Day 2

Allen Ginsberg's Poetry Lesson Plan

Discussion of Thought Questions

  1. 1

    Consider the cannon of things that the “best minds of the generation” do and the actions they take. If you were to list the verbs Ginsberg uses in his list, what would you see? What would the poem be saying about these people who are driven to madness in the contemporary society of the 1950s?

    The best minds of the generation do many things, from the ordinary walking and talking, to the extraordinary writing and screaming, to the taboos of sex, drugs, and alcohol. A list of the activities could show the daily or the extreme, the sane and the insane, the conventional and the unconventional. These verbs/ actions demonstrate the chaos that Ginsberg saw in his 1950s...

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