Allen Ginsberg, "Howl" and "America"

Ginsberg first made his mark when "Howl" was published by City Lights Books and immediately considered obscene. His free verse is similar to Walt Whitman's but his language and honesty are things not before seen in literature. Ginsberg was a beatnik and colleagues of William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Beatniks were a counter-culture movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s that flaunted their experimentation with drugs, sex, politics and religion.

Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath studied together with Robert Lowell and are often considered confessional poets - poets that use material from their own lives in their writing. Both wrote about parts of their lives that were once considered taboo in literature. Sexton, famously, wrote about her menstrual cycle and Plath, in her novel "The Bell Jar" and in her poems, wrote about her own suicide attempts.

In separate 250 word posts, respond to two of the following:

A) How does the form, language, and punctuation/grammar Ginsberg uses supplement the meaning of "Howl" and "America"? How/why does Ginsberg blend fictional and non-fictional anecdotes in these poems? Do these qualities make this poem a postmodern work? Why?

B) What is the tone of Sexton's "Sylvia's Death"? How does she address her topic and how does she present Sylvia Plath? What are the major ideas presented in "My Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman"? Could this be considered a particularly feminist poem?

C) What are the major metaphors in "Lady Lazarus" and what do they say about Plath? What do we learn about the narrator and her father in "Daddy"?

D) Is there a certain shock value in these poems? Do you imagine it to be the same or less than that was experienced years ago when the work was first published? Ultimately, what is the effect of this poem? Why does it affect the reader as such? Is that something that Ginsberg, Sexton and Plath did intentionally?