The common thread between the Beats and the Hungryalists

Abstract

Abstract

This paper traces the geographical expansion of the trend of writing Language Poetry from the 1950s, which gradually influenced the broader spectrum of literature world-wide. A new group of uprising poets known as the Language poets were opting for technically disruptive writing in place of rhetorical and representational writing in order to reflect the spirit of the age. The paper draws a comparison between the poems of the famous beat poet Allen Ginsberg and the poems of some of the Hungry Generation poets of Bengal in order to trace out the emotional as well as the technical similarities between these two geographically diversified yet very similar groups in terms of voicing a common spirit of rebellion. Be it the poetry of the American beat poet Allen Ginsberg or the Indian hungryalist poet Malay Roychoudhury, the emotions, sentiments and angst expressed through their poems are the same. In spite of being separated by a huge distance their spontaneous and later censored poetry seem to echo the same rebellious voice and proceed towards the common objective of cleaning the society of hypocrisies and inhibitions. The history of American poetry since World War II represents a contest between a formalist approach towards the experimental impulse of modernism and an anti-formalist revolt that affirms the presence of open forms. Postmodern poetry or avant-gardepoetry has always posed oppositional challenges to the cultural establishments of a society. Modern and late modern experimental writers have repeatedly suggested that technically disruptive work is scientific, objective and presentational-the very opposite of representational and rhetorical writing. This was followed by the uprising of a new group of poets known as The Language poets.They were an avant-garde group in United States that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its immediate postmodern precursors were the New American poets, a cluster which