OK, I know that if we’re getting literal about the title of this diary series, “Howl” isn’t a book; however, it is THE poem featured in the collection Howl & Other Poems published in 1956 by City Lights Bookstore. It is still City Light’s best seller, and the issues & imagery Mr. Ginsberg was brave enough to discuss opened this country & the world to concepts like “hippies,” the introduction of eastern philosophy (including Buddhism) into American culture, ecological consciousness, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the “gay pride” movement, etc. 55 years after the trial that declared “Howl” not obscene, the struggle for academic & artistic expression goes on, and its themes are still relevant.
How does my life fit into this picture? For my entire life before the spring semester of my freshman year of college, I didn’t like poetry – AT ALL. What I’d read was either hokey rhymed treacle or Shakespearean bull pucky that I didn’t understand. The only reason I decided to take Contemporary American Poetry the spring semester of my freshman year was that I loved the professor; she’d been my Honors Literature professor the previous semester & was a hoot! :D The minute I walked in that first day, I realized I was the only freshman surrounded by a bunch of juniors & seniors and wondered what the *&^%$#@! I was doing in there.
After the syllabus was distributed, we opened the anthology for the class, and the very first poem we read was “Howl.” Bear in mind my aforementioned “history” with poetry & the fact that I was raised in a very isolated sheltered part of central Illinois/western Indiana where people didn’t discuss suicide, drug use, mental illness, homosexual behavior, etc. The minute I got through those famous first couple of lines
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
, I knew this poem was going to be unlike anything I’d ever read in my life. As I read further, I thought to myself, “
Hello?! Check out the cussing!” and “
Gee, I guess this guy was gay.” Beyond the semi – immature sheltered reaction of an 18 – year – old, as I read further, I realized that Allen Ginsberg was giving voice to a nagging feeling that I guess I’d felt for a long time but hadn’t allowed to surface into my conscious mind.
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian/angels. [emphasis mine]
When our class was finished with the first day’s lecture, I asked my professor, “Has this Ginsberg guy written anything else?!” After that day, a world of brilliant, intelligent, tortured artists & muses was introduced to me who had the courage of their artistic & personal convictions in an early to mid – 1950s America where it was dangerous to be different. One wrong or suspicious comment from someone who didn’t like you could get you fired or jailed or killed. Had the famous 1957 obscenity trial in San Francisco ended differently, Lawrence Ferlinghetti would’ve gone to jail.
Howl on Trial: the Battle for Free Expression is a WONDERFUL account of what lead up to the trial & what resulted from the verdict.
As I mentioned above, themes from “Howl” and the battle of free artistic and academic expression still resonate 57 years after its ground – breaking first public reading at the Six Gallery. Since that first day in Contemporary American Poetry, I met Allen Ginsberg my senior year of college at a reading at Butler University (felt like I met the Almighty him/her/itself!), I’ve earned my BA in history and an MA in English, I had a 3 – hour lunch with Lawrence Ferlinghetti in San Francisco (another Almighty meeting!), and the class I teach each spring term is “An Introduction to the Beat Generation” – despite its rocky beginning. After the English department chair’s suggestion that I teach the class since I’d done much original research, knew more about the subject than any of the full – time English faculty, and I liked it so gosh – darned much, I made history by my spring term class proposal being the first one ever rejected by the final committee that had to approve it. The “surface” reason was that an adjunct faculty member wasn’t qualified to teach during spring term. The real reason from people I knew & trusted who were at that meeting was that I’d be encouraging drug use & homosexual behavior. I then suddenly found myself at the center of a very big very public debate about academic and artistic freedom. All this took place less than 10 years ago when we’re supposed to be more “receptive” and “enlightened” to ideas & experiences not our own AND at an institution of “higher education.” After I dressed in my Sunday best as to appear as professional & non – threatening as possible, I won my appeal to be allowed to teach the class at the next meeting of that committee. Ever since then, the class has had a very positive reception, and it is the high point of my year!
If Allen Ginsberg was alive today, he probably wouldn’t have the physical stamina to camp in Zuccotti Park, but he sure as $hit would’ve supported Occupy protestors by lending his time & energy to the cause, writing a poem or 2 specifically for the occasion, or expanding on the imagery & feelings he’d already written in “Howl.”
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 whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose/fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a/smoking tomb!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose/poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch/whose name is the Mind!
Remember, he wrote these lines in the aftermath of WWII when the atrocities of the concentration camps & what the atomic bombs really did to Japan came to light; however, the sentiment & passion & desperation behind these lines still resonate in a society where a major party’s probable Presidential candidate and the party itself think corporations are people, poor people should pay a higher tax rate than rich people, home mortgages are casino chips on Wall Street, and uninsured Americans should be left to die.
I’ve read “Howl” in public a few times and, during a couple serious frightening points in my life (including just before that horrible committee meeting I had to attend), I went somewhere to read it aloud just to myself because every time I do, I feel relieved & empowered & ready to kick a$$ and take names. Every once in awhile, when I need a spiritual & mental pick – me – up, I’ll read “Howl” out loud to myself. Allen Ginsberg left this life in April 1997, but “Howl” still is & will always be with us to hopefully educate and inspire. The struggle goes on, but “Howl” will continue to show me the way.