ginsberg, beats and women

by lonesomedhobo

Posted to What Are You Reading? on 2003-01-18 03:10:00

i have just finished the brilliant bio of ginsberg by barry miles and have realized again what an amazing person ginsberg was. despite his exceptional poems and his constant search for openness and experiences is truly inspiring. i found that i felt total empathy with many of his feelings and also seem to have this constant self analysis going on too but the one thing the book opened up was the notion of beat misgoynmy. i must admit the most esteemed beat writers do seem to be men (i know there are some women but the ones that are considered the movers and shakers)and the kinship and beat comraderie seems to be between the men. women seem to be more the objects of sexual feelings than a true respect of their ideas. the writer bukowski comes to mind here, i think he is a great writer and very humorous but the book ‘women’ really stank of misgoynmy. still i would like to believe that a movement as enlightened as the beats would have the openness to include females. so i was wondering what are others views on this.

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