What was howl by allen ginsberg about

Ginsberg eventually became a household name, to the point his public figure often overshadowed his prophetic yet shocking poems, and even caused some to label him a sellout.

Themes include the horrors of US capitalism, mental illness , heteronormativity, gay pride, embracing quotidian beauty, authenticity, and more. It remains one of the most well-known poems from the Beat Generation to this day. His Russian Jewish mother, Naomi, was a communist, and his father, Louis, was a poet and high school teacher.

Naomi also had schizophrenia; she spent much of her later years institutionalized. Ginsberg began his education in Paterson, New Jersey where he met and befriended the famed poet William Carlos Williams who would later write the introduction to Howl and Other Poems. Williams instructed the young Ginsberg, who was fond of emulation, to write in his own voice and style, and to draw inspiration from everyday life.

Ginsberg attended Columbia University, where he met William Burroughs author of Naked Lunch and began rebelling against the educational system the school briefly expelled him for etching obscenities on his dorm room window. Ginsberg believed this vision symbolized the attainment of universal harmony—a harmony that superseded status quo notions of humanity, poetry, beauty, etc.

Ginsberg is best known as a Beat poet. He hit the San Francisco scene in , happy to reacquaint with friends Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, and Burroughs all of whom are associated with the upper echelon of Beat writers.

Soon after, he met his life partner, poet and actor Peter Orlovsky. The east river is a salt tidal estuary in New York.

This line is based on a real life episode. Herbert Huncke, a petty thief, one of the beat gang, arrived at Ginsberg's door one snowy morning. He'd been on the streets for ten days and was in a terrible state, with bloody feet.

Ginsberg took him in and tended to his needs. However, when Huncke recovered he began to take over Ginsberg's apartment, filling the place with stolen goods. Ginsberg's life changed when he agreed to be driven by one of Huncke's friends to his brother's house.

It turned out the car was stolen, contained stolen clothes, and was spotted by a police patrol car. In a speed chase the car overturned. Ginsberg survived but was found guilty of aiding a thief.

Fortunately for him interventions from his university professors allowed him to avoid jail. Instead he ended up at the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute, where he was to be re-trained as a normal member of society. During his eight-month stay, he met none other than Carl Solomon, inspiration for the poem 'Howl'.

What goes around, comes around. Another suicidal scenario, this time high up overlooking the Hudson River. The moon, that harbinger of lunacy and cyclic energy is present as the victims are crowned with victory wreaths, an old Roman tradition.

Ginsberg was well aware of the low life that gathered under the bridges of Bowery, in Manhattan. A rescue mission has been here since Weeping and onions seem to go together. Hobos and others down at heel often push their belongings around on wheels. There is something tragic about seeing people on the street who have fallen victim to the times, or have a loveless existence.

On the flipside there is romance too. Perhaps there's no excuse for bad music though. Bill Keck did build harpsichords, so this line is a direct link. Ginsberg is said to have spoken with his wife just before starting 'Howl'. Durgin happened to store his theology books in orange crates he'd picked up from the streets. This line introduces rock and roll and the pioneering aspirant beats who thought they were writing great literature to this new music but woke up knowing their work was naught but trash.

Food and eating appear quite often in 'Howl'. The Jewish dish lungen is a stew of lungs and other meats served with potatoes. Ginsberg's mother certainly cooked it but nowadays it is forbidden to eat animal lungs The shortest line. Desperation rules. You have to be mad and starving hungry for eggs to get under a truck for one.

Is the truck moving at the time? Let's hope not, for the sake of the beat and the egg. This line is well known and has some bizarre yet stirring imagery. A certain Louis Simpson, one of Ginsberg's Columbia Uni friends, and a poet and editor, did actually throw a watch, belonging to someone else, out of a window, a crazy thing to do.

Simpson thought that time was no longer needed because everyone was living in Eternity. Louis Simpson had served in WW2 and was older than Ginsberg. His war time experiences left him a little traumatised and he eventually had a nervous breakdown.

Such absurd mini-stories within this poem. Suicide attempts result from desperation, the crushing demands of society and family squeezing out hope, yet in this line the victims fail in their attempts to end life and are forced to open antique stores! Ginsberg's talent for juxtaposing dark and light, humor and horror in this poem is once more illustrated. One of the longest lines in the poem, depicting Madison Avenue, the luxury district of New York where fashion and bling and money count.

In 'Howl', the scene is more like one from Hell—minds being burned alive in what appears to be an environment of war. What battle rages? What war is this? This is none other than the military-industrial complex, the Capitalist elites and the conformists waging war on the best minds, the peripherals, the creatives who question, protest and promote alternative worlds.

Tuli Kupferberg, poet, musician and protestor did jump off a bridge in , the Manhattan bridge according to sources, and was picked up badly injured by a passing tugboat. Ginsberg turns this true episode into a poetic fiction—as he did in many lines of 'Howl'—using biographical fact and dressing it up as poetry.

Again, nitty gritty street-life is given ghostly character. And there's not even a free beer? Another long line, with commas for pauses, which helps break up the breath.

Bill Canastra, another beat gang member, did fall out of a subway train window and got killed. The language of this line: sang, fell, jumped, leaped, cried, danced, smashed, threw up. Ginsberg must have heard tales of Nazi Germany and the plight of the Jews in those dreadful camps. Well, Ginsberg at speed in this line. The beats loved to drive their metaphors to all kinds of places. That phrase hot-rod Golgotha jail-solitude watch quickens then slows all by itself Put the two together and you have a potent mix of life and death, whilst the latter suggests time in the clink, behind bars Still in the car, one of those heavy gas-guzzling whitewalled chrome beasts featured in On the Road , like a Hudson Commodore, driving nonstop to visit one of the best minds Does it exist?

In Reality or Not? Ginsberg and the beats took long necessary excursions, journeying by car, bus, train Neal Cassady is associated with Denver, it was the city he grew up in, studied and worked. He lived with a drunken father but always sought a better life. Later on when Cassady started writing and mixing with Kerouac both would venture out into the city's bars and clubs, including Charlie Brown's and My Brother's Bar.

Ginsberg was also around, falling in love with Cassady, the Adonis of Denver. Ginsberg liked cathedrals, especially St Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue in New York, where he is said to have prayed for Jack Kerouac one time, himself a visitor to the same cathedral on numerous occasions. A line without punctuation, to be spoken in one long breath, as are the next five. Alcatraz is the island prison in San Francisco Bay. It was in its heyday an infamous place, because nobody could escape from there.

So the best minds are in jail, waiting for the golden headed criminals, the hardened jailbirds who looked towards Alcatraz with pain in their souls and their sweet voices. What became of some of the best minds? Well, they went to Mexico for the drugs, they went to Rocky Mount, North Caroline where Kerouac's sister lived to find Buddha, they went to Tangiers like William Burroughs for the boys or the railroad like Cassady who was a railroad worker for some time Many of those labelled as insane in Ginsberg's time and even today were, arguably, anything but.

Ginsberg uses the radio of hypnotism in a figurative way—it stands for the brainwashing of the populace into believing that the mainstream way of life was the sane way and that alternative living, creative being, was the path of the insane.

Whatever the fact, poetic license allows Ginsberg to neatly sum up Solomon's entry into the psychiatric institute.

And once inside the treatment could start. Back then it was a drug called metrosol an anti-depressant that was commonly used, in conjunction with electric shock therapy, which is banned in some countries and most states nowadays. Ginsberg's use of adjectives and nouns is unusual— concrete void— quite an image.

The symbolic pingpong table. The ball flying from one end to the other, the mood swinging between smash and mishit, the ball hitting the net, flying off here and there, out of control. These three lines build up to a climax of near despair, culminating in line 71, the longest, which depicts a very private ending to Naomi Ginsberg's long struggle with mental illness. Ginsberg is sensitive and detailed in this carefully constructed line; there's almost a child-like feel to the repeated and the.

In line 69 the best minds return years later, in memory? The wig of blood could be caused by the electric therapy, or be a symptom of self-harm. The language in line 70 is weighty: Pilgrim State's Rockland's, Greystone's, dolmen-realms, stone, heavy. Ginsberg knew of insanity and madness—he was eight months in a psychiatric institute himself, as previously mentioned. He saw the sad decline of his own mother Naomi, a schizophrenic, who was in Greystones hospital for long stretches.

She died June 9, Ginsberg wrote the poem Kaddish about her, considered one of his best poems. Time narrows down to 4 am and that dash—at the end of the line takes on new meaning. Following the death of his mother and the emotional trauma this must have caused for Ginsberg, captured poignantly in line 71, from out of the dark madness comes a glimmer of hope.

The final seven lines of 'Howl' feed on this hope and acknowledge that, despite the grief, destruction and loss, despite the awfulness of mainstream American reality, a transcendant cathartic relationship between mind and soul can be attained. And out of this individual experience, meeting Solomon, Ginsberg gained new insights into his poetry and the direction he should take in life. Reference to Carl Solomon and the close bond built between the two.

Ginsberg's idea of society at large is summed up in the term animal soup of time. Ginsberg learned about the ellipse, shorter line, through studying haiku and the poetry of Pound and Williams.

The catalog refers to the long lines of Walt Whitman, whilst meter connects the line length, stress and breath. Ginsberg loved Cezanne for his vibrant color and juxtaposed images, calling the effect of seeing such contrasts and depth an ' eyeball kick' hence the vibration.

Ginsberg wanted to create a similar effect in his poetry, which occurs in 'Howl' with such phrases as hydrogen jukebox. April 5, Shuqin Thomaes Teacher. How do you write a simple poem? Use the free verse form. Perhaps the most freeing form in poetry is free verse, where you are not limited by line count, rhyming structure, or syllable count. Try the haiku form. Use the cinquain form.

Do the limerick form. Try the epigraph poetry form. Make a short shape poem. Kathya Parmo Teacher. What is the beat of a poem called?

Rhythm can be described as the beat and pace of a poem. Rhythm is created by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line or verse. Rhythm can help to strengthen the meaning of words and ideas in a poem. Husein Orobengoa Teacher. Who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism? Ginsberg summed up the evils of this Capitalist , consumerist America with one word: Moloch.

Younas Hudojnikov Reviewer. How do you cite poems? MLA Works Cited entry for a poem. Elizabeta Schrangs Reviewer. Where did Allen Ginsberg live? East Village. Milagrosa Kamin Reviewer. What is the purpose of Howl by Allen Ginsberg?