Purpose
To both study and produce a substantial work of poetry.
To analyze the experiences of your generation and communicate them using allusions, metaphors, stylistic patterns, and other poetic devices.
To practice self-analysis and to justify creative decisions using clear claims and evidence.
Instructions
Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, the first reading in our third/final unit, will continue this trend in a fashion you may find startling. Ginsberg’s poem, widely considered one of the most important and impactful in American literature, begins with “I saw the best minds of my generation…” and then provides a lengthy, detailed, outraged, sentimental, profane, and perhaps inspiring expression of what Ginsberg believes his generation has endured. The poem is about the challenges his generation has faced, but also about its hopes and dreams. “Howling” outward from the heart of his generation, Ginsberg acts as its voice, crafting a poem to express in vivid and engaging fashion what he thinks his generation most wants to say to the world.
Your task, in the first part of Project #3, is to write your own version of Howl You should take Ginsberg’s poem as your inspiration, but of course you don’t have to mimic or copy what Ginsberg wrote, and indeed, you shouldn’t. Your goal is to produce your own original speaking-for-my-generation poem. Like Ginsberg’s, it should be filled with references and allusions to the people, places, experiences, events, terminology, pop culture, etc. most important to your generation. It should also be 100+ lines. It should not rhyme. Think imagery. Think word choice. Think symbols and metaphors. Think about how you can best capture the language, attitudes, failures, triumphs, everyday doings, and extraordinary feelings of your generation. The first line of your poem should be “I saw the best minds of my generation…” What comes next is up to you.
In the second part of Project #3, you should write a brief essay (approx. 500-600 words) that explains “what you were going for” in your poem and why you decided to write it in the way that you did. That means you’ll need to identify the particular details in your poem and explain what they mean. What patterns, figurative language, allusions, references to specific people/places/things did you include, and why? This brief essay is your chance to “decode” your poem for an audience outside your generation who may not understand the way you were speaking or why you were speaking that way.
Questions to consider:
What is my generation? What will I name it? How will I define it? (Gen X, Millenial, Gen Z, etc. or something else?)
What do I want those in power to know, understand, “get,” act upon / do something about, etc., regarding members of my generation?
What images can I use in my poem to show what is important to my generation, how my generation has been misunderstood or mistreated? (What will be my “Moloch”?)
What specific details can I use to illustrate my generation’s experiences? For example, Ginsberg addresses his poem to Solomon, a friend who was confined to the Rockland mental institution in New York. But, instead of saying “I’m with you in the mental institution,” the speaker expresses his solidarity with, “I’m with you in Rockland.” Beyond New York, Howl deals a lot with the larger community of the United States, particularly during the 1950s, when the atom bomb was starting to foment paranoia and marked the start of the Cold War. Thus, “hydrogen jukebox” and “sexless hydrogen” are passing allusions to the hydrogen bomb, one of the first weapons of mass destruction. Notice, though, that Ginsberg does not spoon-feed the audience with blatant statements like “The hydrogen bomb is threatening to annihilate the entire world!” Instead, he is decidedly more subtle, more “poetic.”
Think of your poem as a time capsule: a hundred years from now, students taking LIT2000 (at Daytona Intergalactic University) might study your poem for clues as to what it was like to be a member of your generation. What, exactly, do you want them to know—good and bad—about your generation and your place in it; this time, and the world that you inhabit?
Formal or informal?
Project #3 will consist of two parts: 1) Your poem; and 2) A short essay analyzing your poem. As indicated above, your poem should take Howl as its inspiration, and therefore its language will reflect the language of your generation, however formal or informal you consider this to be. Your analysis of your poem should be clear, direct, detailed, well-organized, and aimed at an audience with high expectations for formal and stylistic correctness.
Length?
Your poem should contain at least 100 lines. Your analysis of your poem should be 500-600 words (or longer).
Grading
The following criteria will be used to evaluate this assignment:
Length, creativity, and detail of poem.
Formal complexity and allusiveness of poem.
Focus, specificity, and use of evidence in analysis.
Overall clarity and distinctiveness of ideas about your generation.
Overall organization and document design.
