Project by: Henry Pomerance (11th Grade)
Project Advisor: Jane Belton
Student(s)’s Advisor(s): Jacqueline Baker

Working with Jane on this honors project was an enlightening experience. When I first came up with the project, I wanted to explore Allen Ginsberg’s work in a multifaceted way. I achieved this by looking at some of Ginsberg’s most famous and influential poems (in particular, my favorite Ginsberg poem “America”), and exploring how and why Ginsberg wrote them.

First, we chose four poems to focus on: “In the Baggage Room at Greyhound”, “America”, “Howl”, and “A Supermarket in California”. We discussed how Ginsberg was making writerly choices to convey specific meanings, in particular, how he used personification to more deeply explore sometimes otherwise mundane subjects. Then, we looked at “America” again, but this time focused on its larger meaning in the context of its time, and Ginsberg himself. Finally, after analyzing Ginsberg’s poetry, I wanted to write my own poem that was based both off his writing techniques and his subject matter. Of all the work I did in this project, I am most proud of that poem I wrote, and I think that experience helped me write poetry for the Poetry class I was taking at the time.

Reading Allen Ginsberg’s work brought me into his world: the Hippie movement, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and American consumerism. In his poetry, he did a masterful job of making me feel like I was really there in his poems. He exposed America’s values as shallow and greedy, and he did so in a sarcastic, joking manner. As I read, I got the feeling that he was very much at ease with his literary skills, and this gave him the freedom to write about whatever he thought was important, and in any form. He made me take a deeper look at society today, and see the similarities in what he had issues with sixty years ago. In fact, critiquing America became my “inspired poem”. It was not difficult to find material for the poem, but it was hard at times to distance myself from Ginsberg’s writing. In my first two drafts, I felt I was not using my own voice enough. So, I tried not to think of Ginsberg’s style while writing the third draft; it developed much more smoothly and as a balance of our two styles.

You can view my work below: