Reflection on Beats Poetry

Beats poetry celebrates non-conformity, spontaneity, and creativity. These poems talk about more modern and topics that are more controversial such as abortion, war, homosexuality, and sex in a more graphic way. Many of the issues that were being brought up because of WW2. The language in these poems are much more informal. In some poems I found the language to be slang such as in Diane Di Prima's poem "Rant". The sound and structure of these poems are different. Many of the poems sound and flow reminded me of rap music. Also there was a lot of repetition and some poems seemed like they had choruses repeating the same stanza in between others. In Diane Di Prima’s poem “Rant” the poem has repeated lines and also the structure of this poem is different in the fact that it seems that the points that she wants to emphasis she puts in all capitol letters, which seems to change the tone of the poem a bit. I also noticed the way the poems were written different in the way they told a story. All of the different poems and poets were different which shows how this group experimented with language and the style and topic of writing. I found it interesting how in Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Death and Fame” he talks about his death and uses quotations to list and show how people reacted to and what people said about him and his death.