Allen Ginsberg

1
Allen Ginsberg Frank McCourts Angelas Ashes

• Eebs Chan, Malorie Garrett, Katy McGinness,
  Krystal Madkins, Mo Rhim

2
Poetry and Prose

• There are specific attributes of poetry that make
  it distinct from prose, which is one reason why
  we chose to read some poetry and then a novel.

3
Poetry The Good and the Bad

• Good
• Artistic and Lyrical
• Some consider more beautifully written than prose

• Bad
• Hard to understand
• Hard to read
• School Structureforced to over analyze poetry

4
Allen Ginsberg

• Allen Ginsberg was a beat poet
• Beat poetry has its own rhythm
• Anti-pop culture
• Humorous
• Words and subject resonate with you-Beautiful
  when read aloud http//www.allenginsberg.org/home
  .asp 

5
The Sunflower Sutra

• Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
  flower? When did you look at your skin and decide
  you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the
  ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a
  once powerful mad American locomotive?You were
  never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
  sunflower!And you Locomotive, you are a
  locomotive, forget me not!  

6
Genre The Memoir

• What is a memoir? A memoir is a piece of
  autobiographical writing, usually shorter in
  nature than a comprehensive autobiography. The
  memoir, especially as it is being used in
  publishing today, often tries to capture certain
  highlights or meaningful moments in one's past,
  often including a contemplation of the meaning of
  that event at the time of the writing of the
  memoir. The memoir may be more emotional and
  concerned with capturing particular scenes, or a
  series of events, rather than documenting every
  fact of a person's life http//www.inkspell.homest
  ead.com/memoir.html

7
Memoir Expectations

• The intimacy of the memoir immediately gives the
  reader a sense or an expectation of a narrative
  of human experience and emotion.
• More than just facts strung together, a reader
  expects a memoir to portray emotional events and
  personally significant experiences

8
Angelas Ashes Synopsis

• Frank McCourts memoir, Angelas Ashes, tells
  his story of growing up surrounded by poverty and
  despair in the slums of Ireland. The death of his
  siblings, his fathers abandonment, and abuse
  from family and neighbors are some of what
  plagues McCourts childhood. McCourt, however,
  manages to recount such things without waxing
  poetic. The poverty, the hungerthe constant
  abysmal conditions that McCourt endures as he
  grows up are all described in a simple,
  straightforward manner that allows the reader to
  feel sadness but also appreciate the humor and
  humanity in much of what he endures. The spark of
  hope in times of despair, the humor during times
  of tragedy, and the idea that it is possible to
  persevere which are seen in Angelas Ashes are
  woven together to help in creating part of the
  books beauty.

9
Synopsis continued

• The beauty of Angelas Ashes also stems not
  only from McCourts style of writing but rather
  from the reader being able to relate to what
  McCourt narrates. Whether its the realistic
  imperfection of characters (McCourts father,
  Malachy, for example, can be a good father to his
  children but hes also an irresponsible drunk),
  off-beat family, or memories of sexual awakening,
  theres something to which readers can relate.

10
Style/Appeal

• Not the writing itself, but rather, what the
  style creates
• The style of the book is not necessarily what
  creates the beautiful experience in that it is
  not the writing in particular what we found
  appealing. Rather it is the style that allows
  the reader to become immediately connected with
  the human experience, the honesty and the rawness
  attached to the narrative. The absence of
  superfluous or extravagantly constructed prose
  lent the writing a certain bareness that allowed
  for the seemingly real and honest emotion and
  experience shine through the writing.

11
Style and Appeal continued

• In this book, it was not the beautiful passages
  of prose that created beauty in the writing, but
  it was the accessibility of the actual experience
  and emotion created by the stark and bare bones
  writing style that connected the reader to the
  intense human experience and emotion in the
  narrative. Ultimately it is this connectivity
  and access that makes the reading/experiencing of
  the text beautiful.

12
Excerpts from Angelas Ashes

• When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I
  survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable
  childhood the happy childhood is hardly worth
  your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable
  childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and
  worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic
  childhood. People everywhere brag and whimper
  about the woes of their early years, but nothing
  can compare with the Irish version the poverty
  the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father the
  pious defeated mother moaning by the fire
  pompous priests bullying schoolmasters the
  English and the terrible things they did to us
  for eight hundred long years. Above all- we were
  wet." (McCourt 11)

13
Excerpts Continued

• "I know Oliver is dead and Malachy knows Oliver
  is dead but Eugene is too small to know anything.
  When he wakes up in the morning he says, Ollie,
  Ollie, and toddles around the room looking under
  the beds or he climbs up on the bed by the window
  and points to children on the street, especially
  children with fair hair like him and Oliver.
  Ollie, Ollie, he says, and Mam picks him up,
  sobs, hugs him. He struggles to get down because
  he doesn't want to be picked up and hugged. He
  wants to find Oliver. .. Malachy and I play with
  him. We try to make him laugh...He doesn't say
  Ollie anymore. He only points. Dad says Eugene is
  lucky to have brothers like Malachy and me
  because we help him forget and soon, with God's
  help, he'll have no memory of Oliver at all. He
  died anyway." (McCourt 82) 

14
Excerpts Continued

• "Uncle Pat says there's no food in the house,
  not a scrap of bread, and when he falls asleep I
  take the greasy newspaper that held Uncle Pat's
  fish and chips from the floor. I lick the front
  page, which is all advertisements for films and
  dances in the city. I lick the headlines. I lick
  the great attacks of Patton and Montgomery in
  France and Germany. I lick the war in the
  Pacific. I lick the obituaries and the sad
  memorial poems, the sport pages, the market
  prices of eggs butter and bacon. I suck the paper
  till there isn't a smidgen of grease.  I wonder
  what I'll do tomorrow." (McCourt 296)  

15
Excerpt and explanation

• You might as well. (McCourt 150)
• When the boys ask to go out and play, the mother
  simply states You might as well and without
  having to explain with unnecessary prose the
  sense of defeat or despair felt, McCourt is able
  to convey all of the emotion and the struggle
  with four simple words spoken by the mother.
• Throughout the novel, McCourt does not even use
  quotation marks, adding even more to the sense of
  a bare writing style that is not weighed down
  by anything other than the simplest and most
  direct methods to convey the emotion and honest
  experience

16
Conclusion

• Though Ginsberg and McCourt have different and
  distinct styles of writing, both are able to give
  a sense of beauty or an experience of beauty.