“No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love — be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love — cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy”, — this are the words of Allen Ginsberg, American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He became popular thanks to his revolutionary poem “Howl” that was dedicated to writer Carl Solomon.
Talking about his great works, there are a couple of those, that deserves our attention: “Kaddish”, “America”, “A supermarket” and “Song”. All of them are about love. Ginsberg claims that love sometimes can be really overwhelming and hard to cope with, but it’s such a strong feeling that it eventually conquers everything:
“The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction
the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.”
This lyrical poem expresses author’s necessity for love. He uses the word “weight” to show that love is a heavy burden, but all people in the world become happier as soon as they find it:
One of the most significant contribution of Ginsberg’s and far more controversial is his openness about homosexuality. For him, love cannot be divided into gender because when people find their soulmates, it is impossible to contradict this fact. He was vigorously fighting for gay rights and their freedom and expressed his desire openly in his poetry. Allen was also frankly sharing his thoughts about gay marriage with Peter Orlovsky, his life partner.