In high school, I was very active in the literary arts group. I’d attend poetry readings and listen to my friends give their latest form of self-expression. To me it was a pivotal part of my youth, helping me to understand the value of support and listening to other voices that differed greatly from my own.
To be honest, if I had to pick poets that were my favorite, they were more the collective that I was friends with. As much as we were encouraged to read poems, I wasn’t always the most voracious. I’ll fully admit that I read Charles Bukowski and at times missed the satire, wondering why this sad old man was wallowing in self-pity. Still, I loved how he played with form and became one of the few voices that I actually would call a favorite.
Though that could also be because I was comparing the poetry of high schoolers to the greats: these indomitable forces that were best symbolized by Allen Ginsberg. When you’re young, the idea of an angry voice is exciting, and no poem will ever be as effectively forthright as “Howl,” which made it a must-read for me. As a poem that helped to define the beat poets of the 1950s, it felt like an essential document that needed to be studied. However, because of its length, you always felt inadequate when approaching it because while it was art, it wasn’t something to just consume. You needed to prepare yourself.
So basically, I bought a collection of Ginsberg poems sometime early in college and never quite appreciated his work.
Oh sure, I always respected “Howl,” but it felt overlong, like trying to read Leo Tolstoy in stanza form. I felt like I would be lost among the words, losing the nuance and any greater appreciation for what he was trying to say. As it stands, I think this is something you can’t appreciate without some history and context, or at least personal familiarity with how marginalized communities were treated in the time.
The time was of course one of the least controversial decades in American 21st century. In 1955, the country was in the middle of The President Eisenhower Administration, and things were painted as this Leave It to Beaver lifestyle, this clean-cut suburbia that occasionally gets romanticized still. With that said, it was smack dab in the middle of the previous era, defined by World War II, and the next, which was defined by counter-culture and the Vietnam War. I guess it was a nice time to be alive. I frankly wouldn’t know.
So to have Ginsberg come out with “Howl” feels like this great piece of defiance. In 2020, I am reminded of how far things have come in such a short time. It’s in the Civil Rights, LGBT Rights, and to some extent discussion of mental health. While there’s still a handful of issues to be concerned about, we’re far from a time where “Howl” was considered controversial for how it depicted debaucheries such as drugs and sexual activity of both straight and queer experiences. Ginsberg was a radical, and frankly one of the few Beat Generation voices that I can tolerate.
What I find incredible is that having gone through college and studying the English form, I’m able to better appreciate “Howl” than I did as a 20-year-old. At the time I am sure that I was more overwhelmed by the expansive amount of detail, the shift in a style not “making sense,” feeling like he could’ve said in half the length. Having studied T.S. Eliot, I’m now well aware of how collegiate poets are their own frustrating beast, and in some respects, Ginsberg was much more transparent than his counterpoints.
As the myth goes, “Howl” was written after Ginsberg got high on peyote. He never intended to perform it, and the original recording of him doing it only finds him getting through Part I before admitting that he lacked the energy.
Once you get going, it’s easy to see why. The thing that I get reading “Howl” in 2020 isn’t only an understanding of a more relevant and social context, but also that it’s the type of writing that I admire. It’s a playful exploration of the form, demanding you to interact with it. You can’t just read “Howl.” You need to treat it like it’s part of your body. Ginsberg described each stanza as a single breath. The catch is that those breaths for him are arduous, going on for ridiculously long times and featuring some of the most colorful imagery I have ever seen.
There is also only one period in Part I. In theory this is all one sentence meant to encapsulate a singular idea, and it’s easy to see what the point is. Going on for a near six pages, you become overwhelmed by the detail, which is rarely pleasant. It has a vulgarity that could easily serve as equal part activist rhetoric and a young man trying to get a rise out of people. Why else would he have such fun with his alliteration?
I am not personally interested in going through every stanza and pointing out all of the meaning. To be honest, it’s secondary to the experience of observing the form of Ginsberg and understanding that yes, English is something that can be played with. Each of these longwinded lines has a hanging format, with the majority of them beginning with the word “who.”
This is all in reference to the first line, which is one of the best first lines of anything in the English language:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed bymadness, starving hysterical naked,
By calling them great minds, you’re already expecting this to be some love letter to forgotten voices that time has passed by. Considering that the story is dedicated to his friend Carl Solomon, who had experience with mental health issues, there is plenty of subtext in the idea that the people he’s talking about aren’t from any college dorm room. They’re out there with missed opportunities, living on the street, and wasting away in a public that has no time for what they have to say.
For an Eisenhower Administration commentary, it’s one of the most striking ways to look at the era. The people that Ginsberg considers being great are those who are given the most morbid detail, of a certain rejection that has no direction in life. Then again, it’s more than sympathizing with those that he’s personally spoken to. It’s a commentary on something that we don’t really associate with 1950s Americana. It’s something where these people are beaten, lacking the care that they need in order to realize their true potential.
Does “Howl” need to have Part I be six pages long? To be honest, this is all stuff that clearly meant something to Ginsberg, and he needed to get it out there with such a burning passion. Every story mattered and these people deserved just as much to be treated as humane. I don’t know if everything is true, though he claims at one point that “this actually happened.” Still, you’re overwhelmed by every new passage, finding its unending pace to be reflective of the fact that this problem just keeps going on. What are we going to do about it? We’re supposed to feel uncomfortable. It’s supposed to spark change as Ginsberg captures his love and affection for these people.
Because they’re in “Howl,” they have been immortalized. This is like Victor Hugo trying to capture 19th century France in “Les Misérables,” only in a much shorter span. With every noun and adjective, a picture is expanded and it becomes more than a single flaw in the system. It’s a major one, howling in the street as drug addicts, homosexuals, and the mentally ill all are abused. The language choice may be jarring, but all of it is sincere to the extent that “Howl” still feels vibrant 65 years later. His reference to nudity and gay sex may have landed him in a famous obscenity trial, but it’s finding the sparse love in a harsh society.
Comparatively, Part II, and Part III are shorter. In fact, the punctuation becomes far more abundant, with Part II referencing Moloch as this demon who is taking the souls of his friends. He references jailhouses, armies, and congress. He is creating a symbolic picture of something. The experimental form is a way to slow down, allowing the point to be more emphasized and for the audience to understand how Ginsberg is framing his argument. By the end, he comments directly on his relationship with Solomon, including “where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets.”
It’s all a perverse vision and one that has internal punctuation that is a whole lot of fun to read. It’s melodic, capturing a mix of patriotism and sarcasm and Ginsberg creates this picture of America that is greatly flawed but has some artificiality to it. “Howl” is said to be a poem that pays tribute to the centennial of Walt Whitman’s first version of “Leaves of Grass.” Of course, this one is much more vulgar and critical. Still, Ginsberg wasn’t wrong in citing Whitman as a pivotal figure, if just because both were bisexual men who expressed themselves in their own unique ways.
I’ll admit that coming to “Howl” is to risk being overwhelmed and missing the point. If you’re not ready to grapple with dark and dreary imagery, it may just come across as an angry college kid wanting attention. Instead, it’s a love letter to the marginalized, slowly going through the bigger picture to find the heart of why it matters to Ginsberg.
If it wasn’t long enough, there’s even a Footnote, which overstates the obvious. Having already discussed his relationship with Solomon, Ginsberg concludes that everything that he’s talked about is holy, even citing his Beat Poet brethren in all of the repetition reminiscent of religious imagery. It’s a surreal blending of everything, evoking sympathy and trying to make you care about everything that he has just said.
Well, do you?
As June 2020 begins to conclude, I am thinking about what this month has meant in the bigger picture. It was supposed to just be Gay Pride Month, as this great celebration of the LGBT community’s best achievements. However, it was also a significant time of the Black Lives Matter, who started with protests for George Floyd, but also came to include unfortunate victims like Breonna Taylor and Robert Fuller. The name keeps growing, and it has really opened a worthwhile discussion about the cultural value of just ignoring the negative things in life.
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I don’t know a lot about Ginsberg personally, but I imagine that 65 years ago, he was wanting to have that conversation in a way that forced us to deal with them head-on. That is why “Howl” still feels vital. Even beyond the world of poetry, it has an urgency that you recognize in its form. Maybe some won’t appreciate its gargantuan length, but hopefully, the message will be loud and clear as a form of expression. This wasn’t Ginsberg speaking for one person. This wasn’t just about Carl Solomon. This was about hundreds, maybe even thousands, of great minds whose voices we’ll never hear because of their oppression.
Which is something that feels relevant in June 2020. We’re still trying to have these voices be heard, and to have a debate that will hopefully lead to positive change. In some ways, it has, in others not so much. Still, it’s important that those who want to see the world realign in something just and fair, they need to continue to howl. Howl until they listen and make a difference. Whether or not you agree with every line Ginsberg wrote, you definitely understand his frustration, which continues to echo all this time later. Keep the fight alive as best you can, and hopefully you too will echo through the analogs of history.
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