"Mugging" by Allen Ginsberg

Aim: How led to the poet's disillusionment?

Motivational Activities:

• About Allen Ginsburg: Visit the site and collect six quick facts about the poet.

• Take a virtual tour in Lower East Side Tenement Area

Do Now: In your journal, describe things you do in your neighborhood. Close your eyes, what main imagery , sounds, touch or smells come to your mind. Describe them.

Procedure:

Note: Everything described in the poem  is seen or heard by the speaker. Note the different attitudes toward the city before and after he was mugged.

Part I Mugging

1. Who is the speaker? From whose point of view is the story told?

2. Make a list of words used in the poem to describe the setting-time, place, and mood.

3. What tone of voice is conveyed in the first 25 lines? What evidence supports your conclusion?

4. Who mugged "him"? How did they do so? Did they find any money? What did they find instead in his wallet?

5. What does he mean by this line "...my shoulder bag with 10,000 dollars/full of poetry left on the broken floor--"?

    Part II- After he was mugged-

1. When he came out the store where he was mugged, what did he see?

2. What attitude  and feelings toward the area are conveyed through the detailed descriptions of the neighborhood?

3. How are the cops described?

4. What's the residents' attitude toward the cops when asked to help? Why do they react this way?

5. What feelings are implied in the last few lines of the poem "--passing empty apartments, old lady with frayed paper bags/sitting in the tin-boarded doorframe of a dead house"?

6. How does the poet show his changed attitude towards the same neighborhood after his mugging experience?

7. What literary techniques are used to convey such an attitude?

Part III

• What does he see from his 4th floor apartment?

• When tone of voice is conveyed when he says," ...I'm taking your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn./I'm immortalizing your exhaust, Ave A bus..."?

• What does the last line "O, Thought, now you'll have to think the same thing forever!" mean?

HW#17 Use your own words to describe the story that took place in the poem. Cite some words or phrases used in the poem as you retell the story.

HW#18 Cite 10 examples of literary techniques or elements used in the poem. You will-

1. Copy the line(s) or phrases.

2. Explain what literary technique or element  the example is.

3. Describe what feelings or attitude are conveyed through the examples.