CONTEMPORARY POETRY REPORT NOTES

HOWL by ALLEN GINSBERG (1955-1956)

Author Bio (Include the movement they belong in)

This Beat Generation consisted of a group of writers and cultural activists influencing American culture and
politics after the World War II whose central elements are the rejection of conventional narrative values, rejection of
materialism, sexual liberation, and exploration and explicit portrayals of the human condition. This Beat Generation
assumedly represents that group of people who celebrated freedom of self rather than conforming to the selfish motives
of the contemporary capitalistic society. This style of poetry uses a free verse structure to convey individualism, (A
difference than the typical, rhythmic, rhyming (of which his father was doing)) a loss of faith, and societal issues of the
modern world. Free verse poetry follows a natural speech rhythm without using meter or rhyming lines.

One of the most respected or known Beat writers of his generation. Considered as well as rebellious since most
of his works were a form of protest against different issues.

He had always been in favor of the free expression of thoughts in creative arts, and he never restrained him from
doing so in his poetry whenever he deemed it necessary. He is friends with other BEAT writers such as Jack Kerouac
(Danielle’s report) and William Burroughs, I think he met them at Columbia University. They are known for their
“unconventional” views, that once, faced with prosecution, he decided to plead for insanity and spent several months in
a mental institution.

“Howl” was considered at its time underground poetry, outlawed poetry. To understand it, we have to
understand the time it was written, in America and after WWII. Howl is Ginsberg's most-read poem which was a satire
work towards the American government for its destructive attitude at the beginning of the Cold War just after World War
II. Ginsberg's "Howl" is a well-known free verse poem focusing on his observations and life experiences of the modern
world. The controversial subject matter and vulgar language of the poem led to its banning.

‘Howl’ is a free verse poem divided into three long sections, separated by headers. The lines are long and look
more like paragraphs than they do stanzas of a poem.

CLOSE READING

PART I
The poem starts with the declaration, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked". From this very first line to the end of Part-I, the poem talks about various activities of these best
minds. Among the three parts of the poem, Part-I shows these the seemingly unnatural acts of these people. This part of
the poem refers to a single subject "who" which seems to point towards the people who had a different vision of life
other than those considered normal by the mainstream society. Society will label them as mad but Ginsberg considers
them and because of what society has done. These descriptions focus on what each person experienced, which led to
their madness, without explicitly explaining what destroyed them.

PART II

Part-II leads the readers to who or what made these great minds go mad. “Moloch”, which is the biblical name of
a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice. This 'Moloch' dominates the middle part of the poem. He describes
Moloch as: 'Solitude', 'Filth', 'Ugliness', 'Ashcans', 'unobtainable dollars', 'Boys sobbing in armies', 'Children screaming
under the stairways', 'Old man weeping in the parks', all these words and phrases reinforce the indifference of society to
the suffering of the people ahe only thing it is capable of doing it to exploit them and judge them its prescribed
parameters. At the end of Part-II, Ginsberg reaffirms how the American society has destroyed all the potential and
dreams of his "Mad generation," the name he has given to those people who want to value their individuality over the
accepted societal norms.

The first part of the poem focuses on the who of the best minds being destroyed and what they did, which led to their
destruction. However, the second part answers what killed those great minds. Ginsberg starts with a question and
structures the remaining lines with exclamatory statements surrounding the answer.

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys
sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

PART III

The final part of the poem is visibly autobiographical as it mentions Carl Solomon whom Ginsberg met at the New York
State Psychiatric Institute in 1949 where both of them had been residing as patients because they were thought to be
suffering from a mental disorder (Raskin 96).

"Rockland" in this part represents the psychiatric institute as Ginsberg believes it to be barren and futile. The best minds
like Carl Solomon end up in such 'Rocklands' as a result of society's exploitation. Ginsberg expresses his solidarity or
identification (understanding of madness) with Carl by the use of "I am with you in Rockland" (Ginsberg 55) after every
one line in Part -III. The ending of the poem nevertheless is optimistic. Ginsberg presents a surrealist situation where
their own souls' airplanes will drop angelic bombs illuminating the hospital and collapsing all the walls to free Carl. This
situation is suggestive of Ginsberg's hope that the wall society has built between established societal norms, and
individual choices will one day collapse.

The third and final part of Howl features a more personal narrative of Ginsberg. He references Carl Solomon, who was
one of his closest friends. In his twenties, Ginsberg became enthralled with the English poet William Blake. After reading
one of his poems, he confessed to having mystical visions. After an arrest, Ginsberg was taken to a psychiatric hospital
where he met and befriended Solomon. The first line of this part begins with a greeting to Solomon: Carl Solomon!

This poem section constantly repeats the phrase, "I'm with you in Rockland." Ginsberg repeats "I'm with you," to show
solidarity, and the word "Rockland" is a reference to the psychiatric hospital.

I'm with you in Rockland, where you must feel very strange

I'm with you in Rockland, where you imitate the shade of my mother

I'm with you in Rockland, where you've murdered your twelve secretaries

I'm with you in Rockland, where you laugh at this invisible humor

OVER-ALL
The form of the poem also appropriately fits the content. The long-running sentences without any regular rhyme scheme
enable the poem to achieve its aim. Ginsberg borrowed the style of the poem from his inspiration Walt Whitman, who
has also used long lines in his poems, as Raskin points out: Like Whitman, he wrote long poems with long, prose-like lines
and long catalogues of things and people and events.

This prose-like quality of "Howl" gives the poem an unconventional structure. Though Ginsberg followed the style of Walt
Whitman for the form of "Howl," the poem as a whole is a unique one. The frankness of language and it's
unconventionally long prose-like lines without any rhyming render it a shout like an appearance, very apt to the
rebellious content of the poem.