Robert Lowell, and Norman Mailer.Barsky, Robert F. (1998), "Marching with the Armies of the Night" in Noam Chomsky: a life of dissent. 1st ed. Cambridge: M.I.T. PressMitford, Jessica (1969) The Trial of Dr. Spock, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, and Marcus Raskin [1st ed.]. New York: Knopf, p. 255. In 1968, Ginsberg signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War,"Writers and Editors War Tax Protest", New York Post. January 30, 1968. and later became a sponsor of the War Tax Resistance project, which practiced and advocated tax resistance as a form of anti-war protest."A Call to War Tax Resistance", The Cycle, May 14, 1970, p. 7.
He was present the night of the Tompkins Square Park riot (1988) and provided an eyewitness account to The New York Times.Purdham, Todd (August 14, 1988), "Melee in Tompkins Sq. Park: Violence and Its Provocation". The New York Times, sect. 1, part 1, p. 1, col. 4: Metropolitan Desk. |
Allen Ginsberg | Relationship to communism | Relationship to communism
Ginsberg talked openly about his connections with communism and his admiration for past communist heroes and the labor movement at a time when the Red Scare and McCarthyism were still raging. He admired Fidel Castro and many other Marxist figures from the 20th century. Ginsberg was a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. In "America" (1956), Ginsberg writes: "America, I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry". Biographer Jonah Raskin has claimed that, despite his often stark opposition to communist orthodoxy, Ginsberg held "his own idiosyncratic version of communism." On the other hand, when Donald Manes, a New York City politician, publicly accused Ginsberg of being a member of the Communist Party, Ginsberg objected: "I am not, as a matter of fact, a member of the Communist party, nor am I dedicated to the overthrow of the U.S. government or any government by violence ... I must say that I see little difference between the armed and violent governments both Communist and Capitalist that I have observed".Ginsberg, Allen (2008), The Letters of Allen Ginsberg. Philadelphia, Da Capo Press, p. 359. For context, see also .
Ginsberg travelled to several communist countries to promote free speech. He claimed that communist countries, such as China, welcomed him because they thought he was an enemy of capitalism, but often turned against him when they saw him as a troublemaker. For example, in 1965 Ginsberg was deported from Cuba for publicly protesting the persecution of homosexuals.Allen Ginsberg's Life . illinois.edu The Cubans sent him to Czechoslovakia, where one week after being named the Král majálesu ("King of May",Ginsberg, Allan (2001), Selected Poems 1947–1995, "Kral Majales", Harper Collins Publishers, p. 147. a students' festivity, celebrating spring and student life), Ginsberg was arrested for alleged drug use and public drunkenness, and the security agency StB confiscated several of his writings, which they considered to be lewd and morally dangerous. Ginsberg was then deported from Czechoslovakia on May 7, 1965,Yanosik, Joseph (March 1996), The Plastic People of the Universe. furious.com. by order of the StB. Václav Havel points to Ginsberg as an important inspiration. |
Allen Ginsberg | Gay rights | Gay rights
One contribution that is often considered his most significant and most controversial was his openness about homosexuality. Ginsberg was an early proponent of freedom for gay people. In 1943, he discovered within himself "mountains of homosexuality." He expressed this desire openly and graphically in his poetry. He also struck a note for gay marriage by listing Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong companion, as his spouse in his Who's Who entry. Subsequent gay writers saw his frank talk about homosexuality as an opening to speak more openly and honestly about something often before only hinted at or spoken of in metaphor.
In writing about sexuality in graphic detail and in his frequent use of language seen as indecent, he challenged—and ultimately changed—obscenity laws. He was a staunch supporter of others whose expression challenged obscenity laws (William S. Burroughs and Lenny Bruce, for example). |
Allen Ginsberg | NAMBLA membership | NAMBLA membership
Ginsberg was a supporter and member of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a pedophilia and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States that works to abolish age of consent laws and legalize sexual relations between adults and children. Saying that he joined the organization "in defense of free speech", Ginsberg stated: "Attacks on NAMBLA stink of politics, witchhunting for profit, humorlessness, vanity, anger and ignorance ... I'm a member of NAMBLA because I love boys too—everybody does, who has a little humanity". In 1994, Ginsberg appeared in a documentary on NAMBLA called Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys (playing on the gay male slang term 'chickenhawk'), in which he read a "graphic ode to youth". He read his poem "Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass" from the book Mind Breaths.
In her 2002 book Heartbreak, Andrea Dworkin claimed Ginsberg had ulterior motives for allying with NAMBLA: In reference to his onetime friend Dworkin, Ginsberg stated: |
Allen Ginsberg | Recreational drugs | Recreational drugs
thumb|right|Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and John C. Lilly in 1991
Ginsberg talked often about drug use. He organized the New York City chapter of LeMar (Legalize Marijuana).Fisher, Marc (February 22, 2014). Marijuana's rising acceptance comes after many failures. Is it now legalization's time? The Washington Post. Retrieved August 3, 2016. Throughout the 1960s he took an active role in the demystification of LSD, and, with Timothy Leary, worked to promote its common use. He remained for many decades an advocate of marijuana legalization, and, at the same time, warned his audiences against the hazards of tobacco in his Put Down Your Cigarette Rag (Don't Smoke): "Don't Smoke Don't Smoke Nicotine Nicotine No / No don't smoke the official Dope Smoke Dope Dope." |
Allen Ginsberg | CIA drug trafficking | CIA drug trafficking
Ginsberg worked closely with Alfred W. McCoy on the latter's book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, which claimed that the CIA was knowingly involved in the production of heroin in the Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand, and Laos. In addition to working with McCoy, Ginsberg personally confronted Richard Helms, the director of the CIA in the 1970s, about the matter, but Helms denied that the CIA had anything to do with selling illegal drugs.Ginsberg, Allen, and Hyde, Lewis. On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. Print. Ginsberg wrote many essays and articles, researching and compiling evidence of the CIA's alleged involvement in drug trafficking, but it took ten years, and the publication of McCoy's book in 1972, before anyone took him seriously. In 1978, Ginsberg received a note from the chief editor of The New York Times, apologizing for not having taken his allegations seriously. The political subject is dealt with in his song/poem "CIA Dope calypso". The United States Department of State responded to McCoy's initial allegations stating that they were "unable to find any evidence to substantiate them, much less proof." Subsequent investigations by the Inspector General of the CIA, United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a.k.a. the Church Committee, also found the charges to be unsubstantiated. |
Allen Ginsberg | Work | Work
Most of Ginsberg's very early poetry was written in formal rhyme and meter like that of his father, and of his idol William Blake. His admiration for the writing of Jack Kerouac inspired him to take poetry more seriously. In 1955, upon the advice of a psychiatrist, Ginsberg dropped out of the working world to devote his entire life to poetry. Soon after, he wrote Howl, the poem that brought him and his Beat Generation contemporaries to national attention and allowed him to live as a professional poet for the rest of his life. Later in life, Ginsberg entered academia, teaching poetry as Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College from 1986 until his death.Lawlor, William. Beat culture : lifestyles, icons, and impact. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005. Print. |
Allen Ginsberg | Inspiration from friends | Inspiration from friends
Ginsberg claimed throughout his life that his biggest inspiration was Kerouac's concept of "spontaneous prose." He believed literature should come from the soul without conscious restrictions. Ginsberg was much more prone to revise than Kerouac. For example, when Kerouac saw the first draft of Howl, he disliked the fact that Ginsberg had made editorial changes in pencil (transposing "negro" and "angry" in the first line, for example). Kerouac only wrote out his concepts of spontaneous prose at Ginsberg's insistence because Ginsberg wanted to learn how to apply the technique to his poetry.
The inspiration for Howl was Ginsberg's friend, Carl Solomon, and Howl is dedicated to him. Solomon was a Dada and Surrealism enthusiast (he introduced Ginsberg to Artaud) who had bouts of clinical depression. Solomon wanted to commit suicide, but he thought a form of suicide appropriate to dadaism would be to go to a mental institution and demand a lobotomy. The institution refused, giving him many forms of therapy, including electroshock therapy. Much of the final section of the first part of Howl is a description of this.
Ginsberg used Solomon as an example of all those ground down by the machine of "Moloch." Moloch, to whom the second section is addressed, is a Levantine god to whom children were sacrificed. Ginsberg may have gotten the name from the Kenneth Rexroth poem "Thou Shalt Not Kill," a poem about the death of one of Ginsberg's heroes, Dylan Thomas. Moloch is mentioned a few times in the Torah and references to Ginsberg's Jewish background are frequent in his work. Ginsberg said the image of Moloch was inspired by peyote visions he had of the Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco which appeared to him as a skull; he took it as a symbol of the city (not specifically San Francisco, but all cities). Ginsberg later acknowledged in various publications and interviews that behind the visions of the Francis Drake Hotel were memories of the Moloch of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis (1927) and of the woodcut novels of Lynd Ward. Moloch has subsequently been interpreted as any system of control, including the conformist society of post-World War II America, focused on material gain, which Ginsberg frequently blamed for the destruction of all those outside of societal norms.
He also made sure to emphasize that Moloch is a part of humanity in multiple aspects, in that the decision to defy socially created systems of control—and therefore go against Moloch—is a form of self-destruction. Many of the characters Ginsberg references in Howl, such as Neal Cassady and Herbert Huncke, destroyed themselves through excessive substance abuse or a generally wild lifestyle. The personal aspects of Howl are perhaps as important as the political aspects. Carl Solomon, the prime example of a "best mind" destroyed by defying society, is associated with Ginsberg's schizophrenic mother: the line "with mother finally fucked" comes after a long section about Carl Solomon, and in Part III, Ginsberg says: "I'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my mother." Ginsberg later admitted that the drive to write Howl was fueled by sympathy for his ailing mother, an issue which he was not yet ready to deal with directly. He dealt with it directly with 1959's Kaddish, which had its first public reading at a Catholic Worker Friday Night meeting, possibly due to its associations with Thomas Merton. |
Allen Ginsberg | Inspiration from mentors and idols | Inspiration from mentors and idols
Ginsberg's poetry was strongly influenced by Modernism (most importantly the American style of Modernism pioneered by William Carlos Williams), Romanticism (specifically William Blake and John Keats), the beat and cadence of jazz (specifically that of bop musicians such as Charlie Parker), and his Kagyu Buddhist practice and Jewish background. He considered himself to have inherited the visionary poetic mantle handed down from the English poet and artist William Blake, the American poet Walt Whitman and the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The power of Ginsberg's verse, its searching, probing focus, its long and lilting lines, as well as its New World exuberance, all echo the continuity of inspiration that he claimed.
He corresponded with William Carlos Williams, who was then in the middle of writing his epic poem Paterson about the industrial city near his home. After attending a reading by Williams, Ginsberg sent the older poet several of his poems and wrote an introductory letter. Most of these early poems were rhymed and metered and included archaic pronouns like "thee." Williams disliked the poems and told Ginsberg, "In this mode perfection is basic, and these poems are not perfect."
Though he disliked these early poems, Williams loved the exuberance in Ginsberg's letter. He included the letter in a later part of Paterson. He encouraged Ginsberg not to emulate the old masters, but to speak with his own voice and the voice of the common American. From Williams, Ginsberg learned to focus on strong visual images, in line with Williams' own motto "No ideas but in things." Studying Williams' style led to a tremendous shift from the early formalist work to a loose, colloquial free verse style. Early breakthrough poems include Bricklayer's Lunch Hour and Dream Record.
Carl Solomon introduced Ginsberg to the work of Antonin Artaud (To Have Done with the Judgement of God and Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society), and Jean Genet (Our Lady of the Flowers). Philip Lamantia introduced him to other Surrealists and Surrealism continued to be an influence (for example, sections of "Kaddish" were inspired by André Breton's Free Union). Ginsberg claimed that the anaphoric repetition of Howl and other poems was inspired by Christopher Smart in such poems as Jubilate Agno. Ginsberg also claimed other more traditional influences, such as: Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson.
Ginsberg also made an intense study of haiku and the paintings of Paul Cézanne, from which he adapted a concept important to his work, which he called the Eyeball Kick. He noticed in viewing Cézanne's paintings that when the eye moved from one color to a contrasting color, the eye would spasm, or "kick." Likewise, he discovered that the contrast of two seeming opposites was a common feature in haiku. Ginsberg used this technique in his poetry, putting together two starkly dissimilar images: something weak with something strong, an artifact of high culture with an artifact of low culture, something holy with something unholy. The example Ginsberg most often used was "hydrogen jukebox" (which later became the title of a song cycle composed by Philip Glass with lyrics drawn from Ginsberg's poems). Another example is Ginsberg's observation on Bob Dylan during Dylan's hectic and intense 1966 electric-guitar tour, fueled by a cocktail of amphetamines, opiates, alcohol, and psychedelics, as a Dexedrine Clown. The phrases "eyeball kick" and "hydrogen jukebox" both show up in Howl, as well as a direct quote from Cézanne: "Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus". |
Allen Ginsberg | Inspiration from music | Inspiration from music
Allen Ginsberg also found inspiration in music. He frequently included music in his poetry, invariably composing his tunes on an old Indian harmonium, which he often played during his readings. He wrote and recorded music to accompany William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. He also recorded a handful of other albums. To create music for Howl and Wichita Vortex Sutra, he worked with the minimalist composer, Philip Glass.
Ginsberg worked with, drew inspiration from, and inspired artists such as Bob Dylan, The Clash, Patti Smith, Phil Ochs, and The Fugs. He worked with Dylan on various projects and maintained a friendship with him over many years.Wills, D., "Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan", Beatdom No. 1 (2007).
In 1981, Ginsberg recorded a song called "Birdbrain." He was backed by the Gluons, and the track was released as a single. In 1996, he recorded a song co-written with Paul McCartney and Philip Glass, "The Ballad of the Skeletons", which reached number 8 on the Triple J Hottest 100 for that year. |
Allen Ginsberg | Style and technique | Style and technique
From the study of his idols and mentors and the inspiration of his friends—not to mention his own experiments—Ginsberg developed an individualistic style that's easily identified as Ginsbergian. Ginsberg stated that Whitman's long line was a dynamic technique few other poets had ventured to develop further, and Whitman is also often compared to Ginsberg because their poetry sexualized aspects of the male form.
Many of Ginsberg's early long line experiments contain some sort of anaphora, repetition of a "fixed base" (for example "who" in Howl, "America" in America) and this has become a recognizable feature of Ginsberg's style. He said later this was a crutch because he lacked confidence; he did not yet trust "free flight." In the 1960s, after employing it in some sections of Kaddish ("caw" for example) he, for the most part, abandoned the anaphoric form. 'Latter-Day Beat' Bob Dylan is known for using anaphora, as in 'Tangled Up in Blue' where the phrase, returned to at the end of every verse, takes the place of a chorus.
Several of his earlier experiments with methods for formatting poems as a whole became regular aspects of his style in later poems. In the original draft of Howl, each line is in a "stepped triadic" format reminiscent of William Carlos Williams. He abandoned the "stepped triadic" when he developed his long line although the stepped lines showed up later, most significantly in the travelogues of The Fall of America. Howl and Kaddish, arguably his two most important poems, are both organized as an inverted pyramid, with larger sections leading to smaller sections. In America, he also experimented with a mix of longer and shorter lines.
Ginsberg's mature style made use of many specific, highly developed techniques, which he expressed in the "poetic slogans" he used in his Naropa teaching. Prominent among these was the inclusion of his unedited mental associations so as to reveal the mind at work ("First thought, best thought." "Mind is shapely, thought is shapely.") He preferred expression through carefully observed physical details rather than abstract statements ("Show, don't tell." "No ideas but in things.")Rabinowitz, Jacob, Blame it on Blake, Amazon/Independent 2019, , pp. 55–63. In these he carried on and developed traditions of modernism in writing that are also found in Kerouac and Whitman.
In Howl and in his other poetry, Ginsberg drew inspiration from the epic, free verse style of the 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman.Ginsberg, Allen Deliberate Prose, pp. 285–331. Both wrote passionately about the promise (and betrayal) of American democracy, the central importance of erotic experience, and the spiritual quest for the truth of everyday existence. J. D. McClatchy, editor of the Yale Review, called Ginsberg "the best-known American poet of his generation, as much a social force as a literary phenomenon." McClatchy added that Ginsberg, like Whitman, "was a bard in the old manner—outsized, darkly prophetic, part exuberance, part prayer, part rant. His work is finally a history of our era's psyche, with all its contradictory urges." McClatchy's barbed eulogies define the essential difference between Ginsberg ("a beat poet whose writing was [...] journalism raised by combining the recycling genius with a generous mimic-empathy, to strike audience-accessible chords; always lyrical and sometimes truly poetic") and Kerouac ("a poet of singular brilliance, the brightest luminary of a 'beat generation' he came to symbolise in popular culture [...] [though] in reality he far surpassed his contemporaries [...] Kerouac is an originating genius, exploring then answering—like Rimbaud a century earlier, by necessity more than by choice—the demands of authentic self-expression as applied to the evolving quicksilver mind of America's only literary virtuoso [...]"). |
Allen Ginsberg | Bibliography | Bibliography
Howl and Other Poems (1956),
Kaddish and Other Poems (1961),
Empty Mirror: Early Poems (1961),
Reality Sandwiches (1963),
The Yage Letters (1963)with William S. Burroughs
Planet News (1968),
Indian Journals (1970),
First Blues: Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs 1971 - 1974 (1975),
The Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948–1951 (1972),
The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1973),
Iron Horse (1973)
Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness by Allen Ginsberg (1974), edited by Gordon Ball,
Sad Dust Glories: poems during work summer in woods (1975)
Mind Breaths (1978),
Plutonian Ode: Poems 1977–1980 (1981),
Collected Poems 1947–1980 (1984), . Republished with later material added as Collected Poems 1947-1997, New York, HarperCollins, 2006
White Shroud Poems: 1980–1985 (1986),
Cosmopolitan Greetings Poems: 1986–1993 (1994)
Howl Annotated (1995)
Illuminated Poems (1996)
Selected Poems: 1947–1995 (1996)
Death and Fame: Poems 1993–1997 (1999)
Deliberate Prose 1952–1995 (2000)
Howl & Other Poems 50th Anniversary Edition (2006),
The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952 (Da Capo Press, 2006)
The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder (Counterpoint, 2009)
I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career: The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, 1955–1997 (City Lights, 2015)
The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats (Grove Press, 2017) |
Allen Ginsberg | Selected discography | Selected discography
Howl And Other Poems (1959) Fantasy - 7006
None (1965) with Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Andrei Voznesensky Lovebooks - LB0001
Allen Ginsberg Reading at Better Books (1965) Better Books – 16156/57
Reads Kaddish (A 20th Century American Ecstatic Narrative Poem) (1966) Atlantic – 4001
The Ginsbergs At The ICA (1967) with Louise Ginsberg Saga Psyche – PSY 3000
Consciousness & Practical Action (1967) Liberation Records – DL 16
Challenge Seminar (1968) with Gregory Bateson and R.D. Laing Liberation Records – DL 23
Ginsberg's Thing (1969) Transatlantic Records – TRA 192
Songs Of Innocence And Experience (1970) MGM Records – FTS-3083, Verve Forecast – FTS-3083
America Today! (The World's Greatest Poets Vol. I) (1971) with Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti CMS – CMS 617
Gate, Two Evenings With Allen Ginsberg Vol.1 Songs (1980) Loft – LOFT 1001
First Blues: Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs (1981) Folkways Records – FSS 37560
First Blues (1983) John Hammond Records – W2X 37673
Allen Ginsberg With Still Life (1983) with Still Life Local Anesthetic Records – LA LP-001
Üvöltés (1987) with Hobo Krém – SLPM 37048
The Lion For Real (1989) Great Jones – GJ-6004
September On Jessore Road (1992) with the Mondriaan Quartet Soyo Records – 0001
Cosmopolitan Greetings (1993) with George Gruntz Schweiz – MGB CD 9203, Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund – MGB CD 9203
Hydrogen Jukebox (1993) with Philip Glass Elektra Nonesuch – 9 79286-2
Allen Ginsberg: Material Wealth (Allen's voice in poems and songs 1956-1996)(2024) |
Allen Ginsberg | Honors | Honors
His collection The Fall of America shared the annual U.S. National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.
Ginsberg won a 1974 National Book Award for The Fall of America (split with Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck).
In 1979, he received the National Arts Club gold medal and was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
In 1986, Ginsberg was awarded the Golden Wreath by the Struga Poetry Evenings International Festival in Macedonia, the second American poet to be so awarded since W. H. Auden. At Struga, Ginsberg met with the other Golden Wreath winners, Bulat Okudzhava and Andrei Voznesensky.
In 1989, Ginsberg appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's award-winning film Silence = Death about the fight of gay artists in New York City for AIDS-education and the rights of HIV infected people.
In 1993, the French Minister of Culture appointed Ginsberg a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992. In 1993, he received a John Jay Award posthumously from Columbia.
In 2014, Ginsberg was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields." |
Allen Ginsberg | See also | See also
The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg (film)
:Category:Works by Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg Live in London
Hungry generation
Howl (2010 film)
LGBT culture in New York City
List of LGBT people from New York City
Central Park Be-In
Trevor Carolan
Counterculture of the 1960s
Burroughs by Howard Brookner
List of peace activists
Kill Your Darlings
Jewish Buddhist
American poetry |
Allen Ginsberg | Notes | Notes |
Allen Ginsberg | References | References |
Allen Ginsberg | Sources | Sources
Schumacher, Michael (ed.). Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son. Bloomsbury (2002), paperback, 448 pages,
|
Allen Ginsberg | Further reading | Further reading
Boer, Charles. Charles Olson in Connecticut. North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, 1991, (1975). .
Bullough, Vern L. Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. Harrington Park Press, 2002. pp 304–311.
Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. (hc); (pbk)
Collins, Ronald & Skover, David. Mania: The Story of the Outraged & Outrageous Lives that Launched a Cultural Revolution (Top-Five books, March 2013)
Gifford, Barry (ed.). As Ever: The Collected Letters of Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady. Berkeley: Creative Arts Books (1977).
Ginsberg, Allen. Travels with Ginsberg: A Postcard Book. San Francisco: City Lights (2002).
Hrebeniak, Michael. Action Writing: Jack Kerouac's Wild Form, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2006.
Kashner, Sam. When I Was Cool, My Life at the Jack Kerouac School, New York: HarperCollins Perennial, 2005.
McBride, Dick. Cometh With Clouds (Memory: Allen Ginsberg) Cherry Valley Editions, 1982
Morgan, Bill (ed.), I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career: The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, 1955–1997. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2015.
Schumacher, Michael. Dharma Lion: A Biography of Allen Ginsberg. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
Trigilio, Tony. Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007.
Trigilio, Tony. "Strange Prophecies Anew": Rereading Apocalypse in Blake, H.D., and Ginsberg. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. .
Tytell, John. Naked Angels: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1976.
Warner, Simon (ed.). Howl for Now: A 50th anniversary celebration of Allen Ginsberg's epic protest poem. West Yorkshire, UK: Route (2005), paperback, 144 pages, |
Allen Ginsberg | External links | External links |
Allen Ginsberg | Archives | Archives
George Dowden papers on the Allen Ginsberg bibliography, 1966–1971 at Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Columbia University Libraries
Materials related to Allen Ginsberg in the Robert A. Wilson collection at Special Collections, University of Delaware Library
Allen Ginsberg papers at Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries |
Allen Ginsberg | Audio recordings and interviews | Audio recordings and interviews
Audio recordings of Allen Ginsberg, from the Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard University
Audio recordings of Allen Ginsberg, from Maryland Institute College of Art's Decker Library, Internet Archive
Modern American Poetry , interview |
Allen Ginsberg | Other links | Other links
The Allen Ginsberg Trust
Case Histories: Allen Ginsberg at PEN.org honoring Ginsberg's work, from PEN American Center
Allen Ginsberg on Poets.org With audio clips, poems, and related essays, from the Academy of American Poets
"After 50 Years, Ginsberg's Howl Still Resonates" NPR October 27, 2006
Allen Ginsberg photographs with hand-written captions at LensCulture
Autobiographical Article in Shambhala Sun Magazine
FBI agents were warned against interviewing Allen Ginsberg, fearing it would result in "embarrassment" from MuckRock.com
Allen Ginsberg materials in "Beat Visions and the Counterculture" (online exhibition) at Special Collections, University of Delaware Library
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Allen Ginsberg | Table of Content | short description, Biography, Early life and family, Relationship with his parents, New York Beats, The "Blake vision", San Francisco Renaissance, Biographical references in "Howl", To Paris and the "Beat Hotel", Tangier and India, England and the International Poetry Incarnation, Continuing literary activity, Buddhism and Krishna, Illness and death, Social and political activism, Free speech, Role in Vietnam War protests, Relationship to communism, Gay rights, NAMBLA membership, Recreational drugs, CIA drug trafficking, Work, Inspiration from friends, Inspiration from mentors and idols, Inspiration from music, Style and technique, Bibliography, Selected discography, Honors, See also, Notes, References, Sources, Further reading, External links, Archives, Audio recordings and interviews, Other links |
Algebraically closed field | Short description | In mathematics, a field is algebraically closed if every non-constant polynomial in (the univariate polynomial ring with coefficients in ) has a root in . In other words, a field is algebraically closed if the fundamental theorem of algebra holds for it.
Every field is contained in an algebraically closed field and the roots in of the polynomials with coefficients in form an algebraically closed field called an algebraic closure of Given two algebraic closures of there are isomorphisms between them that fix the elements of
Algebraically closed fields appear in the following chain of class inclusions: |
Algebraically closed field | Examples | Examples
As an example, the field of real numbers is not algebraically closed, because the polynomial equation has no solution in real numbers, even though all its coefficients (1 and 0) are real. The same argument proves that no subfield of the real field is algebraically closed; in particular, the field of rational numbers is not algebraically closed. By contrast, the fundamental theorem of algebra states that the field of complex numbers is algebraically closed. Another example of an algebraically closed field is the field of (complex) algebraic numbers.
No finite field F is algebraically closed, because if a1, a2, ..., an are the elements of F, then the polynomial (x − a1)(x − a2) ⋯ (x − an) + 1
has no zero in F. However, the union of all finite fields of a fixed characteristic p (p prime) is an algebraically closed field, which is, in fact, the algebraic closure of the field with p elements.
The field of rational functions with complex coefficients is not closed; for example, the polynomial has roots , which are not elements of . |
Algebraically closed field | Equivalent properties | Equivalent properties
Given a field F, the assertion "F is algebraically closed" is equivalent to other assertions: |
Algebraically closed field | The only irreducible polynomials are those of degree one | The only irreducible polynomials are those of degree one
The field F is algebraically closed if and only if the only irreducible polynomials in the polynomial ring F[x] are those of degree one.
The assertion "the polynomials of degree one are irreducible" is trivially true for any field. If F is algebraically closed and p(x) is an irreducible polynomial of F[x], then it has some root a and therefore p(x) is a multiple of . Since p(x) is irreducible, this means that , for some . On the other hand, if F is not algebraically closed, then there is some non-constant polynomial p(x) in F[x] without roots in F. Let q(x) be some irreducible factor of p(x). Since p(x) has no roots in F, q(x) also has no roots in F. Therefore, q(x) has degree greater than one, since every first degree polynomial has one root in F. |
Algebraically closed field | Every polynomial is a product of first degree polynomials | Every polynomial is a product of first degree polynomials
The field F is algebraically closed if and only if every polynomial p(x) of degree n ≥ 1, with coefficients in F, splits into linear factors. In other words, there are elements k, x1, x2, ..., xn of the field F such that p(x) = k(x − x1)(x − x2) ⋯ (x − xn).
If F has this property, then clearly every non-constant polynomial in F[x] has some root in F; in other words, F is algebraically closed. On the other hand, that the property stated here holds for F if F is algebraically closed follows from the previous property together with the fact that, for any field K, any polynomial in K[x] can be written as a product of irreducible polynomials. |
Algebraically closed field | Polynomials of prime degree have roots | Polynomials of prime degree have roots
If every polynomial over F of prime degree has a root in F, then every non-constant polynomial has a root in F.Shipman, J. Improving the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra The Mathematical Intelligencer, Volume 29 (2007), Number 4. pp. 9–14 It follows that a field is algebraically closed if and only if every polynomial over F of prime degree has a root in F. |
Algebraically closed field | The field has no proper algebraic extension | The field has no proper algebraic extension
The field F is algebraically closed if and only if it has no proper algebraic extension.
If F has no proper algebraic extension, let p(x) be some irreducible polynomial in F[x]. Then the quotient of F[x] modulo the ideal generated by p(x) is an algebraic extension of F whose degree is equal to the degree of p(x). Since it is not a proper extension, its degree is 1 and therefore the degree of p(x) is 1.
On the other hand, if F has some proper algebraic extension K, then the minimal polynomial of an element in K \ F is irreducible and its degree is greater than 1. |
Algebraically closed field | The field has no proper finite extension | The field has no proper finite extension
The field F is algebraically closed if and only if it has no proper finite extension because if, within the previous proof, the term "algebraic extension" is replaced by the term "finite extension", then the proof is still valid. (Finite extensions are necessarily algebraic.) |
Algebraically closed field | Every endomorphism of ''F<sup>n</sup>'' has some eigenvector | Every endomorphism of Fn has some eigenvector
The field F is algebraically closed if and only if, for each natural number n, every linear map from Fn into itself has some eigenvector.
An endomorphism of Fn has an eigenvector if and only if its characteristic polynomial has some root. Therefore, when F is algebraically closed, every endomorphism of Fn has some eigenvector. On the other hand, if every endomorphism of Fn has an eigenvector, let p(x) be an element of F[x]. Dividing by its leading coefficient, we get another polynomial q(x) which has roots if and only if p(x) has roots. But if , then q(x) is the characteristic polynomial of the n×n companion matrix |
Algebraically closed field | Decomposition of rational expressions | Decomposition of rational expressions
The field F is algebraically closed if and only if every rational function in one variable x, with coefficients in F, can be written as the sum of a polynomial function with rational functions of the form a/(x − b)n, where n is a natural number, and a and b are elements of F.
If F is algebraically closed then, since the irreducible polynomials in F[x] are all of degree 1, the property stated above holds by the theorem on partial fraction decomposition.
On the other hand, suppose that the property stated above holds for the field F. Let p(x) be an irreducible element in F[x]. Then the rational function 1/p can be written as the sum of a polynomial function q with rational functions of the form a/(x – b)n. Therefore, the rational expression
can be written as a quotient of two polynomials in which the denominator is a product of first degree polynomials. Since p(x) is irreducible, it must divide this product and, therefore, it must also be a first degree polynomial. |
Algebraically closed field | Relatively prime polynomials and roots | Relatively prime polynomials and roots
For any field F, if two polynomials are relatively prime then they do not have a common root, for if was a common root, then p(x) and q(x) would both be multiples of and therefore they would not be relatively prime. The fields for which the reverse implication holds (that is, the fields such that whenever two polynomials have no common root then they are relatively prime) are precisely the algebraically closed fields.
If the field F is algebraically closed, let p(x) and q(x) be two polynomials which are not relatively prime and let r(x) be their greatest common divisor. Then, since r(x) is not constant, it will have some root a, which will be then a common root of p(x) and q(x).
If F is not algebraically closed, let p(x) be a polynomial whose degree is at least 1 without roots. Then p(x) and p(x) are not relatively prime, but they have no common roots (since none of them has roots). |
Algebraically closed field | Other properties | Other properties
If F is an algebraically closed field and n is a natural number, then F contains all nth roots of unity, because these are (by definition) the n (not necessarily distinct) zeroes of the polynomial xn − 1. A field extension that is contained in an extension generated by the roots of unity is a cyclotomic extension, and the extension of a field generated by all roots of unity is sometimes called its cyclotomic closure. Thus algebraically closed fields are cyclotomically closed. The converse is not true. Even assuming that every polynomial of the form xn − a splits into linear factors is not enough to assure that the field is algebraically closed.
If a proposition which can be expressed in the language of first-order logic is true for an algebraically closed field, then it is true for every algebraically closed field with the same characteristic. Furthermore, if such a proposition is valid for an algebraically closed field with characteristic 0, then not only is it valid for all other algebraically closed fields with characteristic 0, but there is some natural number N such that the proposition is valid for every algebraically closed field with characteristic p when p > N.See subsections Rings and fields and Properties of mathematical theories in §2 of J. Barwise's "An introduction to first-order logic".
Every field F has some extension which is algebraically closed. Such an extension is called an algebraically closed extension. Among all such extensions there is one and only one (up to isomorphism, but not unique isomorphism) which is an algebraic extension of F;See Lang's Algebra, §VII.2 or van der Waerden's Algebra I, §10.1. it is called the algebraic closure of F.
The theory of algebraically closed fields has quantifier elimination. |
Algebraically closed field | Notes | Notes |
Algebraically closed field | References | References
Category:Field (mathematics) |
Algebraically closed field | Table of Content | Short description, Examples, Equivalent properties, The only irreducible polynomials are those of degree one, Every polynomial is a product of first degree polynomials, Polynomials of prime degree have roots, The field has no proper algebraic extension, The field has no proper finite extension, Every endomorphism of ''F<sup>n</sup>'' has some eigenvector, Decomposition of rational expressions, Relatively prime polynomials and roots, Other properties, Notes, References |
August 6 | pp-move | |
August 6 | Events | Events |
August 6 | Pre-1600 | Pre-1600
686 – The Ummayad forces suffer a deceisive defeat against the pro-Alid forces under Ibrahim ibn al-Ashtar in the battle of Khazir.
1284 – The Republic of Pisa is defeated in the Battle of Meloria by the Republic of Genoa, thus losing its naval dominance in the Mediterranean.
1538 – Bogotá, Colombia, is founded by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada. |
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