Howl: A Graphic Novel

Bought for class. Item as described.
5 stars isn't about the content, but about the book arriving when it was supposed to and being the one pictured/undamaged.

I didn't end up reading it. Oops.

This is poetry everyone should read. I love this. It's inspiring and it changes the way you think about poetry after you're only taught about rhythm and rhyme from tea party republicans who think the only worthwhile poetry is in the Bible. This is beautiful.

While it is a convenient little booklet that contains good works by Ginsberg, I was insulted to discover that the publisher had censored Howl. Nowhere in this product description did they hint at this, and I am offended that I paid to have some prude's version of a great literary work. Be warned!

Beat Generation poetry. Obscene and profane, but is it great?

This book is introduced by Williams Carlos Williams, a far better poet, who really should have known better than to pass Ginsberg's rants off as poetry.

There is energy and youth evident in Howl, but there is also an abundance of hogwash and lies.

I got this little book because it kept being mentioned on several sources I was reading on Queer studies (more of a personal interest, as my professional research is not in this field) as one of the most influential gay male poems in the 20th century. I read it twice, the second time forcing myself to make sure I was actually feeling this way about the book: Honestly, how can you call this good poetry?

It has some good things: It is not apologetic at all because of the expression of gay love, what was probably quite a bold move for an artist in the American 1950s, and in some ways it does critic the conformist feeling of the era. So, I do understand that, if this was the first main stream poetry book to have been published with this message, that it is considered relevant, not necessarily for its quality, but for its boldness, and plainly for being the first.

On the other hand, there is no rhythm, no rhyme, it feels more like reading prose than poetry. Maybe it's because I was born on a completely different historical moment, but this book does not really evoke any meaningful feelings in me.

Beat Generation poetry. Obscene and profane, but is it great?

This book is introduced by Williams Carlos Williams, a far better poet, who really should have known better than to pass Ginsberg's rants off as poetry.

There is energy and youth evident in Howl, but there is also an abundance of hogwash and lies.

I got this little book because it kept being mentioned on several sources I was reading on Queer studies (more of a personal interest, as my professional research is not in this field) as one of the most influential gay male poems in the 20th century. I read it twice, the second time forcing myself to make sure I was actually feeling this way about the book: Honestly, how can you call this good poetry?

It has some good things: It is not apologetic at all because of the expression of gay love, what was probably quite a bold move for an artist in the American 1950s, and in some ways it does critic the conformist feeling of the era. So, I do understand that, if this was the first main stream poetry book to have been published with this message, that it is considered relevant, not necessarily for its quality, but for its boldness, and plainly for being the first.

On the other hand, there is no rhythm, no rhyme, it feels more like reading prose than poetry. Maybe it's because I was born on a completely different historical moment, but this book does not really evoke any meaningful feelings in me.

There are arguably three works that best exemplify Beat literature: Jack Kerouac's On the Road, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Alan Ginsberg's Howl. While all three of these works share a celebration of non-conformity and free expression, they also share a controversial journey to prominence. First published in 1956, Ginsberg's Howl is now widely considered to be a prophetic masterpiece, but it had to overcome censorship trials and obscenity charges before becoming one of the most widely read poems of the century. An epic raging against a dehumanizing society, Ginsberg declares his motivation in writing Howl to be:

"In publishing Howl, I was curious to leave behind after my generation an emotional time bomb that would continue exploding in U.S. consciousness, in case our military-industrial-nationalist complex solidified into a repressive police bureaucracy."

Howl is divided into three main parts with an additional footnote. Part I is "a lament for the Lamb in America with instances of remarkable lamb-like youths" and contains the most well-known passages of the poem. In it Ginsberg relates the regular lows and occasional triumphs of "the best minds of [his] generation", the outcasts - poets, artists, jazz musicians, junkies and the mentally ill - whose truth and beauty he felt was being crushed by an oppressive, conformist society.

Part II rails against the state of the machinery of civilisation, represented by the demonic Moloch, deeming it "the monster of mental consciousness that preys on the Lamb." For Ginsberg, mainstream society has - through war, politics and capitalism - sacrificed the heroes of Part I at Moloch's alter of homogenised modernity.

In Part III Ginsberg is addressing Carl Solomon - whom Ginsberg had met during a stay at a psychiatric hospital and to whom Howl is dedicated - directly, sympathising with his mental demons and stating that "I'm with you in Rockland." With his concentration back on his friends and inspiration, Part III is far less bleak in tone than Part II as Ginsberg allows his hope for the future of the "angel-headed hipsters" to begin to shine through.

The Footnote to Howl, contrary to the rest of the poem, is almost ecstatic in tone as Ginsberg uses "Holy!" as a mantra to assert that everything that exists is inherently holy and so both beautiful and worthwhile: "Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!"

Howl is hailed as being the first graphic novel to be published by Penguin Modern Classics although really it is more of an illustrated edition [picture book?] than a graphic novel in the traditional sense. Eric Drooker [friend and collaborator of Alan Ginsberg as well as author of Flood! A Novel in Pictures and Blood Song: A Silent Ballad] is responsible of the art of Howl and it's interesting to note that he is billed as having "animated" the book rather than having illustrated it. The reason for this, and no doubt the reason for the unusual graphic style of the book, is that the majority of Drooker's work that is used to illustrate the book comes from the animated sequences of the recent Howl film.

Illustrating Howl can't have been an easy business, but generally speaking Drooker's art resonates with Ginsberg's words and so Howl: A Graphic Novel does succeed in offering a new interpretation of the poem. While I do certainly prefer the more obviously hand-drawn and painted pages of the book to those in the clear CGI, screenshot style, the differing methods of illustration do mesh together pretty well. The biggest flaw in Howl: A Graphic Novel is not found in the art itself but rather in the way the poem has been rearranged to fit in with the artistic layout. Knowing the poem fairly well, the changes in rhythm due to the fragmenting of the run-on sentences of Howl to fit in with Drooker's `one page, one image' style seem rather jarring and do detract from the reading experience.

It's actually quite difficult to reach a final verdict on Howl: A Graphic Novel. Ginsberg's poem is still great, still relevant and deserves to reach as many readers as possible. The majority of Drooker's art is very good and fairly evocative. However, Howl was already rich in images and so the necessity of fragmenting it and then overlaying it on different images is rather lost on me. Howl: A Graphic Novel is an interesting attempt at illustrating a powerful poem, but it is perhaps not the best way to present Ginsberg's work.

Even after 50 years Ginsberg must be read. Even after 50 years Ginsberg has insights to share. Even after 50 years his poetic flow of urban anger resonates, echoing round and round in our noggins.
My favorite poem in the world is 'In the Baggage Room at Greyhound'. It tells of his last night as a loader, the guy who put the bags on the bus for the passengers along with the huge variety of freight, sent cheaply to places near and far. If the bus is going somewhere anyway, it costs nothing extra to ship a package. Total profit.
"...Hundreds of radiators all at once for Eureka,
crates of Hawaiian underwear,
rolls of posters scattered over the Peninsula, nuts for Sacramento,
one human eye for Napa,
an aluminum box of human blood for Stockton
and a little red package of teeth for Calistoga----"
This is great stuff, all the more so for me because I once worked for a year in that same place, loading the same busses withe the same nuts and teeth. Ginsberg has a way about him.

This book intrinsically fails because it is an illustration of the poem. Now that would be valuable if so billed. A master poem with illustrations. But it is not the graphic novel format. That is important to me. As an artist I always considered illustration craft an adjunct and not integral to the content. There are a few masterful illustrated books such as William Blake and Gustave Dore.

The graphic novel format requires integration between images and narrative or text. They form a whole which cannot be seperated.
Unfortunately, one is better off just reading a text version of Howl, and focusing on the language and their imagination's response.

Having Drooker's illustrations directing your interpretation of the poem are limiting, not integral or expanding of the text. In fact they distract from the text, undermining the poem. This publication is a misnomer and the text of Howl is stronger without these subjective, personal Eric Drooker illustrations. The two could easily be seperated because they never integrate. Pretty illustrations, but that is all. This result fails and the poem is stronger without the distractions of the inferior illustrations.

Here we are granted invaluable insight into the making of "Howl." We see the visions and revisions of Allen Ginsberg, America's poetic enfant terrible, as he composes what is indisputably -- even if the more prim among us recoil from the vividness -- a literary masterpiece. We see his drafts, the marginal corrections, the typescript itself as it evolves into the high-powered dynamo that we know so well.

The annotations to Ginsberg's more recondite references are of immense worth to the reader, who can now situate this poem properly in its literary and temporal climate. Also of vital importance is the small anthology of "precursor texts": the great poems of the past which inspired Ginsberg as he wrote his chef-d'oeuvre -- Whitman, Lorca, Shelley, William Carlos Williams, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Hart Crane, and even old Christopher Smart!

We learn from this variorum edition that Ginsberg's prosody is always controlled, never to the point of hampering his freedom of expression, but always with an eye to enhancing the "diction galvanized against inertia."

Included also is a brief history of the legal battles surrounding "Howl" (in the sedate 1950s, the obscenity caused much startlement!), and a small sampling of the immediate critical reaction to Ginsberg's most famous work. John Hollander's review fascinates, even though it is a hostile reaction -- Hollander's shamefaced pentimento, taking back some of his opprobrium, is appended.

This volume will be of especial appeal to Ginsbergians, to champions of the Beat movement in literature, and to anyone who is fascinated by mid-20th century American literary history.

I have always loved poetry and even though I have never been a great fan of Allen Ginsberg’s poems I was familiar with his most famous poem “Howl.” I thought it would be interesting to see how his poem would be created into a graphic novel. For those in this generation who know nothing about Allen Ginsberg; he was part of what was known back in the early 1950s as a beat poet. He was friends other poets and writers like Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and William Burroughs. These writers explored their innermost dark fantasies in their books and poems. At that time these writers were very popular among college students and intellectuals.

I never was and never will be a great fan of free-verse poetry; nevertheless, I found this graphic novel (Animated by Eric Drooker) version of “Howl” beautifully illustrated. It also reveals the dark and brooding subject matter of poem “Howl.” This 224 page volume is organized into five parts.

Part one covers “Who.” Part two illustrates his idea of big business in “Moloch.” Part three he explains “Rockland.” The final part there is a footnote to Howl. If you are a Ginsberg fan and enjoy his poetry you should check out this graphic novel version.

Rating: 3 Stars. Joseph J. Truncale (Author: Haiku Moments: How to read, write and enjoy haiku).

Drooker’s animations are breathtaking, and I enjoyed seeing the way he interpreted Ginsberg’s words. Making this poem into a major motion picture was an ambitious enterprise; I have to wonder how that went. I must commend Drooker for getting to know Allen Ginsberg. Some reviewers have commented that this is not the right way to present the poem, but I can't believe that a personal friend of Ginsberg would have misrepresented his work. Ginsberg would have loved this graphic novel.

HOWL seemed a great deal more significant when I read it in college. Even though Ginsberg causes readers to think about the state of present society, I feel his words are somewhat time-locked. Readers can’t know all the people and places he references. It’s not even as accessible to me as it was a few years ago... I do think this is an important work, but it can’t mean to me what it did to readers a generation or two ago.

In February 2012, the book discussion group at the LGBT Center in NYC had a large-ish group, many of whom had read the poem before and were re-reading it after a couple of years, but many of whom were reading it for the first time. Even those who had just read it the day of the meeting we able to comment on its surreal and powerful effect.

Many readers thought that "Howl" was dark and disturbing, the hallucinations were too strong and too drug induced. But others thought that (as Ginsberg intended) "Howl" is an ultimately uplifting poem, full of praise for the youth who were its market and who would carry the poem into the future and make it as famous as it is.

Some of the readers had a "facsimile" edition showing the careful and multiple edits that Ginsberg made to bring the spontaneous-seeming poem to life. A few others had done research and realized that all the events of the poem (especially those in Part I) were based on real events: Ginsberg in a mental institution, Jack Kerouac driving across country, Carl Soloman (to whom the poem is dedicated) introducing Ginsberg to a rich full life both in the mental institution, lovers and sex and drugs and poetry readings and visions and explicit gay sex (in 1955! more than a decade before Stonewall! !) and catalogs of people and events (like Walt Whitman) and a world of knowledge and mystic thought (like T.S. Eliot).

But the highlight of the meeting was Joan, a 93-year-old resident of the village and poet who knew Ginsberg ("the sweetest man I ever met") and Kerouac ("what a drunk") and told us stories of her meetings with all the beat poets. Wow! I was blown away. She was a major surprise, completely entertaining, and was able to point out a couple of things that only a contemporary of Ginsberg know: In 1955, the horrors of the Holocaust were still coming to light. Ginsberg, as a non-soldier and as a Jewish author, was overwhelmed by the stories that were emerging. Some of these images made it into "Howl." And the H Bomb was still very real and an overwhelming threat in 1955. The image of the bomb threads its way through the poem in ways that may not be immediately obvious to contemporary readers.

More on Ginsberg-friend Joan: Interview with a Poet: [...]

This was an amazing meeting where EVERYONE learned something powerful about the beat poets and the area around The Center in the 1950s.

Looking for one book, I found this slender volume that I believe I bought at the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco more than 30 years ago. I haven't thought of Ginsberg much--he's not among those poets I'll pick up now and again. However, as nostalgia for the '60s is gathering with the force of a tsunami, I've been seeing more and more photographs of the man in the company of this or that celebrated individual.

One could be kind and call him the "Beat Zelig," or unkind, and judge him as a committed careerist. I met him a few times in the '80s and early '90s, never liked him or took him seriously. Nevertheless, as I had the book in my hands, I thought I'd read "Howl" and its companion pieces and see if I came away thinking more highly of the man, his craft and his vision.

My short review: "Howl" is a little overwrought and self regarding. It is a work by a man who knew what he was doing, which while industrious is not particularly poetic. Ginsberg has less Blake or Whitman in him than a hip Robert Frost, by which I means he wants to be both accessible and popular. Read "America" and you'll understand what I mean by this comparison. It's not a bad poem but utterly contrived.

Writing this, I'm happy to concede that the poems "A Supermarket in California" and "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound" are excellent, really gems, and deserve to be read today. These poems have something important to say, and say it beautifully, unlike "Howl" which seems a self-conscious "Song of Myself" addressed to America's post war, increasingly disaffected, youth. In the end, more a Yawn than a Howl.

While Allen Ginsberg's three-part, long poem "Howl" is borne of a particular moment in American history --- the Joseph McCarthy congressional witch hunts; the cold war with Russia (which includes, to a degree, the Korean War); social and racial unrest --- it is still possible to read and appreciate the work without the context of the time. The staccato beats of the stanzas, the raw and potent language, as well as the cross-country travels in the poem are all worth exploring in detail outside of the realm of Ginsberg's cultural experience. With powerful imagery, specific American locales, and references to John Milton, William Blake, Neal Cassady and the Bible, the 1956 poem ushered in not only the age of Beat poetry, but a lasting piece of fury, compassion and madness.

The opening line, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" sets in motion a seemingly endless list of unnamed, but mostly male, people whom the narrator apparently knew who lost their sanity in the streets, subways, back alleys and bars of America. Written as a single, run-on sentence, the rhythm scheme is structured as mini-tales, each passage of a new, mind-blowing experience beginning simply with "who," connecting back to that first line of the poem. The sense of dislocation within familiar terrain is the theme repeated throughout, with places in the heartland like Laredo, Texas and Arkansas as sinister and terrifying as Chicago and New York City. The people of the narrator's generation come from and travel to all points on the U.S. map, but share the common states of sorrow and confusion, unable to feel grounded within landscapes that no longer hold the same security and dependency that they once did. When the "angelheaded hipsters [...] / [...] bare their brains to Heaven under the El" and "[drink] turpentine in Paradise Alley," the America that once made sense is transformed into a jumble of seedy and depressed places where screaming at God, poisoning oneself, and having meaningless s*x for an almighty, capitalistic dollar is the current norm.

Time, space, eternity, the universe and Plato are invoked throughout the narrator's journey across America, allowing Ginsberg to delve into the big questions asked by man, albeit without attempting to directly answer any of them. He is ambitious in his reachings, detailing the concerns and experiences of an entire generation, his only judgments coming in the form of labeling the various acts performed as the actions of an insane group of people. He then follows the list of his generation's misdeeds with a section devoted to Moloch, invoking the biblical Canaanite who also shows himself in poems by Coleridge and Milton. The third and final section addresses Carl Solomon, a real-life friend to Ginsberg, to whom the poem is dedicated. It continues the societal course of madness to its logical conclusion, with Solomon in a Rockland, N.Y. mental hospital receiving treatment for the destruction of his, the best, mind.

Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlenghetti, Neal Cassady and the rest of the beats blazed a path across the country in the 50's from San Francisco to Denver to New York with all sorts of stops in between (to include Idaho of all places) and one of the real gems they left behind in Ginsberg's beautiful tome to madness and freedom, "Howl." This is perhaps some of the best language coming out of twentieth century American poetry. Its a nouveau re-creation of Walt Whitman jacking up the language benzedrine fueled but coming out on the other end not so much as a imitation but as some wholly new, exciting, and electric.
I bought this book from the City Lights bookstore, Columbus Avenue, Little Italy, San Francisco. The bookstore and press started up by the beat Lawrence Ferlinghetti where there were wild at night readings. I'd recommend it for the experience, but if you aren't in local proximity of Baghdad by the Bay, the very next best thing is getting it right here on the store. It's pocket portable which is an important thing allowing you to bring poetry out where it was meant to be, into the world...carried in a backpack on hikes, carried in a book bag into the city, carried in, well a pocket, "dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix."
It's a beautiful book with beautiful language. Don't be slighted by the critics, make up your mind for yourself. Just listen..."I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...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."

I reread this little book before attempting to review it. I remembered that it was a mad mantra of transcendent power from the heart of hell, but I didn't remember how nondated it was. This work is fresher and more relevant than 99% of what passes for poetry today. How can something last nearly 50 years without going stale or becoming trite? How can it be even more real now? Maybe it is because Ginsberg ripped it live, screaming, and bleeding from a place beyond time and beyond space. He tore it from the living bowels of MOLOCH itself and showed it to HIM. After all, what does divine madness know of time?

This poem is transcendence itself. It demonstrates that when you plunge into the deepest pit of hell it either kills you, or perhaps it burns out your insides so that you become a soulless zombie, OR you transcend it and rise howling to become a Mad Poet Saint who can truely encompass the Sacred in the Profane.

Read this poem, and the others like America, A Supermarket in California, Sunflower Sutra, Wild Orphan, and In Back of the Real. It's almost frightening how relevant to daily life it is. If you didn't know it, you would never guess that it was written in the 50's. Of course Ginsberg does invoke, holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space the fourth dimension, in the Footnote. Maybe that's why it's timeless. As Cassady used to say, we know time, yes, we know time....

I wish I would have been there for that first public reading in San Fran with Kerouac running around the audience passing the wine jug. On all the planes, the Gods themselves must have jumped back in shock as a flaming monkeywrench of living poetry was jammed through the spokes of the great quivering meat wheel of conception....

"Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!"
"where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worm of the senses"
"watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?"
"to think at the sun"
"You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!"
"Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!"
"...nor me looking around at the horrible dream..."
"...and a soiled dry center cotton tuft like a used shaving brush that's been lying under the garage for a year."

A small selection of Ginsberg's being that shot out at me when I read Howl. Wow. What a beautiful, enraged, adoring, curious, imaginative, pensive, wonderous, transcendent, sweet, observant, sensitive collection of poems this is.

Howl is a brilliant imagining of a generation of souls careening through existence, full of action and movement. The famous opening line, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked..." sets off a force of vivid description and incredible depth. Howl continues through the devious Moloch, to rest in Rockland where his love laid. A Supermarket in California is sweet understanding, peaceful and simple in public. In the other poems live the Sun's power, life exposed in the presense of dead flowers and the baggage of life. In Song, the most gorgeous of the collection, love's force is bowed down to. And in America Ginsberg asks questions that almost 50 years later I wonder on, and wish for answers to.

This is a classic little book. Full of infinite beauty and life. Something I can return to over and over.

_I reread this little book before attempting to review it. I remembered that it was a mad mantra of transcendent power from the heart of hell, but I didn't remember how nondated it was. This work is fresher and more relevant than 99% of what passes for poetry today. How can something last nearly 50 years without going stale or becoming trite? How can it be even more real now? Maybe it is because Ginsberg ripped it live, screaming, and bleeding from a place beyond time and beyond space. He tore it from the living bowels of MOLOCH itself and showed it to HIM. After all, what does divine madness know of time?

This poem is transcendence itself. It demonstrates that when you plunge into the deepest pit of hell it either kills you, or perhaps it burns out your insides so that you become a soulless zombie, OR you transcend it and rise howling to become a Mad Poet Saint who can truely encompass the Sacred in the Profane.

_Read this poem, and the others like America, A Supermarket in California, Sunflower Sutra, Wild Orphan, and In Back of the Real. It's almost frightening how relevant to daily life it is. If you didn't know it, you would never guess that it was written in the 50's. Of course Ginsberg does invoke, holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space the fourth dimension, in the Footnote. Maybe that's why it's timeless. As Cassady used to say, we know time, yes, we know time....

_I wish I would have been there for that first public reading in San Fran with Kerouac running around the audience passing the wine jug. On all the planes, the Gods themselves must have jumped back in shock as a flaming monkeywrench of living poetry was jammed through the spokes of the great quivering meat wheel of conception....

Howl, And Other Poems-Allen Ginsberg *****

When originally released in the 1950's Howl was one of the most contraversial works in literature up to that point even rivaling that of Ulysses. Filled with shocking imagry and what some may concider to be distasteful wording and dipictions of overt homosexuality and non-conformity along side excessive drug use and things of that nature. The author as well as other poets were taken to court on the subject matter of the poem was obscene, which it was latter ruled not to be.

Many will tell you in todays world that Ginsberg as well as all the other Beat poets were overrated and hyped up to be something that they really were not, well this is all a matter of opinion but that opinion is just wrong.

Regardless of whether the beats were 'hyped' and if this poem had not been taken to court there is no way it would have been this popular but that does not howeve mean that it would be any less powerful and well written.

So in the end you must read Ginsberg for your self and form your own opinion. But most of the time people who read his poems agree that he is one of the best, and while Howl is not his best work, it is truly a powerful poem non the less.

Allen Ginsberg's epic poem, Howl, says so much about American society that it cannot be ignored or simplified. Ginsberg's views on America are still considered unorthodox and radical, but his observations both in the Hedonistic underground in the Baby Boomer-Leave It To Beaver 1950s, and his mentally ill friend Carl Solomon are as poignant as any poem written now, and represent a diminished sense of innocence in American culture, which predated feminism, the sexual revolution, AIDS, Reaganomics, ENRON, and even the full blown massacre of the Vietnam War. Very few poets have made an impact in writing now, but to me, Allen Ginsberg is the greatest poet of the last century, and easily had an impact on many writers today.

I reread this little book before attempting to review it. I remembered that it was a mad mantra of transcendent power from the heart of hell, but I didn't remember how nondated it was. This work is fresher and more relevant than 99% of what passes for poetry today. How can something last nearly 50 years without going stale or becoming trite? How can it be even more real now? Maybe it is because Ginsberg ripped it live, screaming, and bleeding from a place beyond time and beyond space. He tore it from the living bowels of MOLOCH itself and showed it to HIM. After all, what does divine madness know of time?
This poem is transcendence itself. It demonstrates that when you plunge into the deepest pit of hell it either kills you, or perhaps it burns out your insides so that you become a soulless zombie, OR you transcend it and rise howling to become a Mad Poet Saint who can truely encompass the Sacred in the Profane.
Read this poem, and the others like America, A Supermarket in California, Sunflower Sutra, Wild Orphan, and In Back of the Real. It's almost frightening how relevant to daily life it is. If you didn't know it, you would never guess that it was written in the 50's. Of course Ginsberg does invoke, holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space the fourth dimension, in the Footnote. Maybe that's why it's timeless. As Cassady used to say, we know time, yes, we know time....
I wish I would have been there for that first public reading in San Fran with Kerouac running around the audience passing the wine jug. On all the planes, the Gods themselves must have jumped back in shock as a flaming monkeywrench of living poetry was jammed through the spokes of the great quivering meat wheel of conception....

Ginsberg is both tragic and dynamic, a lyrical genius, con man extraordinaire, and probably the single greatest influence on American poetical voice since Whitman. So said Dylan Thomas, another lyrical genius whose works like Ginsbergs are also best read aloud. Preferably through a megaphone. The opening sequence of Howl not only burns itself into the brain but marks an American era in which poetry was not a useless profession but rather a game changer in culture and politics:

"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 machin-
ery 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 tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas 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, burn-
ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall..."

Howl makes a good Beat set with On the Road by Kerouac and Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg is quite possibly one of the greatest American epics ever written. With its nightmarish violent and sexual imagery this will last forever. Let me just tell you if your new to Ginsberg (which I am not)I would recommend reading Reality Sandwiches or Kaddish first; if the overtly homosexual imagery in Howl doesn't bother you. Reality Sandwiches is a bit more toned down than Howl although in my opinion not better. Ginsberg's epic is a psychological drug induced (Ginsberg wrote Howl while under marijuana's influence) head trip into the minds of his fellow fallen hipsters and junkies. It is about a howl of defeat and a stench of death. If you are a beginning writer and\or wish to write w\more freedom I highly recommend picking this up not only for enjoyment but also for a style book of sorts because Howl shows how to free onesself in the literary sense (trust me I'm a published poet and have been reading Ginsberg for awhile he is one of my main influences). The first part (the actual poem Howl is divided into 3 not including holy, holy)is one long sentence never utilizing a period until the end. I could write a whole essay on Ginsberg but I'll leave you with the man, the myth, the legend; just pick up his work if poetry interests you and definently pick up Howl if you are not too sensitized.
"...the mad man bum and angel beat in time; unknown, yet putting down what might be left to say in time come after death..."

Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" was probably the dividing line between two Americas, two generations, two sexualities, two cultures. He was of course indicted and arrested and this poem barred from publication - of course again making it sell a lot more copies eventually - but in a way he was America's first great modern poet. The first line became a sort of countercultural national mantra:

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked"

"Howl" presents a view of contemporary society, placing a source of human woe within human consciousness and perception. In his poem, Ginsberg uses the word "Moloch," for the condition of the mind. The narrator declares" Mental Moloch!"... Moloch who name is the Mind!" According to Ginsberg, we are born in a state of "natural ecstasy" but Moloch "enter's the soul early". He pushes for an emergence from the belly of "Moloch," or the monster of corrupt institutions that devours us, "bashe[s]" and eats "up our brains and imaginations."

One of my favorite poems of all time and an absolute must read.

Ginsberg, an American icon of poetry, delivers his full capacity in this short collection of poems. "A Supermarket in California" portrays a place where famous poets of past generations are shopping in convenience as they alienate Ginsberg and each other in their yielding to technology and progress.
HOWL is full of unrealized cravings for something that never came. Ginsberg relates to his reader that instead of satisfaction at ideals being realized, he must find contentment merely in his own "nakedness."
It's a stellar glimpse into a genius of words that has come through our times. It is a short read that any lover of words will appreciate.

Ginsberg's "Howl" is a raging, vibrant, dirty, sleepy and phosphorescent, as it captures the grime, the delight and the sway of American life. It is a gripping piece that thrusts the reader into the heat of the city, the purr of the suburbs and the spray of popular culture. It is one of the most remarkable products of the Beat generation, possesing the all-encompassing sprawl of Whitman and the raw cultural reflection of Morrison whil creating its own unique voice. It is a dynamic, raw, and beautiful representation of America, stuffed with discord, sweetness and the gorgeous raucous of Americn culture. It is a poetic counterpart to Keroac's narrative and a modern rendition of Whitman's "Song of Myself" as it bustles the reader on a fantastic journey accross America, diggin in crevices, moving through city streets and sitting on kitchen counters.
It sings, in free verse, the soul of America.

the descritption parallels kerouac yet with his humbleness describing friends foes and hardships. painting with words instead of a brush. Compleing poem for anyone, the homosexual overtones are immesible by its genius. no wonder why he was such an inspiration to all he came in contact with. Truly he motivated artist such as Burroughs Cassady and kerouac. I am glad i bought it so i can be inspired time after time. thanks Ginsberg rucksack warrior

Mr.Drooker's work captures Allen's words in every flicker, every word, ever frame. From the smoldering smoke of the cigarette's glowing ember to the haunted walls of Rockaway, Mr.Drooker takes us along a visual orgasm of forests,alleyways and rooftops as the words of Howl turn with every new page. This book is a masterpiece to capitalize ANY beat generation fans soul instantly! This book adorns one of the book shelves in my den proudly. There is also a movie for this book complete with Mr. Drooker's animation as used in the making of this book.

the descritption parallels kerouac yet with his humbleness describing friends foes and hardships. painting with words instead of a brush. Compleing poem for anyone, the homosexual overtones are immesible by its genius. no wonder why he was such an inspiration to all he came in contact with. Truly he motivated artist such as Burroughs Cassady and kerouac. I am glad i bought it so i can be inspired time after time. thanks Ginsberg rucksack warrior

Mr.Drooker's work captures Allen's words in every flicker, every word, ever frame. From the smoldering smoke of the cigarette's glowing ember to the haunted walls of Rockaway, Mr.Drooker takes us along a visual orgasm of forests,alleyways and rooftops as the words of Howl turn with every new page. This book is a masterpiece to capitalize ANY beat generation fans soul instantly! This book adorns one of the book shelves in my den proudly. There is also a movie for this book complete with Mr. Drooker's animation as used in the making of this book.

I remeber first reading Allen Ginsbergs Howl one night on the Sunset Strip it seemed to explode across the night like a star which everyone looks at and gos Aww... He was the maestro of eternal prose which set fire to the American continet and spread across the land setting fire to conventional prose and structure by calling old poetmen to account and crossing the lines that had been drawn. He reads like a beautiful juxtaposition of Shelly, Blake, Rimbaud, Baudilerre and Whitman. His book will open the etneral doors of heaven and set free the thoughts of anyone waiting to listen the eternal prose and beginning should flow down New Yorks Greenwich Village across a continent that is all land and people to the doors of his cottage in San Fransisco rising and stagggering like an angel over tennements and howling '...I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by maddness starving hysterical naked dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinary of night...' A master A Teacher and the heir of Whitmans Fabled dammed.. 'If your not safe then neither am I'

Ginsberg is perhaps an "important" poet, and I admit that "Howl" has a certain frothy energy. But aside from the oceanic rhetoric, there's not much in these poems; it's the kind of poetry that no doubt sounds great when recited before a crowd, but doesn't really bear much scrutiny. I was tired of hearing about the best minds of Allen Ginsberg's generation long before the bombastic, repetitive verses of the title poem came to a close. A few of the additional poems included, though, are decent enough, and manage to communicate a sense of the transcendent in the stuff of everyday life.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of self-appointed critics who, in order to try to convince others of their own individuality and intellectual honesty, feel the need to let everyone know that they consider Ginsberg (and every other so-called "Beat" for that matter) to be an overrated hack and more of a celebrity than a poet and blah, blah, blah, blah. It is true that Ginsberg's style has been imitated by far too many lesser poets who, obviously, don't posess anything close to the man's talent and it is also true that there's an equal number of people who claim to love Ginsberg but have never actually bothered to sit down and really read anything beyond the first page of "Howl." Inetivably, one wishes that all of these presumed literary critics (regardless of where they stand) would just shut up, read the poems for themselves, and form their own opinions regardless of what the current trend is. For if they did, they would discover a very talented poet who, even if he occasionally seemed to be repeating and parodying himself as he got older, still created some of the strongest American poetry of the latter 20th Century. While Kaddish remains his strongest work of poetry, his much more famous poem "Howl" still carries more of a raw, exhilirating anger. Written to be read aloud, Howl is basically a cry against the conformity of 1950s America but the anger found within still reverberates almost half a century later. Certainly, his vision of a drug-abusing community of outcasts wandering along darkened city streets remains as relavent as ever. Like any apocalyptic poem, it can be credibly charges that at times, Howl is superficial and there's not much beyond shocking images. I don't necessarily disagree with this -- Howl, for instance, doesn't carry the same emotional weight as Ginsberg's more personal Kaddish. However, if Howl is all image, they're still very powerful images. Would I feel the same passion for this poem if I didn't know the much-reported stories of Ginsberg's "best minds of my generation destroyed by madness?" In short, if the beats hadn't been so celebrated by the media, would this poem have the same power? Honestly, who cares? The fact of the matter is that yes, the beats were celebrated (or hyped depending on your point of view) by the media and Howl is a powerful poem. All other considerations are simply unimportant doublespeak. As for the other poems contained with Howl, they are a mixed batch but all have their value. Some are a little too obviously based on Whitman (much as countless other poets based too much on Ginsberg) but they all have their points of interest. Its obvious that none of them were chosen to overshadow Howl but to a certain extent, that works very well. After the rage and madness of Howl, its good to have these other poems to "come down" with.
With all this talk of anger and rage, I should also mention that Ginsberg's sense of joy is a component of his poetry that too many critics either fail to mention or ignore all together. Whatever you may think of his talent, it is obvious that Ginsberg loved poetry and found his greatest happiness through the discovery of new forms of poetic expressions. For all of its apocalyptic ragings, Howl never grows shrill because one can sense the fact that Ginsberg had a lot of fun composing (and performing) the poem. A few years before his own death, I was lucky enough to attend one of Allen Ginsberg's readings. Though he read mostly from Kaddish and his shorter poems (perhaps, understandably, trying to make sure we understood he actually had written other poems beyond the one everyone kept citing), he also read a bit from Howl. He proved to be an amazing reader, going over these words he must have seen over a million times past, with an almost childlike enthusiasm and joy. As he did this, I looked out at the others in the audience and basically, I saw rows and rows of identical looking "intellectuals," all posessing the same dead-serious expression on their face, nodding at each relavent point as if to make sure everyone understood that they understood genius. Contrasting their forced seriousness with Ginsberg's uninhibited joy, I realized that there was only one true tragesy as far as Allen Ginsberg was concerned and that was the fact that his self-appointed acolytes always took him for more seriously then he did himself. To consider Howl and Ginsberg without joy is like considering language without words.

More that just a book of timeless ingenious poetry. It is a response to America during the late forties and early fifties, it sums up the ideas and feelings of a generation of young americans beat by the remains of a world war. It is the most influential work on the American poetical voice Walt Whitman. There will never be another poet like Allen. Buddha, Vishnu, God, may you rest his soul.

Five stars for the poem, one star for the graphics and typography. This book is patently NOT the way to read this poem. Howl is momentum; Howl is movement; Howl is a wall of words that knocks you down and ties you up. This book was full of stills plucked from an animation and breaks up the wall of words over hundreds of pages. Both choices disservice both the poem and animation. The poem ends up broken into pieces. The pictures are indistinct and poorly composed, because they were never meant to be stills. The art itself borders on cheesy, with characters firmly in the uncanny valley and visual metaphor that is just too easy.

This book is a dead thing. If you want a better experience, print the poem out in its entirety on a roll of butcher paper and read it out loud to yourself by candlelight in an empty room.

This is the most important long poem in 20th century American poetry, a must. You can't talk about american poetry without reading it a few times. For me Ginsberg is the poet of "Howl" and "Kaddish", nothing else he wrote ever came closer to these two long poems.

This is one of the greatest collection of words ever printed under one cover. The poems around Howl are also some of Ginsberg's best, some are:"A Supermarket in California", the second most anthologized Ginsberg poem, "An Asphodel", a beautiful little (short) love poem about what i believe to be a tulup or a dafodil (look it up, tho, it has symbolic meaning) and "Song" which is a very sincere and beautiful poem about love that made me cry it was so simply powerful. It is terrific to have this collection of poems in a small, nice-looking book; its portable. You can turn to any page and find something extraordinary.

HOWL defies comparison with anything. Ginsberg cracks open the mind of America--while riding on an hallucinogenic roller coaster--and takes a studied look inside. The style is incredible, pyrotechnical, it transcends words themselves, taking on the characteristics of a hieroglyph. Using all elements of the profane, he creates something holy. Should be required reading in all bars, bowling alleys and elementary schools.

Even critics who are sympathetic to Ginsberg, such as David Perkins in his "History of Modern Poetry," admit that he was a one-hit wonder. T. S. Eliot pointed out, speaking of Milton, that a poet can be great but still exercise a bad influence on those who follow him. I myself, speaking of "Howl," would use words very similar to those Tennyson used in describing "Sordello" -- I liked only the first line of it. There are better free verse poets than Ginsberg, just as there are better critics of America than Ginsberg.

This book of Ginsberg's poems are an essential for the Ginsberg reader.

This has "America" and "Howl", 2 of Ginsberg's best poems. This little book of poems was also on a list of banned literature for the contemplation it makes one ponder.