Howl | Allen Ginsberg

I came across a poem that really sparked my interest. Howl, written by Allen Ginsberg in 1955. Ginsberg dedicated Howl to Carl Solomon, a writer he met during the eight months he spent at the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute. Ginsberg had been deeply disturbed to learn that Solomon had undergone shock therapy to treat his depression. Ginsberg believed that madness was often mistakenly used by middle class society to explain genius or brilliance.

Here is an excerpt from 'Howl'

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,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels
staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkan-
sas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes
on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in
wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt
of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or
purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,"

I really admire this poem because Ginsberg refers to 'the best minds' not as college graduates, scholars, doctors or politicians but world travelers, bums, musicians, and poets. Essentially the idea of people who are sort of lost. “Dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.” Angry fix being drugs to help the anger and frustration. Then Ginsberg calls them ‘angelheaded hipsters’ which to Ginsberg were religious figures that resemble angels. “Burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night” This idea of an ancient heavenly connection is religion, God, belonging. Finding the connection between man and God. Then Ginsberg goes on to explain them getting high and being under the hallucination of drugs and seeing angels. Then telling us how these ‘best minds’ got expelled from school for writing and drawing things on the walls which others viewed to be crazy. Then he goes on telling us these people spent most of their time spent up doing drugs and dreaming in cheap hotels. I think this poem really shows the point that sometimes the people who excel in school and life in society’s eyes aren’t always the smartest. Maybe it’s the people who seem crazy and burned out are the true brilliant people. I feel like the main message of the poem is that what’s crazy to one person isn’t crazy to someone else. Ginsberg's idea of normalcy were very different than what is mainstream. If people want to run around and do things out of the norm who are we to judge them and confine them to certain rules and regulations?

“Ginsberg wanted “Howl” to express the pent up frustration, artistic energy, and self-destruction of his generation, a generation that he felt was being suppressed by a dominant American culture that valued conformity over artistic license and opportunity.  For a poet or the individual to howl, meant that that person was breaking from the habit of conformity to the virtues and ideals of American civilization and expressing a counter-cultural vision of free expression” Says gradesaver.com I totally agree with this view and feel that’s what this poem is all about and that this is how the title 'Howl' is meant to correlate with the meaning.




Audio of Allen Ginsberg reading 'Howl' at the Big Table Chicago Meeting in 1959

"Allen Ginsberg's Poetry Summary and Analysis." Allen Ginsberg's Poetry Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of "Howl," Part I, Verses 1. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
Ginsberg, Allen. "Howl." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.

"Howl Summary." Shmoop. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
Allen Ginsberg Reads "Howl," (Big Table Chicago Reading, 1959). By Allen Ginsberg. Perf.           Allen Ginsberg. 2013. Youtube. Web. 17 Feb. 2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkNp56UZax4>.
Allen Ginsberg. Digital image. Grazian Archive. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.