In this passage Ann Charters introduces us to the infamous Allen Ginsberg. We get a look at Ginsberg’s aberrant and influential life as being the son of Louis Ginsberg, a poet and high school teacher, and Naomi Ginsberg, an avid member of the Communist party. Ginsberg attends Columbia University in 1943 where he would meet William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac for the first time thus changing his life forever. After having a vision of William Blake, which inspired Ginsberg to write the poem A Supermarket in California, Ginsberg moves to San Francisco. There he meets the poet Kenneth Rexroth who influences him to be a poet who writes for his own enjoyment and inspiration thus transforming him into the most important poet of the Beat Generation. …show more content…
He uses motley of images to represent the advancement of current economic society and the exodus of a “wild west” American frontier. Allen says that he “sits down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive” and “looks at the sunset over the box house hills.” Ginsberg believes that the burgeoning urbanization in the aspect of a beautiful sunset makes him sad and disgusted. He continues to say that he is enclosed by “gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery,” using natural symbolism to portray the mechanical affliction that has taken over the modern world. He continues with this imagery describing the “river coated with a layer of oil” not allowing any fish to live in it. Ginsberg is depressed because the beauty of the natural world has been taken over by rusted iron and