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Quote by Allen Ginsberg

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Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg, born on June 3, 1926, was an influential American poet. Known for his free-form poetry and profound political and social commentary, he was one of the key figures of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg's landmark poem 'Howl' was first published in 1956, becoming a milestone in American literary history. more

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“Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.”

“A work of (whatever) art can be either 'received' or 'used'. ...'Using' is inferior to 'reception' because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it ... When the art in question is literature a complication arises, for to 'receive' significant words is always, in one sense, to 'use' them, to go through and beyond them to an imagined something which is not itself verbal.”