One of our favorite games here at the Mercury—besides purposefully damaging our livers—is playing “Overrated, Underrated, or Rated?” It’s pretty simple. Pick any subject or person and decide whether it’s overrated, underrated or rated just about where he, she or it should be (AKA “rated”). For example (and these are just my opinions, feel free to disagree):
The Beatles: OVERRATED!
Popeye’s Fried Chicken restaurants: UNDERRATED!
Handjobs: UNDERRATED!
Comedian Dane Cook: RATED! (He’s just as awful as everyone thinks, therefore he is neither over or under, he’s just “rated.”)
Sidenote: When I asked my staff if they considered me “Overrated, Underrated, or Rated,” they were split between “overrated” and “underrated.” Some think a masturbating chimp such as myself shouldn’t hold such a lofty position, while others find my humor masks a more serious, contemplative side. Me, I think I’m “rated.” I’m exactly as awesome as I think I am.

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ANYWAY, LET’S GET TO POET ALLEN GINSBERG! From Wikipedia:

In the 1950s, Ginsberg was a leading figure of the Beat Generation, an anarchic group of young men and women who combined poetry, song, sex, wine and illicit drugs with passionate political ideas that championed personal freedoms. Major literary works of the Beat Generation include the novels On The Road by Jack Kerouac and Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, as well as Ginsberg’s epic poem Howl, in which he celebrates his fellow “angelheaded hipsters” and excoriates what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States.

So what do you think?
ALLEN GINSBERG: OVERRATED, UNDERRATED OR RATED?

Support your conclusion in the comments below, and stand by for more “Overrated, Underrated, or Rated?” next week!

Bang bang, choo-choo train, let me see you shake that thang. Wm. Steven Humphrey is the editor-in-chief of the Portland Mercury and has held the job since 2000. (So don’t get any funny ideas.)

14 replies on “Overrated, Underrated, or Rated: Allen Ginsberg”

  2. He is the guy who coined the use of “hipster” in reference to fashionable youths. Still, he blew his entire wad with “Howl”.

  3. Between “rated” and “over:” rated, because he’s an important link in American culture, and influenced a lot of people who went on to influence more people (I guess that’s saying the same thing twice).

    Overrated, because 99% of poetry is stupid.

    Yep, simply because I say it is.

  8. I’m just going to quote from his seminal 1977 publication, MIND BREATHS:

    I went down to Santa Fe take vacation there
    Indians selling turquoise in dobe huts in Taos Pueblo Square
    Got headache in La Fonda, I could get sick anywhere

    Must be my bad karma, fuckin these pretty boys
    Hungry ghosts chasing me, because I been chasing joys
    Lying here in bed alone, playing with my toys

    Someday I’m gonna get out of here, go somewhere alone
    Yeah I’m going to leave this town with noise rattling bone
    I got the sickness blues, you’ll miss me when I’m gone

    Sorry Allen… OVERRATED.

  9. I agree, underrated. People think he ‘blew his entire wad’ (a term my own mother would use in public …much to my embarrassment as you may be able to imagine) on Howl.

    To which I respond with a hearty but jovial, Pffffffftftftftft.

    I mean, what about ‘America’?
    Ha ha ha!

    Oh, yeah… and here’s another reason why he’s under rated:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWxl-HvwjJs

    Fuck yeah.

  12. I’m with those who cast a jaundiced eye on poems. Either they are awesome great or sad awful. But find me a poet or singer now that is Ginsberg political, extra credit for genre breaking. You can use this thread.

  13. I say: Rated. Because on the one hand he’s given due credit for writing some objectively awesome poetry (“Howl”, “America”), but on the other hand he’s also given a well-earned degree of shit for being associated with the most superficially awful of all American literary movements, as well as being liked way way WAY too much by college sophomores who ascribe transcendental importance to things like road-tripping to Mexico. He’s sort of like the Grateful Dead in that he becomes much more palatable if you ignore his biggest fans.

  14. any of the beats: over-rated! Why did these guys ever even get rated? Because the youth and their marijuana my friends. And because acid.

    Cool feature anyhow.

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