Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets - No. 4)

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!

I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this, but I can't figure out what's so great about Alan Ginsberg. Granted, no one had written like this before. He was a member in good standing of the beats and they were innovative and pumped new life into a genre that had come to be viewed in terms of it's outdated conventions. Yet, mostly the work gets to be tedious in its attempts to shock and draw attention to itself.

I respect this work the way I respect say... The Washington Monument. It's impressive that it's there, but at the same time there's not a lot to it once you've seen it.

I was very intrigued by the idea of creating a graphic novel of this poem. I still am; however I don't believe that this artist's style is a good match for this powerful poem.
The art is quite reminiscent of recent children's animation-- "Polar Bear Express" art and Howl are a very bad mix. Howl needs art that is explosive, colorful and frenetic. I know that this artist has worked on other Allen Ginsberg poems- I have never seen them and they could be great. Given the choice of reading this version of Howl or the City Lights pamphlet version- I would read the pamphlet in a heartbeat.

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....

Allen Ginsberg's poem "America" in the Howl collection is excellent. Ginsberg has been called the best post-1945 poet in America. I think that is certainly true of his poetry from the 1950s and '60s, if not later. It's funny that "Howl" was called obscene when first published and such a big fuss was made about it--drawn-out trial, etc. It really is one of the great works of poetry of the 20th century, in the same way that Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is of the previous century. What Ginsberg did with language was something radical, refreshing, hip and new, and his messages had great appeal to those disgusted with the Establishment and with various forms of social injustice. As you read Ginsberg, some of his poetical phrases can be hard to decipher, but for every obscure line the poem is often saved by the next line which is beautiful and crystal-clear. What he writes about in "Howl" is somewhat of a different world from ours, physically--a world of Dharma bums, hipsters, Jazz, Buddhism, Dadaism, Communism, etc... but emotionally, what he writes is very relevent to our times because his work is an attack on America's materialism and social complacency.

David Rehak

author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

Allen Ginsberg's Howl has long been one of my favorite poems. I like and admire the poem for various reasons; most of these reasons are related either to the particulars of the poem or to its technical aspects. As a poem, I find it to be a watershed work, both for the extent of its influence and its immense historical importance; therefore, I hope to be able to use it as a standard for my own writing and as a source of perpetual inspiration.

Reading and re-reading Howl is, for me, an enjoyable experience. For a first-time reader, the depth and sophistication of its imagery can seem staggering and even intimidating, but subsequent reads reveal something new each time. Unlike many poems, great or otherwise, Howl rewards re-reading. Much of the poem's complexity and appeal derive from its series of vivid, phantasmagoric portraits, or "chains of flashing images" as described in the Bob Dylan phrase that Ginsberg himself likes to quote. These images are described well and fully; they succeed in conjuring up particularly keen visions in the reader's mind. As Carl Solomon, Ginsberg's primary inspiration for the poem says, Ginsberg possesses a "great skill in describing the maze of thoughts of upset people and conveying them to the reader." By any account, the poem's vivid imagery is one of the keys to its phenomenal success and its immense power. In my own writing, I tend sometimes to veer too closely toward abstract composition without any grounding in concrete imagery; constantly referring back to Howl will, hopefully, steer me away from this tendency.

To me, one of the most noteworthy aspects of Howl is its mesmerizing use of the particular. Readers who are largely ignorant of Ginsberg's life, as I was when I first read the poem, will likely read all of the incidents catalogued in the first part of the poem as fictional creations of the author. However, as Ginsberg reveals in the "Author's Annotations" section of this edition, nearly all of the events depicted in Part I of the poem are based on real occurrences. Even the events that seem the most unlikely have their roots in reality; for example, one of Ginsberg's friends actually "walked all night with their shoes full of blood" (4), while another really "jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge... and walked away unknown and forgotten" (5). That these and many of the other events described in Part I actually happened is a definite surprise to me. Such surprise, no doubt, arises because of the manner in which Ginsberg relates the events in his poem - i.e., surrealistically - and also because it seems to have been written in a very spontaneous fashion, as will be mentioned later. Knowing the history behind the lines in the poem reveals to one how beautifully and successfully Ginsberg shows the beauty of the particular; he manages to take events that he knows of, some of them quite personal, and turn them into something universal. On the surface, such disparate and seemingly unrelated vignettes would appear to have little or no relevance to anyone other than Ginsberg and the others involved in them, but the poet admirably shows that this is far from being true. As hinted at in the Carl Solomon quote above, this is the true genius of Ginsberg's art. The thought of even attempting such a thing probably does not occur to many, and it certainly does not occur to me. In most of my writing, I typically do not even consider using particular events from my own life because they do not seem universally applicable; however, after reading Howl, I find this to be a false assumption. For me, then, Ginsberg's enlightening use of the particular can serve as a fountainhead of inspiration.

The famous long lines of Howl comprise, for me, another of the poem's attractive elements. I have always been partial to long lines in the poetry that I choose to read; I also tend to employ them in my own compositions. Ginsberg's lengthy lines, in particular, are flexible and graceful, as they serve several functions. First of all, they contribute greatly to Howl's sense of pacing; this becomes especially clear when one hears the poem read aloud. Secondly, they allow the poem to flow very smoothly; indeed, when read, the poem almost seems to take on a distinctive rhythm of its own. Few poets, of course, favor the long line; between Whitman and Ginsberg, precious few used it to their advantage. Ginsberg, on the other hand, not only uses the long line, but also is famous for doing so; his skillful deployment of the long line in Howl clearly demonstrates the technique's poetical vitality. Ginsberg has said that the whole of Howl was an experiment to see what can be done with the long line (163); in that case, it is most assuredly a successful experiment. Howl provides constant encouragement - and justification - for my own use of the long line when I sometimes have doubts about its usefulness.

I also admire Ginsberg's deft hand with tropes. In Howl, his use of the trope of anaphora stands out especially. All four parts of the poem have a word or phrase that starts out most of the lines - "who" in Part I, "Moloch!" in Part II, "I'm with you in Rockland" in Part III, and "Holy!" in the Footnote. The constant reiteration of these words and phrases is important to the pacing of the poem; they lend it a breakneck speed and a sense of cadence that is nearly hypnotic. As many fans of Howl well know, the poem truly comes alive only when one hears it read; these anaphoric phrases are one of the main reasons for this. Ginsberg also manages to come up with, through word association, several memorable phrases that seem contradictory or oxymoronic; the most famous of these, of course, is his "hydrogen jukebox" (3). I try to be aware of the tropes available to me when I write and to make good use of them; Howl remains a goldmine of inspiration.

When applying the poetics of Ginsberg, as displayed in Howl, to my own writing, probably the most important factor is Ginsberg's constant revision. The version of Howl that I read contains facsimiles of many early drafts of the poem, complete with Ginsberg's changes. The amount of changes that Ginsberg made in his poem from the first draft to the final one is staggering. I was very surprised by them, as I am sure other also are. The reason for this being that Howl appears to have been written in a very spontaneous manner, much like Kerouac's work. What looks like an astounding display of spontaneity in Howl is actually carefully controlled art. To be sure, the early versions of Howl are, in their basic essence, quite similar to the finished product; the power and beauty of the poem are already present in them. However, through his various changes and alterations, Ginsberg ended up with a poem superior to the one with which he started. The finished version is cleaner, more succinct, flows better, and reads better than the earlier versions. In short, Ginsberg, much to this writer's surprise, shows himself to be a meticulous but successful reviser. I hope to apply this fact to my own writing, because revision is one of my weak points. After scouring the various versions of Howl, though, I at least know that successful revision is possible; hopefully, I will be able to learn more about this delicate art from studying Ginsberg.

Many people view Howl as essentially a poem of protest, but Ginsberg himself has said that it is not meant to be viewed in this light alone. Armed with all the candor of truth, he declares of his poem that, "To call it a work of nihilistic rebellion would be to mistake it completely. Its force comes from positive `religious' belief and experience." What the poet says is true; Howl is not a hopeless, nihilistic lament. Instead, it is a hopeful (and very spiritual, in the non-traditional sense) howl from the wasteland of contemporary culture and society; it is the voice of one man who insists upon holding up a lucid torch of compassion and reason in a world full of oppressive darkness. One of Ginsberg's intentions with Howl was to, if possible, save the best minds of the next generation from being "destroyed by madness" (3). Still, the poem does contain protest elements, and these I particularly admire. Part I of the poem chronicles the unfortunate experiences of many of Ginsberg's hapless contemporaries; it shows the apathetic extremes that are possible when the world is a mere hollow shell that serves only to bring on malaise. It also reflects the fact that there has been more than one "Lost Generation." The inherent, even if implicit, protest in Part I against the mindlessness of the mainstream world is very powerful and piercing. Similarly, the second part of the poem attacks the source of many of the evils in society, the military-industrial complex. Ginsberg compares the problem identified by Eisenhower to Moloch, the fire god of the Canaanites; the former sends young, idealistic kids off to their deaths in pointless wars, whereas worship of the latter involved sacrificing children by fire. The protest elements of Howl, then, are incredibly powerful and striking, even if they are not essential to the poem's core sentiment. I frequently make use of protest methods in my own work, and successful examples such as Howl are a never-ending inspiration to me.

Lastly, I look upon Howl with admiration because of its sheer daring. The poem was, of course, highly controversial upon release; it even provoked a legal trial after having been dubbed obscene by legal authorities (Ginsberg 169). I can scarcely imagine the reactions of some of the more conservative readers of the 1950's to the poem; after all, this was the decade of utopian suburbia and Leave It To Beaver. Some lines seem daring even now, as the fact that I cannot even quote them under the store rules attests. I admire Ginsberg's resolve - whether it was bravery, mere bravado, or whatever else - to publish and distribute his poem in the midst of such raving censorship and extreme prejudice. These things, of course, are still occurring, but the fact that Howl was published in the 1950's make the event even more noteworthy. With the publication of Howl, Ginsberg boldly announced himself to the world as an atheistic, homosexual Jewish Communist. Ginsberg's determination to stand behind the work he had written, no matter what the consequences, was an awe-inspiring decision that can only elicit feelings of admiration and inspiration from me.

I am not exactly sure of the general influence that Allen Ginsberg's classic anthem of the 'beat' generation had on my generation, the children of the 1960's because most people I knew then, including myself, had only read the liberation poem long after seeking an alternative lifestyle or becoming radicalized (not necesarily the same thing). However, no matter what its immediate influence on my generation it nevertheless spoke to me more than any other modern poem since reading T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland back in high school.

In retrospect I would pay a very high price to have been able to be there in San Franscisco in that garage in 1956 sipping a little wine and listening to the great yawlp. And Howl is very definitely a poem to be listened to and only read later to try to figure out what all the symbols mean. Walt Whitman finally had company as Ginsberg spoke in one song the anguish that his generation was feeling about the turn industrial society had taken.

On a recent re-reading I found it rather funny that the scandal that surrounded publication was such a big deal with most of the language and references to sex, including homosexual sex now rather commonplace and unremarkably. Finally, does anybody feel as I do that if one did not know that the poem was written over 50 years ago that that it could have been written about today's technologicaly-driven society. Timeless, in short just like Whitman.

What can you say? That Allen Ginsberg's Howl is one of the finest American poems of the second half of the twentieth century may be a matter of opinion (though it is my opinion), but that it was the most important is simply a matter of fact, and this modest black-and-white cover City Lights edition, with a selection of wonderful shorter poems besides Howl and a classic introduction by W. C. Williams, has for half a century now been riding around in the back jeans pockets of students, drifters, and hipsters. The reviews here and in innumerable other sources will give you a good idea of what the poem is like, so I'll only add that anyone interested in modern American poetry, literature, or society should have a copy of this book.

When I first read this book in high school, I found it both disturbing and profane. Now I still do, but it's in a much better way....
Ginsberg came of age in a time of both terror and hypocrasy. During the Presidency of Eisenhower, we were edging toward hot war with the Soviets and on our own people. Kids were just finding psychoactives for the first time-- they were just learning to bend their minds and change their souls. Americans were just hearing of Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Andre Gide and Oswald Spengler and all of the other literary people who can be heard in the words of Ginsberg....
And he processed them (though some of them now would seem more high culture than him) and came up with the knowing, tortured voice of a generation. A voice that is not so different from the voice of my generation-- one of trouble, angst, unhesistancy, and spiritual malaise. Whereas he saw his generation starving, hysterical, naked in a mental institution, we do not even have the clothes to care so much....
However old you are, read this book. It will make you think. Read Gregory Corso too.... he was wonderful but has been forgotten....

"Howl" is perhaps the most aptly titled poem ever. What Allen Ginsberg does with his poetry is exactly that: scream and howl and tear away at all notions of conformity. The epitome of Beat Literature is it's uninhibited energy, of which Howl is a primal statement. Ginsberg unleashes all demons, social to sexual, and leaves the reader with a sense of a man who is in tune with himself and his environment. Gone are the rigid structures of verse and meter, instead they are replaced with a zest for life and a zest for the uncompromising truth. Beat Generation writings thrive on the sound and the fury their literature contains, not bothering with too many pretentions and conventions.
As for comparisons, Howl follows in the tradition of Walt Whitman (who is given a strange but touching ode in Howl), with it's yelps and ecstatic screams. Like Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", "Howl" expands the boundaries and concepts of what poetry is.

Allen Ginsberg's poem "America" in the Howl collection is excellent. Ginsberg has been called the best post-1945 poet in America. I think that is certainly true of his poetry from the 1950s and '60s, if not later. It's funny that "Howl" was called obscene when first published and such a big fuss was made about it--drawn-out trial, etc. It really is one of the great works of poetry of the 20th century, in the same way that Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is of the previous century. What Ginsberg did with language was something radical, refreshing, hip and new, and his messages had great appeal to those disgusted with the Establishment and with various forms of social injustice. As you read Ginsberg, some of his poetical phrases can be hard to decipher, but for every obscure line the poem is often saved by the next line which is beautiful and crystal-clear. What he writes about in "Howl" is somewhat of a different world from ours, physically--a world of Dharma bums, hipsters, Jazz, Buddhism, Dadaism, Communism, etc... but emotionally, what he writes is very relevent to our times because his work is an attack on America's materialism and social complacency.

David Rehak

author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

Allen Ginsberg's Howl has long been one of my favorite poems. I like and admire the poem for various reasons; most of these reasons are related either to the particulars of the poem or to its technical aspects. As a poem, I find it to be a watershed work, both for the extent of its influence and its immense historical importance; therefore, I hope to be able to use it as a standard for my own writing and as a source of perpetual inspiration.

Reading and re-reading Howl is, for me, an enjoyable experience. For a first-time reader, the depth and sophistication of its imagery can seem staggering and even intimidating, but subsequent reads reveal something new each time. Unlike many poems, great or otherwise, Howl rewards re-reading. Much of the poem's complexity and appeal derive from its series of vivid, phantasmagoric portraits, or "chains of flashing images" as described in the Bob Dylan phrase that Ginsberg himself likes to quote. These images are described well and fully; they succeed in conjuring up particularly keen visions in the reader's mind. As Carl Solomon, Ginsberg's primary inspiration for the poem says, Ginsberg possesses a "great skill in describing the maze of thoughts of upset people and conveying them to the reader." By any account, the poem's vivid imagery is one of the keys to its phenomenal success and its immense power. In my own writing, I tend sometimes to veer too closely toward abstract composition without any grounding in concrete imagery; constantly referring back to Howl will, hopefully, steer me away from this tendency.

To me, one of the most noteworthy aspects of Howl is its mesmerizing use of the particular. Readers who are largely ignorant of Ginsberg's life, as I was when I first read the poem, will likely read all of the incidents catalogued in the first part of the poem as fictional creations of the author. However, as Ginsberg reveals in the "Author's Annotations" section of this edition, nearly all of the events depicted in Part I of the poem are based on real occurrences. Even the events that seem the most unlikely have their roots in reality; for example, one of Ginsberg's friends actually "walked all night with their shoes full of blood" (4), while another really "jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge... and walked away unknown and forgotten" (5). That these and many of the other events described in Part I actually happened is a definite surprise to me. Such surprise, no doubt, arises because of the manner in which Ginsberg relates the events in his poem - i.e., surrealistically - and also because it seems to have been written in a very spontaneous fashion, as will be mentioned later. Knowing the history behind the lines in the poem reveals to one how beautifully and successfully Ginsberg shows the beauty of the particular; he manages to take events that he knows of, some of them quite personal, and turn them into something universal. On the surface, such disparate and seemingly unrelated vignettes would appear to have little or no relevance to anyone other than Ginsberg and the others involved in them, but the poet admirably shows that this is far from being true. As hinted at in the Carl Solomon quote above, this is the true genius of Ginsberg's art. The thought of even attempting such a thing probably does not occur to many, and it certainly does not occur to me. In most of my writing, I typically do not even consider using particular events from my own life because they do not seem universally applicable; however, after reading Howl, I find this to be a false assumption. For me, then, Ginsberg's enlightening use of the particular can serve as a fountainhead of inspiration.

The famous long lines of Howl comprise, for me, another of the poem's attractive elements. I have always been partial to long lines in the poetry that I choose to read; I also tend to employ them in my own compositions. Ginsberg's lengthy lines, in particular, are flexible and graceful, as they serve several functions. First of all, they contribute greatly to Howl's sense of pacing; this becomes especially clear when one hears the poem read aloud. Secondly, they allow the poem to flow very smoothly; indeed, when read, the poem almost seems to take on a distinctive rhythm of its own. Few poets, of course, favor the long line; between Whitman and Ginsberg, precious few used it to their advantage. Ginsberg, on the other hand, not only uses the long line, but also is famous for doing so; his skillful deployment of the long line in Howl clearly demonstrates the technique's poetical vitality. Ginsberg has said that the whole of Howl was an experiment to see what can be done with the long line (163); in that case, it is most assuredly a successful experiment. Howl provides constant encouragement - and justification - for my own use of the long line when I sometimes have doubts about its usefulness.

I also admire Ginsberg's deft hand with tropes. In Howl, his use of the trope of anaphora stands out especially. All four parts of the poem have a word or phrase that starts out most of the lines - "who" in Part I, "Moloch!" in Part II, "I'm with you in Rockland" in Part III, and "Holy!" in the Footnote. The constant reiteration of these words and phrases is important to the pacing of the poem; they lend it a breakneck speed and a sense of cadence that is nearly hypnotic. As many fans of Howl well know, the poem truly comes alive only when one hears it read; these anaphoric phrases are one of the main reasons for this. Ginsberg also manages to come up with, through word association, several memorable phrases that seem contradictory or oxymoronic; the most famous of these, of course, is his "hydrogen jukebox" (3). I try to be aware of the tropes available to me when I write and to make good use of them; Howl remains a goldmine of inspiration.

When applying the poetics of Ginsberg, as displayed in Howl, to my own writing, probably the most important factor is Ginsberg's constant revision. The version of Howl that I read contains facsimiles of many early drafts of the poem, complete with Ginsberg's changes. The amount of changes that Ginsberg made in his poem from the first draft to the final one is staggering. I was very surprised by them, as I am sure other also are. The reason for this being that Howl appears to have been written in a very spontaneous manner, much like Kerouac's work. What looks like an astounding display of spontaneity in Howl is actually carefully controlled art. To be sure, the early versions of Howl are, in their basic essence, quite similar to the finished product; the power and beauty of the poem are already present in them. However, through his various changes and alterations, Ginsberg ended up with a poem superior to the one with which he started. The finished version is cleaner, more succinct, flows better, and reads better than the earlier versions. In short, Ginsberg, much to this writer's surprise, shows himself to be a meticulous but successful reviser. I hope to apply this fact to my own writing, because revision is one of my weak points. After scouring the various versions of Howl, though, I at least know that successful revision is possible; hopefully, I will be able to learn more about this delicate art from studying Ginsberg.

Many people view Howl as essentially a poem of protest, but Ginsberg himself has said that it is not meant to be viewed in this light alone. Armed with all the candor of truth, he declares of his poem that, "To call it a work of nihilistic rebellion would be to mistake it completely. Its force comes from positive `religious' belief and experience." What the poet says is true; Howl is not a hopeless, nihilistic lament. Instead, it is a hopeful (and very spiritual, in the non-traditional sense) howl from the wasteland of contemporary culture and society; it is the voice of one man who insists upon holding up a lucid torch of compassion and reason in a world full of oppressive darkness. One of Ginsberg's intentions with Howl was to, if possible, save the best minds of the next generation from being "destroyed by madness" (3). Still, the poem does contain protest elements, and these I particularly admire. Part I of the poem chronicles the unfortunate experiences of many of Ginsberg's hapless contemporaries; it shows the apathetic extremes that are possible when the world is a mere hollow shell that serves only to bring on malaise. It also reflects the fact that there has been more than one "Lost Generation." The inherent, even if implicit, protest in Part I against the mindlessness of the mainstream world is very powerful and piercing. Similarly, the second part of the poem attacks the source of many of the evils in society, the military-industrial complex. Ginsberg compares the problem identified by Eisenhower to Moloch, the fire god of the Canaanites; the former sends young, idealistic kids off to their deaths in pointless wars, whereas worship of the latter involved sacrificing children by fire. The protest elements of Howl, then, are incredibly powerful and striking, even if they are not essential to the poem's core sentiment. I frequently make use of protest methods in my own work, and successful examples such as Howl are a never-ending inspiration to me.

Lastly, I look upon Howl with admiration because of its sheer daring. The poem was, of course, highly controversial upon release; it even provoked a legal trial after having been dubbed obscene by legal authorities (Ginsberg 169). I can scarcely imagine the reactions of some of the more conservative readers of the 1950's to the poem; after all, this was the decade of utopian suburbia and Leave It To Beaver. Some lines seem daring even now, as the fact that I cannot even quote them under the store rules attests. I admire Ginsberg's resolve - whether it was bravery, mere bravado, or whatever else - to publish and distribute his poem in the midst of such raving censorship and extreme prejudice. These things, of course, are still occurring, but the fact that Howl was published in the 1950's make the event even more noteworthy. With the publication of Howl, Ginsberg boldly announced himself to the world as an atheistic, homosexual Jewish Communist. Ginsberg's determination to stand behind the work he had written, no matter what the consequences, was an awe-inspiring decision that can only elicit feelings of admiration and inspiration from me.

I am not exactly sure of the general influence that Allen Ginsberg's classic anthem of the 'beat' generation had on my generation, the children of the 1960's because most people I knew then, including myself, had only read the liberation poem long after seeking an alternative lifestyle or becoming radicalized (not necesarily the same thing). However, no matter what its immediate influence on my generation it nevertheless spoke to me more than any other modern poem since reading T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland back in high school.

In retrospect I would pay a very high price to have been able to be there in San Franscisco in that garage in 1956 sipping a little wine and listening to the great yawlp. And Howl is very definitely a poem to be listened to and only read later to try to figure out what all the symbols mean. Walt Whitman finally had company as Ginsberg spoke in one song the anguish that his generation was feeling about the turn industrial society had taken.

On a recent re-reading I found it rather funny that the scandal that surrounded publication was such a big deal with most of the language and references to sex, including homosexual sex now rather commonplace and unremarkably. Finally, does anybody feel as I do that if one did not know that the poem was written over 50 years ago that that it could have been written about today's technologicaly-driven society. Timeless, in short just like Whitman.

What can you say? That Allen Ginsberg's Howl is one of the finest American poems of the second half of the twentieth century may be a matter of opinion (though it is my opinion), but that it was the most important is simply a matter of fact, and this modest black-and-white cover City Lights edition, with a selection of wonderful shorter poems besides Howl and a classic introduction by W. C. Williams, has for half a century now been riding around in the back jeans pockets of students, drifters, and hipsters. The reviews here and in innumerable other sources will give you a good idea of what the poem is like, so I'll only add that anyone interested in modern American poetry, literature, or society should have a copy of this book.

When I first read this book in high school, I found it both disturbing and profane. Now I still do, but it's in a much better way....
Ginsberg came of age in a time of both terror and hypocrasy. During the Presidency of Eisenhower, we were edging toward hot war with the Soviets and on our own people. Kids were just finding psychoactives for the first time-- they were just learning to bend their minds and change their souls. Americans were just hearing of Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Andre Gide and Oswald Spengler and all of the other literary people who can be heard in the words of Ginsberg....
And he processed them (though some of them now would seem more high culture than him) and came up with the knowing, tortured voice of a generation. A voice that is not so different from the voice of my generation-- one of trouble, angst, unhesistancy, and spiritual malaise. Whereas he saw his generation starving, hysterical, naked in a mental institution, we do not even have the clothes to care so much....
However old you are, read this book. It will make you think. Read Gregory Corso too.... he was wonderful but has been forgotten....

"Howl" is perhaps the most aptly titled poem ever. What Allen Ginsberg does with his poetry is exactly that: scream and howl and tear away at all notions of conformity. The epitome of Beat Literature is it's uninhibited energy, of which Howl is a primal statement. Ginsberg unleashes all demons, social to sexual, and leaves the reader with a sense of a man who is in tune with himself and his environment. Gone are the rigid structures of verse and meter, instead they are replaced with a zest for life and a zest for the uncompromising truth. Beat Generation writings thrive on the sound and the fury their literature contains, not bothering with too many pretentions and conventions.
As for comparisons, Howl follows in the tradition of Walt Whitman (who is given a strange but touching ode in Howl), with it's yelps and ecstatic screams. Like Whitman's "Leaves of Grass", "Howl" expands the boundaries and concepts of what poetry is.

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.

Ginsberg is one of the top ten poets who have ever lived. A true visionary like Blake. *Howl and Other Poems* is his best work--his equivalent of the *Songs of Innocence and Experience* More than just a poet, of course, he is also a mystic and prophet. He sees the truth behind the surface. The beauty behind the pain of America's idealistic outcasts of his generation as they go "mad" from having seen to much and hoped for too much and pushed things too far. The ugliness and desparation that hide behind the nice orderly facade of everyday life. Ginsberg's poetry can express the most absolute dispair (the "Moloch" section of "Howl" still feels like a close brush with death even though I've read it hundreds of times), but he can also express such amzaing spiritual joy. In this regard he is more like the Sufi poets than anything Western. This sense of the divine within all things and all experience. The "Holy! Holy! Holy!" litany in the footnote to "Howl" ; the love song to Love itself in "Song." This little collection expresses more in less than 100 pages than is imaginable unless you have experienced it first hand.

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.

In my mind, this is the best poem written in the 20th century, with T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" bringing up a close second. With Howl, Ginsberg totally reinvented the way poetry was written, and you can clearly see this influence in the slam poets of today. Howl is both raw and reserved, for while it punches you in the face with graphic detail it holds back key emotional points that leave one questioning. This is a very emotional poem, but these emotional points that I speak of are left vague for a very important reason: so that every single reader draws their own conclusions and so the reader is forced to bring more of themselves into the poem. Like "The Wasteland", Howl is not a poem you can easily read in emotional detachment; for, if you do, you miss the key elements of the poem. But, if you are searching for a poem that will first drag you to the lowest of the low and then, gradually, slowly but surely, bring you back up to where you can finally see daylight again, this is the poem for you. It is a sad poem, but it is also a poem that has the ability to take a sufficiently imaginative person from the depths of suicidal depression (which I know) and bring them back to where they are able to function as some kind of human being again.

In short, this poem gets a bad rap, but it is essentially optimistic, although it starts off from a pessimistic viewpoint. If you look, the beauty is there; but if you approach it with preconceived judgments, you will most certainly not see the poem's bright side.

I used to think that people didn't read things like "Howl" because they didn't understand. But as I have grown older I've come to the realization that is has much more to do with their NOT wanting to understand. It is easy to read, but not easy to understand. It causes one to think -- no, to have to think. One has to think about "Howl" if one reads it. It is one of those weird things you still think about years later on some lame Tuesday afternoon while paying bills. So, most people avoid it so they don't have to try and come to grips with the affects it can have on their minds. Football and movies are easier for people to deal with most of the time.
I don't know if this is a bad thing anymore. People want to live comfortable lives, and if one thinks uncomfortable thoughts, then life can become uncomfortable. One is forced into action to try and help right the wrongs of this world, and that is not easy. Wrongs stay in place in large measure because people don't know how to fix them. Sure, we can quote RFK and say, "some see things that never were and ask why not", but saying things like that is the easy part.
Reading, "Howl" changes a person. Makes them uncomfortable, but it means to do that. It is a great piece of writing. It is probably the best piece of poetry written in the last half of the 20th century in the United States.
But beware; because it causes one of think of change. Change can be good, and it can be bad. I like to think "Howl" is good because it opened my eyes to ugly thoughts. True, ugly can be beautiful. But remember the hardest thing about change -- it is.

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..."

This book is totally amazing. I have read a lot of Ginsberg's work and I love it all. I am only 14 and I don't get why people think this is so inapropriate! I mean sure, it can get racey at times and maybe for some people it could be too much but it is art! Art is beautiful so why does profanity matter if it is written in an elegant way. And he isn't just swearing for fun, Ginsberg and all his peers were trying to get a message across. That message is a good one, one we should all pay a little more attention to because it applies just as much to today as it did back then in the 50's. The Beat style of writing is inspiring and beautiful, the way the words flow on the page and the rhythm to it all. This collection of poems totally rocks, from his classic and most famous poem Howl, to his firery America, and the wonderful Sunflower Sutra. When I was first introduced to the Beat generation work I thought, oh, okay, this looks sorta interesting... but as soon as I started reading I became utterly imersed. Because of the work of poets like Ginsberg I have been inspired. These writings are what made me want to become a writter and a poet when I am older. Ginsberg was right when he said, "Poet is Priest."

-GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

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.

It is a shame that this annotated edition of one of the great beat/modern poems is out of print. I strongly suggest you get this book while it is still available at the used bookshops.

Ginsberg claimed to have written this work spontaneously, but this work shows the poem was written over a period of time, and edited. Maybe he was only referring to the first draft! It really doesn't matter,but looking at the drafts does give one insight into how Ginsberg created the poem(s) and the development of a classic.

'Howl' is a short book of poetry, but each poem enclosed hits you with full force and intensity. They open you up to feeling and for that brief moment in time you are completely immersed in the world Ginsberg creates. I'm unaware of the controversy surrounding these poems, but all I can say is that these are some great poems that deserve to be read by a much wider audience. Poetry is a unique and powerful experience (both reading and writing) and this collection is no different. Well worth a look.

Feel free to check out my blog which can be found on my profile page.

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.

And as one of the most memorable poems of the 20th century began...
"I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness,
while starving hysterically naked,
and roaming the streets with an angry fix..."

Allen Ginsberg, poet and storyteller of the Beat Generation, became the driving force of the newly formed Beat movement that, through insanity, madness, and periods of solitude, rose from the depths -- specifically the woefully sexy city of Berkeley, CA, to the cumulative vortex that remained in pieces on the seductive streets of NYC's Lower East Side community.

"Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in houses, we'll both be lonely."

The book, "Howl & Other Poems" not only includes both parts of "Howl" but includes other works such as "A Supermarket in California."

"The madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time, coming after death."

Overall this book is the equivalent of a historical document, in terms of the Beat Generation's poetry. It also contains several short poems that were written under the influence of... certain substances and poems related to Ginsberg's sexual experiences, as well.

This book, short as it is, is well worth owning. Another the store quick pick I'd like to recommend is "THE LOSERS CLUB: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, about a poet who can't get published -- amazing book, referencing the beats and Bukowski. Not only is it entertaining and funny, but ultimately profound.

(...)

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.

Read "Howl" when I was around 18 and thought it (and still do) a groundbreaking (for various reasons) work. Twenty years later, I find that I don't praise it as quickly and easily as I used to. The images Ginsberg created are fantastic and the whole stream of consciousness approach is, more often than not, exhilarating but I sincerely doubt that all those people posting 5 star reviews can honestly tell me what "Howl" is remotely about. Art is subjective, I know, and where one person sees a brilliant poetic catharsis another sees a slightly over-rated diatribe, no doubt written while under the influence of some "chemical refreshments" so popular within the beatnik culture. I'm aware that "Howl" doesn't necessarily have to have a "meaning" (at least not a conventional one) but even employing a surrealist stance and dismissing even the most remote notion of logic, there seems to surface little more than drug induced hallucinations and ravings. Did "Howl" push the envelope? You bet it did. Did it change how poetry was viewed? I believe it did that, too. Is it great poetry? That's totally personal, but it my opinion it serves more as testament of the culture and age from which it emerged than anything bearing literary merit.

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.

This work is more than a poem, it is prophecy in the truest sense of the word, a "forth-telling." It is a call to action and to live life with our eyes wide open. The ferment that this poem has started began with the Beats and continues on to our own time. So many poets, writers, and artists owe so much to Ginsburg and this shot that he fired. He inspired the writers of the Beat Generation on up to writers of our own day (I am thinking here of Geoffrey B. Cain's "The Wards of St. Dymphna" which clearly owes something to this poet). Read this; it is still news for today. It isn't over yet!

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.

Easily one of the best book of poems to hit the scene in the mid-50's. To really get a good feel of Howl and some the other poems in this collection I encourage you to listen to recordings of Ginsberg reading the poems. It provides insight of how you should read them and helps one to better understand how to read them. It is also interesting to find out that Ginsberg (and those listening) found his poems quite comical and not completely serious like some will lead you to believe.

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.

I read "Howl" as a high school student, and thought it would be nice for my students to have the experience, in a more appealing format; the graphic novel.

I guess it had been a while since I read the poem, or maybe I was being naive? I certainly didn't anticipate what some of the language of the poem might look like in picture form. Boy am I glad I screen the books before I put them in my classroom library!!!!!

This is not meant for a classroom, even with mature high school students... This one is staying on my personal bookshelf: )

A must read for those who have an interest in the sixties. Ginsberg is able to express much of what this time period was all about. The growing pains of a generation and the struggle for identity in poetic verse.

RD McManes

Can your household live without this book? Well, probably. But there's no reason it shouldn't.

The one gripe is the odd sizing of this book. C'mon, City Lights, what book is this supposed to sit on the shelf with?!

For some reason I thought this was going to be a large collection of poems by Allen Ginsberg. I can say I've been a fan for quite sometime. This was not the case. In fact, This book only consists of 57 pages. Its a very small book so I don't care how famous Howl is or if it's being made into a movie with James Franco. This is not worth the purchase of 6 or more dollars.

The poem is in perfect form and as meaningful as it was in 1956, the animation on the other hand is very disappointing. I thought it was bad in the movie and not much better printed, when is this pixar animation that is leaking into all artwork going to end like it needs to.

Complete rubbish. It had it's place as a "moment" in the timeline of poetry (more interesting for its sociological aspects), but, despite all the hype and notoriety over the years (shall we dare say the Emperor is not wearing any clothes?), it remains a self-indulgent rant whose themes are monosyllabic, not to mention- repetitive (and I don't mean the "repetition" used as a poetical device). Great poetry has a multi-dimensional aspect to it, that is like a sculptural object, that changes as it turns in the light, as you view it from different angles. When you read it again and again, you discover things you didn't see before. The agenda here is too blatant. It may be interesting as a paradigm shift, but I think that without the attendant hype of the political climate of the time, it would have probably disappeared into obscurity. But we make icons out of things like this in our culture, because we have so few real moments of genius to cling to.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, staring hysterical . Awesome line, one of the best i've come across, but there isn't much more that's remotely appealing about Howl. I know that it's supposed to be vulgar and cruel, but it just isn't worth your time. And the price is outrageous for what you get, about what would be ten or fifteen pages of text on normal sized paper, and only a handfull of good lines. I wasted my money on it. Why not go check out Lilith, Phantastes, Dave Weckel Band, or Cat's Cradle for some real poetry, if that's the sort of person you are.

Probably the worst poem ever written by an American. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness etc. etc." And it just gets worse from there. How would Ginsberg know? I doubt he would have been able to recognize the best minds of his generation and I really doubt that the possessors of those minds would have had anything to do with him. Everything that seems fresh and distinctive about Ginsberg is actually warmed-over drug-addled Whitman. The difference is that Whitman had some talent -- not much, but some: tucked away in his windy narcissistic ramblings you can find occasional traces of real poetry. Ginsberg never wrote any. But then the Beats never produced anything of enduring value -- they were symptoms of a horrible era in American history, nothing more. Ginsberg's influence on American poetry has been ruinous. But he does serve one useful purpose: whenever I learn that a particular person or group (William Carlos Williams, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, The Clash, Natalie Merchant, Phillip Glass) takes him seriously as a poet -- or as an activist, philosopher, political commentator or anything else -- I know that that's someone I never need to take seriously again.

'Howl', like most -- perhaps all -- Beat poetry, has not aged well. It's a lazy, ugly poem which could have been written by any well-read and angry college kid. I have read it many times and see nothing in it of any value other than the historical.

The first line is the only line worth reading. The rest of the poem describes those who Mr Ginsberg apparently felt were the "Best minds" of his generation. Those best minds appear to me, to lack authenticity. Like they are trying to be something they are not. At their core, they are lost. Sad.