Ginsberg Howl

HOWL is a howl When feeling really emotional, sometimes we tend to find a way of expressing them and one of them is to writing it down right? Allen Ginsberg, a poet, expressed his emotions by writing poems. Reading the book HOWL was full of surprises; each poem had me feeling happy, confused, sad, and mad, etc. Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL, demonstrates his poetry based on the life with mixed emotions, vulgar language, slang words, confusion, and obscenity that evokes feelings from readers.

From the outset of Howl, Part I takes on a tone of delirium as the Beat Poets, sometimes referred to as the ‘best minds’ or simply ‘they’,

A Howl for Help Beat poetry took up a big part of the 1950’s. The beat movement was a time where American writers had the opportunity to express themselves in a way that allowed them to achieve genuine happiness. Allen Ginsberg is a prime example of a Beat Poet. In his poem Howl he expresses how he truly feels about the society that he lives in.

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.

Howl allows the reader to see a small glimpse into Allen Ginsberg’s life. As a student at Columbia University, Ginsberg was “expelled from the academics for crazy and publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull.” (Ginsberg 7) This lead him to eventually become expelled from his

The poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg brought criticism to American Society in the 1950’s, at a time when it was a postwar period and was also a time of expansion and prosperity in American culture. People in the American culture received the poem in many different ways, some embraced the poem, thinking it detailed the way things were perceived at that time, while others thought it was obscene and should be banned. In my opinion, I think it was a relevant evaluation of how most people felt during that time, though some people thought the poem took it too far with obscenities and lustful thoughts the poem portrayed. After reading the poem “Howl” I am convinced that Ginsberg is trying to make a point that rules and structure are what is wrong with the generation of that period and making people go mad and acting out in different ways. Ginsberg uses slang terminology throughout the poem to get a point across to his readers that this generation has no regard for authority and has lost respect for what is good and proper.

Becoming the same as everybody else is a dull concept, and not exactly favorable to anybody. Despite, or in lieu of, our best interests, humans ensure that there is something distinguishably unique in each of us. However, behaving without manner or class just to be unique runs parallel with the actions of juvenile delinquents. Allen Ginsberg, revered author of Howl and its ingenuity, covers various themes in his illustrious poem, including madness, sex, drugs, and the corruption of the government. Although some view the poem as an enlightening artwork of protest, Howl is an archaic disappointment deserving none of its critical acclaim.

“Howl” is meant to be a snapshot of Beatnik life. It is the fractured stories of the fractured lives of the “best minds.” Ginsberg uses the "who" to start many of the lines and to designate these “best minds” as the character for the poem. Ginsberg views the best minds to be the people who live outside of society, the people who [were] “angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night”. Howl" is partly a reflection on what American culture and society of the 1940's and 50's had done to those that would not line up in conformity to American culture and politics, what America had done to these “best minds”.

Having an easy-to-follow format, Ginsberg’s poem emphasizes an overall, sincere theme that he complicates through lengthy and wordy poetic devices. Through three parts and a footnote, Ginsberg explains that there is a good and bad to everything in life and whether it is on a micro or personal level or a more complex and worldwide level, they both exist all the same. Although this famous poem comes with a love-hate relationship to some, it is not meant to be offensive to anyone. Looking at it from Ginsberg’s point of view, he is simply speaking his mind and he has the right to do so in which ever way he pleases. In short, what readers need to understand of “HOWL” is not that a homosexual man wrote of offensive situations, but that a homosexual man wrote of his own experiences through his passion that is poetry.

“Hear The Meaning Behind My Howl” Allen Ginsberg, an American poet from the 1950s, started to work on his poem Howl in 1954 and was published in 1956. Howl expressed Ginsberg’s experiences and feelings through this poem at the time when there were many political issues in America. He lived through the madness of World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the post-war era. With all of the political madness in the air, the Beat Generation came to be. The Beat Generation rejected the standards of society and materialism; they were an underground, anti-conformist youth group.

Allen Ginsberg’s, “Howl” and T.S. Eliot’s, “The Waste Land” provide unique writing styles and are debatably the most influential poems in American literature. “Howell” was a poem that was able to influence a generation of poets. It gained great popularity when it was banned within the United States. Jonsson noted in her work that “Ginsberg’s colleague Lawrence Ferlinghetti ran a small publishing company, City Lights Publishing, and he had HOWL printed in England. When the novel was taken into America, it caused big problems. The entire edition was confiscated with the motivation that the novel was “obscene…” (Jonsson, 5-6). This banning of Ginsberg’s poem resulted in creating a platform for the author to illustrate his unique style of writing

I chose “Howl” to examine because it describes in great detail the anger, frustration, and self-destruction of Allen’s generation. Allen felt that his generation conformed to standards and to the American culture. Thus, he uses the poem, “Howl”, to express his anger and refusal to conform to America’s standards. The title of the poem suggests themes in the poem like madness and anger toward conformity. Moreover, the title suggests the theme of expression in the form of angry words and lines.

One particular line in the first section of “Howl” is my favorite because of its stark transparency: “with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls” (Ginsberg). The first half of this line are beautiful and tragically melodramatic. Finishing with carnality forces the reader to lower their shock and remember that sexuality really is a part of the big beautiful picture. Lines like these sparked the actual sexual revolution, the change in thinking during the 1960’s, ten years after Ginsberg wrote “Howl”. Hand in hand with Ginsberg’s free sexuality comes his open bisexuality. He has a complete disregard of the social norm, writing in his poem “Message”: “man / or woman I don't care what anymore, I / want [the] love I was born for” (Ginsberg). The ideas in this line reflect the ideas of the Homophile Movement; acceptance of gay people and focusing on love instead of sex. Ginsberg surely was one of the forerunning poets on this movement. Ginsberg’s work on the folly of the United States government, the horror of war, and basic sexuality reflects the ideas of the Beats Generation and the movements that went along with it; the sexual revolution and the Homophile

“Howl” is managing to maintain a level of resistance even today. The language used when the poem was first published was controversial. In present day, some of the dialect Ginsberg used has taken on new meaning, and the harshness of certain words has also increased. For example, when he refers to the best minds of his generation “dragging themselves through the negro streets” (Ginsberg 9) we can interpret this in one of two ways. Firstly, that the best minds are simply walking down the streets at night, or secondly – “negro” is literally interpreted implying they are walking through a predominantly African American neighborhood/place. With such room for interpretation, there can be a resistance seen in the way the reader interprets the text versus what Ginsberg may have actually meant. This guessing game Ginsberg allows the reader to partake in

They were free thinkers and rebels, and they wanted to live more authentic lives with drugs, sex, alcohol, and nonconformity; they often included these subjects in their art as well. Allen Ginsberg’s three-part poem, Howl, is considered one of the most accurate characterizations of the Beat generation; it broke barriers by including drugs, sexual language, alcohol, and exposing the raw world. The word choice in this poem is captivating to say the least, and the verses are all thought-provoking. It was said that the first public reading of Howl marked the beginning of an era of expressive, rebellious artwork in