Angel Headed Hipsters

Angel headed hipsters is a term that is often used to glorify the beat movement and it's poetry. It is a term that is used mostly as a synonym for the followers of the hippie counter culture. Society at the time of origination had classified the long haired hippies as a negative and dirty excess on society's traditional conservative morality. The term "Angel Headed Hipsters" is the poetic reaction to this negative assumption about the beat movement. In a way, poets like Ginsberg are very much creating a mystifying innocence around the followers. When in actuality a lot of drugs, pain and ruination followed the beat movement,

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
             madness, starving hysterical naked,
      dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
             looking for an angry fix,"

There is a negative side to the term "Angel headed hipsters" that is remarkably overlooked. People were ruined in the beat movement. We are to assume and interpret that the "angel headed hipsters" as a more roving wise guru motif rather than what America really thinks they are. Because hippies are not homeless, dirty, drugged up, dumb, giving nothing to society dregs but rather wandering Buddah like wise "angel headed hipsters". Maybe this term for the beat generation is deserving. Maybe that selfless, kind and friendly nature is absent in contemporary society. I see that era through the 50s and 60s as very much an American poetic renaissance. Just as much as the Harlem Renaissance moved American literature so did the beat and San Francisco literature.

I have no authority to comment but rather interpret. I know that the professor used to be a hippie and he has all the authority to talk about it because he was there. I'm music columnist reviewing a punk cd when he's never been to a concert. I wasn't at the Howl trials or anything like that and sometimes feel that I can't talk about these things without being objective.