Themes

The crux of Beat poetry is the rejection of social conformity and literary tradition, it was saturated with feelings of being used up and spat back out. WWII left that generation with "their own lust for freedom, and the ability to live at a pace that kills," this is demonstrated by the wide-spread use of hallucinogenic drugs, it's an example of the devil-may-car attitude displayed by most of the Beat poets; however, "their excursions into drugs or promiscuity come out of curiosity, not disillusionment" (This Is The Beat Generation). The Beat Generation was definitely a post-war generation but it differed from the post-WWI generation, dubbed the Lost Generation, "for, unlike the Lost Generation, which was occupied with the loss of faith, the Beat Generation [was] becoming more and more occupied with the need for it." The central themes in most Beat poetry are creativity, sexual freedom, drugs, adventure and the rejection of the mainstream. Beat poets looked for "a new life-freedom, whether sexual plurality and spontaneity, zen and other Eastern mysticism and transcendence, or commune and loft residence"(Pocket Books to Global Beat). Beat poetry is chaotic, it tends to be all over the place which is a reflection of the ways Beat poets lived. Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is probably the most famous poem to come out of the Beat Generation and the flow of the poem perfectly demonstrates the way Beat poetry depicts the overall freedom, in life and in language, that the Beat poets strived for. Politics also factored into much of Beat poetry, the Beat Generation was a huge influence on the huge bloom of youth activism that went on in the 60's. The use of drugs and the sexual freedom are two most publicized things that got passed along to the next generation of boundary pushers but it can be argued that the Beat writers' unabashed way of speaking their minds about anything they wanted and that boldness gave the next generation the courage to fight for what they believed in.