Allen Ginsberg’s Prophetic Vision: Next Year, Jerusalem

Allen Ginsberg was our American underground, unacknowledged poet laureate, who espoused nakedness in poetry and wore khakis for the GAP. World famous for Howl (1955) and Kaddish (1959), for his political stance, for his Buddhism, for accompanying himself on the harmonium, he was the Beat Generation’s rock star, performing with Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, and P.R. man continuing to champion the works of poets in his circle: Amiri Baraka and Jack Kerouac-- till his death in 1997.

A Jew, secular and socialist, part of an American tradition steeped in humanist causes, Ginsberg was also the son of a mad woman, his mother Naomi Ginsberg who came from Russia when she was a little girl, escaping pogroms. What traces of Judaism did he learn from her? How was his faith shaped by the teachings of his poet father, Louis Ginsberg, and his ongoing struggles with Norman Podhoretz and the Partisan Review crowd? This proposed paper will illuminate Allen Ginsberg’s Judaism in the context of the Beat Generation spiritual quest.