Peace through Hostility: The Beats' Call for Equality through Aggressive Poetic Imagery

Peace through Hostility: The Beats' Call for Equality through Aggressive Poetic Imagery

This paper focuses on the poetic techniques of two Beat poets, Lenore Kandel and Allen Ginsberg, whose impressionistic, caustic poetry is in some ways representative of the entire Beat movement. Kandel's poems ring with overt sexual overtones, seemingly unconcerned with respect to morality or grace, invoking instead shocking and disturbing images. In her poetry is an intrepid protest of violence and conformity through the paradoxical use of violent description. Like the other Beat poets, she often refused to compromise in either structure or content, adopting a flowing, free-verse form. Allen Ginsberg's poetry employs the same modes: free verse, shocking context, and explicit social critique. While his poetry is not nearly as volatile as Kandel’s, his poem Howl arguably speaks for a generation of disenchanted and disillusioned youths, surveying the problems of society the Beats identified. Ginsberg similarly attacks the wrongs of the world around him without caution. Both poets believed the cure, or at least part of the cure, for the ills of society could be achieved with an embrace of freedom and individualism, exemplified by their sprawling, and often hostile, poetry.