Ginsberg Beat Poetry Analysis

III. Structure
Structure in Beat Poetry Beat poetry often took on a free verse structure and rarely followed the norm of stanzas and couplets that much of western poetry did. Ginsberg often wrote in a manner that seemed to mimic a conversation or the fashion in which someone speaks. It is awkward at moments and has many run-on sentences but this way of writing helped portray the very personal style of Beat work. The free verse structure allows for more control for the poet to explore ideas and feelings that could be hindered by traditional structures. The structure itself adds to the poems in terms of emotions and how the poem is read out loud. In Plutonian Ode the use of this lax structure allows for Ginsberg to focus on the feelings of anxiety and hopelessness that comes from the bomb. The majority of the poem lacks definitive stanzas, instead it is more like a

Many of his poems sound like a dialogue because they were meant to be spoken out loud. An example of this would be Howl. First hand accounts have stated that the full message of the poem could be felt from the way Ginsberg presented it. This poem was very risque at the time due to the vulgarity of the language and the taboo topics discussed throughout. Not everyone took it well, so much so that the police department even tried to sue the publishing company. When Ginsberg read out loud his poems they often sounded like mantras. This was a slight influence of his religious backgrounds but it offered a sort of mesmerizing grasp on those around. Jack Kerouac described how “scores of people stood around in the darkened gallery straining to hear every word of the amazing poetry reading”. Speaking out the poems was important to how people understood them. Saying the words out loud gave them newer meaning one that the Beats knew all too well. By speaking the poems out loud it breathed life into words that were on