"I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that"

James Dickey expresses profound dissatisfaction with the impact of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry on the broader realm of poetic craft. He suggests that Ginsberg, a leading figure in the Beat movement, has fundamentally lowered or diluted the standards and discipline Dickey associates with poetry. Where Dickey honors poetry as a craft, requiring rigor, skill, and expertise, he sees Ginsberg’s work as embodying a style that is freeform, informal, and rule-breaking, prioritizing raw authenticity over technical mastery.

Dickey’s complaint centers on the doors that Ginsberg’s style opened for self-proclaimed poets. The “mean” he references can be understood as a new, lower common denominator. Poetry, in Dickey’s perspective, has always demanded a certain elevation, of language, thought, and artistry. By contrast, Ginsberg’s innovations, especially his use of spontaneous, unfiltered expression and his embrace of the ordinary and the taboo, invite a flood of others to mimic him. For Dickey, the danger is that many who lack depth, skill, or purpose can now declare their work “poetry” simply by imitating Ginsberg’s surface gestures. The craft is not simply democratized but, in his eyes, cheapened.

At the heart of Dickey’s critique lies an anxiety about the dilution of standards. He sees the poet’s role not merely as self-expression, but as the upholding of a tradition, a lineage involving hard-won proficiency and a respect for the artistic labor required to make something enduring. Ginsberg’s radical openness, in Dickey’s view, blurs the boundaries between the true poet and the dilettante. Ultimately, Dickey worries that the very definition of poetry becomes so expansive and inclusive that it loses meaning, as anyone can now claim the title by echoing what Ginsberg has made permissible, regardless of individual merit or skill.