Customer Reviews

Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets Series)

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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.

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....

This book changed my life.

In my sophmore year of high school, my English teacher read "America," a vicious commentary on tha views of the majority in this country contained in this book, to my class.

I didn't think about this peom again until senior year (though it had stunned my fellow classmates and I). Picking this great pocket edition up at my local bookstore, I had no way of realizing what kind of effect it would have on me.

This book is full of some of Ginsberg's most classic works. His unorthodox style bleeds through the poems whether they are shorter, narrative odes to important figures in his life or sprawling, staggering, frenetic pieces which pull the extremes of life itself into the lines.

Because of this book I am now persuing poetry in college.

This should be required reading for Life in general.

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

"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 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..."

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.

And as one of the most profound poem 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, master poet and storyteller of the Beat Generation, became the omnipotent force of the newly formatted Beatnik movement that, through insanity, madness, and periods of solitude, rose from the depth of the west coast, specifically in 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 poem-dense book, "Howl & Other Poems" not only includes both parts of "Howl" but includes other classical works such as "Kaddish" (a beautifully rendered tribute to Ginsberg's mother- a figure whom he continued to question the delicate balances of her love toward him and vice versa) and "A Supermarket in California" where he composes a rather brief poem, spanning from his powerful visions of him and Walt Whitman walking upon the solitary streets, wondering what has become of their things as he allows Whitman's "beard to point them in the right direction."

"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 text-book, 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.

The one interesting side to the book itself is that, in my opinion, not only it is a reflection of a singular man's views, experiences, desires, and emotions, but it is a mirror of the vastly unknown and abnormally tucked-away world, that the reader can reflect upon. This book is worth owning. Another Amazon quick pick I'd like to recommend is The Losers Club by Richard Perez

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.

_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....