I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
These minds that the speaker introduces us to are the, who's, we see throughout the entire poem. These are people who, the speaker initially stated, have been destroyed and are now dragging themselves looking for that angry fix. Because this is the notion these minds are driven by, recklessness consumes them in their travels to seek temporary fix. This recklessness exudes the feeling of getting nowhere fast. At least that is the way I interpret it.
There is a lot of references to hopelessness and failure:
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
These minds that the speaker introduces us to are the, who's, we see throughout the entire poem. These are people who, the speaker initially stated, have been destroyed and are now dragging themselves looking for that angry fix. Because this is the notion these minds are driven by, recklessness consumes them in their travels to seek temporary fix. This recklessness exudes the feeling of getting nowhere fast. At least that is the way I interpret it.
There is a lot of references to hopelessness and failure:
"who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,"
"who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,"
"who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,"
All of these just overwhelms me with the thoughts of those people who can't seem to get their life together. Even the structure of the poem shows the scrambling of this type of life. The lines go on and on with commas making the scrambling pause now and then. The speaker is displaying a certain lifestyle that is in a way muted. It is a lifestyle that not all experience but many wish they would never to experience.
It's a progression of unfortunate events that make these who's continue on with a reckless lifestyle. The imagery I get is a collage of drug addicts life. Perhaps Ginsberg wasn't describing solely a drug addict lifestyle but it certainly felt like it especially with all the drug references or objects that are used like drugs for example, benzedrine, turpentine, narcotic tobacco haze, cooked rotten animal lungs, and opium.
Perhaps he was describing his life during the first World War stated in the introduction by Williams Carlos Williams. Williams stated that he was " mentally much disturbed" by this event and this disturbed Williams as well. Therefore this poem could be describing those dark moments in his life before becoming a successful poet. If this poem is a connotation of this period then it makes a lot more sense because he's not describing people at random, it's people or events he has encountered.
"who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,"
"who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,"
All of these just overwhelms me with the thoughts of those people who can't seem to get their life together. Even the structure of the poem shows the scrambling of this type of life. The lines go on and on with commas making the scrambling pause now and then. The speaker is displaying a certain lifestyle that is in a way muted. It is a lifestyle that not all experience but many wish they would never to experience.
It's a progression of unfortunate events that make these who's continue on with a reckless lifestyle. The imagery I get is a collage of drug addicts life. Perhaps Ginsberg wasn't describing solely a drug addict lifestyle but it certainly felt like it especially with all the drug references or objects that are used like drugs for example, benzedrine, turpentine, narcotic tobacco haze, cooked rotten animal lungs, and opium.
Perhaps he was describing his life during the first World War stated in the introduction by Williams Carlos Williams. Williams stated that he was " mentally much disturbed" by this event and this disturbed Williams as well. Therefore this poem could be describing those dark moments in his life before becoming a successful poet. If this poem is a connotation of this period then it makes a lot more sense because he's not describing people at random, it's people or events he has encountered.
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