Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg

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Original Title: Howl and Other Poems

ISBN: 0872863107
ISBN13: 9780872863101
Autor: Allen Ginsberg/William Carlos Williams (introduction)
Rating: 3.7 of 5 stars (667) counts
Original Format: Hardcover, 56 pages
Download Format: PDF, FB2, MOBI, MP3.
Published: January 1st 2001 / by City Lights / (first published 1956)
Language: English
Genre(s):
Poetry- 3,525 users
Classics- 379 users
Fiction- 118 users
Literature >American- 85 users
Description:

The prophetic poem that launched a generation when it was first published in 1956 is here
presented in a commemorative fortieth Anniversary Edition.

When the book arrived from its British printers, it was seized almost immediately by U.S. Customs,
and shortly thereafter the San Francisco police arrested its publisher and editor, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, together with City Lights Bookstore manager Shigeyoshi Murao. The two of them
were charged with disseminating obscene literature, and the case went to trial in the municipal
court of Judge Clayton Horn. A parade of distinguished literary and academic witnesses
persuaded the judge that the title poem was indeed not obscene and that it had redeeming social
significance.

Thus was Howl & Other Poems freed to become the single most influential poetic work of the post-
World War II era, with over 900,000 copies now in print."

About Author:

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was the son of Louis and Naomi Ginsberg, two Jewish members of the New
York literary counter-culture of the 1920s. Ginsberg was raised among several progressive
political perspectives. A supporter of the Communist party, Ginsberg's mother was a nudist whose
mental health was a concern throughout the poet's childhood. According to biographer Barry
Miles, "Naomi's illness gave Allen an enormous empathy and tolerance for madness, neurosis,
and psychosis."
As an adolescent, Ginsberg savored Walt Whitman, though in 1939, when Ginsberg graduated
high school, he considered Edgar Allan Poe his favorite poet. Eager to follow a childhood hero
who had received a scholarship to Columbia University, Ginsberg made a vow that if he got into
the school he would devote his life to helping the working class, a cause he took seriously over the
course of the next several years.
He was admitted to Columbia University, and as a student there in the 1940s, he began close
friendships with William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom later became
leading figures of the Beat movement. The group led Ginsberg to a "New Vision," which he
defined in his journal: "Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the
fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true
expression and the true art."
Around this time, Ginsberg also had what he referred to as his "Blake vision," an auditory
hallucination of William Blake reading his poems "Ah Sunflower," "The Sick Rose," and "Little Girl
Lost." Ginsberg noted the occurrence several times as a pivotal moment for him in his
comprehension of the universe, affecting fundamental beliefs about his life and his work. While
Ginsberg claimed that no drugs were involved, he later stated that he used various drugs in an
attempt to recapture the feelings inspired by the vision.
In 1954, Ginsberg moved to San Francisco. His mentor, William Carlos Williams, introduced him to
key figures in the San Francisco poetry scene, including Kenneth Rexroth. He also met Michael
McClure, who handed off the duties of curating a reading for the newly-established "6" Gallery.
With the help of Rexroth, the result was "The '6' Gallery Reading" which took place on October 7,
1955. The event has been hailed as the birth of the Beat Generation, in no small part because it
was also the first public reading of Ginsberg's "Howl," a poem which garnered world-wide attention
for him and the poets he associated with.
Shortly after Howl and Other Poems was published in 1956 by City Lights Bookstore, it was
banned for obscenity. The work overcame censorship trials, however, and became one of the
most widely read poems of the century, translated into more than twenty-two languages.
In the 1960s and 70s, Ginsberg studied under gurus and Zen masters. As the leading icon of the
Beats, Ginsberg was involved in countless political activities, including protests against the
Vietnam War, and he spoke openly about issues that concerned him, such as free speech and gay
rights agendas.
Ginsberg went on publish numerous collections of poetry, including Kaddish and Other Poems
(1961), Planet News (1968), and The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1973), which won
the National Book Award.
In 1993, Ginsberg received the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters)
from the French Minister of Culture. He also co-founded and directed the Jack Kerouac School of
Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Colorado. In his later years, Ginsberg became a
Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College.
On April 5, 1997, in New York City, he died from complications of hepatitis.

Other Editions:
- Howl and Other Poems (Paperback)

- Aullido (Paperback)

- Howl, and Other Poems (Paperback)

-

- Uluma (Paperback)

Books By Author:

- Kaddish and Other Poems

 - Collected Poems, 1947-1980

- Howl

- Collected Poems 1947-1997

- Reality Sandwiches

Books In The Series:

Related Books On Our Site:

- A Coney Island of the Mind

- Lunch Poems

- The Portable Beat Reader

- Pomes All Sizes

- Selected Poems

- Gasoline & The Vestal Lady on Brattle

- Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

- The Collected Poems

- A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

- Diving Into the Wreck

- The Branch Will Not Break

- Selected Poems
 - The Country Between Us

Rewiews:

Feb 04, 2017

BillKerwin
Rated it: really liked it
Shelves: poetry
Easy to overstimate Allen Ginsberg. Easy to underestimate him too.
There areif you leave out the political, religious and major historical figuresonly about two
dozen or so 20th century cultural icons, and Ginsberg is one of themright up there with Einstein,
Bogart, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe. In the 60's, his face was ubiquitous, and the Ginsberg
poster you picked out for yourself showed the kind of Ginsberg you aspired to be: Ginsberg in
Uncle Sam hat, naked Ginsberg embracing naked Pete
Easy to overstimate Allen Ginsberg. Easy to underestimate him too.
There areif you leave out the political, religious and major historical figuresonly about two
dozen or so 20th century cultural icons, and Ginsberg is one of themright up there with Einstein,
Bogart, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe. In the 60's, his face was ubiquitous, and the Ginsberg
poster you picked out for yourself showed the kind of Ginsberg you aspired to be: Ginsberg in
Uncle Sam hat, naked Ginsberg embracing naked Peter Orlovsky, psychedelic Moses Ginsberg
holding up two stone tablets of the Law of Who to be Kind to, or Ginsberg protesting in the snow
and wearing a big sign that says Pot is Fun. He was a hipster, a hedonist and a holy man,
standing up for every form of free expression you could imagine, smiling from the walls of every
coffeehouse, every bookstore, every other two room apartment that you knew. And it was hard to
get past all those posters and just sit down and read the poetry.
But if you got past all that, it was still hard to separate the political from the poetic. His most
famous poem "Howl" was the center of a notorious free speech fight, and many of the later poems,
from America to Wichita Vortex Sutra and beyond, could not be fully understood without some
knowledge of the protest movements of the time. However, if you did actually sit down and read
some of his poetry--away from the context, away from the intoxicating counter-cultural
atmosphere--you might begin to suspect that Ginsberg the Poetry Icon was superior to Irwin Allen
Ginsberg from Newark, New Jersey, the guy who actually sat down and wrote what is
oftenfrankly--mediocre verse.
Part of the problem stems from the length of Ginsberg's free verse line: it is indeed a very long
line, habitually a few beats longer than a dactylic hexameter. (Even when he breaks a line into
W.C.Williams triads, it still seems to be long.) Now poets who choose such a line as their vehicle
(Kit Smart, Martin Tupper, Whitman, Fearing, Jeffers, Ginsberg) come off sounding biblical and
orotund in long passages which lack lyricism and are often indistinguishable from mediocre prose.
(C.K. Williams--perhaps because of his narrative drive--is the notable exception here). When you
add to this the fact that Ginsberg delights in improvisation, and once embraced as his model the
no revisions necessary Kerouac prose style, it is little wonder that many of his lines fail to sing.
But, as I said, it is easy to underestimate him too, particularly if we just sit down and read his
poetry, divorcing it from the world of cultural influences and public performance that he loved. For
example, if you sit down to read Howl, and it seems too ponderous, too much like the prophet
Jeremiah wailing for all the pitiful beatnik dead, just stop for a minute and go download some early
50's jazz--Herbie Nichols maybe, or Lee Konitz or the MJQand play it quietly in the background
while you stand up and recite the poem aloud to yourselfswaying a little, perhaps even snapping
your fingers. You may begin to discover unexpected deposits of gentle humor, the occasional
pocket of sick humor, and even a little slapstick from time to time, and also sense--knitting the four
movements of this magnificent performance piece togetheran overarching, self-conscious
hipster irony which refuses for even one second to take Ginsberg the Prophet or Ginsberg the
Poetry Icon completely seriously.
As you probably can tell, I love Howl. I think it is a masterwork of American poetry, unique and
irreplaceable. This collections also contains three pieces almost as good: A Supermarket in
California (an encounter with Walt Whitman eyeing the grocery boys), America (a love letter to
the USA and a protest poem at the same time, ending with the memorable line, America I'm
putting my queer shoulder to the wheel), Sunflower Sutra (a conversation with Kerouac in Frisco
about a gray dead sunflower which ends with a sermon proclaiming that we are all beautiful
golden sunflowers inside), and In the Baggage Room at Greyhound, Irwin Allen Ginsberg's
farewell to a job he obviously hated.
These five poems make up only 70% of this small 50 page collection, and the rest of the poems
included here I don't think are worth reading at all. (But then I didn't experiment with jazz in the
background. So I just might be underestimating Ginsberg once again.)
144 likes
17 comments

Estott
His stuff can sound better when it is read out loud - or rather declaimed. The MOLOCH section
really needs punch behind lines like"Moloch whose soul i
His stuff can sound better when it is read out loud - or rather declaimed. The MOLOCH section
really needs punch behind lines like"Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks!" It's trance poetry
at times.
Of course he's not alone- even Homer's ODYSSEY can be improved by a fine reading.

Jun 20, 2016 01:49PM

deleted user
Great review, and liked remembering those different Ginsberg posters, and their various appeal!
They were still up and around in the 70s and into the
Great review, and liked remembering those different Ginsberg posters, and their various appeal!
They were still up and around in the 70s and into the 80s, too.

Aug 14, 2016 07:23PM