Howl

Howl is a poem by Allen Ginsberg that was first performed in 1955 in the Six Gallery in San Francisco. It is noted for relating stories and experiences of his friends and contemporaries, its tumbling hallucinatory style, and the subsequent obscenity trial which it provoked. It is dedicated to Ginsberg's friend Carl Solomon, whom he met in a mental institution.

Overview and structure

The poem is in three parts, with an additional footnote. Part I is the best known, and communicates scenes, characters and situations drawn from his own experience, and the community of poets, artists, political radicals, jazz musicians, drug addicts and psychiatric patients which he encountered. Part II is a lament at the state of America, named as 'Moloch' in the poem. He was inspired to write Part II when he saw a hotel as a monster he named Moloch during a peyote vision, and much of the section itself was written while under that same peyote influence. Part III is directly addressed to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met whilst visiting his mother at Rockland, a New York psychiatric hospital, and relates shared experiences, hopes and fears. The footnote is notable for its repetitive 'Holy!' mantra and its optimistic outlook.

Related Topics:
Jazz - Peyote - New York

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The frequently quoted (and often parodied) opening lines set the theme and rhythm for the majority of the poem:

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

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:dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix

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Part I contains a mixture of the biographical:

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:who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa

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and the abstract:

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:who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensations of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

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This last, Latin, phrase translates as ""Father Omnipotent Eternal God."

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