Walt Whitman's Influence on Allen Ginsberg

There are a number of ways that Walt Whitman’s influence can be seen in Allen Ginsberg’s work Howl, including a similar style of format and flow, a similar reaction from the literary world and a concern with American ideals and its people.
A significant influence that Whitman has for Ginsberg is the fact that Whitman had been a breakaway from the literary establishment of his time, with his long winded style, sexual exploration and the presentation of himself as the everyman rather than a highly cultivated elite poet. In his book American Scream, John Raskin explains that “As late as 1955, Whitman was still largely untaught in college poetry classes and still largely unappreciated in academic circles, though he had a solid reputation in the nonconformist world”(20). This seems to closely relate to Ginsberg’s own experience in the literary world as well as both the writers were not acknowledged for a significant period of time after they began writing.
Howl also has a similar style and flow reminiscent of Whitman. Raskin speaks of Ginsberg’s style sating that “like Whitman he wrote long poems with long prose like lines and long catalogues of things, people and events”(20). This idea is particularly conveyed with the first poem in the text. Like Whitman, Ginsberg presents a sprawling view of the country, taking the reader form the chaotic underbelly of New York, to Denver to San Francisco and everywhere in between.
Another similarity between the poets was their subject matter. Raskin states that like Whitman, Ginsberg “wrote for American and about America” (20). But Ginsberg did not have an optimistic view of his country and what it was or could be like is evident in Whitman’s poems. Something which is readily apparent in some of Whitman’s poems is a warm love of his fellow man and a kind of trust and feeling of solidarity with the masses he came into contact with on the streets of the towns and cities of the country. Raskin points out that “…unlike Whitman, Ginsberg often did not trust the masses …he knew full well, the masses could be manipulated” (21). Yet at the same time, Ginsberg is certainly concerned about his fellow citizens and a Footnote to Howl expresses this. As Ginsberg cries “Everything is holy! everybody’s Holy!...Holy the vast lamb of the middle class!...Holy New York Holy San Francisco…” (27-28), it sound as if he is making an ecstatic and urgent plea for Americans to come to a recognition that their country, the world and themselves are holy; That they are not merely disposable objects that consume products, that they are sacred and are worthy of not being under constant threat of nuclear annihilation.
Further more, he felt that it was a poets “democratic duty” (23) to write about the problems and faults with the country and expose them to the public, as America was founded on dissent. The very structure of our government was set up for its people to question it, protest it, and change the laws if need be in order to protect the people form totalitarian absolute rule. Like wise, Howl is very much in the tradition of American patriotism, if patriotism is not having blind faith the government or having a Manichean view of it. Ginsberg acknowledges this duty, stating “It occurs to me that I am America” (41). The poem itself indicates a profound rift within the nation and a questioning of its current ideals, but more importantly the reaction to the poem certainly indicates the recognition of these faults and the need to break away from the old way of thinking. John Raskin speaks of this identification stating that Howl “conferred a strange power…It bound us together and gave us a sense of identity” (xi).
In conclusion, Howl is clearly a myriad of various influences; a kind a fusion between the “world weariness of T.S. Elliot and the innocent wildness of Walt Whitman” (244). It still has the power to shake American’s notions of themselves and their country, with its tenacious energy and thought provoking statements of life in America.

Work Cited

Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. City Lights Book, San Francisco, 1956.

Raskin, John. American Scream : Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984.