considering it is mainly one big sentence, it doesn't leave much room for thought processing

it's hard to pause and think about what Ginsberg is saying. you really just have to plunge right into it and let it do its thing.

i definitely have not ready anything like this before.

I agree with stjoseph. It seems to me that the poem just keeps building, you have to roll right through it. It can't be read slowly.

each stanza contains alot of information and jumps from subject to subject quickly making it hard to digest all the information at once

that's the point. Since the poem was written during the Beat Generation and was a precursor to the Hippy Generation...

...it stands to reason that Ginsburg was alluding to the confusion and identity crisis that the youth of America was dealing with...

...at the time. Conformity was a big deal during the Eisenhower Administration. If you were different in any way...

...(black, Asian, Jewish, gay, Communist, etc) it was seen as a threat to the system. I think Ginsburg wanted to alleviate the pain...

...and confusion of that generation. That's why he refers to everything as holy. No matter how good or bad something appears to be...

...it can be endearing to some extent. I think one of his messages was to entertain the idea of embracing all aspects of humanity...

...good or bad.

i agree. I think that in the beginning he might not have been exactly pointing out what is "bad," but what isn't accepted in conformist...

society. We just see them as bad without really understanding

then there are parts that are products of our inability to understand one another... like war and jail and such

I definitely like this poem more than any of the others we've read this quarter...

...mostly because I'm a big fan of the 60's and the Beat Movement that preceded that era.