Analysis Of Howl, By Ginsberg

Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court. Roth ran a business in New York by selling books, photos, and magazines. Roth was charged with 4 counts for sending inappropriate circulars and an inappropriate book. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Roth’s appeal. Alberts was prosecuted for the sale of lewd books, and for writing inappropriate advertisements within the books. Albert’s conviction was upheld by a lower court. The Court must decide if indecent material is protected by the freedom of speech and press in the First Amendment. All ideas, even the most foolish, controversial, and intolerable, are protected by free speech. The only exception is when they interfere in more important safeties. However, indecency has been demonstrated to have no redeeming

Allen Ginsberg’s revolutionary poem, Howl, is a powerful portrayal of life degraded. It represents the harsh life of the beat generation and chronicles the struggles of the repressed. Howl is a poem of destruction. Destruction of mind, body, and soul through the oppression of the individual. Using powerful diction, Allen Ginsberg describes this abolition of life and its implications through our human understanding of abstractions like Time, Eternity, and self. The poem’s jumbled phrasing and drastic emotion seems to correspond with the minds of the people it describes. Ginsberg uses surprisingly precise and purposeful writing to weave the complex

The form of Ginsberg’s poem challenges the American culture by resistance from “best minds”. Howl is separated to three sections that include long lines, which look like paragraphs. Resisting

Century apart, Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman share similar cultural, political and moral values, which they express in their literary work. Whitman’s writing is considered controversial for the eighteen hundreds. He sets the stage for generations to come breaking way from the strict Victorian poetic tradition by writing in free verse. Ginsberg follows his footsteps when composing his poem “Howl” by writing in long lines almost resembling prose and subdividing the poem into several parts. Likewise, he uses numerous repetitions to achieve rhythmicity of his verse. Ginsberg’s poem is heavily influenced by Whitman’s philosophy. The works “Song of myself” and “Howl” are similar in ideas, structure and underling themes. The two authors protest against old traditions imposed on the individual by corrupt society, stand against conformity and put emphasis on the need for change. They identify with their generation and dwell on themes such as sexuality, religion and the state of American society.

Ginsberg’s work often represents a struggle for spiritual survival in a dehumanized, repressive society. This can be seen in his writing of “Howl”:

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked”, In this quote from Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”, I don’t see a social commentary from one of my favorite poems, I don’t see Ginsberg’s observation of the destructive qualities: war, society, government, and capitalism on these outcasts, these drug users¬¬--drop outs, musicians, and poets, the disregarded yet “the best minds of my generation”. No. In this line I see my grandmother. I see her transform from one of the strongest willed and independent woman I’ve ever known, to a person stuck in a nursing home that doesn’t even realize that they’ve worn the same clothes for three days straight. I see one of the greatest minds of my generation, my life, destroyed

In fact, during the rise of the poem’s popularity, Ginsberg and his associates were charged with promoting obscenity, and the poem itself was

I chose Allen Ginsberg for my posting. His best known work is “Howl” where he describes estranged Americans of the postwar in the 1950s. Walt Whitman and William Blake inspired Allen, but Allen incorporated his own “barbaric yawp” with hallucinations and more. Allen’s goal was to provide a reason for the separation of who protested against the culture of the United States. Allen’s language in his writing was “extra vagance”, and that made Allen a famous, well-known poet of the age. Allen was born in Newark, New Jersey. In 1943, Allen went to Columbia University at seventeen years old. He was dismissed from the University for making rude remarks about the university president and allegedly wrote anti-Semitic obscenity on a window. He was let

Therefore, in the very beginning, Ginsberg presents to the reader the subject and tone of the poem in the context of this question. Ginsberg’s questions make the audience realize the seriousness of the issues that this poem discusess, such as America, politics, war, humanity, and ethics.

Howl, by Allen Ginsberg, is an inaccessible writing with such obscure references from a unique personal life and small subculture from 50 years ago that it cannot stand on its own today. It tackles issues society has already decided, makes them completely unrelatable, and attempts to shock readers. Except to literary historians, this poem is irrelevant to modern society because of constant references to obscure places and people, frequent vulgarity to which internet-based society has been desensitized, and societal issues that already have national-level attention.

Poet Allen Ginsberg composed "Howl" in 1955 and it was published by City Lights Books of San Francisco, CA the following year. He composed the poem in the middle of the 1950s, one of the greatest decades in history for mainstream America. It had been a decade since the American and Allied victory in the second world war. Numerous American men returned home to a country in much better shape than expected, with many women having entered the workforce to keep the economy and industry alive in their absence. The spoils of war were great and America saw a great era of prosperity and domestic, suburban bliss. More interstate highways were constructed. Many more cars were produced and bought. It was a classic era for mainstream American culture in the 1950s. Yet in the haze of the suburbs, expansion of television, growth of Hollywood, and cars, present here were the seeds of rebellion and counterculture that was more indicative of the following decade, 1960s. One such seed is the poem

There are many similarities between Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Ginsberg’s “Howl”. Whitman’s influence can be noticed in Ginsberg’s work which range from a similar style of format, structure, a concern with the general population of America, and the impact that these two great writers had on the rest of the literary world. Another significant influence that Whitman has for Ginsberg is the fact that Whitman had been considered an outcast from the literary world of his era. Whitman appeared as a plainly dressed working man rather than a fancy high societal poet. His long winded style, free verse, and sexual exposure made Whitman stand out from the rest of the other poets. Ginsberg was also not accepted among the poets of his generation. His literary works were banned from the public’s eye. Another similarity was between the two was their subject matter. In the introduction of leaves of grass, Malcolm Cowley said, “Its subject is a state of illumination induced by two (or three) separate moments of ecstasy”.

According to the1973 case of Miller v. California, material is obscene if all three of the following conditions are met:

What Allen Ginsberg did in 1955 was unthinkable. In the midst of McCarthyism and severe anticommunist sentiment, he wrote a poem in which he admitted having belonged to the Communist party. Yet, even more surprising was that he didn't stop there. In his poem "America," Allen Ginsberg challenges the beliefs and values that the United States has always cherished, leaving no stone unturned, and no feather unruffled. Always the cynic and revolutionary, Ginsberg slaughters the sacred cows.

During the 1950s, many different literary movements came to the spotlight. Two such movements were Confessionalism and Beat poetry. There are many commonalities between these movements, and often, authors and works from the Beat movement incorporate various Confessionalist characteristics. Allen Ginsberg, one such author, combined both Confessionalism and Beat poetry in a variety of his works, including Howl and Kaddish. The Confessionalist aspects of Allen Ginsberg and his works, such as Howl, were heavily outweighed by the Beat aspects in his work.