"Howl" by Ginsberg
Since my focus is the Howl film, I do not include any analysis of the poem here; I'm also assuming since "Howl" was assigned reading, we will be discussing on the discussion board for this week. What I'm going to offer in this section is some brief information, reviews (mine and others), and a video of Ginsberg reading his famous poem.
"Howl" was published by City Lights in 1956, but "Howl" was first read in front of a live audience in 1955 at Six Gallery in San Francisco. Sadly, there is no video of this first reading, however there is a recording. "Howl" faced much controversy, mainly due to the powerful diction used by Ginsberg. Ginsberg uses various forms of the word "cock" throughout, "fucked" and "cunt" are both used, there are many drug references, and the sexual imagery runs rampant. Yes, the language is rough, but it's necessary and crucial - without this language, the poem would not mean the same thing. Many people did have an issue with the release of Howl and Other Poems in 1956, as evident by the Obscenity Trial that took place in 1957 - this is detailed in "The Obscenity Trial" tab. |
Reviews and Impressions of "Howl"
"A hundred and fifty enthusiastic people had come to hear us...I hadn't seen Allen in a few weeks and I had not heard Howl--it was new to me. Allen began in a small and intensely lucid voice. At some point Jack Kerouac began shouting "GO" in cadence as Allen read it. In all of our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before--we had gone beyond a point of no return--and we were ready for it, for a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the gray, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellective void--to the land without poetry--to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision. . . .Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America and its supporting armies and navies and academies and institutions and ownership systems and power-support bases... Howl was Allen's metamorphosis from quiet, brilliant, burning bohemian scholar trapped by his flames and repressions to epic vocal bard."
- Michael McClure
"Anyway I followed the whole gang of howling poets to the reading at Gallery Six (Six Gallery) that night, which was, among other important things, the night of the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Everyone was there. It was a mad night. And I was the one who got things jumping by going around collecting dimes and quarters from the rather stiff audience standing around in the gallery and coming back with three huge gallon jugs of California Burgundy and getting them all piffed so that by eleven o'clock when Alvah Goldbrook (Ginsberg) was reading his, wailing poem "Wail" (Howl) drunk with arms outspread everybody was yelling "Go! Go! Go!" (like a jam session) and old Rheinhold Cacoethes (Kenneth Rexroth) the father of the Frisco poetry scene was wiping tears in gladness. Meanwhile scores of people stood around in the darkened gallery straining to hear every word of the amazing poetry reading as I wandered from group to group, facing them and facing away from the stage, urging them to slug from the jug, or wandered back and sat on the right side of the stage giving out little wows and yesses of approval and even whole sentances of comment with nobody's invitation but in the general gaiety nobody's disapproval either. It was a great night... come eleven thirty when all the poems were read and everybody was milling around wondering what had happened and what would come next in American poetry, he was wiping his eyes with his hankerchief. And we all got together with him, the poets, and drove in several cars to Chinatown for a big fabulous dinner off the Chinese menu, with chopsticks, yelling conversation in the middle of the night in one of those free-swinging great Chinese restaurants of San Francisco."
-Jack Kerouac - this is more a retelling, but it's Kerouac! I had to add it in.
" He was always on the point of "going away," where it didn't seem to matter; he disturbed me, I never thought he'd live to grow up and write a book of poems. His ability to survive, travel, and go on writing astonishes me. That he has gone on developing and perfecting his art is no less amazing to me...Now he turns up fifteen or twenty years later with an arresting poem. Literally he has, from all the evidence, been through hell...It is the poet, Allen Ginsberg, who has gone, in his own body, through the horrifying experiences described from life in these pages. The wonder of the thing is not that he has survived but that he, from the very depths, has found a fellow whom he can love, a love he celebrates without looking aside in these poems. Say what you will, he proves to us, in spite of the most debasing experiences that life can offer a man, the spirit of love survives to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith--and the art! to persist."
- William Carlos William
" "Howl" was the first poem to bring Ginsberg public attention, and its treatment of homosexuality is characteristic of Ginsberg's position during this time. "Howl" is a lament for "the best minds of my generation," the "angel headed hipsters" destroyed by the cruelties of American society. The homosexual functions in the world of "Howl" as a figure of angelic innocence, his love a protest against the insensitivity and madness which surrounds him. . . .
Although Ginsberg calls on Whitman, he transforms an ultimately peaceful vision of human unity into an affirmation of the homosexual's alienation from the "straight" world and a desire to become an object of love rather than a participant in it."
- Robert K. Martin
My impression of the poem is one of awe. I rarely enjoy poetry outside the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, but this poem, "Howl" is in my top three now. It is powerful and it is easy to relate to, at least for me. "The Footnote to Howl" is the most powerful to me - I have read it at least ten time and I have cried every single time, and I don't understand why. Ginsberg's language moves me. There is so much love, hate, pain, agony and angst running through this poem - it's palpable. This is a poem I look forward to reading and thinking about again and again, and I have never felt that way about a poem before.
- Michael McClure
"Anyway I followed the whole gang of howling poets to the reading at Gallery Six (Six Gallery) that night, which was, among other important things, the night of the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Everyone was there. It was a mad night. And I was the one who got things jumping by going around collecting dimes and quarters from the rather stiff audience standing around in the gallery and coming back with three huge gallon jugs of California Burgundy and getting them all piffed so that by eleven o'clock when Alvah Goldbrook (Ginsberg) was reading his, wailing poem "Wail" (Howl) drunk with arms outspread everybody was yelling "Go! Go! Go!" (like a jam session) and old Rheinhold Cacoethes (Kenneth Rexroth) the father of the Frisco poetry scene was wiping tears in gladness. Meanwhile scores of people stood around in the darkened gallery straining to hear every word of the amazing poetry reading as I wandered from group to group, facing them and facing away from the stage, urging them to slug from the jug, or wandered back and sat on the right side of the stage giving out little wows and yesses of approval and even whole sentances of comment with nobody's invitation but in the general gaiety nobody's disapproval either. It was a great night... come eleven thirty when all the poems were read and everybody was milling around wondering what had happened and what would come next in American poetry, he was wiping his eyes with his hankerchief. And we all got together with him, the poets, and drove in several cars to Chinatown for a big fabulous dinner off the Chinese menu, with chopsticks, yelling conversation in the middle of the night in one of those free-swinging great Chinese restaurants of San Francisco."
-Jack Kerouac - this is more a retelling, but it's Kerouac! I had to add it in.
" He was always on the point of "going away," where it didn't seem to matter; he disturbed me, I never thought he'd live to grow up and write a book of poems. His ability to survive, travel, and go on writing astonishes me. That he has gone on developing and perfecting his art is no less amazing to me...Now he turns up fifteen or twenty years later with an arresting poem. Literally he has, from all the evidence, been through hell...It is the poet, Allen Ginsberg, who has gone, in his own body, through the horrifying experiences described from life in these pages. The wonder of the thing is not that he has survived but that he, from the very depths, has found a fellow whom he can love, a love he celebrates without looking aside in these poems. Say what you will, he proves to us, in spite of the most debasing experiences that life can offer a man, the spirit of love survives to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith--and the art! to persist."
- William Carlos William
" "Howl" was the first poem to bring Ginsberg public attention, and its treatment of homosexuality is characteristic of Ginsberg's position during this time. "Howl" is a lament for "the best minds of my generation," the "angel headed hipsters" destroyed by the cruelties of American society. The homosexual functions in the world of "Howl" as a figure of angelic innocence, his love a protest against the insensitivity and madness which surrounds him. . . .
Although Ginsberg calls on Whitman, he transforms an ultimately peaceful vision of human unity into an affirmation of the homosexual's alienation from the "straight" world and a desire to become an object of love rather than a participant in it."
- Robert K. Martin
My impression of the poem is one of awe. I rarely enjoy poetry outside the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, but this poem, "Howl" is in my top three now. It is powerful and it is easy to relate to, at least for me. "The Footnote to Howl" is the most powerful to me - I have read it at least ten time and I have cried every single time, and I don't understand why. Ginsberg's language moves me. There is so much love, hate, pain, agony and angst running through this poem - it's palpable. This is a poem I look forward to reading and thinking about again and again, and I have never felt that way about a poem before.