Poetry
Howl and Other Poems
Allen Ginsberg · 1956
Synopsis
The collection opens with Howl, in three parts followed by a note. The first, a single sentence of seventy-eight lines most of them beginning with “who”, tells what the best minds of a generation destroyed by madness went through: the roads, the expulsions from universities, the asylums. The second invokes Moloch, god of cement and money. The third addresses Carl Solomon, with whom the poet says he is in Rockland. Shorter poems follow: a California supermarket where an old poet passes, a sunflower covered in soot in a railway yard, an address to America.
Context
A first version of the first part was read by the author on 7 October 1955 at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, before about a hundred people, at an evening introduced by Kenneth Rexroth. City Lights published the collection in 1956, as number 4 in the Pocket Poets series, with an introduction by William Carlos Williams. In 1957, customs seized 520 copies printed in London; the manager of the bookshop, Shigeyoshi Murao, and then Lawrence Ferlinghetti were prosecuted. On 3 October 1957, Judge Clayton Horn recognised the book as having social value.
Who it is for
A long poem followed by short poems, in long, sweeping lines. Two French translations, in 1977 and in 2022.
Prizes and reception
Translated into more than twenty languages; a founding text of the Beat Generation and of a trial that remained famous for freedom of expression.
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